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July 3, 2020

Hagia Sophia: church, mosque or museum?

Historian says "converting" place of worship has been done since the earliest times
Hagia Sophia: church, mosque or museum?

The Turkish Council of State has delayed a decision on whether the famed Hagia Sophia in Istanbul can be reconverted into a mosque.

The court said on July 2 that it would make a ruling within fifteen days.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed last year during a re-election campaign that he would seek to make the original 6th century Byzantine basilica a Muslim place of worship one more.

It was first converted into a mosque in 1453 under Ottoman rule and remained such until the 1930s when the founder of modern day Turkey, Mustafa Atatürk, ordered that it be turned into a museum.

The conversion of places of worship is not uncommon, says Isabelle Poutrin, professor of history at the Reims-Champagne-Ardenne University in France.

A specialist in 16th-17th century religious and political history, she discussed the issue with La Croix's Anne-Bénédicte Hoffner.

La Croix: What is the place of the Hagia Sophia in Ottoman history?

Isabelle Poutrin: The Basilica of Holy Wisdom was built by the Byzantines with the idea of rivaling the temple of Solomon.

When it was inaugurated in 537, Emperor Justinian is said to have exclaimed, "I have defeated you, Solomon!"

As the architect of the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmet II did not wish to destroy this monument whose architecture, especially the dome, amazed him.

Nourished by Greek culture and eager to build an empire on par with that of Alexander the Great, he wanted to assume the Byzantine heritage to surpass it.

The basilica was then converted into a mosque, as was the practice: crosses and bells were removed, a minbar (pulpit), a mihrab (niche indicating the direction of Mecca) and carpets were installed.

The Christian mosaics were preserved and would not be covered until the 17th century, in a period of Islamic hardening.

Mehmet II, like his successors, never stopped wanting to build even more beautiful and larger mosques, without ever succeeding in matching the dimensions of the dome.

Hagia Sophia remained the mosque in which the Sultan came to pray after his enthronement.

Understanding the Ottoman sultans' fascination with Hagia Sophia allows us to measure its symbolic importance for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Was the conversion of a place of worship a common practice in the past?

It began with the christianization of the Roman Empire and the reuse of pagan temples.

In Spain, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim places of worship were constantly being transformed as the borders shifted.

To the practical argument - it is much simpler to reuse a building than to destroy it - is added political motivation: taking possession of one's most important places of worship leaves an impression on one's opponent.

Later, conversion of churches was also common during the time of the Protestant Reformation.

Which of these past conversions are problematic today?

First of all, in many cases the status quo prevails.

The Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque, for example, located in northern Cyprus, was once the Cathedral of St. Nicholas before it was transformed during the Ottoman conquest of the island in 1571.

In Spain, former synagogues that have become churches (and are still used for worship) are attracting memorial tourism from visitors, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, in search of this ancient past, without giving rise to any particular difficulties.

The situation is more complicated in Cordoba, with the former mosque turned into a cathedral.

On its website, the Diocese of Cordoba describes it only as a "cathedral", erasing its Muslim past.

Tourist guides, for their part, call it a "mosque" and some, in the name of a somewhat idealized vision of the history of Andalusia, also claim this heritage.

The denominations sometimes reveal our unease.

Why these current tensions around Hagia Sophia?

The particularity of Hagia Sophia is that it was transformed into a museum in 1934 and President Erdogan is no longer satisfied with this status quo.

However, questioning it is explosive, given the history of the monument and its location in Istanbul, a hub of European geography, a symbol of what has long been a border between empires.

The trap would be to respond by defending a Western Christian heritage, forgetting that Hagia Sophia has been a museum for more than half a century.

Given the wide variety of places of worship that have been re-designated, we do not know what could happen if everyone started to claim their own.

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