Coinciding with the 567th anniversary of the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans on May 29, 1453AD, the cultural and political controversy in Turkey over "Hagia Sophia", which was initially designed as a Christian church in the sixth century and considered the eighth wonder of the world with its distinctive dome of 31 meters in diameter, was restored. The Byzantines compared their entry to a trip to the sky.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday, Thursday, that the Surah Al-Fath will be read in the Hagia Sophia as part of the annual celebrations of the conquest of Constantinople, recalling his pledge that sparked sharp Western criticism last year to turn the Hagia Sophia Museum into a mosque, considering this "a demand that the Turkish people and the Muslim world have looked to since Years".

Hagia Sophia remained the center of Orthodox Christianity until 1453 CE, when the Ottoman Turks conquered the city under the rule of Sultan Mehmed II, known as Al-Fatih, and after 916 years of church service, it became a mosque mosque symbolizing victory and conquest, however, the church mosaic was not destroyed Distinguished, and even Christian paintings and icons were covered with gypsum, which appeared again after the restoration of the church in the twentieth century.

And held in the Hagia Sophia the first Friday prayer after the conquest of Constantinople, and used a mosque for 482 years, and it was considered the jewel of the Islamic world, to be known as the "Great Mosque", and after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire it was converted into a museum in 1935, and since then the debate between historians and intellectuals has not been interrupted And politicians in Turkey about the fate of Dora Istanbul's ancient architecture.

The ongoing debate is taking place between supporters of remaining a historical museum as it is now, and between those who want to return it to a large mosque, according to the will of the Ottoman Sultan Muhammad al-Fateh.

A long and complex history

During his 38-year reign (from 527 AD to 565 AD), the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I worked to achieve coexistence between disputed Orthodox denominations within the Eastern Church, and Roman law was organized into a code still influencing modern laws, and its achievements culminated in the abundance of ancient architecture that was built by non Far from his castle, but she didn't have any of the cool mosaic icons at first.

By the ninth century AD, with the rise of a Christian current that clung to religious images and icons, a group of artists was tasked with drawing angels and emperors and representing the Messiah who overlooks the Great Dome, and although many of these images were lost in ancient times, many of them also remained in the ancient building despite its many transformations From church to mosque to museum.

For more than 900 years, the Hagia Sophia was the most important building in the Eastern Christian world: the seat of the Orthodox Patriarch, the counterpart of the Roman Catholic Pope, as well as the Central Church of Byzantine Emperors, says Roger Crowley, author of "1453: The Holy War of Constantinople and Saddam of Islam and the West": Hagia Sophia summarized Whatever the Orthodox religion was ... for the Greeks, it symbolized the center of their world. Its very structure was a microcosm, a metaphor for the divine mysteries of Orthodox Christianity.

Visitors from all over the eastern Christian world came to see their icons, which are believed to work miracles, and an unparalleled collection of sacred relics. Within the collection of the cathedral, the alleged artifacts included pieces of what was considered the true "cross", the olive branch that the dove carried to Noah, peace be upon him after the flood, the Christ jacket "the crown of thorns", and the blood of Christ himself. "Hagia Sophia was the mother church," Crowley says. "It symbolizes the eternity of Constantinople and the Empire forever."

On May 28, 1453 the Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI entered the Hagia Sophia (Church of Divine Wisdom) for the last prayer, Constantinople was under siege, and the fate of the great cathedral was not clear. The emperor prayed there before returning to the city walls, where he coordinated defense efforts against Muhammad II's army, which would become conquest by the end of the day.

While the two armies clashed forcefully before the outcome of the battle was decided, there was a sense of anxiety and anticipation of what the Church, which was built by more than 10,000 workers, would be ordered by Emperor Justinian, who wanted to chronicle the greatness of the Eastern Church and become the seat of the Orthodox Patriarch.

The next day, the conqueror entered the city, and immediately walked with his army to the Hagia Sophia, according to Byzantine accounts that the Sultan descended at the church door and bent to take a handful of dirt and put it on his head, in a work symbolizing humility in front of the Creator, and in the five centuries that followed this work Symbolically, Hagia Sophia continued to shine as the largest religious building of the Ottoman Empire and to which four minarets were added that also serve an architectural purpose and protect the building from collapse on itself.

Ancient and modern transformations

The accounts of European historians say that the Fatih Sultan was an intellectual who spoke at least four languages, and patronized Italian artists such as the famous artist Gentile Bellini, who painted him as a bearded and glowing figure immersed in a huge robe, and likened him to Crowe to Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar.

Pottery by Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror by the Italian artist Gentile Bellini (Wikipedia)

Centuries later, in 1935, the role of the Hagia Sophia changed again 12 years after the founding of the Turkish Republic, when President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk signed a decision transforming the Hagia Sophia into a secular museum. According to the Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, Ataturk's decision not only transformed the Hagia Sophia into an "artifact from the past", but also made it "a site of memory rather than a symbol of living religious experience", and thus became the most prominent tourist and archaeological landmark in modern Turkey.

The Hagia Sufi cultural and political transformations over the centuries do not seem different from their architectural transformations. The first minaret of the structure of the church was added in 1481 AD, and another minaret was erected during the reign of Sultan Bayezid II, who assumed the throne after the conquering Sultan, and destroyed a major earthquake in Istanbul in 1509 the first minaret To adopt another instead.

Two other minarets were built during the reconstruction and restoration work undertaken by Mimar Sinan during the reign of Sultan Selim II, and for this reason the four Hagia Sophia minarets built at different times differ from each other.

Selim II's tomb became the first royal tomb in Hagia Sophia, which also contains 43 tombs of Sultans, their wives, and princes. In 1739, a school, library, and kitchen were added to the mosque. The Hagia Sophia, which was closed during renovations between 1847 and 1849, opened as a mosque for the last time in 1849.