The decision to return the Hagia Sophia Museum to a mosque has sparked controversy, and the Turkish decision has taken on multiple dimensions and paths. For the peculiarity of the place first, and for the current political context and attitude towards those involved in it second.
The reactions varied between political, religious, and popular, but far from the political polarization that was represented in the contradiction of the Egyptian and Emirati media to the Turkish president on the one hand, and in the comments of partisan Islamists and former Islamists on the other hand, this article is an attempt to understand what is going on in isolation from political agitation, and understanding here It requires consideration from two sides: the historical political perspective and the legal juristic perspective.
But the question we can hardly find answer to is: What are the circumstances of its transformation into a museum? Why do some of them deal with the decision to make it a museum as if it were the origin that roamed the legacy of previous centuries?
This article argues for proving that the issue is more complex than quarrels and immediate political investment; The decision is a link within a long path that reflects the transformations of modern Turkish identity and the struggle over how it is defined (secular or Islamic) and its perceptions of modernization, as it is also linked to Turkey's relationship with Europe; That is: the decision is not a personal political event or a transient, and if this - like any event - can be invested politically by several parties, not from one party.
The Hagia Sophia building, with its long history - around 1500 years - represents a diverse heritage, built by the Roman Emperor Justinian I between 532-537 AD, and considered the most prominent cathedral in the Christian world, then Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror transformed it in 1453 into a mosque after the conquest of Constantinople, then turned During the reign of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to the Museum in 1935.
Given these complexities, we will find that each party focuses on only one side of it, there are those who only see its origin as a church (it remained so for about 900 years), and who does not see anything but it was a mosque (it remained so for about 500 years), and others do not see Except that it is a museum (it remained so for about 85 years).
These complications seem appropriate to the ongoing political woes; But the question we can hardly find answer to is: What are the circumstances of its transformation into a museum? Why do some of them deal with the decision to make it a museum as if it were the origin that roamed the legacy of previous centuries?
The importance of the building lies in its history and symbolism; On the one hand it stores the Byzantine and Turkish heritage, and on the other hand it symbolizes the conflict between Christianity and Islam, and therefore it is not possible to separate any controversy about the building from this rich symbolism that did not leave it; Whether at the moment of its construction, when it was converted into a mosque, or when it was converted into a museum, and now when a mosque is returned; That is, the symbolic conflict is inevitable, and Western reactions - especially Christianity - express this clearly. Otherwise, why is the transformation of a museum into a mosque "a return to the Middle Ages" (in the Russian expression of the Russian Orthodox Church), or "an unacceptable violation of freedom of religion" ( In the words of the Russian bishop, the Metropolitan Illarion), or "tearing east and west" (in the words of the ecumenical patriarch Bartholomew)?
These statements only see a building in the building that will be converted into a mosque, although the building has not been a church for nearly 6 centuries, and in return another group insists on keeping it a museum. Because she sees the matter only as a religious reactionary represented by the ruling Islamic party, and it adopts a modern concept of art and tourism.
The church was not named after a certain saint, so Hagia Sophia means sacred wisdom, creative mind or divine wisdom, and it represents Byzantine architecture in which - for the first time - the Greek, Roman, Eastern and Christian elements blend in, and was designed to be the capital of the unique and most beautiful king of Justinian of Rome, and in a crossing scene Justinian advances toward the pulpit, raising his hands, calling: "Glory to God who has seen me as a Creator, to complete this great work. That is, Solomon! I have conquered you."
The historian Will Durant tells us that the historian of the ancient western scientist Brokebius Al-Qaysrani (d. 560 AD) spoke of Hagia Sophia and said: "If a person enters this church to pray, he feels that it is not a work of human powers ... that the soul rises to heaven and realizes that God here is close to it."
All buildings must be preserved to be a spoil organized by the sultan ", which is in complete conformity with the juristic vision, especially the Hanafi school of thought that was in place in the Ottoman Empire
Islamic scholars distinguish between the countries that were conquered and the ones that were forcibly conquered (i.e. war), and they differed in the lands and buildings that the Muslims encountered after the conquest of the countries by force, and there are three sayings; The first: It becomes a waqf as soon as it is seized, which is the doctrine of Imam Malik as narrated by Abu Bakr al-Tartushi (d. 520 for migration). Ibn Rushd al-Jadd (d. 520 of al-Hijrah) said: "All of them are God's blessings on Muslims: churches and others." The second: The imam (caliph or sultan) divided it like all the spoils of war, and the third: The imam was given the choice in that, which is the Hanafi school of thought as stated by Ibn Abi al-Izz (d. 792 for migration); However, Imam Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi (d. 684 AH) reported that the agreed rules that matters of disagreement, if he communicated with some of their sayings, was a judge who was appointed as the judge and the disagreement rose.
What this means is that what Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (d. 886 AH) did in Hagia Sophia when he converted it to a mosque and stood on the Muslims completely in accordance with Islamic jurisprudence, and Al-Fatih wrote a long text explaining this endowment (the written copy in my hand is located in 176 pages), and the waqf The Islamic has high restrictions and conditions that make the text of the endowment as the text of the street in terms of compulsion and lack of diligence in changing it, and therefore there is no point in inventing a fact that does not prove (namely that he bought the building from his own money); The reasons for ownership in the ancient world were not limited to purchasing only, and this is what was done in the ancient world and approved in the modern world, so that every country now exercises sovereignty over what is under its hand, regardless of the history of previous wars during the empires.
Will Durant recounts that the Fatih Sultan declared that "all buildings must be preserved to be a spoil organized by the sultan", which is in complete conformity with the juristic vision, especially the Hanafi school of thought that was in place in the Ottoman Empire.
When we talk about the "Hagia Sophia Mosque" which was built about five centuries ago and about a school attached to it, we are talking about a rich Islamic memory, and fragments of this history can be found in some books of translation, where we stand on the names of some of the sermons and sermons and read the science in the Hagia Sophia So who preached Imam Muhyiddin Muhammad Al-Noksari Al-Rumi Al-Hanafi who used to remind people every Friday: sometimes the Hagia Sophia and sometimes the Mosque of Sultan Muhammad, and the interpretation of the Qur’an was sealed in Hagia Sophia before his death in the year 901 AH, and Sheikh Abdul-Ahad al-Nuri al-Zayli (d. 1061 AH) who He continued preaching to him, and others. Al-Mohebi mentions an incident in which he indicates that Ahmed bin Al-Naimi Al-Dimashqi was “the preacher of Hagia Sophia,” and who taught in it: the Hanafi jurist Sheikh Mulla Khusraw (d. 885 AH) who was appointed to the judiciary in Constantinople and then became a mufti of the Royal Takht.
The Hagia Sophia remained a mosque and a school until 1931, and the Tunisian historian Mahmoud Mogadish (d. 1813) said: “It is still a place of worship, a cause of goodness and augmentation, and the seat of honor and happiness.”
But how did Hagia Sophia turn into a museum? Thomas Whittemore, founder of the Byzantine Institute of America, played an important role in secularizing the building; He was engaged in Byzantine art and history, and in 1931 he obtained the permission of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to restore the Hagia Sophia, and it appears from some writings that Thomas was a diplomatic figure and close to Ataturk, and he was a member of the wealthy and influential circles in Boston in the first half of the twentieth century, and was among those They supported the revival of Byzantine churches, and the Dictionary of Art Historians indicated that Thomas was spending the winter period in America raising funds to support his project emphasizing his "Christian nature."
The conversion of the Hagia Sophia Mosque to a museum was considered for the first time after Thomas's intervention and during the four-year restoration period, and he had obtained permission to remove the plaster from the Byzantine drawings inside the building, which had been hidden after the Muslims entered, which Durant described as saying : "The proper cleansing took place, and all the Christian principalities were removed from it, covered with white mosaics, and the 500-year-old was forgotten."
In my estimation, the disclosure of these important Byzantine drawings was the gateway to convert the mosque into a museum so that it could be kept exposed to meet the ideal idea of tourism.
On November 24, 1934, the Council of Ministers of the Modern Republic of Turkey announced that the Hagia Sophia Mosque should be secularized and converted into a museum. Because of its historical importance as a unique artistic architecture and a new knowledge window for humankind, it seems that the Minister of Education Abidin Özmen had played an important role in this; They found in the idea of the museum a cultural and neutral act at the same time, however the decision did not pass without fuss; Rather, questions were raised about the validity of the signature of the decision, but the controversy soon subsided and the matter became a museum.
The Hagia Sophia that we see today bears traces of interventions that have occurred on the building and its surroundings since the Ottoman organizations in the late nineteenth century, where some of the surrounding buildings were removed to create a space that allows to see the entire building
On the other hand, it seems that the idea of the museum eased the tension of some Westerners towards the building. Since the conversion of the Hagia Sophia to a mosque, Greece wanted to "restore" their church (in theological expression), and there were demands for that after the First World War in the Anglo-Saxon countries, and he was one of the strongest defenders On the restoration of Lord George Curzon, British Foreign Secretary (between 1919 and 1924).
The secularization of the building made it merely a "historical memory" (neither a mosque nor a church), and being a museum means that it was brought out from the current realities of life and became part of the system of tourism and shared history according to the modern European perception.
On the Turkish side, Ataturk was seeking to build a modern nation-state in the European style, and then he needed to establish a common history embodying the national idea, and perhaps he found transforming the building into a museum as a convenient way to enhance the greatness of the Turkish nation and its history on the one hand, and to find other tributaries - Byzantium - To consolidate this history and to obtain European recognition of the modernity of its emerging state as well (let us remember that some modernists in Egypt took refuge in the history of the Pharaohs, for example)
But the Hagia Sophia that we see today bears traces of interventions that have occurred on the building and its surroundings since the Ottoman organizations in the late nineteenth century, where some of the surrounding buildings were removed to create a space that allows to see the entire building; In compliance with European tourism standards, then some of the Islamic elements that were introduced to it during the Ottoman era in the framework of the restoration of the Byzantine heritage were then stripped, and the history of these recent developments can be found through the writings of Robert Nelson, for example.
Thus Hagia Sophia was secularized in the context of the growing interest in Byzantine history on the one hand, and in the context of the Kemalist modernization in Turkey and the pursuit of building a national identity that is supplied by both Byzantine and Ottoman history, and it is striking that Bernard Bernards predicted in 2013 that if the anti-secular trend in Turkey strengthened So, it is not unlikely that Hagia Sophia will transform again into a mosque with another layer of associated memories, in a scientific article presented in the history of art at the University of Radboud Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and there were data indicating this; In the same year, Bulent Arinc, Deputy Prime Minister of the Turkish government, expressed his desire to reopen the Hagia Sophia as a mosque, a demand and a desire that was later insisted upon.
This long historical context refers to two central components: religious and historical symbolism, and the ideology of the ruling authority that has always had a role in the changes that have affected the "building function" (church, mosque, museum, mosque), and therefore I do not expect that the existing problem and tension will be resolved, so the decision The current comes in the context of the new face of Turkey, which wants to restore its previous history over secularism, which puts us at the center of the polarizations hostile to Erdogan and the Islamists in general, so the decision becomes a new tool for the conflict; Although the context of its transformation into a museum was so; The picture is even clearer when we evoke other Hagia Sophia buildings that were converted into museums and then restored as mosques.
Pınar Aykaç presents us with a remarkable study titled "Stabbing in the Byzantine Past: Four Buildings of Hagia Sophia and Ideological Battles over the Restoration of Architecture in Turkey". In (Vize) Qarqalir Ili that the Ottomans seized between the years 1368-1369, the Hagia Sophia was converted to the Solomon Pasha Mosque, and there were attempts to send European missions to restore it and a dispute arose between the Directorate of Institutions that assumed Endowment Affairs after the establishment of the Turkish Republic on the one hand, and the Ministry of Culture On the other hand, in 2007 the building was opened as a mosque again.
To present a specific modernization style that neutralizes the present and brings us to the embalmed memory of history, and meets the standards of modern tourism; But it is not able to remove the religious and historical tensions that this memory revives itself
In Iznik (the capital of the Seljuks of Rome in the Empire of Nicaea and now affiliated with Bursa), Orhan Ghazi had converted the Hagia Sophia to a mosque in 1330, and the aforementioned Turkish Minister of Education also had a role in the restoration of the monument there between 1933-1934, and since the eighties he witnessed This site is a controversy and calls for its dedication to Christian religious events, and judicial cases have been filed, but a decision was issued in 2011 to return him to a mosque.
And in Trabzon, which constituted an exception, where he had been working as a church for centuries since the Ottoman rule of the Trabzon Empire in 1461, and he remained so until 1952 when it was converted into a museum; However, in 2012 he was converted to a mosque with a judicial decision after suits between the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Directorate of Foundations.
The secularization of religious places represented by the idea of a "museum" can present a certain modernization style as it neutralizes the present and brings us to an embalmed memory of history, and it meets the standards of modern tourism; But it is not able to remove the religious and historical tensions that this memory revives itself, which are fueled by hopes and pain, so some contemporary studies have put forward a new concept called (Spatial Turn) and it is a trend that places the place a special importance, as the holy places acquire a special importance in developing moral virtues such as coexistence Or religious pluralism, spaces called Post-Secular Societies in which the virtues of solidarity and coexistence are strengthened, and Massimo Rosati has suggested that the Hagia Sophia be a model for this pattern; Because it is not just an architectural human heritage; Rather, it is a central religious symbol for both Orthodox Christians and Muslims. But the most important challenge facing transforming the museum into a mosque - in my opinion - is how to deal with the Byzantine drawings and interior images that pushed towards making it a tourist museum, and it does not fit with the concept and function of the mosque, as well as within the limits of freedom that will be granted to future Christian visitors.