In this post you may discuss your thoughts about the Hagia Sophia as a Byzantine work of architecture or discuss the impact of its controversial return to being a mosque. Your post needs to be a minimum of 250 words.
Information about the Hagia Sophia
The Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom, was the center of the Byzantine empire. This building glorified the Byzantine emperors as much as it glorified God. To quote historian John Romer, “It was here, on the last day of Byzantium, that the emperor and his troops prayed before going out on the city walls to die.”
We know the names of the architects of the Hagia Sophia – Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus. Their design and engineering innovations were marvels of their time and would greatly influence Islamic and, later, Western European architecture.
The Hagia Sophia became a mosque when the Byzantine empire fell to the Islamic empire in 1454CE.;the same time the city of Constantinople was renamed Istanbul. In the early 20th century the Turkish government made it a museum – so it was neither Christian church nor Islamic mosque. In the summer of 2020, the Turkish government decreed it to be a mosque once more. In past semesters, I have fielded a few questions about a church becoming a mosque. This not the first time this has happened, and it has happened the other way. The Cathedral of Cordoba in Spain was originally the Great Mosque of Cordoba from when that part of Spain was part of the Islamic Empire.
