Hagia Sophia

Overview

Hagia Sophia is a mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. It was built as a Christian cathedral in 537 CE and served as the principal church of the Byzantine Empire for over nine hundred years. After the conquest of the city in 1453 by the Ottoman Empire, one of the most powerful states at that time, it became a mosque, then a museum from 1934, and in 2020 it returned to use as a mosque. Daily Muslim prayers are held beneath its dome. Hagia Sophia is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Present

Hagia Sophia functions as a mosque under the management of Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs, the state body that administers mosques in the country. The five daily Muslim prayers and the Friday congregational prayer are held there. The building's Christian mosaics, which depict human figures, are covered by curtains during prayer times, in keeping with the Islamic practice of avoiding figural images in spaces of worship.

Religious Significance

Christianity (from the 4th century CE)

Hagia Sophia was the cathedral of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire and the city known today as Istanbul, and the seat of its patriarch, one of the chief bishops of the Christian world. The first church on the site was completed in 360 CE. The name Hagia Sophia means Holy Wisdom in Greek: Christians dedicated the church to Christ, understood as the Wisdom of God. For more than nine hundred years it was the center of Christian worship in the empire, and Byzantine emperors were crowned beneath its dome.

Islam (from the 15th century CE)

Hagia Sophia became a mosque in 1453, when the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II conquered Constantinople and converted the cathedral, holding the first Friday prayer there. Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet Muhammad foretold the conquest of Constantinople, and the building's conversion is remembered within that tradition as the fulfillment of his words.

History & Structure

Hagia Sophia was built between 532 and 537 CE on the orders of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, after two earlier churches on the site were destroyed, the second in a city riot in 532. The building is crowned by a central dome about 31 meters across, rising about 55 meters above the floor, carried on four massive piers and flanked by two half-domes. After 1453 the Ottomans added four minarets, a mihrab (the niche marking the direction of prayer toward Mecca), and heavy exterior buttresses to support the structure. In 1934 the Turkish Republic converted the building into a museum, and in 2020 a court ruling and presidential decree returned it to use as a mosque. Hagia Sophia is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering Istanbul's historic center, designated in 1985.

Additional Resources

• Official website: Ayasofya Camii
• Related: Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (Smarthistory)
• UNESCO: Historic Areas of Istanbul
• Book: Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian's Great Church by Rowland Mainstone (1988)