Istanbul’s Haghia Sophia, which served as a cathedral for 916 years and as a mosque for 481 years, has showed one more of its faces.
The magnificent Byzantine/Ottoman sanctuary has been under ceaseless restoration since it was converted into a museum in 1935. The newly uncovered treasure is a long-lost mosaic angel face of a seraph.
Hagia Sophia is the epitome of Ottoman/Muslim approach to the universal culture. You shouldn't think in modern terms to understand it.
For a nationalist/Islamist Turk who can only think in those modern terms, it was the moment of a crushing victory when the Ottomans had converted Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Similarly, the simple-minded non-Turkish person would find this conversion as a sign of religious repression.
No; beyond such anachronic or biased perspectives, the story of Hagia Sophia is one of the greatest stories of religious tolerance and multi-faith respect.
The Turks captured the city in 1453. So we should think about the historical conditions of the 15th century and before. For that time, when a victor would like to intimidate the beaten enemy, he would not convert, but completely destroy their temples. See what happened in the 13th century Spain, when the Catholics decisively won the war against the Muslims...
The Ottomans didn't do that. The conversion of Hagia Sophia was actually done in line with the broad gesture towards the local Christians of the city. Sultan Mehmed II, who guaranteed the well-being of his new subjects, could indeed destroy everything Christian inside Hagia Sophia; but he didn't. Such a destruction could even be considered compatible with certain Christian trends, like the Byzantine iconoclasm, but Mehmed, again, didn't resort to it.
Instead, as a disguised patron of arts and still a truely tolerant Muslim believer, the Sultan just applied a thin layer of plaster over the mosaics. Moreover, he reinforced the building structurally and adorned it with the finest style, with the help of Sinan. Without these contributions, it is likely that Hagia Sophia would not still be standing today, according to some experts.
So when the time came, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, as the second hero of Istanbul, converted Hagia Sophia into a museum and we started to take back the good old mosaics. Luckily, we still do...
