I was privileged to visit the Hagia Sophia in March 2020, I trip curtailed by the Covid lockdown. Sadly, I believe this depiction has been veiled again, the building recommissioned as a mosque.
The Turkish authorities made the right decision to let the Hagia Sophia be a museum open to all people where both its Christian and Muslim history were honored. But the current mood in Turkey is not toward such ecumenicism. I don't know exactly where things stand re: the murals today. Places of worship have been repurposed throughout human history, but this is a case of one of the most significant churches in a religion that is still very much alive and actively practiced having its Christian history increasingly erased. The closest thing I can think of in the other direction is the mosque/cathedral in Cordoba, but even that is not on the same level within Islam as the Hagia Sophia is in Christendom. We'd have to go back to the Christian appropriation of the Pantheon in Rome to get something on the same level.
So true. Its place as museum offered equal access, mutual appreciation and a good deal of respect. However, the current Turkish government is wilfully eroding Ataturk’s vision for a secular state free of religious interference. Even as a museum huge boards with inscriptions from the Quran dominated the view above.
I was privileged to visit the Hagia Sophia in March 2020, I trip curtailed by the Covid lockdown. Sadly, I believe this depiction has been veiled again, the building recommissioned as a mosque.
I love your poem. Especially the line “I seek the one who seeks me”
The Turkish authorities made the right decision to let the Hagia Sophia be a museum open to all people where both its Christian and Muslim history were honored. But the current mood in Turkey is not toward such ecumenicism. I don't know exactly where things stand re: the murals today. Places of worship have been repurposed throughout human history, but this is a case of one of the most significant churches in a religion that is still very much alive and actively practiced having its Christian history increasingly erased. The closest thing I can think of in the other direction is the mosque/cathedral in Cordoba, but even that is not on the same level within Islam as the Hagia Sophia is in Christendom. We'd have to go back to the Christian appropriation of the Pantheon in Rome to get something on the same level.
So true. Its place as museum offered equal access, mutual appreciation and a good deal of respect. However, the current Turkish government is wilfully eroding Ataturk’s vision for a secular state free of religious interference. Even as a museum huge boards with inscriptions from the Quran dominated the view above.