After a gap of 85 years in its long history, Aya Sofia, an important Byzantine building and one of the world’s great historical heritage, has once again become a place of worship. The weapon used in this recent change is the law which was also used in 1934 when Attaturk turned it into a museum. Attaturk was the founder of modern Turkey.
If modern buildings often do not last more than several decades, how is it possible that this building has been in existence for 1500 years?
Sofia embraced Istanbul’s tumultuous history, despite the wounds of so many wars and the good times and bad times, it still has its place. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, the Church of the Holy Wisdom of Christ was founded in the Byzantine city of Acropolis on the same site as the previous two churches.
In the 4th century, Roman Emperor Constantine renamed the city Constantinople and moved the capital of the Roman Empire to it. Constantine wanted to make the city forget Rome. Sofia was first opened by Constantine II, Constantine’s son, in 360, but was burned during the riots in 404. It was later rebuilt by Theodosius II in 405, but was burned again in the riots of 532. Some of the remains of that burnt building are in the garden of the present mosque.
A few days after the riots, King Justinian decided to rebuild it and so the church was built, which for the next several hundred years was the largest church in the world.
By 1452, the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire had shrunk to Constantinople. Although the city’s defense was strong, it was a Christian island surrounded by the Ottoman Empire of Muslim Turks. Turk leader Sultan Muhammed decided to destroy the city’s defenses, and on April 22, 1453, the Turkish army set out to lay siege to Constantinople.
On May 29, 1453, the strong and high walls of Constantinople finally broke down. And so the last form of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine world, came to an end.
For Constantinople, that was the beginning of a new chapter in history. The city was renamed Istanbul, a Muslim city and capital of Sultan Muhammad’s Ottoman Empire. This time the only way to save him was to change his style for Byzantine construction. The cathedral building became a mosque. A church for 900 years, a mosque for 500 years, a museum for a very short time and the Aya Sophia building, which will once again become a mosque, still stands there with glory.
