Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: ZOOKER
Hagia Sophia, Christian church that was conquered, appropriated, and redesignated as a mosque, reconquered and restored by Christians, then reconquered again by Muslims. Is that right?

Not quite: it was a cathedral, then a mosque, and now a museum. The cathedral was completed in 537, served as the head of the Orthodox Church of the Byzantine Empire until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottomans. At which point it was converted to a mosque. It became a museum by order of the founder of modern Turkey, Ataturk. It was part of his overall program of modernization and secularization of Turkey.

So, no, it has never been reconsecrated as a church since the Ottoman takeover in 1453.

9 posted on 05/04/2020 6:14:27 PM PDT by Jack Black
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies ]


By the way, the museum phase started in 1935 - and is a good compromise for a 1,500 year old building that multiple religions have an interest in.

It's what should be done with the whole Temple Mount in Isreal in my opinion, turned into a giant museum. The Dome, the mosque, the entire area that the Muz are holding onto as "theirs" when it's clearly appropriated territory.

The churches in mosques built by the Moors in Spain, which were then turned into churches after the Reconquesta, are now all museums, too.

10 posted on 05/04/2020 6:18:13 PM PDT by Jack Black
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies ]

To: Jack Black
>> So, no, it has never been reconsecrated as a church since the Ottoman takeover in 1453. <<

It's true it hasn't been reconsecrated as a church since the Islamofacists conquered Turkey, but it DID change religious denominations and was briefly re-consecrated as a Roman Catholic Cathedral from 1204–1261, during the crusades. The Byzantines got it back and turned it back into an Eastern Orthodox cathedral (at least until 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Muslims), but they're still bitter about the Catholic takeover in the 1200s to this day.

17 posted on 05/04/2020 6:55:11 PM PDT by BillyBoy ('States Rights' is NOT a suicide pact.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson