On This Day in History: December 27

The Hagia Sophia

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It is a beautiful bit of architecture called the Hagia Sophia, located in Istanbul, and it’s almost 1,500 years old. And considering they didn’t have all sorts of fancy machinery, it’s pretty impressive that it was constructed in only five years. Amazing what you can do when Jesus is motivating you. I wonder if they’d have been quite so motivated if they’d known that a thousand years later Muslims would turn it into a mosque.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: December 27, 537--

In 532 the city was named Constantinople and Justinian I was the Eastern Roman Emperor. Islam wouldn’t even exist for another century, and Justinian had the Hagia Sophia, which means “holy wisdom,” built as an Eastern Orthodox Christian cathedral, the largest one in the empire. Completed on December 27, 537, at the time it boasted the world’s largest interior space, as well as the largest pendentive dome. I’m not sure what that is, some kind of impressive architecture thing I’m sure you could google.

The reason Justinian had it built was because the previous church on that spot was destroyed earlier that year in the Nika Riots, where half the city burned and tens of thousands died. The riots began because of high taxes; Justinian used his army to put down the riot and then said fuck you I’ll build an even bigger church with your tax money. The structure is said to have changed the history of architecture and was the largest cathedral in the world for a thousand years until Seville was completed in Spain in 1520.

But it wouldn’t remain a cathedral forever. Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 and the conquering Muslims were all nice church I think we’ll use it to pray to our version of the same god instead. And so, after nearly a millennium of Jesus-and-his-dad worship, the prayers switched over to Allah worship.

They had to do some major renos; they weren’t gonna just start using it as a mosque without first purging or covering much of the Jesus and Mary and saints and angels type decorations and architecture, then replacing it with their own Islamic decorations and architecture. It was Extreme Makeover: Religious Edition.

It remained a mosque for almost five centuries, but in 1935 it was changed to a museum under the secular Republic of Turkey. However, in July 2020, with Turkey slipping back toward religion-influenced authoritarian fuckery, the building was once again reclassified as a mosque.

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