Christians & Muslims Issue 74 | 2002 Click here to order the downloadable audio version

ARTICLE TOOLS

Find similar articles E-mail this page

On January 27, 537, Byzantine Emperor Justinian dedicated the magnificent Church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople. "Glory to God, Who has deemed me worthy of fulfilling such a work," he prayed. "O Solomon, I have surpassed thee."

About a generation later, a widow in Mecca gave birth to a son named Muhammad. He reportedly prophesied to one of his followers, "You shall conquer Constantinople. Glory be to the prince and to the army that shall achieve it." Muslim armies tried repeatedly to make the prophecy come true, besieging Justinian's capital seven times in as many centuries.

The siege party in 1453 brought an extra weapon—the Janissaries, an elite corps of men taken as children from Christian families and raised as Islamic warriors. With this force Sultan Muhammad II overwhelmed the defenses of the last Emperor Constantine, who spurred his horse into the oncoming ranks of Janissaries and was never seen again. Muslim fighters broke down the doors of Hagia Sophia and killed or imprisoned hundreds of Christians hiding inside.

Muslims transformed Hagia Sophia into a mosque by removing Christian objects, whitewashing mosaics, and installing plaques with Qur'anic texts on the pediments. As our cover image shows, though, the transformation was hardly complete. Some Christian ornaments were destroyed, but many were merely hidden.

After Turkey became a secular republic, in 1924, Hagia Sophia became a cultural museum, and art historians were able to restore dozens of Christian elements. Today, the Christian and Islamic embellishments coexist awkwardly in a space no faith can claim. When Pope Paul VI visited the site in 1967 and privately recited a Hail Mary, a group of Muslim students responded the next day by performing ...