When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, the church of St. Sophia was immediately turned into a mosque. This was the normal procedure at the time. In war the victor would convert the most prestigious house of worship of the vanquished into a house of his own faith. The Spanish had done the same to the mosques in Toledo, Seville and Cordoba. While there was an element of self-glorification in this, at the same time it demonstrated a certain respect for what the Ottomans called “people of the Book”, namely Jews and Christians. In spite of all their wrong beliefs, these people believed in the same God. On a practical level the conversion of the church was like a guarantee that the building would not be left to fall into ruins.
In spite of all their wrong beliefs, these people believed in the same God.
One authentic tradition of the Ottomans obliged the tribal leader, the “bey”, to perform his Friday prayer with his people. After the “bey” became a “sultan”, the mosque regularly chosen for this ceremony was St. Sophia, or Ayasofya as the Turks called it. The frescoes and mosaics of the church were not destroyed; they were not even covered until the seventeenth century.
For nearly 500 years Ayasofya was regarded as the most majestic, the most precious mosque of the Ottoman Empire. In 1934, nearly ten years after the creation of the Republic of Turkey, Ataturk decided to turn it into a museum. There was no external pressure for this move. It was a purely civilized act by the Turkish President, emphasizing the international human value of this magnificent structure and its universal appeal.
