More on Turkey!

So, last time you got an overview of our trip to Turkey. Today, you are going to get a history and cultural lesson--once a teacher, always a teacher! I hope you find it as interesting as I did!

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia is on of the oldest churches in the world--ranking in the top 10, and some of the churches making the list are just ruins today! There has been a church on the grounds since the year 360 AD, with the current structure being completed in the year 537 AD.

Its construction was the pinnacle of Byzantine architecture, and it remained the largest church in the world for 1,000 years. (Byzantine: later Roman Empire during medieval times, its capitol being Constantinople--or Istanbul--rather than Rome). Whew, that was a mouthful! Anyway, what sets this particular architecture apart is its dome. See how little the people are at the bottom of the picture. You have to go up to the balcony above ground level in order to truly understand the size of this dome. An interesting side note: we did NOT climb stairs to get up on the balcony. We walked up a series of ramps wide enough for a cart pulled by a donkey in order to transport materials up! You can see both Christian and Islamic symbols in the church--more on that later. In 1453, it was converted to a mosque when the Ottomans conquered the empire. The Ottomans copied the architecture of Hagia Sophia in all of the mosques they built in what is now modern day Turkey, hence the term Turkish mosque. The Turkish mosque has a distinctly different dome than mosques in other Islamic countries. In 1935, after the fall of the Ottoman empire, it was converted from a mosque to a museum under the rule of a new secular republic government.

Here are some things you need to know so that you can understand what you are looking at in the picture. During the Byzantine era, throughout history, and even today in some churches, it was quite common to see artwork depicting Biblical characters: Jesus, of course, the Virgin Mary, the apostles, angels, and so on. Since these are people, they obviously have faces. In Islam, it is forbidden to depict faces inside their mosques. This became a problem to be dealt with when churches were converted to mosques. 

Hagia Sophia was originally constructed with mosaic tiles, some covered in gold, depicting different scenes from Scripture. When it was converted to a mosque, those containing faces had to be covered. Fortunately for us today, they did not destroy these mosaics and paintings. They merely plastered over them! Since becoming a museum, some of the plaster has been removed to reveal the beautiful mosaics underneath. Instead of plastering over all of the paintings, they added their own paint to camouflage people/angels. If you look in the top third of the picture above, you will see an angel on the left and a matching one on the right. The one on the left has been restored to its original form while the one on the right is still in its camouflaged state to disguise the form and face of an angel.

Gold tiles in ceiling mosaics, uncovered

You can also see the large round medallions with Arabic writing on them in the picture below. They were added when the church was converted to a mosque. The picture below also shows another painting that has been uncovered in one of the side domes. The bare patches on the wall are just due to age! I would imagine that after 1,500 years, the building is certainly entitled to show a little aging!

 The picture of Don and I below gives a much better perspective
of just how big this building is. We are up only one "floor" from the main floor,
yet look how small the chandeliers behind us appear!

 

Notice the marble columns in all of these pictures. If you examine the pictures closely, you will see that there are many marble columns used to construct this building. They are mammoth. Yet, these are just the columns on the second floor. The columns that are on the main floor are mammoth! Not only that, they are recycled! The "modern" world thinks that recycling is all their idea, but in the 6th century, the builders of this church recycled marble columns from older Roman ruins. They can tell where the marble was mined, and they know for sure that some of the columns came from the Temple to Artemis not far out of Ephesus!

The red marble column in the picture below is one of the marble columns on the main floor that was recycled. They built this church in five years. There is no way that they could have completed this massive a building in such a short time without using "pre-made" materials! It would have taken too long just to make the columns required. Recycling old columns was a common practice; after all, the Romans used recycled columns in their underground cistern as well (see the picture on my post "Where's the biggest turkey in Turkey?)

The somewhat plain exterior of the Hagia Sophia belies the grandeur that the architects created on the side. They used a terra cotta brick covered with red plaster on the exterior. Some of the plaster has fallen off and exposed the brick underneath, which accounts for differences in color and texture -- again, it's holding its age better than I will! Now that you know how amazing this building truly is, I will share my last pictures of the outside of the Hagia Sophia--the Holy Wisdom. Hope you enjoyed your history lesson! I'll be sharing more on Turkey in days to come!

This is the museum entrance. This picture gives a good close-up of the building exterior. Over to the far left is a man in a pink-ish shirt. He is looking down into an excavation pit where they have uncovered foundation ruins of at least one of the previous churches built on this site.