Yesterday's Class

The story of the Hogia Sophia was something that I found quite intriguing. The vastness and complexity of the building itself are only part of the reason that I was drawn to this building. I would love to visit it to experience its beauty and to enter one of the few places left in the world where you can bring yourself back to such an early time and see the sights/walk in the same spaces as people did many hundreds (almost thousands) of years ago and contemplate what it might have been like back then. Besides that, I was very much interested in how it was transformed from a church to a mosque. As always, religion is full of many contradictions. Different religions have always fought, and possibly always will. Many claim that they are the ones worshipping the right god, instead of considering that maybe everyone is worshipping the same god. As a result, religions often either try to convert others to their religion, or claim a superiority to those who have different beliefs. I find it interesting that after the church was invaded by Muslims, it was so easily converted into a mosque. According to what I have read, the Christians were slaughtered inside, and that was it. Instead of building their own mosque, they took a place that was sacred for Christians and decided that after a few of the decorations were changed and paintings painted over, it was now sacred for muslims. That was that. They created a mosque out of a place where an "inferior religion" worshipped after committting a lot of bloodshed on that very ground, where they would later worship.

I think the main reason that I like the building is due to the way that it looks today. It was transformed into a museum, and in that transformation, some of the original Christian paintings were uncovered, while leaving in tact many of the Islamic changes. Seeing the two religions in the building, side by side, is very beautiful to me. I am sure that both the Christians who originally built the building, and the Musilms who took it over would be in shock, seeing the paintings of Christ next to the Islamic words. However, there they are, two different worlds living side by side, so that anyone who is somehow unfamiliar with religion might think that they belonged together.