Hagia Sofia - Holy Wisdom
Hagia Sofia - photo by William E. Evans, 2014
“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ordered the Hagia Sophia museum, one of Istanbul's most famous landmarks, to be converted into a mosque.” from the NPR News Article
If the human race is indeed evolving into a single, collective civilization, we’re taking our own sweet time getting it done. Seems humans are much better at citing our most minute differences than what’s in our common interests–meanwhile hand-over-heart declaring we’re all in this together. Right on.
In the face of shrinking distances and real-time Internet linkages, reactionary forces are pushing back, world-wide resisting the idea of ‘a more perfect union.’
Americans are still getting used to the concept that African Americans aren’t second class citizens and making apologies for the Confederate statues; China is incarcerating Buddhist monks in Tibet and ‘reeducating’ Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang; North Korea is building nuclear weapons and starving its own people; and a segment of the Muslim world wants to return to the time of the caliphates. Interestingly, of the nations and movements mentioned, varying shades of authoritarianism seems to be a common denominator.
Those are only the highlights. This may take a while yet.
D and I spent a few days in Istanbul back before Erdogan slewed sideways declaring if Europe wouldn’t give him membership in their club, he’d take his toys and go home–no sense pretending Turkey had a democracy if they didn’t want him in their European Union. When we were visiting, the tension could be read about in the daily newspapers, but not on the streets of Istanbul. Even Taksim Square was calm and absent the demonstrators.
Though walking home from Taksim one nice evening, we passed an entire family on the sidewalk, father, mother and children dressed in their best clothes–because they were wearing all they had, these Syrian refugees. Begging on the streets of Istanbul. Right there.
Maybe taking the longer view is in order–there’s certainly a long enough view to be taken in Istanbul. Even the cats know it’s an old city and Erdogan won’t be around forever. The cats will wait. Whoever comes after him may rethink things. Whereas I hold little hope for Russia ever giving up its czarist ways, Turkey still shares with the West as much as it holds with the East. Best example being Istanbul.
Istanbul has such a wonderful, layered history that untying the weave into East or West would be a ludicrous waste of effort.
In the West, the Enlightenment developed the concept of the state existing to serve the individual. Over the objections of King and Church. America is largely a product of that philosophy, even in times when we don’t practice it with any consistency or clear purpose. Yet, the expression, ‘fail upward’ applies in spades.
“The idea of society as a social contract, however, contrasted sharply with the realities of actual societies. Thus, the Enlightenment became critical, reforming, and eventually revolutionary. Locke and Jeremy Bentham in England, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, and Condorcet in France, and Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson in colonial America all contributed to an evolving critique of the arbitrary, authoritarian state and to sketching the outline of a higher form of social organization, based on natural rights and functioning as a political democracy. Such powerful ideas found expression as reform in England and as revolution in France and America.”
from Britannica article on the Age of Enlightenment
Democracies are messy, stumbling assemblages, self-contradictory and lacking consistent vision. Like the people who form them. Yet they allow for evolution–growth even–in human knowledge, without which cultures grow brittle, decrepit and dry out–a prime example being the Ottoman Empire at the end of its days.
Whereas autocrats require two things above all: a common religion and devils to blame. The religion can be secular, but it needs to be fervently–religiously–held by its adherents. Devils are necessary to furnish the ‘us against them’ every autocrat must rail against to prove his worth. Umberto Eco’s opening lines to an essay on fascism are classic:
“In 1942, at the age of ten, I received the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles (a voluntary, compulsory competition for young Italian Fascists—that is, for every young Italian). I elaborated with rhetorical skill on the subject ‘Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?’ My answer was positive. I was a smart boy.”
from Umberto Eco’s essay, Ur-Fascism in The New York Review of Books
Not far from the city’s historic center, we sat at an outdoor café having Turkish coffee (a distinctly fine experience) and a smörgåsbord (Swedish for ‘butter-goose table’) rounded off by baklava. I’d become partial to that Middle Eastern treat ever since D’s mother first set down a tray of her hand-rolled, honeyed baklava after Sunday dinner.
The young Turkish waiter told us with a sly grin he was thinking about taking a second wife, to which I offered that one was more than sufficient for the wise man. It seemed obvious he was teasing us to get a reaction and we him, and all was well. We tipped him well.
Well then.
Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar is exactly that–grand. Imagine, sixty-one streets under roof and more than four thousand shops. Tysons Corner is small time by comparison. D found a shop selling scarves and proceeded to demonstrate to her Irish husband the art of the haggle. After which we had tea and baklava with the proprietor. My working theory is that while the Israelites were hanging out with the Egyptians, they learned by example–politically incorrect on so many levels.
Sweets in the Grand Bazaar - photo by William E. Evans, 2014
And Istanbul’s vaulted Basilica Cistern is a sight to behold, built to supply the Roman era city in times of siege. While there, we attended an elaborate gala thrown by D’s company. Dancing girls with nary a head covering to be seen. Just as there are people in Istanbul who shrug seeing such behavior, there are others who don’t, and out in the hinterland one suspects even more.
The Basilica Cistern is a four minute walk from the Roman hippodrome–and Hagia Sofia, where Erdogan has his people praying again. You can follow two thousand years of melding cultures by studying Hagia Sofia–and Istanbul.
Dancers in the wing - photo by William E. Evans, 2014
Dancers in color - photo by William E. Evans, 2014
Hagia Sofia “Holy Wisdom”
It’s a common misconception that Hagia Sofia is of Byzantine architecture. It is more accurate to say that it singularly inspired the Byzantine then Islamic architecture to follow. In fact, Hagia Sofia was Roman, built when Roman skills at architecture were still strong–and centuries before Europe’s collapse into the Dark Ages–building the narrow, pointed Gothic arches because they’d lost the skills to build like the Romans.
Hagia Sofia is the best surviving example of late Roman architecture.
Under the frescoes still lie icons - photo by William E. Evans, 2014
Restored Icon in Hagia Sofia - photo by William E. Evans, 2014
When you stand in that space and consider its history, and its influence on the cultures and architecture to follow, it’s hard to name a more important moment in architectural history–Eastern and Western alike. A Greco-Roman basilica imported to the edge of the Roman Empire, surviving that empire’s collapse, becoming the center of a second great empire, the Byzantine, then wrestled away after a millennium by the Ottomans, finally returned from a colonial rule as the pride of modern day Turkey.
In the sense that Istanbul (nee Constantinople) ultimately became the seat of the Byzantine Empire, following the collapse of the Roman Empire in Europe (the so-called Western Roman Empire), the Church of Hagia Sofia would become model for what was to follow in the thousand plus years of Byzantine church architecture, and then seed the Ottoman Empire with the iconic Muslim mosque.
A Roman structure, laid out in the form of a Greek cross became the basis of Islamic mosques.
Consider: from the middle of the 5th to the 21st Century–for far longer than the history of Europeans in the New World–Hagia Sofia was the central church (basilica) in one of the world’s most important cultures. And its architectural influence extended to the Islamic culture that replaced the Byzantine. From a distance, the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmed Mosque) from the 16th Century might be mistaken for Hagia Sofia’s younger sibling.
Hagia Sofia trompe l'oeil - photo by William E. Evans, 2014
Mimbar rising toward an icon of Mary and Christ Child - photo by William E. Evans, 2014
Would a conquered Byzantine resent the Ottomans ‘borrowing’ their highest art? The Japanese, once deciding to embrace Modernism, took that architecture to a higher plane–as did the Ottomans from the Byzantines. My favorite architectural historian, Doctor Cooledge argued that these borrowings are the way of history.
…with God in the details - photo by William E. Evans, 2014
“Constantinople became the capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. The combination of imperial power and a key location at the crossing point between the continents of Europe and Asia… played an important role in terms of commerce, culture, diplomacy, and strategy. It was the center of the Greek world and, for most of the Byzantine period, the largest city in Europe. Constantine's conversion to Christianity, in 312, had set the Roman Empire towards Christianization, and in 381, during the reign of Theodosius I, the official state religion of the Roman Empire became Christianity, turning Constantinople into a thriving religious center.
“According to historians this flourishing Eastern Roman Empire was then classified as the Byzantine Empire to distinguish it from the Roman Empire. This empire was distinctly Greek in culture, and became the centre of Greek Orthodox Christianity after an earlier split with Rome, and was adorned with many magnificent churches, including Hagia Sophia, once the world's largest [basilica].”
Justinian I, the twentieth emperor of the eastern Roman Empire, built his church between 532 and 537 AD (or CE if you prefer) on the site of two earlier Christian churches. It wasn’t like the Byzantine Empire wasn’t important, even if it seems lost in a side story to Western minds. A good portion of what became known as Ottoman brilliance under such men as Suleiman the Magnificent (1494 to 1566 AD) had been handed the Ottomans by Byzantium. It was not a bloodless conquest. And not so long before Europeans discovered the New World for themselves (seeing as the Native Americans had found it long before).
“Constantinople fell to the attacking Ottoman forces on 29 May 1453. Sultan Mehmed entered the city and performed the Friday prayer and kutbah (sermon) in Hagia Sophia, this action marked the official conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque.”
“In 1935, the first Turkish President and founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, transformed the building [Hagia Sofia] into a museum.”
from Wikidpedia article on Hagia Sofia
In 2020, eighty-five years later, the Turkey’s President declared Hagia Sofia was, a voilà, again a mosque. How easy was that! Zealous adherents to the past may claim Ataturk had been only appeasing the West, though the arc of history may yet prove them wrong.
The core of Istanbul has been the site of human habitation going back to prehistoric times. Named Lygos, then Byzantium by the Greeks who settled there, renamed Constantinople by Emperor Constantine. The city received its modern name, Istanbul, by Ataturk.
The Ottoman Empire spanned from the mid-Sixteenth Century until it was broken apart by World War 1, being allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Turkey itself might well have been partitioned (it had been partitioned on paper) by the victorious Allies had it not been for Ataturk’s defense of the Ottomans during the war, and following, during Turkey’s war for Independence, fought against Greece and Armenia. France and England, exhausted from World War I declined to take part. Ataturk was one of those singular leaders who first served his country as its best military leader, went on to found a nation and rebuild it into a modern state, shedding the encrusted Ottoman corruption and autocracy.
So should it matter that, in the midst of a pandemic, the modern state of Turkey is encouraging religious privilege to reenter its political life? Like any successful autocrat, Erdogan understands it’s always wise to throw red meat regularly to the masses—keeps the autocrat relevant. Eighty-five years after Ataturk dragged Turkey from a decay borne of the same. One would like to think it possible that a culture imbued with so long a tradition of church-state rule could yet move beyond autocracy. Ataturk apparently believed Turkey could, and it may well yet.