Hagia Sophia was first named “Megale Ekklesia” (The Great Church) as it was the largest church in Constantinople (Istanbul today). The historian Socrates indicated that the church was named Sophia during the reign of Emperor Constantius. The name given to the church symbolized the second divine attribute of the Holy Trinity. Originally, Sophia, which means “Holy Wisdom”, was a name given to Christ by 4th century theologians.

Mosque

after the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453, the Hagia Sophia was converted to a mosque as the symbol of the conquest. At that time, the church was very dilapidated. Several of its doors had fallen off. This condition was described by several Western visitors, such as the Córdoban nobleman Pero Tafur[5] and the Florentine Cristoforo Buondelmonti.[6] The sultan Mehmed II ordered the immediate cleanup of the church and its conversion to a mosque. The next sultan Bayezid II built a new minaret, replacing the one built by his father.

In the 16th century the sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) brought back two colossal candles from his conquest of Hungary. They were placed on both sides of the mihrab. During the reign of Selim II (1566-1577), the building started showing signs of fatigue and was extensively strengthened with the addition of structural supports to its exterior by the great Ottoman architect Sinan, who is also considered one of the world’s first earthquake engineers. In addition to strengthening the historic Byzantine structure, Sinan built the two additional large minarets at the western end of the building, the original sultan’s loge, and the mausoleum of Selim II to the southeast of the building (then a mosque) in 1577. The mausoleums of Murad III and Mehmed III were built next to it in the 1600s.

Later additions were the sultan’s gallery, a minbar decorated with marble, a dais for a sermon and a loggia for a muezzin.

The sultan Murad III (1574-1595) had two large alabaster Hellenistic urns transported from Pergamon and placed on two sides of the nave.

Sultan Mahmud I ordered the restoration of the building in 1739 and added a medrese (a Koranic school, now the library of the museum), a soup kitchen (for distribution to the poor) and a library, and in 1740 a fountain for ritual ablutions (Şadirvan), thus transforming it into a külliye, i.e. a social complex. At the same time a new sultan’s gallery and a new mihrab were built inside.

The most famous restoration of the Hagia Sophia was ordered by Sultan Abdülmecid and completed by eight hundred workers between 1847 and 1849, under the supervision of the Swiss-Italian architect brothers Gaspare and Giuseppe Fossati. The brothers consolidated the dome and vaults, straightened the columns, and revised the decoration of the exterior and the interior of the building. The mosaics in the upper gallery were cleaned. The old chandeliers were replaced by new pendant ones. New gigantic circular-framed disks were hung on columns. They were inscribed with the names of Allah, the prophet Muhammad, the first four caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali, and the two grandchildren of Mohammed: Hassan and Hussain, by the calligrapher Kazasker İzzed Effendi (1801-1877). In 1850 the architect Fossati built a new sultan’s gallery in a Neo-Byzantine style connected to the royal pavilion behind the mosque. Outside the Hagia Sophia, a timekeeper’s building and a new medrese were built. The minarets were altered so that they were of equal height. When the restoration was finished, the mosque was re-opened with ceremonial pomp on 13 July 1849.

Museum

In 1935, the first Turkish President and founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, transformed the building into a museum. The carpets were removed and the marble floor decorations appeared for the first time in centuries, while the white plaster covering the mosaics was painstakingly removed by expert restorers. [7]

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