Who Owns the Hagia Sophia?
I’ve long been fascinated by the concept of global history. Not necessarily the history of the planet, per se, but the division between what is viewed as the history of a particular region, people and society and what is deemed the shared story of all of humanity.
Obviously there are no easy answers. An imperfect argument could be made that (in the West at least) there are two different definitions: non-Western stories and/or occurrences and monuments that arose before or around the Common Era.
The first definition seems fairly simple. And I can say that even despite my extensive (and expensive) education, I never learned much about Asia, Africa or the Americas north or south of the continental US. Everything that I was taught outside of that seemed to be framed as a precursor to the rise of Western Civilization.
As such, the fertile crescent, also known as Mesopotamia, and all the dynasties of Egypt were considered an integral part of the Western historical canon. It is unsurprising then that my “global history” lessons concluded around primordial Greece and Rome detailing the subsequent rise and inevitable falls their respective empires.
WHAT MAKES HISTORY GLOBAL?
But there was a second subset of “world history.” Although, at least for me, these were the stories, histories, arts and monuments were never taught in school. Instead, these ancient marvels, such as the Terracotta Army, tomes such as Bhagavad Gita or architectural wonders such as Machu Picchu were the stuff of documentaries, Discovery and History Channel specials.
This type of global history is seemed to apply to what comprised the majority of the UNESCO World Heritage Site list. UNESCO (an acronym for United Nations Educational Scientific Cultural Organization) is dedicated to the preservation of "cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity."[2] In other words, like the thesis of the “global history” these monuments, documents, cultural artifacts and stories are too grand or important to belong to one singular culture.
So what happens when the society that houses the UNESCO artifact doesn’t agree with the organization? Well, the world found out a few weeks ago when the president of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared that the Hagia Sophia lose its status as a museum and resume receiving devotees for daily prayers as a working mosque.
What is the Hagia sophia?
On the surface, this doesn’t seem as though it should be particularly controversial. To most outsiders, especially Westerners, Turkey is a Muslim country and the Hagia Sophia looks like a mosque already, so what is the big deal? Well, the reality is that Turkey isn’t a muslim country. And before the Hagia Sophia was a mosque, it was a church. And not just any church. Until the 15th century it was the largest cathedral in the world—a title it held for nearly 1000 years.
Before Turkey was Turkey, it was Byzantium. And before the city the houses the Hagia Sophia was called Istanbul, it was known as Constantinople. If you were asleep during this class in global history, the Byzantine Empire was effectively the Eastern half of the Roman Empire.
The initial building was built by Justinian I. It took nearly 5 years to build and was consecrated on December 27, 537. At the time of its completion, it was considered a remarkable achievement in architecture. Along with its size, the ancient world marveled at its huge dome which seemed to be suspended in air. A feat that seemed well matched to the new fledging religion that was still getting its roots in the air.
And as a church it remained, although that wasn’t without controversy, until 1453. It was then that the city of Constantinople fell and the Ottoman ruler Mehmed the Conqueror converted the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. And thus it remained until the end of Ottoman rule. And here is where it gets complicated. In 1931, the mosque was closed. But it was reopened in 1935 as a museum in the new secular Turkish Republic.
That decision was reversed in early July 2020, when the Turkish Council of State annulled the decree by the Turkish Cabinet in 1934 to turn the Hagia Sophia into a museum. The reason given was that under both Turkish and Ottoman law the degree was unlawful as the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed had endowed the Hagia Sophia to be an Islamic site of worship. This type of endowment was referred to as a waqf and it essentially deemed the Hagia Sophia as the personal property of the Sultan for him to do as he pleases.
Although, it may be hard for outsiders to reconcile this concept. How can the Sultan claim a 1,000 year old church as his personal property? And why are Ottoman laws even being considered nearly 100 years after the fall of the empire?
What makes Turkey, Turkey?
While I am no expert on Turkish, well, anything, from the months that I spent there and the years I spent teaching my students, I can tell you many hold immense pride in the Ottoman Empire. I can also say that many of them also held the republic’s founder Mustafa Ataturk in high regard (those that weren’t ethnic or religious minorities) and believe strongly in secularism. However, much like in the USA, Brazil, and the Philippines, there has been a rise in right-wing ideology in terms of religion and national identity.
This has been compounded in Turkey by the correlation between religion and class. My students, all of whom were of the professional class, were very insistent that they were not Muslim. This sentiment was compounded by my Airbnb host who waxed Islamophobic about the possibility of partnering with a Muslim woman.
“Can you imagine me with a Muslim woman?” My Airbnb host asked me seemingly out of the blue. Taken aback, I told him that no, in fact, I could not imagine him with a Muslim woman. What I did not say was that I couldn’t imagine him with any woman at all. (There is a larger story here. Stay tuned for that.) Suffice it to say, this remark was just one of the many strange exchanges that we had over the course of the two months that I stayed there.
Read the rest of this story here.
Much like liberal places in the West, religiosity was seen as a tenet of backward and provincial people. And it was that type of intolerant and elitist attitude that the country’s president grew up with. And this is the what many argued that he was rebelling against in his governance.
Political pundits far more versed than I on this subject argue that this move to “take back” the Hagia Sophia from secularism is just a ploy to appease his political base. And while I don’t know know enough about Turkish politics to know whether or not that is true, I think that it is fair to ask again if the Hagia Sophia indeed belongs to them?
Indigene?
Dotted along North American Mississippi Valley, there are large pyrimidal earthen mounds. They are what remains of the Mississipian Culture that once thrived throughout the American southeast and Midwest. While these mounds are apart of the country that I inhabit, as a descendent of enslaved Africans and not native Americans, do I have any claim to them?
While I believe that it is the duty of the United States government to conserve and respect these places, so they really belong in the pantheon of American History? This conversation gets even more intense in the countries to our South as there are more robust indigenous and mixed-race (metizaje) populations. While much of Latin American racial and cultural history has been focused on nationality and a common mixed-race history, many indigenous activists have been pushing back against this narrative. Citing that it further erases and oppresses them.
Now there is no one to one comparison to the Turkish state, but the reality still remains. The people that we now refer to as the Turks are a part of a larger Turkic ethno-linguistic group that originated in north Asia or Siberia. They entered the Middle East and Asia minor around the 10th century AD and came to dominate what is now Turkey nearly 500 years later. Modern Turks are a mixture of that original North Asian Turkic group, as well as, the indigenous inhabitants of the region. While I believe that their identity as “Turks” is far more consolidated than that in Latin America, it still begs the question whether mixed-ethnic people are right to claim to cultural artifacts that pre-date the initiation of their state and identity? In other words, if the Hagia Sophia existed before the Ottomans, Turkish identity and Turkish State, can these groups alone lay claim to them? Or lay claim to them exclusively?
Or are somethings: buildings, artifacts, etc., so ancient that no one group can claim them? Can it be argued that some things are so ancient that they merely belong to us all? In some ways I believe that that is what the International community is trying to contend.
But for many in the muslim world, both inside and outside of Turkey, critics of the pushback against the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia claim that the Christian outrage stems mostly from Islamophobia. Many have pointed to La Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba and the conversion of what was once the second largest mosque in the world into a Catholic church. Built in 8th century on the grounds of a 6th century cathedral, La Mezquita, like the Hagia Sophia, is an architectural marvel. And is still to this day regarded as one of the most impressive Islamic structures in the world.
But despite its importance to the islamic world, La Mezquita has not functioned as a mosque since the 13th century. In 1236 King Ferdinand III of Castile conquered the city of Cordoba during the Reconquista and converted the Islamic complex into a cathedral. Those in support of the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia cite hypocrisy on behalf of an international community. They claim, and rightfully so, that there would never be such a rally behind restoring what was once an Islamic building into a Church, La Catedral de Córdoba into a mosque. Why then are they objecting to the Hagia Sophia resuming its status as a working mosque?
Oddly enough, in the past 20 years there has been a push to make La Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba a more inclusive space for all. Muslims have called on the Catholic church to allow for Islamic prayers to take place within its walls. Secular Spaniards have called for the church to be decommissioned and turned into a space that honors the dual heritage of both Spain—as a state with both Christian and muslim roots.
Unsurprisingly, both of these propositions are highly controversial. Not only because they challenge the status of a building, but the very definition of what it means to be Spanish. Any proposed changes would redefine the heritage of not only the edifice, those who still remain inside the country’s borders.
By allowing the Hagia Sofia to exist as a secular space, Mustafa Ataturk Kumal intended to honor the wonderfully complex history of a land and people who hands, borders and spiritual beliefs have changed innumerable times since time immemorial. By not placing one history over the other,
Merriam-Webster defines heritage three ways:
property that descends to an heir
something transmitted by or acquired from a predecessor : LEGACY, INHERITANCE
something possessed as a result of one's natural situation or birth : BIRTHRIGHT
So the question remains, is the Hagia Sophia solely the heritage of the Turks, or are we all its heirs? And if secularism is to be abandoned, which legacy should the Hagia Sophia represent? Its Christian roots or its Islamic inheritance?
Does recognizing one erase the other? Does recognizing both marginalize one or both of these religious groups? I don’t know. And much like my global history classes dictated—it is all a matter of perspective.
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