{"id":4922,"date":"2010-05-08T00:06:43","date_gmt":"2010-05-08T07:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=4922"},"modified":"2010-05-08T00:06:43","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T07:06:43","slug":"godsbigblog-the-hagia-sophia-where-christianity-and-islam-meet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/godsbigblog-the-hagia-sophia-where-christianity-and-islam-meet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hagia Sophia: Where Christianity and Islam Coexist — and Clash"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
In the Hagia Sophia, Christianity’s Madonna and Child are flanked by roundels with Arabic script bearing the names of Muhammad and Allah. The rondels were added to the\u00a0 basilica when it became a mosque after the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

As\u00a0a religion writer,\u00a0I’ve got plenty of respect for Islam as well as for the many (friendly, smart, lovable, cool, inspiring) Muslims I’ve met on the religion beat over the years. So, trust me. This is not a rant against Islam or Muslims.<\/p>\n

It’s about how it feels to have one’s culture and faith obliterated by someone else’s culture and faith.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Hagia Sophia, now a museum, draws tourists from all over the world. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I got a close-up look at this when I entered the magnificent Hagia Sofia for the first time during a trip to Istanbul in 2009. Completed in 537 by order of the Emperor Justinian, this glorious Byzantine basilica was the focal point of Eastern Orthodox Christianity for nearly a millennium.<\/p>\n

The Hagia Sophia’s status as a Christian church came to an abrupt end, however, when the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453 and converted the basilica into a mosque soon after.<\/p>\n

I am fully aware that Western Christians have done their share of imposing their culture, technology and religion on the peoples they have conquered or overwhelmed. I know, just for starters, all about how the Parthenon<\/a>, a temple built to honor the Pagan goddess Athena, was taken over and turned into a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.<\/p>\n

Still, I\u00a0see now\u00a0that I’ve understood religious oppression only intellectually all these years. As a Christian living in a mostly Christian country, I’ve never really known how it feels<\/em> to have one’s faith and its most cherished symbols obliterated by a colonizing force.<\/p>\n

Until I stepped inside the Hagia Sophia.<\/p>\n

It was dark in there. The few remaining Christian mosaics – including those of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Saint John Chrysostom – were nearly invisible.<\/p>\n

Not at all invisible, however, were eight huge round black disks, each one nearly 25 feet across and each one emblazoned with — to me unintelligible — Arabic calligraphy. Constructed of wood and leather, the disks were conspicuously placed, high on the columns supporting the basilica’s massive dome.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The back sides of the Arabic rondels are unfinished. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The disks – also known as medallions or roundels — felt like giant, flashy billboards for Islam. I’ve got God on my side and you don’t<\/em>, they seemed to argue. It didn’t help that, when I climbed to the upstairs balconies and stood behind the disks, I could see their crude wooden backsides.<\/p>\n

To my Muslim friends no doubt the calligraphy on those medallions would feel holy and beautiful. The inscriptions represent, after all, the names of Allah, Muhammad, Islam’s first four caliphs, and Muhammad’s two grandsons. (Peace be upon them!)<\/p>\n

But as a Christian standing in what had once been a magnificent church, I could not feel the holiness of those huge disks. I felt\u00a0bullied by them.<\/p>\n

It’s been hundreds of years since the Hagia Sofia was seized and turned into a mosque, but on that day in 2009, it felt like the desecration had happened yesterday.<\/p>\n

The Hagia Sophia is a museum now, and I hear there’s a campaign afoot to restore the basilica as a Christian church.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a>
Two of the eight rondels that hang high on the walls of the ancient basilica, built by Emporer Justinian in 537. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Part of me would love to see those eight in-your-face disks go away. But another part of me knows better. Just as Jerusalem has become a holy spot for Christians, Muslims and Baha’is as well as Jews. So has the Hagia Sophia come to belong to Muslims as well as Christians.<\/p>\n

Back home now, sitting here in my writing room, I study my photos of the offending medallions. I hunt down more pictures of them on line. I ponder their elegant, swooping lines. I open my mind – I try to – to the beauty of the calligraphy.<\/p>\n

And after a while I see that, yes, indeed, they are beautiful. Like the Christian icons that preceded them, I find the boldface disks with the strange writing on them\u00a0to be\u00a0windows into the sacred. Soon I am scouring the Web for more photos<\/a>. My eyes follow and are amazed by their complex, mysterious lines.<\/p>\n

I wonder, the next time I enter the Hagia Sophia, will I feel oppressed by those medallions – or touched? I honestly don’t know.<\/p>\n

For an update on the status of the Hagia Sophia, go to<\/em>
\n“I’m Worried About the Hagia Sophia.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

As an American Christian, I’d never known how it feels to have my faith’s most cherished symbols obliterated by a colonizing force. Until I entered the Hagia Sophia. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[560,135,34,561,562,563],"class_list":["post-4922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-byzantine","tag-christianity","tag-dont-miss","tag-hagia-sophia","tag-islam","tag-religious-oppression"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}