I was standing before the altar in the Hagia Sophia. I looked up and saw two long curtains coming down from the apse ceiling, partially covering up mosaics depicting Virgin Marry and the Christ Child. There is solemn sadness in their gaze, visible from the gap between the curtains. The curtains were installed when the complex was converted from a museum into a mosque in 2020.
Two calligraphic wood-panel medallions are located within the interior nave of the apse. They bare names of Allah and Muhammed.
The crowd beneath the dome, tourists, faithful and unfaithful alike, were looking up and around in awe. I wondered how many of Christian and Muslim visitors realised how absurd it was to be unified under one place of worship designed and redesigned to revere different versions of the same god.
The Hagia Sophia was built as a church building in 537 AD and remained a mosque from 1453 until 1931, when it was closed to the public for four years. It was re-opened in 1935 as a museum under the secular Republic of Turkey, and the building was Turkey's most visited tourist attraction as of 2019. In July 2020, the Council of State annulled the 1934 decision to establish the museum, and the Hagia Sophia was reclassified as a mosque. The decision to designate Hagia Sophia as a mosque was highly controversial and drew condemnation from the Turkish opposition, UNESCO, the World Council of Churches and the International Association of Byzantine Studies, as well as numerous international leaders. 1
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