On the outside Hagia Sophia is the more stately than the Blue Mosque. But inside, in comparison, it’s a haggard dowager, much of its riches & magnificent mosaics looted and desecrated, first by the Iconoclasts, then by Crusaders under the Venetian doge Dandolo & Baldwin of Flanders, and later by the invading Ottomans. The Ottomans further plastered over many of the mosaics, added monograms of the caliphs on the pillars, added a mihrab, minbar and the minarets, in the process of converting it to the first major mosque of Constantinople. Now, parts of the grand nave are obscured by scaffolding.
The current structure was built by Justinian I after the earlier church was burned down during the Nika Revolt. It took 10,000 men to clear out the rubble and prepare the site for the new church, which would be the largest cathedral in the world for over a thousand years. It cost 320,000 pounds of gold (or over $6B in today’s money). So grand was the endeavor and the finished structure that according to Madden, upon entering the church for its dedication ceremony in 537, Justinian exclaimed, “Solomon, I’ve outdone you.”
While Constantinople’s first great patron, Constantine the Great, is well known & was honored in the name of the city he greatly expanded & enriched, it could almost as well be known as Justinian’s city, given the number of structures he had built during his reign. Of course, had it not been for the Nika Revolt, the impetus behind his building spree might have been significantly more modest. But circumstances define a man, and for someone who was a low-born peasant from the countryside (and hence despised by the ruling elite), to becoming the Emperor, then nearly losing his empire to the revolt and going on to become a saint, he did pretty well for himself. His survival of the revolt was largely due to his wife Theodora, who was the lone dissenter when everyone counseled that the two of them should abdicate and flee the city. She reminded Justinian: “Empire is a glorious death shroud.” So they stayed behind to quell the revolt. A combination of Byzantine intrigue that sowed suspicion in the ranks of those revolting — pitting the Blues against the Greens — and his general Belisarius’ bravery won the day.
If Justinian’s rise to power is interesting, so is the love story between him and Theodora. She was 20 years younger than him, a former actress and prostitute who plied her trade in Antioch (today’s Antakya) & Alexandria before returning to Constantinople and taking up a job as a weaver. It is then that she met Justinian, who was at that time a consul. She was not the kind of woman a consul, let alone a future Emperor, should marry. The aristocracy ridiculed her, as they would Justinian even after he became Emperor. Despite the opposition, the two married and soon the former peasant & prostitute ascended the throne of the mighty Byzantine Empire. Other than a mosaic depicting Justinian in the Hagia Sophia, the only other mosaic I remember seeing of the two of them is the one in the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, which is part of a series of beautiful vivid mosaics better preserved there than in Istanbul, the never-center of this art.
Coming back to the Hagia Sophia, despite the depredations over the centuries, the few mosaics that are still visible are beautiful, although they were mostly added after the end of Iconoclasm, the original ones having been lost to history. Besides the obligatory depictions of Christ, Mary, some of the apostles and archangels Gabriel & Michael (although the latter has disappeared from the mosaic), what is interesting is the presence of St. John Chrysostom — the same man who decried chariot race hooliganism in his time — above the northern tympanon.
In the complex is a baptistry that’s believed to be older than the church. During the Ottoman rule, it was converted to tomb for Sultans Mustafa I, Ibrahim, and a host of family members. Outside the main structure is the tomb of Sultan Selim II, designed by the famous architect Sinan. In an act of public shaming of European art theft from all over Asia & Africa, there’s a sign outside that alleges that a Frenchman substituted original panels for counterfeit ones made in Sèvres.
Although currently a secular museum, there’s been a growing movement in the last few years to revert it to its role as a mosque. Yusuf Halaçoglu, a Parliamentarian, even argued that Ataturk’s directive to convert it to a museum in the 1930s was forged. Not surprisingly, the Greeks have protested. While as of now a final decision hasn’t been made, given the increasing Islamization of Turkey under Erdogan and his allies, it’s only a matter of time.
