Hagia Sophia – Istanbul, Turkey

Hagia Sophia (“Holy Wisdom”), also known as Turkish: Ayasofya, Latin: Sancta Sophia or Sancta Sapientia, is a former patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, now a museum, in Istanbul, Turkey. Famous in particular for its massive dome, it is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture. It was the largest cathedral in the world for nearly a thousand years, until the completion of the Medieval Seville Cathedral in 1520.

The current building was originally constructed as a church between 532 and 537 AD on the orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, and was in fact the third Church of the Holy Wisdom to occupy the site (the previous two had both been destroyed by riots). It was designed by two architects, Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles.

The Church contained a large collection of holy relics and featured, among other things, a 50 foot (15 m) silver iconostasis. It was the patriarchal church of the Patriarch of Constantinople and the religious focal point of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly 1000 years.

In 1453, Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and Sultan Mehmed II ordered the building to be converted into a mosque. The bells, altar, iconostasis, and sacrificial vessels were removed, and many of the mosaics were eventually plastered over. The Islamic features – such as the mihrab, the minbar, and the four minarets outside – were added over the course of its history under the Ottomans. It remained as a mosque until 1935, when it was converted into a museum by the Republic of Turkey.

For almost 500 years the principal mosque of Istanbul, Hagia Sophia served as a model for many of the Ottoman mosques such as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Blue Mosque of Istanbul), the Şehzade Mosque, the Süleymaniye Mosque, and the Rüstem Pasha Mosque.

Although it is sometimes referred to as Saint Sophia (Greek for wisdom), the Greek name in full is Church of the Holy Wisdom of God, and it was dedicated to the Holy Wisdom of God rather than a specific saint named Sophia.

History

First church

Nothing remains of the first church that was built on this location, known as the Megálē Ekklēsíā (“Great Church”), or in Latin “Magna Ecclesia”.

As often happened in those days, the site was selected because there had been a pagan temple there. The church was built next to the area where the imperial palace was being developed and next to the smaller church Hagia Eirene, finished first and acting as cathedral until the Hagia Sophia was completed. The Hagia Sophia was inaugurated by Constantius II on 15 February 360. Both churches acted together as the principal churches of the Byzantine Empire.

This church was chronicled by Socrates of Constantinople (380-440), who claimed that it was built by Constantine the Great. It was built as a traditional Latin colonnaded basilica with galleries and a wooden roof. It was preceded by an atrium. This first church was then already claimed to be one of the world’s most outstanding monuments. The appellation “Megálē Ekklēsíā” continued to be used for a long time, only to be replaced by the name “Hagia Sophia” after the conquest of Byzantium in 1453.

Second church

The patriarch of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, came into a conflict with Empress Aelia Eudoxia, wife of the Emperor Arcadius and was sent into exile on 20 June 404. During the subsequent riots, this first church was largely burned down. A second church was ordered by Theodosius II, who inaugurated it on 10 October 405. The fire that started during the tumult of the Nika Revolt resulted in the destruction of the (second) Hagia Sophia, which burned down to the ground on 13-14 January 532.

Several marble blocks from this second church have survived to the present day, and they are displayed in the garden of the current (third) church. The blocks were originally part of a monumental front entrance; they were excavated in the western courtyard by A.M. Schneider in 1935.

Third church

On February 23, 532, only a few days after the destruction of the second basilica, Emperor Justinian I took the decision to build a third and entirely different basilica, larger and more majestic than its predecessors.

Justinian chose the physicist Isidore of Miletus and the mathematician Anthemius of Tralles as architects; Anthemius, however, died within the first year. The construction is described by the Byzantine historian Procopius’ On Buildings (De Aedificiis). The emperor had material brought over from all over the empire, such as Hellenistic columns from the temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Large stones were brought from far-away quarries: porphyry from Egypt, green marble from Thessaly, black stone from the Bosporus region and yellow stone from Syria. More than ten thousand people were employed during this construction. This new church was immediately recognized as a major work of architecture, demonstrating the creative insights of the architects. They may have used the theories of Heron of Alexandria to be able to construct a huge dome over such a large open space. The emperor, together with the patriarch Eutychius, inaugurated the new basilica on December 27, 537 with much pomp and circumstance. The mosaics inside the church were, however, only completed under the reign of Emperor Justin II (565-578).

Earthquakes in August 553 and on December 14, 557 caused cracks in the main dome and the eastern half-dome to appear. The main dome collapsed completely during an earthquake on May 7, 558, destroying the ambon, the altar and the ciborium over it. The emperor ordered an immediate restoration. He entrusted it to Isodorus the Younger, nephew of Isidore of Miletus. This time he used lighter materials and elevated the dome by 6.25 metres (20.5 ft), thus giving the building its current interior height of 55.6 metres (182 ft).

Architecture

Hagia Sophia is one of the greatest surviving examples of Byzantine architecture. Of great artistic value was its decorated interior with mosaics and marble pillars and coverings. The temple itself was so richly and artistically decorated that Justinian proclaimed, “Solomon, I have surpassed thee!”. Justinian himself had overseen the completion of the greatest cathedral ever built up to that time, and it was to remain the largest cathedral for 1,000 years up until the completion of the cathedral in Seville in Spain.

Justinian’s basilica was at once the culminating architectural achievement of late antiquity and the first masterpiece of Byzantine architecture. Its influence, both architecturally and liturgically, was widespread and enduring in the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Muslim worlds alike. Under Justinian’s orders, eight Corinthian columns were disassembled from Baalbek, Lebanon and shipped to Constantinople for the construction of Hagia Sophia.

The vast interior has a complex structure. The vast nave is covered by a central dome which has a maximum diameter of 31.24 metres (102 ft 6 in) and a height from floor level of 55.6 metres (182 ft 5 in), about one fourth smaller than the dome of the Pantheon. The dome seems rendered weightless by the unbroken arcade of 40 arched windows under it, which help flood the colourful interior with light. Due to consecutive repairs in the course of its history, the dome has lost its perfect circular base and has become somewhat elliptical with a diameter varying between 31.24 m (102 ft 6 in) and 30.86 m (101 ft 3 in).

The dome is carried on pendentives four concave triangular sections of masonry which solve the problem of setting the circular base of a dome on a rectangular base. At Hagia Sophia the weight of the dome passes through the pendentives to four massive piers at the corners. Between them the dome seems to float upon four great arches. These were reinforced with buttresses during Ottoman times, under the guidance of the architect Sinan.

At the western (entrance) and eastern (liturgical) ends, the arched openings are extended by half domes carried on smaller semi-domed exedras. Thus a hierarchy of dome-headed elements builds up to create a vast oblong interior crowned by the main dome, a sequence unexampled in antiquity. Despite all these measures, the weight of the dome remained a problem, which was solved by adding buttresses from the outside.

All interior surfaces are sheathed with polychrome marbles, green and white with purple porphyry and gold mosaics, encrusted upon the brick. This sheathing camouflaged the large pillars, giving them, at the same time, a brighter aspect. On the exterior, simple stuccoed walls reveal the clarity of massed vaults and domes. The yellow and red colour of the exterior was added by the architect Fossati during the restorations in the 19th century.

Dome

• The dome of Hagia Sophia has spurred particular interest for many art historians and architects because of the innovative way the original architects envisioned the dome. The dome is supported by pendentives which had never been used before the building of this structure. The pendentive enables the round dome to transition gracefully into the square shape of the piers below.

Marble jar

• The marble jar was brought from Pergamon during the reign of Sultan Murad III. Originally from the Hellenistic period, it was carved from a single block of marble.

Narthex and portals

• The Imperial Gate was the main entrance between the exo- and esonarthex. It was reserved only for the emperor. The Byzantine mosaic above the portal depicts Christ and Emperor Leo VI the Wise. A long ramp from the northern part of the outer narthex leads up to the upper gallery.

Upper Gallery

• The upper gallery is laid out in a horseshoe shape that encloses the nave until the apse. Several mosaics are preserved in the upper gallery, an area traditionally reserved for the empress and her court. The best-preserved mosaics are located in the southern part of the gallery.

Loge of the Empress

• The Loge of the Empress is located in the centre of the upper enclosure, or gallery, of the Hagia Sophia. From there the empress and the court-ladies would watch the proceedings down below. A round, green stone marks the spot where the throne of the empress stood.

Marble Door

• The Marble Door inside the Hagia Sophia is located in the southern upper enclosure, or gallery. It was used by the participants in synods, they entered and left the meeting chamber through this door.

Decorations

• Originally, under Justinian’s reign, the interior decorations consisted of abstract designs of the marble slabs on the walls and mosaics on the curving vaults. Of these, one can still see the two archangels Gabriel and Michael in the spandrels of the bema. There were already a few figurative decorations, as attested by the eulogy of Paul the Silentiary.

Mosaics and Minarets

Mosaics

The church was richly decorated with mosaics throughout the centuries. They either depicted the Virgin Mother, Jesus, Saints, or emperors and empresses. Other parts were decorated in a purely decorative style with geometric patterns.

During the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, the Latin Crusaders vandalized the valuable items in every important Byzantine structure of the city, including the golden mosaics of the Hagia Sophia. Much of these valuable items were shipped to Venice, whose Doge, Enrico Dandolo, had organized the invasion and sack of Constantinople.

• Imperial Gate mosaic
• Southwestern entrance mosaic
• Apse mosaics
• Emperor Alexander mosaic
• Empress Zoe mosaics
• Comnenos mosaic
• Deësis mosaic
• Northern tympanon mosaics

Following the building’s conversion into a mosque in 1453, many of its mosaics were destroyed or covered with plaster, due to Islam’s ban on representational imagery. This process was not completed at once, and reports exist from the 17th century in which travellers note that they could still see Christian images in the former church.

In 1847-49, the building was restored by two Swiss brothers, Gaspare and Giuseppe Fossati, and Sultan Abdülmecid allowed them to also document any mosaics they might discover during this process. This work did not include repairing the mosaics and after recording the details about an image, the Fossatis painted it over again. This work included covering the previously uncovered faces of two seraphim mosaics located in the centre of the building. The building currently features a total of four of these images and two of them are restorations in paint created by the Fossatis to replace two images of which they could find no surviving remains. In other cases, the Fossatis recreated damaged decorative mosaic patterns in paint, sometimes redesigning them in the process.

The Fossati records are the primary sources about a number of mosaic images now believed to have been completely or partially destroyed in an earthquake in 1894. These include a great mosaic of Christ Pantocrator in the dome, a mosaic over a now unidentified Door of the Poor, a large image of a jewel-encrusted cross and a large number of images of angels, saints, patriarchs, and church fathers. Most of the missing images were located in the building’s two tympana. The Fossatis also added a pulpit (minbar) and the four large medallions on the walls of the nave bearing the names of Muhammad and Islam’s first caliphs.

Minarets

One of the minarets (at southwest) was built from red brick while the other three were built from white marble; of which the slender one at northeast was erected by Sultan Bayezid II while the two larger minarets at west were erected by Sultan Selim II and designed by the famous Ottoman architect Sinan. The reason for the varying dimensions and mass of the minarets was to counterweight the main structure’s mass and distribute the weight uniformly. This application by Mimar Sinan was one of the earliest seismic and geotechnical engineering efforts in the world. Latest research shows that without the counterweight of the minarets, the main structure would tend to collapse.

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