From Hagia Sophia to Ayasofya: Architecture and The Persistence of Memory

One hundred years ago, at the height of the Balkan Wars, Bulgarian forces moved into Macedonia and Thrace, finally taking Edirne on 26 March 1913 after a protracted siege. Although they held the city only briefly, the Bulgarians saw their presence in “Odrin” as permanent, and the Tsaritsa Eleanor came to visit barely a week after the conquest. A recently published note by Bogdan Filov (later Prime Minister), who was one of several archaeological “researchers” traveling with the Bulgarian army, accompanies his photographs from that time.  He wrote:

On our arrival in Odrin, we met the Queen… She told us that a committee had been established in Sofia whose wish had been to turn the mosque of ‘Sultan Selim’ into a church.  She of course opposed this and expected us to support her. I think that it would be best if the architecturally significant monuments are left to be owned by the state, but available for the Turks to use them, by letting them be open for visitors.[1]

The mosque in contention was Sinan’s masterpiece, the Selimiye Camii (1569-75), a signature monument of Ottoman architecture, and the first of the great imperial mosques to surpass the scale of Hagia Sophia.[2] By July, however, the Bulgarian army was in retreat, Edirne returned to Ottoman control, and the incident was forgotten.

Looking back, the proposed conversion of an historic mosque into a church might strike us as shocking, but the United States and many other Christian countries were vocal supporters of the Bulgarians. Their ultimate goal was the conquest of Istanbul and the reconversion of the Ayasofya Mosque into the Church of Hagia Sophia. This too might strike us as shocking, but the move was regularly and routinely advocated in the West.

Istanbul only officially became Istanbul in 1930. Before then, it answered to many names, but for much of the Western world it remained Constantinople, legendary entrepôt of the East and capital of a vanished empire (fig. 1). For the educated traveler schooled in the Classics, Constantinople was the last great ancient city, albeit a bit down in the heel and overlaid with an Oriental veneer. During the waning years of the Ottoman Empire, it represented a brash alternative to the contemporary urban situation, with what European tourists saw as decline and decadence on all sides. If the archaeologists could only sweep away that veneer, they imagined, the vestiges of a glorious past would reappear, as they had decades earlier in Athens – testimony of an all but forgotten civilization, uniquely responsible for preserving and transmitting the culture of Greco-Roman antiquity.[3]

Byzantium represented the continuation of the ancient Greco-Roman tradition, and thus merited study. Moreover, it was a Christian past, and that mattered greatly to Christian Europe, which still viewed the Muslim world with suspicion. Shaped by attitudes of European imperialism of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the Ottoman Empire was viewed as decadent, irrational, and bellicose. In contrast, Byzantine Constantinople had “defended the higher life of mankind against the attacks of formidable antagonists, and rendered eminent service to the cause of human welfare,” as Alexander Van Millingen wrote in 1899. “This is what gives to the archaeological study of the city its dignity and importance.”[4]  That is, the past, waiting to be unearthed, represented something entirely different from the present reality – it was not something that could provide validation or symbolic underpinnings for the current regime. Unlike other nations and capitals, which had used the past to forge a modern identity, the pre-Ottoman past of Constantinople stood in dramatic opposition to the present – doubly tainted by its Hellenism and by its Christianity. This curious past offered no symbolic capital to the Ottomans; it could only serve to empower the present regime by remaining conquered – that is, if its churches continued to function as mosques, and its spaces of power remained unexplored. Still today in Istanbul, it constitutes a radical political statement to call the city Constantinople.

Byzantinists like myself are accustomed to being politically incorrect, to finding our religious monuments transformed into mosques, reconfigured to suit the functional and symbolic requirements of a different religion, and to dealing with all the challenges that come with a messy afterlife.[5] In writing Byzantine architectural history, later transformations, accretions, and altered meanings (all too often ignored) must be balanced against a narrow period focus and incorporated into a larger historical view. Buildings are forever in the process of becoming, and to fix them at their moment of conception severely limits what we might learn from them. Working a decade ago on the restoration of the Zeyrek Camii in Istanbul – that is, the twelfth-century Byzantine monastery of Christ Pantokrator – our theoretical discussions often devolved into something very basic, such as what kind of cornices should be restored in areas where they were missing – Byzantine, Ottoman, Republican?[6] It would have been considerably easier to simply restore the building to its 12^th-century Byzantine form.  But if we were going to understand the building as the sum of its history, we couldn’t just sweep away its disparate accretions, but how to reconcile the jarring historical juxtapositions? And could we still privilege the Byzantine past when the building had a long Ottoman history and continues to function as a mosque?  Difficult questions, indeed. Historical circumstances provided an easy answer: following George W. Bush’s visit to the NATO meeting in Istanbul in 2004, the Vakıflar Genel Müdürluğü (General Directorate of Pious Foundations) revoked our permit, and the project was given to the municipality. The building’s Byzantine history will take a back seat to its current religious function.

Our sort of longue durée approach represented a relatively new, ecumenical attitude toward archaeology and historic preservation, very much in contrast to the attitudes of the preceding centuries, as for example, what occurred in the fervor of nationalism within modern Greece. In early twentieth-century Thessalonike, all Ottoman transformations were undone, so that most Byzantine churches retain no vestige of their Ottoman history.[7] Many buildings are almost unrecognizable in their pre-restoration states, as the Holy Apostles or Hagia Sophia.  At the Hagia Sophia, the past was so effectively erased that scholars subsequently interpreted the base of its minaret as the remnant of the Byzantine belfry.[8]

One of the very basic realizations I had while working at the Zeyrek Camii is that Byzantine churches don’t make very good mosques – at least from a purely functional perspective. After the sixth century, most Byzantine churches were private, oriented to small congregations and private devotions, so that plans are characterized by their complexity rather than their monumentality – with subsidiary chapels, narthexes, and ambulatories to address the increasingly intricate nature of Byzantine devotions.  In the Ottoman transformations of buildings like the Fenari İsa Camii (the Monastery tou Libos), walls and columns were removed in an attempt to unify the space for congregational worship.[9] Add into the mix the shift of focus from due east toward Mecca and you have a recipe for complexity and contradiction.  The Fethiye Camii in Istanbul (Theotokos he Pammakaristos), for example, is so transformed that Byzantinists still puzzle over its construction history (figs. 2-3).[10] The motivation for conversion was never simply functional.

For the early Ottomans, the conversion of churches was part of the symbolic appropriation of the land: domination and the Islamic presence were expressed in the standard practice of transforming the main church of a conquered city into a mosque, as for example the Ayasofya Camii at Iznik.[11] At Bursa (conquered in 1326), intriguingly, we have no record of a cathedral converted to a mosque, but two Byzantine churches were appropriated for use as the mausolea of Osman and Orhan. Both were destroyed by earthquake in the nineteenth century but are known from drawings.  The conversion of Byzantine churches to house the tombs of the founders of the Ottoman dynasty is an act I find redolent with meaning, as recently discussed by Suna Çağaptay.[12]

The functional appropriation of important Byzantine buildings was symbolically significant and would have been clearly understood by the contemporary viewer, whether Christian or Muslim. In most instances, the physical transformation was minimal, often without the immediate destruction of the figural decoration. A minaret would have been added on the exterior, a mihrab and other necessary furnishings on the interior, giving the building a sort of transitional appearance – at once identifiable as both a church and a mosque. The building would have stood symbolically as a monument of conquest and domination. What was most important was the clear recognition that the building used to be a Christian church but was no longer.[13] Initially at many converted buildings, including the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, much of the original interior decoration was left intact, although the visibly Christian elements were understood differently by later, more religiously conservative generations.

As is well known, Mehmed the Conqueror converted the church of Hagia Sophia to a mosque in one of his first official acts following the 1453 conquest of Constantinople, and it was clearly a symbolic act.[14] The conversion involved minimal physical transformation, and even its name remained the same – Ayasofya Camii in Turkish. As appropriated, however, the scale and evocative power of the building cried out for a symbolic reading. Two aspects of the conversion of Hagia Sophia from a church to a mosque are important to our discussion. First, it was necessary to create an Islamic text and an Ottoman legend for Hagia Sophia. Borrowing from Byzantine accounts, Ottoman historical texts interwove history and myth to situate Hagia Sophia in an Ottoman present and to justify its conversion into a royal mosque, as Stephane Yerasimos and Gülru Necipoğlu have discussed.[15] Thus, according to one version, when the half-dome of the apse collapsed on the night of the Prophet Mohammed’s birth, it could only be repaired with a mortar composed of sand from Mecca, water from the well of Zemzem, and the Prophet’s saliva. In addition, Muslim and Ottoman symbols were introduced into Hagia Sophia, including the first minaret, the mihrab, and other mosque furnishings, as well as sacred relics and battle trophies.

Half a millennium later, Atatürk performed a similar symbolic transformation: as he secularized the Turkish state, he secularized Hagia Sophia following the foundation of the Republic. On 24 November 1934 – the same day that Gazi Kemal was proclaimed “Atatürk” (Father of the Turks) – the Turkish Council of Ministers decreed that the building should be turned into a museum:

Due to its historical significance, the conversion of Ayasofya mosque, a unique architectural monument of art, located in Istanbul, into a museum will please the entire Eastern world; and its conversion to a museum will cause humanity to gain a new institution of knowledge.[16]

Thomas Whittemore, who had befriended Atatürk, had gained his permission already in 1931 for the uncovering of the mosaics.  These had been exposed in the 1847-49 restoration by Gaspare Fossati, but they were hurriedly documented and subsequently covered up in response to religious sentiments.[17] As Whittemore embellished his story, “Santa Sophia was a mosque the day I talked to him. The next morning when I went to the mosque, there was a sign on the door written in Atatürk’s own hand. It said: ‘The museum is closed for repairs.’”[18]

Certainly the secularization fit within the context of Atatürk’s political vision and civilizing mission to reshape modern Turkey as a part of Western civilization.  All the same, there had been regular and repeated calls for reopening Hagia Sophia as a church for much of the previous half-century. An 1877 article in the New York Times began, “How soon the crescent over the minarets of St. Sophia will be replaced by the cross, or how soon the minarets themselves will be entirely swept away, leaving the outlines of the church in their ancient condition, no seer has foretold.”[19] The same article notes the longstanding Greek belief – “not altogether discredited by the Turks” – that the building would be restored to Christianity. A 1912 article in the same newspaper predicted that the Bulgarians, advancing on the Ottoman capital, would soon plant the cross on top of St. Sophia.[20] A decade later, the Greek megale idea had the conversion of Hagia Sophia as one of its top priorities.[21] Across England, ardent philhellenes formed the St. Sophia Redemption Committee, its manifesto published in 1919. The idea of the return of Hagia Sophia to Christian usage epitomized European aspirations for the city and was supported by major political figures of the day.[22]  In the discussions following the end of World War I and the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, it seemed entirely possible. In 1921, a special service was held in St. John the Divine in New York with Orthodox and Episcopal clergy praying in six languages (Hungarian, Greek, Arabic, Russian, Serbian, and English) for the restoration of Hagia Sophia as a Christian sanctuary.[23]  The cathedral was filled to capacity for the service, with many turned away.  Similar services were held simultaneously in Washington, D.C., St. Louis, Detroit, Newark, Philadelphia, and Chicago.  Through the early twentieth century, almost all Western commentators expressed the same wish, while to them the Ottoman mosque represented no better than a desecration.  One wonders if Atatürk’s secularization of the building came something of a compromise – that is, a defensive strategy when faced with the unified desires of the very Christian West.

Seventy-nine years later, Ayasofya remains the most popular museum in Turkey.[24]

All of this might seem like ancient history but for recent events in Turkey. In November 2011, the Ayasofya in Iznik (Byzantine Nicaea) was reopened as a mosque (fig. 4).  Originally a church and the setting of one of the most important early Church councils (in 787 CE, to end the first phase of Iconoclasm), the building had been converted to a mosque with the Ottoman conquest of Bithynia, and subsequently outfitted by Sinan.  But it had fallen into disrepair long before the foundation of the Republic and stood as a roofless ruin.  For decades it had functioned as a museum and recently had begun to attract Christian pilgrims. Then Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç found a loophole in the law, insisting the building had never officially been a museum, and that allowed its conversion to a mosque.[25]  Reaction has been predictable: academics and secularists have decried the move, which they see as setting a dangerous precedent.  Islamists are delighted: as one local commented, “And high time too. Next, I want to see it happen in the Ayasofya in Istanbul.” In fact, the Byzantine antiquities of the buildings are being protected – perhaps even better than before. Still, locals expect tourism to decline, even though admission fees are no longer collected.

The reconversion of one Ayasofya has spurred efforts for the reconversion of another. On 29 May 2012, the anniversary of the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople, thousands of devout Muslims, organized by the Anatolian Youth Organization, prayed outside the Istanbul monument, shouting, “Break the chains! Let Ayasofya Mosque open!” As their leader Salih Turhan explained, “Keeping Aysofya Mosque closed is an insult to our mostly Muslim population of 75 million. It symbolizes our ill-treatment by the West.” He continued, “As the grandchildren of Mehmed the Conqueror, seeking the reopening of Ayasofya as a mosque is our legitimate right.”[26]

Meanwhile, as if in complete ignorance of the last century’s history, the Free Agia Sophia Council of America continues to lobby the U.S. Congress to support the reopening of Hagia Sophia as an Orthodox church, even after their failed attempt in 2010 to conduct a liturgy inside the building.[27] In short, the building has accrued meanings that have nothing to do with its physical form and quite possibly very little to do with its history – and even less to do with religion.  Proponents on both sides of the political debate employ cultural memory selectively, while conflating religious and national identities.[28]  As with both of its historic conversions, the symbolic implications far outweigh the functional.

Then, early in 2013, it was announced that Ayasofya in Trabzon (Byzantine Trebizond) would reopen as a mosque. With its rich Byzantine fresco program lovingly restored, the thirteenth-century building has been a museum for the last half-century (fig. 5).[29] Never the focus of controversy, the reconversion seems to have been instigated solely on the basis of its name. What will happen to the frescoes remains to be determined; for now, they are screened off by a false ceiling and out of sight. As the most popular touristic site in the city, the economy of the city will no doubt be affected. A major force behind the conversion movement, Vakıflar Director Adnan Ertem proclaimed that of the Ayasofyas in Turkey, five are functioning as mosques, while two are “inactive” (i.e., museums), calling their present owner, the Cultural Ministry, an “occupying force.”[30]

As I write, a parliamentary commission is now considering an application to reopen Ayasofya in Istanbul as a mosque, with a petition signed by millions of Turks.[31]  This time they’re serious. Indeed, like the abortion issue in the United States, supporting the reopening of Ayasofya has become the litmus test of the true believer.  Protests by the academic community have fallen on deaf ears, as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Islamist government presents the conversion as a move toward “religious freedom.” Sadly, the politically motivated debate within Turkey is framed almost entirely in religious terms, and the response from outside Turkey has been largely religious as well, with the common (mis)perception that Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia is a Christian building. Indeed, the vast majority of responses coming from outside Turkey have been by Christian religious organizations and not by political leaders, who see a NATO alliance as more valuable than cultural heritage.

More than religion is at stake, however, as the building is deeply embedded in competing narratives of national and regional history.  As part of its human rights policy, UNESCO has attempted to define both the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of humanity deemed worthy of protection. But with a monument as symbolically loaded as Hagia Sophia, there is always the danger of accepting a majority narrative that would silence all other histories. Nationalist, religious, or other selective readings of cultural heritage can effectively erase historic memory and sever links with the past, and one wonders if this in fact is the subtext of the current Turkish/Islamist agenda.[32]

How far have we come in the last century?  A few recent incidents are telling.  The fifth-century basilica of St. John Stoudios (the Imrahor Camii) is the oldest surviving church in Istanbul and the center of the city’s most important Byzantine monastery. Destroyed by fire in 1894, the site belongs to the Cultural Ministry as an historic site.  Closed to visitors and now a roofless ruin, its evocative remains have never been properly documented.[33] A parliamentary commission has now determined that the basilica should be rebuilt to function as a mosque.[34]

The Kesik Minare (“Broken Minaret”) in Antalya faces the same fate, despite public opposition. Recently excavated, the ruin preserves substantial remains from a Roman temple, a Byzantine church, a Crusader church, and an Ottoman mosque. As in so many other sites, its rich, heterogeneous history would disappear if rebuilt.[35]

Another recent event is noteworthy in this context.  The Arap Camii, originally the early fourteenth-century Dominican church in Galata, suffered minor damage in the 1999 earthquake, after which plaster began to fall from the vaults, revealing remnants of its original decoration.[36] Contemporary with the famed Chora Monastery (Kariye Museum), the unique frescoes and mosaics of the Arap Camii combine stylistic features and iconographic themes of Italian and Constantinopolitan painting. Not only do the paintings demonstrate the close working relations of Byzantine and Italian artisans of late Byzantium, they illustrate graphically the political complexities of the period. Perhaps second in importance only to the Theodosian Harbor among recent archaeological discoveries, the paintings were fully uncovered and conserved in 2011-12. Sadly, the Vakıflar decided to cover them up again. They are no longer visible.[37]

One wonders if this is to be the fate of Turkey’s rich, colorful, and heterogeneous past. At least the Tzaritsa had the good sense to say no.

Author: Robert G. Ousterhout

*This article was originally published in İstanbul Araştırmaları Yıllığı / Annual of Istanbul Studies 2 (2013). 

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[1] Bogdan Filov, 2 April 1913, quoted in Ivo Hadjimishev, The Gipson Archive: Dr. Bogdan Filov and a description of his research mission in 1912-1913, Sofia, Ethnographic Institute and Museum, 2009, p.10.

[2] Gülru Necipoğlu, “Challenging the Past: Sinan and the Competitive Discourse in Early Modern Islamic Architecture,” Muqarnas, 10, 1993, pp. 169-80, esp. pp. 175-76.

[3] I repeat here some ideas first expressed in Robert Ousterhout, “The Rediscovery of Constantinople and the Beginnings of Byzantine Archaeology: A Historiographic Survey,” in Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914, eds. Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem, Istanbul, Salt Garanti Kültür, 2011, pp. 181-211. For understanding attitudes to Constantinople’s past in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries see also Robert Nelson, Hagia Sophia, 1850–1950: Holy Wisdom, Modern Monument, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004.

[4] Alexander Van Millingen, Byzantine Constantinople: The Walls of the City and Adjoining Historical Sites, London, John Murray, 1899, p. v.

[5] Note the numerous essays in Toplumsal Tarih 229, 2012.

[6] See most recently, Robert Ousterhout, Zeynep Ahunbay and Metin Ahunbay, “Study and Restoration of the Zeyrek Camii in Istanbul: Second Report, 2001-05,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 63, 2010, pp. 235-56.

[7] Charles Diehl, Marcel le Tourneau, and Henri Saladin, Les monuments chrétiens de Salonique, Paris, 1918, for earlier appearance.  See also Hadjimishev, Gipson Archive, pp. 36-37.

[8] Apostolos Bakalopulos, “He chronologesis tou kodonostasiou tes Hag. Sophias Thessalonikes,” Byzantion, 21 1951, pp. 333-39.

[9] Compare the plan in Jean Ebersolt and Adolphe Thiers, Les églises de Constantinople, Paris, 1913, pl. XLIX; with E. Mamboury’s restored plan, in Theodore Macridy et al., “The Monastery of Lips (Fenari Isa Camii) at Istanbul,”Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 18, 1964, fig. 5.

[10] Compare Ebersolt and Thiers, églises, pl. LIII; with Hans Belting, Cyril Mango, and Doula Mouriki, The Mosaics and Frescoes of St. Mary Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii) at Istanbul, Washington, D.C., Dumbarton Oaks, 1978, fig. A; and Robert Ousterhout, Master Builders of Byzantium, Princeton, Princeton University Press,1999, fig. 82.

[11] Sabine Möllers, Die Hagia Sophia in Iznik/Nikaia, Alfter, 1994; followed by Urs Peschlow, “The Churches of Nikaia/Iznik,” in İznik throughout History, eds. Işıl Akbaygil, Halil İnalcık, Oktay Aslanapa, Istanbul, 2003, pp. 201-18.

[12] Suna Çağaptay, “Prousa/Bursa, a city within a city: chorography, conversion, and choreography,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 35, 2011, pp. 45-69; see also Robert Ousterhout, “Ethnic Identity and Cultural Appropriation in Early Ottoman Architecture,” Muqarnas, 13, 1995, pp. 48-62.

[13] As I emphasize in Robert Ousterhout, “The East, the West, and the Appropriation of the Past in Early Ottoman Architecture,” Gesta 43/2, 2004, pp. 167-78.

[14] See Çiğdem Kafesçioğlu, Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital, University Park, Penn State Press, 2009, pp. 18-22.

[15] Gülru Necipoğlu, “The Life of an Imperial Monument: Hagia Sophia after Byzantium,” in Hagia Sophia from the Age of Jutinian to the Present, eds. Robert Mark and Ahmet Çakmak, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 195-225; Stephane Yerasimos, Légendes d’empire: La fondation de Constantinople et de Sainte-Sophie, Paris, 1990.

[16] Nelson, Hagia Sophia, p. 180; as announced  in the New York Times on 14 October 1934: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70F12FF3A58177A93C6A8178BD95F408385F9 (consulted 21 May 2013)

[17] Cyril Mango, Materials for the Study of the Mosaics of St. Sophia at Istanbul, Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1962; also Volker Hoffmann, ed., Die Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Bilder aus sechs Jahrhunderten und Gaspare Fossatis Restaurierung der Jahr 1847-49, Bern: Peter Lang, 1999, esp. pp. 139-48.

[18] Lord Kinross, Hagia Sophia, New York, Newsweek Books, 1973, p. 128.

[19] http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F4071EF8385B137B93C2AB1783D85F438784F9 (consulted 21 May 2013)

[20] http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10B14FA385813738DDDAD0894D9415B828DF1D3 (consulted 21 May 2013).

[21] See among many others, Michael Finefrock, “Atatürk, Lloyd George and the Megali Idea: Cause and Consequence of the Greek Plan to Sieze Constantinople from the Allies, June-August 1922,” Journal of Modern History, 52, 1980, pp. D1047-66.

[22] Rev. John Albert Douglas, The Redemption of St. Sophia: An Historical and Political Account of the Subject, London, 1919; note also Erik Goldstein, “Holy Wisdom and British Foreign Policy, 1918-1922: The Saint Sophia Redemption Agitation,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 15, 1991, pp. 36-64; and Nelson, Hagia Sophia, pp. 105-28.

[23] http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70911F83F5810738DDDAA0894D9405B818EF1D3 (consulted 21 May 2013).

[24] US News ranks Hagia Sophia number one of twelve Things to Do in Istanbul: http://travel.usnews.com/Istanbul_Turkey/Things_To_Do/Hagia_Sophia_Museum_Church_Ayasofya_60785/ , noting, “Some say the building is symbolic of the eclectic history of Istanbul itself.” (consulted 27 May 2013).

[25] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/world/middleeast/the-church-that-politics-turned-into-a-mosque.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (consulted 21 May 2013).

[26] http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2012/05/29/thousands-of-muslims-pray-for-Istanbuls-hagia-sophia-to-be-a-mosque-again/ (consulted 21 MY 2013).

[27] http://www.freeagiasophia.org (consulted 21 MY 2013).

[28] See for example, http://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/02/opinion/l-restore-hagia-sophia-for-the-bimillennium-120986.html (consulted 21 May 2013).

[29] David Talbot Rice, The Church of  Haghia Sophia in Trebizond, Edinburgh, 1968; for the conversion, see Andrew Finkel, “Mosque conversion raises alarm,”  The Art Newspaper, 245, April 2013, online edition: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Mosque-conversion-raises-alarm/29200 (consulted 21 May 2013).

[30] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/trabzons-hagia-sophia-to-open-for-prayers.aspx?pageID=238&nid=40538 (consulted 21 May 2013).

[31] http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/looking-luke/2013/feb/5/turkish-parliament-considers-converting-hagia-soph/ (consulted 21 May 2013).

[32] See the essays in Helaine Silverman and D. Fairchild Ruggles, eds., Cultural Heritage and Human Rights, Springer, 2007.

[33] Wolfgang Müller-Wiener, Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls, Tübingen, 1977, pp. 147-52.

[34] http://www.zaman.com.tr/gundem_imrahor-camii-100-yil-sonra-ibadete-aciliyor_2043653.html (consulted 21 May 2013)

[35] For the mosque history see Gasme Kaymak, Die Cumanin Camii in Antalya. Ihre Baugeschichte und ihre byzantinischen Ursprünge Bauaufnahme, Istanbul, Adalya Suppl. 9, 2010; for the proposed conversion, see   http://www.sabah.com.tr/Akdeniz/2013/01/13/kesik-minare-cami-mi-olsun-muze-mi (consulted 21 May 2013)

[36] Engin Akyürek, “Domenican Painting in Palaiologan Constantinople: The Frescoes of the Arap Camii (Church of S Domenico) in Galata, in The Kariye Camii Reconsidered, eds. Holger Klein, Robert Ousterhout, and Brigitte Pitarakis, Istanbul, Istanbul Research Institute, 2011, pp. 327-41; Haluk Çetinkaya, “Arap Camii in Istanbul: Its Architecture and Frescoes,” Anatolia Antiqua – Eski Anadolu 18, 2010, pp. 169-88.

[37] [no author], “Rönesans Istanbul’da Başladı,” Tarih 39 (April 2012), 34-46.