The mosaic of the virgin with the boy Jesus in the apse of the Hagia Sophia was closed from yesterday’s Friday prayer with curtains, because it lies in the direction of Mecca, in which the Muslim faithful during prayer bow. It was the face of the Archangel Gabriel to the twelfth century in a pendentif spandrels under the dome of Isidore of Miletus. So it should have, if you believe the announcements of the Turkish government and the competent religious authority Diyanet, leave it at That. The rest of the figure ornament of the Church, which is now a mosque, will not be touched, and also covered works of art would be made after the end of the religious ceremony for tourists visible.
An Empress and her love Affairs
But you have to be very gullible to assume that the conversion process, with the court’s judgment of 10. July began, his conclusion has found. Already there are Turkish voices calling for the destruction of individual mosaics, such as the portraits of the middle-Byzantine Empress Zoe, who kneels on a side wall of the Hagia Sophia, with her third husband Constantine before Christ.
Zoe was there for her numerous Affairs known, your predecessor, Alexander, who is depicted in a mosaic on the Northern gallery of the Hagia Sophia, for his addiction to drink. Should you expect the believers to pray through the images of a “whore” (a Turkish historian), and of an alcoholic? It is such Considerations which will determine in the future the debate surrounding the most famous building of Istanbul, and it is clear that the paradigm shift that many fear, it has already taken place.
On another scale, weighed
The Hagia Sophia is not a Museum anymore, it is now managed by the religious authority Diyanet, that is to say: you came into the sphere of religious morality and belief. What are our cultural artifacts, will be on the scale of salvation-historical certainties weighed. But we have no reason to feel the political chauvinism is behind this and other reclassifications of assets from Museum, churches to mosques, sublime.
