Europe in these times: Looking for signs
Istanbul, Turkey, 17 December 2021
The Bosporus is a striking matte turquoise today. It’s quite unlike what one might expect a waterway so very urban and heavily-trafficked to be; but indeed, as the big merchant ships slide slowly past toward the Sea of Marmara and the Mediterranean beyond, and the ferries speed their way from Istanbul’s European to its Asian side, the Straits’ waters undulate slightly with the weather, pastel green like a child’s Easter egg. Perhaps, though, the color is notable only as a consequence of contrast—today, as every day the previous week, it is raining steadily, with no appearance of the sun and little light offered by the sullen sky; color of any kind is welcome, and maybe the perception of it is thus heightened. At present I am crossing the Sultan Ahmet Park, from the Blue Mosque (its interior being renovated, the structure offers very little to be seen upon entry) toward the Hagia Sophia, dodging, as I go, unofficial tour guides wanting to know if I’d voluntarily pay them to show me things I could otherwise see for free. But I make it to my destination quickly and without a companion, and enter with a specific goal in mind.
In 2020, the Turkish government passed a law turning the grand old structure back into a mosque. Originally a basilica from the sixth century, it first became an Islamic house of worship after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in the fourteen hundreds. It remained so for five hundred years until it was transformed into a museum under the secularizing regime of Atatürk in the 1930’s. Knowing the outlines of this history, and given the recency of the structure’s latest change of status, I’m going there to know and see what had become of the building’s Christian symbols and accouterments. Had they stayed, or been moved to some type of display or museum? Had they been destroyed?
Surprisingly, I’m met with Christian imagery instantly: stepping inside the structure through the tourist entrance I see, in the arch above the interior door that leads to the worship space, in the typical eastern mosaic style on a flaking gold background, a Virgin Mary, seated with Child. Two crowned figures stand on either side of the Virgin, seemingly offering gifts (upon later research, I learn that these are the emperors Constantine and Justinian). It is most certainly an image I have seen before, a centuries-old and very famous piece of artwork, clearly restored and cared-for. It’s a remarkable and uplifting sight, and it makes me hopeful for what I will see beyond.
Further on, the famous interior of the structure is indeed beautiful and unique, with its high-vaulted ceilings and its huge dark metal chandeliers spaced out so as to fill the space with an ethereal light. I am walking shoeless (it is, after all, a mosque) across the slightly damp floor. At first I wander throughout the cavernous room and take in the dark grandeur of the place. Soon enough, though, I am looking for more signs of the church that this used to be. After some time of noting none, save perhaps a large and domed alcove in the back wall that it seems must have been the site of the altar, I depart. I place my shoes back on my feet, and head toward the structure’s exit.
In a long transverse hall just before the doors that open to the outside, a series of explanatory plaques are mounted on one wall. I read Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror’s “endowment” of the mosque from the fifteenth century and the record of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 2020 decree converting the then-museum back into a mosque once more. They are clear in their intent, authoritative about what this building is.
I head back out into the semi-cold drizzle, and spend the evening wandering the Grand Bazaar before a fish dinner and a longer-than-promised cab ride through atrocious traffic and back to my hotel on the other side of town. It is not until much later, after I’ve returned home from my trip, looking at photos, that I notice what had been just in front of me. In the dome of what I now understood was the apse, over what would have been the altar, long white banners stretch from the ceiling’s highest point, arced so as to cover parts of the dome’s surface. And, just peaking out behind, the image; I can’t exactly make it out in the picture, but upon research I find out that it is the Virgin and Child mosaic, the oldest and most famous Christian work of art in the Hagia Sophia. It is covered during Muslim worship times, and I had been in the mosque just before a call to prayer.
And so, what I had seen was a compromise; the signs of history are allowed to persist, but carefully managed; culture mapped on culture, the past acknowledged while the present is lived. That’s a small consolation, perhaps—the structure existing as a museum was also, for nearly ninety years, an apparently acceptable state of affairs—but a real one, respectful of heritage and purpose, of time and change and plurality. And that’s enough.
