From a historical perspective, the conversion of religiously and politically charged buildings this sort of as Hagia Sophia in Istanbul is no new phenomenon, branching back again to antiquity. “The background and context of this sort of transformations constantly have to do with adjustments in the equilibrium of electric power and the desire to make these obviously obvious,” write Prof. Dr. Katrin Kogman-Appel and Franziska Kleybolte from the Cluster of Excellence “Faith and Politics” and the Institute for Jewish Scientific tests of the University of Münster. A multitude of this sort of scenarios can be identified in all epochs, religions and areas. “The architecture and visual language of ritual areas have a especially good prospective for expressing id and, as a result, for distinguishing one’s possess team from other groups,” the researchers make clear in a dossier write-up on the Cluster’s site, “The conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque2. An function with historical parallels, highlighting illustrations from antiquity, the Center Ages and the present working day. They look into the phenomenon applying the instance of medieval buildings in present-working day Spain, evaluating religions and areas. “Appropriations on the Iberian Peninsula occurred as a final result of conquests, pressured baptisms on a huge scale and the expulsion of Jewish and Muslim minorities.”
In accordance to Kogman-Appel and Kleybolte, these medieval conversions of synagogues into church buildings have been “functions of seizure of electric power” which have been intended to categorical “the triumph of the Church over Judaism”. The visual language of the buildings was religiously reinterpreted, new performs of artwork with anti-Jewish articles have been put in, and making components of the synagogues have been reused. “To the conquered – if they continued to stay in the place – this produced their defeat all much too clear to them.” Economic motives also performed a role, however, since in most scenarios the Jewish neighborhood shed all its public and non-public house collectively with the synagogue.
Getting rid of mortal stays, whitewashing walls
Little is recognized about the rituals of re-consecration, as the researchers make clear, but the conversions have been recognized as “purifications”. Numerous church buildings have been consecrated to Mary, the immaculate one particular. “In Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany, for occasion, care was taken in the course of the conversion in 1519 that there have been no far more mortal stays of a Jew in the area and that the whitewash was stripped off the walls and repainted so that almost everything ‘Jewish’ was expelled from the walls.” A very similar go occurred in the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque immediately after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. “It much too was ‘purified’: the Byzantine mosaics have been whitewashed in purchase to do justice to the Qur’anic restraint in direction of photographs in spiritual contexts.”
With a view to the present, the researchers write: “Having over, reusing and reworking religiously and politically charged house is by no suggests an isolated scenario – neither inside Turkey nor in the longue durée: for instance, a museum – formerly a mosque – in the Turkish town of Iznik was re-transformed into a mosque in 2011 the exact was viewed as for the Turkish town of Trabzon in 2013 and it has also been a phenomenon in record because antiquity, identified again and again in all epochs, religions and areas.” The Jewish Scientific tests job at the Cluster of Excellence is entitled “Religious Buildings Alter their Identity. Iberia 709-1611”. This was preceded in the 1st funding section by the job “The Destruction of Sanctuaries in Late Antiquity” of ancient historian Prof. Dr. Johannes Hahn.
“Hagia Sophia not a spiritual scenario, but countrywide(istic) affectivity”
The write-up “The conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque. An function with historical parallels” has been revealed as section of a thematic dossier on the site of the Cluster of Excellence entitled “Hagia Sophia – spiritual buildings and the record of their conversion”. In a even more dossier write-up, Byzantinist Prof. Dr. Michael Grünbart traces the eventful record of Hagia Sophia with its interior and exterior adjustments from the 6th to the twenty first generations. He stresses that the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque was significantly less a spiritual make any difference than a “countrywide(istic) affectivity”. The making has not been a Christian church for far more than 550 many years. His write-up is entitled “Faith and politics at the Golden Horn? Turning over a new leaf on Hagia Sophia”. (vvm/sca)
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