An Ode to the Hagia Sophia

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Doka
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An Ode to the Hagia Sophia

Post by Doka » 07-10-2020 11:30 PM

This is an article well worth reading. One thing you can count on and that is History, it never goes away, and repeats it's self fairly frequently. Rather it be, by the century or 4,000 years, or so lost in time we overlook it entirely. That's just the way it is on this planet. No Utopia here. But we do eventually get around to digging every thing back up again, never really learning a thing, about ourselves, leaving that to the "Manipulators".


An Ode to the Hagia Sophia

When I visited the magnificent Cathedral of Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia, in 2011, I could not help but feel a sense of immense loss. The golden Christian mosaics had been excavated from the walls of the former mosque, but the building retained its thoroughly Islamic character. The magnificent dome featured an ornate carving of an Arabic surah from the Quran. Six massive black discs bearing the names of Allah, Mohammed, and the four Rashidun caliphs dominated the ceiling, and the massive door pointing toward Mecca continued to reorient the room.

Even so, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s order to finally transform the Hagia Sophia into a mosque once more means what little Christian heritage remains in the ornate museum shall be again suppressed and relegated to the dustbin of history. It remains unclear whether or not Erdogan will order the Christian mosaics once again plastered over, as they were following the original transition to a mosque in 1453, but these vestiges of Byzantine civilization will be undermined, one way or another.

On Friday, Turkey’s top administrative court annulled the 1934 presidential decree that transformed the Hagia Sophia from a full-blown mosque to a museum. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the great modernizer and secularizer of Turkey, had established the museum as a testament to Anatolia’s Byzantine Christian heritage, as well as its Turkish Islamic heritage.

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https://pjmedia.com/culture/tyler-o-nei ... ia-n630312
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Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities': Voltaire

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