Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Hagia Sophia (Encore)

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey is one of the largest, oldest, and most significant buildings in the world. It has served as a holy place for three different religions and has been the focal point for two different empires. Almost, 1,500 years after its construction, it is still making headlines today. Learn more about the Hagia Sophia on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. Tomorrow, just like Douglas MacArthur, I shall return. The I.S. Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey, is one of the largest, oldest, and most significant buildings in the world. It has served as a holy place for three different religions and has been the focal point of two different empires. Today, almost 1,500 years after its construction, it is still making headlines. Learn more about the IAS Sophia on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by Expedia's OutTravel the System podcast. I know you love to hear the story. behind the story. So let me tell you why I think you might want to listen to the Expedia podcast Out Travel the System. This season alone, the show talks to someone on a mission to visit every country in the world. In case you're wondering, the tally stands at 194 out of 197 countries.

There's the man who's visited and stayed at literally thousands of hotels who share some of his favorite unique accommodations and experiences. Or how about the woman who has reached some deep philosophical conclusions about travel and privilege in no small part because of the pandemic. Get all of this and more when you tune into the show, including larger insights about the future of travel, as well as tips and tricks to maximize your savings for your next trip, whenever you feel ready to head out into the world again. You can find Out Travel the System on your podcast platform of choice. Before I begin, let me address the elephant in the room. How do you pronounce the name of this building? The problem stems from the fact that the name was

given in classic Greek, which is pronounced slightly different than modern Greek, and then the city was eventually taken over by Turks. If you had no background and were just a standard English speaker, you might pronounce it Hagia. However, that has never really been how it's been pronounced. There's also H. Haia, Haigia, with Y, silent. The standard pronunciation in what I'll be using in this episode is Aya. This would be as if it were spelled A-Y-A, which is actually how it's spilt in Turkish. In modern Greek, it might be Aya. The second thing is the meaning of the name. I've read in several places where they refer to the building as Saint Sophia. That is emphatically, not what the name is and never was. The name of the church, when it was constructed,

meant holy wisdom, and it was an attribute of Christ, not the name of a saint. With that out of the way, the Ayasophia is one of the largest and oldest extant buildings in the world. By this, I mean it isn't a ruin or just a structure like the pyramids, but an actual building with four walls and a roof, which is still in use today, as a building. The Iosophia is the third church to exist on the current site, with the previous two churches having been destroyed by riots. The first church was known as Magna Ecclesia and was commissioned by the emperor Constanius II, the son of Constantine the Great, in the year 360. This building was destroyed by riots in the year 404. The next building was constructed by Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II, who consecrated it in the year 415. And remember back to my very first episode of the podcast that the Byzantine Empire was just a name given to the Eastern Roman Empire after the fact.

All of these people consider themselves to be Romans. That building, which also held the name Ayas Sophia, was burned down in a riot in 532 during the Nika revolt against the Emperor Justinian, which was the greatest riot ever seen in the history of the empire. Half of Constantinople was destroyed, and tens of thousands of people were killed. The Nika riots are a fascinating subject involving opposing sports teams, and will be the subject of a future episode. The Emperor Justinian, who I previously talked about in my episode on the plague of Justinian, was a big builder, and when the previous church burned down, he wanted to leave his mark. He commissioned what would be the biggest building in the world.

It wasn't just the biggest building in the world. It was the biggest building in the world for almost a thousand years. It wasn't until the construction of the Cathedral of Seville in 1507 that anything surpassed it in size. The building is of Mason reconstruction built with massive arches and domes. It isn't a light building with thin walls, as you would see in Gothic cathedrals in Europe. It has the appearance of a massive structure, which is what was necessary at the time to create something so large. The central dome is 55.6 meters or 182 feet 5 inches tall, with a maximum diameter of 31.24 meters or 102 feet. The dome of the Pantheon in Rome is technically wider, but the area enclosed under the dome of the Iosophia is significantly larger as it rests on much taller walls.

The Pantheon dome also has a hole in the middle, whereas the dome of the Iosophia is fully enclosed. The most remarkable thing about the building, to me at least, isn't the size or a size or a small. its age. It's the fact that it was built in five years. Construction of the church began in the year 532 and it was completed in 537. To put that into perspective, most of the major cathedrals in Europe took over a century to build and many took several centuries. The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is still under construction and has been for over 100 years with modern building techniques. According to legend, when the building was complete, Emperor Justinian said, Solomon, I have outdone thee.

This massive cathedral became the center of the city of Constantinople, of the Byzantine Empire, and of the entire Eastern Orthodox religion. The decor in the cathedral matched its size with some of the most remarkable artwork and gilded religious figures in Christendom. The cathedral was the site of coronations for almost every Byzantine emperor for a thousand years. The building suffered periodic damage over the years, mostly from earthquakes. earthquakes in 553, 558, and 869 all did damage to the building which was repaired. The great earthquake of 989 collapsed the Western Dome, but it too was repaired. The church was a Greek Orthodox cathedral for most of its life, but it did have a period of 57 years, from

1204 to 1261, when it was a Catholic cathedral during the Latin occupation of the city. The Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, who led the sack of the city, is buried somewhere inside the building, but the exact location is unknown. After the return of the city in 1261, it remained a Greek Orthodox cathedral until the day which was the most significant day in the history of the city. The day the Roman Empire finally fell.

May 29th, 1453. On that day, the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet II, breached the city walls, Emperor Constantine the 11th was killed, and the Ayosophia became a mosque. With its conversion to a mosque, there were several massive changes to the building. First, the religious mosaics and mosaics of former emperors were plastered over.

Islam prohibits images of people, so it was required that the images be removed. Second, four large minarets were constructed outside the building. This was done over a period of years by several different sultans. Finally, the building itself was renovated. By the time the Byzantine Empire fell, the empire and the church had been in serious decline. By the time the city was conquered, there were reports of the doors literally falling off the hinges. Mammat II ordered a restoration of the building, which was to become the first imperial mosque in the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. The building served as a mosque for 482 years.

The next big change occurred after World War I when the Ottoman Empire had ended and the Republic of Turkey rose in its place. The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, declared the building to be a museum in 1935 as part of an overall secularization of Turkey. As part of the conversion to a museum, many of the original Christian mosaics which were plastered over were uncovered. The carpet which had been installed for prayer was removed, exposing the original marble floor which hadn't been seen in centuries. By the 1990s, the building was in desperate need of repair again. The fact is, it's a 1,500-year-old building, and anything that old will need constant maintenance. There were issues with the roof leaking, arches and walls needing support, and the water table was starting to rise. One of the challenges of a building this large and this old is that it is in an almost constant state of repair or renovation.

The most recent chapter of the building occurred in 2020, when Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan rescinded a 1935 order turning the building into a museum. The building is now again a mosque, but open to the public like cathedrals in Europe are. If you haven't been to Istanbul, then you owe it to yourself to go. The I. Sophia is often overlooked on the list of world wonders, but if anything, it deserves a sense. spot near the top. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Mackle. Special thanks to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Please remember to leave a review over on Apple podcasts. Even a simple review can really help the show get discovered in the sea of other podcasts that are out there.