A church with high symbolic value in the history of Christianity will be used as a mosque. Till now, the building was a museum and tourist destination.
Istanbul (kath.net/KNA) The Hagia Sofia of Nicaea, the meeting place of the Seventh Ecumenical Council in the year 787 is to be declared a mosque by the Turkish authorities. As the Turkish press reported last Thursday, the call to prayer of the Muezzins is being sung for the first time that eve since the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The minaret was attached during the Ottoman period to the Church in the city the Turks call Iznik. Last year it was restored. With the celebratory prayer at the beginning of the Islamic sacrificial feast on Sunday morning, it will free the former church for Islamic religious ceremonies.
The decision of the Office of the Board as the competent authority sparked a fierce debate. The art historian Selcuk Mülayim of Marmara University pointed to the importance of the building in the history of Christianity and warned the move would draw protests to itself from around the world. The Chamber of Commerce of Iznik criticized the move as totally incomprehensible, as the small town lives from tourism.
Also controversial is whether it is due to the Board to explain how the previous church is converted from a museum to a mosque. The Office explained that the building had been set aside by the community unjustifiably as a museum, according to their documents, since it had never been used as a museum before. In the past year in any case, a sign stood before the restored church structure with "Museum" written on it; a warden collected entrance fees.
In the Hagia Sophia of Nicaea the Bishops of the East Roman Empire gathered in 787, in order to decide the Byzantine Iconoclast Controversy and to permit the veneration of Icons. Nicaea was also the meeting place of the first Ecumenical council in the year 325. The palace in which the Council took place, is no longer extant, however.
The Hagia Sophia was changed into a mosque by the Muslims in 1331 when they captured the city, and after a fire it was restored by architect Mimar and destroyed at the Battle of Bursa in the Turkish War of Independence in the 1920s. The ruins were restored in 2007 and has drawn Christian religious tourism.
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All the more reason to keep the Cathedral in Cordoba as a church.
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