Soon after Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals annulled Ataturk’s 1934 decision to convert Hagia Sophia into a museum, President Erdogan, flanked by the Turkish flag and a photo of the museum’s interior, delivered a speech declaring his intention to reopen it as a mosque. Rehashing popular conservative rhetoric, he justified the move by framing Hagia Sophia’s initial mosque conversion as the linchpin of the 1453 conquest of Istanbul and criticized the early republic for illegally transforming the mosque into a museum. With dramatic flair, he also recited a poem well-known within right-wing circles, Mahzun Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia Temple), to exemplify the public’s supposed desire to see the monument become an official place of worship:
Oh great temple, why are you covered with sorrow like this?
Tell us about the age of Fatih even if only a little.
We were lined up five times a day under your calming dome with your adhans,
you had an invitation yesterday.
O my temple, let them be ashamed
those who close rather than open you.
Buried in this rather static narrative of the mosque’s immutable identity, President Erdogan mentioned the building’s transformation into a “complex” that provided “charity activities.” Although left unspecified, this was likely a reference to the monument’s forgotten subsidiaries. Like other imperial mosques, Hagia Sophia was the social, economic and even political hub of its surrounding district. Though the assortment and frequency of services ebbed and flowed, such institutional charity provided the basis for the complex to develop an interwoven relationship with its residential neighborhood. As the late Robert Ousterhout remarked soon after the museum’s conversion, “A church is never just a church…it provides a variety of social services, houses a variety of other activities.” Lost in the flurry of Erdogan’s nationalist pageantry harkening back to the glories of the empire was the fact these Ottoman complexes were more than places of worship representing imperial dominance. With the AKP soon to begin the crux of its purposed fifty-year restoration and maintenance project, will the renewal serve the actual needs of the city?
The Hagia Sophia Kulliye
On the northeast corner of the Hagia Sophia complex, near the imperial gate of Topkapi Palace and the iconic Fountain of Sultan Ahmed III is a striking yet often overlooked Ottoman Baroque entrance. While the gate currently leads to a carpet museum, for generations it was where individuals of varying social status entered to dine in the imaret (public kitchen). Often located next to imperial mosques, this Ottoman institution fed pilgrims, students and mosque staff, and then distributed the leftovers to the local poor. Supported by a charitable endowment that often specified which social class received how much food, patrons would receive at minimum twice a day, a bowl of soup with a piece of bread. One chronicler dismissively referred to these meals as “dishwater” and “a lump of dry clay” respectively, a rather trivializing remark when considering the thousands of patrons who relied on the imaret for their daily caloric charity.[1] The socio-economic impact of these imarets is difficult to ignore given their ubiquity. By the end of the eighteenth century, Istanbul alone had roughly fifty scattered throughout the urban landscape and according to one estimate they collectively fed approximately 15 percent of the city’s population.[2] The idea of distributing food to those in need was a time-honored tradition in the Middle East long before the Ottomans, yet it was the Turks who institutionalized the practice on an unprecedented scale. These institutions were clearly a source of pride; the carpet museum’s entrance is still inscribed with the words, “With this imaret Aya Sofya became truly flourishing.”
These institutions were clearly a source of pride; the carpet museum’s entrance is still inscribed with the words, “With this imaret Aya Sofya became truly flourishing.”
Yet it was not just the imaret, but a host of other institutions that were integrated into the city’s socio-economic fabric. As the Turkish poet Yahya Kemal once mused: “located in the center of a neighborhood, a mosque wasn’t merely a building for worship, but a kulliye that represented the era it was founded; (it had) a college, public kitchen, hospice, bathhouse, primary school, and clockroom….”[3] Aerial photos of the nearby Bayezid II detail a typical kulliye (mosque complex). The iconic central domed structure with (at least) two minarets signifying the mosque’s imperial status, in turn surrounded by smaller buildings and structures many of which house the kulliye’s subsidiaries. Hans Christian Andersen offered an amusing observation of the Hagia Sophia complex itself, writing how “its numerous cupolas and subsidiary buildings, has a whimsical resemblance to a great flower-bulb to which several smaller bulbs have attached themselves.”[4]
This comes as no surprise; the mosque was a place of worship, so prayers and Quranic recitations often emanated from the center structure. At the same time, madrasa students would be attending lectures in the northeast corner, people filling their jugs from the public fountain in the southwest courtyard, locals tending to the garden near the sultans’ tombs in the southeast corner, all the while hundreds of patrons were dipping their “lump of dry clay” into a bowl of “dishwater” at the refectory. During Ramadan, sections of the kulliye would also transform into a full-fledged market. Vendors would sell religious items such as beads, prayer mats, and Qurans, alongside goods from various corners of the empire for iftar (the meal eaten after sunset), such as cured beef from middle Anatolia, butter from the Black Sea region and rice from Egypt.[5] Because the general layout of the complex remains more or less physically intact, contemporary visitors to Hagia Sophia would be able to imagine the controlled commotion generated by the immense human traffic.
What is more difficult to picture is the urban sprawl that once enveloped the Ottoman complex, adding residential clamor and commercial bustle to the mosque scene. The immediate vicinity contained shops selling clothes, birds kebabs, and lemonade, but also barbers trimming hair out in the open and holy men who attempted to cure physical or mental illnesses by reciting a verse from the Quran while gently breathing on the face of the patient.[6] Some businesses, including the famed Cağaloğlu Bath located a few blocks west, were part of Hagia Sophia’s endowment, providing much of the funding for the kulliye’s clearly expensive operation.[7] Beyond such retail establishments was a vast array of densely packed, haphazardly built timber-framed homes with a protruding second floor. Such urban sprawl was punctured by a cascade of narrow, irregular, and nameless streets from which locals, nobles, vagabonds, peddlers, and hundreds of mosque staff strode into the complex. For foreign visitors especially, Istanbul’s urban infrastructure was so disorienting that they had to use the towering kulliyes as directional reference points.[8] When hundreds of lamps were installed throughout the imperial mosque during Ramadan evenings, one Spanish explorer exclaimed the illumination served “to display the majesty of this temple better than the light of the sun,” and as a welcome sight given how the nighttime streets were nearly pitch black prior to the introduction of streetlights in the 1840s.[9] Yet some lettered observers were more keen on highlighting the contrast between the opulent mosque and dilapidated sprawl. One early Turkish historian remarked how each kulliye was “each a product of prosperity, of civilization among ruinous buildings of cities,” while an Italian sociologist recalled the enchanting beauty of St. Sophia surrounded by “the squalor…sordid streets.”[10]
A district radically transformed
However, this sense of urban intimacy was often challenged by forces beyond the control of its residents. As a nineteenth-century Ottoman proverb frighteningly notes, “in Constantinople fire devours your goods, plague takes your wife…”[11] Istanbul’s constricted, maze-like roads running through densely packed wooden houses often fell victim to plagues that traveled through trading routes and fires from coffeehouse mishaps or disgruntled arsonists. Public cries of “Yargin Var!” (There is fire!) and the emergence of Yersinia pestis had always been regular features of urban life, but after a series of unprecedented calamities in 1865 the government undertook efforts to fundamentally restructure Istanbul’s urban layout. In late June, büyük kolera (great cholera) broke out, seeping through Istanbul for over a month during which 30,000 residents lost their lives. Horrific stories circulated, such as how out of eight or ten people who were attending a cholera victim’s funeral, five or six would drop dead, having to be buried alongside the one whose funeral they were attending.[12] Not to be outdone, a major fire broke out a few weeks later in Hocapasa, a wealthy neighborhood northwest of Hagia Sophia, notorious for its frequent conflagrations. Carried by east winds, the harik-i kebir (great fire) further consumed roughly 1.2 square miles of urban structure stretching from Hagia Sophia to the east and Bayezid II to the west within thirty-two hours.[13] The imperial mosque itself was spared, but hundreds of its patrons now faced a horizon of collapsed walls and roofless buildings.
As a nineteenth-century Ottoman proverb frighteningly notes, “in Constantinople fire devours your goods, plague takes your wife…”
The unprecedented calamity merited an exceptional response, prompting Istanbul’s municipal government to implement a massive urban restructure plan. The usage of flame-resistant brick and cement materials was encouraged, while the narrow and irregular streets widened and straightened. The Divanyolu, a prominent road that connected Hagia Sophia and Beyazid II, was also widened from five to sixteen meters, allowing firefighters easier access, delaying the spread of fire, and providing more natural light for pedestrians. Such construction was not without cost; the Atik Ali Pasha Kulliye, located along the major artery, lost its imaret due to the sixteen-meter standard, a notable sign of things to come.[14]
The most notable urban transformation happened within the immediate vicinity of the Hagia Sophia itself, as the destruction of the neighborhood was seen as an opportunity to aesthetically modernize the city. Inspired by Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s redevelopment of Paris, authorities decided to physically isolate the kulliye from its surrounding urban sprawl to provide an unobstructed view from afar. Convinced of the Parisian notion of glorifying monuments through isolation, Ottoman officials enlarged the existing courtyard and demolished buildings adjacent to the imperial mosque. Istanbul’s mayor remarked the wide-open space from the Hagia Sophia to Beyazid II only embellished the existing charms of the historic district, adding that the streets in particular were now “just like in the European cities.”[15]
Pleased officials aside, urban fires and disease continued to persist for decades. To complicate matters, from the late nineteenth-century onward a financial crisis coupled with a rapid influx of migrants congested Hagia Sophia’s neighborhood. According to an 1882 government survey, a third of Istanbul’s Muslim population lacked permanent housing, with many living in schools, shops, Sufi lodges, and mosques. Huts and squatting houses began to form in nearby lots or green space, with reports of stranded Central Asian pilgrims camping on the kulliye’s courtyard eliciting public health concerns.[16] But settling near the imperial mosque seems to have been the only recourse for these poor migrants and penniless hajjis. If they could receive any form of assistance, it would be within the general vicinity of Istanbul’s most recognizable monument. Many understood the mosque-sprawl relationship as one of integration, regardless of Hagia Sophia’s imperial status shrouded within layers of folklore. Tales of how the mosque’s doors were made from the remains of Noah’s ark lied uncomfortably with the self-evident socio-economic needs of the public. Just past the enormous wooden doors that lead to the main sanctuary sat registered panhandlers.[17]
Compounding tragedies, elite neglect, and urban overhaul began the process of what scholars have described as Istanbul’s musealisation. Over the subsequent decades, the government’s focus and eagerness to construct a picturesque Hagia Sophia quarter unfortunately came at the expense of immigrants and the working-class. For those who could stay in their current residence, most were forced to build (and rebuild) their homes with cheap timber, despite the municipality’s efforts to control the price of flame-resistant materials. Yet, further landscaping in 1901 led to the removal of working-class residents of the nearby Binbirdirek and Boyacıhan neighborhoods, while squatters and street children were also expelled from the vicinity in subsequent years. The once ubiquitous timber-framed houses with a protruding second floor were soon razed and for the next few decades, the surrounding area rapidly transformed into a tourist-centric district. Modern restaurants, shops, and hotels catering to tourists began to populate the northern street while to the south the general area from Hagia Sophia to Sultanahmet Mosque was leveled to build a Parisian park.[18]
Imarets also experienced a general decline as the once fifty strong institutional service shrunk to a mere fifteen just before the twin outbreaks of büyük kolera and harik-i kebir.[19] Soon after the constitutionalist Young Turks wrestled power away from Sultan Abdulhamid II in 1908, they closed all but two imarets in a bid to weaken institutions associated with the Sultanate. A few imarets would briefly return in the following years, but Hagia Sophia’s public kitchen was not one of them.[20] Though the kulliye continued to operate as a place of worship, it had largely retreated from its role as the district’s economic and social nucleus. Erratic forces of nature, legitimate concerns regarding urban health, and elite sensibilities regarding institutional reform, gentrified the surrounding district and transformed the Hagia Sophia into what Robert Nelson refers to as “something to see rather than use.”[21]
Glory of the “temple” restored?
While it is true the 1934 conversion was a powerful symbol of Turkish secularism, it was also the culmination of the historic district’s continuing musealisation, a trend Erdogan has unflinchingly embraced. However, despite the pomp and circumstance surrounding the recent reconversion, there was an apparent lack of public enthusiasm. According to a 2020 Metropoll Research survey, only 30 percent of participants saw no political agenda behind the new decree, which stood in contrast to 55.7 percent who believed it was an attempt to shift the public’s attention away from the economic crisis or to secure votes in an upcoming election. Such popular skepticism was well-warranted; Turkey has been struggling with a recession since 2018 and the ruling party suffered major losses in key mayoral elections in the following year. With polls showing Erdogan’s declining popularity, the decision to convert the Hagia Sophia amid a pandemic seemed like a frantic attempt to shift the narrative.
Authorities themselves seemed to have been unaware of the building’s fragility; they allowed parts of the building’s interior to be used for shoe storage and permitted heavy cleaning equipment that eventually cracked the marble floors.
By all accounts, the conversion process itself was haphazardly organized. With only a few weeks to negotiate the co-managerial responsibilities between the Directorate of Religious Affairs and Ministry of Culture and Tourism, a slew of damages and maintenance issues surfaced. Assailants carved out pieces of the wooden imperial gate, left chiseled marks resembling bathroom vandalism, squeezed trash in confined spaces, and scraped off the main prayer hall’s wall coatings. Authorities themselves seemed to have been unaware of the building’s fragility; they allowed parts of the building’s interior to be used for shoe storage and permitted the entry of heavy cleaning equipment that eventually cracked the marble floors. The continuing flow of traffic had also raised concerns about the structure’s humidity as an excess amount could damage the delicate mosaics. Security camera footage eventually surfaced showing fragments of the ceiling falling onto an unsuspecting crowd. Sadly, much of this could have been avoided. An advisory board had recommended initiating an extensive restoration of the complex while admitting only groups of twenty-five visitors at any given time. Yet, only after four years, twenty-one million visitors, and an extremely close presidential election, did the ruling party finally begin the fifty-year restoration project, awarding Erdogan’s close associates with government contracts.
Church, mosque, or museum, Hagia Sophia has always been used to promulgate the political priorities of its stewards; from the outset Erdogan’s machinations are no different. Yet, political expediency seems to have eclipsed any pragmatic case for the conversion, as Istanbul’s three thousand mosques cater to an increasingly irreligious public.[22] As Shannon Steiner and Emily Neumeier have argued, monuments with as complex histories as Hagia Sophia have an “inherent mutability,” challenging assumptions of what “a church, mosque, or museum is ‘supposed’ to be.”[23] Perhaps a restored Hagia Sophia could offer goods and services to a public struggling with price hikes and homelessness, re-integrating the complex into the daily lives of Istanbulites. However, for the foreseeable future the musealisation will likely continue; the “temple” may be open, but the kulliye remains closed.
Niels Lee received a master’s degree from Yale University, with a focus on modern Ottoman and Islamic intellectual history. He currently works as an editor and has published articles in MERIP, The Birch, and the Journal of the History of Ideas Blog.
[1] Amy Singer, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem (State University of New York Press, 2002), 61.
[2] Amy Singer, “What is the Price of a Free Lunch? The Costs of Serving and Consuming Meals in Ottoman Public Kitchens (imaret),” in Assistenza e solidarietà in Europa, secc. XIII-XVIII (Assistance and Solidarity in Europe from the 13th to the 18th Centuries), ed. Francesco Ammannati (Firenze University Press, 2013), 281; Stéphane Yerasimos, “Feeding the Hungry, Clothing the Naked: Food and Clothing Endowments in Sixteenth-Century Istanbul,” in Feeding people, feeding power: imarets in the Ottoman Empire, eds. Nina Ergin, Christoph K. Neumann, and Amy Singer (Istanbul: Eren, 2007), 242.
[3] Yahya Kemal, Aziz İstanbul (Istanbul: İstanbul Fatih Cemiyeti, 2008), 38.
[4] Hans Christian Andersen, Hans Christian Andersen’s Stories for the Household, trans. H. W. Dulcken (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1891), 833.
[5] Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, Social history of Ottoman Istanbul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 152-154.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Halil İnalcık, “Fatih, Fetih ve İstanbul’un Yeniden İnşası”, Dünya Kenti İstanbul, ed. Afife Batur (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1996), 31.
[8] Gülru Necipoqlu, The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), 110.
[9] Michael Greenhalgh, Islamic Architecture through Western Eyes: Spain, Turkey, India and Persia, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2022). 128; Avner Wishnitzer, As Night Falls: Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Cities after Dark (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
[10] Nur Altinyildiz, “The Architectural Heritage of Istanbul and the Ideology of Preservation,” Muqarnas 24 (January 2007): 300; Constantine M. Panunzio, The Soul of an Immigrant (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921), 57.
[11] Nükhet Varlik, Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 185.
[12] Kate Fleet, “The Provision of Water to Istanbul from Terkos: Continuities and Change from Empire to Republic,” in Middle Eastern and North African Societies in the Interwar Period, eds. Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 220.
[13] Sibel Gürses Söğüt, “Yeni Belgelerle 1865 Hocapaşa Yangınının Sınırları,” Toplumsal Tarih 263 (May 2015): 74-80.
[14] Nur Altinyildiz, “The Architectural Heritage of Istanbul,” 285.
[15] Zeynep Çelik, The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 62.
[16] Stanford Shaw, “The Population of Istanbul in the Nineteenth Century,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 10 no. 2 (May 1979): 269.
[17] Julia Pardoe, The City of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of the Turks, in 1836, vol. 1 (London: Henry Colburn, 1837), 377.
[18] Pınar Aykaç, Sultanahmet, Istanbul’s Historic Peninsula: Musealization and Urban Conservation (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2022), 46-48.
[19] Amy Singer, “Imarets,” in The Ottoman World, ed. Christine Woodhead (London: Routledge, 2012), 82.
[20] Amy Singer, “The Last New Imaret? An Ottoman Imperial Firman from 1308/1890,” in The Ottoman Middle East: Studies in Honor of Amnon Cohen, eds. Eyal Ginio and Eli Podeh (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 236.
[21] Robert S. Nelson, Hagia Sophia, 1850–1950: Holy Wisdom Modern Monument (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), xvii.
[22] Murat Çokgezen, “Can the State Make You More Religious? Evidence from Turkish Experience,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 61, no. 2 (2022): 349-73.
[23] Emily Neumeier and Shannon Steiner, “’A Church is Never Just a Church’: Hagia Sophia and the Mutability of Monuments,” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 8, no. 1 (Summer 2021): 216.