Hag ia Sophia, June 27th, 7am- Anders

Hag ia Sophia, a mosque without a loud speaker, a quiet giant of transformation among many mosques that blare a call to worhip 5 times a day, now a museum, grand yet silent among a city of singing centers of worship.

Sophia- First a christian church, burned in the "Nika" revolt of 532 AD, it was rebuilt in just 5 years, but nothing lasts as the roof of the church is now splayed on the ground before the mosque arranged in no arrangement, much of the old church sleeps unforgotten about below the accumulation of 500 years of islamic reign. Some of the old church remains lay 3 meters below the current ground level in rectangular pits, walled and kept exposed, some church remains are at ground level placed neatly in a garden, and then some church remains are left unexcavated out of fear of ruinging ruins.

the 15th century brought muslim conquest to constantinople (check my fact on that one) and 39 years before 1492 when columbus sailed the ocean blue (is that line about columbus too corny?) this grand church was through with christianity and embraced a new prophet wich would change the name of the city to Istanbul and the name of the building from church to mosque. 400 years later after sustained claimed righteousness and control a muslim sultan named Abdulmacid commenced a 22 year facelift that gave full form to the building now known as Hag ia Sophia.

In 1923 the Ottoman empire fell and Turkey was created from the hands of a now mythical general known as Ataturk. While 99% of Turkish citizens are muslim the country is officially secular, yet according to someone i met here only 80% of Turks are practicing, the other 20% refer to themselves as "modern," but dissent is not welcomed here and so the moderns are mainly muted in opinion.

Ataturk and his government, in 1935, declared Sophia as a museum open to all and it is now being restored amongst a constant flow of tourists and turks. As Shelby and i approached Sophia we wondered if it was a good to time to visit her. We did not yet know that Sophia was not a functioning mosque, it was just past 4pm and according to our estimates the call to worship should start in either 20 or 80 minutes, when the call starts the mosques are cleansed of non-believers and one of five daily prayers in practiced to praise Allah and clear the mind and body of the unholy dirtiness developed from several hours of being human.

Shelby asked a uniformed guard standed gated and guarded at the outer wall of his Sophia, "is this a good time to visit?," "Yes, yes," he responds and we step back to locate the appropriate line to walk down, the 3 paths are labeled- "with a ticket," "without a ticket," and "citizens of Turkey," our line held no traffic so we walked past two dozen Turkish citizens waiting to see their lady, we would have felt more comfortable waiting in line with them instead of walking past with our tourist priviledges, i hope they did not have to pay as much as we did to walk amongst their own history.

We walked through security and found a history plaque giving meaning to what we were seeing. This is when we learned of Sophia's retirement from mosquehood and birth of museumhood, later we noticed the absence of speakers on the towering minnerettes, giving clue to the fact that unlike the mosque with a ceiling colored blue, Sophia was obtaining her beauty rest.

to be continued....