Was the Blue Mosque a Church?

It was originally built in 360 AD and for more than a thousand years was a Christian church. It belonged to the Orthodox Catholics for the whole time, except for a 57 year period between 1204 and 1261 when it was a Roman Catholic cathedral.

Why is the Sultan Ahmed Mosque important?

The Sultan Ahmet Mosque, built between 1609 and 1616, was meant to reassert Ottoman power even though Ahmed I had to procure funds from the treasury since his lack in victory also meant a lack in spoils of war.

Can Hagia Sophia be converted into a mosque?

Built 1,500 years ago as an Orthodox Christian cathedral, Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453. In 1934 it became a museum and is now a Unesco World Heritage site. Islamists in Turkey long called for it to be converted to a mosque but secular opposition members opposed the move.

What happened to Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia and St Saviour?

St. Saviour Church in Chora (Kariye) in Istanbul on August 21. T he Turkish government formally converted a former Byzantine church into a mosque Friday, a move that came a month after it drew praise from the faithful and international opposition for similarly turning Istanbul’s landmark Hagia Sophia into a Muslim house of prayer.

Why is Turkey’s Chora Church Museum being turned into a mosque?

And as with the Hagia Sophia, the decision to transform the Chora church museum back into a mosque is seen as geared to consolidate the conservative and religious support base of Erdogan’s ruling party at a time when his popularity is sagging amid an economic downturn.

Can a church be converted into a mosque?

But the recent conversion of churches into mosques is not new. In 1993, Maranci observed such transformation of the 10th-century Cathedral of the Holy Apostles in Kars, on the Armenian border. And in 2013, CT reported on the conversion of the smaller Church of Hagia Sophia, on the Black Sea coastal city of Trabzon.