Being the common heritage of different religions, languages and powers, Hagia Sophia has long deserved to be a museum…
I once was a temple built for Zeus, the supreme god of religions, or Apollo, the protective god of the city. People entered my temple looking onto the Bosphorus, to be protected, to speak and to pray. Then came Rome, with huge armies behind it… First, they destroyed my city, then Marcus Aurelius Antoninus had pity on me. They reconstructed me, and my city walls. They also built a Hippodrome. Then Antoninus called me after his name, soon the Romans called me as such. Then my new Roman owners fought against each other. First, Constantine dominated the East. Byzantion was a small city, Constantine made it the capital. He named it Constantinople; the city of Constantine. His mother Helena admired the new religion, and in time she became Christian. The new founder of the city, the owner of the new world, Constantine, now permitted the believers of the new religion. Thus, those who had come to worship Zeus and Apollo before now wanted to change me. Now my name is the temple of wisdom, Hagia Sophia. My new religion was Christianity, however in time they also fell out with each other. They took it out on me: first they destroyed me, then they set me on fire. A civil war was on in my city. The Blues and the Greens fought for power. They set the Church of the Sacred Wisdom on fire. Then they called great mathematicians and philosophers forth to reconstruct me. Thus, I became the most spectacular building of antiquity. I stood for centuries, my treasury was overflowing. Even my curtains were of silver. People from all over the world came to see me. Even the Vikings came and engraved their names on my marbles. The Muslims came from the Arabian lands to see me, and they could not hide their astonishment in the presence of my magnificence. They made plans to conquer me. The Avarians, Bulgarians, Arabians, all came to my door…
The walls of my city were thick and enduring, nobody could destroy my city. The Crusaders came to our door in a time of great infidelity. They sacked my city. They plundered me, and even took my curtains off. They brought carriages on my marble floor to carry away my belongings. Then the leader of the Crusaders, the greedy blind king of the Venetians, died suddenly. They buried him on my second floor. They engraved his name over me: Enrico Dandolo. Mehmed, the Ottoman Sultan, came to the city and destroyed my insurmountable walls. His name became Fatih, because he conquered my city. I am the symbol of the power, in a city giving names. Fatih first added a minaret to me, to perform his first friday prayers, in my sacredness. Then they changed my name, I became the Mosque of Conquest. Sultan Mehmed was a wise man; he did not dismantle the symbols of the previous religion on my walls, but instead covered them with a thin layer. He hung the sacred symbols of his own religion, written in Arabic writing, on all four corners on my walls. Time has passed, the name of my city had changed again, now they called it Istanbul. I saw many things over thousands of years. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the new rescuer, the great wise man, gave me a position that is superior to all religions, languages and powers, he transformed me into a museum.
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