Hagia Sophia—a building whose domes have defined Istanbul’s skyline for over 1500 years—has led many lives. Initially a church, subsequently a mosque, then a museum, the structure is today a monument of world heritage, even as its official status remains contested. Hagia Sophia’s global fame took shape during the long nineteenth century, when Europeans "discovered" its architectural significance. But what role did local actors play in the creation of Hagia Sophia as a modern monument? This book seeks out the audiences of this building beyond its Western interpreters, from Ottoman officials to the diverse communities of Istanbul. Chronologically bracketed by the major renovation of the structure in the 1740s and its conversion into a museum in 1934, this volume traces the gradual transformation of Hagia Sophia within the Ottoman imaginary from imaret (mosque complex) to eser (monument); that is, from lived space to archaeological artifact.
Uncovers a diversity of local encounters with Hagia Sophia in the late Ottoman Empire
Arvustused
A church for a millennium, a mosque for five centuries and a museum for ninety years, the Hagia Sophia has still much to reveal to those who wish to look beyond its current polemical context. This excellent collective volume offers such an opportunity, with a focus on a still understudied period of the monuments recent history -- Edhem Eldem, Boaziçi University
List of FiguresNote on Contributors A Note on Translation and
TransliterationAcknowledgments
Introduction: Writing the Modern Biography of an Ancient MonumentEmily
Neumeier and Benjamin Anderson
1. Hagia Sophias Second Conversion: The Building Campaign of Mahmud I and
the Transformation from Mosque to Complex (1739-43)Ünver Rüstem
2. The Paradoxes of Hagia Sophias Ablution Fountain: The Qasida al-Burda in
Cosmopolitan IstanbulTülay Artan
3. The Calligraphic Arts in the Age of Ottoman Architectural RenovationEmily
Neumeier
4. From the Mouth of Angels: Folkloric Hagia SophiaBenjamin Anderson
5. The Other Ayasofya: The Restoration of Salonicas Ayasofya Mosque,
1890-1911Sotirios Dimitriadis
6. 'That Domed Feeling': A Byzantine Synagogue in ClevelandRobert S. Nelson
7. The Monument of the Present: The Fossati Restoration of Hagia Sophia
(1847-9)Asli Menevse
8. From Ceremony to Spectacle: Changing Perceptions of Hagia Sophia through
the Night of Power (Laylat al-Qadr) Prayer CeremoniesAye Hilâl Uurlu
9. Temple of the Worlds Desire: Hagia Sophia in the American Press, c.
1910-1927Robert Ousterhout
Index
Emily Neumeier is Assistant Professor of Islamic art and architecture at Temple University, Philadelphia. She studies the visual and spatial cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, with a focus on the Ottoman Empire, and her research has been published in venues such as the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, and History and Anthropology. Benjamin Anderson is Associate Professor of History of Art and Classics at Cornell University. He is the author of Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art (Yale University Press, 2017) and co-editor of Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Toward a Critical Historiography (Penn State University Press, 2023), and The Byzantine Neighbourhood: Urban Space and Political Action (Routledge, 2022)
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