interwiki, renameuser, Administrators
13,552
edits
Changes
m
→Later history: sp
== Later history ==
[[image:Hagia_Sophia_Christ.jpg|thumb|300px|left|Mosaic of [[Jesus Christ]]]]
For over 900 years the Hagia Sophia was the seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople and a principal setting for imperial ceremonies. It was converted to a mosque at the [[Fall of Constantinople]] to the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mehmet II in 1453. Since [[Islam]] considers the depiction of the human form to be blasphemous— that is, it is [[iconoclasm|iconoclastic]]—Hagia Sophia's icnonographic iconographic mosaics were covered with plaster. For almost 500 years the principal mosque of Istanbul, '''Ayasofya''', served as model for many of the Ottoman mosques of Constantinople such as the Shehzade Mosque, the Suleiman Mosque, and the Rustem Pasha Mosque.
In 1934, under Turkish president Kemal Atatürk, Hagia Sofia was secularized and turned into the '''Ayasofya Museum'''. Nevertheless, the mosaics remained largely plastered over, and the building was allowed to decay. A 1993 UNESCO mission to Turkey noted falling plaster, dirty marble facings, broken windows, decorative paintings damaged by moisture, and ill-maintained lead roofing. Cleaning, roofing and restoration have since been undertaken.