Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City by John Freely, Hilary Sumner-Boyd Page A

walls had been breached and that the city had fallen. Then the doors of the church were barred and the congregation huddled inside, praying for a miraculous deliverance which never came. Soon afterwards the vanguard of the Turkish soldiery forced its way into Haghia Sophia, bringing to an end the last tragic hour of Byzantium.
    THE CHURCH AS A MOSQUE
    Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror entered the city late in the afternoon of that same day, Tuesday 29 May, and rode slowly through the streets of the city to Haghia Sophia. He dismounted at the door of the church and bent down to take a handful of earth, which he then sprinkled over his turban as an act of humility before God. Let us read Evliya Çelebi’s account of this historic occasion: “Sultan Mehmet II, on surveying more closely the church of Aya Sofya, was astonished at the solidity of its construction, the strength of its foundations, the height of its cupola, and the skill of its builder. He caused the ancient building to be cleared of its idolatrous objects and purified from the blood of the slain, and having refreshed the brains of the victorious Moslems by fumigating it with amber and lion-aloes, converted it that very hour into a mosque.”
    Immediately after the Conquest, Sultan Mehmet thoroughly repaired the fabric of Haghia Sophia. Later sultans refurbished and adorned the interior of the building in various ways, so as to restore something of its ancient beauty. Evliya Çelebi describes some of these benefactions: “Sultan Murat III brought from the island of Marmara two princely basins of white marble, each of them resembling the cupola of a bath. They stand inside the mosque, full of living water, for all the congregation to perform their ablutions and quench their thirst. The same sultan caused the walls of the mosque to be cleansed and smoothed; he increased the number of lamps and built four raised stone platforms for the readers of the Kuran, and a lofty pulpit on slender columns for the müezzins. Sultan Murat IV, the Conqueror of Baghdad, raised upon four marble columns a marble throne for the preacher.”
    All of these objects can still be seen in the nave of Haghia Sophia, along with the gifts of later sultans. The two lustration urns which Evliya mentions are located in the western exedrae. They are late classical or early Byzantine urns to which have been added Turkish lids. An English traveller in the seventeenth century reported that they were always kept full of water “to cool the Mohammedans overheated by their pious gesticulations.” The marble preacher’s throne is located in the middle of the northern arcade. The four marble platforms for the readers of the Kuran are the large one next to the south-east pier and the three smaller ones that are built up against the other piers. The most noteworthy of the later Ottoman additions are the very elegant library built beyond the south aisle by Sultan Mahmut I in 1739, and the imperial loge to the left of the apse, constructed by the Fossatis for Sultan Abdül Mecit in 1847–9.
    Of the Fossatis’ decorations the most obtrusive and regrettable are the eight huge green levhas, or medallions, which hang from the piers at gallery level. These were done by the calligrapher Mustafa Izzet Efendi and contain in golden letters the Holy Names; that is, those of Allah, the Prophet Muhammed, and the first Caliphs and Imams. The great inscription in the dome is also by Mustafa Izzet Efendi. This replaces an earlier inscription with the same text, Surah 24:35 from the Kuran.
    For a vivid picture of what Haghia Sophia was like as a mosque we turn to the Seyahatname , where Evliya Çelebi describes the building as it was in the reign of Sultan Murat IV, in the middle of the seventeenth century. From Evliya’s description we see that Haghia Sophia partook once again of the glories of the age, just as it had 11 centuries before in the reign of Justinian:
    This mosque, which has no equal on earth, can only be