Hagia Sophia The Crown Jewel of Ottomans – History Bites 12

Salam Alaikum everyone, I am back with another episode of history bytes, subscribe to the channel and follow the links in the description to support our work. I am right now inside higher Sophia. What a magnificent structure this is. This is higher Sophia, once upon a time, the largest church in the world now one of the largest mosques in the world. This was built in the sixth century, completed in the 530s, by Emperor Justinian, who was a Roman Byzantine Emperor, who completed the structure and once you've walked into the structure, having completed it, he said, Solomon, I have surpassed D. In other words, he was referring to the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, and he was

claiming that he had surpassed Solomon Ali Salaam.

And this is indeed a very imposing structure, a giant, magnificent structure. Parts of the building are still from the sixth century. You can see the pillars behind me there. Okay, those pillars are definitely from the sixth century, 14 years before the Prophet said Allah Islam was born Prophet Muhammad Salah Salam was born in 570. This structure was completed in 530s. As you can see, you can imagine that this is very, very old from the sixth century. Okay, later on.

In 1453, Fulton Muhammad the father conquered the city of Constantinople and it took the city by force, and everything within the city became his property. And he decided to turn the structure of the church into a market, a mosque, right since then, it had remained as a masjid and then in the early 20th century, in the 1920s, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the den ruler of Turkey, converted the structure into a museum. And then recently, Aragon play about Ibadan, the

leader of Turkey, he decided to make a document or revert it back to the status of the master. This is the Ottoman number behind me you can see this member was put by the Ottomans. This is where the Imam climbs it goes up, and he does the fatwa. Okay, so the Ottomans added a lot of Islamic

messages to the building as you can see verses from the Quran. Okay, then there is a verse about the merabh. There is shahada there.

And the verse of the Quran under the massager that Allah if Allah to whom Allah He had, that mosques, masajid belong to Allah alone, do not call upon others with Allah in them. So that's a very powerful message. Because when you see the church, you see a lot of imagery. There's something on the top there behind those two curtains, see these two curtains. There is an image of Mary, if I'm not mistaken, it looks like Mary. Okay, so the Christians had a lot of imagery. In this place, you can see on the top that there is something like an angel depicted, right. So

in the church,

basically like this, they had many images of angels and

characters of importance like Jesus, Mary and other saints. And if you go on top, you see some of the Emperor's depicted as well. And outside, you see some other pictures of Jesus.

So, in a place of worship, you cannot have pictures of humans, according to the Islamic principles. That's why some of these pictures were hidden temporarily. They were plastered over by the Ottomans in the 15th century. And then later on when it was made into a museum, these pictures were uncovered. And then now they are put some temporary covering on top you can see the curtain the cloth, covering those pictures of the people, when they're praying, they're not bowing to these pictures. Okay? So in Islam, it is not allowed to bow to a picture or have pictures in a masjid, in a mosque. So I'll give you a very quick tour of this magnificent structure. It is basically a huge

sign of the victory of Islam over the Byzantines, the Romans, albeit in the 15th century. So it's gonna take you around very quickly

some magnificent structure, a very, very powerful, imposing structure. You can see that these pillars

these pillars are from the sixth century, these pillars are made actually before the Prophet sallallaahu Prophet Muhammad was born.

This is

the Byzantine architecture from the sixth century the Roman Byzantine architecture from the sixth century.

And then later on the Ottomans added these names Allah, Mohammed, Omar Ali,

Hassan of man, Abu Bakr. For them, they added the name of the Sahaba to the structure to denote the belief that they are Sunni Muslims. They believe in the four caliphs. They also believe, and Ali has some profane and awful bait. So they were actually declaring the Akita of anyone who walks into the structure the Ottomans, right. So it's a huge, giant structure, very important building, I want every single one of you to go online and study the history of high Sofia in particular, you need to know your history, your history, absolutely dynamic, you have to be proud of it. You have to be proud of the achievements of your predecessors, they went through a lot of difficulties, and they

give many sacrifices for them to achieve this, to look at these pillars. This pillar.

These pillars are made

in the sixth century, very giant imposing structure, you can see the dome on top of it.

This was the largest indoor standing structure in the world for nearly 1000 years, until the Blue Mosque was made opposite by Sultana.

And that masjid, was made in the 16th century and is also a very, very important, powerful structure. May Allah reward everyone who has been involved in this word, preserving the heritage for the Christians and the Muslims, because this heritage belongs to both communities. This was a church once upon a time, then it became a masjid, right. So may Allah preserve everyone who has been involved in preserving this heritage, this history for posterity for them to come and see that once upon a time, Jesus was being worshipped here, Mary was being worshipped. And then once Muslims took over one God alone, Allah was worshipped and since then Allah is being worshipped alone. On that

note, I'll stop the vlog. I hope you enjoyed it more redo coming from history bites, don't forget to subscribe and follow the links to support our inshallah solid economical law. Thank you for watching.