We were having lunch in a small open-air café on the Asian side of Istanbul when the call to prayer rang out from a nearby minaret. The high-pitched, amplified voice of the muezzin triggered a chorus of barking dogs and a mixed reaction from the crowd. Most of the people on the street paused and turned to face Mecca. Some bowed their heads and went through the ritual prayer while standing, others knelt, but a surprising number lay prostrate, side-by-side, on the sidewalk or on the steps of their shops. Later that same day as we were leaving the Spice Market near Eminou, a busy transportation hub and up-scale shopping district on the European side of the Bosphorus, the call to evening prayer was scarcely acknowledged. In Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country with a strong secular constitution, religion is a matter of personal choice and many Turks have a pretty relaxed approached to its rituals.
The muezzin, who recites the ezan in its original Arabic, no longer needs to climb a narrow stairway to the top of a minaret. But his message, broadcast from hundreds of loudspeakers on hundreds of minarets across the city, has not changed for centuries.
Allah is Most Great, Allah is Most Great.
I testify that there is no god but Allah.
I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.
Come to prayer! Come to prayer!
The daily ritual is one of the five pillars of Islam and requires devout Muslims to turn away from the concerns of the day and face Mecca for a few moments of remembrance and surrender to Allah. The obligatory ritual, repeated five times a day, need not be performed in a mosque. According to the Prophet Mohammed, "The whole earth is a mosque," and practicing Muslims can respond wherever they happen to be when the voice of the muezzin calls for the daily prayer. Or, if you are a Muslim living in Istanbul, you may not choose to respond at all.
The present arms-length relationship between state and church began in 1923 when Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) proclaimed the Turkish Republic and adopted a strict secular constitution. But in the centuries leading up to the Republic religion was a driving force in the lives of the people, their leaders, and the architects of their city. The history of Istanbul is interwoven with the history of religion and in many ways the face of modern Istanbul is defined by its Christian and Islamic heritage.
The city began its rise to world prominence in AD330 when Constantine the Great moved the capital of his empire from Rome to the site of ancient Byzantium, later renamed Constantinople. As the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine made himself supreme arbiter of church affairs and embraced his new religion with a passion. Under his rule Constantinople became both capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire and the seat of Christianity. For more than a thousand years, long after the western part of the Roman Empire had ceased to exist, the vast Byzantine Empire continued to flourish until the Ottoman Turks finally conquered Constantinople in 1453. They changed the city's name to Istanbul (city of Islam), the Christian Byzantine Empire became the Muslim Ottoman Empire, a Sultan replaced the Emperor and, for the next 470 years, Islam replaced Christianity as the state religion.
Today more than ninety percent of Turks are Muslim but since it became a Republic in 1923 the country has had no official state religion. I asked Ahmet, our resident guide, how the strict secular policy of the government was working. "There is some resistance from conservative Muslims," he admitted. "But most of us believe it is possible to be a good Muslim in a secular society and that religion should not influence political affairs." He pauses and points to the massive domed buildings on either side of us - Aya Sophia and the Blue Mosque, one Christian the other Muslim. "Islam is very respectful of other religions," he adds as we set off for a closer look at Aya Sofia, Church of Divine Wisdom.
From Sultanahmet Park, where we are standing, it's a short walk through manicured rose gardens to the multi-domed church of St. Sophia. Built in AD535 by Emperor Justinian during the height of Byzantine power it is a masterpiece of both décor and engineering. For almost a thousand years, until the conquest of Constantinople in AD1453, it was the largest and most prestigious church in the Christian world, and it is still an impressive structure. Supported by hidden columns its massive central dome, more than a hundred feet across, appears to float in space high above the marble floors - a remarkable feat considering that it was built without any modern high strength materials. Thirty million gold mosaic tiles cover the inside of the dome. Walls and smaller semi-domes are covered with mosaics and murals depicting the life of Christ and the dedication of the church to the Virgin Mary. Emperor Justinian commissioned the murals as a way to reach illiterate worshipers with the Christian story. But not everyone agreed.
In AD726 controversy over the presence of images inside the church flared into a nasty civil war. The Iconoclasts (image-breakers) were ultimately put down by more liberal Christians, but that was not the end of it. After the Muslim conquest of Constantinople in 1453 Aya Sophia was converted to a Mosque. Four minarets were added, and the murals and paintings were plastered over in strict compliance with Islamic law; and the Ottoman Turks were not content with just converting existing churches to Mosques. In 1606, a thousand years after Aya Sofia was built, Sultan Ahmet I set out to upstage Justinian's creation with one of his own. It took ten years to build the Blue Mosque, which now faces Aya Sofia on the opposite side of Sultanahmet Park.
The Blue Mosque is bigger and more elaborate than Sofia but as we walk toward it through the park I am taken as much by the similarities as the differences. Everything about the Blue Mosque is on a much grander scale but its overall design, a huge central dome surrounded by a multitude of semi-domes and arched terraces, is similar to that of Sophia. It would be hard to say which is the more impressive. Each is an architectural masterpiece in its own right and though they come from different eras and different faiths they share a common reverence for the religious history of their city.
When Ataturk proclaimed the Turkish Republic in 1923 Aya Sophia was turned from a mosque into a museum. The plaster was stripped from its mosaics and the Christian murals were carefully restored to their former glory. The Blue Mosque continues to be a place where devout Muslims come to pray and Sultanahmet Park, which surrounds both buildings with walkways and beautiful gardens, is a place where people of all faiths are welcome to share the beauty and grandeur of Istanbul's religious heritage.
