Turkey

There was a big turnout of Muslim pilgrims on the Chora Monastery for the Friday midday prayer, an important within the Islamic religion, the primary following the monument was transformed right into a mosque.

The functioning of the pericallous Byzantine temple of Istanbul as a Muslim mosque was inaugurated by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, final Monday, in a particular ceremony wherein he was related immediately from the presidential palace by way of teleconference.

Few pilgrims match into the restricted area of the church’s catholicon, so many who got here for prayer occupied the outer area across the monument. The inside area was already full half an hour earlier than the prayer.

The Monastery of Chora has been included within the checklist of UNESCO World Heritage Websites. It homes essentially the most elaborate Byzantine mosaics surviving in Constantinople, together with Hagia Sophia and the Monastery of Pammakaristos, which additionally capabilities as a mosque.

The mosque works on the mannequin of Hagia Sophia. The mosaics on the partitions within the prayer space had been lined, whereas an space was decided to be visited by vacationers with a information.

The church of Agios Sotiros in Chora, the catholicon of what was as soon as a monastic advanced, dates from the sixth AD. century, whereas its distinctive mosaics and frescoes had been created within the 14th century, from 1305 to 1320, in the course of the reign of Palaiologos.

The Monastery of Chora was transformed right into a mosque in 1511, 58 years following the Fall of the Metropolis, and by choice of the Council of Ministers of Turkey in 1945 it grew to become a museum. After this choice, specialists from the USA carried out an enormous undertaking of restoration and upkeep of the mosaics and frescoes, eradicating the plasters that lined them.

Work started in 1948 and was accomplished ten years later in 1958. In 2019, Turkey’s Council of State (Danistay) revoked the 1945 choice, and a yr later, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan introduced that the monument would as soon as once more operate as a mosque.

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