S14E05

Welcome to Echoes of History, the place to explore the rich stories from the past that bring the world of Assassin's Creed to life. I'm Matt Lewis. Today we're exploring a landmark that stood for 1500 years and that players can clamber all over in Assassin's Creed Revelations, the Haggaiya Sophia. The skyline of Constantinople is a detailed panorama of slanted roofs, domes and spires. In the early morning light it's dominated by the silhouette of a large hill on the eastern shore. Except, that isn't a natural feature. The crest of the hill is really an enormous man-made dome and those smaller hillocks around it are yet more domes. What you thought were trees are really great towers. From its minarets the call to prayer is cast out and falls upon the city like a fisherman's net. Similar to most western visitors to this city, you don't share the Muslim faith. Yet you find the musical summons beguiling. If for no other reason than curiosity, you head out into the dense streets to slip into the crowds of dutiful worshippers on their way to the Grand Mosque. The alleyways are full of people but lack the bustle and noise of the daytime. There's an unexpected calm as you stroll silently with the crowds towards Haggaiya Sophia, the centre of religion in the world's greatest city. You trust your instincts and follow the lyrical call to prayer as it hovers in the air. Surrounded by tall buildings that have stood for centuries, you could only catch an occasional glimpse of the Haggaiya Sophia's dome or its towers. Were there four or two? You're not sure at this time. At last you reach the large open space around the mosque. It's filled with people wending their way inside. Up close the building is even more impressive. You'd assume that such a monument to the almighty was constructed of the best masonry. It's made of fine brickwork, a rich clay that gives the church its distinctive colour. There, you said it. Church? That's what it used to be. You glance at the worshippers around you. You can't see any others like you. As you step inside, the new decorations, carefully placed over the old Christian ones, remind you that you're a stranger in someone else's home. Luckily, you're adept at blending in. All the same, you must treat this place with the respect it deserves, with the respect the conquerors have treated it, when they could have destroyed it. Looking up at the inside of the enormous dome, which seems to float above the central space, you're amazed by the complex mosaics that turn the brick building into a golden chamber. You gaze in awe at its transcendence. Forcing yourself to return to Earth, you slip into a discreet corner to watch the worship take place. As the congregants kneel to pray, you find yourself still distracted by the incredible architecture. You'll continue to treat this place with respect. But all the same, you make a quiet promise to yourself to see just how high you can climb it. The Haggaius of Aethea holds a unique position in history, not just for its longevity, but also for its blending of East and West. Its walls and ceilings bear the marks of multiple cultures, their art, architecture, languages and faiths. It's as much a melting pot as the metropolis that surrounds it. To help me unpick the complex threads of the Haggaius of Aethea's history, I'm joined by Emily Neumeyer, Assistant Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at Temple University. She recently edited the biography of the building titled Haggaius of Aethea in the Long 19th Century. Welcome to Echoes of History, Emily. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, Matt. It's great to have you here. I can't wait to get to know this building a little bit better. I have so many questions to start off with that probably fall into the stupid question category. And I guess my first one is, we're talking about what I would call Haggaius of Aethea, but is my pronunciation abysmal? How should we say the name of the building? I say that's a perfectly fine pronunciation. I usually say Haggaius of Aethea. And the thing is, is that it has many names and many languages. In Greek, the name of the building is E-A-I-E-S-O-F-I-S, which means holy wisdom. We can talk more about that. It's dedicated to the holy wisdom of God. And then in Turkish, they really just kind of adapt the Greek and they say Aethea Sophia. So however you like. I like it when there's not a wrong answer. There's not really. There's not many ways to be wrong in the pronunciation of the building's name. And I guess you covered then my next question was going to be what does the word mean? What does the name of the building mean? Yeah. So as I said, the name Haggaius Sophia means holy wisdom. The thing to know about Haggaius Sophia is that it's a church. It was originally built as a church and most churches are dedicated to a saint. But in the case of Haggaius Sophia, it's dedicated to what one Byzantine writer referred to as the glorious powers of God. So it's the holy wisdom of God. And it's parallel to another building that's nearby that was constructed just a little bit earlier, Haggaiia Ireni, which is holy peace, right? So there's sort of holy peace and holy wisdom there a pair. Yeah, fascinating. And who gave it that name? So the building we see now is actually the third iteration of the building. But originally in the fourth century, it was originally constructed by Constantius II, who was the son of Constantine, who was the founder of the city, Constantinople, right? The city of Constantine. That's what Constantinople means. That was the original Constantius II, son of Constantine, is responsible for the dedication of this church to holy wisdom. And so has that building always had that name from then until now or has it ever had any other name? No, I think it's always had that name since its initial construction in its first iteration in the fourth century. That's the interesting thing actually, right? Because this is something that it's an essential part of this building is that it's had many lives. It was a church and then it was a mosque and then it was a museum and now it's a mosque again, right? So what's interesting is that even when it was converted into a mosque, they never changed the name. They never changed it, rededicated it with a different name, the Ottomans. I mean, under Mathematica II, they kept the name Ayasofia. So it was known as the Ayasofia Mosque. So the mosque of holy wisdom in Ottoman Turkish, which is kind of interesting, actually. They preserved the memory. This was such a great monument that was so well known that they decided to keep the name. And also that's the interesting thing to talk about is you would expect that when it was converted into a mosque, that they would make all these changes. But there's actually a lot of surprising moments of continuity between the time from a church to an Ottoman mosque. And the fact that it's just become a mosque again, that's kind of literally breaking news is that it's only just happened. Yeah. So it was back in 2020 in the long span of history. It's very, very recent. This building has been in the news. Maybe people have seen and read about it. It was a very controversial, much debated decision. As of July 2020, it is now a mosque again. So the building that we see today, when does that start to be built? When does that date from? Okay. So like I said, it was first constructed in the fourth century, the first version, and then that burned down due to a riot. And then there was a second building and then that burned down to a riot. It's kind of like that Monty Python sketch from the Holy Grail, where he's like, you know, that burned down and then I built another thing and then that burned down. But the third one stood up. Right. So it's kind of like that. To answer your question, the building we see today, the construction began after that second riot. It was constructed in 532. So it was ordered by Justinian the first, who was the Byzantine emperor of the time, the great emperor Justinian, very famous immediately after the riots as gesture of his power, his sovereignty and also his triumph over a time political turbulence. He ordered immediately the reconstruction of the building. And what's interesting is that they decided not to build what had already been there. We think that Ayasofia in its first and second versions was a wooden building with a kind of a pitched roof, like a basilica style. We're not entirely sure, but we think that's what was there. But for the third iteration, for what we see today, Justinian and his architects decided to do something completely different. And that's why the building is so significant. They decided to add an enormous dome over a very large wide space and it is in brick and it is in stone. So they decided to do something completely different. And honestly, it's one of the buildings that's changed the world. Really. There was nothing like it that had ever been built before. Yeah, I feel like I could very easily get distracted at this point by Justinian because he's so cool between his marriage and his laws and dealing with plagues and all sorts of stuff. He's a very interesting character in his own right. So we'll add Ayasofia to his list of incredible achievements. Do we know anything else about who is involved in the construction? Do we have an idea of architects or builders or anything like that that were involved? We actually have a lot of information about the builders and the architects because Justinian had a court choreographer, Procopius. So Procopius gives a lot of details about the construction of Ayasofia, which, by the way, isn't always something we have for a building that's constructed in the sixth century. Normally, you just get the big guys named, aren't you? The guy who's paying for it. That's all you tend to see in the record. So it's interesting to have other names attached to it as well. Exactly. So we do know, Procopius says that Justinian hired two mathematicians and engineers by the name of Isidor and Themius. And they work together to imagine this new space, this new engineering marvel, let's say, of placing such a large dome over such a such a wide space. Yeah. So we do know who was responsible for designing the space of Ayasofia as we see it today. That just makes the story even cooler that we can attach some some real people beyond the emperor to it as well. Is there any significance to where Ayasofia is built as well? You mentioned that there had already been a couple of churches on that site. Is there anything of pre-Christian significance there or any particular reason why that site was chosen for such an amazing building? That's a good question. So remember, this is in Constantinople. This was originally a Roman city. For people who know Istanbul, Ayasofia is located on a peninsula that juts out into on one side, the Marmara Sea and on the other side, the Bosphorus, which connects the Marmara Sea to the Black Sea, which is the Strait. So Ayasofia is very dramatically perched at the tip of this peninsula. So it overlooks water on, you know, basically three sides. So it's very dramatically perched and it's on top of a natural hill. So you can see it from all angles. And it's this giant mountain of a building, like I said. And the dome is very prominent in the landscape. The significance of the site is that we believe in ancient times, the earliest iteration of the city that that tip on the peninsula was the Agora. So the kind of city center of the ancient site. And then when this becomes the capital of Byzantium, the Byzantine Empire, though, of course, the Byzantines never really thought of themselves as the Byzantines. They always thought of themselves as Roman, right? They fully thought they were Roman emperors, right? For them, there wasn't really sort of break from the Romans anyway. So when Constantine establishes the city, the Byzantines, the rulers, they place their their palace right on the tip of the peninsula and then have Hagia Sophia right next to it. So it's this kind of pairing between imperial power and religious authority. So the palace and the the cathedral. The most significant thing about Constantine is that he's the Roman empire that converts to Christianity, right? So that's why Hagia Sophia is so important is because it is the first real cathedral church for these new Christian Roman emperors, the Byzantines. And so in Assassin's Creed Revelations, players can walk around the inside and the outside of Hagia Sophia. You can even climb up to the roof. You know, you can literally crawl all over this building and get close to to the magnificence of it. And it's a beautiful thing. Are there any architectural features that were particularly special or important or striking when it was first built? The most important thing is, especially in the interior and the exterior, is the dome. People who are playing the game or people who go visit the building in real life. The first thing they'll notice is that when they walk inside is that there's not a bunch of small little rooms. It's this massive space that's under a single dome. And there were certain techniques that they use to achieve that particular effect. So like I said, this building for the first time uses semi domes. There's all these little tricks to keep the dome up, right? Because there's a lot of work, hidden work going on behind the building to keep that dome up. And by the way, it's not always successful. The dome has now collapsed three times in the course of its history. When you play the game, it's in 1511, right? So it's an Ottoman mosque in the game, and it's under the reign of Bayes at the second. Suiltan Bayes at the second. So by that point, the dome has collapsed three times. So you're actually seeing the third the third or fourth dome that way. So I would say when you walk in, the major thing is to marvel at how this this sort of cavernous space, nothing like it had existed before. It's almost like a canyon when you walk in this just giant open space. There was nothing quite like it before. There was the Pantheon in Rome. The dome was was wider than Hagia Sophia's dome. Hagia Sophia is 105 feet in width. But the thing about the Pantheon is is that it's not as tall and it's also it's really just kind of embedded in the city center. It's not something it's not very striking in the landscape. But Hagia Sophia, because it is placed on this natural hill on this peninsula, it has such a dramatic exterior presence in the city. It's so like I said, it's nobody had ever really seen anything quite like it before. Yeah, perfect position to sort of stand there and say, look at me. So if you're going to build something there, it might as well be something incredible. And there must have been so much just techniques and engineering skill involved in creating such a massive open space, because later in the medieval period, there will be this drive to get bigger and wider and higher interior spaces in churches and cathedrals. And they're doing that kind of six, seven, eight hundred years after Hagia Sophia has already created this vast interior space. So in lots of ways, they're architecturally way ahead of anybody else. Yeah, that's absolutely true. So like I said, when it was first constructed, it was the largest domed space in the Christian world, and it held that title for about a millennium. So finally, the building to beat it was the the Duomo in Florence, which I know you've also talked about on this podcast, right? That's a pretty remarkable feat to have that kind of engineering skill last for such a long time. It was just idiots gambit, really, and the engine in the engineers and the architects. They didn't really, you know, it was like this great test. There is this experiment. They didn't know if it was going to work. So it was construction 532. The first time the domed collapses is in 557. So only just a few years after was built. Right. So there was some trial and error, a dome sitting on a square space that that is that massive is exerting a lot of pressure, both down and horizontally. So the way that you have to deal with that is they came up with a bunch of different strategies and most notably, I would say, are the semi domes. So if somebody is in the game and they're inside, I want them to notice not only the central dome, but also look at what we call semi or half domes on either side, they'll probably notice that you can probably climb on it. I think these probably is a challenge in the game to climb in these in these areas. But I want them to notice these semi domes that are on the sides that are in there. What are they doing is they're they're opening the space up. They're expanding the space even more. But they're also taking pressure off of that main dome. They're taking the pressure and directing them down into the side walls. There's also these four massive piers that are holding the dome up on four sides. But in the game, you may not notice them because the engineers were very careful to hide them to kind of hide them behind a screen of columns. When you actually are inside the building, you don't notice these four piers as much as you may otherwise because they're kind of hidden behind this sort of screen. So yeah, so there's there are things that are both visible and invisible working in the building to help keep the space up. That's a great tip for something to look for that you can see doing a job of of making the space even bigger and making it look better, but is also doing an engineering job of keeping the whole building up. And the idea is well that there is some magic going on that you can't see behind the scenes. I really, really like that. So there is so much more going on than even what you can see in that spectacular space. I guess my next question would be what motivated Justinian to build such an incredible building? You know, if you've had a church there that's burned down twice, I guess there must have been a temptation to think let's give up. Was there a particular reason that Justinian thought I'm going to build something so incredible, it'll last for 1500 years? I think there's two answers to that question. There's the more pragmatic answer, which is remember that there are these revolts that just happened where they burned down the building. Right. So I think there is a pragmatic issue of if you are building this giant monumental cathedral that you're putting a lot of people to work. Maybe if they're working on your cathedral, they're less likely to be out in the streets revolting. And also, it's it's clearly an expression of power. Justinian and his expansion of the Byzantine Empire is really making a statement, an unmistakable statement about imperial power, that this is the center of the world. And again, I think Hagia Sophia shows Justinian trying to make a statement about his rising above this political turmoil. Yeah, yeah. And if we skip ahead, kind of almost a millennium and we think about the the change of hands of Constantinople, so it will be conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453. Do we have an idea then of why when the city changes from being Christian to being Muslim, why don't the Muslims tear down this symbol of Christian authority in the city? That's a great question. And my students ask me this often, right? I mean, when you conquer a city, when you inherit a city, you've you have this major symbol. It's a good question. Why not just tear it down? There's several reasons, I think, that the Ottoman Sultan and the second decided to keep Hagia Sophia. First of all, on a practical level, it would just be so much more expensive to tear it all down. This is not a minor building, right? As we explained, this giant mountain of stone, right? You know, just even just this the trouble of taking it down would be unimaginable in terms of expense and then to build something new. It's actually very easy to convert a Byzantine church into an Ottoman mosque because mosques need to be oriented in the direction of Mecca, which is the direction of prayer for Muslims. So basically, and luckily in Istanbul, in Constantinople, that more or less the orientation is southeast. In general, churches are oriented east because you want to be facing the rising sun. And so it was very easy. You just kind of go in, you take the apps out, you take the icon to ask this, you take the altar out and then you just put in a mikrab, a niche showing the direction of prayer and you put a minaret up. So it's very easy. It's a much more sort of cost effective solution is to just take the building as it stands. But I think there is also a very clear symbolic move that Mehmed the second takes. Mehmed the second is not he's not an iconoclast. He's someone who very much respects the Byzantines. He respects the culture of of antiquity. We know that he spoke and he read ancient Greek. He had he had the works of Homer, you know, read to him in Greek. He also saw himself as a Roman emperor. He saw himself as the natural heir to the Roman empire. So I think by claiming the significant monument of Rome, Eastern Rome, I think he's also making a very clear statement that he is the new Roman emperor. It's a very clear statement that the Ottomans are the new realm. Fascinating. And I guess there is an element to of political pragmatism in that if you've got this stunning symbolic building that represents power and is just so impressive. Just repurpose it. Why would you tear it down? I guess it can do a job for you as well as it has for previous rulers. Exactly. And it's such a remarkable, well-known monument that it would just. I mean, I think Mehmed the second also, he was someone who, like I said, I think he he really respected it. And I just can't imagine him tearing down some a building that was just also just so beautiful and so well known. So, yeah, absolutely. I think it makes sense to I think you're absolutely right to repurpose this building as his own symbol of power and to just reimagine it in this new way as a mosque. And with the arrival of the Ottomans and the conversion to Islam, do they make any more significant changes to the building? Sort of discuss the slight alteration to turn it into a mosque. Do they make any more significant changes to the fabric of the building? Not really. That's what's so amazing about it, is that actually this is what's really remarkable is. So in 1511, you know, just a few decades after the conquest, the building doesn't really actually look a lot different than as it did as a church, which again, I want to emphasize, because this, especially in 2020, when the Turkish government reconverted it back into a mosque, there was a lot of rhetoric about how they were fulfilling Mehmed the second's ambition in that Haya Sophia ultimately should be a mosque. And yet if we look back at the moment of Mehmed the second, there were not a lot of very dramatic interventions in the building. As I said, they took out the altar in the apse. They replaced it with a mihrab and a minbar. The mihrab is a niche that indicates the direction of prayer. And the minbar is the place where the imam delivers a sermon on Fridays on during Friday, congregational worship. And then they added one minaret under Mehmed the second. Haya Sophia now has four minarets. Other three came later. What's also really remarkable, and this is the thing I really want to emphasize, is that they did not cover the mosaics. So the other thing that Haya Sophia perhaps is best known for, besides the dome, besides the massive space, are the beautiful Byzantine mosaics, which is a type of technique of artwork where you take very tiny little pieces of stone and you arrange them on the wall to create beautiful patterns or images. And the Byzantines really excelled at this particular technique. And so there's this remarkable mosaic of the Virgin Mary in the apse that's very famous of the Virgin Mary with a Christ child on her lap. There was the image of the Pentocutor of Christ up in the dome, in the central dome. And there were several other mosaics as well. What's remarkable is that these mosaics were not covered up when it was first converted to a mosque in in 1453, which in actually what's really interesting is that the mihrab just down below in the apse that was installed during the time of Mehmed the second has a verse from the Quran that mentions Mary because there is Mary and Jesus are figures that are mentioned in in the Quran, the Holy Book of Islam. And so there's this reference, this dialogue between the apse, the image of the Virgin Mary up in the apse with the mihrab down below that this textual inscription that mentions Mary as well. So it shows us kind of continuity or dialogue between these two, as we say, you know, Abrahamic faiths. Why I mentioned the mosaics is because the thing is in Islam, in general, there are images of humans in general within Islamic art, but not in religious spaces. So in a mosque, you would not see the representation of people. There is this avoidance of representation of people in religious contexts, like a mosque space or in a Quran manuscript, because you don't want to distract from the worship of of God. It's a very similar concept. I mean, in Byzantium, they had iconoclasm, right, where they had a similar anxiety about images and also with the reformation. So this is a concept that we're familiar with. Right. But what's remarkable is that again, Mehmed the second, when they first converted it, there was this respect for the mosaics. And it seems like there was a good deal of tolerance and respect in terms of, you know, they did not immediately cover up all the mosaics. That did happen over time, but very gradually. So hundreds of years went by when it was a mosque and you could see the Virgin Mary up in the apse, for example. I think that's quite striking because there is a temptation to imagine that with such a significant change in the main purpose of the building, there would be a desire to wipe away anything Christian and replace it with lots of Islamic images and things like that, which clearly didn't happen. And I think that's quite striking. It speaks of a degree of tolerance and respect for the history of the building, I guess. Absolutely. And I think there's a tendency today. There's this re narration that's happening where we forget that moment. The life of the building under the Ottomans. It was a long process. The mosaics were slowly covered up very gradually, but it took place over hundreds of years. And that that initial moment, I think we need to remember that there was a good deal of continuity and tolerance. So if someone was to visit Hagia Sophia today, how much of the decoration that they could see has survived from the sixth century? That's a good question. Well, again, quite a bit, I would say. So here's the thing is that actually the mosaics that I was just mentioning were actually added after Justinian. So even in the Byzantine period, this building is not a stable thing. Right. So under Justinian, most of the decorations were mosaic, but they were more geometric patterning crosses, things like that. And you can still see because there was no actually ironically, you can probably see more of the Justinian period because they're, you know, more amenable to a mosque environment than the not. But it was all these sort of famous mosaics that I'm talking about were actually added after Justinian, right? Ninth, 13th century. It's amazing that so much of the the original stuff is potentially still there to be seen for kind of fifteen hundred years later. But here's the thing that what they decided to do when they converted it back into a mosque in 2020 is that and this is one of the big controversial decisions is that they decided to hide the Virgin Mary in the apps. It's like the sale, this is covering. You can kind of peek around it if you're standing up in the galleries. But there was this whole debate about covering up of the Virgin Mary. So there was all this debate about it. So this is why. And the explanation given was, well, this is a mosque now. So we should cover these these mosaics, these images to respect Islamic worship. But this is the point I want to make is that the Virgin Mary was visible for the first two hundred, three hundred years of the building being a mosque. So yeah, it's a kind of five hundred and seventy five years ago. They made a different decision that lasted for centuries. So this is not quite a new thing to cover it up, but it is a decision that's been made that's different to what happened in 1453. That's right. I'm going to ask you a really unfair question now. There's a couple of achievements in the game that relate to the building. So there's one achievement for climbing to the top of one of the minarets, the four minarets that are on the building. Were those minarets there in 1511? Was there four minarets on the building? I was I was trying to figure this out. So I yeah, in the game, there's there's four minarets. And actually, that's not quite right. By 1511, there would have been two minarets. But actually, the the last two minarets were added in the 1570s. So it's not it's not quite right. But, you know, it's it's a video game. But I I have to say that I was very impressed in general with having having looked at it. I was very impressed with what they with what they did. But yeah, that's not that's not quite right. There would have been only two. And one of the other achievements is to climb from the base to the pinnacle in under 25 seconds. And I presume that would be impossible. Yeah, I think even the most accomplished parkour specialist would have a lot of trouble pulling that off. I don't think that's possible. Well, it just goes to show how good Ezio is at that kind of thing. If he can do it in 25 seconds. Just going back to that kind of that 1453 moment in which Haggis if he switches kind of its main purpose, do we have any sense of how the inhabitants of Constantinople reacted? So how did the Christians feel about sort of losing that building? And how did the Muslim population feel about a former Christian church becoming a mosque? That's a little hard to say because we don't have many accounts in the 15th century of just regular people. And what did regular people think? Right. One thing that can be said is that the way Constantinople changed, you would expect that with the fall of the of the Byzantine emperors, that all the Christians would have left the city, that everybody who's there would have left and the Ottomans would have brought in Muslims. But that's not exactly what they did. So there were a lot of Muslims who were brought in from different parts of Anatolia, what is today Turkey to the city. But Mehmed the second also endeavored to also bring back and to accommodate the Christians who had already been living in Constantinople. So there wasn't this sort of massive change of population. There was a giant influx of of Muslims. But this is the thing about the Ottoman Empire is that it wasn't in this. It's a multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multilinguistic empire where you have Christians and Muslims and Jews all living together under under the Ottoman Sultan. So Christians were allowed to continue to live in the city, to worship in their churches, not Hagia Sophia, but they were allowed to maintain other churches. So there were other churches in the city that were allowed to continue to exist in that function. Yeah. So I would say that Istanbul under under the Ottomans becomes a place where you have both Christians and Muslims living together. Do we see Hagia Sophia over the centuries of its existence having an influence on either the multiculturalism of the city? Because it seems like everybody has a connection to Hagia Sophia. It can mean something to all of the people there. Or does it have any kind of influence over the wider architecture of the city? Because it's such an impressive building. Is there an effort to to emulate that further? Widering Constantinople in Istanbul? Absolutely. And this is why Hagia Sophia is so interesting in terms of architecture, because it's not only a remarkable building, but it also it generates copies that generate inspires the construction of so many other buildings. So especially the Ottomans, when they go on to really, you know, because they have to populate Istanbul, not just with Hagia Sophia, but with other imperial mosque complexes and anybody who has been to Istanbul. Or maybe if in the game, if you wander around Constantinople, you might notice some other prominent mosque buildings that look very similar to Hagia Sophia, because the Ottomans really took on Hagia Sophia as the model of a large central dome over a square. They really took Hagia Sophia as the model for their own imperial mosque complexes. So some other very famous buildings in Istanbul, like the Suleymaniye, like the Blue Mosque, which maybe some people have visited if they've been to Istanbul. These monuments, they're not carbon copies, but they're absolutely inspired by Hagia Sophia. So Hagia Sophia, in a lot of ways, gives birth to multiple other Hagia Sophia's in the city of Istanbul and also beyond. Even today, I'm based here in the United States, Greek Orthodox communities, actually a lot of synagogues. Just right here in Philadelphia, where I'm based, there are multiple buildings and one way or another, quote, the architecture of Hagia Sophia. It's a very inspirational building that creates other little Hagia Sophia's in Istanbul and throughout the world. Yeah, it's an incredible influence for a building to have had for kind of 1500 years. And just to kind of round off the story, we mentioned that it's recently moved back to being a mosque, having been a museum from 1453. How long is it a mosque for? And then when does it become a museum before it moves back to being a mosque? So the Ottoman Empire falls and the Turkish Republic, what we the modern country of Turkey, is in 1923. And it's interesting, you would think that with this new secular Turkish Republic, that they would immediately convert it into a museum. But that's actually not quite what happened. They actually so Hagia Sophia is not converted into a museum until 1934. There's a bit of a lag time. So there is this idea, this effort that maybe it could be the mosque, the national mosque of the new country of Turkey. But eventually, under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first president and founder of Turkey, decides ultimately to convert it into a museum as as a symbol of this new secular nation state. Yeah, so it's 1935. And then another notable moment in 1985, when it was inscribed into the UNESCO World Heritage List. And then 2020, it's converted back into a mosque. And it's safe to say that the politics in Turkey have shifted dramatically from 2020 from 1935. When it was, it was 1934, as the decision was taken, it was officially opened as a museum in 1935. Politics have changed quite a bit. And in 2020, under the rule of the Auk Party in Turkey with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, it was important to under under these modern contemporary politics to declare it as a symbol of Islam and to convert it back into a mosque. So part of this kind of neo Ottoman politics of the present day. I guess it's interesting again to think that in well from 1923, when the Republic of Turkey emerges in 1935, 3435. And that decision is made to turn into a museum, much like 1453. I guess there's another moment there when it could have been lost forever, it could have been torn down and destroyed because of what it had represented before. But again, the decision is made to keep it to preserve it. I mean, it's clearly a building that's living a blessed life to some extent. It's it's a building that is very resilient. It's a building that is, like you said, it means something different to so many different people. But it's such an important monument to so many that it just continues to stay relevant. That's the thing, you know, history is is always with us. And Ayasofya always finds a way to accrue different layers, both physical and symbolic. Right. But it continues to stay relevant even until today. So even though it was, you know, first, what we see was from 532, it is something that continues in the present moment to have very, very real and present meaning for so many different people around the world. Yeah, incredible. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure to get to know this building a little bit better and to explore all of the reasons to go and visit it, I guess. Before we finish, I always like to give my guests the opportunity to step into the the animus of the Assassin's Creed world and be transported back to a moment in time. So is there a point in the long history of Hagia Sophia that you would really like to witness a moment that you would like to be there for? I would love to see it in its moment in 1453 when it's converted to a mosque. I would love to see what it looked like as is this in this moment of of transition and in this moment of the city becoming something new. I would really love to have been there for that. Yeah, I guess that's a great moment that shows the living nature of the building that it continues to exist and to breathe and to perform different purposes at different times, but it continues to be relevant and necessary so far for 1500 years. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Emma. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. I feel like I really, really want to go and see Hagia Sophia now because I haven't. You should. Yeah, it's waiting there for you. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. 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