Afterlives of Hagia Sophia: the change in the official attitudes towards preserving antiquities in the Late Ottoman and Early Republican Periods

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2011

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Keskin, Ümran

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The history and ideology of preservation increasingly arouse interest in parallel with the rising importance of the cultural heritage and preserving it. Hagia Sophia is one of the monuments that comes to mind immediately when the cultural heritage of Turkey is mentioned. Both as a Byzantine and an Ottoman ecclesiastical and imperial monument, Hagia Sophia bears political and religious importance besides its artistic and architectural uniqueness, 1500 years after its construction. This study aims to expose the change in the official attitudes towards preserving antiquities in the transition period from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic, through examining the ideological and physical approaches to Hagia Sophia. In the Late Ottoman Period important leaps about two important components of cultural life, museology and archeology, were realized in terms of both preservation and exposition of the antiquities, besides the political, economical and judicial changes. Thus, the emergence of museological and archeological studies and related legislations in the Late Ottoman Empire Period and their development in the Early Republican Period are examined chronologically in this study. The reasons behind the changes in the usage of Hagia Sophia, from a church to a mosque and then to a museum, are researched in order to understand the ideology of the adaptive re-use and its results while evaluating the impact and meaning of the afterlives. The selected time period is very critical because the changes occurring in the social and political life of the country, together with the change of the ruling power, paved the way for the present situation in Turkey.

Subject Keywords

Historical museums

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12613798/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/21075

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

Ü. Keskin, “ Afterlives of Hagia Sophia: the change in the official attitudes towards preserving antiquities in the Late Ottoman and Early Republican Periods,” M.A. - Master of Arts, Middle East Technical University, 2011.