Hagia Sophia reverberated to a muezzin’s call to morning prayer for the first time in 85 years on Saturday.
The broadcast of the morning call to prayer from within Hagia Sophia is likely to reignite the controversy over the use of the building, which was designated a museum in 1935 under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Republic of Turkey’s first president,
Although the prayer call has been played from Hagia Sophia’s minarets for the last four years, the muezzin has always chanted from a prayer room in the museum grounds rather than from inside the former mosque and cathedral.
The Azan call was televised in a Saturday program featuring the head of the Religious Affairs Directorate, Mehmet Gormez, Samaa TV reports.
