Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended Muslim prayers at Istanbul's Hagia Sophia on Friday, the first since the iconic place of worship in Istanbul was converted back into a mosque, CGTN reports.
First built as a cathedral in the Christian Byzantine Empire, the UNESCO World Heritage site in historic Istanbul was repurposed as a mosque in 1453, following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.
In early July, Turkey's highest administrative court, the Council of State, reversed a decision made in 1934 by modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, to make the site into a museum.
Following the ruling, Erdogan ordered that the place of worship be reopened for prayer.
During morning prayer, Erdogan recited a verse from the Koran, and later, the head of the state religious affairs agency, Ali Erbas, delivered the Friday sermon inside Hagia Sophia, holding a sword as a symbol of conquest.
"The reopening of Hagia Sophia ... is the return of a sacred place, which had embraced believers for five centuries, to its original function," Erbas told the congregation.
