This building is seven hundred years older than Notre-Dame, Langdon thought.
After taking a moment to absorb the breadth of the room’s dimensions, Langdon let his eyes climb skyward, more than a hundred and fifty feet overhead, to the sprawling, golden dome that crowned the room. From its central point, forty ribs radiated outward like rays of the sun, extending to a circular arcade of forty arched windows. During daylight hours, the light that streamed through these windows reflected—and re-reflected—off glass shards embedded in the golden tile work, creating the “mystical light” for which Hagia Sophia was most famous.
Langdon had seen the gilded ambience of this room captured accurately in painting only once. John Singer Sargent. Not surprisingly, in creating his famous painting of Hagia Sophia, the American artist had limited his palette only to multiple shades of a single color.
Gold.
The glistening golden cupola was often called “the dome of heaven itself” and was supported by four tremendous arches, which in turn were sustained by a series of semidomes and tympana. These supports were then carried by yet another descending tier of smaller semidomes and arcades, creating the effect of a cascade of architectural forms working their way from heaven toward earth.
Moving from heaven to earth, albeit by a more direct route, long cables descended straight down from the dome and supported a sea of gleaming chandeliers, which seemed to hang so low to the floor that tall visitors risked colliding with them. In reality, this was another illusion created by the sheer magnitude of the space, for the fixtures hung more than twelve feet off the floor.
As with all great shrines, Hagia Sophia’s prodigious size served two purposes. First, it was proof to God of the great lengths to which Man would go to pay tribute to Him. And second, it served as a kind of shock treatment for worshippers—a physical space so imposing that those who entered felt dwarfed, their egos erased, their physical being and cosmic importance shrinking to the size of a mere speck in the face of God … an atom in the hands of the Creator.
Until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him. Martin Luther had spoken those words in the sixteenth century, but the concept had been part of the mind-set of builders since the earliest examples of religious architecture.
Langdon glanced over at Brüder and Sinskey, who had been staring upward and who now lowered their eyes to earth.
“Jesus,” Brüder said.
“Yes!” Mirsat said excitedly. “And Allah and Muhammad, too!”
Langdon chuckled as their guide directed Brüder’s gaze to the main altar, where a towering mosaic of Jesus was flanked by two massive disks bearing the Arabic names of Muhammad and Allah in ornate calligraphy.
“This museum,” Mirsat explained, “in an effort to remind visitors of the diverse uses of this sacred space, displays in tandem both the Christian iconography, from the days when Hagia Sophia was a basilica, and the Islamic iconography, from its days as a mosque.” He gave a proud smile. “Despite the friction between the religions in the real world, we think their symbols work quite nicely together. I know you agree, Professor.”
Langdon gave a heartfelt nod, recalling that all of the Christian iconography had been covered in whitewash when the building became a mosque. The restoration of the Christian symbols next to the Muslim symbols had created a mesmerizing effect, particularly because the styles and sensibilities of the two iconographies are polar opposites.
While Christian tradition favored literal images of its gods and saints, Islam focused on calligraphy and geometric patterns to represent the beauty of God’s universe. Islamic tradition held that only God could create life, and therefore man has no place creating images of life—not gods, not people, not even animals.
Langdon recalled once trying to explain this concept to his students: “A Muslim Michelangelo, for example, would never have painted God’s face on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; he would have inscribed the name of God. Depicting God’s face would be considered blasphemy.”
Langdon had gone on to explain the reason for this.
“Both Christianity and Islam are logocentric,” he told his students, “meaning they are focused on the Word. In Christian tradition, the Word became flesh in the book of John: ‘And the Word was made flesh, and He dwelt among us.’ Therefore, it was acceptable to depict the Word as having a human form. In Islamic tradition, however, the Word did not become flesh, and therefore the Word needs to remain in the form of a word … in most cases, calligraphic renderings of the names of the holy figures of Islam.”
One of Langdon’s students had summed up the complex history with an amusingly accurate marginal note: “Christians like faces; Muslims like words.”
“Here before us,” Mirsat went on, motioning across the spectacular room, “you see a unique blending of Christianity with Islam.”
He quickly pointed out the fusion of symbols in the massive apse, most notably the Virgin and Child gazing down upon a mihrab—the semicircular niche in a mosque that indicates the direction of Mecca. Nearby, a staircase rose up to an orator’s pulpit, which resembled the kind from which Christian sermons are delivered, but in fact was a minbar, the holy platform from which an imam leads Friday services. Similarly, the daislike structure nearby resembled a Christian choir stall but in reality was a müezzin mahfili, a raised platform where a muezzin kneels and chants in response to the imam’s prayers.
“Mosques and cathedrals are startlingly similar,” Mirsat proclaimed. “The traditions of East and West are not as divergent as you might think!”