ISTANBUL (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th July, 2020) Ali Erbas, the head of Turkey's religious authority, on Thursday said that three imams for Istanbul's Hagia Sophia have been appointed ahead of first Muslim prayers scheduled for Friday.
The religious authorities also appointed five muezzins, persons responsible for reciting calls for prayers.
"Three imams have been appointed to Hagia Sophia [known as Ayasofya in Turkey] � Mehmet Boynukalin, Ferruh Mustuer, Bunjamin Topcuoglu, as well as five muezzins," Erbas told reporters.
Boynukalin is a professor of Islamic law at Istanbul's Marmara University, while Mustuer and Topcuoglu previously have been serving as imams of two other Istanbul-based mosques.
Hagia Sophia was built as an Orthodox Christian cathedral by Byzantine emperor Justinian and opened its doors to believers in 537, remaining the world's largest Christian temple for over a thousand years until Constantinople was captured by the Ottoman Empire and renamed Istanbul in the 15th century. Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque in 1453. It became a museum under Turkey's secular leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1934. That status was revoked by a Turkish court on July 10, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decreeing that Hagia Sophia would become a mosque once again.
