ISTANBUL—With its substantial dome and towering minarets, Hagia Sophia is to humanity what the Colossal Canyon is to geology: an open-air guide that concentrates almost one and a half of millennia of historical past because the successive heart of Orthodox Christian and Muslim empires, punctuated by ransacking, fires and earthquakes.
However by deciding on Friday to remodel serve into a tubby-fledged mosque a building that has been a museum since the 1930s and has changed into a ambitious symbol of ecumenical family, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan despatched…
