Several thousand people including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan participated on Friday in the first Muslim prayers at Hagia Sophia since the reconversion of the former cathedral into a mosque.
The prayers come after a July 10 ruling revoked the Byzantine-era building's status as a museum, in place since 1934. Erdoğan recited the verses [of the Surah Al-Fatihah and the Surah Al-Baqarah] from the Koran -- the holy book of Islam -- before the call to prayer was heard from the four minarets of Hagia Sophia.
