The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS tells the full story. Once they breached the walls of Constantinople, Muslims raided monasteries and convents, emptying them of their inhabitants, and plundered private houses. They entered Hagia Sophia, which for nearly a thousand years had been the grandest church in Christendom. The faithful had gathered within its hallowed walls to pray during the city’s last agony. Inside the great cathedral, the Muslims killed the elderly and weak and led the rest off into slavery.

When the slaughter and pillage was finished, the Sultan Mehmet II, the Conqueror, ordered an Islamic scholar to mount the high pulpit of Hagia Sophia and declare that there was no God but Allah, and Muhammad was his prophet. The magnificent old church was turned into a mosque; hundreds of other churches in Constantinople and elsewhere suffered the same fate. Millions of Christians joined the ranks of the dhimmis; others were enslaved, and many were killed.

But now there is a document circulating, claimed to be the bill of sale of Mehmet the Conqueror, when he bought Hagia Sophia. The Turkish Supreme Court apparently used it as one justification for converting the cathedral into a mosque once again. This document could possibly be authentic, but it is noteworthy that it was never spoken of until now. I’ve never seen mention of it in numerous histories of the conquest. Also, if this “sale” did take place, it was obviously done under duress.

The Muslims took over Hagia Sophia on May 29, 1453, as they were plundering Constantinople and murdering or enslaving Christians wholesale. The building was considered to have become a mosque when Mehmet sent the muezzin up to the pulpit to proclaim the Islamic shahada, not upon some sales agreement. The Ecumenical Patriarch or Emperor or whoever was deemed to be its owner was in no position to refuse to sell.
If someone came into your house, stole your possessions, killed your grandparents, enslaved your wife and children, and publicly announced that the house was his, and later gave you a bill of sale, would you consider this to be a fair-and-square real estate transaction?



“Sultan Mehmet ‘Bought’ Haiga [sic] Sophia before converting into (Mosque) Masjid – Purchase documents submitted to Turkish Supreme Court,” by Shahid Qureshi, London Post, July 13, 2020:

When Sultan Mehmet conquered Constantinople at the age of 21 and ended Byzantine Empire in the 1453, he purchased the property of Hagia Sophia from his personal wealth before converting it into a Masjid (Mosque). The details of the transaction are still stored in the Turkish Museum, as can be seen in the photo below.This is the main reason why the court ordered Aya Sofya to be re converted into a Masjid.