A passage from the Quran was recited at a ceremony in the Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, on Orthodox Good Friday. The Muslim cleric who recited the Islamic scriptures for the first time in 85 years did so on the occasion of the opening of a new exhibition, entitled “Love of the Prophet.”

The ceremony was attended by top Turkish government and religious officials.

The iconic Hagia Sophia cathedral was constructed in the sixth century to serve as a foremost church of eastern Christendom and was the seat of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Ottoman forces conquered the city in 1453, and Mehmet II ordered the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque and the building of four minarets around its Byzantine dome.

It stopped serving as a mosque in the mid-1930s and was transformed into a museum by the Kemalist state, however, under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) there has been talk of reconverting Hagia Sophia into a mosque.