When the Turks entered the city, they rushed to this building, to massacre or make slaves of all who took refuge there; they then proceeded to demolish it, as the most eminent place of infidel worship. In this critical moment, the sultan entered, and arrested the destruction just as it had commenced. He announced, that he gave to his soldiers the plunder of spoil and captives, but the public edifices he reserved to himself. He at once conceived the idea of converting this magnificent Christian church into a Mohammedan mosque; and as he had transferred the government of the Osmanli to the most splendid capital, so the worship of Islam should be celebrated in the most splendid edifice in the world. In order to accommodate the interior to the new rites, the effigies and pictures which covered the walls were erased, and all trace of such representations was effaced by a simple and uniform colouring: the arms of the cross were, with little violence of alteration, bent up into the form of a crescent; and, to silence the sound of a bell, so revolting to the followers of the Prophet, he caused a minaret to be erected at an angle, to invite the faithful to prayer by the sound of the human voice; and having thus purified it from what he supposed to be superstitious and idolatrous emblems, he sat down cross-legged in the sanctuary, and caused himself to be shaved there. He then ordered the Koran to be read in place of the Bible, offered up his prayers, and finally suspended the curtain that had once closed the door of the temple at Mecca. He made no further alteration in the Christian church, and it remains as it was left by Justinian, unchanged for 1300 years, the most perfect and splendid monument of the arts of the Lower Empire.