Professor among 3 imams named for Hagia Sophia
Turkey on Thursday appointed three imams for Hagia Sophia, one of them a professor of religious studies, as the nation prepares for the first Muslim prayers in the Istanbul landmark in 86 years following its conversion back into a mosque. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to join hundreds of worshipers on Friday for prayers inside the former Byzantine cathedral that became a mosque with the 1453 Muslim conquest of Istanbul and then a museum in 1934 after Turkey became a secular republic. —