| In
December of 2004 I made a two or three day stopover in the Turkish city
of Istanbul while on my way to Egypt.
At the top of my list of sights to see in Istanbul was this place, known
as Hagia Sofia in Greek, Sancta Sophia in Latin, the Church of the Divine
Wisdom in English and now Aya Sofia in Turkish. |
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| That
English translation is a bit poor, a more accurate but admittedly clumsier
name would be Church of the Holy Wisdom. Completed in AD 537,
it's considered a marvel of the ancient world because of its enormous dome,
the largest in the world until modern building materials became available. |
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| It's
not a bad sight when lit up at night-time, even though it's had many additions
made to its exterior, the most obvious of which are the four tall minarets
which now surround it. |
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The main dome is an incredible achievement, but it wasn't done without
difficulties, in fact the first dome collapsed during an earthquake only
eleven years after it was constructed, and the second only lasted another
five years. It had to be reconstructed several times over the
following centuries, and more buttressing added to the outside to provide
extra strength.
In a way, the history of Aya Sofia is a small-scale reflection of Istanbul
itself, which has gone through as many changes of name as the cathedral.
The city was originally settled in 667 BC by Greeks who named it Byzantion
after King Byzas; it was besieged by pagan Roman emperor Septimius Severus
in AD 196, who rebuilt it and Latinized its name to Byzantium.
In AD 330 emperor Constantine refounded it, named it Constantinople after
himself, and moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople.
When the empire broke into two parts, Constantinople became the capital
of the eastern, Byzantine Empire. In 1453 the Byzantine empire
was overthrown by muslim armies, and Constantinople became Constantiniyye
the capital of the Ottoman Empire, making this the only city in the world
which has been the capital of three different empires.
After the conquest Hagia Sophia became Aya Sofia and was turned into a
mosque, which it remained until the statesman Ataturk disbanded the Ottoman
sultanate, proclaimed the Turkish Republic with its capital at Ankara,
renamed Constantiniyye to Istanbul and turned Aya Sofia into a museum.
Today you can still see remnants of both its Christian and its Muslim periods,
the latter represented by the large discs with the name of Allah and some
of the sultans, a muslim pulpit with steps called a mimber, and
the mihrab beyond the chandelier which shows the direction to Mecca. |
| Since
Islam prohibits the depiction of humans and animals in order to avoid idolatry,
muslim artists have long specialized in drawing complex geometric patterns
such as these - though from the crookedness of the top pattern and the
distinct bend in the top, left-hand line, it looks like this particular
artist has disobeyed the equally strong Islamic prohibition against alcohol! |
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| Here's
that mihrab, surrounded by text from the Koran both in stained glass and
classic blue tiles, which are used in many middle eastern mosques. |
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| Thankfully
the invaders didn't destroy all of the Christian artwork on the walls and
domes of the cathedral, instead they covered some of it with plaster, which
has since been removed to reveal the mosaics underneath. Here
on the inside of one of the small semi-domes surrounding the main dome
is a 10th century depiction of the virgin Mary and Jesus. Unfortunately
the main dome has been obscured for many years by a mass of scaffolding,
so there's not much point taking of a photo of it. |
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| Here's
Jesus with John the Baptist. Look closely and you'll see the
individual tiles which make up these mosaics; 30 million tiny gold tiles
were used to line the main dome itself. |
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I think of this mosiac as Christ and His Opposable Thumb.
Whatever the mosaic's precise meaning, it's clear that Jesus thinks that
Emperor Constantine IX and Empress Zoe are A-OK, and he wants to publicly
express his gratitude to them for providing all of those bags of money
so he could have a comfy throne, a nice cushion, a good book to read and
30 million tiny gold tiles to make the place look nice. |
| From
Aya Sofia it's a very short stroll across a pleasant park to the Blue Mosque,
whose construction was inspired by its near neighbor. Even
from the outside it's easy to see the similar plan of a main dome surrounded
by multiple semi-domes, which is just as well, since I didn't have time
to go inside. |
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| From
the outside I think it looks better balanced and proportioned than Aya
Sofia, but internally its architecture is less daring than its predecessor,
with four large columns holding up the main dome, instead of the free-standing
dome of the cathedral. |
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| Like
Aya Sofia, it's also lit up at night and in the warmer months there's a
nightly sound-and-light show. |
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I really regret not having spent much time in Istanbul, because not only
didn't I have time to see the inside of the Blue Mosque, I also missed
seeing many of its other most interesting sights. For instance,
the Gate of Salutations here is about as close as I got to viewing the
legendary Topkapi Palace, home of the Ottoman sultans for the first 400
years of their reign.
Even worse in my opinion, I somehow failed to visit the Hippodrome, which
is right beside the Blue Mosque. This was the center of the
pagan Roman city, even today it includes obelisks and columns looted from
Egypt and ancient Greece. And while I did pass the entrance
to the Roman underground water cisterns, I didn't find time to tour
them, either. |
The mosque of Suleyman the Magnificent is the largest in Istanbul and the
grandest in all of Turkey.
It was built between 1550 and 1557 by sultan Suleyman I, and his tomb is
just outside the mosque, near the tomb of his ambitious and powerful wife
Roxelana.
Suleyman's death in 1566 began the period known as the Rule of the Women,
with weak sultans being encouraged to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh
while their mothers and grandmothers indulged in political intrigue and
scheming. The expansion of the empire was only achieved by
the efforts of the viziers and other officials who did the day-to-day running
of the empire. |
| Just
down the hill from the mosque of Suleyman the Magnificent is Yeni Cami,
the so-called "new mosque" which is actually about 400 years old.
It's very close to the Galata bridge which crosses the waterway known as
The Golden Horn to an area of the city called Galata. |
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And here's the Galata Tower, the highest point of a citadel built by traders
from the Italian city of Genoa. Standing 67 meters high, it
was the tallest building in the city.
When it was built in 1348 it was called The Tower of Christ and it controlled
a giant metal chain which was placed across the Golden Horn to prevent
muslim invaders from bringing ships into the waterway. Amazingly,
some of the links from this chain are on display at Istanbul's military
museum, though they didn't really help the city, since the invaders transported
their boats overland at night and stormed in the next morning.
While I was waiting to catch my flight back to the United States I read
of another claim to fame which the Galata Tower has, as the launching place
for a very early manned heavier-than-air flight! It's claimed
that in 1638 Hezarfen Ahmet Çelebi climbed the tower, strapped on
a pair of wings and successfully flew across the Bosporus.
Çelebi is still revered in Turkey, one of Istanbul's three airports
is even named after him. |
| If
you're in Istanbul then it's very worthwhile to take a boat trip down the
Bosporus, which together with the Sea of Marama connects the Mediterranean
Ocean to the Black Sea. At the narrowest point of the Bosporus
you'll find the Fortress of Europe, built by the muslim armies to support
their conquest of Constantinople. During their seige the Ottoman
commanders used the Fortress of Europe, together with the Fortress of Asia
on the opposite shore, to control traffic on the Bosporus and prevent help
coming to the city. |
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| You
can see from the surrounding houses and the vehicles on the street just
how large the walls and towers of the fortress are. |
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| Remarkably
it's said that the fortress was built in just four months, probably because
of some innovative motivational techniques put in place by the sultan -
a vizier was put in charge of building each of the main towers and threatened
with execution if it wasn't finished in time! |
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| Nearby
is the northernmost of two giant suspension bridges across the Bosporus,
this one is called the Fatih bridge. |
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| The
fortresses and the bridges highlight the main reason for Istanbul's importance
over the last two thousand years. As well as being the
controlling location for traffic between the Mediterranean and the Black
Sea, it also straddles the boundary between Europe and Asia.
The west bank of the Bosporus is considered to be part of Europe, while
the east bank is part of Asia. Therefore as well as being
the only city to have been the capital of three empires, Istanbul is also
the only city in the world which straddles two continents. |
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| The
Bosporus still has a lot of strategic importance, with a great deal of
oil and other shipping coming down from Russia and other Black Sea countries. |
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| Carrying
huge quantities of oil down the Bosporus is a continuing cause of concern
for many people, not only because this is a densely populated area, but
also because of the amount of environmental damage an accident would cause. |
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Until that day, a trip on the Bosporus is also a good way to see some of
the area's birdlife. |
| Istanbul
has always been a very good place to get a nice shag. |
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| It's
also a good place to see local people like these fishermen going about
their everyday lives. |
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| At
the village of Anadolu Kavagi you can see some homes, presumably also belonging
to fishermen. This is where the boat tours end, giving you an hour
or two to eat in one of the restaurants and wander around the streets.
As you can see, there's some snow lying around; I ignorantly assumed that
Istanbul would have a mild winter climate like southern California, but
it turns out to be much colder! |
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On the trip back to the city you can see many luxurious houses called yali
along the banks of the Bosporus.
It looks like it would be one heck of a big job for the maids to wash all
of those wooden louvres! |
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