The Mosque of Suleyman and Hagia Sophia

One of the things that made Suleyman I magnificent was his architect, Mimar Sinan, who designed more than 350 buildings and monuments throughout Turkey. Sinan was a Greek or Armenian Christian who was conscripted into the sultan's service. He was a military engineer before becoming the chief imperial architect in his 40's. He then worked into his nineties, and designed more than 80 mosques.

Sinan's crowning achievement is Suleymaniye Camii, or the Mosque of Suleyman. We hopped into a bus that could easily have held three times as many people and drove past the University of Istanbul to the mosque, which was built between 1550 and 1557. The dome is the highest of any Ottoman mosque and is support by four enormous piers, as well as side half-domes, arches, and many smaller columns.

But first we had to walk down the primrose path. Yes, the sidewalk leading up to the main entrance of the mosque was lined with primroses. I'm glad Abby pointed this out, so that I knew when I was being led down the primrose path!

Suleyman's mosque has far fewer tiles than the Blue Mosque, and relies more on frescoes for interior decoration. The salmon-colored dome adds a peaceful, serene feeling to the inside of prayer hall.

After the Mosque of Suleyman we purchased fezzes for Mark and me, and the feminine version thereof for Sarah and Abby. We stood in a doorway to the Blue Mosque’s courtyard and asked Esin to take our pictures. We were channeling Grandpa Bob and the many photos taken of him in various headgear. Upon seeing this photo on Abby’s Facebook page, Abby’s Aunt Doris remarked that we were doing this vacation “correctly.”

According to Fodor’s, “The dazzling mosaics and frescoes in the former Church of the Holy Savior in Chora [Kariye Musezi] are considered to be among the finest Byzantine art works in the world.” Even though this was not on our itinerary, Esin declared it to be a “must see” so we decide to make it our next stop. It is not too far from Suleyman’s Mosque, so it only took a few minutes to get there. It was very considerate of the rest of our group to humor my desire to see it.

The mosaics depict scenes from the New Testament or the Apocrypha. The mosaics were covered with plaster when the church became a mosque in the sixteenth century and were not uncovered until the 1940’s. The church has two narthexes; only the baptized were allowed beyond the first narthex. Over the main entrance is a large mosaic of Christ Pantocrator bearing the phrase in Greek, “I am the land of the living.” The Greek word for land is “Chora.” This church was originally in the country outside the city walls, although the walls were extended in fifth century to bring the church inside the walls.

The church was damaged by the fourth crusade and was restored after the dreaded Latin crusaders left Byzantium. Esin explained the many fanciful mosaics based on the apocryphal Gospel of James. There are several stories about Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary according to the writer of the Gospel of James. There are also biblical stories, including Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, the flight to Egypt, Jesus in the temple at a young age, the temptation in the wilderness, water into wine, and the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. The nave of the church was closed for renovation, so we were not allowed to see it, but we were pressed for time anyway so we did not mind. The frescoes in a side chapel were available to view, but were less spectacular than the gilded and very detailed mosaics of the two narthexes, which showed a realism of expression and humanity that had previously not been seen in Byzantine art. Some of these frescoes, in their use of perspective, light and shadow, are thought to have inspired Italian renaissance artists.

After Chora, at long last, came Hagia Sofia, closed on Mondays, so we had to wait until Tuesday to visit. Still the fourth-largest church in the world, it was completed in 537 by the Emperor Justinian. It’s hard to believe that a building of such antiquity is still standing, and in an earthquake zone! The dome is 18 stories high and more than 100 feet wide. Hagia Sofia is the third church on the site, the second was destroyed in the Nika riots of 532, when Emperor Justinian wanted to skip town, but Empress Theodora convinced him to stay and quell the riot. Portions of the old church are scattered around the outside of Hagia Sofia, including a frieze with sheep on it that represent the twelve apostles. If the sheep were colored, then I suppose Judas would be the black sheep!

Hagia Sofia’s original dome collapsed in an earthquake in 539, so the architect designed a steeper dome, and the church re-opened in 563. Flying buttresses were added later to further support the dome. Mehmet the Conqueror turned the church into a mosque and had the mosaics plastered over. Fortunately, this preserved them until 1935, when Ataturk declared the church-then-mosque a museum and the project of uncovering the mosaics began. In the northeast pendentive of the dome is an odd-looking six-winged seraph, mostly wings with a face in the middle. Esin pointed out the circles on the floor, beneath the great dome, where the emperors were crowned.

 We hiked up a steep, slippery ramp to the upper level to view the 13-century mosaic of Jesus, Mary and John the Baptist. The light and shadows in the mosaic matched the actual light source coming from the window to the left. Esin pointed out that Jesus’ face is asymmetrical, and that his eyes seem to follow you as you move around the room. Although we associate these devices with renaissance art, they actually had their beginning in the churches of Byzantium.

Esin  and our driver then took us to the Basilica Cistern (Yerebatan Sarnici), which was a block-and-a-half from our hotel. The Romans/Byzantines built a series of aqueducts and cisterns to and in Byzantium to keep the city supplied with water, even in the event of siege.The most famous of these cisterns is the Basilica Cistern. After acquiring tickets, we descended a flight of damp steps into an underground engineering marvel of 336 marble columns rising 36 feet to support Byzantine arches and domes. I was glad that I wore my Yosemite baseball cap, which was being dripped upon by water that had evaporated from the cistern and condensed on the roof above. Carp and their close relative, the goldfish, swam through the shallow water, apparently unaffected by the coins that superstitious non-ichthyologists have cast into the water. At the back of the cistern are two salvaged stone medusa heads at the bases of columns, apparently placed there by the architect in upside-down and sideways positions to ward off bad luck for his project. They seem to have worked.

Esim led us down Alemdar Caddesi to a kebab restaurant where we had testi kebab. This dish involves cooking meat and vegetables in a sealed clay pot. Although I believe it was cooked in an oven first, the final cooking occurs over open flames at table side. The server then breaks the top off the pot with a steel rod and pours the tasty testi into a serving dish before you.

From the restaurant it was a short walk uphill to the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, which is on the grounds of the Topkapi Palace. The building housing ancient artifacts has a nice collection of Hittite, Assyrian and Babylonian objects. The Treaty of Kadesh, the world’s oldest peace treaty, was recorded on a tablet and is displayed in this museum. Ramses II, the builder of Abu Simbel in Egypt, is one of the parties to this agreement. The Hittite king Hattusili III is the other party. The entrance to the Museum of the Ancient Orient is guarded by two enormous Hittite Lions.

We walked across the square to the main part of the museum, which was built in 1890. Although under renovation, large parts of it were open to the public. Here was a statue of a lion form the (original) mausoleum built in the 4^th century B.C. in Halicarnassus, what is now Bodrum, which we would visit later in the trip. There was a section of the actual chain that kept Ahmet the Conqueror’s fleet out of the Bosporus in 1453, that is, until he rolled his ships overland into the Golden Horn. Esin led us through the many layers of Troy, from the first layer to the sixth layer and later. What was striking to me was how similar the various layers were. Layer VI, the layer of the Illiad, did not appear to be drastically different from those either before or after it. Even though the museum nominally closed at 5:00 p.m., we were hustled out beginning at about 4:40, I presume because people wanted to go home.

Abby wasn’t sure she could walk all the way back to the hotel, especially once we learned that the main exit from Topkapi Palace was closed and that we would have to walk down hill (Abby’s least favorite direction) and then back up a steep hill again to get to the hotel. Esin, bless her heart, found a management employee of the museum who was on his way home from work and could give Abby (and me) a ride to the bottom of the hill. He was very gracious. From the bottom of the hill, it was relatively easy for Abby to walk the short distance uphill to the hotel.

Mark was not feeling well, and we had had a late and sumptuous lunch, so for supper the other three of us sat in our room and munched on some cashews I had brought from Walgreen’s in St. Paul. We talked about the events of the day, and about politics, and went to bed early, the better to get ready for another half day of sightseeing in Istanbul and then travel to Cappadocia on Wednesday.