Istanbul (Was Constantinople)

After the previous post, I'm sure you're wondering how exactly Istanbul turned out. I can definitely say that Istanbul, as a whole, was a lot better than the first half of the tour. There were also a couple far more embarrassing or egregious faux pas, but I'll try to mention them in passing rather than making those complaints the centerpiece of my post.

The day our three busloads of tourists left Izmir we buzzed through Laodicea and Colossae (the latter is a heap of unexcavated dirt) and flew from Denizli Airport to Ataturk International in Istanbul. We checked into our hotel at 10pm, the Kempinski of Ciragan Palace. Ciragan Palace was originally an Ottoman palace built under Sultan Abdulaziz 1863 and 1867. The sultan suite of the hotel is the second-largest suite in Europe (behind one in Rome), and costs 30,000 euros a night. My roommate and I slept in a room that was a modest 1250 euros, although I'm relieved under the certainty that our 150 travelers received a package deal. We had a bidet, but I never tried it out. We also had a pillow menu, in case the three different kinds of pillows already on the bed were insufficient.

The next morning we went to the Hagia Sophia. This, of course, was going to be a great highlight of the trip. The greatest church in Christendom, with two previous churches on the site (one erected by Constantine the Great) and the current one put up under Justinian the Great. It served as a church for nearly a thousand years until the brutal Turkish-Muslim sack of Constantinople in 1453, when it was ingloriously vandalized and turned into a mosque. But Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic, decreed that the Hagia Sophia should be made into a museum, and so it has been in the 1920s. Since then, restoration work has uncovered profoundly beautiful mosaics underneath the plaster that covered them during its time as a mosque, and these were indeed alone worth it all.

Dee, as I mentioned, took a whole semester course on the Hagia Sophia at Istanbul University. It showed. When the acoustics weren't quite right, she stepped a few feet in a seemingly random direction, and suddenly we could hear her perfectly. She gave us a wonderful tour lasting about an hour, and another forty-five minutes by ourselves in the church.

What did I feel at this? It's impossible to understand how I felt without going into my expectations.

The Hagia Sophia, despite its conversion into a mosque and thereafter into a museum, will forever remain in the hearts and minds of the faithful the seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople. It was another thousand years before Michelangelo's dome on St. Peter's pushed the Hagia Sophia's dome into second place; another three hundred before St. Paul's in London pushed it into third. Its engineering skill was unsurpassed. When Justinian oversaw the completion of it, he declared "Solomon, I have outdone thee"; conversely when the Turks attempted to outdo him a thousand years later with the building of the Blue Mosque, they failed to erect as grand a dome.

And oh, the many nights I've stayed up with assorted friends dreaming of a Fourth Crusade to reconvert it into a church and restore its former glory. I admit that, because it was so profoundly wrong.

The Hagia Sophia is a tomb.

Flashforward a week: I'm at Dionysiou Monastery on Mount Athos talking with a Cypriot fellow who speaks passable English. I mention that I've been to the Hagia Sophia recently. He asks me how it was. I give him the standard answer: "It was magnificent. The mosaics were extraordinary. The dome is spell-binding." He replies, sadly, "I've never been." I mention to him that it wouldn't be too hard to go. He says, "No, you don't understand. I've been to Constantinopolis (Istanbul). But I can't go there."

I would have never agreed with him beforehand, but I can't help but do so now. It's a little like the Holy Sepulchre: there are electric cords and scaffolding everywhere, and it's dimly lit throughout. The architects originally designed the church to work playfully with the light, in tandem with the candles and oil lamps lit during the liturgy and the reflection of shimmering mosaics; today, the light, however brilliant at times, hits flat. But it's also unlike the Holy Sepulchre: there is no tomb there to venerate, no worship commemorating the mighty deeds of our God, no monks in quiet corners folding themselves inside themselves away from the tourists, inviting you to join their. It's a museum; it's a tomb.

By all means, go. It's a magnificent museum, and perhaps you can, like me, conjure up a little feeling of times past by hearing a distant echo of the chants. But I came out wondering whether it was truly right to envision a reconversion of the church. On the galleries, the mezzanine floor where the ladies worshiped, there is a display of large boards showing the various icon mosaics uncovered and restored throughout the church. The entrance plaque reads: Hagia Sophia, A Vision for Empires. It's an accurate enough description of this church; but is that the proper role of any church? Perhaps as a museum it can be a testament to that unholy marriage between state and church; perhaps as a tomb, we can venerate it as the place where such a vision is put to rest.

But more on Caesar later...

That afternoon we were taken to an overly opulent carpet store called Matis. It's reputed to be one of world's leading exporters in Turkish carpets (whether from Turkey or the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, with whom they contract), and the store in Istanbul is their outlet. The talk on carpets was actually very interesting, and now I know the difference between wool, cotton-wool, mercerized cotton, and silk carpets. But then everybody headed out for four hours of shopping at the Grand Bazaar, and I just left and went back to hotel (after a brief stop in the train station).

That evening we had a particularly amazing dinner together in a Roman cistern, with live music and the best beef I've ever had outside the United States. It was a great time.

The second day we went back to Sultanamet (the central Old City district) to begin our morning with a visit to the Blue Mosque. To my absolute horror, the pastor in question began to give a public talk outside the entrance to the mosque on Islam. Now, before I'm mentally judged and berated for not being ready to face public scorn for Christ... well, once again, "by no means!" If it were the case that the massive group, or volunteers within it, were prepared to stand outside the mosque and witness for Christ, and risk time in a Turkish prison for religious provokation and proselytizing in the secular public square, or a riot of angry pious Muslims, that would be one thing. To proclaim the good news that Jesus Christ is the risen Lord and Savior, and that Allah is neither lord, nor savior, nor risen, that would be just the sort of thing that Christians ought to be doing, and we should all be so prepared to take those risks in order to announce that there is a very different sort of kingdom on the rise.

But that's not what this was. The speaker didn't address the Muslims at all. Rather, he gave an 'educational' talk about Islam to the gathered tour group, right outside the mosque, which included a good number of gross mischaracterizations of Islam. Islam is many things, and often many awful things, but his talk didn't go into dhimmitude, or jahaliyyah, or takfir, or any of the profane doctrines preached by Muslims radicals and derived from the Islamic mainstream. Rather, he just ridiculed the religion as stupid, talking about how all Muslims will get 72 virgins when they die (untrue) or how Muslims believe that all non-believers are to be killed (also untrue).

But forget that the facts were wrong; more importantly, it served no other purpose than to provoke. This was not a witness to Christ. It was just spitting in people's faces. Naturally, let's not forget, that this was all said in English; therefore, the only Turks who could understand it were those who have some education in English, most of all our wonderful Turkish Muslim tour guides!

Well, moving on.

The Blue Mosque itself (above) was amazing. Somehow, even though it was smaller than the Hagia Sophia, the smaller space brought it down to a human scale in which one could somehow better imagine it as a functional building rather than a monument (or a museum). It didn't hurt, of course, that the Muslims were just getting ready for their noontime prayer, with many people milling around and finding their place on the carpet. It was also a pleasure to finally see a mosque that didn't have that ramshackle feel to it, like so many have.

After the Blue Mosque we headed to Topkapi Palace, the grand estate of Suleiman the Great. If you don't know who Suleiman the Great is, he was the most powerful monarch of early modernity. To put things in perspective: his British contemporaries, the Stuarts, ended up dethroned... or decapitated. He presided over the Ottoman Empire when it stretched three continents, from Vienna in Europe through the North Africa deserts, across the entire Middle East to the borders of the Savafad dynasty in Persia.

And yet, the Osman dynasty (the ruling dynasty of the Ottoman Empire) retained certain features of their nomadic, tribal past. A good example: the sultan's divan, where he met with advisors and ministers, is miniscule in scale compared to any similar room in Versailles or Buckingham. Indeed, its dome is only the size of the tribal chieftan's yurt, an animal-hide tent the Turks traveled in from their origins in Central Asia to their settlement in Anatolia. The contrast between their power and their architecture was most striking.

Not to say the Osmanlis were humble. During the extensive free time we had at Topkapi, I forked out the extra couple bucks and went into the extensive rooms of the imperial harem. Here the concubines of the sultan were kept, serving both as objects for the sultan's pleasure as well as tutors for his children, workers in the palace, and other functionaries. They, in turn, were served by eunuchs also housed in the complex. The harem (that is, the building complex, not the concubines) contained not just rooms for, well, harem-stuff, but also galleries of the arts and chambers for schoolrooms. Pictured left is the Courtyard of the Favorites. It was certainly well worth the extra 10 lira or so.

We ended the day with a visit to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. This museum contains some of the most precious treasures from the Ancient Near East, as many of them were excavated or discovered during the period when the Ottoman Empire controlled Palestine and Mesopotamia. I'll just list them here:

The Gezer Calendar, the oldest example of Hebrew:
The Siloam Inscription, an inscription detailing the meeting of the laborers working from both ends to dig out Hezekiah's tunnel:
The Thanatos Stone, a Herodian-era warning telling Gentiles to keep out of the Jerusalem temple courts on pain of death:
The sarcophagus of King Abdalonymos of Sidon, with one of the earliest images of Alexander the Great in existance:

Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries, and I was unable get a picture of the Treaty of Kadesh, which established peace between Ramasses II and the Hittite King Muwatalli II, or the animal reliefs from the Ishtar Gate. Even so, the number of biblical-era finds in this place is unparallleled. I knew it was good, but I had no idea how much was packed in. After another long talk from pastor in question, we only got about forty-five scheduled minutes in the museum, so I said 'forget that,' and told them I was goign to skip dinner and would see them back at the hotel around 8. So I spent another two hours in the museum, and got to go through the extensive Greco-Roman sculpture section. Rick Steves- the excellent travel guide writer of the series Europe Through the Back Door, which I'm using in lieu of Lonely Planet from here on out- even had a detailed self-guided tour through the museum.

Well, it wouldn't be a long-term travel experience without something making everything go wrong, and I bet most of you can guess what came next:

That unpronouncable volcano in Iceland erupted.

Shouldn't be a problem for me, right? After all, my only plan was to take a night train from Istanbul to Thessaloniki after another full day in Istanbul. I'm not flying until May 10th, when I head home from Rome.

Well, the group had its plane canceled, so while they were stuck in Istanbul with no schedule for the morning except wait for news, I headed to the Sirceki Train Station (the terminus of the Orient Express, by the way) to reserve my ticket on the train. After waiting in an hour long line, and despite being one of the first in the door, I was told that there was no space on the train until the following night. The closing of air space had pushed several million stranded travelers onto trains. So, I had another day in Istanbul.

I ended up staying at a lower-cost hotel (lower-cost being all relative compared to the Kempinski) with my roommate and another tour member that night. But that afternoon, I devoted my attentions to getting to one of Istanbul's greatest attractions: the Chora Church.

If the Hagia Sophia is St. Peter's Basilica, Chora is the Sistine Chapel. It's a small church on the northwestern end of the Old City that was converted into a mosque after the Turkish invasion; however, its mosaic and fresco icons are magnificently preserved, and give the viewer a little glimpse of the glory that was the Hagia Sophia. If I no longer feel the strong urge to tear down the minarets and reconvert Hagia Sophia back into a church, all that fervor is now focused on this delightful little chapel.

As for history, the Chora Church was originally built as Holy Savior Outside the Walls during the Justinian era; its current form was brought about by the Byzantine prime minister Theodore Metochites in 1312 after extensive damage during the Fourth Crusaders (thanks a lot, the West).

I made my way there with the girls stranded in Istanbul, and man, even with my high expectations (and their moderate interest), we were all surprised.

Here's a rundown of its best frescoes and mosaics:

The Last Judgment:
The Anastasis (Resurrection):
The Deesis (Supplication):
The Dormition of Mary:

Well, they ended up having to stay in Istanbul two extra nights (they flew home the morning I arrived in Thessaloniki) so we had yet another free day in Istanbul. As I said, things turned out pretty well. While everyone else went on a Bosporus cruise offered by the tour operator (in order to give people at least something to do), we decided to follow the Rick Steves' guide on walks through the Sultanamet district, the historic sightseeing core of Istanbul, and the back streets of the Old City. That pretty much took up the whole day, and included the Spice Market, the Grand Bazaar, the Turkish and Islamic Museum of Arts and Culture, the hippodrome and its numerous towering monuments, and the graveyard of the Suleimaniye Mosque, where Suleiman the Magnificent is buried. It turned out to be a wonderful and relaxing way to spend a fourth day in the city. However much I wanted to get back to the Hagia Sophia to spend more time in there, and to the Archaeological Museum to get pictures of the Treaty of Kadesh and the Ishtar Gate reliefs, I think my time was better spent with my new friends wandering the old city.

That evening, I said goodbye to the wretched tour, the wonderful friends, and the exotic city of Istanbul, and hopped the 8:30pm night train to Thessaloniki. It was off to Mount Athos, to get my pilgrimage back on track.