LAKE IZNIK, SANCTA SOPHIA & US

One of my favorite places in Turkey is the little town of Iznik, formerly called Nicaea. It is an old, old city, probably dating from 1000 BC. It was revitalized by one of Alexander the Great’s generals in 316 BC and renamed Nicaea, after another general’s wife. By 74 BC it was part of the Roman Empire. Under Roman control it got new walls, temples, theaters and baths.

If you are coming from Istanbul, a trip of about 90 minutes, you will drive along the shoreline of Lake Iznik on the way to the town.


Then as you get closer, you will drive through several layers of Byzantine and Roman walls, and finally enter by the old Istanbul Gate.


With the rise of Constantine, who was head of the Christian Church, the town took on new importance. In 325 Constantine called what became known as the First Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church. It was the first time all the Bishops of the church had come together, and the primary cause was because of a particular heresy that had arisen about the nature of Jesus, called “Arianism” Besides the condemnation of this heresy, the council also created the “Creed of Nicaea” – the intent being to define unity of beliefs for the whole of Christendom.

This Council was held at Sancta Sophia Church, which as you would expect is now in ruins but still very interesting. The original building was destroyed by an earthquake in 1065 but rebuilt. At that time Mosaics were set into the walls. The church became a mosque with the ottoman conquest in 1331, and then had to be restored once again because of a fire in 1500.

Nevertheless, when you stand inside those ruins, you can’t help but feel you are still in a place where a major event in the history of Christianity took place.

Nicaea, now Iznik, was also the location of the 7th Ecumenical Council. This time it had to settle a controversy over whether or not Icons – pictures of Christ, the apostles, the saints, and holy events - would be allowed in the church. Iconoclasts, the term given to those who felt that icons were the “images” prohibited by the Bible, destroyed them wherever they could. The church council ruled against this, and in doing so enabled artists through the ages to create in peace.

But Iznik has more than just religious history to commend it. In 1514 Sultan Selim I rolled his armies over Azerbaijan and packed up all of the region’s artisans and took them to Iznik. They brought with them a high level of expertise in the making of colored tiles. A great period of Iznik tile making started and really lasted until 1700. Now the art of colored tile-making is being revived, and you can buy good examples at moderate prices. Any of the old antique Iznik tiles cannot be legally exported from Turkey.


Jer and I found the local museum to be among the most interesting we visited, and on the grounds I took a picture of Jerry standing next to a tiny tomb. Who would have thought a tiny baby would have such a lovely place of repose.

A LITTLE SIDE TRIP IN TURKEY

One of the places in Turkey that we found exceptionally interesting was a little town named Iznik, which is located south and a little east of Istanbul, across the Sea of Marmara and about 18 miles south of the Marmara shoreline. It's a tiny town of about 16,000 people and off the beaten path for tourists. But Jerry and I found it to be one of our favorite places, and we kept returning to it, even though it was a long drive away. Our driver, Ahmet, was always with us to drive and care for us as we explored his country. He always said he was really getting an education by working for us, as he had hardly seen any other part of his own country than Istanbul.

Iznik is thought to have been founded about 1000 BC. Originally called Nicaea after the wife of one of Alexander the Great's generals, it later became Nicomedia and eventually Iznik. There is a really interesting museum in town, and it was at that museum that we learned of the tomb pictured above and below.

In 1960, while bulldozing the hillside for fill dirt, this old Byzantine tomb was discovered. Luckily its historical worth was recognized quickly and the cement work was placed around it for its preservation and protection. The tomb dates from the late 300's A.D. Ahmet arranged for a museum guide to take us to the tomb, which was kept under lock and key. The guide allowed us to go inside and had no objection to my using a flash camera, which surprised me.

Really lovely Byzantine murals covered the inside walls. It was undoubtedly the tomb of a wealthy family. Some damage has occured over the years from vandalism but overall it has been decently preserved. At the bottom of the picture you can see where one of the owners had been buried. There is a similar crypt on the other side of the tomb.

With my own personal interest in cemeteries and burial places, I was totally taken with this tomb, as well as with a totally different kind of burial place shown in the photo below, which was taken in Sille just outside of Konya. Konya is in the south central part of Turkey, northeast of Antalya on the coast and southwest of Ankara, the capital of Turkey. We were in Sille in the dead of winter. It was frosty cold and everything was brown and dead. This picture shows a burial ground. What looks like little cactus plants growing over the hillside are really the headstones of tombs.

As I understand it, the Muslim idea of headstones is to have them made of impermanent material, available and in good condition as long as there are people alive who remember and honor the deceased, but just as the deceased's physical body eventually ceases to exist, and the people who remember him disappear, so does the marker that indicates his burial place. Therefore what appears to the Western eye as a very unkept place is simply being what it is supposed to be....representative of the life cycle of all things.

From time to time here I will provide photos of other tombs, crypts, mausoleums, cemeteries and such that I found so very interesting. I have that kind of interest in cemeteries here in the US too, but certainly in Turkey there are just layers and layers of time periods in which the remnants of burial practices can be seen. Photographing them was one of my favorite pastimes!

Ahmet was very uncomfortable with cemeteries but he was a trooper. He mostly stayed near the car rather than to go exploring with us, but he never complained. For that we were grateful.