books I came to agree with Askaris more and more that Byzantium had brought civilization to her contemporaries and modernism to all humanity. With every paragraph I seemed to rise another step toward the clouds. Meanwhile I continued to pray that I wasn’t the victim of a big bad joke.
Byzantium was a divinely chosen nation, the inheritor of both the Roman and Greek cultures. The Byzantines were not totally wrong to sneer at the Catholics, since it was they who formed the first Christian state and built that most magnificent church, Haghia Sophia. For a Byzantine to be uneducated was almost as great a crime as being unlucky. They survived for eleven centuries because of their legal system, which was founded on written laws, yet lived in chaos because of their governing system, which was without written laws.
I ploughed through books containing pictures of icons, mosaics and frescoes. The everyday clothes of Byzantium citizens, the uniforms of foot soldiers, even the saddles and stirrups of their warhorses flaunted charming designs.
I came across it in the architecture books section, as if it had been waiting just for me on its special stand. In gilded letters on the purple leather binding of the giant book was stamped
Promenade in Byzantium
. This monumental example of the art of the book was number 003 in an edition of 999. It was the work that would be the turning point of my life. But my first job of the morning was to inhale the scent of the copyright page and then wrap the book in a great hug. No matter how often I turned the 333 pages as slowly as I could, I remained as unsatisfied as a child called in early from the playground. The book was a compilation of computerized reconstructions of all of the existing great but run-down Byzantine monuments.
Here were 111 architectural masterpieces, all functional and respectful of space and of an aesthetic reinforced by plain and symmetrical elements! Palaces, churches, city walls, hippodromes, aqueducts, triumphal arches, towers, barracks, schools, hospitals, libraries, cisterns, pools, parks, bridges, stadiums, hotels, bath houses, municipal buildings, fountains, stables … every one of them had an authentic and proud face, and it grieved me to think what a symbolic metropolis Istanbul could have been if only these buildings had survived. Below the image of each building, portrayed from different perspectives, was a description of it in four languages. It was natural for the Great Palace to receive the lion’s share of attention. It was a monumental city in itself, begun by the father of Byzantium, Constantine himself, in the fourth century and continued for another six centuries with one beautiful addition after another. The palace complex began where the Sultanahmet Mosque stands now and continued without interruption to the Marmara shore. This masterpiece for the centuries was turned into a ruin by the crusaders who stopped off at Constantinople, ostensibly to break their journey, on their way to Jerusalem. I used to trace the Arabian Nights-like Great Palace stone by stone and curse that benighted mob the Byzantines put down as ‘Latins’, along with the Pope who manipulated them and the Venetian duke who collaborated with him. I remembered how the Conqueror extended protection to all the Byzantine monuments beginning with the church of Haghia Sophia, which he took over for a mosque. And has Europe, I wonder, shown the crusaders who plundered Constantinople – not excepting its matchless library – one-tenth of its reaction to the Arabs’ destruction of the Alexandrian library?
Emperor Constantine I had no hope for a Rome riddled by polytheism. Converting to Christianity, he founded a new capital for himself. His goal in 330, as he laid the foundations of the new city – first called East Rome and then Constantinople after him – was to make it more magnificent than the original Rome. Most of the emperors who followed him embraced this goal as well. In the
Byzantium was a divinely chosen nation, the inheritor of both the Roman and Greek cultures. The Byzantines were not totally wrong to sneer at the Catholics, since it was they who formed the first Christian state and built that most magnificent church, Haghia Sophia. For a Byzantine to be uneducated was almost as great a crime as being unlucky. They survived for eleven centuries because of their legal system, which was founded on written laws, yet lived in chaos because of their governing system, which was without written laws.
I ploughed through books containing pictures of icons, mosaics and frescoes. The everyday clothes of Byzantium citizens, the uniforms of foot soldiers, even the saddles and stirrups of their warhorses flaunted charming designs.
I came across it in the architecture books section, as if it had been waiting just for me on its special stand. In gilded letters on the purple leather binding of the giant book was stamped
Promenade in Byzantium
. This monumental example of the art of the book was number 003 in an edition of 999. It was the work that would be the turning point of my life. But my first job of the morning was to inhale the scent of the copyright page and then wrap the book in a great hug. No matter how often I turned the 333 pages as slowly as I could, I remained as unsatisfied as a child called in early from the playground. The book was a compilation of computerized reconstructions of all of the existing great but run-down Byzantine monuments.
Here were 111 architectural masterpieces, all functional and respectful of space and of an aesthetic reinforced by plain and symmetrical elements! Palaces, churches, city walls, hippodromes, aqueducts, triumphal arches, towers, barracks, schools, hospitals, libraries, cisterns, pools, parks, bridges, stadiums, hotels, bath houses, municipal buildings, fountains, stables … every one of them had an authentic and proud face, and it grieved me to think what a symbolic metropolis Istanbul could have been if only these buildings had survived. Below the image of each building, portrayed from different perspectives, was a description of it in four languages. It was natural for the Great Palace to receive the lion’s share of attention. It was a monumental city in itself, begun by the father of Byzantium, Constantine himself, in the fourth century and continued for another six centuries with one beautiful addition after another. The palace complex began where the Sultanahmet Mosque stands now and continued without interruption to the Marmara shore. This masterpiece for the centuries was turned into a ruin by the crusaders who stopped off at Constantinople, ostensibly to break their journey, on their way to Jerusalem. I used to trace the Arabian Nights-like Great Palace stone by stone and curse that benighted mob the Byzantines put down as ‘Latins’, along with the Pope who manipulated them and the Venetian duke who collaborated with him. I remembered how the Conqueror extended protection to all the Byzantine monuments beginning with the church of Haghia Sophia, which he took over for a mosque. And has Europe, I wonder, shown the crusaders who plundered Constantinople – not excepting its matchless library – one-tenth of its reaction to the Arabs’ destruction of the Alexandrian library?
Emperor Constantine I had no hope for a Rome riddled by polytheism. Converting to Christianity, he founded a new capital for himself. His goal in 330, as he laid the foundations of the new city – first called East Rome and then Constantinople after him – was to make it more magnificent than the original Rome. Most of the emperors who followed him embraced this goal as well. In the
Similar Books
