From my last stop in Lalibela, I went to Bahir Dar for four days of relaxation after a fast-paced trip. My next travel section was a marathon – a 12 hour bus ride to Addis Ababa, a few hours for dinner, then ten hours of flying back to London via Istanbul, a connection that I made with minutes to spare and my bag didn’t make at all.
I arrived back in London and immediately set about the chores that go along with moving internationally – closing bank accounts, packing boxes, saying goodbye to friends you might not see for years. Then came the real reason for my return – my last university exam of the year – followed by more frantic packing. It was a whirlwind five-day stop before getting on a plane back to Ethiopia.
I engineered a 15 hour layover in Istanbul in the way back. Why not cram another country into this marathon trip? Visas are easy to get online if you have a western passport.
My first two hours in Turkey were spent sleeping on a metal bench – my sleep for the 24 hours before and after consisted of two fitful hours on the ground in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark, two more on the plane, and this stint on a bench. I was nearly sleepwalking through Istanbul’s attractions.
The first stop was the Hagia Sophia, famous to art historians for its revolutionary architecture and to tourists for an equally impressive queue to purchase tickets. My arrival early in the morning meant I didn’t have to wait long to get in.
The Hagia Sophia was built in the 6th century, during the reign of the Byzantine Empire’s most powerful ruler, Justinian (his wife, Empress Theodora, was also especially powerful). When Constantinople fell to the Turks in the 1400s, it was converted to a mosque and has been a museum since 1935.
The conversion to a mosque led to some interesting features. Perhaps the most noticeable are the massive icons, with their elaborate calligraphy. These are painted on wood and are an art form unto themselves in the Islamic world. These are the largest I’ve seen.
All mosques face Mecca, and this is the direction in which Muslims pray five times a day. This proved problematic in the Hagia Sophia, which was not built to face Mecca at all. The mihrab (indicating the direction of Mecca) can be seen in the photo above to be right of the window marking the central axis of the church. The other Islamic-era architecture at the front is similarly skewed off the original axis.
The saddest part of the church’s conversion was that many of the mosaics (dating to after the iconoclastic controversy) were lost, replaced by painted walls and ceilings. The ones that remain give an indication of the building’s glory as a cathedral. The removal of the Islamic decoration to restore the mosaics (especially the massive image of Christ as the light of the world presumed to be in the dome) is not without its own problems – the Islamic art covering it is also extremely important and its destruction would be itself a huge loss. Here are a few photos of the mosaics that have been uncovered.
On the right is Emperor Constantine, holding a model of Constantinople. On the opposite side is Emperor Justinian with a model of the Hagia Sophia. Both are presenting their models to the Virgin Mary, holding the child Jesus.
This is the central figure of Christ from a larger mosaic. It was commissioned to commemorate the church’s return to use as an Orthodox cathedral after several decades of use by Catholics during the Crusades.
In one corner of the upper gallery, a Venitian Doge who died on crusade is buried. Nearby, a marble railing is scarred by ancient runes, carved by the Emepror’s bodyguard – Vikings from Scandanavia.
The walls themselves are a showcase of power. Each type of marble comes from a different corner of the Mediterranean – Egypt and even France are represented.
Just in case you forgot who built the place, Justinian and Theodora’s monograms are etched in all the columns.
But the star attraction is the dome – the largest masonry done in the world when it was built. The all-concrete dome at the Pantheon in Rome is larger and reigned supreme as the largest in the world. The technology for spanning such large spaces was lost afterwards (and indeed hard to develop – the Hagia Sophia’s done collapsed twice shortly after completion). Both records came to an end in 1436 with the completion of the Duomo (Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore) in Florence. It’s interior space is only marginally larger than the Pantheon, but it’s height is much greater to reduce the horizontal pressure on the walls.
A short walk from the Hagia Sophia is the Blue Mosque, its architecture inspired by the much older Byzantine structure. Its done is not as large, but the interior space bigger – created by adding a series of half domes around the central one.
Admission to the Blue Mosque was free, but Islamic standards of dress were required. The staff provided free scarfs – or gowns in extreme cases – for visitors of both genders to cover themselves appropriately. This meant elbow to ankle covering for men (scarves wrapped like a towel to cover shorts were common) and wrist to ankle for women, with a head scarf (in practice, it seemed like elbow to ankle was sufficient, and many non-Muslim women came prepared with their own head covering).
I had lunch – my only meal in Istanbul – at a relatively expensive restaurant near the Hagia Sophia. It’s main attraction wasn’t the food, but rather the panoramic views. Old Constantinople on one side, new Istanbul on the other. I snapped some photos from my table.
After lunch I visited an exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign – celebrated as a David and Goliath victory in Turkey and a disastrous squandering of life in England and especially Australia and New Zealand, whose ANZAC brigades were charged with a suicidally difficult assault. It was fascinating to see the Turkish perspective.
I made a quick stop at the Spice Market, where I bought the virtually obligatory Turkish Delight (Edmund betrayed his siblings to the White Witch for THIS?) and navigated the crowded market through an onslaught of smells.
But then it was back to the airport for my return to Ethiopia, where I write this. There are no more interludes in Europe now – only two months and a massive distance to cover between here and Cape Town.
