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The Parthenon, Pericles and King Solomon: a case study of Ottoman archaeological imagination in Greece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2018

Elizabeth Key Fowden
Elizabeth Key Fowden*
Affiliation:
University of [email protected]
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Abstract

What made Athens different from other multi-layered cities absorbed into the Ottoman Empire was the strength of its ancient reputation for learning that echoed across the Arabic and Ottoman worlds. But not only sages were remembered and Islamized in Athens; sometimes political figures were too. In the early eighteenth century a mufti of Athens, Mahmud Efendi, wrote a rarely studied History of the City of Sages (Tarih-i Medinetü’l-Hukema) in which he transformed Pericles into a wise leader on a par with the Qur'anic King Solomon and linked the Parthenon mosque to Solomon's temple in Jerusalem.

Keywords

Ottoman AthensParthenon mosqueMahmud EfendiEvliya ÇelebiIslamic archaeologyOttomanization
Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , October 2018 , pp. 261 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, 2018 

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References

1 I am grateful to the Gerda Henkel Stiftung for their generous funding of my research, including a grant that has made possible selected translations, especially those relating to the Parthenon, from Mahmud Efendi, Tarih-i Medinetü’l-Hukema. For these translations and related discussions I would like to thank Thomas Sinclair. Final discussion and composition took place within the ‘Impact of the Ancient City Project’ led by Prof. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 693418). I thank Gülçin Tunalı for a copy of ‘Another kind of Hellenism? Appropriation of ancient Athens via Greek channels for the sake of good advice as reflected in Tarih-i Medinetü’l-Hukema’, PhD dissertation, Ruhr Universität Bochum, 2013, in which she transcribes most of the text, translates select passages, and sets Mahmud Efendi in a wider Ottoman historiographical context. Her dissertation is available online at https://www.scribd.com/document/334328999/Gulcin-TUNALI-pdf. I would like to thank Dimitris Loupis for photographs of the entire manuscript and Seyyed Mohammad Shariat-Panahi for an initial translation and discussion of the Pericles section in Athens in 2014. I have benefited from discussions about aspects of earlier versions of this article with Suna Çağaptay, Garth Fowden and Banu Turnaoğlu, and from the comments of the two anonymous reviewers, none of whom should be held responsible for errors or omissions in the present article.

2 Gülru Necipoğlu has discussed the processes of Islamization and Ottomanization, and the differences between these two, in the context of Hagia Sophia: Necipoğlu, G., ‘From Byzantine Constantinople to Ottoman Kostantiniyye: Creation of a cosmopolitan capital and visual culture under Sultan Mehmed II’, in From Byzantion to Istanbul: 8000 years of a capital, June 5 - Sept. 4, 2010, Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Istanbul. Exhibition catalogue (Istanbul 2010) 262–78Google Scholar, and Necipoğlu, G., ‘The life of an imperial monument: Hagia Sophia after Byzantium’, in Mark, R. and Çakmak, A. Ş. (eds), Hagia Sophia from the Age of Justinian to the Present (Cambridge 1992) 195–225Google Scholar. See also Kafadar, C., ‘A Rome of one's own: Reflections on cultural geography and identity in the lands of Rum’, Muqarnas 24 (2007) 10Google Scholar: ‘In short, the Turkish encounter with Hellenic Asia Minor was in some measure supplemented and filtered by the Turkish encounter with an earlier Arab (and other peoples’) reception of the heritage of the lands of Rum’. Later Ottoman views of antiquities have been explored by Shaw, W. M. K., Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire (Berkeley 2003)Google Scholar, and Eldem, E., ‘From blissful indifference to anguished concern: Ottoman perceptions of antiquities, 1799-1869’, in Bahrani, Z., Çelik, Z. and Eldem, E. (eds), Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914 (Istanbul 2011) 281–329Google Scholar. See also Altürk, G. Akyürek, ‘Mid-nineteenth century Ottoman re-discovery of Constantinople: New practices of seeing architecture of the city’, in Altan, E., Ekici, S. E., Peker, A. U. (eds), 1. Türkiye Mimarlık Tarihi Kongresi / Architectural History Conference Turkey I (Ankara 2017) 183–200Google Scholar, who explores the popular Ottoman press in the mid-19th century in order to discuss changing attitudes to and uses of ancient material in the urban fabric of the Ottoman capital. See now the stimulating issue of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture 6 (2017) edited by S. Mulder and particularly her Editorial ‘Imagining localities of antiquity in Islamic societies’, 229-54.

3 Casale, G., ‘Seeing the past: Maps and Ottoman historical consciousness’, in Çıpa, H. E. and Fetvacı, E. (eds), Writing History at the Ottoman Court: Editing the Past, Fashioning the Future (Bloomington 2013) 80–99Google Scholar, and his current book in preparation, Muslim Rome; G. Tunalı, ‘Another kind of Hellenism?’; Krstić, T., ‘Of translation and empire: Sixteenth-century Ottoman imperial interpreters as Renaissance go-betweens’, in Woodhead, C. (ed.), The Ottoman World (London 2011) 130–42Google Scholar, and Neumeier, E., ‘Spoils for the new Pyrrhus: Alternative claims to antiquity in Ottoman Greece’, International Journal of Islamic Architecture 6 (2017) 311–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Rivalling Elgin: Ottoman governors and archaeological agency in the Morea’, in Anderson, B. and Rojas, F. (eds), Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison (Havertown, PA 2017) 132–58Google Scholar.

4 See Bouras, C., Byzantine Athens 10th - 12th Centuries, trans. Fowden, E. K. (Abingdon-on-Thames 2017) 146–54Google Scholar; Shawcross, T., ‘Golden Athens: Episcopal wealth and power in Greece at the time of the Crusades’, in Chrissis, N. G. and Carr, M. (eds), Contact and Conflict in Frankish Greece and the Aegean, 1204-1453: Crusade, Religion and Trade between Latins, Greeks and Turks (Farnham 2014) 65–95Google Scholar; Kaldellis, A., The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens (Cambridge 2009)Google Scholar; Ousterhout, R., ‘“Bestride the very peak of heaven”: The Parthenon after antiquity’, in Neils, J. (ed.), The Parthenon: From Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge 2005) 317–24Google Scholar; Korres, M., ‘The Parthenon from antiquity to the 19th century’, in Tournikiotis, P. (ed.), The Parthenon and its Impact in Modern Times (Athens 1996) 136–61Google Scholar; McNeal, R. A., ‘Archaeology and the destruction of the Athenian Acropolis’, Antiquity 65 (1991) 49–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See also Fowden, E. K., ‘The Parthenon Mosque, King Solomon and the Greek Sages’, in Georgopoulou, M. and Thanasakis, K. (eds), Ottoman Athens: Archeology, Topography, History (Athens forthcoming 2018)Google Scholar.

6 Tarih-i Medinetü’l-Hukema, Tokapı Sarayı Emanet Hazinesi no: 1411 (hereafter TMH). For the date and circumstances of composition, see TMH 2b; on his family background, see TMH 267a.

7 Orhonlu, C., ‘The History of Athens (Tarikh-i medînetül hukema) written by a Turkish kadi’, Actes du IIe Congrès International des Études du Sud-Est Européen (Athènes 7-13 Mai 1970), II (Athens 1972) 529–33Google Scholar, and Orhonlu, C., ‘Bir Türk kadısının yazdiği Atina Tarihi’ [The History of Athens written by a Turkish kadı], Güney-Doğu Avrupa Araştırmaları Dergisi [Journal of South-East European Studies] 2/3 (1973/4) 119–36Google Scholar.

8 See n.1 for the full reference to the dissertation; Tunalı has published two subsequent articles closely related to her dissertation, see Tunalı, , ‘“Seseya”. Representation of Theseus by the Ottoman mufti of Athens at the beginning of the eighteenth century’, in Helmedach, A., Koller, M., Petrovszky, K. and Rohdewald, S. (eds), Das osmanische Europa. Methoden und Perspektiven der Frühneuzeitforschung zu Südosteuropa (Leipzig 2014) 487–506Google Scholar, and Tunalı, , ‘Gregory Kontares, Theophanes Kavallaris, Grigoris Sotiris and Mahmud Efendi: The venture of Tarih-i Medinetü’l-Hukema’, in Georgopoulou, and Thanasakis, (eds), Ottoman Athens: Archeology, Topography, HistoryGoogle Scholar. I thank the author for sending a pre-publication version. See Tunalı, ‘Another kind of Hellenism?’, especially 1-2 and 32-43 on Mahmud's biography and his method of composition; 27-32 for a broad description of Mahmud's ‘intellectual horizons’.

9 TMH 266b-267a. ‘The addiction to fetvas in Athens was my fate’ (267a, tr. Sinclair). Mahmud seems to have resigned himself to life among the educated elite of Athens, whose climate and manners he appreciated.

10 TMH 2b. On the role of the meclis in the transfer of knowledge between the early modern capital and provincial cities, see Pfeifer, H., ‘Encounter after the Conquest: Scholarly gatherings in sixteenth-century Ottoman Damascus’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 47 (2015) 219–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Her investigation of social and intellectual exchange between Arabs and Turkish-speaking Ottomans might be profitably transposed onto Christian and Muslim exchanges in the Ottoman provincial cities of Rumeli, for which the compositional setting of Mahmud's history presents occasional, if meagre, evidence.

11 On Kaisariani Monastery and the learned abbots, see the edition of the eighteenth-century history by Benizelos, I., Ιστορία των Αθηνών, edited by Kokkonas, I. and Bokos, G., supervised by Manousakas, M. I. (Athens 1986) 118-21Google Scholar. For discussion of Mahmud’s informants and sources, see Tunalı, ‘Another kind of Hellenism?’, 67-78 and Tunalı, ‘Gregory Kontares’.

12 Mahmud refers to these languages and cultures differently in close sequence, suggesting that either for reasons of style, imprecision or ignorance he varied his expression, for example at TMH 2a. For his impressionistic representation of the languages and periods of his sources, see also TMH 2b and TMH 4a; generally 4a-5a on his sources. See Tunalı, ‘“Seseya”’, 487-9, who interprets the languages Mahmud mentions as ‘Ancient Greek and Latin, Modern Greek and French’. For discussion of Mahmud's informants and sources, see Tunalı, ‘Another kind of Hellenism?’, 67-78; also on the sources, see Tunalı, ‘Gregory Kontares’. On the (sometimes vague) use of rumi and yunani, and their variants, in Arabic writers, see Serikoff, N., ‘Rūmī and yūnānī: Towards the understanding of the Greek language in the medieval Muslim world’, in Ciggaar, K., Davids, A. and Teule, H. (eds), East and West in the Crusader States (Leiden 1996) 169–94Google Scholar.

13 Kontares, Georgios, Ἱστορίαι παλαιαὶ καὶ πάνυ ὠφέλιμοι τῆς περιφήμου πόλεως Ἀθήνης (Venice 1675)Google Scholar. Tunalı, ‘Another kind of Hellenism?’, 78-82 and Tunalı, ‘Gregory Kontares’. The school teacher, historian and priest Georgios Kontares took the name Gregorios when he was elevated to the metropolitan throne of Servia and Kozani. The name Georgios appears on the title page of the 1675 publication.

14 Tunalı, ‘Another kind of Hellenism?’, 124-6 suggests ways in which Mahmud ‘Ottomanizes’ ancient Greek history and examines his technique by closely examining his treatment of Theseus (126-43), Alexander (143-60) and Constantine (160-72), case studies of what she calls Mahmud's ‘Ottomanization’ of ‘foreign cultural units’ (124). On his various sources, and especially his development of Theseus legends, and Mahmud's place in the development of Ottoman interest in Hellenic history, see also Tunalı, ‘“Seseya”’.

15 For acute perceptions regarding Alexander's usefulness in ‘two competing visions of Ottoman history: one that defined the empire as the “New Rome,” destined to revive the lost glory of Greco-Roman antiquity, and another that defined it as a quintessentially Islamic state’, see Casale, ‘Seeing the past’, esp. 92.

16 On the philosophers see Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi. Topkapı Sarayı Bağdat 304 Yazmasının Transkripsiyonu, Dizini, ed. Gökyay, O. Ş. et al., VIII (Istanbul 2005) 119Google Scholar. I examine Evliya's description of Athens in ‘The Parthenon Mosque’.

17 On Muslim interpretations of the Olympieion, see Cohen, E., ‘Explosions and expulsions in Ottoman Athens: A heritage perspective on the Temple of Olympian Zeus’, International Journal of Islamic Architecture 7 (2018) 85–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fowden, ‘The Parthenon Mosque’. On the possibility of multiple antiquarian views of the Olympieion, see Anderson, B., ‘Forgetting Athens’, in Anderson, B. and Rojas, F. (eds), Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison (Havertown, PA 2017) 184–209Google Scholar. At TMH 54a, unrelated to his descriptions of the Olympieion or the Parthenon, Mahmud plays with the similarity between the wise Solon and the wise Solomon (Suleyman), see Tunalı, ‘Another kind of Hellenism?’, 125.

18 On Evliya's ‘prospettiva . . . biblico-islamica’ on the Attic landscape, see the rarely cited discussion of Mahmud Efendi and his Tarih-i Medinetü’l-Hukema, in Arrigoni, E., ‘Fasti attico-salomonici ed Atene islamica: Il periegeta turco Evliya Celebì (sec. XVII) e la reinterpretazione del paesaggio archeologico della campagna attica,’ in Botta, G. (ed.), Studi geografici sul paesaggio (Milan 1989) 47–91Google Scholar, esp. 74-86 with n. 37.

19 TMH 4a. See above, n. 11. Plutarch is indeed one of the ancient authors named by Mahmud as a source he used thanks to the learned abbots. Others he names are Herodotus, Thucydides and Diodorus, see Tunalı, ‘Another kind of Hellenism?’, 89, and Tunalı, ‘Gregory Kontares’.

20 TMH 124a.

21 TMH 124a-b: Ḥālā Ḳudüs-i şerīf de Ḥażret-i Süleyman (‘aleyhi's-selām) bir nādīde ma‘bed-i merġūb binā itmişdir ki, cümle ḫāṣ u ‘āmm ziyāretine müştāḳlardür. Velākin mezbūr Rūmili'nden ġayet ba‘īd olmaġla Rūm ḫalḳı ziyāretine gitmeğe ‘aẓīm ‘usretleri vardur. Ancak biz daḫı ṣāfī beyāż mermerden dört divārı binā olındıkdan soñra saḳfını daḫı beyāż mermer kirişler ve beyāż mermerden taḥtlar ile ṭavānlar döşenub bir nādīde ve mesbūḳ bi'l-mis'l olmayan mu‘aẓẓam ma‘bed idelim. Çünki diyārımız ‘ilm u ma‘rifet kesb olunacaḳ ve eks'er ahālīsi semt-i zühd ve ‘ibādete zāhiddir (transcription Tunalı, ‘Another kind of Hellenism?’ 291); English trans. Sinclair. Tunalı, ‘Another kind of Hellenism?’, does not discuss or translate this passage, but at 126 notes in passing that ‘Mahmud Efendi mentions Pericles in the section on the building of the Parthenon with terminology belonging specifically to Ottoman culture’.

22 TMH 133a. English trans. Sinclair. See also Tunalı, ‘Another kind of Hellenism?’, 59.

23 Rabbat, N., ‘Politicising the religious: or How the Umayyads co-opted classical iconography’, in Blömer, M., Lichtenberger, A. and Raja, R. (eds), Religious Identities in the Levant from Alexander to Muhammed: Continuity and Change (Turnhout 2015) 95–104Google Scholar.

24 For Jerusalem, see Marsham, A., ‘The architecture of allegiance in early Islamic Late Antiquity: The accession of Mu‘āwiya in Jerusalem, ca. 661 CE’, in Beihammer, A., Constantinou, S. and Parani, M. (eds), Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean: Comparative Perspectives (Leiden 2013) 87–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Necipoğlu, G., ‘The Dome of the Rock as palimpsest: ‘Abd al-Malik's grand narrative and Sultan Süleyman's glosses’, Muqarnas 25 (2008) 17–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and for Damascus, see Khalek, N., Damascus after the Muslim Conquest: Text and Image in Early Islam (New York 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Flood, F. B., The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Umayyad Visual Culture (Leiden 2001)Google Scholar, all with extensive bibliographies.

25 The full Parthenon account is at TMH124a-134b. For a partial translation of TMH126b-130b, without discussion, see Tunalı, ‘Another kind of Hellenism?’, 61-2. In a future publication, Thomas Sinclair is planning to analyse Mahmud's discussion of the Parthenon construction and measurements, including the question of sources. Consequently, I restrict myself here to Mahmud's remodelling of Pericles in a Solomonic guise. In my forthcoming monograph entitled The Parthenon Mosque I discuss Mahmud's fusion of Ottoman concepts and classical Greek history in his Parthenon description at much greater length.

26 The best study of this period is Yakovaki, N., Ευρώπη μέσω Ελλάδας: Μια καμπή στην ευρωπαϊκή αυτοσυνείδηση, 17ος – 18ος αιώνας (Athens 2006)Google Scholar.

27 Future study of the Tarih-i Medinetü’l-Hukema may make it possible to gauge how best to interpret its similarities to the earlier mode of translating and adapting European writing for Ottoman consumption examined by Tijana Krstić. She concludes that ‘although the exchange of religious, literary and scientific knowledge with the west through translation continued throughout the seventeenth century, there are no similar attempts at seamless synthesis of disparate cultural, historical and religious elements for the glory of the Ottoman sultanate’: Krstić, ‘Of translation and empire’, 140. The translation culture Krstić studies merits consideration alongside that which made possible Mahmud's History in the early eighteenth century as well as Veli Pasha's commissioning of a modern Greek translation of Pausanias to aid in his archaeological explorations, and his use of a modern Greek translation of Oliver Goldsmith, The Grecian History, from the Earliest State to the Death of Alexander the Great, the first edition of which was published in two volumes in London in 1774 and appeared in English in multiple abridged editions from the late eighteenth century: see Neumeier, ‘Spoils for the new Pyrrhus’ 153-4, and Angelomati-Tsougaraki, E., Τα ταξίδια του Λόρδου Guilford στην Ανατολική Μεσόγειο (Athens 2000) 123–4Google Scholar, on a request from an English traveller for a copy of Pausanias in the original. I would argue that Mahmud's history provides at least one example of the work of ‘seamless synthesis’ a century later than Krstić’s examples, but for a provincial rather than court audience. It would be helpful to know how Mahmud's History found its way to Topkapı Palace.