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Rock-cut façades: conveyors of ‘false’ monumentality in Byzantine Cappadocia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2022
Abstract
The monumental rock-cut façades of the tenth to eleventh century-mansions – so-called courtyard complexes – in Cappadocia, central Turkey, are rare examples of secular Byzantine architecture. While these symmetrically designed façades adorned with superimposed arches differ from the simpler ones (both carved and built) in the region, they bear striking similarities to others from the broader Mediterranean basin. This article offers new insights into the discussion on the uniqueness of the rock-cut façades of courtyard complexes and reconsiders the raison d’être of this ‘false’ monumentality in the rural setting of Byzantine Cappadocia.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham
Footnotes
This is an extended and revised version of a paper titled ‘Rock-cut façades in Byzantine Cappadocia’, read at the symposium ‘From Constantinople to Cappadocia’ at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (April 2014). I would like to thank Robert Ousterhout, the symposium organizer, for his invitation. Thanks also go to Suna Güven for her input in earlier versions of this paper. I wish to thank the Republic of Turkey's Ministry of Culture and Tourism General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums for granting me a work permit for the Scientific Research Project to survey rock-cut façades in Nevşehir, Cappadocia, in 2020 and 2021. Special thanks go to Çankaya University for the financial support of the Scientific Research Project in 2021.
References
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3 Mathews and Daskalakis-Mathews, ‘Islamic-style mansions’, 299.
4 Rodley, L., Cave Monasteries of Byzantine Cappadocia (repr. Cambridge 2010)Google Scholar, was the first to offer a comprehensive architectural study, classifying the buildings as ‘courtyard monasteries’. For a critique of the common opinion that Cappadocia was a monastic centre, see Ousterhout, R. G., ‘Questioning the architectural evidence: Cappadocian monasticism’, in Mullett, M. and Kirby, A. (eds), Work and Worship at the Theotokos Evergetis 1050–1200 (Belfast 1997), 420–31Google Scholar; Kalas, V., ‘Early explorations of Cappadocia and the monastic myth’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 28 (2004) 101–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Kalas, V., ‘Challenging the sacred landscape of Byzantine Cappadocia’, in Walker, A. and Luyster, A. (eds), Negotiating Secular and Sacred in Medieval Art (Aldershot 2009), 147–73Google Scholar; R. G. Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement in Cappadocia (rev. 2nd edn. Washington, DC 2011), 206–12, and Visualizing Community, 6–9. For the secular identification of the complexes and their dating, see e.g. Mathews and Daskalakis-Mathews, ‘Islamic-style mansions’; Ousterhout, ‘Cappadocian monasticism’; V. Kalas, ‘Rock-cut architecture of the Peristrema valley: society and settlement in Byzantine Cappadocia’, PhD thesis, New York University, 2000; F. Tütüncü, ‘The land of beautiful horses: stables in middle Byzantine settlements of Cappadocia’, MA thesis, Bilkent University, 2008; F. G. Öztürk, ‘Negotiating between the independent and groups of courtyard complexes in Cappadocia’, in A. Brown and A. Leach (eds), Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: Open 30 (Gold Coast 2013), 2.837–49.
5 For instance, while Peker classifies Mavrucandere, a rock-cut settlement in Eastern Cappadocia, as a medieval ‘agricultural village’, she uses the absence of decorated façades – as seen in Açıksaray, Çanlı Kilise or Selime – as the main argument. She denies the possibility that the ‘secular halls and rooms’ found in the settlement belonged to a ‘courtyard complex for rural elites’, due to the lack of decorated façades. Peker, N., ‘Agricultural production and installations in Byzantine Cappadocia: a case study focusing on Mavrucandere’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 44.1 (2020) 40–61 (n. 32)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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8 Exceptionally, in the Soğanlı (Soandos) Valley in Cappadocia are a few churches carved into isolated cones, while in the exterior, the tops of the cones were formed into pinnacle domes. Three churches in the north of the valley are referred to in the literature as the Kubbeli (Domed) Churches; see Ousterhout, Visualizing Community, 306–7. One of the outstanding examples of a three-dimensionally formed exterior of rock-cut architecture in Anatolia is the cruciform church at Kilistra in Lycaonia; see F. G. Öztürk, ‘Rock-cut architecture’, in P. Niewöhner (ed.), The archaeology of Byzantine Anatolia: from the end of Late Antiquity until the coming of the Turks (New York 2017), 148–59.
9 Ousterhout, Visualizing Community, 279, 351.
10 See Kostof, Caves of God, 69; Ousterhout, Visualizing Community, 484.
11 Mathews and Daskalakis-Mathews, ‘Islamic-style mansions’, 300; Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement, 145–9; Öztürk, ‘Negotiating’, 843.
12 For the concern for security that, among other factors, shaped the plan and elevation of the Seljuk inns, see Yavuz, A. T., ‘The concepts that shape Anatolian Seljuq caravanserais’, Muqarnas 14 (1997) 80–95 (84)Google Scholar.
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14 For a discussion on the façades of the Byzantine built churches, see E. Tok, ‘Türkiye'deki orta ve son Bizans dönemi kiliselerinde cephe düzeni’, MA thesis, Ege University (Izmir), 1997; Ousterhout, R. G., Master Builders of Byzantium (Philadelphia 2008), 194–200Google Scholar; Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement, 84–5. The Early Byzantine masonry houses near Silifke in Turkey and the Late Byzantine masonry houses at Mystras in Greece are rare examples of still standing Byzantine secular architecture, and so of the surviving façades. For Silifke, see G. Varinlioğlu, ‘Rural landscape and built environment at the end of antiquity: limestone villages of southeastern Isauria, PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2008; I. Eichner, Frühbyzantinische Wohnhäuser in Kilikien. Baugeschichtliche Untersuchung zu den Wohnformen in der Region um Seleukia am Kalykadnos (Tübingen 2011). For Mystras see Orlandos, A. K., ‘Quelques notes complémentaires sur les maisons paléologuiennes de Mistra’, Art et société à Byzance sous les Paléologues (Venice 1971), 73–82Google Scholar.
15 The author conducted a comparative architectural study of 43 courtyard complexes including groups of complexes at Çanlı Kilise, at Selime-Yaprakhisar, and at Açıksaray, and ten isolated examples at Direkli Kilise, Karanlık Kale, Eski Gümüş, Soğanlı Han, Erdemli, Şahinefendi, Aynalı Kilise, Hallaç, Kılıçlar and Bezir Hane. See F. G. Öztürk, ‘A comparative architectural investigation of the middle Byzantine courtyard complexes in Açıksaray-Cappadocia: questions of monastic and secular settlement’, PhD thesis, Middle East Technical University (Ankara), 2010; Öztürk, ‘Negotiating’.
16 Kostof, Caves of God, 65; Kalas, ‘sacred landscape’, 168; Kalas, ‘Rock cut façades’, 42–3.
17 For the Açıksaray group see Öztürk, ‘A comparative architectural investigation’, 157–97; F. G. Öztürk, ‘Açıksaray “open palace”: a Byzantine rock-cut settlement in Cappadocia’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 107/2 (2014) 127–52; Rodley, Cave monasteries, 121–50.
18 V. Kalas, ‘Cappadocia's rock-cut courtyard complexes: a case study for domestic architecture in Byzantium’, in L. Lavan, L. Özgenel and A. Sarantis (eds), Housing in Late Antiquity: from palaces to shops (Leiden 2007), 393–414 (403–4); Kalas, ‘Rock cut façades’, 43–4.
19 Ousterhout, Visualizing Community, 353.
20 L. Rodley and N. Thierry, ‘Cappadocia’, Grove Art Online (2003) (https://www.oxfordartonline.com, retrieved 2021-02-17).
21 Nevertheless, the scarcity of sculptural ornaments on the façades cannot be explained with the nature of the rock-cut architecture alone. Ramsay, W. M. and Bell, G. L., The Thousand and One Churches (reprint, London 2012), 319CrossRefGoogle Scholar, having in mind masonry churches at Karadağ, write that ‘colour, and not the plastic arts, was counted on to adorn these buildings.’ Likewise, Redford, S., Landscape and the State in Medieval Anatolia: Seljuk gardens and pavilions of Alanya, Turkey (Oxford 2000), 89Google Scholar, underlines that ‘painted plaster imitations of more costly marble panelling’ was an ‘established Byzantine practice’. He points to the common use of colour red, zigzag and chequerboard patterns on wall paintings of Byzantine rock-cut architecture in Cappadocia and Seljuk buildings, and to the association of these paintings with military and elite settings: S. Redford, ‘Flags of the Seljuk sultanate of Anatolia: visual and textual evidence’, in N. Vryzidis (ed.), The Hidden Life of Textiles in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean: contexts and cross-cultural encounters in the Islamic, Latinate and Eastern Cristian worlds (Turnhout 2020), 67–82 (69–70, 72).
22 For the Eski Gümüş complex, see Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 103–18; Öztürk, Comparative Architectural Investigation, 137–9.
23 Sometimes it is difficult to decide whether a façade is the main façade or the interior wall of a destroyed vestibule that has not survived. This situation poses a problem, especially in the Çanlı Kilise, where the complexes are in poor condition.
24 Ousterhout, Visualizing Community, 353.
25 Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement, 10–11, 81–2.
26 The masonry church with brick decoration at Çanlı Kilise, Cappadocia, is an example. Its details indicate Cappadocian and Constantinopolitan characteristics and probably a collaboration of craftsmen; see R. Krautheimer and S. Ćurčić, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, rev 4th edn (Harmondsworth 1986), 398–400; Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement, 25, 84–5; Ramsay and Bell, Thousand and One Churches, 446–7.
27 See Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement, 168, 176. For a brief discussion on the brick and stone architecture and the transmission of decorative vocabulary from one to another construction medium, including rock-cut architecture, see Ramsay and Bell, Thousand and One Churches, 446–56. In this respect, see also Trkulja, who points to the nature of the material which affects the degree of abstraction, the ornament on a brick façade being more abstracted than those carved into a cut stone façade; J. Trkulja, ‘Divine revelation performed: symbolic and spatial aspects in the decoration of Byzantine churches’, in A. Lidov (ed.), Spatial Icons: performativity in Byzantium and medieval Russia (Moscow 2011), 213–46 (220). See also n. 21 above.
28 For several comparisons for the Cappadocian façades, see e.g. G. de. Jerphanion, Une nouvelle province de l'art byzantine. Les églises rupestres de Cappadoce, 2 vols (Paris 1925–42), vol. 1, 44–5; Kostof, Caves of God, 69–75; Mathews and Daskalakis-Mathews, ‘Islamic-style mansions’, 299; Kalas, ‘Domestic architecture’, 404; Kalas, ‘Rock cut façades’, 44; Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 236–7; Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement, 169–70, and Visualizing Community, 351–3; Cooper, E. and Decker, M. J., Life and Society in Byzantine Cappadocia (New York 2012), 206–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ramsay and Bell, Thousand and One Churches, 449.
29 Mathews and Daskalakis-Mathews, ‘Islamic-style mansions’, esp. 300, 309–10; see also Mathews, T. F., Byzantium: from antiquity to the Renaissance (New Haven 2010) 91–2Google Scholar.
30 For Ala Kilise, see Thierry, N. and Thierry, M., Nouvelles églises rupestres de Cappadoce. Région du Hasan Dağı (Paris 1963) 193–200Google Scholar; V. Kalas, ‘Middle Byzantine art and architecture in Cappadocia: the Ala Kilise in the Peristrema Valley’, in J. Alchermes, H. Evans, and T. Thomas (eds), Anathemata Eortika: studies in Honor of Thomas F. Mathews (Mainz 2009), 184–94; Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 119–20.
31 Kalas, ‘Ala Kilise’, 193.
32 See Kostof, Caves of God, 70; Ramsay and Bell, Thousand and One Churches, 316–17.
33 Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement, 176–7.
34 Mathews and Daskalakis-Mathews, ‘Islamic-style mansions’, 300. The discussion on the origin and transformation of the horseshoe-shaped arch is a complex issue and goes beyond this article's scope. Existence of horseshoe-shaped arch in Europe was the subject of debate between ‘easterners’ and ‘westerners’ in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The debate focused on the origin of the horseshoe-shaped arch where ‘Visigothic origin’ was put against ‘Moorish origin’. E. T. Dewald, ‘The appearance of the horseshoe arch in Western Europe’, American Journal of Archaeology 26.3 (1922) 316–37. Dewald claims the debate was ‘[…] a matter of patriotism rather than of archaeology’. Dewald, ‘the horseshoe arch’, 316. Dewald proposes a third possibility: that the horseshoe arch, ‘originally oriental’ was introduced to Europe before the coming of the Moors to Spain, wherever there was the influence of the East, especially of Asia Minor and Syria. Dewald, ‘the horseshoe arch’, 317. Likewise, Ramsay and Bell point out the appearance of the horseshoe-shaped arch in countries whose architectural tradition derives entirely or partly from a common ‘Asiatic source’. Ramsay and Bell, Thousand and One Churches, 316–17. As for the Cappadocian examples, dating the Cappadocian examples mistakenly into the fourth century, Texier and Pullan claim that the use of the horseshoe-shaped arch in Cappadocian rock-cut façades was before Islam. Texier, C. and Pullan, R. P., Byzantine Architecture: Illustrated by Examples of Edifices Erected in the East During the Earliest Ages of Christianity, with Historical and Archaeological Descriptions (London 1864) 4, 40Google Scholar.
35 For a general discussion on the validity of designation ‘Islamic Art’ and ‘Islamic Architecture’ see, O. Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art (rev 2nd edn. New Haven 1987) 1–18; and Rabbat, N., ‘What is Islamic architecture anyway?’, Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012) 1–15Google Scholar.
36 Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 237.
37 Op.cit., 236–7; see also Kostof, Caves of God, 69; and Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement, 174.
38 N. Thierry, La Cappadoce de l'Antiquité au Moyen Âge, Bibliothèque de l'Antiquité tardive 4 (Turnhout 2002) 101.
39 Kostof, Caves of God, 45; Ousterhout, ‘Ecumenical character’, 219–20; Ousterhout, Visualizing Community, 23–4, 486; Kalas, ‘Rock cut façades’, 45. For more on the nature of rock-cut architecture, see F. G. Öztürk, Kapadokya'da Dünden Bugüne Kaya Oymacılığı / Rock Carving in Cappadocia From Past to Present (Istanbul 2009); Öztürk, ‘Rock-cut architecture’; Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 224–5.
40 Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement, 174.
41 Kalas, Peristrema Valley, 114–15; Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement, 169; Ousterhout, Visualizing Community, 351.
42 For critical approaches to the issue of architectural influences between the East and the West during the medieval period, see e.g. Howard, D., ‘Venice and Islam in the Middle Ages: some observations on the question of architectural influence’, Architectural History 34 (1991) 59–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Draper, P., ‘Islam and the West: the early use of the pointed arch revisited’, Architectural History 48 (2005) 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also note 28 above.
43 See notes 34 and 42 above.
44 Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 2–5. See also note 4 above.
45 Kazhdan, A. and Epstein, A. W., Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Berkeley 1985) 63Google Scholar.
46 The first intensive study to make this suggestion was by Ousterhout, who surveyed Çanlı Kilise in western Cappadocia between 1994 and 1997. See Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement and Ousterhout, Visualizing Community, esp. 275–77. See also Kalas, ‘Rock cut façades’, 45. For historical and administrative changes of the tenth and eleventh centuries see Hild, F. and Restle, M., Kappadokien (Kappadokia, Charsianon, Sebasteia und Lykandos) (Vienna 1981) 70–105Google Scholar. For the Byzantine aristocracy in general, see Ostrogorsky, G., ‘Observations on the aristocracy in Byzantium’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 25 (1971) 3–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the Cappadocian aristocracy and wealthy landowners during the tenth and eleventh centuries, see M. Kaplan, ‘Les grands proprietaires de Cappadoce (VI–XI siècles)’, in C. D. Fonseca (ed.), Le aree omogenee della civilta rupestre nell'ambito dell'Impero Bizantino: La Cappadocia (Galatina 1981) 125–58; and Cheynet, J. -C., ‘L'aristocratie cappadocienne aux Xe et XIe siècles’, Dossiers d'Archéologie 283 (2003) 42–50Google Scholar.
47 For the strategic position and proposed military association of Çanlı Kilise, see Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement, esp. 7–9, 172–3, 182–4; of Selime-Yaprakhisar, see Kalas, Peristrema Valley, esp. 156–9; of Açıksaray, see A. Grishin, ‘Açık Saray and medieval military campaigns’, in L. Rasmussen, V. Spear, D. Tillotson and J. H. Tillotson (eds), Our Medieval Heritage: Essays in Honour of John Tillotson for his 60th Birthday (Cardiff 2002) 164–71; Öztürk, Comparative Architectural Investigation, 157–97; Öztürk, ‘Açıksaray “open palace”’; and Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 121–50, esp. 150. See Tütüncü, The Land of Beautiful Horses, for a proposed link between horse-breeding and the military context in Cappadocia. See Redford, ‘Flags of the Seljuk sultanate’, for a proposed link between red painted wall decorations found in Açıksaray and military context.
48 Kostof, Caves of God, 69.
49 See Ellis, S., ‘The end of the Roman house’, American Journal of Archaeology 92 (1988) 565–76 (567)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Early Byzantine housing’, in K. Dark (ed.), Secular Buildings and the Archaeology of Everyday Life in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford 2004) 37–52 (48).
50 Ousterhout, A Byzantine Settlement, 176.
51 See Ousterhout, ‘Ecumenical character’, 214–18; Ousterhout, Visualizing Community, esp. 279, 352; see also e.g. Mathews and Daskalakis-Mathews, ‘Islamic-style mansions’, 299; Kalas, ‘Sacred landscape’, 165, 168–9; Kalas, ‘Rock cut façades’, 43, 45; and Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 237. Redford especially emphasizes the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as an era of ‘culture contact between Islamic and Christian societies’ in the eastern Mediterranean, which allowed a ‘transmission of visual language of power and privilege’; Redford, ‘Flags of the Seljuk sultanate’, 73.
52 For a discussion on architectural ‘exchange’ between Roman, Byzantine, Sasanian and Arabic palaces, see N. Westbrook, ‘An exchange between East and West emulations and borrowings in Roman, Byzantine, Sasanian and Arabic palaces, from the third to tenth centuries’, in A. Brown and A. Leach (eds), Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: Open 30 (Gold Coast 2013), 1.365–74.