{"id":102287,"date":"2023-10-11T14:58:24","date_gmt":"2023-10-11T20:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=102287"},"modified":"2023-10-12T23:28:02","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T05:28:02","slug":"on-foot-in-a-very-ancient-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/10\/on-foot-in-a-very-ancient-city.html","title":{"rendered":"On foot in a very ancient city"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/a>

The Sultanahmet or Blue Mosque, in Istanbul \u00a0 (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

After breakfast, we visited the ancient Hippodrome<\/a>, where chariot races were held in Byzantine days, and where the infamous massacre took place during the great Nika Riot of AD 532 (about which I hope to say more in a future entry).<\/p>\n

Two monuments are (to me) particularly notable in the Hippodrome:<\/p>\n

• \nThe Serpent Column\u2014Originally, this was the sacrificial Tripod of Plataea,\u00a0which was created to celebrate the victory of the Greeks over the invading Persians during the Persian Wars of the fifth century BC.\u00a0 Emperor Constantine ordered the Tripod to be moved from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi\u00a0and placed in middle of the Hippodrome. The top was once adorned with a golden bowl supported by three serpent heads, although it appears that this was never brought to Constantinople. The serpent heads and the top third of the column were destroyed in 1700, so that all that remains of the Delphi Tripod today is the base.<\/li>\n

• In AD 390, the emperor Theodosius the Great brought a pink granite obelisk from the Temple of Karnak, in Luxor, Egypt, and placed it inside the racing track. The obelisk dates from around BC 1490, during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III. In order to move it to Constantinople, Theodosius had the obelisk cut into three pieces, of which this is the top section. It still stands today on the marble pedestal where Theodosius placed it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  The four gilded bronze horses on the facade of St. Mark\u2019s Basilica in Venice<\/a> were stolen from Constantinople after the infamous Fourth Crusade of the early thirteenth century, which sacked the city and poisoned relations between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy for centuries.<\/sup> They were part of a quadriga<\/em>, a brace of four chariot horses, that had adorned the Hippodrome until that time and that are the only equestrian team to have survived from classical Antiquity. \u00a0<\/sup>Since 1974, happily, the four original horses have been preserved inside; the figures on the balcony over the central portal are copies.<\/p>\n

  The next stop was the Sultanahmet or Blue Mosque<\/a>. Its nickname comes from the beautiful, blue ceramic tiles\u2014Iznik tiles, bearing the name of the town famous for making them\u2014that adorn the interior. \u00a0(Iznik was formerly known as Nikaia or Nicaea, which was famous for making creeds.\u00a0 See?\u00a0 Historical progress does<\/em> actually happen.)<\/p>\n

  We next visited a portion of the Topkap\u0131 Palace<\/a>, one of the largest and oldest surviving palaces in the world. (Please notice the final i<\/em> of Topkap\u0131<\/em>, which lacks a dot.\u00a0 That is deliberate, and specific to Turkish spelling.\u00a0 A dotless i<\/em> is pronounced rather like a weak uh<\/em>.)\u00a0 This was the seat of the Ottoman sultans until the erection of the more modern, European-style Dolmabah\u00e7e Palace\u00a0over on the opposite or eastern shore of the Bosporus.\u00a0 In Turkish, that more modern palace is known as the Dolmabah\u00e7e Saray\u0131<\/em>.\u00a0 Classical music lovers may recognize the Turkish word for \u201cpalace\u201d in the title of Mozart\u2019s 1782 opera Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail<\/em> (English: The Abduction from the Seraglio<\/em>, which has a Turkish setting).<\/p>\n

  Then, after lunch, we visited for a little while with Jeff Flake<\/a> and his wife in the area between the Sultanahmet Mosque and the Hagia Sophia.\u00a0 He is the Latter-day Saint former senator from Arizona and the current ambassador of the United States to T\u00fcrkiye.\u00a0 They offered some interesting observations on relations between T\u00fcrkiye and America, as well as upon the state and progress of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> here.<\/p>\n

  We next walked over to (and through) the Basilica Cistern<\/a> \u2014 there was great deal of walking today\u00a0 \u2014 which was built in AD 532, making it a contemporary of the Hagia Sophia.\u00a0 It was a part of the extraordinary water system of the Byzantine capital, which continues to be visible in some of the still-standing aqueducts that can be seen around the city.\u00a0 (We drove under an elegant and very large one this morning).\u00a0 You may have seen the Cistern in the 1963 James Bond film From Russia with Love<\/em>, perhaps, or in the 2016 film version of Dan Brown\u2019s Inferno<\/em>.<\/p>\n

  Thereafter, we walked to the Grand Bazaar<\/a> , which is said to be the largest covered market in the world. I\u2019m not a shopper, but the Grand Bazaar (like the none-too-distant Spice Market) takes one back to the late-medieval or early-modern world, when bicontinental Istanbul was a focus of merchant trade routes linking not only Europe and Asia but Africa.<\/p>\n

  And then, finally, our group attended a whirling dervish ceremony at the HodjaPasha Culture Center.\u00a0 Although many no doubt see the dervishes as a quaint tourist attraction, they are far, far more than that.\u00a0 (Tonight\u2019s ceremony wasn\u2019t a \u201cperformance,\u201d as is sometimes seen on cruise boats along the Nile.\u00a0 It was a genuine worship service, shortened for a tourist crowd.\u00a0 An odd comination, I know, but it worked.)\u00a0 The dervishes represent the Mevlevi Sufi order, which traces its genealogy back to the great thirteenth-century Persian mystical poet Jal\u0101l al-D\u012bn Mu\u1e25ammad R\u016bm\u012b, who spent much of his life in Konya, the ancient Iconium, \u00a0and is buried there.\u00a0 Their spinning dance, in imitation of the movement of the celestial spheres, is designed to foster a separation of consciousness from the mundane world and a union with the divine.<\/p>\n

  In some respects, though not all, R\u016bm\u012b is a very congenial thinker from a Latter-day Saint perspective.\u00a0In the opening lines of his principal work, the Masnavi<\/em>, for instance, he uses the reed flute as a metaphor for the human soul.\u00a0 It makes such a plaintive sound, he says, because it is in exile from the reed bed by the river, which is its true home.\u00a0 The lament of the reed flute symbolizes the soul\u2019s sorrow at its separation or exile from God.\u00a0 We, too, are cut off from our source, from our original home, and are seeking reunion.\u00a0 Elsewhere he says<\/p>\n

  \n
  
  From the reed flute, the Master Artisan cut a flute with nine holes, and named it \u2018Adam.\u2019\u00a0 O reed flute, you have been wailing with these lips.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
  
  Suggestions of an antemortal existence occur at more than a few places in R\u016bm\u012b\u2019s writings.\u00a0 \u00a0And he even hints at what seems like a notion of human deification:<\/p>\n
  
  "
  
  I died as a mineral and became a plant.<\/p>\n
  
  I died as plant and rose to animal.<\/p>\n
  
  I died as animal and I was Man.<\/p>\n
  
  Why should I fear?\u00a0 When was I less by dying?<\/p>\n
  
  Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar<\/p>\n
  
  With angels bless\u2019d; but even from angelhood<\/p>\n
  
  I must pass on: all except God doth perish.<\/p>\n
  
  When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,<\/p>\n
  
  I shall become what no mind e\u2019er conceived.<\/p>\n
  
  Oh, let me not exist! For Non-existence<\/p>\n
  
  Proclaims in organ tones,<\/p>\n
  
  To Him we shall return.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
  
  There\u2019s so much that needs to be said, so many stories that need to be told, about this absolutely wonderful place.\u00a0 But your patience is finite, and jet lag is unforgiving.<\/p>\n
  
  Posted from Istanbul, T\u00fcrkiye<\/p>\n
  
  \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
  
  \u00a0 \u00a0 After breakfast, we visited the ancient Hippodrome, where chariot races were held in Byzantine days, and where the infamous massacre took place during the great Nika Riot of AD 532 (about which I hope to say more in a future entry). Two monuments are (to me) particularly notable in the Hippodrome: The Serpent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":34688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36710,36704,828,36713,831,36707],"class_list":["post-102287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-basilica-cistern","tag-blue-mosque","tag-constantinople","tag-grand-bazaar","tag-istanbul","tag-sultanahmet"],"yoast_head":"\nOn foot in a very ancient city<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    After breakfast, we visited the ancient Hippodrome, where chariot races were held in Byzantine days, and where the infamous massacre took\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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