Download PDF | (Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies) Velika Ivkovska - An Ottoman Era Town in the Balkans_ The Case Study of Kavala-Routledge (2020).
227 Pages
An Ottoman Era Town in the Balkans:
The Case Study of Kavala presents the town of Kavala in Northern Greece as an example of Ottoman urban and residential development, covering the long period of Kavala’s expansion over five centuries under Ottoman rule. Kavala was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1387 to 1912. In the middle of the sixteenth century, Ibrahim Pasha, grand vizier of Suleiman the Magnificent, contributed to the town’s prosperity and growth by the construction of an aqueduct. The Ottomans also rebuilt and extended the existing Byzantine fortress. The book uncovers new findings about Kavala, and addresses the key question: is there an authentic “Ottoman” built environment that the town and its architecture share? Through the examination of travelers’ accounts, historical maps, and archival documents, the Ottoman influences on the urban settlement of Kavala are assessed. From its original founding by the Ottomans in the late fourteenth century to the nineteenth century when the expansion of tobacco production in the area transformed its prosperity, the development of Kavala as an Ottoman era town is explored. The book will be of interest to scholars and students interested in Ottoman history and urban history. Velika Ivkovska was born in Skopje, then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. She is a trained engineer architect and an academician. She completed her doctoral studies at Istanbul Technical University, Turkey and is currently an Assistant Professor at Bahçeşehir University, Turkey. She is a member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) Macedonia and she actively participates in conferences and seminars concerning the built heritage and its protection and preservation. She has published widely on the architectural, vernacular, and urban environments.
Preface
After working as an architect for more than ten years and then completing my postgraduate studies in my hometown of Skopje, I decided to continue my work and conduct research on vernacular architecture, focusing on Ottoman domestic architecture in the Balkans. I always found domestic architecture, especially that left from our ancestors, alluring and inspirational, especially since I come from lands that once were part of the great Ottoman Empire and which bear invaluable traces of their domination. Therefore, my aim was clear: I decided to focus my new research on Ottoman urban, public, and domestic architecture. This direction led me to Istanbul on the advice of Professor William B. Bechhoefer, editor of a book of proceedings from a conference in Amasya that had a strong influence on me. He declared Istanbul Technical University the preeminent place to study the subject I was interested in, even passionate about. I was lucky enough to be granted a scholarship by the Yurtdışı Türkiye Bursları to conduct my PhD studies at this university. The four years of my studies were filled with incredible growth of my knowledge of Ottoman architecture in general. The topic of this book chose me rather than the other way around: after a summer visit in 2014 to the small port town of Kavala in Northern Greece I ended up mesmerized by its old walled town and its domestic architecture. That is when I knew that I had to work on Kavala. The research phases were intense and astonishing because they brought so much amazing information about the town as well as wonderful people who all had their own influence on the path of my work. This publication mainly concerns the town of Kavala in Northern Greece. It has been chosen as an example of Ottoman era urban and architectural environment. Within this framework, this work covers the period of Kavala’s development under Ottoman rule between 1391 and 1912, for which I try to explain the urban development of the town, taking into account all the historical, architectural, economic, social, and political conditions that influenced its establishment, growth, and development throughout five centuries of Ottoman rule. In recent years, my studies have taken me to many conferences where I had the chance to present my works, compare my ideas with other colleagues and researchers, and also meet remarkable figures working in the field of Ottoman, Islamic, vernacular architecture and the field of the protection and preservation of the cultural heritage, especially in the Balkans.
Acknowledgments
Many people were part of my research process that led to this publication. I owe them endless gratitude. I will begin with my mentor and professor of my postgraduate thesis Professor Dr. Kokan Grchev, who literally opened doors to my academic career and to whom I am eternally indebted. Professor Heath Lowry, an incredible mind and a true mentor and adviser, the man who believed in me and selflessly shared all his knowledge and materials to help me reach my goal. Professor Philip Shashko, another incredible scholar, without whose help and constant push this work would have never taken the shape it took, and to whom I am forever grateful and indebted. Professor Dr. William B. Bechhoefer, who suggested I do my PhD at Istanbul Technical University, where I was warmly welcomed by the exceptional Professor Dr. Sinan Mert Şener who, at the time, acted as the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture. I also want to thank my adviser Professor Dr. Aygül Ağır, as well as Professor Dr. Murat Gül, Professor Dr. İlknur Kolay, Professor Dr. Turgut Saner, Assistant Professor Dr. Luca Orlandi, all from Istanbul Technical University. Meg Dreyer for editing and proofreading the manuscript. The people and the officials of Kavala were always more than willing to help me. Professor Sapfo Ageloudi selflessly shared materials and printed works from her private collection. Gratitude to Professor Kostantinos Lalenis who provided amazing visual materials from his private collections; Charalampos Papadopoulos for his efforts providing official illustrated materials, and Ioanna Dalkitsi for being the wonderful person she is and for her friendship. Further thanks to Assistant Professor Dr. Despoina Zavraka, Professor Dr. Maria Doussi, Professor Dr. Nicos Kalogirou, Professor Dr. Vilma Hastaoglu Martinidi, all from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Additional thanks to the dear people from TU Wien, Professor Dr. Caroline Jaeger-Klein and Professor Dr. Renate Bronberg, two outstanding scholars and academicians. From my home country of Macedonia, Professor Dr. Blagoja Kuzmanovski has followed my life and career for as long as I can remember. Maja Nacevska, the strongest and smartest woman I have ever met, whom I admire greatly and who is my role model; Nadica Velickoska, the woman with the strongest and kindest heart, who does for me what only a mother does for her children.
And the most important people in my life, my deceased grandparents Afrodita and Risto, who taught me most valuable life lessons and both of whom I miss immensely. My parents, Blagoja and Elena, who are my pillars of strength, especially during these past four years, and without whose help I could have never achieved this. And last but not least, my son Miron, the greatest achievement in my life, my constant driving force, the reason we embarked on this incredible journey, whose existence makes me stretch beyond my limits to be what I am today, for shaping me and for being my greatest love and my brightest guiding star.
February 2020 Assistant Professor Dr. Velika IVKOVSKA (Engineer Architect)
Summary
The town of Kavala grew out of the Ottoman conquest in the late fourteenth century to become a vibrant port city due to the activities of the sultans Selim I, Suleiman the Magnificent, and his grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha. Originally the Ottomans conquered the Byzantine town of Christoupolis, believed to be located on the later site of Ottoman Kavala. However, not much remains from the Byzantine time. This suggests that the later town of Kavala was a pure Ottoman era settlement, with no pre-existing structures, other than the remains of the Byzantine fort and the recently excavated basilica. Within the framework of the period from the end of the fourteenth century until the end of Ottoman rule, this study observes and presents the development of Kavala as an Ottoman era settlement in the Balkans. On a smaller scale, this work focuses on the organization of the Ottoman mahalle system and the development of the town’s urban space. In the first chapter, this work introduces the Ottoman town through the prism of Orientalism and introduces a view of it within the frame of the Ottoman Balkans, considering how much, or even if, the Saidian Orientalism can be applied to the Ottoman Balkans. It further moves on with introducing the specific characteristics of plan and siting, considering the geography, topography, and morphology of the area. Moreover, this chapter defines the peculiar urban features characterizing Ottoman towns and centers, including the concepts of çarşı, imaret, and mahalle, and the important relationships between the residential and commercial activities in these areas. In more detail, this work analyzes life inside the mahalle and the spatial organization of public and private areas within it. The second chapter focuses more closely on the main topic of the work and includes a short introduction to the town and its history, from the ancient Greek colony of Neapolis to the Byzantine Christoupolis; next, the study presents the urban development of the town of Kavala after the Ottoman conquest of the region, analyzing the progressive transformation of the town under Ottoman rule. In the subchapters, all the phases of the transformation of the town are presented chronologically, from early Ottoman occupation (1391–1478) of the region until the first mention of Kavala appears in the historical record. This analysis crosses the period of Suleiman the Magnificent and his grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha in the sixteenth century; the period of Mehmed Ali Pasha between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and the development of the industrial town in the era of the expansion of the tobacco industry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each of these subchapters addresses the different phases of the urban development, including public structures such as the aqueduct, the military fortress, the fountains, mosques or mescids, markets, and imarets, and identifies the street layout and the characteristics of the Ottoman houses inside the mahalles. Moreover, the increasing population and consequent urbanization of new areas outside the original walled Ottoman settlement of Kavala are taken into consideration and elaborated, as is the process of Westernization, recognizable by new approaches in its architectural aesthetics. The conclusion synthesizes all the work and presents Kavala’s authenticity as an example of a true Ottoman era settlement in the Southern Balkans. The final part of the work consists of references and annexes.
Introduction
This work falls within the category of Ottoman heritage studies, addressing the formation and development of an Ottoman era town in the Balkans. It examines previously unexplored and under-researched Ottoman architecture related to the urban development of the port town of Kavala in Northern Greece, supported by numerous original primary archival sources. Kavala was built along the Via Egnatia on a peninsula facing the Aegean Sea. It was probably built on the site of the ancient city of Neapolis, which later became the Byzantine Christoupolis before falling under Ottoman rule in 1391. For almost one hundred years thereafter the site was abandoned. No activities there can be tracked until the end of the fifteenth century, at which time the earliest mention of a village/town named Kavala is found in an Ottoman tax register (tahrir defter) dated 1478 (Hicri: 883).1 This document opens a door to extensive research on the settlement’s development, confirming Kavala to be a newly founded Ottoman era town rather than an urban center overlapping the previous Byzantine Christoupolis.2 Is there a genuine, authentic Ottoman built environment? By discovering new facts about this town and its structures and reviewing the available literature (travelers’ accounts, historical maps, and archival documents), this work examines the state of the art of Ottoman era urban planning in Kavala’s urban settlement. The literature dealing specifically with the urban development of Ottoman Kavala is limited; the only extensive work on Kavala’s urban development is the book published by Professor Amelia Stefanidou in 2007, entitled The Port Town of Kavala during the Period of Turkish Rule: Urban and Historical Investigation (1391–1912). 3 Stefanidou analyzes the population and its ethnic background, examining the site in three different periods, occasionally interrupted by discussion of important Ottoman monuments built within these separate time frames. However, Stefanidou’s work does not develop analysis or theories about the formation and development of Kavala’s urban areas, from its conquest in 1391 until its falling under Greek rule. Her work is a survey of the historical monuments built on the historic peninsula; she follows secondary sources about the demographic changes which exist in BOA, and finishes by linking this archival data to the development of the town’s population. The research concerns only the public structures. It does not deal with the establishment of the first urban site or the increasing number of individual houses and further development of the neighborhoods, the so-called “Turkish mahalle”. The town’s growth from an urban and architectural point of view is incomplete. The present work is a complex synthesis, examining the urban development of Kavala and its Ottoman era architecture in one integral study. The research consolidates previous findings on Kavala’s history, economy, architecture, and culture with new research on the Ottoman town system and its architecture’s interaction with space, vernacular traditions, history, and life. Based mostly on original and unpublished archival documents, as well as pious foundations, mostly those for which there is evidence in BOA – which are those of Mehmed Ali Pasha as well as the smaller foundations of Halil Bey and Kadi Ahmed Efendi – the work covers almost five centuries of Ottoman domination, from 1478 until 1909. Among the archival documents on this topic a selection is presented in a separate appendix; these relate to shifts in the society, such as appointments of imams and judges, payment of taxes, construction works, and other activities that were ongoing in Kavala under Ottoman rule. All these documents, given in chronological order, provide, where possible, continuity in the settlement’s expansion through which we follow Kavala’s urban, architectural, religious, social as well as industrial development and growth. Many and disparate factors influenced the town’s birth and development. Physical factors included land configuration and geography. Geographic factors included the proximity of water, the sea, and other natural resources. Social factors included the housing program and the consequent aggregation of dwellings forming the mahalle giving the inhabitants a sense of community. Multiconfessional factors were determined by the presence of ethnic groups within those mahalles following different religions and their mutual cohabitation. Most important of all were safety factors related to protecting the settlement and its further development. Crucial for the town’s establishment, expansion and growth were: the reconstruction of the fortress and the walls surrounding the inhabited nucleus for the purpose of protecting the settlement; conveyance and distribution of water inside the protected settlement, providing life and prosperity; the town’s adaptation to the geography of its site; the organic street layout that enabled circulation inside the settlement; the coexisting ethnicities, which reflected Ottoman tolerance, acceptance, and respect; trade, especially the tobacco production and export in the later centuries that boosted the town’s economic prosperity; and finally the home/house, that core of Ottoman society representing family values and standing in the community. Many research trips and surveys were conducted to understand the development of the urban settlement together with its life, traditions, and culture. Attention was given to the period of Kavala’s industrial peak in the nineteenth century when the town became one of the biggest tobacco centers in the Mediterranean, which influenced its urban and residential growth at the turn of the century. The population explosion following this industrial development demanded new residential areas for the newcomers, many foreign, who introduced Western modes of urban planning and architectural styles to the town. As the old district on the peninsula grew overcrowded, the further urban development of the town offered another opportunity to introduce new architectural approaches to the domestic architecture. Considering all these important factors, this research tries to explain the town’s urban transformations occurring during five centuries of Ottoman rule. The purpose of this work is to determine the authenticity of an Ottoman era urban environment in the Balkans through a case study, the town of Kavala, through description and analysis of the town’s phases of urban development and its geographical environment. To this end, several objectives have guided the published work: • Examination of primary archival resources related to Kavala’s establishment and the town’s historical continuity in Ottoman times. • Presentation of a historical overview of the urban development of the town through published works as well as re-elaborated maps. • Review of relevant texts dealing with the town’s development through historical, architectural, economic, and social aspects in order to comprehend the Ottoman context. This work also tries to describe and analyze the phases of the development of the town’s urban environment, locating the first established nucleus of the town (the intramural area) and following the later phases of urban development (the extramural area) on the outskirts beyond the primal urban zone. This research aims to determine the urban layout and development of the settlement according to its important historical phases. Using travelers’ itineraries, memoirs, and visual materials, this work considers the neighborhoods built at the time of Ottoman arrival in the town and locates them geographically on the peninsula. A review of the literature, including primary resources from archives, travelers’ accounts, and on-site photo documentation, supports this work’s purpose of proving the town’s uniqueness and demonstrating its urban continuity in the Ottoman era. The literature-based findings led to determinations of when and where the town was established after Ottoman subjugation and how it continued its urban development, ultimately permitting answers to the question, “Is there an authentic Ottoman era urban environment in the town of Kavala?” To answer this question, this work researched the urban development and transformations of Kavala from its establishment in the late fifteenth century through five centuries under Ottoman rule, arriving at the era of the expansion of tobacco production in the area and tracing this burgeoning industry’s socioeconomic influences on the town. This is presented through re-elaboration of maps, indicating the most important phases of the urban development throughout the centuries. In order to follow those changes, the work presents three main historical phases4 that coincide with three architectural milestones: the construction of the aqueduct and the complex of Ibrahim Pasha in the sixteenth century; the setting of the foundations and the building of the imaret complex by Mehmed Ali Pasha in the early nineteenth century; and the building of the tobacco depots by the end of the nineteenth century, shaping the settlement’s future.
Based on the course of the town’s urban transformations, this work presents Kavala’s development in two stages. The first stage concerns the formation of the first intramural nucleus, the Ibrahim Pasha neighborhood, located by the harbor and influenced by the hilly side of the peninsula, that later continued to develop into the second intramural area; this second area consisted of Hüseyin Bey, Halil Bey, and Kadi Ahmed Efendi neighborhoods, covering the whole peninsula of the town. The second stage of Kavala’s expansion is the urban growth and development of the town outside the walls in the space referred to as extra muros (outside walls), with Agios Ioannis, Hamidiye, Selimiye, Küçük, Yeni, Dere, Agios Pavlos, and Çaylar neighborhoods and the so-called Kumluk (sandy) area by the sea shore. This work places importance on the “street layout”; through its development we perceive how urban patterns mark different phases of the town’s growth. The street layout is important; it grew out of the morphology of the terrain but also influenced the architecture of the built environment and the individual housing program. To understand the formation of the town, this work examined morphogenetic analyses of the urban site and its street patterns. These elements define the layout plan typologies. The aim of this method is to describe the relationships between the morphology of the area and the man-made environments within it, and one of the theoretical arguments is that the settlement patterns also originate in the social life of the inhabitants.5 This work uses the town of Kavala in Northern Greece as a possible example of an authentic Ottoman era urban environment in the Balkans; Kavala developed, over a period of five centuries, as an Ottoman era settlement that was built on the site of a previous and no longer existing Byzantine town. The discontinuity between the Byzantine and the Ottoman periods allows us to think about Ottoman Kavala as a new settlement not necessarily linked with the previous urban development. In fact, this study does not trace the typical Ottoman pattern of establishing settlements and consolidating power in preexisting built environments. In general, it was a common Ottoman practice to extend power in conquered domains through integrations and overlays in the existing urban environments, slowly adapting to the environment and modifying it into a more “Ottomanized” one. The coercive transfer of entire populations from different religions, from one province to another, within the borders of the huge empire was one of the successful Ottoman strategies to colonialize the newly conquered territories. Even considering the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century and the subsequent integration of Kavala into the new Greek state, the town still kept and preserved its peculiar Ottoman era appearance. This was especially true on the old historic peninsula, where the Muslim population settled and lived for five centuries. This work presents Kavala as an amalgamation of morphological structures, urban fabrics, and networks of interrelated streets. A town was generally subdivided into quarters; major street layouts and urban facilities, residential fabrics, secondary layouts, and parcel divisions all developed within those quarters, shaped by ethnic, economic, social, religious, and judicial phenomena. This study of Kavala’s urban form in the Ottoman context may help widen the definition of the Ottoman town itself, perhaps even illuminating specifics of its founding and development of its urban, residential, and private enclaves in the Balkans. It might also explain its role within the borders of the Ottoman Empire, how such a complex ethnic population’s composition contributed to its growth through the centuries and how important was its geographic and geomorphological location. Morphogenetic analysis cast light on the development of the town, its urban site and its street patterns shaping the parceling of the land plots that eventually influenced the development of the dwellings. In order to carry out the research in an appropriate way, this study uses a mixed methodology that includes both qualitative and quantitative analytic methods related to the collected materials. The methodological research related to the analyses of the town and the urban form of Kavala includes an interdisciplinary study in which the connections between the architectural, social, economic, anthropological, cultural, and historical approaches are traced. In general, studies of cities and urban settlements are not a simple task because they require a knowledge of many disciplines and they need proper tools in order to select and interrelate all the collected data. The qualitative element of this work conducted visual analysis of artifacts in situ and archival documents. Data and materials were collected through traveling and residing in the region, and sites and artifacts were visually inspected and documented in the field. Comparison of current findings with past conditions, as documented in artifacts found in archives and libraries, furthered architectural analysis. The archival materials examined still exist in archives in Istanbul, including BOA and TPML, as well as above-mentioned archives and libraries including the Kavala Public Library, Kavala–Thasos Ephorate of Antiquities, the Library of the Faculty of Architecture at the Aristoteles University in Thessaloniki, the Istanbul Technical University Library, IBB Atatürk Library Istanbul, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens Gennadius Library, and others. Observations in situ and archival materials have been recorded through field notes, sketches, architectural drawings, on-site measurements, photographic campaigns, and so on. On-site research into Kavala’s dwellings, where accessible, and their current conditions is registered, documented, and used for the purpose of following, on a smaller scale, the town’s residential development in the enwalled town. This study’s quantitative element gathered materials from a survey of old houses still existing in the historical peninsula, choosing a conspicuous and significant number of houses as examples of the main system governing each area. On a bigger scale, the comparison between maps related to other important cities and towns within Ottoman borders helped identify specific patterns of development of the urban texture, starting from the scale of the neighborhoods, or mahalle, to the entire city. The present work is a result of the combination of all these research methods.6 The structure of the book first presents the Ottoman town, and then introduces Kavala for the purposes of comparison. The first chapter considers attempts to clarify Kavala’s classification as an Ottoman era town seen through the lens of Orientalism and Balkanism; then it follows the plan and siting of the Ottoman town, taking into consideration geography, topography, and morphology. Moreover, this chapter defines the peculiar urban features of Ottoman era towns and city centers, including the concepts of çarşı, imaret, and mahalle and the important relationships between residential and commercial activities in these areas. Life inside the mahalle and the spatial organization of public and private areas within it are analyzed in detail. The second chapter represents the main core of the book. It focuses more closely on Kavala and studies the town, including a short introduction to its history, dating back to the ancient Greek colony of Neapolis and the Byzantine Christoupolis; this introduction presents evidence of the existence of the town in ancient times and of what remained from that period and its urban development after the Ottoman conquest. This chapter aims mostly to study and analyze concretely the progressive transformation of Kavala under Ottoman rule. In the subchapters, the urban settlement also follows a timeline related to important historical and social milestones that contribute to its establishment and development as an important site on the route of the Via Egnatia. All the phases of the town’s transformation are shown chronologically, beginning with the establishment of the settlement in the early times (1391–1478), just after the conquest; then the development under Sultan Selim I, spanning the period of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha in the sixteenth century; then the period of further development between the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century; the prosperity under Mehmed Ali Pasha between the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century; and finally the industrialization of the town in the era of the expansion of the tobacco factories between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In each of these subchapters the different phases of the town’s urban development are addressed, including public structures such as the aqueduct, the military fortress, the fountains, mosques, or mescids, markets, and imarets. The street layout of the neighborhoods and the characteristics of the Ottoman era houses are identified. The population expansion and the consequent urbanization of areas outside the original intramural settlement of Kavala and the process of Westernization as result of the Tanzimat reforms, recognizable by different architectural aesthetic expressions, are also considered. The conclusion presents a synthesis of this study of Kavala’s authenticity as an Ottoman era settlement in the Southern Balkans. The final part consists of detailed bibliographical references and an appendix, which includes many original and unpublished archival documents. To summarize: the aim of the work is to analyze and compare all information, data, and materials in order to recognize Kavala as a worthy example of a preserved Ottoman era built environment in the Balkans. From it we can see the authentic development of a small town in the Balkans and today’s Northern Greece. The narrow scope of this work describes and analyzes different phases of the development of the urban environment of the town where the settlement was first established and later developed on the outskirts of this site. The goal is to determine the urban layout and the development of the town, as the impact on the urban fabric is still ongoing. Detecting the neighborhoods built upon the arrival of the Ottomans and locating them on the peninsula based on archival documents as well as travelers’ itineraries are among the investigative achievements of this work. In this context, changes continuously occurred in the public and civic structures as well as in the urban fabric throughout the town’s life under the Ottoman rulers. These changes continued during the decades after the Ottomans lost the rule in this region and the town entered within the borders of the Greek nation-state.
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