Download PDF | Machiel Kiel - Studies on the Ottoman Architecture of the Balkans-Variorum (1990).
369 Pages
INTRODUCTION
For half a millennium much of Southeast Europe was an integral part of the Islamic world and shared fully in its political, economic and cultural life. Balkan cities were among the largest of the Muslim Empire, and some of the most important owe their very existence to the active urbanisation policy of that state: the Empire of the Ottoman Turks. As examples there are Sarajevo the capital city of Bosnia, and its two other largest cities, Banja Luka and Mostar, or Tirana, capital of Albania, or Elbasan and Korga, not to mention many smaller towns in Bulgaria. Places which today are hardly known, such as Didymoteichon and Giannitsa in Greece, were in the past eminent centres of Islamic learning. Numerous are the cities which developed from a minor walled town or castle into a large commercial and cultural centre after the Ottoman conquest had brought unity and lasting peace: Plovdiv, Shoumen, Sofia and Jambol in present-day Bulgaria, Kavalla and Komotini in Greece are examples, and there are scores of smaller towns.
In the new towns of the Ottoman Balkans, as well as in the developing older ones, a new kind of Islamic architecture evolved, differing greatly from what had gone before. This new style visibly bore the mark of its Islamic past, especially the experience of the Seljuks of Asia Minor, from where the first architects were recruited. The local Byzantino— Slavic styles of the Balkans had their influence too. Yet the result differs from all others in its simple and surveyable forms, with decorative elements concentrated in a few places and the dominating importance of the dome. Ina way Ottoman architecture mirrors the pragmatic outlook of the Ottoman state, as well as its centralised, hierarchic nature.
Ottoman architecture came into being in a land with no tradition of Islamic culture. Buildings such as mosques, baths or khans were virtually unknown in the Balkans; the institution of khans in towns or caravanserais along the main roads was a novelty, not to speak of the Bedesten or the Zaviye-Mosque (T-Plan), which are typical Ottoman creations. After the southern Balkans had been incorporated into the emerging empire in the second half of the 14th century, Muslim—Turkish administrators, soldiers and civilians settled in and alongside the old walled towns, and masses of peasants and Yiirtik cattle bréeders came over from Anatolia to settle the land where ever there was room. There was then a sudden need for Islamic buildings in large numbers; and this took place at a time when Ottoman architecture had not yet crystallised. This sudden need revolutionised Ottoman building and was, in my opinion, a powerful factor in shaping Ottoman art. What was required was an architecture with simple but monumental forms, systematic in plan and easy to build. Exquisitely decorated buildings in the tradition of the Anatolian Seljuks remained a rarety. In the formation of this new style, the Balkans played a great role. The new style was soon to evolve its own code of aesthetics and reached full maturity in the first half of the 15th century. The great buildings in Edirne, Skopje or Plovdiv bear ample witness to that.
In the Balkan countries monumental examples of all phases of Ottoman architecture can still be found, beginning with the mosque and hospice (imaret) of Ghazi Evrenos in Komotini and his khan in Ihca/ Loutro Trajanopolis, built in the 1370s, with the oldest part of the Old Mosque of Jambol, a decade later, and with the Imaret of Mihaloglu in Ihtiman in Bulgaria and the hamams of Didymoteichon and Giannitsa, both from the 1390s, and ending with the government buildings, schools and hospitals of the early 20th century.
Ottoman architecture in the Balkans comprises a great number of types: mosques, schools and hot baths play an important role, as is understandable in so thoroughly an Islamic state as was that of the Ottoman Turks. Yet it is noticeable that utilitarian buildings are often much larger in size than buildings with a religious function; e.g., stone-built market halls (bedesten), covered shopping streets (arasta), monumental bridges, aqueducts, or huge caravanserais. These utilitarian buildings are an eloquent witness to the pragmatic spirit of the Ottomans, combining, as they did, beauty with usefulness.
There is one aspect which should never be forgotten in an evaluation of the Ottoman architecture of the Balkans: the capital cities of the Empire were situated somewhere else. Setting aside Edirne, which is technically in the Balkans but usually counted as in Turkey proper, there are no imperial buildings comparable with those in the capital cities of Bursa or Istanbul. In the Balkans, no equivalent of the Alhambra of Granada or the Taj Mahal of Agra was ever produced. What we find is good provincial architecture, with specific features of its own in the first phase but dominated by the art of the capital cities in the classical phase. The only really imperial buildings were the road-stations on the Istanbul-Belgrade highway, such as in Uzunca-Ova, Harmanlh or Tatar Pazarcik, all in Bulgaria (and all disappeared), the Stileymanic aqueduct of Kavalla, or bridges such as that over the Drina in Bosnia.
Hence, no enormous mosques should be expected in the Balkans, because there was no imperial city, no need for grand representative structures and no great mass of Muslims needing such buildings. Yet the total architectural production of the Ottomans in the Balkans was enormous. Ekrem Hakki Ayverdi collected information on almost 20,000 buildings of all sizes, suited to the needs of the widely dispersed Muslim communities, and often, in spite of their relatively small size, of great monumentality and artistic value.
The importance of Turkish Islamic architecture in the Balkans of today is evaluated very differently in the various successor states of the Empire. This is closely related to the manner in which the particular state came into being and with present-day politics and economic conditions. In countries which have not yet accepted and digested their past as it was, countries still in search for their own identity, with the process of ‘Geschichtsbewltigung’ unfinished, Ottoman architecture is often interpreted as being the product of their own creative genius: thus in fact as the work of Albanian, Bulgarian or Greek architects and master builders. In other countries, where the past has been digested, the imperial character of this art, radiating from Bursa, Edirne and Istanbul is stressed: thus an art transplanted from East to West, without however, forgetting the local component. Yugoslav research (Andrej Andrejevic) has even stressed the point that in the 16th and 17th centuries Ottoman—Turkish elements, decorative as well as structural, deeply influenced the Serbian—Orthodox architecture of some districts. Elsewhere such points are denied and late 18th- and 19th-century realities (where Christian masters indeed carried out most Ottoman construction work) are simply projected back into the 15th and 16th century.
In the last twenty years the Ottoman archives have yielded important and previously wholly unknown sources on the technical organisation of Ottoman architecture. The accounts of the greatest of all Ottoman building projects, the Siileymaniye compound, composed of eleven monumental structures, have been published by O.L. Barkan in two bulky volumes: Stileymaniye Cami ve Imareti Ingsaati, 2 vols (Ankara, 1972, 1979). I, myself have found dozens of accounts of smaller building projects in the Balkans, basically 15th- and 16th-century but also from the 17th and early 18th century. From these sources it becomes very clear that the planning, design and day-to-day organisation was firmly in Ottoman hands.
Architects and workleaders, trained in the capital, were dispatched to the province. Models of what to build were sent with them. Clear-cut cases are those of the big Zincirli Kule in Thessaloniki (1537-39), of the mosque of Hasseki Sultan in Svilengrad (1558), or of the new castle of Navarino (1573). No model has survived, it seems, but we find them well depicted in the miniatures of the Book of Festivities, when guild processions took place at the occasion of the circumcision of the sons of Sultan Murad III (1582). With the help of these models the individual patrons, or the state commission, could decide what kind of mosque or fortress they wanted. Detailed plans and elevations, such as for the medieval cathedrals of Western Europe (Cologne or Strasbourg, for example) have not yet been found in the Ottoman archives and I doubt whether they were ever made.
At state building projects a government official kept the accounts and the local Cadi scrutinised them before they were sent to Istanbul for approval. The money usually came from provincial taxes, part of which was not remitted to Istanbul but used on the spot. In the case of private buildings, as the bulk of the great projects in the provinces were paid for locally, by the local governors and high ranking members of the military or the administration, that money likewise did not need to be transferred. In contrast to building projects in medieval Europe, where it could take ages before the necessary amount of money was brought together, Ottoman building projects were finished within a few years because money and labour were directly at hand. The labourforce was recruited locally. The central government dispatched orders to the Cadis of the districts adjacent to the site of the project, ordering them to assemble such and such a number of stone cutters, carpenters, chalkburners, bricklayers, etc., to give them money for the journey and have their names inscribed in two registers, and then to send them off to the building site. One register remained in the Cadi’s office, the other was sent to the site. To make sure that the men really arrived, they each had to provide a guarantor before they were actually paid. The only things the patrons were interested in were “experienced, well-trained masters, experts in their craft”.
At the site the men were paid daily, and lists of their names, the number of days they had worked (there was a considerable amount of part-time work), and the money they got were noted day by day. All the accounts are kept in the difficult administrative script used in the Ottoman bureaucracy, the Siyakat script, with the numbers often coded and many special signs and abbreviations used. The language of the accounts is more often than not Persian, mixed with Arabic and Turkish words, as well as some specifically local Greek or Slavic technical terms. These accounts testify to the high professional standards of the Ottoman bureaucracy at its prime.
Through these detailed sources we can easily see who in fact constructed Ottoman buildings. For the Stileymaniye it appears that of the 1122 stone cutters engaged, 89 per cent were Muslims, sons of Muslims; of the 367 carpenters, 77 per cent were Muslims. In fact the two groups ‘make’ the building. The role of the bricklayer is subordinate. Disregarding the workers who came from Istanbul itself, the largest single groups of stone cutters came from the old Seljuk centres of Amasya, Kayseri and Konya. The largest groups of Muslim stone cutters from the Balkans came from such thoroughly Turkified cities as Plovdiv/Filibe (in 1489 it had 796 Muslim households to 78 Christian ones, and among the Muslims almost no local converts), or other centres with a large Turkish population, such as Serres, Skopje or Thessaloniki. It is remarkable that almost no Bulgarian Christian masters were active in the construction of the Stileymaniye. This is in the greatest possible contrast with the situation in the 19th-century Ottoman building projects. The smaller projects of the 15th- and 16th-century Balkans show a similar composition of masters. It goes without saying that in districts where the Muslims were only a small minority, the role of the local Christian masters was much bigger. Yet all key positions were in the hands of well-trained Ottoman Muslims. In fact the Ottoman state in the early and classical period was very little interested in the religious or ethnic background of its labourforce.
Such things belong to the 19th-century idea of nationalism and should not be projected back to times when they did not exist. The records mention, time and again, that “good and experienced masters” had to be found. Not more. Hence we can often see that Yanni, son of Dimitraki and Manol, son of Radoslav earned more money than Arslan, son of Suyakdi or Mehmed, son of Mustafa, simply because they were better workmen.
The records also tell us how and where the building stone, the wood, and iron and lead for the roof covering was procured, then transported to the building site on so many carts for such a daily hire. There are minute enumerations of all imaginable materials from paint to nails and coloured glass, or goldleaf for the crescent on top of the building, or linseed oil and hemp to make pipes watertight. An important piece of evidence, supporting the Ottoman records in an unexpected manner, was the discovery of an old-Bulgarian inscription on a brick. The brick was found in the 1960s when the mosque of Firuz Bey in Tirnovo was demolished. According to the Arabic inscription above its entrance, this mosque was built in 1435.
The old-Bulgarian text was written when the clay was still soft and states: “Kosta, son-in-law of Yanako, 10,000 on the 27th of the month June, these karamidi (bricks) were made and built in the masgit of Ferizbeg”. (Arheologija, Sofia 1967 2, pp. 27-35) The Bulgarian study on this text not only concluded that the workman possessed a good education, but also that he was the architect of the mosque and that this proved that Ottoman architecture, from the very beginning, was a Bulgarian affair. This, without being able to compare the building with a dozen similar works in Edirne, all built in the purest Ottoman style, and without a notion of the existence of the rich Ottoman archival material. In fact the brick from Tirnovo shows how the procurement of building materials was entrusted to locals in the manner indicated by the paybooks.
The copy books of the correspondence between the central government and the provinces (Mtihimme Defterleri) show us that vezirs and other statesmen also made use of the administrative machinery to organise the labour force and procurement of building materials for their own building projects—such as quarrying stone near Didymoteichon for the Hamam of Sokollo Mehmed Pasha in Edirne, or lead from the mines of Kratovo in Macedonia for the khans and mosque of the same person in Liileburgas, in Turkish Thrace. This rich material deserves a monograph, something I am currently working on.
The Ottoman accounts not only tell us who actually carried out the work in the Balkans but also explain why, at the time when the empire was in its prime, there was such a large degree of uniformity in style between buildings in districts so far from one another as Thrace, the Morea or Albania. They simply mirror the strictly centralised bureaucratic empire, with all initiatives radiating from Istanbul. Only in the first century of Ottoman art, say between 1360 and 1460, was there room for local currents, and in these formative years innovative experiments did take place. The plans of mosques, khans and hamams came from Seljuk Anatolia, the overall shape and proportions show Turkish taste, but the masonry is often in the local Balkan tradition: cloisonné, or, in the cheaper buildings, broken stone, plastered over and with imitation cloisonné painted and cut in the plaster. Only in the more expensive buildings, such as the Mehmed Bey Mosque in Serres (1492), or the urban complex of Liileburgas (1560s), was the fine Seljuk ashlar technique from Central Anatolia used.
It goes without saying that in the 17th century, when the grip of the central administration slowly loosened, local forces became more prominent: in other words, the architecture became less Ottoman-Turkish and more local and Balkan. Yet, in the great centres works in the style of the capital were still erected, even in this later period. The grand mosque of Ibrahim Pasha in Razgrad (1716), an example of the “colossal style” of the late-classical period, or the elegant Lale Devri mosque, school and library of Halil Pasha in Shoumen (1744) amply testify to the continued influence of the capital.
Time, and especially men, have dealt harshly with the works of Ottoman architecture in the Balkans. Its stages of development and the interaction between individual buildings will never be known in all their fullness: too much has vanished. In the 19th century, but even more so in our 20th century, Ottoman buildings have been destroyed to a stunning extent. Of the 165 medreses mentioned in the official lists of the 17th century, only six or seven are still standing. According to the census and taxation register of the small sandjak of Egriboz (Negroponte) in central Greece, in 1521 there were 34 large and small mosques, six hamams, ten schools and six dervish convents for the small Muslim congregation. Of all these buildings the ruin of one single hamam is still extant. In the great Turkish centre of Shoumen in Northern Bulgaria the Ottoman Yearbook of 1869/70 mentions forty mosques. In 1980 eight were still standing, in 1989 only three. The others had been blown up with dynamite and removed by bulldozer— including the “Old Mosque” from the 1490s and two exquisite Lale Devri buildings from the early 18th century. And these few examples can be multiplied.
Ottoman architecture in the Balkans is no easy topic to study. In all Balkan countries in the last 25 years, under whatever political regime, the present author has been arrested and confined, his notes or films confiscated—most recently in April ’89 in Kumanovo, Yugoslavia, for no other reason than taking photographs of Ottoman buildings.
Ottoman architecture in the Balkans is the legacy of a yet undigested past. It still remains too little known. In some Balkan countries it is still easier to blow a mosque up than to restore it. To make a building known to the international public often means to influence its fate in a positive way. Some studies reproduced here have been instrumental in the process of saving and restoring some important works, so that they could be handed down to generations to come. It is therefore a good thing that Variorum has decided to collect some of these studies, most now provided with additional notes and corrections,* in a volume dedicated entirely to this Legacy in Stone.
Haarlem, Bonn, Miinchen MACHIEL KIEL
1990
* The opportunity has also been taken to correct, in the texts of the articles themselves, a number of misprints and minor errors. Those that remain, however unsightly, do not materially affect the sense of the passages concerned, and the reader is asked to excuse them, as also the inconsistencies in spelling and transliteration and the all too frequent lapses in the author’s English.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following editors and publishers for kindly permitting the reproduction of the articles in this volume: the editors of Balkan Studies (1, HI. VI & XIII); Prof. Dr Yager Yticel, President, Turk Tarih Kurumu (II, VII); E. J. Brill, Leiden (IV); the editors of Byzantinische Zeitschrift and C. H. Beck-Verlag (V); Prof. Dr Nejat Goyiine (VIII, IX, XII); the Trustees of the National Museums of Scotland (X); Mr Ahmed Aliéié, Director, Orijentalni Institut, Sarajevo (XI); and the Faculty of Letters, Istanbul University (XIV).
Particular thanks are also due to Dr Nimetullah Hafiz, as co-author of study XI,
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The articles in this volume, as in all others in the Collected Studies series, have not been given a new continuous pagination. In order to avoid confusion and to facilitate their use where these studies have been referred to elsewhere, the original pagination has been maintained wherever possible.
Each article has been given a Roman number, in the order of its appearance in this volume, as listed in the Contents. This number is repeated on each page of the article and is quoted in the Index entries.
The plates for these articles have been grouped together at the end of the volume, each plate being marked with the Roman number of the study to which it refers. Wherever possible, the illustrations have been reproduced from the original photographs. In some instances, however, when no alternative was available and the original plate was hardly legible, it has been necessary to omit the illustration concerned; in others it has been possible to substitute new photographs and to add supplementary illustrations.
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