Turkey | Turkish Riviera | Antalya | Kaleiçi

The Winter Solstice occurred in Mongolia on December 21 at 6:44 pm. It was of course the shortest day of the year. There were eight hours, twenty-two minutes, and fifty-four seconds of daylight, five seconds less than on December 20. On December 22 there would be two seconds more daylight. So the days would be getting longer. I climbed to the top of Zaisan Tolgoi just north of my hovel before sunset on the 21st and at the moment of the Solstice made appropriate oblations and orisons. Later that morning I absquatulated to Istanbul, where I caught another flight to the city of Antalya on the Turkish Riviera, about 300 miles south-southeast of Istanbul.

Antalya, on the Mediterranean Sea

Turkey’s fifth largest city, with a population of over a million, Antalya is the second biggest tourist destination in the country. Over 12.5 million visitors passed through Antalya in 2014, with most of them staying at beach resorts to the east and west of the city. Antalya was especially popular with Germans and Russians. Of course since 2014 there have been a Spate Of Terrorist Attacks in Turkey,  including one in Sultahmet Square which killed thirteen people, eight of them Germans. Then  relations with Russia soured after Turkey shot down a Russian jet fighter which had allegedly strayed into Turkish airspace. Tourism Tanked in the backwash:

One of Europe's largest travel companies reports that bookings to Turkey are down 40 percent. Turkey's largest resort, Antalya, is popular with Russian tourists and has already been badly hit, according to Atilla Yesilada, an Istanbul-based consultant with Global Source Partners. "A lot of companies are in serious difficulty,” Yesilada said. “Up to 1,300 hotels are up for sale. In Antalya, tourist arrivals by air are down by 21 percent. There is really a lot of hardship."

Of course now is off-season for the beach resorts. Those visitors that stay in the city congregate in Kaleiçi, the Old Quarter, which was surrounded by walls during Roman times. The price of hotel rooms has been slashed to one-half or one-third of the regular rate at most hotels. Kaleiçi is where I am holed up. I appear to be the only guest in the “butik” hotel where I am staying.  The streets of Kaleiçi, lined with upscale hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, and gift shops, are eerily deserted. In the early mornings I  sometimes walk around for half an hour before I see another human being. Only in the afternoons do a few Russians, Chinese tour groups, and Turks from other parts of Turkey make an appearance. So it is a good place to avoid the end of the year (according to the odious Gregorian calendar) hullabaloo.

Downtown Antalya with Kaleiçi, the Old Quarter, to the right of center

 City of Antalya with the Taurus Mountains behind (click on photos for enlargements)

Antalya Bay, with the city on the right

Antalya Harbor

Another view of Antalya Harbor

The original settlement of Kaleiçi was founded by Attalos II, king of Permagon, between BC 159–138. King Attalus II eventually bequeathed his entire kingdom, including the city of Antalya, to the Romans and it became part of the Roman Empire.

 Kaleiçi, the Old Quarter, outlined in red

Hadrian’s Gate, the ceremonial entrance to Kaleiçi. It was built to honor the Roman emperor Hadrian’s visit to the city in 130 AD. This is of course the same Hadrian who built Hadrian’s Wall in what is now northern England.

Another view of Hadrian’s Gate

Ruins of the Korkut Mosque

A pagan temple was built on this site in the 2nd century AD. In the 6th AD the temple was knocked down and replaced with a Christian church. The church was heavily damaged by the Arab invasions of the 7th century, and it was finally rebuilt in the 9th century. In the 13th century is was converted into a mosque by the Seljuqs Of Rum. Then Antalya was captured the Christian king Peter I of Cyprus, who converted back into a church. The city was later seized by the Ottomans and Sultan Beyazit II’s  son Korkut (1470–1509) turned it into a mosque again. The mosque was largely destroyed by a fire in 1896 and is now in ruins.

Ruins of the Korkut Mosque

Ruins of the Korkut Mosque

Ruins of the Korkut Mosque

Ruins of the Korkut Mosque

Ruins of the Korkut Mosque

Minaret of the Korkut Mosque. The top was destroyed in the fire of 1896.

The Yivli Minare (Fluted Minaret) built by the Seljuqs of Rum in the thirteenth century

Another view of the Fluted Minaret

Iconic view of Antalya

Turkey | Istanbul | Hagia Sofia | Enrico Dandolo

There are few greater ironies in History than the fact that the fate of Eastern Christendom should have been sealed—and half of Europe condemned to some five hundred years of Muslim rule—by men who fought under the banner of the Cross. Those men were transported, inspired, encouraged, and ultimately led by Enrico Dandolo in the name of the Venetian Republic; and, just as Venice derived the major advantage from the tragedy, so she and her magnificent old doge must accept the responsibility for the havoc that they have wrought on the world.

— Byzantium: The Decline and Fall — John Julius Norwich

Hagia Sofia, in the Sultanahmed District of Istanbul, may be one of the most recognizable buildings in the world. The one-time church, then mosque, and now museum with its immense dome and soaring salmon-colored walls has become the symbol of Istanbul and of Turkey itself. 

Hagia Sofia (click on photos for enlargements)

The site where Hagia Sofia now stands, located on a prominent headland overlooking the Bosporus Strait, which flows from the Black Sea into the Sea of Marmara and separates Europe and Asia, was the Acropolis of the ancient city of Byzantion. The current Hagia Sofia was the third and last of three churches built at the same location. The first, known as the Great Church, was built by Constantius II (r. 337–361), son of Constantine the Great, who founded a new city on the site of ancient Byzantion in a.d. 324. He dedicated the city and on May 11, 330 and renamed it after himself: Constantinople. The Great Church built by Constantius II, later to be called Hagia Sofia (“Holy Wisdom”) was dedicated on February 15, 360.This church was destroyed by fire in 404 during riots triggered by John Chrysostom (c. 349–407), the 37th Patriarch of Constantinople, who in a series of hair-raising sermons from the pulpit of Hagia Sofia fulminated against the unbridled licentiousness of the Byzantine Emperor Arcadius and his court, singling out for particular opprobrium the Emperor’s consort, Eudoxia, whom he compared to the Biblical Jezebel. These sermons got him banished from Constantinople. Following mass demonstrations among his followers, who had been driven to a frenzy by his sermons (his name Chrysostomos in Greek, anglicized as Chrysostom, means “golden-mouthed”), he was allowed back into Constantinople, where he again preached from the pulpit of Hagia Sofia, this time comparing Empress Eudoxia to Herodias, the mother of Salome, demanding the head of Saint John the Baptist on a platter. This and other infelicities got him exiled from Constantinople yet again. His infuriated followers protested and in the ensuing riot Hagia Sofia was set aflame and almost completely destroyed.

Emperor Theodosius II (r. 408–450) rebuilt the church and dedicated it on October 10, 415. This second version of the church lasted until January 14, 532, when it was burned to the ground the during the so-called Nika Riots. This uprising was caused by, in the words of Byzantine historian Procopius (c. 500– c. 54), “some men of the common herd, all the rubbish of the city . . . the lowest dregs of the people in Byzantium” who attempted to overthrow Emperor Justinian. Nika, Greek for “conquer”, was the rallying cry of rebels; thus the Nika Riots. Faced with this formidable insurgency Justinian at first had considered abdicating and fleeing the city but then was bucked up by a rousing speech by his famous, not to say notorious, wife, the former ecdysiast and prostitute Theodora. She dismissed with scorn “the belief that a woman ought not to be daring among men or to assert herself boldly among those who are holding back from fear,” and concluded: 

For while it is impossible for a man who has seen the light not also to die, for one who has been an emperor it is unendurable to be a fugitive. May I never be separated from this purple [the color of royalty], and may I not live that day on which those who meet me shall not address me as mistress.

Bucked up by these words, Justinian ordered a savage reprisal. Thirty thousand rioters were corralled by forces loyal to the Emperor and slain on the floor of the huge stadium known as the Hippodrome, located not far from Hagia Sofia. 

Theodora (c. 500 – 28 June 548) portrayed on a mosaic in a church in Ravenna, Italy (not my photo)

Wasting no time, in February 23, 532, thirty-eight days after the destruction of the second Hagia Sofia, Justinian began the construction of the third and final version of the church. Amazingly, the immense structure, then and for the next thousand years the largest building the world, was completed in five years, ten months, and four days, and dedicated on December 27, 537. On this day, Justinian, in a curious holdover of pre-Christian pagan rites, sacrificed 1,000 oxen, 6,000 sheep, 600 stags, and 10,000 various birds in honor of the new church. In a more Christian mode, he donated 30,000 bushels of grain to feed the poor of the city. Entering the completed church for the first time he gazed up at the immense dome and proclaimed “Glory to God, Who has deemed me worthy of fulfilling such a work. O Solomon, I have surpassed thee.”

Interior of Hagia Sofia

Interior of Hagia Sofia

Despite structural flaws that required major revisions and damage from earthquakes (a temblor on May 7, 558 brought down the original dome), fires, riots, and aging, the basic structure of Hagia Sofia remains the same to this day, although of course it no longer serves as a church. It was converted into a mosque by Sultan Mehmed II on May 29, 1453, the day Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks and Byzantium, after 1123 years and eighteen days, came to an end. Then in 1935 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the secular state of Turkey, ordered that Hagia Sofia be turned into a museum.

Over three million people a year visit the museum of Hagia Sofia, making it Turkey’s biggest single attraction. Every morning hundreds of people line up by the entrance gate for the 9:00 opening, this despite the spate of terrorists attacks that have plagued Istanbul in recent years. On January 6, 2015, a female suicide bomber killed herself and one policeman in front of the police station just 200 feet from the entrance to the museum. On January 12, 2016, a Syrian member of ISIS blew himself up and killed thirteen tourists in front of the Obelisk of Theodosius, 1,000 feet from the museum entrance. (The obelisk stands on what was once the old floor of the Hippodrome, now Sultanahmet Square, where the Nika rioters were massacred. According to legend their bones are still buried there.) But still crowds stream into Hagia Sofia. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, mill around the main floor of the building, which measures 220 by 250 feet. Some stand in the exact center of the main floor, where an inset disk of dark marble known as the Omphalos marks the spot believed by some to be the Navel of the World. Almost everyone cranes their necks upward to the vast dome, 102 feet in diameter and peaking at 182 feet above the floor. The more curious may take note of the 104 columns in the interior, including eight huge shafts of porphyry taken from quarries in Upper Egypt and believed to have first stood in the Temple of the Sun in Baalbek, in what now Lebanon, the eight columns of green marble from the quarries of Thessaly in Greece, and the many other columns of variegated stone, all transported here to grace Hagia Sofia.

Most visitors will trudge up the broad stone steps, the centers of which are worn down inches by centuries of foot traffic, to the galleries overlooking the main floor. Adorning the walls of the the South Gallery are several magnificent Byzantine-era mosaics that have been painstaking restored after being plastered or painted over when Hagia Sofia was a mosque. Perhaps the most famous mosaic, The Deesis, is on the side wall the middle bay of the South Gallery. In Byzantine art a Deesis (Greek for “prayer” or “supplication”) is an iconic representation of Christ flanked by John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary. John and Mary are shown turned toward Christ with the their hands raised in supplication, interceding with Christ on behalf of mankind at the time of the Last Judgement. The Deesis in Hagia Sofia, measuring 20 feet wide and 13.5 feet tall, was probably created in the latter part of the thirteen century, although this dating is disputed, making it one of the very last mosaics added to the church and in the opinion of some the very finest. The mosaic had been covered with plaster and paint when Hagia Sofia was a mosque. In 1934 the American historian Thomas Whittemore and a team of craftsmen and restorers from the Byzantine Institute of America began the painstaking work of uncovering and restoring the Dessis. Not until 1938 was the restoration completed.

The Deesis

The Deesis

Almost everyone who enters the South Gallery stands for at least a few minutes in front of the Deesis, many snapping photos with cameras, smart phones, and tablets. Most then turn and proceed to other mosaics at the end of the gallery. Before leaving the middle bay a few may notice near the wall opposite the Deesis a blue sign bearing the words “Grave of Henricus (Enrico) Dandolo, Doge of Venice and commander of the armies that invaded Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade. He died during the expedition and was buried in Hagia Sofia.” Of the few who notice the sign even fewer stop to glance at the stone inset in the floor bearing the inscription “Henricus Dandolo”. This, allegedly, is his tombstone. Enrico Dandolo was the only person ever buried within the confines of Hagia Sofia. Most Byzantine emperors, including Constantine the Great, were entombed at the Church of the Holy Apostles, which was demolished in 1462 and replaced by Fatih Mosque (Mosque of the Conqueror). The tomb of the Conqueror of Constantinople, Mehmed II, can still seen there today. Other Ottoman sultans were entombed in courtyards just outside Hagia Sofia and at various other locations around Istanbul, but none were ever buried within Hagia Sofia. Enrico Dandolo alone was accorded this honor.

Alleged tombstone of Enrico Dandolo

Alleged tombstone of Enrico Dandolo

The Latin Empire of Constantinople created by the Frankish Crusaders and Venetians under the leadership of Enrico Dandolo lasted until 1261, when the Byzantines ousted the occupiers and recaptured the city, but their empire would never recover its former greatness. Irreparably weakened, the Byzantines stumbled forward for another 247 years, but were finally defeated by Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453, creating the fault lines between Islam and the Occidental Christian world that exist to this day.

—

Writing in the early 1950s, historian Steven Runicman, author of the three-volume The History of the Crusades, states flatly: “There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade,” adding that the disastrous event was “unparalleled in history.” In light of the world wars, nuclear bombings, and holocausts that took place during the first half of the twentieth century, to say nothing of the ethnic cleansings and other wholesale atrocities that have occurred since, this may sound like an exaggeration. Yet it is true that the wounds created by the Fourth Crusade are still raw today. In 2001, 797 years after the fall of Constantinople, Pope John Paul II felt compelled to issue a statement on the matter: “It is tragic that the assailants, who set out to secure free access for Christians to the Holy Land, turned against their brothers in the faith. That they were Latin Christians fills Catholics with deep regret. . . . How can we not share, at a distance of eight centuries, the pain and disgust?”

Three years later, on the 800th anniversary of the fall of the city to the Venetians and Frankish Crusaders, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the 270th Archbishop of Constantinople and the leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, whose headquarters is located in the Fener district of Istanbul, accepted the Pope’s apology: "The spirit of reconciliation is stronger than hatred. We receive with gratitude and respect your cordial gesture for the tragic events of the Fourth Crusade. It is a fact that a crime was committed here in the city 800 years ago . . . [but] the spirit of reconciliation of the resurrection . . . incites us toward reconciliation of our churches.”

On November 27, 2004, in what was hoped would be a further gesture of good will, Pope John Paul II presented two sets of relics to Patriarch Bartholomew while the later was on a visit to Rome. One group of relics contained the bones of Saint John Chrysostom, who as we have seen instigated the riots which resulted in the burning of the second Hagia Sofia. The second group included the bones of Saint Gregory Nazianzus (c.329–390), a priest from southwest Cappadocia in Turkey who eventually become the 35th Archbishop of Constantinople. These relics, which had placed in new crystal reliquaries, were to be transported to Istanbul and on November 30, feast-day of St. Andrew, patron saint of the city, installed in the Patriarchate headquarters the Fener district.

These relics, it was generally believed, had previously been in Constantinople and had been seized as war booty after the sack of the city in 1204. Patriarch Benjamin alluded to this in a sermon given on November 20, 2004: “For 800 years these relics have been in exile, although in a Christian country, not of their own will, but as a result of the infamous Fourth Crusade, which sacked this city in the year of our Lord 1204. . .” While Benjamin was grateful for Pope John Paul’s gesture, he added that the return of the relics was a “warning to all those who arbitrarily possess and retain treasures of the faith, piety, [and] civilization of others.”

This apparent chastisement did not sit well with some in the Pope’s camp. A Vatican spokesman first cast doubt on whether the relics of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus had ever been in Constantinople in the first place. Instead, he claimed, the relics had been translated (the technical term for moving relics from one place to another) to Rome for safe-keeping in the eighth century by Greeks nuns. Other accounts, however, insist that in 950 his relics were moved from his birthplace at Nazianzus to Constantinople and were subsequently seized by the Crusaders and taken to Rome. As for the relics of Saint John Chrysostom, the spokesman would only allow that they had been translated to Rome “at the time of the Latin empire of Constantinople.” He also insisted that the relics had not been stolen, since according to well-established Catholic belief relics could not be translated unless the relics themselves, which were believed to possess spiritual power, allowed it to happen. Ultimately, it was God’s Will that the relics had ended up in Rome. Thus while the Pope was apologizing for the sack of Constantinople in 1204 he was not apologizing for the translation of the relics to Rome. The return of the relics was a good-will gesture only and not an admittance of any wrong doing. This point being made, the relics of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus were, as planned, handed over to Patriarch Benjamin on November 27, 2004, and they now reside, apparently of their own volition, at the Patriarchial Cathedral of St. George in the Fener district of Istanbul. Thus have the events of 1204 reverberated down to the twentieth-first century. 

—

Although the relics of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus ended up in Rome, innumerable other relics were translated to Venice—stolen, in less technical terms—by the Enrico Dandolo-led Venetians. Relics were, of course, just part of  the Vast Array Of Loot seized during the sack of Constantinople and transported back to Venice, much of which is still on display in the city to this day. But relics may have had a special importance to Enrico Dandolo, since his family had long been involved in the “translation” of religious artifacts to Venice, and indeed the rise to prominence of the Dandolo Family was due at least in part to the honor bestowed upon it by what in the eyes of their fellow Venetians were these acts of religious piety. Thus when Enrico Dandolo translated relics to Venice he was just continuing a tradition initiated long before by his illustrious family. 

Turkey | Istanbul | Snow Storm

From Antalya I wandered back to Istanbul, where I thought I would stay for a day or two before wandering on. Instead I got caught up in one of the Biggest Snowstorms In Recent Memory. At my hotel there was at least sixteen inches of snow on the ground and reportedly there were 120 centimeters (47 inches) in some parts of the city. All this in a city built on hills (seven of them, like Rome) and not that well equipped for handling snow. Over 800 flights were cancelled in and out of Istanbul’s two airports. This was quite a contrast with Istanbul In January of 2014 when the temperatures reached the low 70s F. and irises were in bloom.

Hagia Sophia in the snow. This was the first morning of the blizzard, when only about six inches of snow had fallen (click on photos for enlargements).

Palm trees taking a beating during the blizzard

Blue Mosque in the distance

For the first time in all my years of coming to Istanbul the famous fish sandwich restaurants near the Galata Bridge were closed.

The fisherman on the Galata Bridge were still out in force. It would take more than a blizzard to drive them off. 

Crampons and iceaxes would have come in handy on the steep streets of Galata, north of the Golden Horn.

View from my hotel

My hotel in Istanbul

 Istanbul’s legendary street dogs were given temporary shelter from the storm at an up-scale mall (not my photo).

Turkey | Hasankeyf | Update

The NYTimes has an disturbing story about Hasankeyf, which I visited back in June of 2014. See Dam Project Threatens to Submerge Thousands of Years of Turkish History. Sound like the town itself could be submerged. The fate of the ancient ruins above the town is uncertain. Glad I got there when I did.

The town of Hasankeyf, on the banks for the Tigris River, from the ruins of the ancient city (click on photo for enlargement)

Turkey | Nusaybin | White Water | Beyazsu | Fish Restuarant

After visiting Nusaybin and the Church of St. Jacob on the Turkish-Syrian border we stopped at one of the famous fish restaurants on the Beyazsu (White Water) River north of  the city.

Most of the restaurants on the Beyazu grow their own trout in water tanks fed by the Beyazsu River (click on image for enlargements).

Trout in the tanks. After you order they are netted and prepared for the table.

Most of the restaurants feature river-side dining.

River-side tables

River-side tables

River-side table where we dined

You might think this place was just for show and that the food would be an afterthought, but not so. This was one of the better restaurant meals I have had in years. Actually we ordered the Kurdish equivalent of Surf-n-Turf. The lamb kabobs are not shown here.

Turkey | Nusaybin | Conflict

Back in the Spring of 2014 I visited Nusaybin On The Turkish-Syrian Border. Nusaybin is the modern Turkish name of the city. Most of the residents of the city, however, are either Kurds, Syriacs (also known as Chaldeans, Assyrians, or Arameans, not to be confused with Syrians) or Arabs. The Kurdish name for the city is Nisêbîn. During Roman and Byzantine times the city was known as Nisibis. I was in town to visit the Church of St. Jacob and the ruins of the old School of Nisibis, which local boosters and Others try to claim was the world’s first university. It might well have been the first university in what is now Turkey. It was founded by St. Jacob in the first half of the fourth century A.D. Jacob (d. 338) had been appointed bishop of the Christian community of Nisibis in 309. In addition to founding the university, he also, according to local sources, built the church which still stands near the ruins of the School of Nisibis. Jacob was one of the signatories at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. If you are a Christian and attend Christian services you will probably at some point repeat at least part of the Nicene Creed, which was formulated at the First Council of Nicaea. St. Jacob was also the first Christian to search for Noah’s Ark. He claimed he found a piece of the Ark on Mt. Judi, about seventy miles north of Nisibis. What eventually happened to this alleged relic is unknown.

 Coffin of St. Jacob in the catacombs beneath the Church of St. Jacob in Nusaybin (click on image for enlargements)

Back then the town was pretty peaceful. The only sign of civil war just across the border in Syria was the almost totally empty square next to the border crossing. Normally, I was told, the square would be full of traders from the Syrian town of Qamishli, just across the border, buying and selling goods.

Now comes the sad news that 496 people were killed in Nusaybin during clashes between the Turkish military and alleged members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). See Turkey Says It Ended Some Military Operations Against PKK. The Kurds who took me to Nusaybin had relatives in the city, whom we met while we were there. I can only hope that they were not somehow caught up in this conflict. 

Kurdish coffee sellers in the Nusaybin market

Turkey | Istanbul | Hagia Sophia | Enrico Dandolo

From the Obelisk of Theodosius I wandered east through Sultanahmet Square, soon passing by the the Kaiser Wilhelm Fountain, an octagonal domed structure built by the German government in 1900 to mark the German Emperor Wilhelm II's visit to Istanbul in 1898. Near here would have stood the starting gates used for horse and chariot races in the old Byzantine Hippodrome which occupied the area now taken up by Sultanahmet Square. 

Mounted above the starting gates were larger-than-life size copper statues of four horses. Their provenance is unclear (an Entire Book has been written on this issue and the horses in general) but they were probably made in what is now Greece and used to ornament some monumental structure there. Greece having been subsumed by the Byzantines, Theodosius II, the same Theodosius who built the Land Walls, expropriated the horses and had them moved to Constantinople, where they were used to ornament the Hippodrome. When the Crusaders and Venetians sacked Constantinople in 1204 the horses were claimed as war booty by the Venetians and taken to Venice, where they can still be found today.

 An artist’s rendering of the Hippodrome starting gates. The horses can be seen on top of the gate in the middle. The dome of Hagia Sophia is behind, to the right  (click on photos for enlargements).

Leaving Sultanahmet Square I arrive at the entrance to Hagia Sophia, the immense church built in the  a.d. 530s by Justinian I. It is now a museum. One of the architectural wonders of the world, it is visited by millions of people a year—3,574,043 visitors in 2014. Usually around opening time there is a line of several hundred people waiting to get in. Today, three days after the suicide bombing at the nearby Column of Theodosius, there is no one in line. I have been inside Hagia Sophia several times, but each time it was crowded with hundreds, of not thousands of people. I thought today, when it would not be so crowded,  might be a good day to visit again. Inside I was surprised to find several hundred people, almost all of them members of tour groups. They had apparently arrived right at opening time and used a special entrance reserved for guided groups. I spent an hour or so wandering around the ground floor, studying the many stone pillars ransacked from various lands conquered by the Byzantines, and then climb the broad stone staircase to the South Gallery. 

Hagia Sophia

On the east wall of the western buttress in the South Gallery can be seen the mosaic known as the Deesis. It probably dates to the fourteenth century. John Freely, author of Strolling through Istanbul, considers it “one of the very greatest works of art produced in Byzantium.” Only part of the mosaic has survived, but we can see Christ in the middle flanked by Mary and St. John the Baptist.

The Deesis: Christ in the middle, Mary on the left; St. John the Baptist on the right

Detail of the Deesis

Everyone who visits the South Gallery stops and gazes at the Deesis, most taking photos with their smart phones or iPads. Almost no one notices a small tombstone set level with the floor at the base of the buttress facing the Deesis. Most walk by it without a glance. Few realize that it is a memorial to the man who instigated what may well be the greatest crime ever perpetrated in the name of Christianity. I am speaking of Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo and Sack of Constantinople in 1204. John Freely:

Set into the pavement just opposite to the Deesis is the tomb of the man who ruined Byzantium. Carved in Latin letters on the broken lid of a sarcophagus there, we see the illustrious name, HENRICUS DANDALO. Dandalo, Doge of Venice, was one of the leaders of the Fourth Crusade and was the one chiefly responsible for persuading the Latins to attack Constantinople in the years 1203–4. After the final capture of Constantinople on 13 April 1204, Baldwin of Flanders was crowned in Haghia Sophia as Emperor of Rumania, as the Latins called the portion of the Byzantine Empire which they had conquered. But the Latin Emperor did not reign supreme even in his capital city, for three-eighths of Constantinople, including the church of Haghia Sophia, was awarded to the Venetians and ruled by Dandalo. The old Doge now added the title of Despot to his name and thereafter styled himself “Lord of the fourth and a half of all the Roman Empire.” But proud Dandalo had little time to lord it over his fractional kingdom, for he died the following year, 16 June 1205, and was buried in the gallery of Haghia Sophia. After the Conquest, according to tradition, Dandalo’s tomb was broken open and his bones thrown to the dogs.

 Memorial to Enrico Dandolo

Detail of Enrico Dandolo

 We might assume that whatever marker covered his tomb was also destroyed. The current tombstone was installed later, when and by whom is it not clear (if anyone has any information about this please let me know). Thus the marker here in the South Gallery is not actually the grave of Enrico Dandolo (or Dandalo; both spelling occur in the literature) but rather a memorial to him. From the memorial I walk over to the balcony and gaze down on the hundreds of people milling around the floor of Hagia Sophia. The scene on April 13, 1204, would have been quite different. We have the account of the Byzantine historian Niketas or Nicetas Choniates (1155–1217), who was an eye-witness to the Sack of Constantinople:

What then should I recount first and what last of those things dared at that time by these murderous men? O, the shameful dashing to earth of the venerable icons and the flinging of the relics of the saints, who had suffered for Christ's sake, into defiled places! How horrible it was to see the Divine Body and Blood of Christ poured out and thrown to the ground! These forerunners of Antichrist, chief agents and harbingers of his anticipated ungodly deeds, seized as plunder the precious chalices and patens; some they smashed, taking possession of the ornaments embellishing them, and they set the remaining vessels on their tables to serve as bread dishes and wine goblets. Just as happened long ago, Christ was now disrobed and mocked, his garments were parted, and lots were cast for them by this race; and although his side was not pierced by the lance, yet once more streams of Divine Blood poured to the earth.
The report of the impious acts perpetrated in the Great Church are unwelcome to the ears. The table of sacrifice, fashioned from every kind of precious material and fused by fire into one whole-blended together into a perfection of one multicolored thing of beauty, truly extraordinary and admired by all nations-was broken into pieces and divided among the despoilers, as was the lot of all the sacred church treasures, countless in number and unsurpassed in beauty. They found it fitting to bring out as so much booty the all-hallowed vessels and furnishings which had been wrought with incomparable elegance and craftsmanship from rare materials. In addition, in order to remove the pure silver which overlay the railing of the bema, the wondrous pulpit and the gates, as well as that which covered a great many other adornments, all of which were plated with gold, they led to the very sanctuary of the temple itself mules and asses with packsaddles; some of these, unable to keep their feet on the smoothly polished marble floors, slipped and were pierced by knives so that the excrement from the bowels and the spilled blood defiled the sacred floor. Moreover, a certain silly woman laden with sins, an attendant of the Erinyes, the handmaid of demons, the workshop of unspeakable spells and reprehensible charms, waxing wanton against Christ, sat upon the synthronon and intoned a song, and then whirled about and kicked up her heels in dance.
It was not that these crimes were committed in this fashion while others were not, or that some acts were more heinous than others, but that the most wicked and impious deeds were perpetrated by all with one accord. Did these madmen, raging thus against the sacred, spare pious matrons and girls of marriageable age or those maidens who, having chosen a life of chastity, were consecrated to God? Above all, it was a difficult and arduous task to mollify the barbarians with entreaties and to dispose them kindly towards us, as they were highly irascible and bilious and unwilling to listen to anything. Everything incited their anger, and they were thought fools and became a laughingstock. He who spoke freely and openly was rebuked, and often the dagger would be drawn against him who expressed a small difference of opinion or who hesitated to carry out their wishes.
The whole head was in pain. There were lamentations and cries of woe and weeping in the narrow ways, wailing at the crossroads, moaning in the temples, outcries of men, screams of women, the taking of captives, and the dragging about, tearing in pieces, and raping of bodies heretofore sound and whole. They who were bashful of their sex were led about naked, they who were venerable in their old age uttered plaintive cries, and the wealthy were despoiled of their riches. Thus it was in the squares, thus it was on the corners, thus it was in the temples, thus it was in the hiding places; for there was no place that could escape detection or that could offer asylum to those who came streaming in.
O Christ our Emperor, what tribulation and distress of men at that time! The roaring of the sea, the darkening and dimming of the sun, the turning of the moon into blood, the displacement of the stars—did they not foretell in this way the last evils? Indeed, we have seen the abomination of desolation stand in the holy place, rounding off meretricious and petty speeches and other things which were moving definitely, if not altogether, contrariwise to those things deemed by Christians as holy and ennobling the word of faith.
Such then, to make a long story short, were the outrageous crimes committed by the Western armies against the inheritance of Christ.

The Crusader State established in 1204 by Enrico Dandolo and his co-conspirators lasted until 1261, when Constantinople was retaken by the Byzantines. But a candle always flickers most brightly one last time just before it goes out, and Byzantium soon proved itself to be a spent force. On May 29, 1453 Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror entered Constantinople and claimed it for Islam. He himself rode into Hagia Sophia and ordered that it be turned into a mosque. After 1123 years Byzantium was gone forever, and what is now Turkey became part of the Muslim geosphere.

As John Julius Norwich put it in Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, volume three of his magisterial history of the Byzantine Empire:

There are few greater ironies in History than the fact that the fate of Eastern Christendom should have been sealed—and half of Europe condemned to some five hundred years of Muslim rule—by men who fought under the banner of the Cross. Those men were transported, inspired, encouraged, and ultimately led by Enrico Dandolo in the name of the Venetian Republic; and, just as Venice derived the major advantage from the tragedy, so she and her magnificent old doge must accept the responsibility for the havoc that they have wrought on the world.

Among the vast amount of loot claimed by Enrico Dandolo were the four copper statues of horses that graced the Hippodrome. As mentioned above, they are now in Venice. While standing there overlooking the floor of Hagia Sophia I decide I must go to Venice to see the horses and the birthplace of Enrico Dandolo, the man who has had such an incalculable effect on world history.