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The East, the West, and the Appropriation of the Past in Early Ottoman Architecture Author(S): Robert Ousterhout Reviewed Work(S): Source: Gesta, Vol

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The East, the West, and the Appropriation of the Past in Early Ottoman Architecture Author(S): Robert Ousterhout Reviewed Work(S): Source: Gesta, Vol The East, the West, and the Appropriation of the Past in Early Ottoman Architecture Author(s): Robert Ousterhout Reviewed work(s): Source: Gesta, Vol. 43, No. 2 (2004), pp. 165-176 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the International Center of Medieval Art Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067103 . Accessed: 25/11/2012 17:58 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press and International Center of Medieval Art are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Gesta. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.226 on Sun, 25 Nov 2012 17:58:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The East, theWest, and the Appropriation of the Past in Early Ottoman Architecture ROBERTOUSTERHOUT University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Abstract nean history; as Deborah Howard insists, "The concept of East and West remains fundamental to our political, ideolog As the Ottoman state emerged in the fourteenth and fifteenth ical and cultural framework."2 These categories are linked it encountered the medieval cultures centuries, contemporary, to geography only superficially, however; the fundamental of Western Europe and Byzantium, as well as the past, clas difference lies in radically opposing viewpoints on govern sical cultures of northwest Asia Minor. An examination of ment, economy, and ethics. Moreover, these early Ottoman architecture, including the construction of new religion, catego as its own works, adaptation of existing buildings, and attitudes expressed ries shifted each Mediterranean culture fashioned toward older monuments, helps to clarify the nature of the worldview. They could function as part of a binary opposition encounter. The Ottoman the be appropriation of past may in the assertion of political identity, but they could also take understood as a part of their symbolic control of the land and on increasing importance as that identity was compromised. as an attempt to themselves within the larger context position In classical Asia and the East were of world history as the rightful heirs of the Roman/Byzantine antiquity, symbolized a Empire. by Troy and signified Troy; the Trojan War became potent metaphor enlisted in times of conflict and conquest. As Brian Rose has demonstrated, the site of the Trojan War provided a a on Is the past really foreign country? Consider the follow potent symbolic station-stop for autocratic rulers the move.3 ing incident. In 1463, a decade after the Ottoman capture of The Perisan king Xerxes offered sacrifices to Athena Ilias and Constantinople, when Mehmet the Conqueror was on expedi to the Trojan heroes on his way westward in an attempt to tion toMitylene, he diverted his army and crossed the Helles conquer Greece in 480 bce. It is unclear if he identified the pont to visit Ilium, the site of ancient Troy (Fig. 1). There was Trojans as his fellow Asiatics, as Mehmet later did, although at best a poor village on the site at that time, but Mehmet was this seems likely; they were linked by their wars against the more concerned to see "its ruins and the traces of the ancient Greeks.4 Alexander the Great clearly identified with the Greeks city" as well as the tombs of the heroes?"Achilles and Ajax on his eastward campaign in 334 bce; at Troy he sacrificed and the rest," whom he praised and congratulated. Then, to Athena Ilias and King Priam and then reenacted the funeral according to his biographer Kritovoulos, games of Patroklos.5 The Romans saw themselves as the de scendants of the Trojans, and following the Roman conquest He is reported to have said, shaking his head a little, of Asia Minor, they acknowledged Troy as Rome's mother "God has reserved for me through so long a period of city; consequently the pilgrimage to Troy became an ideolog years the right to avenge this city and its inhabitants. ical necessity for traveling Roman rulers. Julius Caesar visited For I have subdued their enemies and have plundered the site, and Suetonius later claimed Caesar had considered their cities and have made them the spoils of the My moving the capital there. The rebuilding of Troy by his heir sians. It was the Greeks and Macedonians and Thes Augustus reflects the unprecedented emphasis he placed on salians and Peloponnesians who ravaged this place in his Trojan ancestry, and it coincides with the writing of the the past, and whose descendants have now through my Aeneid. Hadrian stopped at Troy, followed by Caracalla, who efforts paid the just penalty after a long period of years, visited in 214, on his way to battle the Parthians, repeating the for their injustices to us Asiatics at that time and so rituals performed by Alexander. Whether successful in their often in or subsequent times."1 ambitions not, for each of these visitors, the legend of Troy and notions of East and West were significant cultural con Mehmet's words resonate against the backdrop of legen structs underlying their concepts of empire and dominion. dary Troy, which stood as a historical flashpoint in East-West The idea of the Eastern/Trojan ancestry of the Romans relations?or inMehmet's terms, Asiatic-Greek relations. The must have been in the mind of Constantine as well, as he geographic polarity signaled by Mehmet's comments repre founded a new capital, Constantinople, in the East, and the sents a remarkably persistent cultural construct inMediterra public monuments he imported to decorate his new city may GESTA XLIII/2 ? The International Center of Medieval Art 2004 165 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.226 on Sun, 25 Nov 2012 17:58:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions " ??5S?$\ -^l&A7???^?Z-- 3??S? =2i-'-t:r; ? -'..'-.ve -rS?rc <? $*& ii,irev ''ft'?? FIGURE 1. V/ew o/ r/i? archaeological site of Troy (photo: author). FIGURE 2. Istanbul, Hippodrome, view in 1574, showing Hagia Sophia, Obelisk of Theodosius, Serpent Column, and Masonry Obelisk. Freshfield Album, drawing 21, Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS 0.17.2 (photo: Trinity College Library). 166 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.226 on Sun, 25 Nov 2012 17:58:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ? 4^^SS?| ?S*sfHr*? ^.a?:r FIGURE 3. iznik, Haci ?zbek Camii, historie photograph by G. Berggren (from collection of A. A. M. Bryer). reflect this. The Serpent Column in the Hippodrome, for ex destiny.10 As Sarah Bassett argues, early Constantinople was ample, called to mind the conflict of the Greeks and the Per very much an intellectual construct, one that "grew up around . sians. Itwas originally erected in Delphi to commemorate the the intersection of history and myth that makes the city Battle of Plataea in 479 bce, in which the army of Xerxes the last link in a chain of destiny that stretched from Troy to was defeated, an event that was viewed at the time as the Rome."11 victory of the rational, democratic, civilized Westerners?the The question I would like to pose in this paper is, what Greeks?over the irrational, uncivilized, despotic Easterners? did Mehmet think he was doing at Troy? The culturally con the Persians (Fig. 2).6 The foundation of Constantinople fol structed competitive discourse between East and West briefly lowed on Constantine's vanquishing his eastern co-emperor outlined above makes sense in the context of classical antiq and rival Licinius in 324, an event presented in terms similar uity, from Xerxes to Constantine, with its established attitudes to the Greek victory over the Persians, as the triumph of jus and prejudices. But why would the classical past have been tice over tyranny. In the political propaganda of the period, appropriated in the establishment of the Ottoman Empire? Licinius was portrayed as a cruel and depraved despot, the How did a formerly migratory tribe, whose origins may be enemy of the civilized world.7 Perhaps most interesting in traced to central Asia, come to situate themselves within this context of historic destiny and potent political symbol the matrix of Western civilization? An examination of early ism, Constantine is said to have considered establishing his Ottoman architecture, including both the construction of new new capital at Troy.8 Much of the borrowed symbolism in early works and the appropriation of existing buildings, may help Constantinople referred to the Trojan legend, such as the to answer this question. As I shall argue, the Ottoman appro sculptural program in the main public bathing institution, the priation of the past may be understood as part of their sym Baths of Zeuxippos.9 bolic appropriation of the land and as an attempt to position In addition to a variety of Trojan themes in its public themselves within the larger context of world history as the sculpture, the colossal statue of Constantine once displayed rightful heirs of the Roman/Byzantine Empire. atop the porphyry column in his forum is also claimed to have The beginning of the Ottoman state in the late thirteenth come from Troy; the base of the statue is said to have con century may be characterized as a period of cultural overlap.12 tained the palladium, the ancient wooden guardian statue As the Ottomans settled in the Byzantine territory in north associated with Troy and its fortunes, later with Rome and its west Anatolia, they adopted the Greek administration of the 167 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.226 on Sun, 25 Nov 2012 17:58:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions region, and the population remained largely mixed.
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