The person charging this material is re- 
 sponsible for its return to the library from 
 which it was withdrawn on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. 
 
 Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books 
 are reasons 'or disciplinary action and may 
 result in dismissal from the University. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 BUILDING USE ONLY 
 
 
 r 
 
 \ 
 
 
 L161 — 0-1096 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
HE BYZANTINE INFLUENCE UPON OTTOMAN 
 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD LEWIS ALDRICH 
 
 THESIS 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS 
 
 IN 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 1920 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ♦ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT. 
 
 The most compel -nt of students cannot undertake a 
 study and bring it to a finish without assistance from 
 others. Therefore, a novice has a double obligation for 
 the greater ammount of criticism necessary for his work. 
 
 commuer/v*-' 
 
 This thesis has received much criticism from Professor 
 Albert Howe Lybyer, of the department of History. Assistant 
 Professor Rexford Newcomb of the Department of Architecture 
 pointed out carefully the many dangers to be found indeal- 
 ing with architecture historically. Miss Winifred Fehren- 
 kamp has been more than merely professionally obliging 
 with regard to material in the Architectural Library. In 
 Chicago, Mr. Lionel Robertson made it possible for me to 
 see many objects of Byzantine art which would have been 
 inaccessible without his aid. 
 

 
 
 
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/byzantineinfluenOOaldr 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Adams, Henry "Mount Saint Michel and Chartres” 
 
 Houghton, Mifflin Co., Hew York, 1913. 
 
 Begni, Ernesto, "The Vatican” Hew. Yor*,1914. 
 
 Bell. Edward , "The Architecture of Ancient Egypt” 
 
 G. Bell and Sons, London 1915. 
 
 Beylie,Leon, ”L' habitation byzantin” 1902. 
 
 Boi to , Camillo , "The Basilica of Saint Mark" 1988. 
 
 Calvert , Albert , " Moorish Remains in Soain" 
 
 John Lane Co., London, 1906. 
 
 Chipiez , Charles , "History of Art in Persia” 
 
 Chapman and Hall , London, 1892. 
 
 Coll ingwood, William Gresham, "The Philosophy of Ornament", 
 G. Allen, Orpington, Kent , 1883. 
 
 Conway, Sir William Martin, "The Domain of Art" 
 
 J. Murray , London, 1913. 
 
 Curzon,The Hon. G.K. , "Persia and the Persian Question" 
 London,1892. 
 
 Dalton, Ormunde Haddock, "By zantine Art and Archaeology" 
 
 -n-i.vn ? lar S3£°£ Press , Oxford , 1911 . 
 
 Diehl , Charles, "Etudes Byzant ms” , 
 
 A.Picaud et fils , Paris , 1905. 
 
 Dieulafoy, Marcel, "L'Art Antique de la Perse" 
 
 Paris, 1884. 
 
 D ' Av ennes , pr i s se , "L'Art Arabe", 
 
 V. Morel et Cie. , Paris, 1878. 
 
 Flanigan, J,F. , " The Origin of the Early By zantine Silk Loom", 
 The Burlington Magazine ,Vol. XXXV, October , 1919. 
 
 Purges son, James, "A History of Architecture", 
 
 Dodd, Mead and Co., Lew York, 1907. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward , "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", 
 Macmillan Co., Hew York, 1914. 
 
 Hamlin, A. D .F . , "A History of Ornament", 
 
 The Century Co., Hew York, 1916. 
 
 Harvey, Lethaby, and others, "The Church of the nativity", 
 
 B. T. Bat sf or d, London, 1913. 
 
 Jackson , Thomas Graham, "By zantine and Roamnesriue Architecture 
 Cambridge University Press, 1915. 
 
 Xluchev sky , V . 0 . , "A History of Russia", 
 
 J.M.Dent and Sons, London, 1913. 
 
 Longfellow, W.P.P. , "An Encyclopedia of Art in Italy, Greece, 
 and the Levant" . Charles Scribners’ Sons, U^w York, 1895. 
 Lybyer , Albert Howe, "The Government of the Ottoman Eraoire", 
 The harvard University press. 
 
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 •• 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Ricci , Corado , "Art in Northern Italy", 
 
 Charles Scribners’ Sons, New York, 1911. 
 
 Rockhill.W.W. , "The Jouney of 7/illiam of Rubruck", 
 
 Printed for the Hakluyt Society , London, 1900 . 
 
 Rivoira ,0. , "Moslem Architecture" , 
 
 Humphrey Milford , London, London, 1910. 
 
 Robert son, Alexander , "The Bible of Saint Mark," 
 
 Dodd, Mead and Co., Lew York, 1898. 
 
 Scot t, Leader , "Cathedral Builders", 
 
 Charles Scribners ' Sons, New York, 1899. 
 
 Struges, Russel, "A Dictionary of Architecture and Building". 
 
 Texier and Pullman, "By zantine Architecture" 
 
 London, 1864. 
 
 Timur the Emperor , "Institutes" 
 
 Daniel Stuart , Calcutta, 1785. 
 
 Van Millingen, Alexander , "Byzantine Constantinople", 
 
 J. Mur ray , London, 1899 . 
 
 Verneith-Puiraseau.Fel ix de , "L ' Architecture byzantin en France" 
 V.Didrin, Par is, 1850. 
 
 Violiet -le-Duc , "LlArt Russe", 
 
 (/ V. A. Morel, Paris, 1899. 
 
 Vogue , Melchoir de,"Les Eglises de la Terre Sainte", 
 
 / V.Didron, Paris, 1840. 
 
 Vogue, Melchoir de,"La Syrie Centrale", 
 
 Koblet et Baudry , Paris, 1865. 
 
 Ward , James. "Historic Ornament " , 
 
 Chapamn and Hall , London, 19C 9. 
 
 Williams , Leonard , "The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain", 
 A.C.McClurg and Co., New York, 1908. 
 
 Young, J. J. , "The Ceremie Art ".Harper and Brother, New York, 1897. 
 
 Curtin, Jeremiah, "The Mongols in Russia", 
 
 Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1908. 
 
 D ' Ohsson, Baron G.,"Histoire des Mongols", 
 
 Frederick Mueller .Amsterdam, 1852. 
 
 Dwight ,H.G. , "Constantinople Old and New", 
 
 Charles Scribners' Sons , New York, 1915. 
 
 Foord, Edward , "The Byzantine Emoire", 
 
 Adam and Charles Black, London, 1911. 
 
 Kimball and Sdgell,"A History of Architecture", 
 
 Har per and Brothers, New York, 1918. 
 
 Gurlitt, Cornelius , "Die Baukunst Constantinopels" . 
 
 Four volumes of Plates. 
 

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THE BYZANTINE INFLUENCE UPON OTTOMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 I 
 
 Introduction 
 
 I I 
 
 A historical sketch cf the architectural development in 
 the East . . Empire from the third to the fourteenth cent- 
 ury. 
 
 1. The Roman element. 
 
 (a) Its rapid modification. 
 
 2. The Syrian element. 
 
 (a) The origin . 
 
 (b) The application. 
 
 3. The Persian element. 
 
 4. A resume of the culmination cf these elements. 
 
 5. The confluence of these elements into the Byzantine arch- 
 
 itecture of the sixth century. 
 
 6. The transition from the sixth to the tenth century. . 
 
 7. The slight Seljuk element ir. the architecture of the later 
 
 East Roman Empifce. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Ottoman Turks, and their coming into the Byzantine world. 
 
 1. Their early Asiatic envcirnment. 
 
 (a) The art of barbarian culture, 
 
 2. Their migrations in the Mongol dispersions. 
 
 (a) The influence encountered in the transition, especially 
 under the Sassanids. 
 
 3. The sojourn in Bithynia. 
 
 (a) The contact here with the Greek and the Seljuk influences. 
 
 I V 
 
 The general state of culture in the later days of the Empire, 
 
 1, A view of Byzantine society in the fifteenth century. 
 
 2. The attitude of the Ottoman Turks toward the civisilaticn 
 
 cf the Byzantine Empire. 
 

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V 
 
 The architecture of the Ottoman Turks. 
 
 1. The buildings of Brusa and Adrianople. 
 
 2. The buildings of Mohammed II. 
 
 (a) The confiscation cf the Christian Churches. 
 
 (1) The fate of the Church cf the Apostles. 
 
 (b) The new foundations. 
 
 (1) The mosque of Mohammed II. 
 
 (a) Christopoulcs. 
 
 (1) His Byzantine structure model. 
 
 (2) The decoration of the mosque. 
 
 3. The mosque of Bsyazid I and of Selim I ; the mosque of 
 Eycub. 
 
 4. Architecture under Suleiman and Si nan. 
 
 (a) The Suleimanieh. 
 
 (b) Other works of Sir.an. 
 
 (c) The^.rt of Sinan. 
 
 (1) His reliance upon Sancta Sophia. 
 
 (2) His decoration. 
 
 5. Later Ottoman biuldir.gs. 
 
 (a) The great mosques. 
 
 (b) The lesser Imperial and commemorative mosques. 
 
 (c) Civil and domestic architecture. 
 
 (d) The tombs. 
 
 V I 
 
 The Byzantine character of Ottoman architecture. 
 
 1. The lack of an original Turkish art of building. 
 
 (a) Their late arrival in Europe prevented the growth 
 of a completely different style of architecture. 
 
 2. The extent and significance of Byzantine architecture 
 
 at the time of the Turkish conquest. 
 
 3. The genius of the Turks in adopting and modifying the 
 
 indigenous Byzantine art. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
TH -6 ] BYZANTINE INFLUENCE UPON OTT OMAN ARCH ITECTURE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Many studies which are written uoon historical 
 subjects are concerned with explaining the politic- 
 al mechanism which controls the life of a peoole.it 
 takes a considerable effort’ on the part of the average 
 student to secure the full comprehension of historical 
 study. Re realises that even in a democratic country, 
 the place that political thinking occupies in daily 
 life is comparatively small, and yet, in his study of that 
 people the oolitical activities hold by far the greatest 
 emphasis. If politics, in general, have little concern for 
 life today,the analogy , suggested by the cynicism of his- 
 tory that there is no improvement in the nature of man, 
 relates the same condition in the past. This paradox oro- 
 vokes a search for a sounder view. 
 
 T Ahat is history? Clearly , the conception of the 
 study as one related exclusively to records, oast and 
 present, is not fully competent; and while it may be un- 
 wise to attempt an arbitrary definition.it is pertinent 
 that the study of history has a function 
 
 that is more than that of an account. Its function is not 
 
 only to relate facts, but to set them in their groups, also, 
 and to start them moving as lines of force. 
 
' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
These lineB are incised deepest upon sooiety in the lives of 
 the masses of people. 
 
 It is by regarding history as a sort of map of tendencies 
 that one may understand the objectivity sometimes attributed 
 to the study, — that of explaining the present. In any period, 
 the nearest that one may approach to infalli bility in history 
 is by means of a sound knowledge of its art. It is only in 
 its art that a people leaves an accurate record of themselves. 
 
 The aim of this essay is to point out an artistic in- 
 fluence expressing much of the life of one people, and to 
 show how forcefully it has become the chief expression of 
 a totally different nation. In that group of ideas and char- 
 acteristics which represents the Turkish nation, there are 
 two of particular importance: one is a respect for law; the 
 other, an ability for adaptation, whether it be in military 
 matters, in religion, or in manner of expression. The Eyzantine 
 influence in Ottoman architecture may seem a rather obvious 
 force in the history of art, but in treating of the subject, 
 one sees a very important phase in the development of the 
 Turkish people, and in their art, the hand of the living past. 
 
. 
 
 - 
 
 : 
 
 
3 
 
 A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ARCHITECTURAL DEVELOPMENT 
 IN THE EAST ROMAN EMPIRE FROM THE THIRD TO 
 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 % 
 
 In the East, as well as in the West, the parent archi- 
 tectural style upon which the architecture of the Christian 
 era rests is that of the Roman builders. When they began to 
 assume the political control of Greece, Thrace, and Syria, 
 the Romans found in those countries a style of construction 
 which had been derived from structures of Greek origin. For 
 the comparatively few public buildings which the Hellenic 
 world found it necessary to erect for their needs, the Greek 
 manner of building, with its perfection of light and shade 
 arrangement, its balance of decoration, and its simplicity, 
 had been admirable. The Greek temple was a work of art as 
 well as a work of utility; the Remans, however, while quite 
 able to appreciate the value of a somewhat less refined beauty 
 in architecture, were unable to give to it the attention and 
 care which any art must have. Their mission in the former 
 empire of Alexander was to control it for the purpose of keep- 
 ing the peace, and to exploit the country for its wealth; to 
 take too much effort for a mere structure 3eemed to them to 
 be ridiculous. Consequently, architects as well as other 
 students of art have been accustomed to call the building 
 
; ’ 
 
 i . 1 
 
 , i , / 
 
 * - 
 
7 
 
 activities of the Romans in Asia Minor and Syria degenerate 
 when placed for comparison beside the structures of the 
 acropolis of Pergamum or the temple at Ephesus. So they are, 
 from the point of view that a civic structure must be near 
 perfect in the artistic sense. To the Roman governor of 
 Syria, however, the problem was one of immediate practicability. 
 The temples in his province were buildings for a formal state 
 worship; the other buildings were converted from those reared 
 by the conquered peoples of the province, save for the palaces, 
 theatres and baths which were erected at a later period for 
 enjoyment rather than for administration. For after the time 
 of Augustus the Greek kingdoms of the Esst became integral 
 parts of the Empire, not merely military districts; the cities 
 then fied with each other in their adornment. From the first,, 
 however, the eastern half of the Roman Empire had to be kept 
 under military surveillance, and this necessitated the erection 
 of many military stations. New settlements were made, such 
 as those on the frontier roads like Petra and Palmyra, on the 
 edge of the desert in the tran3-Jordan country. It is to the 
 civic architecture of these and older cities, before their 
 subsequent history in non-Roman hands, that we must look for 
 the beginnings of permanent Roman contributions to early 
 Christian architecture. 
 

A characteristic structure of Roman architecture was 
 
 theba silica* brought from Greece in the late days of the Roman 
 
 Republic! This structural form i9 known to have been employed 
 
 in building the forum basilicas which were used as law courts 
 
 and public gathering places, like the modern Exchange or the 
 2 
 
 Auditorium, as early as the year 184 B. C. Pliny names two 
 subsequent basilicas as the most notable buildings in the 
 city. Indeed, practically all of the civic buildings took 
 this form. It was essentially the form of a covered portico* 
 
 The two rows of columns of the portico bear each a superimposed 
 colonnade on which rests the roof. The eaves were extended 
 our from the top of the columns to a distance equal to about 
 half the width of the colonnade, so that they had to be sup- 
 ported by walls; thus they formed the covering of a wide aisle 
 on either side of the central aisle of the colonnade, later 
 called the nave. The side aisles returned at each end of the 
 building. A superficial glance revealed the basilicas as 
 simply a two story building in the shape of a parallelogram, 
 having a width a little more than a third of the length, and 
 covered by a shallow roof, supported between the walls by two 
 rows of columns? 
 
 1 In general, the Greek peristyle temple form was borrowed, but 
 
 seldom used, without modification; the cella was toe small. Un- 
 
 like the Greeks, the Romans did not always employ a complete 
 peristyle. Their temples thus recall those of Etruria. James 
 Fergusson, History of Architecture, Vol.,1, page 306. 
 
 2 R. Sturgis; "A Dictionary of Arch, and Building", page 224. 
 
 3 R. Sturgis; "A Dictionary of Arch, and Building", page 227. 
 
c 
 
 In the early examples, one end of the parallelogram 
 took the form of a semicircle, crowned by a hemispherical dome. 
 Here liT the Tribune 3at in the Roman days an officer of justice, 
 ready to hear the case of anyone who should seek him in this 
 public place. 
 
 After the days of Augustus there v;a3 a state of quiet 
 in the Eastern provinces, making for economic development and 
 consequently calling into need many more buildings. The mili- 
 tary cities such as Palmyra and Petra have been mentioned. 
 
 There are ruins of cities dating from the Roman period in the 
 Judean Negeb, through Palestine and Syria, and in Asia Minor; 
 their very names often supplement the evidence of their origin: 
 Tiber ias, Caesarea, Caesarea Phillipi, and Maximanopolis. 
 
 From the basilicas of these cities and many others affected 
 by the architectural phase of Roman occupation, the architecture 
 of the East Roman Empire grew, until it reached the end of its 
 development in the Neo- Byzantine style of the XIV century. 
 
 Lack of materials and the pressure of economy subsequently 
 perverted the basilica into a phantasm of its original form in 
 the East, so that it becomes an octagon or even a circle within 
 a square; nevertheless the transitions may be traced and account- 
 ed for by the examination of new factors. 
 
 To the student, the founding of new Rome on the shores 
 of the Bosphorus in 324 announces an interesting innovation 
 in construction. Constantine, in talking over the Christian 
 
 1 This adaptation may be observed actually in the Pompeian 
 
 excavations. Sometimes the exedra was adjoined the basilica, 
 not unlike the Apse of eccles is.st ical architecture. 
 

 
7 . 
 
 faith set aside the existing basilica type of temple. The cella 
 was usually too small for the congregation. The basilica w as 
 still needed, of course, for civic purposes 1 . The pre-Con- 
 stantine Christian edifices existed only by the sufferance of 
 the tolerant Emperors, persecutions swept them away in occasion- 
 al storms. Probably most of the early places of worship 
 were profa.ne structures employed when there seemed to be no 
 danger in public worship; there are, however, records 2 3 of a 
 few splendid structures before the conversion of Constantine. 
 Constantine's architects say the utility of the general 
 basilica plan, however, and employed its flexibility for form- 
 ing the plans of all of their structures. The later basilicas 
 differed accordingly from the one already described. The 
 exterior was built up by courses of unplastered brick, in place 
 of the stone courses of earlier days. In addition, there was 
 in the later plan a court or atrium in front, and the two 
 rows of columns in the central structure were covered by a 
 roof from under which the clerestory windows looked upon the 
 roof of the side aisles. The apse of the older churches was 
 placed at the western end of the basilica, and the altar stood 
 before the center of the apse chord? There grew to be more 
 
 1 Texier and Pullman( Byzantine architecture) p.12, in speak- 
 ing of the architectural activities of St. Helena and of 
 Constantine. "... but with the exception of the Lincinian 
 basilica at Rome, we know of no other law court that was 
 used for Christian worship". 
 
 2 The great church at Nicomedia as an example, was pulled 
 
 down under the edict of Diocletian. 
 
 3 St. Agatha, Ravenna, was agreed upon as the first church to 
 place the apse at the east end. This church was built in 
 417; the practice soon became general. 
 

 
 f 
 
 
 * • 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
s 
 
 cases cf the double side aisle, end a passage called the narthex, 
 at right angles to the nave, separating it and its aisles from 
 the atrium, as at the first St. Peter’s, in Rome 1, * 3 The church 
 was built by Constantine about sixteen yeare after the victory 
 at the Milvian Bridge, and it is a notable Christian adaptation 
 of the ancient basilica. Later, tnere were other changes 
 as the development of the ecclesiastical hierarchy became 
 crystalized. The altar and the apse were raised and shut off 
 as the chancel , and the choir, which was in front of the altar, 
 was also enclosed from the nave by a low wall. The cencelli, 
 the low wall separating the apse and the choir, became ex- 
 ceedingly rich andelaborate. A very dignified treatment of 
 it is that in the Byzantine cathdral of San Marco in Venice. 
 
 The material of the typical basilica was brick, and the roof 
 was usually of wood. Not only the structural materials, but 
 also the columns and decorations of the interior found their 
 way into the churches from the demolished pagan temples. 
 
 On these elements of Roman building there is yet one 
 more development of importance to the student of Byzantine 
 architecture. This element is the liberation of the arch 
 from the entablature, sn innovation made by the architects of 
 
 1 One of the most interesting churches in modern Rome is that 
 called St. Paolo fuori le Mura, which is a survival of the 
 
 age of Constantine, and possibly a contemporary structure 
 to the first basilica of St. Peter. The present building 
 is really a restoration, made after the burning of the 
 original in 1823. 
 
 3 This raised and enclosed apse forms the "berna" of churches 
 designed for the Greek ritual; the chavell becomes the 
 "iconostasis”. The entablature on the silver column of 
 the iconostasis al Santo haplia was used as a foot path for 
 the lamplighter at the Church. 
 

r 
 
 Diocletian at Spaleto in 303. The Roman builders had followed 
 
 a 
 
 the Greek manner of surmounting all capitals with an establa- 
 ture prior to the change; and in adopting the arch, the Romans 
 built it from the entablature surmounting the capitols of 
 the colonnade. Where the arch and the supporting pier had 
 been used together before, there had been no use of the order, 
 the construction being’ U3ed for aqueducts and bridges. On 
 no important structure prior had the arch, the order and the 
 entablature been employed without the fantastic interruption 
 of the space by the dividing entablature^. Thi3 simple change, 
 in architecture, was as important for that art as the aar- 
 ccphagus studies of Donatello were for sculpture, or the ex- 
 periments of Mantegna and Claude Lorraine have been for painting. 
 Basilicas of the tenth and eleventh centuries differ little 
 from those of the fourth. The style was unprogressive be- 
 cause it offered no important problems to its builders. As 
 Mr. Jackson remarks in his study of Romanesque Architecture, 
 the basilica demanded no skill superior to that of the brick- 
 layer (save possibly in the quadro spherical dome of the apse); 
 the exterior was barren. The interior of most early basilicas 
 was often as much of a review of vandal depredation containing 
 fine marbles, columns and capitols of ancient temples and 
 palaces as it was a display of architectural ability and taste. 
 Erected as most churches the period were in times of great 
 political and economic unrest, they are usually monuments to 
 
 1 In the church of Santo Spirito, Florence (Brunelleschi, built 
 ca. 1440) the use of this entablature block adds a c-ertain 
 richness* although it makes the columns top heavy, and on the 
 whole has a rather pedantic appearance. 
 

 - 
 
 t 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
/» 
 
 the seemingly apparently barren growth of early middle ages 
 save for ornamentation, there is little difference between 
 churches of the fourth century as S Apollonaire in Classe 
 at Ravenna, and the tenth century cathedral of Civita- Cas- 
 tellana, or the cathedral at Matera. In architecture, if 
 not in all ramifications of human endeavor, the Middle Ages 
 were dependent rather than creative, until the time when the 
 chaotic situation resulting from the fall of the Roman Empire, 
 the barbarian invasions, and the complete formation of the 
 Church should be compounded into a new soil for a notably 
 creative civilization, of which was to be a beautiful and 
 vigorous architecture. 
 
 Thus in the West, the styles made possible as Roman- 
 esque, Byzantine and Gothic had been potentially released 
 by the innovation in the immense praetorian camp-palace 
 of Diocletian. The basilica became the fortress- like church 
 in southern France where the style held forth until re- 
 placed by the Gothic, a process which seems to have been near- 
 ly complete by the thirteenth century. The transition from 
 the massive piles of the Romanesque structure to the slender 
 solemn edifices of Gothic mysticism — a change which Mr. 
 
 Mams describes as the passing of the Church Militant to 
 the Church Architectural -- is a record for the West of the 
 development of a new feeling for the faith, and at the same 
 time of the change in the nature of medieval society^-. But 
 in the East there were no Aoelards or Anselms, or men as 
 
 1 Henry Adams "Mount Saint Michel and Chartres" Chapter 1 and I I 
 
powerful as Saint Thomas Aquinas to rear a "Church Architect- 
 ural" by incorporating the canon as the skeleton of their 
 own vast theological structures. The Greek Church, through 
 the Middle Ages as today derives its strength from the early 
 Fathers, and there has been no cross current in their dynamic 
 force. Consequently, Sancta Sophia reflects less of univer- 
 sality for the Patriarchs then do the basilicas of Santa 
 Maria Maggiore or the cathedral of Chartres for the successors 
 of Saint Peter. If the Greek Church did not put forth a 
 new bloom of stimulated faith by penetrating to fresher soils, 
 its first source of nourishment in art and architecture was 
 very rich. The Greek world over which Greek Christianity 
 assumed power as its most potent force was filled with wealthy 
 cities after the new peace sufficient for the advanced urban 
 life of a settled civilization had been established by the 
 generals of Alexander. The building of the Hellenistic cities 
 were essentially Greek in the classical sense of building, and 
 consequently merged in with the modified basilica brought back 
 to the East by the Homan conquerors. Even under the Roman 
 Regime there was no very great change either in style or 
 construction to be noted. Although some localities such as 
 East central Syria grew no timber, the Roman builders could 
 
 import timber as well as trained men for their architectural 
 
 .. / 
 
 activities. De Vogue, who seems to have made the most valu- 
 
 able studies in the architecture of Asia Minor and Syria, 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
V- 
 
 remarks that the builders were driven in the later period 
 to the use of stone exclusevely^ . This meant the modificar- 
 ticn of the basilica to the extent of making it support 
 a roof of stone slabs. Arcades of a small interval took 
 the place of rafters; consequently* the Syrian building 
 became a framework of arches and its walls lost their chief 
 function, that of support. This modification is also 
 true in the temple of the Spalato palace. 0 The ceiling of 
 slabs, carried from the entablature to the walls, forms 
 at the same time the roof of the building. 
 
 So far as there is a distinct Syrian style, it is 
 entirely the result of this influence of material. The 
 basilicas used at first were shortened, and the dome be- 
 came an expedient to make up for the lack of wood. The 
 dome brought a new problem, however, for it had to be erected 
 within the basilica walls, a construction simplified consider- 
 ably when the parallelogram of the basilica was shortened 
 
 1 Immediately to the south of Damascus there are great fields 
 of basalt, from which material was quarried in abundance. 
 
 It is here that many cities like Zorah and Ezra arose in 
 the early centuries of the Christian Era. De Vogue "La 
 Syrie Centrale", Geological Maps, page 118. 
 
 2 Signor Rivoira declares this building to be free of all 
 Syrian influence; however, Mr. Jackson quotes M. Stryzgowski ? 
 M. Charle Diehl does likewise) that the palace was erected 
 
 by Syrian Greeks. These scholars are established authorities, 
 yet the viewpoint of Signor Rivoira and of M. Stryzgowski are 
 one hundred and eighty degrees apart. The palace is a 
 very important building. It is one of the most valuable 
 "documents" available to the student of architectural history. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 ( 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 t 
 
 
 
S3 
 
 into the square. An interesting development which grew out of 
 this problem and out of the expedients sought in replace the 
 former wooden roof construction was that of filling the corners 
 of the basilica with masonry in order to bring the form to an 
 octagon. The dome was then erected uoon the piers of a smaller 
 octagon built within the larger. At Bosra and Ezra (Zorah) in 
 the Hauran, there are two notable examples. It was not these 
 innovations, however, that the Greek Church wears as the richest 
 robe of her glory in the East Roman Empire. The vital clue 
 seems from the farther East. The old Persian method was to erect 
 a circular dome upon a square by means of t romps and squinches. 
 
 In Syria, where the problem was only a moderate one, the dome 
 rested upon slabs of stone laid across the original until the 
 square became a sedecimal figure. Merely the fact that the 
 dome was constructed in the Hauran, however, makes the art of this 
 district a penetrating voice acclaiming the influence of the 
 East upon tne West. Whatever structural influence from the 
 east may be seen in the Byzantine architecture must have crossed 
 the bridge of Syria. At once the most striking feature of 
 Persian architecture is the dome, the development of which in. 
 
 Syria has been explained as a structural expedient. At its 
 development in characteristic Persian buildings the dome stands 
 in height at least a distance equal to that of its horizontal 
 diameter; the top is extended into a point, not however, like 
 the domes of the Western churches, crowned with a lantern, 
 there are very few openings, and there is a slight indentation 
 at the base. Save for the last note, the domes bear a notable 
 likeness to the beehive in contour, and this description is 
 
. 
 
 
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 3 
 
used to place the small domed huts of mud to be found in Meso- 
 potamia and Persia today, probably not very different from 
 those of remote antiquity. On very little evidence, some 
 architects have undertaken to restore Assyrian ruins upon 
 the dome construction^ . The greater amount of evidence from 
 the fifth and sixth century 3. C. palace cities of Persepolis 
 and Susa do not show the use of the dome; on the contrary, 
 these buildings are remarkable for their distinctly western 
 trabeate construction rather than for their testimony to 
 Oriental forms of building. The Achaemenid dynasty which 
 had raised these cities was erased by Alexander in the year 
 331 B. C. and the Persian Empire then passed into the hands 
 of the Seleucids. There are no ruins dating from the time 
 of the Seleucid dynasty farther east than North Syria. The 
 Perthians, subject to Persia since the fifth century B. C. , 
 left ruins of splendid barbaric structures having great 
 vaulted ceilings like that of El Hadhi^ a place west of the 
 Kaleh Snergat ruin. Great building a.ctivities were possible 
 under the Sassanids, who supplied a more stable government, 
 beginning 323 A. D. At Serbistan and Freouzabad are palaces 
 of the fourth and fifth centuries representing a dome style 
 based upon the Parthian vaulted ceiling construction, which 
 
 1 Fergusson, James, "History of Architecture" p 331, Vcl. 
 
 The dome appears in some Assyrian base reliefs, and in 
 some Egyptian paintings. See also Bell, Edward, "The 
 Architecture of Ancient Egypt", p 133. 
 
/y 
 
 may be as old as the time of Trajan. The dome development 
 in Syria is complete about the sixth century. Indeed, the 
 Sancta Sophie standing today has a dome which was proba.bly 
 recommended by that erected in 512 at Bosra or that of 
 Zorah completed in 515, for the reconstruction of Sancta 
 Sophia took five years, and it was finished twenty-two years 
 after the cathedral chuch at Zorah. The Persian influence 
 is rather strongly implied in this argument, but up to this 
 time there can be no more structural evidence to change the 
 implication to fact. To determine completely the Persian 
 element in Byzantine architecture through decoration requires 
 much more primary evidence than is now available in the West. 
 
 The Roman basilica is now brought down from its 
 
 civic purpose in its primary 3tage, through the modifications 
 
 made necessary by the lack of wood and the want ofskilled 
 
 builders in Syria. Here ene has Greece, Rome, and the Chris- 
 
 / 
 
 tian East, - a composite resume of three civilizations, an 
 abortive monstrosity of any one of them. There is neither 
 a feeling of Greek elegance and balance, nor the more emphatic 
 Roman richness and strength, not a3 yet the fullest power and 
 solemnity of the be3t sixth century Christian Church. 
 
 The mention of the cathedral churches in the Hauran 
 district has brought this account down to the sixth of our 
 era, at which time the pre-Moslem architectural development 
 of the Syrian country comes to an end. One may net pro ceed 
 farther in seeking an acquaintance with the architecture of 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
the East Roman Empire without turning here at the culmination 
 of its constructive Christian life, and going north from 
 Syria to visit the city of Constantinople. That wonderful 
 and important city entered the Christian era as an ancient 
 metropolis, containing civil buildings, temples and palaces 
 of the Graeco-Roman architecture. With the decline of Rome 
 
 lOf 
 
 in the fourth century, the ancient Byzantiri^ again arose to 
 the position of leadership to which her commanding and central 
 position gave her the title. The year that Constantine nomi- 
 nated the city to be the New Rome, his mother, remembered 
 today as Saint Helena, secured at Jerusalem very important 
 relics, among which was s portion of the true Gross. This 
 gift magnified the importance of the Partriar chate of Constanti- 
 nople and helped to make the city the ecclesiastical as well 
 as the political center of the Eastern Empire. Probably the 
 relic was placed by Constantine, to whom it was sent, in the 
 treasure of one of the former pagan temples of Byzantine, some 
 of which he had caused to be rededicated to Christian use. A 
 fifteenth century historian suggests this^. 
 
 tt Theophanes, Cedrenue, Glycas, Paul the Deacon, Nice- 
 phorus CaJlistus and other late historians agree in making 
 Constantine the founder of the first church dedicated to the 
 Second person of the Trinity as Holy Wisdom^" .It is not des- 
 
 1 It is almost certain that the present Sancta. Sophia, that of 
 Justinian, standing on the summit of the Acropolis of Byzant- 
 ium, occupies the site of the ancient temple cf Pallas. 
 
 2 Lethaby, Quoting Du Cange, "Descripto Sanctae Sophiae" 
 
cribed, however, Mr. Lethaby says later in the collaborated 
 study "Sancta Sophia”, in the De vita Constant ini" which does, 
 however, describe the Church of the Holy Apostles^- on the 
 fourth hill of the city. Another historian has Constant inus, 
 the third son of the emperor Comstantine as the builder of 
 the great church. The dedication of the basilica is the subject 
 of elaborate accounts. We are told that thirty-five years 
 after "Constant inus had brought many offerings of gold, and 
 great treasures of silver; many tissues adorned with gold thread 
 and stones for the sanctuary, the roof of the basilica was 
 destroyed by fire”. This tells much of the structure of the 
 first Sancta Sophia. It is significant for the extent to 
 which wood was used by the architects of a Roman emperor, erect- 
 ing a monumental church for him in a city long filled with 
 splendid and famous marble palaces and temples of its pagan 
 centuries. The first fire came in the reign of Theododius 
 the Great (335); twenty years later it was again damaged by 
 flames. Upon being restored and rededicated by the Empress 
 Pul cher ia, Sancta Sophia remained uninjured until the reign 
 of Justinia.n. In the first part of his reign occurred the 
 Nika Renalt, in which the Church was burned. This was in 
 
 1 Built to contain the relics of Saint Luke. 
 

If- 
 
 January, 532. It is the Sancta Sophia of his reconstruction 
 which stands today, some for repairs to the great dome. 
 
 The architectural remains of the early East Roman 
 Empire do not offer any building as an example which could have 
 inspired in themselves the structural features of Justinian's 
 new church. In Salcnica, the Eski Jami is undated, but is 
 undoubtedly of the early fifth century. Saint Demetrius' 
 church was begun about eleven years after the dedication Sancta 
 Sophia and is, like the Eski Jami, a basilica,. In the same 
 city the church of Saint George antedates the Eski Jami, and 
 it is reminiscent of the domed church at Zorah in Syria. The 
 Sancta Sophia of Salonica mentioned above is built, to be 
 sure, by the pendent! ve construction, but the work is im- 
 perfect, and looks a9 if the architect were attempting a 
 form of construction with which he was not familiar 1 * The 
 church is a little older, it is thought, than the Sancta Sophia 
 at Constantinople. 
 
 Of the churches in Constantinople, that of Saint 
 John Studius, founded in the year 460 is a basilica. The 
 "Little Sancta Sophia" as the Turks call it, is even later 
 than the Sancta Sophia in Salonica. It was completed in 527 
 and has a dome springing directly from the walls. Thus this 
 church, and the Salonica churches of Saint George and of 
 Sancta Sophia recall the Roman dome buildings in general 
 appearance, and the Syrian cathedrals which have been describ- 
 ed in construction fully as much as they resemble the "Envy 
 
 1 Jackson, G. T. "Byzantine and Romanesque Architecture" Chap V. 
 
of Solomon" erected by Justinian. 
 
 Sancta Sophia is a building the chief constructive 
 feature of which is known s.s the "spherical pendentive" 
 
 The plan centers around the' four great piers placed at the 
 corners of a square. From the top of each pier springs an 
 inverted spherical triangle of masonry, whose bases form a 
 circle by their juncture. From the circumference of masonry 
 rises the hemispherical dome. The pendentives are portions 
 of what is really an imaginary dome built over the entire 
 square. The sides are sliced off even with the piers and 
 the top is removed at the summit of the arches thus created, 
 leaving the four masses of masonry leaning against each other 
 for support. They are in turn supported by the half domes, 
 one built up against the east and one against the west arch 
 respectively. The north and the South arches are filled 
 with three superimposed colonnades and a tympanum; on the out- 
 side of! the piers of the north a„nd south arches reenforcevd 
 by a great buttress which today stands as high as the pier. 
 
 Most of Sancta Sophia is constructed of thin brick and mortar, 
 reenforced in the piers and also at some other places by stone. 
 A bout one half of the aggregate is thought to be mortar. 
 
 After the mass had settled raarbel panels of the interior were 
 put up by means of bronze clamps and resin. 
 
 Probably from one of the Turkish minarets the church 
 appears to be a great dome, propped on the east and the west 
 side by half domes ae high as the rim of the hemisphere which 
 
Jo 
 
 they support. They are in turn each propped up by the three 
 smaller domes crowning the exedrae. At each corner under the 
 great dome is an immense buttress extending out the exterior 
 walls of the church, to take the place of the domes on those 
 sides. The axis of these butresses is at right angles to the 
 axis of the line of domes; consequently the arrangement in 
 general recalls the Greek cross. The likness is accidental. The 
 corners and the spaces between the buttresses are each of 
 smaller domes and some barrel vaulting. The whole forming a 
 rectangle. 
 
 Saneta Sophia is probably the greatest "structural" 
 building in .the world, and its dependence upon structure rather 
 than upon decoration for impressiveness is augmented oy the 
 remarkable dimensions. The rectangle of the outer walls extended 
 about 245 feet by 335 feet. The church proper is a great oval 
 nave within the rectangle 325 feet from the door of the exonar- 
 thex to the wall of the central exedra of the bema. The width 
 between the piers mentioned is one hundred feet. Formerly there 
 was an atrium before the church in which stood the famous bronza* 
 statue of Justinian. One enters today thru the exonarthex into 
 the esonarthex, passages running at right angles to the nave, and 
 resembling the lobbies of the modern theatre. The inner passage, 
 rich in marbles, gives a hint of the former magnificence of 
 decorations. It is a cross vaulted chamber with ceiling cf 
 mosaic, and the walls are lined with beautiful marbles in panels 
 and bands, often split and open to form patterns. 
 
 From the warmth of this rich hall one steps into the 
 royal doorway in the center, and he gazes into another world, 
 

 
 
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one unrelated to the intimacy of the esonarthexj there is a 
 
 sudden feeling of vast space. Distance merges the red and the 
 
 green squares of the pavement into Drown; in the deep vista 
 
 there seems to be no rift, save for the streamers of light. They 
 
 coax the vision upward and it rises from the half dome above to 
 
 the great pendent ive arch against which it leans, thence into 
 
 tne hemispherical dome above, made an ethereal ocean of light 
 
 by the circle of windows at its base. Dimly across it one sees 
 
 the farther naif dome and lower the three small domes of the 
 
 exedrae, built off of the bema. The sight is a view of a vast 
 
 pavement under a succession of canopies, the highest over the 
 
 piers in the center, — all in a pyramid ihass. Here there is 
 
 not the arrangement of bundles of harsh lines so characteristic 
 
 of the Gothic cathedrals. The design does not seem to close in 
 
 on the perspective in any way, for the cylindrical walls of the 
 
 bema meet the piers supporting the central dome in the form of 
 
 "columns, standing upon the floor, which are not placed in a 
 
 straight line, but arranged with an inward curve of semicircular 
 
 1 
 
 shape, one beyond another, like dancers in a chorus." The 
 space between the piers on the north and south sides of the 
 square is also filled with columns, all monoliths of green 
 marble taken, as it is said, from old Rome by Constantine, as 
 likewise were those leading from the hemiscycle in which we 
 stand. The second storey in this space is a superimposed 
 smaller colonnade, supporting the tympanum under the pendentive 
 arch. The tympanum has rows of small windows. There are many 
 
 1 L\tha£ey and SiVc-inson. "Santa Sophia", Chanter III, Poem of 
 Paul the Silentiary. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 '• " ‘ fl • 1 ■ • ,c * r *» B » s :>& • . V,f : it3S*0TA'< 
 
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windows in the building but they are small, and the walls are 
 very thick. The circle of apertures at the base of the great 
 dome forms a coronet of windows. "The Church is singularly 
 full of light and sunshine; you would declare that the place is 
 not lighted from without, but that the rays are produced from 
 
 t 
 
 within itself such abundance of light pours into the building.” 
 The walls illuminated in this happy manner are lined with rich 
 marbles and mosaics. The dome was once plated with gold, and 
 the precious metals and jewels were used plentifully throughout 
 the decoration. All of the decorative wealth attested to by 
 Russian pilgrims as well as by western travellers has disappeared, 
 being carried off by the most ^art by the Frankish Crusaders in 
 the year 1304, "That part of the church which is especially 
 sacred and which the priests alcne are allowed to enter which is 
 called the sanctuary contains forty thousand pounds weight of 
 silver.” ”Mcreover, it is impossible accurately to describe the 
 
 gold, silver and gems presented by the Emperor Justinian 
 
 I leave the rest to be inferred.” 
 
 To-day, bereft of jewels, the furniture, the incense, the 
 music, the priest and the worshipper, all of which belongs; to its 
 atmosphere, Sancta Sophia is still impressive and rich. The 
 interior, thanks to the ”rest oration" by Fossati in 1877 again 
 receives the light of the corona, on the walls of gold glass and 
 plaques of rich marbles. Columns of porphyry from the same 
 mines which supplied the Theban temples was brought from Egypt 
 to form part of the colonnades, The eight verde antique columns 
 in the nave are said to be of Molcssian marble, thus denying 
 
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 Old Rome as tlieir home. They seem to have come from Thessaly, 
 altho still another account reports them from Ephesus. Blocks 
 of it were placed alternately with the deep rosy brecciated 
 marble from Phrygia. Spartan porphyry was used along with 
 "Marmor NuMidium" ’’stone nutured in the hills of the Moors, 
 crocus coloured, glittering like gold” in the coarser mosaic, the 
 opus sectile. Gray Proconnesian marble was used for tne columns, 
 capitals and as frames for the richer marbles. Another gray marble 
 was quarried in Euboeia, sometimes of a ’’beautiful greenich white 
 surface, marked with broad wavy lines of green or purple gray”. 
 
 H 
 
 Xierapolis contributed a variegated red marble, and the white 
 and black red stone of Iassian formed the phiale (cantharos?) 
 black marble from Spain, "Marmor Celticum" having white veins 
 was used in some parts of the nave, large sections of which 
 were covered with slabs of honey coloured Egyptian alabaster. 
 
 Over these rich walls were vaults and domes of gold glass. 
 
 The esemble effect is one dominated by reds, browns, and 
 gold. The green of the columns and the dark shadows behind them 
 emphasize the strength of the colour scheme, the mosaics enrich 
 it, and the sunshine from the circlet of windows glorifies the 
 whole. Byzantine art has greatness. Its stately mosaic 
 compositions are magnificently decorative. Beautiful colours 
 are combined in balanced schemes showing a genius for colour 
 values . 
 
 Most of the quotations used in this description are from 
 the architectural epic of Paul the Silentiary, used by Salzen- 
 berg in working out the restoration for Abdul Mesjid with Fossati. 
 The effect of the richness seems to be still, as this chronicler 
 

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J' 
 
 said, beyond the potentiality of speech, 
 
 "Whither am I carried? What breeze has driven, like the 
 
 shin at area, my errant speech? .... Return, my Muse to see the 
 
 1 
 
 wonders scarcely to be believed when seen or heard." 
 
 The costliness is taxation and social suffering must 
 all have seemed repaid at the Christmas dedication in the year 
 53?, the eleventh year of Justinian's reign. It has been about 
 seven hundred years since "the most interesting building of 
 the world's surface was plundered by the rough soldiers of the 
 fourth Crusade, but it is still a pinnacle in architecture and 
 Christian art. Byzantine art is a creative art. "L' art c'est 
 
 t 
 
 d'etre absolument soi-meme", quotes M. Llthaby, Though robbed 
 of her wealth, the church is no ruin; still stately and vast, 
 Sanct Sophia is one of the greatest existing monuments of 
 art to faith. It is the ancient basilica, expressing a more 
 than Roman power; its attractiveness is entirely foreign to the 
 intellectual beauty of Greek art. Its connotive spirit is 
 Hebraic. It nas a literary equivalent in Isiaah. "Thou shalt 
 not behold beauty unless thou enterest within me; thou shalt 
 not enjoy felicity unless thou enterest within me". 
 
 Any dozen mosques in Constantinople today testify to 
 the dominant impression made by Sanct Sophia upon the Turks. 
 
 They have destroyed most of the other churches of Justinian in 
 order to repeat his architectural wonder, yet the Greeks gave up 
 this style of church. Saint Mark's in Venice is a model of the 
 next building erected by Anathemius and Isadorus in Constanti- 
 
 1 Lethaby and Swain, "SanCta Sophia" Paul the Silentiary. 
 
i 
 
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nople. The buildings at Parenzo and Ravenna are Byzantine in 
 decoration, though not quite so closely in construction. 
 
 "Byzantine" meaning now any structure built in conformation to 
 Sancta Sophia. The icon oclastic controversies (726-824) 
 dispersed Byzantine art over western Europe. At Aacnen it has 
 decorated the church of Charlemagne, and adorned the Carolingian 
 
 Renaissance, in Rome it left churches, — Greek court 
 
 1 
 
 ceremonial in the Vatican. In Constantinople, after the 
 beginning of the second "Golden Age" there were general changes 
 in plan treatment and decoration. The Greek cross plan of "La 
 Nea" a church erected by Basil I becomes the model. It was a 
 period of place and provincial church building in Greece and 
 Armenia, and the period extends up to about 1304. St. Marks 
 
 / 3 
 
 Wci.s raised in 1204, the Byzantine church of Perigueiu^ in France 
 
 in 1130, and the two Athenian churches about 1250. The palace 
 
 of Blachernae and the walls of Manuel Comnenus are both about 
 
 1143. The date of the end of the period and its relation to 
 
 Saint Mark's cathedral is obvious. The Venetian sense of humor 
 
 could tolerate the application of the old adage of "robbing 
 
 Peter to pay Paul" to Saint Luke and their own patron. 
 
 In spite of this disaster, building of worth and 
 
 originality went on in Serbia, in the Peloponeseus, and the 
 
 3 
 
 vas sal city of Trebizcnd. There were changes in decoration 
 which belied any charge of degeneracy. The treatment became 
 vertical outside and inside suggesting very distinctly a Gothic 
 influence. Pattern in brick to~k the place of expensive mosaic. 
 
 1 "The Vatican" part IV; section by Paul Maria Baumgarten. 
 
 2 gjmball and Edgell "A History of Architecture, Fig. 85,91, and 
 
. >. on 
 
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The result has a virile appearance and is less rich than the 
 decoration of the first "Golden Age", and it is usually the 
 designation as the style of tne Byzantine Renaissance. The 
 new palaces and churches resemble the Romanesque fortreas like 
 buildings, however; the city was losing its political power 
 and consequently much of its wealth. The brilliance of its 
 scientists, scholars and artists and the vitality of an art 
 acting as a dymanicforce from Constantine or the Palaeologi was 
 not enough. It has a great negative compensation in the 
 political chicanery inflicted upon the dwindling Empire. The 
 Turkish conquerors had good reason to despise the Bysantines with 
 whom they came in contact. It was not, consequently the 
 Renaissance nor the revival in the second "Golden Age" under 
 Basil, but the first "Golden Age" the age of Justinian of 
 Sancta Sophia which the barbarian Turks thought superior, and 
 which they have preserved until today. 
 
 With the painful dissipation of the formerly high esteem 
 of the Palaeologi, and the decay of their political strength 
 and of Byzantine resources, the matter of Ottoman architecture 
 has little to do that is pertinent. The shameless mutilation 
 of Constantinople’s artistic wealth is as much a reproach to 
 the dynasty as is its falsity to subjects and enemies alike. 
 
 The Palaeologi lived in delicate suspense on the past glory 
 of their city. 
 
 If the structures of the Byzantine Renaissance were 
 passed over by the untrained eyes of the Ottoman, it is less 
 true that he had before ignored a pleasing and commendable 
 manner of building for the same reason. The Arab conquests 
 
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Jl 
 
 of Persia and Asia Minor in the eighth oentury had given the lands 
 under the law of the Koran an architectural unity, and the ability 
 of the Seljuk in the architecture of south Asia Minor had 
 subsequently offered excellent models of civil and ecclesiastical 
 architecture. The Ottoman Turks, however, concieved a great 
 tribal dream after their migration into the old Roman province 
 of Bithynia, handed over to them by the Seljuk Turks. This 
 dream, together with their rude state of culture, explains the 
 primitive architecture in their first permanent home. They had 
 very early chosen the grey dome of Sancta Sophia, seen across 
 the strait which separated their province from the continent of 
 Europe. as an ideal; and when they reached the city as conquerors, 
 no other building offered so admirable a model. As the Arabs 
 and Seljuks had possessed the wisdom of developing whatever 
 manner of building they found in their conquests, so the 
 Ottoman adopted, rather than created. Fcran understanding of 
 this trait and its operation, one must examine briefly, at least, 
 the origin and the nature of the Ottoman Turks. 
 

 
 
 
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THE OTTOMAN TURKS; THEIR COMING INTO THE BYZANTINE WORLD. 
 
 The Turkish people spring from the primary group known to 
 ethnological nomenclature as Turanian. Coming as they do more 
 precisely, as a subdivision of the better known Mongols, the 
 Turks in their purer state resemble the Mongols in many respects 
 indeed, almost every group of Asian people share this resemblanc 
 and in Turanian physiognomy, if not in language, there is a 
 unity combining the people of Cambodia and korea with those of 
 Findland. 
 
 The Mongols have their original home in a stretch of 
 plain country lying north of the desert of Gobi, and between the 
 Altai mountains and the Kingham range. Across this barrier to 
 the east dwell . the Mancnus. To the west of the Altai hills 
 lies the country of the Kirghiz, the Naimans, the Uigurs, and 
 other tribes. These names apply as much to general pasture 
 lands as to the home of any settled political entity. The name 
 "Sioux” on a map expresses to us the equivalent to Kirghiz or 
 Sibur. To the north the Mongols found no great incentive for 
 considerable expansion, and there lay to the south a desert the 
 extent of which, while not impassable, was formidable even to 
 the nomad. The Kingham range borders the pastures and the Gobi 
 desert on the east, and extends a formidable wall north along 
 the east of the Mongol country to the Amur river. The ranges of 
 the Altai hills, however, lie in a somewhat east and west 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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direction. From their capital near the east entrance of the 
 principal parses the Mongols poured out on tneir tribal mi- 
 grations to the southward, passing along the well-watered upland 
 pastures of the west slope of the Tien-Shan mountains. 
 
 Once the Altais prooably offered sufficient fertile 
 pasturage for tne Mongol herds, but the pressure of numbers 
 determined a cycle of migrations. To the extent of these shift - 
 ings there was hardly a limit save endurance and defeat in 
 battle. From the Altai hills west to the sandy river plains of 
 Prussia there lay nearly four thousand miles of comparatively 
 level country, covered in the northern portion by tne forests 
 of Russia and Siberia, but which opens up at about the sixtieth 
 parallel to the plains, known from the Russian name as the 
 "steppe" country. This area is the goal of the nomad tribes of 
 Asia, and they attempt to press into its richland warm regions 
 of the Crimea, the Caucasus and Khwarism as the Teutonic peoples 
 had swarmed earlier into Italy. 
 
 The civilization of the Mediterranean world, as well as 
 that flourishing in the rich but inadequately protected valley 
 of the Tigris and Euphrates, has always been conscious of its 
 possible destruction by these barbaric horsemen of the northern 
 plains. Their few appearances in the southwest of Asia have 
 left memories of gigantic catastrophes in history, and in the 
 affairs of men the invasions have seemed only less terrible 
 than a convulsion of nature. They advance with the ever 
 widening wings of a prairie fire, and they are not more merciful 
 than fire to whatever civilization may be the in path. 
 
 From the thirteenth century invasions of the Mongols, the 
 

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the West was poorly fitted to defend itself. The Mongols had 
 at this time not only unity, but genius to guide their expansion. 
 Between the years 1206 and 1227, Ghengiz-khan had directed the 
 activities of hi3 main armies, and with the aid of his brilliant 
 generals had taken under his control all of Asia save Siam, 
 
 India and the Arabian desert. From China, subdued in 1204, he 
 came to the Oxus country and into Persia. The duplicity of the 
 Khwarismian shah was responsible for the destruction of south- 
 western Arabia. Ghengis-khan had hoped to avoid trouble with 
 him. 
 
 His defeat laid open to the Mongols all of Persia. With 
 
 his Chinese engineers and his seven hundred thousand horsemen 
 
 he beseiged cities from the Caspian Sea to the Indus River, but, 
 
 like Alexander, he had taken his troops too far into India, and 
 
 found it wiser to return home. He died in 1227. 
 
 Hi 3 four sons, who were at the head of his respective 
 
 armies, were exhorted to finish the subjugation of China, which 
 
 they finally accomplished in 1279. In the distribution of the 
 
 Mongol tribes which followed the sweep of their armies, the 
 
 conquests to the west and south, are more illuminating. The 
 
 conquest of Russia, Poland and Hungary was begun in 1235 by an 
 
 1 
 
 expedition of five hundred thousand men. "and in less than six 
 
 years they had measured a line of ninety degrees of longitude, 
 
 2 
 
 a fourth part of the circumference of the earth." Even a 
 
 1 Gibbon, Edward "The Decline and Fall of the Rodman Empire" 
 Vol. 7, Cnapter LXIV page 15. 
 
 2 An illuminating note in both the Hakluyt publication of 
 Rub ruck's travels, and also in Gibbon, says that the &ear 
 of the Mongols halted the Baltic commerce, as a result of 
 
 which there was great reduction in the nr ice scale of the 
 English fish markets. 
 

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3 1 ' 
 
 group of Knights Templar came to help oppose their inroad into 
 Silesia, but at Leignitz (1341) they turned south of their 
 own accord to trample the Hungarian Plain. Hungary and the 
 kingdoms of Serbia, Bosnia and Bulgaria were also overrun 
 rapidly, and Russia, at least, has not yet fully recovered from 
 tne devastation. 
 
 The invasions to the south, however, brought changes very 
 important to subsequent history. The Saracen Empire as well a3 
 the many Seljuk states were shattered, so that immigration of 
 nomads which came in found flattery rather than opposition. 
 
 Bagdad and Anatolia were taken and Egypt threatened. Yet such 
 distant conquests served more for vanity than for power to the 
 Khan living on the border of China, and whose great problem was 
 the acquisition of that Empire. The lesser Khans were gradually 
 left the control of the Kirghiz, Russia, Transoxonia and Iran, 
 and they soon found themselves capable of declaring their 
 independence, assuming at the same time the law of the Pr-phet. 
 
 The Khans of Iran were content to leave the Seljuk states of 
 Asia Minor to their own struggles. 
 
 Throughout the conquest of Persia the Mongols had been 
 opposed by Jelaladin, the son of that sultan of Khwarism whom 
 Chengiz-khan had thought it necessary to annihilate. The 
 Khwarismian forces had long been recruited from the tribes of 
 Asia which had found their way into the Oxus country. Among 
 these recruits were various tribes of Turks, a minor branch 
 of the Mongol people. The death of Jeleladin disbanded his 
 Turkish allies, and their venturesome nature led different groups 
 into Syria and Asia Minor. The Turks who were to take 
 
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v- 
 
 Constantinople w re one of these tribes, the Ottoman Turks, 
 
 who had taken services under the Seljuk Sultan of Iconium about 
 1320. Their chieftain was assigned a position in the ancient 
 Greek province of Bithynia, and on Sangar River the tribe 
 pitched their four hundred tents. 
 
 The Ottoman immediately began his remarkable expansion. 
 
 There were no strong forces of opposition, for tne Seljuk dynasty 
 had lost its power through Mongol war and internal dissipation 
 of strength, while on the north the Byzantine Empire was in full 
 turmoil of the political dissention that became its ruin. 
 
 Considering the nature of these two civilizations, the 
 Greek ancient, and long the center of the highest culture of the 
 world; the Seljuk and Saracenic brilliant and rich, it is 
 baffling to acknowledge the supremacy of the Turkish shepherds. 
 Their civilization has been compared to that of the North 
 American Plains Indians, but it was probably somewhat higher. 
 
 Since pre-Christian times they had been under very direct 
 Chinese influence, and had been receptive to the military 
 virtues of obedience and endurance under their suzerainty. Their 
 tribal wanderings were under the complete control of the khan and 
 the organization tnu3 formed partook of the nature of a state 
 in arms seeking a temporary home. The numerical range of 
 fighting men was from a few dozen to about seven hundred thousand. 
 
 The wealth which upheld this primitive state consisted of 
 goats, cattle, sheep and horses, "et surtout en chevaux", Baron 
 D'Ohsson goes on to say, "fournassaient a leur subsistence et 
 composaient toute leur richesse". The horses furnished some- 
 thing else, however, than food and a basis for exchange, and 
 
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that was transportation, it was the swiftness of the invasions 
 as well as the primitive fearlessness of the men that made the 
 Mongols and their allies the terror of southwestern Asia. 
 
 The riches of nomads is nearly all alike, and their small 
 commerce therefor, was carried on with a peoole of a more 
 advanced degree of culture. The commodities carried to Chengiz- 
 khan before his conquests serve as a significient illustration 
 to indicate the primitive exchange, and differ very little from 
 that carried on in the day3 of Strabo, who, writing of the 
 tribes then near the mouth of the Don, says that they brought 
 slaves, furs and various products of native industry while the 
 
 Greeks imported principally tissues and wine”, a frontier 
 
 Indian trading post. 
 
 Their houses were felt tents, and for facility in 
 migration to winter and summer camps, were fitted out very 
 simply. Pictures of their modern dwellings show them to be 
 erected upon the ground, but William of Rubruck says that he 
 saw Tartar houses upon carts whose wheels were twenty feet apart. 
 "I have myself counted to one cart twenty-two oxen drawing one 
 house, eleven abreast across the width of the cart, and the 
 other eleven before them. The axle of the cart was as large as 
 the mast of a ship, and one man stood in the entry of the house, 
 driving,” Such a stage of civic development will explain to a 
 far greater extent than the accusation of inertia or the lack 
 of ability why the Turks of Constantinople have been willing to 
 accept the dwellings of that city as they found them, and it is 
 also one explanation why to-day no man knows his street or 
 number there, but designates his residence by its proximity to 
 
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 : 
 
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to a certain fountain or coffee house, and its district as the 
 
 '•Coral" or "The Thick Beard"; the "E^ts no Meat" or the "Sleeps 
 1 
 
 by Day." 
 
 The decoration of the huts is carried out on the water- 
 proofing ground of tallow, whitened with chalk or white clay, 
 in various primitive designs. Sometimes the felt is dyed black, 
 and is striped in white in the universal zigzag lightening 
 design. They used also designs of birds, beasts, vines and 
 flowers. The settlement of one knan on the rich man seemed 
 like a large town, although there will be very few men in it. 
 Each wife has a large dwelling, "exclusive of the smaller little 
 ones which they set up after the big one, and which are like 
 little closets in which sewing girls live." The plan of an 
 audience tent shows a very strict separation of men and women. 
 This is adhered to in Mongolia to-day, and formed the b^sis of 
 the etiquette at the Manchu Court. It may also possibly lend 
 itself to explain the segregation of women in modern Turkish 
 society, along with the inheritance of such Byzantine customs 
 at the use of the gynaeceuin, or the orthodox Moslem position 
 assigned to women. Whatever influence the tribal custom may 
 have had in the later limitation of the activities of Turkish 
 women, the limitation in the nomadic state did not prevent 
 domestic activity of a useful sort. A diagram of the great 
 houses of the Altai Tatars is divided evenly, and the east half 
 
 they were always orientated to the south were for the 
 
 women, for their dances as well as their labor. 
 
 The worship, before conversion to Buddhism, Nest orianism. 
 
 1 Dwight, H. D. "Constantinople Old and New", page 3. 
 

 
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3 5 
 
 Latin Christianity or to Islam was that of the ancestors, and 
 
 natural personification, with a strong place held by natural 
 
 magic. The influence of tne great faiths mentioned contributed 
 
 the monotheistic conception and a notable religious freedom, so 
 
 that by the time of Ghingiz-khan there was a situation by no 
 
 mea^s sterile of lessons to Eurpoe, which, "defending nonsense 
 
 by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a 
 
 barbarian wno anticipated the lessons of philosophy and 
 
 established by his laws a system of free theism and perfect 
 
 toleration In the Mosque of Bokhara, the insolvent victor 
 
 might trample the Koran under his horses feet, but the calm 
 
 legislator respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most 
 
 1 
 
 hostile sects." Superstition, nevertheless held and still holds 
 an important place in directing the activities of the Turk, 
 and in his earlier days, religion as a body of doctrine rode 
 lightly upon his shoulders. 
 
 This fidelity to law, however, is a commendable 
 characteristic of the Turkish people, disclosed constantly 
 throughout recorded knowledge of them. First, to be sure, it 
 was as represented by the absolute decision of the khan, but 
 even under an astute a leader as the swift Timur, there was 
 time for deliberation and the recording of decision. "And 
 when my councillors and advisors were assembled together, I 
 demanded their opinion on the good and the evil, and on the 
 advantages and on the disadvantages of undertaking or re- 
 
 1 Gibbon, Edward, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire "Vol. 
 7, Chapter LXIV, page 4. 
 

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 linquiehing the enterprise oefore us. And when I had heard 
 
 their opinions thereon, I myself examined both sides of their 
 
 opinions. And I duly weighed the advantages and the disadvantages 
 
 and I considered the perils thereof with the eye of attention. 
 
 And in every plan in which I found a twofold hazard I rejected; 
 
 1 
 
 and I chose that in which the peril was single.” The wisdom 
 
 of deliberation w as proven by trie constant success of Timur's 
 
 arms, and it is as true of Timur as of the earlier Turks that 
 
 the seat of the council floor was no attraction from the field 
 3 
 
 of battle. 
 
 The rise of the Mongols and Turks under Ghengiz-khan had 
 been as phenomenal as the rise of the Arabs under Mohammed and 
 his apostles. In such a sudden bloom a people may learn much, 
 but what they pick up by contact is little more than gloss over 
 their heredity. Accordingly Ala-ad Din, in placing the vigorous 
 and wily tribesmen of Ertoghrul far away from their wandering 
 relatives in south Asia Minorand Syria began one of those 
 collossal cancers of history which serve to delay the progress 
 
 1 Timur the Great, "Institutes” Daniel Strqat Calcutta, 1765. 
 
 (Book I, p.7) 
 
 2 "And when night was come, I pitched my tents on the ground 
 where I was and I consulted with myself that I would not let 
 the plan of battle cool, but that I would charge quick and 
 hot on the army of Ouleous Khaiyeh: and they were near thirty 
 thousand. 
 
 And I considered that I was guilty of delay, something might 
 come to pass which might cause me to stand in need of alliance. 
 And although Amir Hussein was encamped behind me, I did not 
 caude myself to stand in need of his support: but by skillful 
 measures I defeated the force of Ouleous Khaiyeh, and the men 
 of Jitteh” Supra, page 91. 
 

 
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 of evolution and at the same time to magnify the problem of 
 evil. For in removing danger from the Seljuk kingdom by bribing 
 the Turks with the rich Greek province, Ala-ad-Din not merely 
 postponed for a snort time the end of his own dynasty, but 
 enacted the decisive step for the political extinction of the 
 Byzantine Empire, and much of its culture. Ten years before his 
 death he saw the grandson of Ertoghrul enter the Byzantine 
 province of Nicomedia, and also acquire the city of Brusa for 
 a new capital. 
 
 Orchan adorned the city with a mosque, a hospital and an 
 
 important college; he adopted a coinage system and reformed the 
 
 military force. With these he soon extended his lands to the 
 
 Hellespont and the Bosporus. By 1313 the Asiatic provinces of 
 
 tne Byzantine Empire were lost to Orchan. no carried on 
 
 excursions across tne Bosporus, 1356-1358 and at the same time 
 
 defended his provinces against a Latin Crusade, disposing of 
 
 the danger from Constantinople for the moment by a royal 
 
 marriage. The Greeks, however, were reduced to the situation 
 
 of even permitting Orchan to sell his Christian slaves in 
 1 
 
 Constantinople. 
 
 An earthquake and tne weakness of Cantacuzene tolerated the 
 sojurn of a Turkish colony in the Chersonese, but the power of 
 Murad I 1360-1389 made their stay permanent. Five years later 
 he removed to Adrian ople in Thrace, and he reduced the Balkan 
 kingdoms by 1385. Under his son Bajazet I the domains of the 
 Greeks shrank and those of the Ottoman were increased until the 
 Roman world was now contracted to a corner of Thrace between 
 
 1 Gibbon, Edward Vol. 7, Chapter LXIV, p 41. 
 
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 the Proponti 3 and the Black Sea a space of ground not mors 
 extensive than the lesser principalities of Germany or Italy if 
 the remains of Constantinople had not represented the wealth and 
 population of the Empire. Bajazet could have taken the city, 
 but he was persuaded that suen a move would have been unwise, and 
 in playing off a pretender to the Byzantine throne, the sultan 
 had arranged with him that the city was to be surrendered. In 
 1440, the advent of Timur gave the city a temporary relapse from 
 the pressure of the Turks. Civil war succeeded tne alien ruin 
 of the Ottoman Empire, and it was not until twenty years after 
 the rise of Timur that Murad II succeeded in reestablishing the 
 union of his grandfathers disjointed provinces. 
 
 For ten years before his withdrawal into Asia, Bajazet I 
 
 1 
 
 had kept the city practically in astate of siege, and Murad II 
 resumed the investment, attracting there from Asia crowds of 
 Moslems desirous of Martyrdom. In Brusa the Greeks created a 
 domestic revolt, and there was after its suppression a respite 
 to Constantinople of thirty years. When it was ended by Mohanned 
 II, the E«*st Homan Empire came to an end, so that, as the Turks 
 thought, the dream of Othman might be fulfilled, and the crescent 
 take the place of the cross upon the grey dome of Sancta Sophia. 
 
 1 Foord, Edward, "The Byzantine Emoire." Cnapter XIX, p 387. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, "The Devlin and Fall of tne Roman Emoire", 
 Vol. 7, Chapter LXIV. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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THE GENERAL STATE OF CULTURE UNDER THE LATER EMPIRE 
 
 No brief account can hope to picture an adequate panorama 
 of Byzantine society in the XV century, but some attempt at it is 
 necessary in order to explain the late Greek influence over the 
 barbarians from Asia. The rule of Constantinople had always been 
 in the hands of a group of great noble families, some of whom 
 had had dynasties on the throne. In their struggles for power 
 the new Emperors gained with the throne a combination of enemies. 
 To oppose Slavs or Turks it was necessary to pacify the cabalists 
 to some extent, to watch constantly for their plots, to procure 
 money for mercenaries and to maintain dignity against internal 
 chicanery and shamelessness as well as against the military 
 pressure from without. 
 
 December, 1400, found the ruler of the East Roman Empire 
 in London, whither he had gone from Paris, seeking in these 
 places influence for a union of the Greek and Roman faith as his 
 father had sought in Rome Papal good will for the reunion. 
 Eugenius IV offered sufficient guarantee of dignity to John 
 Palaeologus and the Greek bishops, and embarking in Papal galleys 
 in 1437, they arrived in Florence, where the Council was to hold 
 its sessions. The discussions were concerned with questions that 
 could have been concluded as well after the defensive alliance 
 between the East and the West had been arranged, as before. 
 
 The vigorous and subtle contest, however, proves a faith still 
 strong on both sides of the schism, and the persistence in ritual 
 and details of tenet almost balance the lack of perspective. 
 

 
 
 
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L/0 
 
 At Constantinople the populace and the lower clergy both re- 
 pudiated the ceremony of union although the agreement signed 
 at Florence by the Emperor and clergy ” tacitly agreed that no 
 change should be attempted in creed or ceremonies”.! The only 
 good coming from the attempt was the transfer of a group of 
 Greek scholars to a more progressive atmosphere. Politics in 
 Constantinople after 1439 entered into another period of family 
 plotting, and its external enemies pressed closely upon the 
 city in its last years of Greek rule. Thessalonica was taken 
 by Venice in 1438. For the rest the Emperor John had paid 
 tribute. A part of the Morea, and Thrace, and the isles of 
 Lemnos, Thasos, Imbrus, and Samothrace remained to the Roman 
 Empire. The house of John Paiaeologus had three eligible 
 princes, and to quarrel over the last coronation of the Empire 
 was not beneath Demetrius and Thomas. The latter, however, 
 with the Empress, the Senate and the people supported the eld- 
 est brother, who at that time was absent in the Morea. He 
 
 2 
 
 took the name of Constantine XII. He planned another appeal 
 to the West, but the death of Murad II in 1451 made negligible 
 any assistance from Latin Europe. To capture the city was the 
 ambition of Mohammed II and his prize was the crown of all the 
 Turkish conquests. 
 
 5~ Gibbon, Edmund, ”The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire”.”" 
 Vol. 7, Ch. LXIII . 
 
 3 . Supra 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Byzantine society in the XV century was rich in litera- 
 ture and art; its rulers and statesmen were vigorous and clever, 
 if not always wise. The heterogeneous nature of the population 
 of the Empire excluded to some extent the virtue of patriotism, 
 and the many noble families of Constantinople kept the politi- 
 cal life filled with jealousy and dissension. This will go 
 far to explain the plotting and the deceit; when they chose to 
 fight, however, they were able leaders. The little group of 
 nobles who died with the Emperor at the gate of St. Roamnos 
 in 1453 were heroic men, for all of them might have escaped by 
 merely going over to the opposite faction in the city. 
 
 But if the internal story of the Byzantine political 
 life is not very edifying, it does exhibit the diplomatic 
 school in which the Emperors learned to play off their barbar- 
 ous or civilised but rapacious enemies. Intrigues and bribes 
 were useful when it was impossible to pay armies or to hire 
 mercenaries, and the modern world knows what promises can do 
 when arras are ineffectual. To keep one's power against the 
 commercial rapacity of Venice and Pi3a, in the provincial 
 seaports as well as in Constantinople; to play off against 
 French, Papal, Spanish and German politics; to oppose with 
 efficacious subtlety the Turks, and to govern a great city 
 filled with powerful nobles is a task for an able man. The 
 political life of the Empire was exceedingly complicated, and 
 it has been noted that there was little patriotism ^or an- 
 chorage . 
 
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 The basis of the state, as well as those benefitted by 
 its efforts were, of course, the common people. Like their 
 rulers they were vigorous and in political wisdom very much 
 higher than any other people of the XV century, probably not 
 excepting the citizens of Venice or Rome. In spite of the 
 mastery of the clergy and the state, the people could and did 
 act when they were exasperated. Their disagreements may as 
 well be blamed upon the clergy as upon themselves, and their 
 sincerity in intellectual matters as revealed by the schism 
 of the union question at the time of the fall of the city may 
 possibly recompense the lack of perspective. Religious feel- 
 ing served them also to some extent, for patriotism. 
 
 The Patriarch of Constantinople commanded the reverence 
 of the people when the Emperor was undeserving, and the good 
 influence of his clergy was the backbone of the national in- 
 tegrity. Over ecclesiastical controversy the people fought 
 and died, and into their worship they poured their profits as 
 well as their faith. More than one ransom, bribe or tribute 
 of the state was taken from the churches, and these treasure 
 houses stimulated the many plunderers who besieged the city. 
 
 The clergy, for all their stability acted as a somewhat sta- 
 tionary influence. Constantinople for the early Middle Ages 
 was the intellectual center of the world. "Under her shadow 
 Athens became a sort of present day Oxford or Venice and Rome 
 not much more than a vociferous Berlin."! It was not the 
 
 1. Dwight, H. G., "Constantinople Old and New" Page 76 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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 priest, however, nor the prince, nor the merchant, nor the 
 soldier, who revealed to the world the richness of Byzantine 
 civilisation, even the architect may not have the honor. It 
 belongs to the artist. Art, as a reflection of life has its 
 greatest value to the student of history when it is expressed 
 in a work emanating from the artisan rather than the genius. 
 
 The sculpture of Praxitiles and his master is far too lofty 
 to tell as much of Greek life shortly after the Periclean Age 
 as do the coins, the grave monuments or a frying pan. 
 
 This differentiation is verified notably in comparing 
 the famous works of official Byzantine decoration with the 
 bracelet, ring or lamp of the people. The great characteristic 
 of objects of common use treated in an artistic manner is rich- 
 ness of design^ based upon a great freedom in the use of animal, 
 vegetative and geometric combination. There is a grotesque 
 feeling about the execution of animal forms such as is found in 
 lamps or small architectural sculpture, that is more naturalist- 
 ic and at the same time more weird than the French or the Span- 
 ish Gothic manner of treatment. Human figures and faces in 
 genre work are often very crude. Perhaps this may be explained 
 as an effort at indistinct approximation for religious reasons, 
 as are the figures in the Court of Lions at the Alhambra. Or 
 it is more probable that anatomical studies which had dis- 
 played the accuracy of Greek and Roman observation had ceased 
 to be taught. Whatever may be the more accurate reason, it is 
 
 1. Different from the Celtic in that there is less of the 
 geometric and a more natural treatment. 
 

 
 
 
 
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V‘( 
 
 not connected with the lack of technical skill, for the treat- 
 ment of vegetative and animal forms, while simple and vigor- 
 ous, is not grotesque, or too rigid. But there is even a 
 clearer characteristic of Byzantine art than variety in de- 
 sign: the colors are very rich in tone^and in combination. 
 
 The variety of color in the marble facing of Sancta Sophia 
 has been mentioned. In genre work enamels, gold, silver, 
 gilt, and jewels in designs and choice of color of almost 
 barbarous richness did they not possess what appears to be 
 a certain reserve and dignity. 1 2 Their designs in fabrics 
 were copied all over western Europe. That of the double 
 headed eagle in regalia is sufficiently well known, as it is 
 used even in democratic countries, to serve as an indication 
 of this influence. 
 
 There seems to have been a fragment of nearly everything 
 found in Egyptian tombs, at any rate these valuable repositor- 
 ies have given up some fifth century Byzantine fabrics. 
 
 Throughout the Renaissance^ there are in paintings figures 
 clothed in what appears to be the "all over" designs from 
 
 n 
 
 Byzantine looms." Any Papal cope shows this, also, having in 
 addition borders of a kind of lozenge in which hagiogra graphic 
 
 1. Williams, Leonard, "Arts and Crafts of Older Spain" Vol. II, 
 
 page 21. 
 
 1441-1523, Signorelli, Luca, The picture called "Mary Salome". 
 1430-1494, Crivelli » " " "Virgin and 
 
 Child". 
 
 1500-1571, Bordone of Treviso " " " "The Ring of 
 
 Saint Mark 
 handed to 
 the Doge". 
 
 Early XVth, Quirizio " n n "Santa Luca". 
 
 2. Burlington Magazine, Volume XXXV, p.167, Oct. 15, 1919. 
 

 
 
 
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pictures are embroidered or painted. 
 
 The carved ivory, ^ inherited in early feeling from the 
 early Imperial period, but later conventionalised, furnished 
 models for reliquary boxes, plaques and ivory decoration of 
 many varieties to all Europe, and even as late as the tenth 
 century possessed a considerable degree of grace and veracity. 
 The sacred utensils, as well as the profane, were of an Oriental 
 richness in color and design of their ornamentation. The 
 pottery forms either very good or else somewhat crude. There 
 is no general level of superior pottery as was the average 
 grade of Attic ware. There is a suggestion in all of such work 
 of Semitic decoration upon Aryan forms. Indeed, if one were 
 to venture into a distinction of Eyzantine genre art, he would 
 in some manner point out this combination. Certainly that is 
 a safe generalisation to make in comparing Byzantine, Persian 
 and Arabic pottery. 2 
 
 The spread of official art, mostly of a hagiographic 
 nature, went along with the disperaion of Byzantine architectur- 
 al form over Western Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries. 
 
 It is stately in effect of line and composition, and very rich 
 in color. Probably the greater spirituality of the best Greek 
 churches over those of Italy or France is accounted for in the 
 superiority of this decoration to the rationality in decora- 
 tion employed in the Renaissance. 
 
 Byzantine society of the XV century, embellished with 
 
 2 1. See the "R.Khan Monif Collection of Persian Antiquities” 
 catalogue. Sale in Chicago, 191S. 
 
 1 8. Dalton, Armonde Maddock, "Byzantine Art and Archaeology”, 
 Series of plates of ivory work. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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yL 
 
 this rich and widely diffused art, was distinctly in the grand 
 style, and however poor or hard pressed her fortunes were, 
 Constantinople never forgot her imperial position. Gibbon de- 
 scribes the elaborate ceremony insisted upon by John Palaelogus 
 at Venice, when he was about to disembark from the Papal gal- 
 leys; while at Ferrara he was served by princes, all of whom 
 possessed greater wealth and power than he. A few months 
 before the beginning of the siege, there was in preparation 
 an elaborate and very costly embassy to Georgia. The name 
 of the city was still a synonym of splendor, and Constantinople 
 was still the "vilie lumiere”^ for much of the civilised world. 
 
 The contempt of the modern Turk for his Christian sub- 
 jects can not be today more intense than in the Xv century when 
 their religious feeling and national pride justified somewhat 
 their point of view. They coveted the wealth of the city, its 
 site and buildings, but much of the culture which it sheltered 
 they misunderstood and despised. The religion they thought of 
 as idolatry, and the commercial rather than the military nature 
 of the populace seemed to them unmanly. There are no Turkish 
 literary records prior to the time of Mohammed II, but even a 
 superficial acquaintance with Moslem culture as it is carried 
 on by its Ottoman believers will settle the fate of the an- 
 cient and complex culture of Constantinople in the hands of 
 nomads hardly two hundred years from the Altai grasslands. 
 
 1. Dwight, N. G. ’’Constantinople, Old & New.” i 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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As a matter of fact, expediency tempered the policy of Mo- 
 hammed II, and he made a good many concessions with regard to 
 political and religious liberty to insure the peace of the new 
 
 capital. Colonies were imported from the Morea, Anastris, 
 Sinope, Euboea and Samothrace.^ 
 
 THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS 
 
 Although the city was thoroughly plundered after its 
 siege of fifty-three days, the destruction of its architectural 
 monuments was very slight. Mohammed II knew the value of his 
 new capital, and he set out from the first to augment its 
 prestige and adornment. The damage of his cannon was repaired, 
 and after removing the ecclesiastical furniture from Sancta 
 Sophia, he ordered the interior to be whitewashed. The exteri- 
 or he embellished with four minarets and with gardens, and the 
 upkeep of the former cathedral was guaranteed by taxes from 
 segregated lands. His Mohammedieh was finished in 1469, and 
 the Mosque of Eyoub in 1481. 
 
 The Turkish mosques form an architectural development 
 which may be traced thru their succession of political capitals. 
 The exterior appearance is responsible for the impression that 
 the mosques are a more or less successful imitation of Sancta 
 Sophia. This is not true. At Brousa the Jami Mosque, being 
 
 1. Gibbon, Edmund, "The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire", 
 
 Vol. 7, p-*' 0 
 

 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
It. 
 
 built from about 1360 to 1421 has the side aisles divided into 
 bays. It is open in the center, and there is a fountain, a 
 feature which later was placed before the building. At 
 Adrianople, the dome lies upon eight instead of four piers, 
 recalling the radiate plan of church in some of the north Syrian 
 cities. Several mosque yards in Constantinople are surrounded 
 by a cloister, the bays of which are surmounted by a lead dome. 
 The idea of these bays as used at Brousa is carried out in the 
 Suleimanieh side aisles and in most of the other mosques of the 
 capital. Such matters show the adaptability rather than the 
 imitative capacity of the Turkish architect.^ 
 
 Probably the most sacred of all the churches of Con- 
 stantinople was the Church of the Holy Apostles. In this 
 church of Justinian was buried the body of Saint Andrew, and 
 the relics which had augmented the sanctity of the structure 
 had insured it from all harm until the depredations of the 
 Crusaders in 1204. The results of their raid were placed in 
 that jewel of Paris, the Sainte Chape lie. After the Turkish 
 conquest, the Patriarch who had been appointed, retired to this 
 sructure, but shortly afterward removed to the Pammakaristos, 
 and the Church of the Apostles was razed for the Mohammedieh. 
 
 Very little is known of the architect of the Mohammedieh, 
 
 >1 
 
 same that it is definitely stated that he was a Greek Christian 
 
 1. Gurlitt, Cornelius, n Die Baukunst Constant inopels", plate 
 14 e. 
 

 
 
— — — =——=—= 
 
 resident of Constantinople at the time of the conquest.^ The 
 decoration that he chose is lost, for the building as it stands 
 today is a restoration of an eighteenth century Italian archi- 
 tect. His treatment is floral, and is distinctly western, 
 
 Mohammed's other mosque is at the village of Eyoub, and 
 it is commemorative of that saintly Arab warrior who had fallen 
 in the Saracen siege of the city in the eighth century. Of all 
 mosques, the Eyoub is the most sacred. It is a very simple 
 structure, a dome on a drum. The walls are covered with green 
 and blue tiles. 
 
 The Mosque of Bajuzet II, like the church of Justinian, 
 has but two semidomes, but the stress is taken by large piers, 
 and a retaining column in the center of each of the great arches, 1 2 
 rather than by the exterior buttresses. The obscure architect, 
 Haireddin, was the first Turkish architect to use the monolith- 
 ic shaft and the stalactic capital. It is a simple and noble 
 building. There is both a cloister and a garden. 
 
 The Suleimanieh was erected between the years 1550-1555 
 by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. It is considered at once 
 typical and the best of the Constantinopolitan mosques, and it 
 
 1. "Nous n'ignorous pas d'ailleurs (la mosquee) qu'elle avait 
 
 ete lienee en 1468 par 1* architect gier Chrisopoulos sur 
 les mines del'anciene iglise des Sant e-Apat res fonaee 
 pour Constantine le Grand pour serven de lien sepultre 
 aux erapereaie d'Orient." 
 
 2. Gurlitt, Cornelius, "Die Baukunst Const anti nope Is", plate 14d. 
 
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is the great work of the Turkish architect, Sinan. Like all 
 of the Imperial mosques, it commemorates a victory. It tri- 
 umphs over Christianity, indeed, for the palace of Belisarius 
 and the church of Saint Euphemia both contributed material to 
 it, as did also the Greek theatre cf Chrysopolis in Nicomedia. 
 Structurally it resembles Sancta Sophia in the principal feat- 
 ures, but in addition, there is a cloister in the same position 
 as the atrium that once stood before Sancta Sophia, while in 
 the garden at the rear of the Mosque there are the tombs of 
 Suleiman and Roxelana. There is no apse, and the different 
 arrangement of the side aisles has been mentioned. The windov/s 
 are more numerous, however, and give a jewel-like appearance 
 from the white glazed glass of their small circular panes. 1 
 Some of the other structures of Sinan are the Zal 
 
 . A 
 
 Mahmoud Pasha mosque, for a vizer of Selim II j the Mihriraah 
 mosque, the Valideh Atik mosque, the Sokolli Mehmud Pasha, 
 aome tombs in the village of Eyoub, the Shah-zade and its ad- 
 jacent tomb, — "the most perfect monument of its kind in 
 , > 
 
 St amboul". 
 
 Sinan was not only a great architect; he wa6 a great 
 artist. He has shown this in his ability to adapt indigene- 
 ous forms to his needs and to stamp his structure with the 
 
 1. Dwight, H. G. "Constantinople Old & New", page 46, also 
 Gurlitt, Cornelius, "Die Baukunst die Constant inopels", 
 plate 14d. 
 
6 ! 
 
 serenity of Islam. There is no celestial light in the 
 Suleimanieh. It is serene, it is full of sunlight and. peace. 
 Sancta Sophia has also a sublimity fully as notable, but it 
 is aweful sublimity, it is overpowering in the accentuation 
 of distances by lights and by deep shadows, its richness sur- 
 charges the interior with a spirituality impossible to the 
 more simply adorned imperial mosoue. Sin=t.n had the opportuni- 
 ty for diversity, and he used it. He could build a clever 
 wall fountain, a graceful tomb or a monumental mosque. 
 
 He was, moreover, a great decorator and it was under 
 him that Turkish architecture began to assume its most dis- 
 tinctively Turkish feature, — the decorative tile. When not 
 to employ them is the artist’s problem, and in Si nan’ s mosques 
 there is shown on the whole the wisest reserve. He had a happy 
 
 faculty for knowing just where they were needed most, a 
 
 tapestry panel of them around the mihrab or beside the doorway 
 of the turbeh, around a wall as a panel between panels, where 
 
 western architects would have used a moulding, following 
 
 thus the Byzantine decoration by means of facing a wall in 
 panels. He usually chose a floral convention in which at in- 
 tervals medallions of decorative writing were set. Some of the 
 smaller structures were tiled up to the spring of the dome, as 
 the Rustem Pasha or the Sultana Valideh. 
 
 Even a wall fountain was not beneath the notice of this 
 great man. "One that controverts the canon of orthodox Mo- 
 hammedan art is to be admired in the handsome bath of Sancta 
 

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Sophia a work of Sinan where three dolphins, their 
 
 tails in the air, spout water into a fluted basin. I have 
 wondered if these unorthodox ore&tureB like the lions in so 
 
 many gardens, may not perpetuate a Byzantine tradition, if not 
 Byzantine workmanship. In a neighboring fountain there are 
 motifs of the egg, the peacock, and the shell. This is not 
 Sinan' s, but it will indicate the independence from absolute 
 convention, as well as the cleverness of Ottoman artists in 
 the periods of their best work. 
 
 Ottoman architecture has often been differentiated from 
 the older systems of construction by calling it rather a mode 
 of decoration. The sacred buildings differ in their decoration, 
 but in the consistent similarity of their construction, they 
 all resemble their Christian archetype. After the Suleimanieh 
 there are no superior mosques. The decoration becomes less 
 fine and the construction much too regular, as in the Ahmedieh. 
 
 It is a perfect square, and regular throughout; for this reason 
 it is not at all effective. There is no center of interest. 
 
 Its six minarets and its regularity, however, make it the most 
 pleasing of all the mosques in the city. The last great mosque 
 was built in 1755 by the Sultan Osman III. 
 
 There is practically nothing, either in the city or in 
 the provincial cities, which may be called distinctively Turkish, 
 
 1. Dwight, N. G. 
 
 "Constantinople Old & New", page 356. 
 


 civil or domestic architecture. The cosmopolitan nature of 
 the population makes the identification too difficult, and the 
 frequent fires have made historic comparison impossible. The 
 government palaces have been erected by Armenian or French 
 architects, and the designs have been almost entirely French. 
 

 
 
 
 
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 , ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE BYZANTINE CHARACTER OF OTTOMAN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 In becoming acquainted with the Turkish architecture 
 
 in Constantinople, one easily falls into an admiration for it. 
 
 To judge it critically one ought to know much of the men who 
 
 were employed as designers before he may safely credit of 
 
 Turkish genius, but even what little one may identify, like 
 
 that of Sinan, is a substantial testimony to the artistic genius 
 
 of a people who, two hundred years before they built their first 
 
 mosque, were probably as crude and repulsive as any tribe of 
 
 1 
 
 Asiatic nomads. As such they built only tents, but as masters 
 of Constantinople they raised places of worship that for 
 
 U 
 
 structural defects are no worse off than Be$onoretti ' s St. Peters. 
 They lack a distinctive art of building, but are not imitators; 
 and if they are to be called imitators so then must any other 
 design whose work has antecedents. 
 
 Christian civilization had long passed its first 
 millennium when the Ottaman Turks became to know it; and to 
 build upon it rather than to begin an evolution of a new 
 art, was the natural process for the more primitive civilization 
 to follow. 
 
 At the time it was taken up by the Turks, Byzantine Art 
 has spread from Paris to Cairo. It permeated these regions 
 
 1 Art and Archaeology. J arwarRy ,14 2 - 0 , 
 
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 so throughly that its influences are not dissipated today. 
 
 The Turks had very easily felt its influence, and the 
 impression which Byzantine Art made on them in the diplomatic 
 visits of the Sultans and their officials undoubtedly stimulated 
 
 
 their ambition to have the city. 
 
 Their genius lay in their ability to perceive what was 
 
 architecturally superior. "There are in or about Constantinople 
 
 at least a hundred mosques, erected during the four centuries 
 
 in which the Turks ha :e possessed the city. Not one of them 
 
 is a pillared court, like those of Egypt or Syria, none even 
 
 an extended bosilicce, like those of Barbary or Spain. All are 
 
 copies, more or less modified of Sancta Sophia , no 
 
 Christian ever appreciated its beauty but the Turk saw 
 
 2 
 
 and seized it at a glance." 
 
 1 The archaism of such school of sculpture as that to which 
 Mr. Paul Manship belongs has- a suggestion of Byzantine 
 treatment, although it is a little more closely related to 
 the Perjelean age of Greek sculpture. The treatment of the 
 interior decoration of St. John the Divine an c d of the best 
 churches in North America, is strongly Byzantine. Mr. Frank 
 Brangwin is influenced by the color and composition of 
 Byzantine mural decoration. 
 
 2 Tergasson, James, "History of Architecture", Vol. II, p. 558.