Balkan Travellers, Bulgaria
Feb 2 2008
Ani disappears in the no-man’s land between Turkey and Armenia
Text by Albena Shkodrova | Photographs by Anthony Georgieff
We pass by Ocakli, the last Turkish village before the border with
Armenia. The mythical Armenian capital Ani, which at the end of the
ninth century outshined Constantinople, Cairo, and Baghdad with its
splendour, lies somewhere before us. Chronicles called it "City of
1,001 Churches" and a replica of Istanbul’s Saint Sophia used to
stand in its centre.
For the time being, however, nothing on the road speaks of grandeur.
We are travelling across Turkey’s most provincial backwater. Large,
desert-like areas and settlements as if from some prehistoric age
alternate along the road on which we are alone.
Ocakli seems to be inhabited exclusively by sheep. We see a group of
them observing us from behind a low pen wall. Then we notice that
they are engaged in wrecking it by pulling out the straw from the
bricks. Judging from their matter-of-fact look, they have been
working at it for a long time.
The only person around – leaning on a wall, smoking a cigarette, eyes
us with surprise. We slow down to make sure we are on the right path
and find out that he speaks French almost without any accent. "I live
in Paris," he leisurely waves his hand. "I work for Renault, came to
see my parents for the holidays."
This time we get over our shock more quickly than the first time, 120
miles to the south, when a woman wearing salwars and a
psychedelically bright headscarf astounded us with her Californian
drawl.
We may be the only people on the road for the day. The reason is that
the tarmac ends where the country ends too. Ani, one of the least
known but most intriguing tourist destinations on the globe, is a
mile ahead.
We approach it along the Silk Road. If Marco Polo had not been a
fraudster, as an increasing number of historians claim, our car tires
are treading the ruts of his horse’s hoofs.
Today, it is impossible to retrace his steps across Asia due to
political as well as geographical reasons. One of the obstacles is
nearby – the same bridge that the Venetian traveller crossed was
detroyed. Centuries ago…
Ani has been in ruins for the last seven centuries. After the First
World War, the ancient city’s remains fell into a zone of
considerable political tension. Three conflicts of Kemal Atatürk’s
Turkey – with the Soviet Union, Armenia, and the Kurdish separatists,
led to severe travel restrictions being imposed in the course of
decades. The Soviets enforced a 700-meter "security zone" into
Turkish territory, similar to the one still that’s still in place in
southern Lebanon. Nobody was allowed here, including journalists.
After the disintegration of the USSR things took a more liberal turn,
to an extent. Only a year ago, it was more difficult to penetrate
into the ancient Armenian capital than to pass the JFK Airport
immigration. Tourists were allowed through the castle walls only
after coming to blows with Turkish bureaucracy in the town of Kars,
which required three different permits to be issued in three
different offices. Then, at the gate, they were forced to either
leave their passports and cameras with security or to write
explanations on why, while taking pictures of the cathedral, they had
"captured" the borderline behind it too.
We are lucky. Pass permits as well as photography bans were repealed
in 2004. Tickets are now sold from a caravan at the castle walls.
Apart from the moustached clerk, there isn’t a soul around. We enter
a corridor between the two belts of reddish stone which used to guard
the city and look for a gate onto the plateau.
We find it after 200 meters – the Lion’s Gate, a tall, well-preserved
arch, with the wind blowing through it at nearly the speed of a
hurricane. It’s as if all the hot air from inside the castle is
trying to escape and shave off the flat plateau covered with
long-untrimmed grass.
We manage to overcome Ani’s untraditional fortification and a surreal
view opens out before our eyes: a steppe with halves of monumental
buildings scattered all over. On the left we see half a church,
behind it we can make out half a turret, and at the end of the
plateau there is half a chimney of a severed mosque.
A thousand years ago the capital of the Armenian kingdom, comprising
present-day Armenia and parts of Iran and Eastern Turkey, was a
mediaeval metropolis. Its 1,001 churches were technologically and
architecturally avant-garde at the time. Its wealth and splendour
attracted an increasing number of people, and at the end of the tenth
century its population reached 100,000 people.
Turned into a capital by Ashot III, Ani reached the height of its
glory with the Bagratids, an Armenian dynasty which declared
themselves descendants of King Solomon and King David. Its apogee was
during the reign of Gagik I (989 – 1020).
In 1045 the city, named Anahid, after the Persian counterpart of
Aphrodite, fell under Byzantine rule. Only 20 years later it was
taken over by the Seljuk Turks. For almost a century the founders of
the Ottoman Empire fought for control over Ani with the Georgians.
The beginning of the end came in 1239, when the Mongol tribes
attacked. They had little use of city life and made no effort to
restore Ani after a big earthquake in 1319 destroyed it almost to the
brick.
The final blow was dealt by the last great nomad leader, Tamburlaine,
enthusiastically depicted by a number of western writers ranging from
Christopher Marlowe to Edgar Allan Poe. With him, Ani disappeared
from the face of the earth.
After the fourteenth century the ruins remained lost for mankind.
Earthquakes, wars, vandalism, attempts at cultural and ethnic
cleansing, amateur excavations and restorations, and simple neglect
added to the gradual destruction of the handful remaining ruins.
"What is Ani like?" wrote Konstantin Paustovski in 1923. "There are
things beyond description, no matter how hard you try."
Now only a few tumbledown churches, some sections of a castle and
Marco Polo’s bridge remain from what used to be a magnificent city.
In some places the double city wall rises and culminates in turrets
of various shapes and heights, in others it goes down, sometimes
completely disappearing in the tall grass.
We take a broad dusty road, which meanders between the ruins.
Armenian architecture is one of civilization’s greatest enigmas. It
has its own unique appearance, but more importantly – it forms the
basis of a popular European medieval phenomenon, known as Gothic
style. According to Joseph Strzygowski, who wrote in the early
twentieth century, Armenian engineers were the first to devise a way
to put a round dome over a square space. They did this in two ways:
either by transforming the square into a triangle or by building an
octagonal structure to hold the dome. Their architectural genius
resulted in stunningly beautiful buildings.
We slowly reach the first large building, the Church of the Redeemer,
and find out where the Austrian historian carried out his field
research.
The inscription on the façade says that the church was commissioned
in 1035 by Prince Ablgharib Pahlavid, in order to house a piece of
the cross of Christ. Bought in Constantinople, it had to rest here
until Christ’s second coming. Miraculously, the church managed to
survive until the twentieth century: though neglected, it was in one
piece until 1957 when its eastern section was destroyed by lightning.
The rest was badly shaken by an earthquake in 1989 and according to
architects, it is in danger of collapsing. Somebody has apparently
come up with the eccentric solution to block up the former church
door using some broken stones found in situ.
Now the Church of the Redeemer is reminiscent of a theatre décor: a
whole façade on one side and missing walls on the other so that the
audience could view the action on the "stage."
Fifty meters further, we come up against the canyon of the Arpaçay
River, known on its Armenian bank as the Akhurian, which divides
Turkey from Armenia. On the two opposite slopes there are ancient
settlements carved into the rocks, their origins still being disputed
by historians.
The cathedral looks intact, but there is a surprise lurking behind
the gate: we find out that the dome is gone, the open sky above us.
Startled by the noise, hundreds of pigeons take off from the column
capitals and fly out like smoke through a chimney. Strzygowski must
have been a romantic art history scholar, not an engineer.
As a former pontifical church, the cathedral has three entrances: the
north one for the patriarch, the south one for the king, and the west
one from for commoners. This was Ani’s most important building,
designed by the famous Armenian architect Trdat Mendet. Its dome fell
in the earthquake in 1319, but this was only the beginning of a
series of disasters. The western façade is now also in danger of
collapse.
On the walls we notice graffiti (Vovochka+Lena=love), left by Turkish
and Russian visitors. Some of the inscriptions are by Armenians who
must have managed to get here during some of the gaps in Turkey’s
restrictive policy.
Trdat Mendet obviously had megalomania issues. After building the
cathedral, he designed the huge Church of Saint Gregory half a mile
north. His ambition was to build it on the model of the Saint Sophia
in Istanbul. Its dome, however, collapsed shortly after it was
erected and was never restored. Still, the St. Gregory church, named
after the Armenians’ patron saint, contains the largest number of
frescoes dating from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, which made
the Turks call it Resimli Kilise, the Church with Pictures.
We go on to the remarkable red Menüçer Mosque, whose arabesques, from
a distance, evoke the Alhambra.
Naturally, the Turks and the Armenians argue over it too, as the
former claim it was built by the first emir of the Shaddadid dynasty
and the latter insist it dates from Bagratid times.
It remains uncertain who is right but the ruins suggest entrancing
architecture. The combinations of red and black stone typical of Ani
are varied with white, and the six surviving domes have different
ornamentation, in a manner characteristic of the Seljuks. Though
half-ruined, the mosque was used by local Muslims until 1906.
We are climbing uphill to the remarkable castle when we suddenly
notice that the path beneath our feet is not covered with gravel.
What we have mistaken for small stones are in fact ceramic chards. I
draw my hand across them and find a couple with ornaments and several
coated with a colourful glaze. Ten steps further I stop and repeat
the experiment: we are literally walking on ceramics broken over the
centuries.
The chips may have come from anywhere: from the city sewerage system
(a remarkable technological innovation at that time), from pots in
rich merchants’ homes, from the often gilded church interiors, from
the tiles of somebody’s elegant bathroom, from a tombstone or a
plaque commemorating somebody’s triumph.
>From this moment on I can’t get rid of the feeling that I am treading
on the remains of people’s souls. I stalk like a stork until I reach
the gates, thinking that a handful of Ani’s paving material can tell
us more than the thickest of history books.
Like the ruins of Troy, this is a place where you have to imagine,
not just see. "À la recherche du temps perdu," politely says the Turk
leaning on the same wall when he notices us go out of the Lion’s
Gate. Mehmed speaks an almost unaccented French.
Practicalities
Kars is located some 1,500 km east of Istanbul. Unless you have a
car, the best way to go to Ani is by taxi (45 km, $80) Make sure that
the taxi driver has understood that he has to wait for you for at
least three and a half hours, because otherwise you may end up
sleeping under the stars. In the summer, the temperature on the
plateau where Ani stands reaches 36°C and in the winter it may fall
to -42ºC.
The Quarrymen
Ani is one of the symbols of the contemporary Armenian nation just
like the Ararat Mountain 150 kilometers to the south. To commemorate
the 1,700th anniversary of Christianity in Armenia in 2001, the
Armenian government funded the construction of a cathedral in
Yerevan. The stones for this cathedral, St. Gregory the Illuminator,
came, symbolically, from Ani. Well, from as close as possible: the
other bank of the river which is Armenian territory. For this
purpose, not far uphill from Marco Polo’s bridge, a huge quarry,
still functioning today, was built. In a way, the quarry adds to the
surrealism of the scenery. The Kamaz trucks and numerous cranes there
make incredible noise which the wind blows in waves to the old
Armenian capital, now in Turkish territory.
For photos, click the link below
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