Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Ani disappears in the no-man's land between Turkey and Armenia

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Ani disappears in the no-man's land between Turkey and Armenia

    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
    http://www.balkantravellers.com/read/article /331
Working...
X