Turkey: The Ages of Anatolia
29 April - 20 May 2013
Tour Highlights
This tour explores the role of Anatolia (modern Turkey) as a cultural bridge between east and west through the civilisations of the Hittites, Aeolian and Ionian Greeks, the Hellenistic kingdoms, Roman 'Asia', the Byzantine Empire, Seljuk Anatolia and the Ottoman Empire. Highlights include:
- • Your group leader is Dr Susan Aykut, an Ottoman historian who has been a regular visitor to Turkey for over 30 years. Susan is joined by your Tour Lecturer, Dr Erin Gibson, a landscape and survey archaeologist specialising in past human activity of the Eastern Mediterranean
- • Excursions to the ancient sites of Neolithic Çatal Höyük, the Hittite capital at Hattushash, now Bogazköy, and the layers of numerous settlements at Troy
- • Visits to some of the world’s best Graeco-Roman sites, including Pergamum, Ephesus, Priene, Miletus, Didyma and Aphrodisias
- • Exploration of Byzantine legacies, including Hagia Sophia and Kariye Jami (formerly the Church of St. Saviour in Chora)
- • Discovering the rich Ottoman heritage, including, the Topkapi Palace and Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, and the Green Mosque and Green Mausoleum of Sultan Mehmet I and the Koza Han (Old Silk Market caravansarai) in Bursa
- • A day on the Gallipoli Peninsula, including visits to ANZAC Cove, Lone Pine and Turkish Memorial sites
- • Accommodation in beautifully-appointed caves while visiting the extraordinary 'Moonscape' of Cappadocia
- • Specialist lecturers and lectures - classical epigraphist Prof. Adrian Saunders on the graffiti of Ephesus (TBC); Sufi leader Uzeyir Ozyurt on Sufism and Whirling Dervishes; former Director of the Department of Antiquities Prof Engin Ozgen on Ancient Civilizations of Turkey, Hittites and Phyrigians; architectural historian Prof. Zeynep Kuban on Urban Development of Istanbul
Visits include Cumali Kizik • ANZAC Cove • Lone Pine • Troy • Pergamum • Ephesus • Priene • Miletus • Didyma • Aphrodisias • Çatal Höyük • Sultan Han & Bogazköy.
About the Tour
The history of the region occupied by modern Turkey, Anatolia, has been shaped by its geographical position between Asia and Europe. Countless armies, including the Dorian tribes, Persians, Macedonian Greeks, Romans, Magyars and Turks have crossed Anatolia from east to west and west to east in search of territory and plunder. The region also is a trade corridor. For eons goods from the caravan routes of the East crossed the Bosporus near Constantinople (modern Istanbul), the capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, to find their way to Western Europe through Thrace and the Balkans.
Civilisations of great brilliance have emerged in Anatolia as a result of the passage of peoples and their cultures. Hittite kingdoms, Ionian city states, Hellenistic monarchies and the empires of the Romans, their Byzantine scions, and the Ottoman Turks developed political, religious, intellectual, social and artistic institutions, movements and forms which have moulded eastern Mediterranean culture for millennia. Throughout the Ancient period and the Middle Ages, the East boasted a more brilliant civilisation than the West. Political and doctrinal clashes brought periods of chaos when cultures and ideologies impacted upon each other, erupting in intellectual and political turmoil. Cultural ferment in the region produced the Iliad, the Ionic Order, Hellenistic sculpture, the riches of Constantine's 'New Rome', the Councils of Nicea and Ephesus, Justinian's revolutionary basilica, Hagia Sophia, Göreme's underground cities and churches, and Iconoclasm. Greek intellectualism and naturalism fused with Roman social and political organisation and with Christian mysticism to create forms like the Byzantine icon and centrally-planned churches. The appropriation of aspects of Byzantine imperial culture by the dynasty of Osman produced the architectural masterpieces of Ottoman Istanbul such as the Süleymaniye Mosque and the Topkapi Palace. The latter reflects a unique fusion of the ideal of a Western palace with the spatial organisation of a nomadic camp.
This tour explores the role of Turkey as a cultural bridge by studying the civilisations of the Hittites, Aeolian and Ionian Greeks, the Hellenistic kingdoms, Roman 'Asia', the Byzantine Empire, Seljuk Anatolia and the Ottoman Empire. We examine archaeological sites, Byzantine churches, monasteries and underground cities, mosques, souks (markets) hans (Islamic hospices), Ottoman palaces and houses, and a rich popular culture of metalwork, carpets, dance and theatre. The tour also includes a special visit to the battlefields of Gallipoli.
The tour begins and ends in Istanbul where it visits the earliest monuments of Constantine’s ‘New Rome’. We trace the transformation of the city by the Emperor Theodosius, who decreed that Christianity be the State religion, and by Justinian, who rebuilt the city’s churches, and we visit the lovely masterpiece of the last flowering of Byzantine culture, the former Church of St. Saviour in Chora. We also investigate the transformation of the Christian city to the capital of the Ottoman sultanate, the ways in which Hagia Sophia influenced the genesis of Istanbul’s great mosques and the evolution of a distinctive palace, the Topkapi, whose influences were to resonate as far as Mughal India.
The tour travels down the west coast of Turkey to visit Bursa - the Byzantine city which became the Ottoman capital before Mehmet II conquered Constantinople. Here, and at Konya in central Anatolia, we shall encounter shrines in the Seljuk tradition, very different to the Ottoman structures which replaced them.
We next visit the ruins of Troy on the Dardanelles and the historic battlefields of Gallipoli. Travelling further south we enter the world of the Ionian Greeks, their Hellenistic successors, and the Roman Empire. We visit the important Aegean cities of Pergamum, Ephesus, Priene, Miletus and Didyma. Here you will be introduced to the function of the Greek city (polis) and its architecture of oligarchy, the monumental programs of the autocrats who supplanted these city states, and the imperial culture of Rome. Further inland we find the remains of the important Roman cities of Aphrodisias and Pamukkale (Hierapolis).
From Pamukkale we travel to the original Seljuk capital of Konya, the home town of Rumi, founder of the Whirling Dervishes. Remains of early underground Christian monastic communities are seen in Cappadocia as is the ancient capital of the Hittites at Hattushash (Bogazköy). The tour continues to Ankara, Turkey's modern capital at an ancient crossroads, and then returns to Istanbul.
