Our Pilgrimage to Armenian and Syrian Christianity in Eastern Turkey: some essential history

on the road to Ani

Sooner or later in this blog we have to get some historical facts sorted out. As someone who failed history exams at school, you can tell it was never my strongest subject. However I felt at a distinct disadvantage at the beginning of this pilgrimage because I couldn’t slot the ruins of mosques and churches into their rightful historic place in the grand scheme of things in my mind. Hellenistic, Byzantine, Ottoman, Seljuks, Christians: where did they all fit in?
The history of Anatolia (I think at school we called this Asia Minor, from the Greek meaning Small Asia) is enormously complicated, with a great number of tribes and dynasties, and many conflicts over the centuries. I can only begin to scratch the surface here as with some humility I try to put our pilgrimage into some kind of historical context. I wish I had taken more notice of my history lessons at school all those years ago. They would have come in handy now! Instead I used to draw train engines – yes really! I had quite a passion for them, and for some reason the teacher humoured me and let me get on with it.
And if you don’t listen in lessons you can’t expect to pass exams!
So here is my attempt to try to condense enormous volumes of complex historical events into a bite size portion that is relevant to our pilgrimage, is tolerably accurate and which I hope is not too difficult to digest. It can all get enormously confusing because historical scholars seem to disagree among themselves sometimes, there being for example several definitions of both Hellenistic culture and the Byzantine Empire and the periods they cover. With all that in mind, here goes!!

Anatolia was one of the first places where Christianity spread, so that by the 4th century AD, western and central Anatolia were overwhelmingly Christian and Greek-speaking. For the next 600 years, while Imperial possessions in Europe were subjected to barbarian invasions, Anatolia would be the center of the Greek Hellenic civilization albeit under Byzantine control since the split of the Roman Empire into two in 395 AD. Byzantine control was challenged by Arab raids starting in the 8th century with a series of wars, the Byzantine-Arab Wars.

on the road to Ani

So where do the Seljuks fit in? The House of Seljuk was a branch of the Oguz Turks whose original homeland was the Ural-Altay region of Central Asia, on the edge of the Muslim world. This has been the domain of Turkic peoples since antiquity, although their mass-migrations from Central Asia occurred from the 9th century onwards. In the 10th century, the Seljuks started migrating in a big way from their ancestral homeland into Persia which became the administrative core of the Great Seljuk Empire. Then towards the end of the 11th Century they began penetrating into the eastern regions of Anatolia, then under the rule of the Byzantines where they started building mosques such as those we have seen and will see at places like Ani. The Seljuks fought and defeated the Byzantine army in 1071, at the Battle of Manzikert and the capture of the Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes of the Byzantine military aristocracy played an important role in undermining Byzantine authority in Anatolia and Armenia and paved the way for the gradual Turkification of Anatolia. (The Emperor is said to have been blinded, retreated to a monastery and died of his wounds – I wonder which monastery? Does history record?)
The Turkish language and Islam introduced to Anatolia gradually spread over the region and the slow transition from a predominantly Christian and Greek speaking Anatolia to a predominantly Turkish speaking Muslim region was well underway.

But the Seljuk armies didn’t always have it their own way. They were defeated by the Mongols in 1242, and the power of their empire then slowly disintegrated. This made way for one of the Turkish principalities governed by Osman 1 to evolve over the next 200 years or so into the Ottoman Empire which then expanded throughout Anatolia, the Balkans, the Levant and North Africa. In 1453, the Ottomans completed their conquest of the Byzantine Empire by capturing its capital Constantinople.

on the road to Ani

The Ottoman Empire, named after this Osman I, was to prevail as a world empire for almost six centuries, Its power and prestige peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries, although it was often in conflict with those who came in its way, for example the Holy Roman Empire, in its advance to Central Europe through the Balkans. In the early part of the 16th century the Ottoman Empire’s borders were extended south and east and into Egypt and Algeria, and conflicts arose with Portugal over maritime dominance as the Portuguese were perceived to be threatening Ottoman monopoly over the Silk Road, the ancient trading route between East Asia and Western Europe. From the beginning of the 19th century onwards, the Ottoman Empire began to decline and many Balkan Muslims migrated to the Empire's heartland in Anatolia. The Ottoman Empire entered WW1 on the side of the Central Powers (comprising the German Empire, the Austro- Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Bulgaria). It was ultimately defeated. During the war, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were deported and exterminated in the Armenian Genocide although there is still much controversy surrounding the exact circumstances of this. There were also large scale massacres committed against the Greeks and Assyrians. Following the Armistice of Mudros on 30 October 1918 the Allied Powers sought to partition the Ottoman State but Turkish Nationalists then waged the Turkish War of Independence against the occupying Allies. The Turkish National Movement in Anatolia led to the formation of a new Grand National Assembly by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The War of Independence culminated in the Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923, the allies left Anatolia and the GNA decided to establish a republic of Turkey – declared on 29th October 1923 – a modern secular nation-state.
The Ottoman Empire ceased to be on 1 November 1922. 

the gorge at Ani

Now if you still have the stomach for some more history lessons, here is how the history of Kars slots into all that. I have taken this from the excellent on line official guide book to Kars that I have mentioned before. Here you will find a really good time line that makes sense of all this is an easy to follow sequence if you still want more! The first known inhabitants of Kars were the Hurrians, who go back incredibly to 13,000 BC and apparently stuck around for a very long time! The Urartus occupied the region in 900 BC. The Iskits ruled in the 7th century BC but failed to fight off the Persians in the 6th Century BC. In the 4th century BC Alexander the Great of Macedonia won the war against the Persians and took hold of the region, ushering in a spread of Greek culture into the east resulting in a new Hellenistic civilization. The tribe of Parts and the Armenian feudal lords dependent on it then occupied Kars from time to time. Since the 2nd century AD Kars and its surroundings continually changed hands from the Romans to the Sasanis. In 395 the Roman Empire divided into two, and the region found itself in the Byzantine/East Roman Empire. In 646 Kars became Muslim Arab. In 961 the Armenian feudal lords founded the Bagrat Kingdom and made the city of Ani its capital but the Byzantines soon drove the Armenians out from the region.
After 20 years of Byzantine dominance the Seljuk Sultan Alparslan occupied Ani and Kars in 1064.
This region was the first part of Anatolia captured by Turks, 7 years before the victory of Malazgirt in 1071. Byzantines tried to get Kars back in 1080 but lost to the Seljuks. Then in 1124 the Georgians occupied Ani and Kars, but the Seljuks regained control in 1124. 1239 was the Mongolian invasion when they took over the whole of Anatolia starting with Kars and Ani. In later centuries the city was repeatedly disputed between Ottomans and the Safevi country and changed hands many times over the years between Byzantines, Georgians and Armenians. Kars was conquered by the Russians twice in the 19th century and again in the 20th century before the Armenian Turks gained control. And there you have it…

on the road to Ani

no wonder there is such a wonderful variety of different architectural styles in Kars! 

If any historian wants to put me right on any of this then please do…
Tomorrow I shall leave history behind and continue with our travels...hopefully I for one will be better informed.

Pilgrimage to Eastern Turkey: The sights of Kars

First we went to see the Armenian Church of the Apostles. The tourist information board in the grounds helpfully tells us that it was built from 932 to 937 AD by Bagradit King Abbas – of clean cut basalt stone in a clover leaf layout with a steep dome.
The twelve apostles can be seen in relief high up on the outer walls.
In 1064 it was converted to a mosque when the Seljuks conquered Kars. It was an orthodox church for 40 years from 1878 when Kars fell to the Imperial Russians, (who held the city until 1920) then it fell into disuse for some time before being used as a museum from 1969 to 1980.

It became the Kumbet or Kethuda mosque in 1994, when the structure was registered and came under preservation status. That may be so, but the plants sprouting generously from the walls and roof will surely hasten its decay unless money can be found for some renovation work soon.
The mosque is surrounded by brilliantly colorful flower beds – not to the manicured standards we are used to further West, but from a distance striking enough and a welcome flash of color in an otherwise cold and grey landscape.

We then climbed up to the massive and forbidding citadel towering over the city. Built in 1153 AD, it was rebuilt around 1579 after its destruction by Mongol invaders. It was the last place held by the Armenians after the First World War 

The approach road to the citadel, starting from near to the Church of the Apostles, is steep, and was festooned with the ubiquitous litter, being rummaged through and picked over by free range chickens and stray cats, of which there were plenty.
There then follows a long gentle path, to reach the coffee bar where the site plateaus out about half way up. Here one can find sustenance and refreshment, before the last leg of the climb which becomes really steep, tricky and challenging for some. It was definitely not for the fainthearted, the steps in places being difficult, steep and uneven, definitely easier to climb than to descend. But we were rewarded by superb views of the surrounding town and countryside once we made it to the top.

In the center of the town we visited the Mosque of Fethiye (or Fethiye Camii) – separated from a bustling street market selling all manner of fruit and vegetable by a large and untidy public concourse. This building was originally built by the Russians as a church at the end of the 19th century in their occupation period 1878-1918, in typical Baltic architectural style. It was later converted into a mosque in 1985 when two minarets were added. It is the only mosque in Turkey having that distinctive Russian/Baltic architectural style, a style repeated through the old streets of the town, singling it out among Turkish cities. Venturing inside, after the usual deposit of shoes outside the door and the obligatory covering of our female heads, we were confronted by one huge space, the brilliant red of the carpet with a typically Islamic pattern, the brilliant shades of blue adorning the walls, and again the traditional Islamic decorations.

Reflecting on the sadness for Christians of this beautiful building being turned from a church to a mosque, I was then reminded of the many Christian churches that were themselves built upon earlier pagan sites. Life, religions and cultures move on through all stages of history.

There was an interesting mix of Russian, Armenian and Ottoman architecture in this city among the squalor of fly tipping and general mess and litter. The Russian style buildings reflect the fact that Imperial Russia held Kars for some time, from 1878 until 1920.

For a long time it was thought that civilization began in Egypt, but archaeologists have found mud bricks used in this way in Turkey from 6500 BC, with the earliest evidence of metallurgy in the world, dating at 7,200 BC, along with signs of many other skills such as geometry, astronomy and technology of these early inhabitants of Turkey.  For those wishing to know more about Kars and everything it has to offer there is an excellent official government tourist guide online.

Before our journey continues I think I shall need to delve a little into the history of this fascinating area in my next post....

Pilgrimage to Eastern Turkey: further along the road to Kars

Kars, in Eastern Anatolia, is situated on a high volcanic plateau, where there is more animal husbandry than horticulture. We are half way there on our coach journey from Erzurum. Following the river down the hill, we pass many blue beehives neatly arranged in rows, much as I’d seen them in the South Western region of Turkey around Marmaris and Turunc many years ago. This region we are travelling through is known for its butter and honey, both some of the best in Turkey apparently.


The volcanic rock outcrops glistened with Obsidian, once used for tools as it is naturally sharp when broken. With our left turn at Karahurt, Kars is just 74 kilometres to go. We’d be there in plenty of time to explore it before checking in to the next hotel.

In the middle distance I saw some trees with cups attached to the bark, presumably the trees were being tapped for sap. I think they were birch trees and I know this sap is harvested for human consumption in some countries, such as Latvia, Estonia, Russia: Turkey also? Although it is the beginning of winter now and sap tapping would be done as it rises in spring. Perhaps this one was forgotten! The rock formations were incredible, and we came into the coniferous tree line as we climbed again. There were small stone cairns dotted over the hillsides; presumably these are simple boundary markers between farmers?

We were driving up into the clouds now. It was becoming colder and there were dustings of snow on the hillside. The soil was now much darker, colored by the opsidian in the basalt rock.
I’m no expert on Turkish birds but I saw what looked to me like a crane standing in the river. Could it have been? 
Everywhere there were the minarets. In every village we passed, high above the surrounding landscape, these fine white and slim pencil like structures stood out; even if the mosque itself was nothing more than a shack, a small basic building sometimes with only a flat roof. The herds of cattle were now becoming huge, although still free to roam anywhere, it seemed. As we approached Kars, at 1800 meters above sea level, and under a sullen wintry sky, we saw block after block of flats, with colorful walls and roofs, but many seemed to be not occupied. I wondered why? As the coach negotiated narrow roads between high stone walls through the old part of the town towards our hotel for the night, we could peer over the walls into small courtyards of simple houses.

Sometimes these were crammed with geese, and I discovered that these are a local delicacy usually made into a stew. Kars is such a mix of the old, the new, the historic ruins and the positively squalid. It is interesting for all those reasons. 
It is a shame that people tend to use Kars simply as a transit town en route to the ruins of Ani, 28 miles to the East on the Turkish – Armenian border. Because actually it is worth lingering awhile for what it has to offer in its own right.

Not only that, it is the setting for the novel Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. I have yet to read it!

Over the next couple of days I will describe all the many interesting sites we stopped to see in Kars before checking into our hotel for that night....and a short history lesson may be needed to put all this information into the context of our pilgrimage...

Pilgrimage to Eastern Turkey: on the Road to Kars

Our itinerary simply said “enjoy the scenic drive through to Kars (pronounced, I understand, as Karce as in Farce). Life is full of such a rich tapestry of experiences, I wrote in my log for that leg of the journey. Whilst some dozed, I was determined not to miss any detail of this fascinating drive.

First we noticed several army camps along the route with training grounds and closely guarded by sentries in look out posts protected by sand bags. The large herds of goats seemed to be reliant on quite barren looking grazing; I wondered if their feed is supplemented at all? It was now very cold; not more than 6 or 7 C. The coach rolled on past poor primitively constructed single story stone houses, clustered together in small villages with dusty roads beside hayricks of the loose style I remembered as a child of the 1950’s on the Kentish farms before tractors and hay bailers became common. We rushed past meandering streams in flat plains, saw camping sights and picnic areas, wooden open sided huts sheltering wooden picnic tables and benches, often set out in neat rows around a field: all now closed down for the winter which would soon hit this region in earnest.

We stopped for cay – the Turkish tea that I was to come to love in the absence of a good old English cuppa! They drink it neat and quite strong, in small glasses, with sugar, which I could do without. It came as a surprise to me to find everywhere the squat type loos that we became used to in our early student camping days across Europe but which were mostly replaced long ago by modern sanitation. The squat loos, though basic, were variously clean and tolerable or seriously unpleasant. Either way, they invariably cost 1 Turkish Lira, collected by a woman or boy who seemingly did little cleaning of the facilities, simply collecting the money! The squats become quite a challenge to older and stiffer joints and bones!

We passed women in the fields pulling up potatoes, which were stored beside the villages, in clamps covered with plastic sheets, usually blue. We saw what looked like neat piles of blocks of dried mud. These are for use as building blocks. We passed fields of cabbages that would easily win any giant vegetable competition back home. There were pumpkins and squashes piled up beside the road, ready for sale or storage. And the goats had been replaced by large herds of brown cattle, still on sparse pastureland. And there was litter. Everywhere. The stream became a river, and we saw stone water irrigation channels alongside the pastures, rather like the levadas of Madeira. There was grass drying in some fields to make hay presumably for winter feed of the cattle. It looked thin and poor in quality. As we approached Horasan the mud block roofs of the simple houses in the villages along the way were now often replaced by corrugated metal. There was an industrial estate dealing mostly with farm machinery.

After Horasan the scenery changed dramatically, becoming more mountainous with some interesting looking geology. I had to study geology for one year at university and was reduced to tears by having to look through a microscope at endless slides of different rock types. The geology of Turkey is complex and its earliest geological history not fully understood, so I am not qualified to comment on what I observed.

But I did briefly glimpse from the coach window some very strange structures in a village by the side of the road – and just managed to get a shot of them. They looked like giant termite colonies, but with what looked like window and door openings, as if people lived in them. They probably do! These are quite clearly cave houses, for which the Cappadocia region further over to the west of Turkey is famous. I can find no further information about these ones near Horasan but such structures are apparently naturally formed compressed volcanic ash formations into which dwelling places are carved. They may be two to four stories high, and because of the insulating properties of the rock they are cool in summer and warm in winter. It seems that many are now being used as boutique and unusual hotels in some tourist areas. Sadly I only managed to get a very poor snatched photo from the coach. We were not stopping. This was after all a pilgrimage, not a tourist trip! Through Dellal we took the road to Agri and Eleskirt. Studying the map on my lap I had to assume that our guide and driver knew which way to go, but this seemed wrong! Sure enough we had indeed come the wrong way. Mustafa our driver navigated us safely and steadily throughout our trip, but this part of the country was clearly new to him and he seemingly had no sat nav. We came to a sudden stop in a layby where he spoke with a van driver. So we turned around in the road to retrace our steps back to the right road. I saw several large birds of prey during this journey, impossible to identify from the brief glimpses of plumage as we passed. One was standing in a field displaying a bright golden breast. A little later on I watched another land, this time with striking white streaks on the underside of the wings, surely a distinguishing feature for those with knowledge of such birds. I was curious about the tiny isolated cemeteries we passed along the way, often with only 4 or 5 graves.

So we arrived back in Horasan, our first sizeable town on the day’s journey, and a welcome stop for lunch in the local pizza café. I was amused to see for sale in the hardware store across the road a large solar energy panel alongside a new squat toilet. Not everyone here welcomes all the latest comforts it would seem. Our drive continued, more than replete with the best pizzas, enjoyed with the locals of the town. With my tiny appetite my pizza would have fed me four times over, so we wrapped the spoils in napkins and in true pilgrim style shared the pieces on the bus with those still feeling peckish! As we drove alongside the river Aros Nehri, herons standing sentinel on the banks rose into ponderous lazy flight as the coach passed by. There was the carcase of a cow in the shallows, the rib cage intact, cleaned no doubt by weather and scavengers. 

Then we drove close to the old road and an elegant well preserved Ottoman bridge, as we rolled on towards Kars, where there was so much to see before stopping for the night at our next hotel .....to be contd...

PS if the quality of some of these photos is not brilliant, please remember that many had to be taken through the coach window as we drove along - we were pilgrims not tourists after all...