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According to Leo the Deacon, a tenth-century Byzantine historian, the inhabitants of the Anatolian province of Cappadocia were troglodytes: “They went underground in holes, clefts, and labyrinths,” he reported. This remote, mysterious people lived “in dens and burrows.”
The surviving ancient architecture of Cappadocia—a region in central Turkey about 60 miles long and 60 miles wide—is indeed almost exclusively rock-cut, with elaborate cavelike dwellings carved into a fantastic volcanic wonderland. In 1712 French surveyor Paul Lucas traveled through 024Cappadocia, where he saw sculpted busts of hooded monks, along with depictions of the Virgin and Child, adorning some of the rock pinnacles. Scattered about the distorted landscape were “pyramidical houses” with windows; some of the interiors of these cone-shaped structures were decorated with faded fresco paintings. At first, Lucas suspected that these dwellings belonged to Christian hermits, but he changed his mind when he noticed that a number of statues had pagan subjects, some indecent. But Lucas, it should be said, had an active imagination: He also reported strange tales of bodies being cast out of tombs and then finding their way back into this world, inexplicable fires among the pyramids, and a monstrous beast whose peculiar laugh compelled those who heard it to follow, never to be seen again.
Cappadocia is known today for its lunar landscapes, underground settlements and painted Byzantine cave churches.
Roughly 50 to 150 million years ago, repeated volcanic eruptions and subsequent erosion in central Turkey created a series of interconnected valleys, surrounded by limestone plateaus. In the best-known area, around the Göreme Valley in eastern Cappadocia, the terrain consists almost exclusively of a fine-grained, compressed ash. Years of erosion carried away the softer ash, creating Cappadocia’s characteristic cone formations. In some instances, a layer of nonvolcanic rock remains balanced picturesquely on an eroded cone, producing the so-called fairy chimneys. In some areas the rock has a pinkish hue from the underlying sand bed.
In the less-explored area of western Cappadocia, the volcanic landscape offers equally intriguing formations. The narrow Ihlara Valley, for example, is comparatively lush. Here the earth is composed of petrified volcanic ash; the surrounding cliffs are made of ignimbrite (a kind of condensed and hardened volcanic ash). Throughout the region, volcanic landforms are honeycombed with rock-cut settlements, monasteries, churches and underground cities from the Byzantine period.
As a province of the Roman Empire, Cappadocia had early connections to the Christian church. St. Paul may have passed through Cappadocia, and St. Peter mentions the province in his first Epistle. By the third century, it had become a center of Orthodox theology. In the fourth century the region produced three church fathers: Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa. Cappadocia was invaded by the Persians in the sixth and seventh centuries, and then by the Arabs in the eighth and ninth. There are few physical remains from these periods, however, when Cappadocia served as an isolated outpost of the early Byzantine Empire. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Cappadocia reached its floruit. Much of what survives dates to this period, during which Cappadocia forged strong military and bureaucratic connections with Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire.
In 1071 the Byzantine army was annihilated by the Seljuk Turks in the fateful Battle of Manzikirt in eastern Turkey. By 025the end of the decade, the Seljuks were in control of most of Asia Minor, including Cappadocia; they established their capital at Konya, in south-central Turkey. The Seljuks were Muslim, but they allowed the Christian communities to continue and even provided occasional subsidies. By the Seljuk period, however, Cappadocia’s cultural ties to Constantinople had been irrevocably severed; communities declined, and most settlements were either abandoned or converted for agricultural uses.
Because of the nature of the land, many churches, monasteries and dwellings were cut from the rock rather than built. Typically, a living unit was cut into the slope of a hill, with carved chambers organized around three sides of a courtyard. The Cappadocian carvers began by burrowing out the center of a space, perhaps following a natural fissure; next they roughed out the whole and carved the details. With the malleable volcanic rock, work would have proceeded quickly. A room 25 feet long, 14 feet wide and 10 feet high probably took a single man about a month to complete.
Theirs is primarily an architecture of interiors, though the Cappadocians sometimes gave their rock-cut buildings detailed facades, with gables and horseshoe-shaped arches. The architectural elements of the rock-cut buildings were carved in imitation of Byzantine architecture. But there is an important difference: Most architectural features in rock-cut buildings are mere adornments, with no structural purpose. Interior columns, for example, do not support roofs; they exist simply as decoration, mimicking built architecture.
Another enigmatic feature of the region is its “underground cities.” More than 40 multistoried underground settlements have been identified. Unfortunately, none of these has a clear context or a fixed date; they have thus become the subject of wild speculation by local guides and journalists, even by otherwise sensible scholars. Entered through long passages guarded by rolling-stone doors (see photo of rolling-stone doors in the sidebar to this article), these complexes are thought to have served as places of refuge (rather than as permanent dwellings), where the locals, taking with them their food supplies and livestock, hid in times of peril.
When Leo the Deacon described Cappadocia’s subterranean “labyrinths,” did he have these underground cities in mind? Possibly. The underground cities, scholars believe, are associated with the Arab invasions of the eighth and ninth centuries, but we do not know exactly when they were built or how they were used.
Scholarly investigation of Cappadocia began less than a century ago with the pioneering work of the Jesuit monk Guillaume de Jerphanion, who undertook to document the region’s painted cave churches. At least 700 churches in Cappadocia remain in some state of preservation, and about one third of these have painted decoration. This concentration of physical evidence is unparalleled in other parts of the Byzantine Empire. New painted churches are discovered and published each year, constantly expanding our repertory. Thus we have learned a great deal about the style and iconography of fresco paintings. Unfortunately, however, other aspects of Byzantine Cappadocia have not been properly explored. No comprehensive regional survey has been attempted, the region’s architectural setting is rarely given more than a cursory treatment, and the nature of the settlements has not been investigated.
Who lived in this strange environment, and why were they there? In the absence of hard evidence, a vivid folklore has flourished: Monks fleeing persecution dug themselves into the rough wilderness—or so we are told. “From the seventh century onward, we have countless hermitages, monasteries, and independent chapels to prove that the land had become as holy as Mount Sinai or the desert of Sohag, and one of the most concentrated regions of Eastern monasticism,” wrote the late architectural historian Spiro Kostof. Cappadocia is now regularly referred to as a region of intensive monastic settlement, but there is very little evidence to support this view. In other words, we know a great deal about Byzantine Cappadocia in detail, but very little in general.
Lacking written records, scholars have tried to construct a history of Cappadocia based on the monuments. But Byzantine art is notoriously difficult to date on the basis of style; most of the archaeological remains are insecurely dated and thus the subject of endless scholarly squabbles.
And what of Cappadocia today? Visited by thousands of tourists each summer, the fragile environment is under constant assault. The settlement at Göreme, whose name in Turkish means “Unseen,” is now, ironically, perhaps the most seen of all Byzantine sites outside of Istanbul. Father Jerphanion would probably not recognize the subject of his monumental study, now surrounded by paved roads, parking lots and souvenir stands. The rapid wear of too many feet on the compressed ash has obliterated carved staircases and worn ancient paths into ruts. The number of visitors has also dramatically increased the level of humidity in the churches, threatening the survival of the frescoes. Although several churches have been restored recently, these sites require constant maintenance. A few newly conserved churches will remain closed to visitors until the problems can be addressed. Erosion from natural causes threatens the stability of many areas, and several churches around the Göreme area, deemed too dangerous, are closed to visitors.
Time and the elements are taking their toll on the monuments, but the fascination endures. Scholars have attempted to dispel the myths about Cappadocia’s picturesque landscape and troglodytic settlements. But stories about hermit monks fleeing persecution and hiding underground continue to circulate. Cappadocia seems to demand a romantic narrative and to inspire visionary fantasies. It is a wonderland, one we hope can be preserved for future generations.
According to Leo the Deacon, a tenth-century Byzantine historian, the inhabitants of the Anatolian province of Cappadocia were troglodytes: “They went underground in holes, clefts, and labyrinths,” he reported. This remote, mysterious people lived “in dens and burrows.” The surviving ancient architecture of Cappadocia—a region in central Turkey about 60 miles long and 60 miles wide—is indeed almost exclusively rock-cut, with elaborate cavelike dwellings carved into a fantastic volcanic wonderland. In 1712 French surveyor Paul Lucas traveled through 024Cappadocia, where he saw sculpted busts of hooded monks, along with depictions of the Virgin and Child, adorning some of […]
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