Turkish Letters #5 -- Amasya (Shiralee)

Busbecq was called to Amasya by Sultan Süleyman as a kind of "nyah nyah nyah" to the Hapsburg Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and the redoubtable self-styled Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's brother. Ferdinand had been misbehaving in Wallachia and Transylvania, despite his protestations of friendship to the Ottoman supremo - as the old chestnut goes, he was trying to take Candia from a baby, the infant King John. Süleyman was threatened on two fronts. From Europe, where his territories were constantly under threat, particularly by the aforementioned bombastic Hapsburg clan. From the east, where there were his old enemies the Persians, a constant thorn in his flesh since the beginning of his reign and who had recently had some successes in their internecine warfare with his empire. Fortunately he could deal with this by concluding a peace treaty with the Persian leader, Shah Tahmash. This freed him up to attend to his European problems. Busbecq's job was to witness and convey the reality of the changed situation back to his master #1.

Traditionally, Amasya was the training ground for Sultans-in-waiting, or their understudies #2, so it was well set up for this kind of diplomatic coup. Despite its position deep inside Ottoman territories, it was the bulwark against which the Persians repeatedly broke themselves as well as being handily placed for keeping an eye on the Marcher Lords and fractious nomads of Anatolia. One of its glories was its practically unassailable fortress perched over the town, atop almost vertical cliffs. Its position makes its massive stone walls seem obviously redundant, not to mention an absolute bugger to construct. So assiduous were its builders that they also carved a 'secret tunnel' from the keep down to the river so that the townspeople could scamper up to safety at the first sign of a lance or a marauding nomad and could sneak down and replenish their water supplies in the event of a protracted siege.

This sultanic presence left a wealth of architectural memorials; mosques, bedestans (covered markets), hammans (bathhouses), medressehs (Islamic schools), soup kitchens, hans (caravanserais) - even a mental hospital (that was so humane and enlightened that music therapy was being used there as early as the 15 th century). Every princeling, court grandee and many sultans, including Süleyman himself, left their mark.

Whilst the building themselves are eloquent architectural testimonials to their predecessors' foresight, Amasya's current town grandees have gilded the lily by providing sculptured busts of many of them on plinths along the river. These look like they were modelled in Das and sprayed with bronze paint - certainly any of the notables portrayed would have struck their perpetrator's head from his #3 shoulders at first sight of them. At least, I suppose, they don't look any worse than the tableau of Ferhat and his girlfriend, or the full-figure (with world) sculpture of the geographer Strabo #4. That would be because they're all by the same inept aesthetic criminal. #5

Firhat -- he was a brave man, he was a designer...	Strabo -- the world's first historian, looks askance...

Actually Amasya had a number of sculptural oddities. These include, but are not limited to, a very imposing Ataturk tableau #6. It is placed so that the man and the crag-mounted Kale are dramatically juxtaposed.

Of rather less dramatic, but much odder, juxtaposition are a series of concrete animal sculptures a bit further along the river from the bronzed Das ones. We were at a complete loss to understand their significance or relevance. A life-size kangaroo that appeared to be attempting unnatural relations with a planter, a giraffe entangled in plastic tape, a grizzly bear, obviously extremely happy, hugging another planter, some tortoises and an eagle... We could only conclude that they were there to compliment the ersatz wood (moulded and 'realistically' painted concrete) railing and seating that was all over the place. These contrast with a fountain made of wood... There is also a fake waterfall cunningly constructed from concrete rocks attached to the cliff-side at its closest approach to the river. It featured unfortunate saplings in protective concrete sleeves and a picnic area. Sadly it wasn't functioning whilst we were there.

Amasya was also blessed with some light features. The ubiquitous plastic palm trees #7, for example. By day they were a matching pair - one red, one green; but at night they came alive, providing a colour-coordinated lightshow. Another public benefactor thought that it would be a good idea to highlight significant cliff-face features, such as the roman walls, the Pontian tombs and picturesque outcrops that happened to provide footing for a restaurant, with coloured disco-strip lights.

Of course none of these would have been particularly exceptional if they didn't contrast so jarringly with Amasya's own natural as well as architectural beauties.

And it is stunning. Sheer cliff-faces pocked with tombs #8 rise straight up from the riverside. Layer upon layer of ever steeper and higher mountains catch clouds on their shoulders and culminate in snow-capped leviathans. Mists linger in the valleys (supplemented by the exhalations of 70,000 wood or coal domestic fires and an equal number of unroadworthy vehicles). The broad but shallow Yesilirmak (Green River, was known as the Iris in Classical times), around which the city is oriented, is bracleted by a series of ancient bridges, the earliest dating back to Roman rule and featuring concrete covered pylons. Mosques and homes boasted pretty gardens, still golden with leaves and bright fruit and roses.

And the architecture... Perhaps because of the geographical restrictions most of the recent development has happened down on the flats where we didn't have to see it (although the glimpses we got made it pretty clear that it was not superior to that anywhere else in Turkey). Amasya is shaped pretty much like a bowtie - narrow in the middle where the river cuts between two high walls of mountain rock and broadening out into river plains at each end. Busbecq makes it clear that in his day the city was concentrated in the middle section; "...from their slopes there is a view of the river as from the rising tiers of seats in theatre, and one side of the town is completely visible from the other. The hills approach each other so closely that there is only one road which gives entrance to and exit from the city for carriages and beasts of burden." #9 He relates that one of the symbolic ways that the Ottomans rubbed his nose in their new friendship with the Persians was by throwing an ostentatious party in a garden directly across the river from his accommodation for their new friends - and not inviting him. Instead he had the joy of being able to witness every lavish course of the banquet, every ceremonial expression of respect and every bit of the entertainment laid on to honour the Persian ambassador. He was rather impressed.

Our hotel -- the Harsena... not that we got a river-front room, but otherwise all good...

Anyways, back to the architecture. B. dismisses the local domestic architecture as having 'no remarkable beauty'; flat-roofed constructions made of clay that posed an abominable threat to one's clothes when it rained #10. Today these same buildings #11 are one of the glories of Amasya. No longer flat-roofed - climatic change must have forced the current pitched varieties - they are still made using the same basic wood-framed adobe/mud brick techniques. Later, travelling through the other side of central Anatolia, we saw tiny mud-coloured villages, flat-roofed buildings growing out of and dissolving back into the dirt on which they stood, that must be substantially similar to those that B. saw. Some of the most elaborate houses, built along the riverbanks in the 19th century, are now mostly restored and raking in the bucks as hotels and restaurants. Remarkably large numbers of them, however, are empty and derelict, dissolving back into their constituents - clay and straw - just as rapidly as their more modest countertypes in the back streets. Without constant upkeep grass, flowers and even small trees grow from the earthy walls. A broken window lets in the weather and the house starts to dissolve from within - a secret entropic cancer that abruptly metastases into total destruction as the building collapse in on itself.

Whatever B. thought of the domestic architecture, we loved it. We spent our time, when not puffing up to the kale or being impressed by the local museum (which is very much more interesting than the archaeology museum in Ankara btw AND has the only known statue of Teshub, an armless Hittite thundergod AND has a family of mummified dignitaries on display in a little seljuk building in the gardens), or taking in the numerous historic monuments, mosques et al, just walking around menacing perfectly innocent streetscapes with our cameras. And having tea. There is a kind of unconscious (or, perhaps more accurately, un-selfconsious), rightness to the combinations of weather-smoothed shapes, DIY repairs, decorative details and fading flamboyant colour choices that seems to unite the older parts of Turkish cities into glorious experiential overloads. Even the heavy smells of wood-fires and petro-chemicals, the sweet acridity of rotting fruit and sporadic feculent whiffs of drains, the shriek of children, the calls of street vendors, the graunch and beep of traffic and the occasional yowls of cats are all transmuted into necessary ingredients.  

When we simply couldn't take anymore of this sensory onslaught - or it got dark - we'd be forced to stop and eat. Huge numbers of succulent savoury pancakes (gözleme), and equal numbers of freshly cooked acik pide (Turkish pizza) disappeared down our maws. Btw, have I mentioned that JB is now eating 3 or sometimes even 4 meals a day?!!! Everywhere we went, locals went out of their way to help us or engage us in conversation. One day, solely because it had infinitely superior music compared to that emanating from the other cafes, we chanced into a tiny café frequented by the local students. They were so incredibly charming that we ended up staying for hours. Despite the fact that they spoke little more English than we speak Turkish, we found out about their studies, their extra-curricular interests (mostly traditional Turkish music and t-pop), and even gave one girl relationship advice...?! Hard to imagine Australian adolescents even considering spending that much time and effort on a couple of middle-aged non-English-speaking tourists...

Whilst I'm on the subject of food, can I just say Turkish breakfasts are perfect - around a consistent basis of white cheese, tomatoes, olives, egg and freshly baked bread, every place has had its own regional variations. Pancakes and fresh fruit at our hotel in Istanbul; simit, sausage and fresh local honey in Safranbolu; potato salad, pickled peppers and local apples in Amasya; scrambled eggs in Göreme; cold cigare borek in Ankara; spicy pepper paste, omelette, 4 kinds of cheese, local honey and homemade raspberry jam in Cimulikisik (the stand-out breakfast to date); spicy potato borek and sour cherry nectar in Bursa. We've been hoovering up everything in sight... no wonder I'm now as round and sleek as an elephant seal...

#1 Whilst the major negotiations at Amasya were between Süleyman and Tahmash, peace discussions between Süleyman and Ferdinand were subsidiary. In these, Süleyman made it clear that if Ferdinand wanted peace then he would have to abandon his claims to the Transylvanian throne - Ferdinand was reluctant. Süleyman responded by, in the next year, ordering the Governor-General of Buda to capture the border fortress of Szigetvár in southern Transdanubia. The siege failed, but it generated enough panic for the Estates of Transylvania to vote to reinstate Süleyman's choice, the infant John Sigismund and his mother Isabelle, his regent.

#2 Actually favoured sons were more often sent to administer Bursa, which was much closer to the capital and therefore advantaged its governor in the race for power when his father died. Usually, whoever made it back to Constantinople first was declared sultan and then got to decide what happened to his brothers. Almost inevitably it wasn't nice. When Mehmet III, Suleyman's graqndson, succeeded in 1595, he decided to forestall any rival claimants by having all of his brothers, even the infants, strangled. His father's coffin was followed by 19 of his sons to the turbesii.   Despite the geographical disadvantage however, many of Amasya's governors did go on to become sultan and put the skills they learnt in this fractious Cappadoccian centre to good use in governing the even more fractious Ottoman empire.

#3 Please please don't let a woman have loosed this aesthetic abuse upon the world...

#4 Strabo of Amasia (c.62 BCE - c.24 CE): Geographer and the world's first historian. His mother's family had been important during the reign of king Mithridates VI of Pontus, but during the war against the Roman general Pompey, it had switched sides.   This gave him good Roman contacts. He wrote some 47 history books (all lost but quoted often by other Classical authors), and 17 geography books which are partially based upon his own travels (Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Egypt), and partially on reliable sources such as Polybius of Megalopolis and Megasthenes (who had visited India).

#5 He seems to have been in some demand - we have since glimpsed other extraordinary objects that could only have been made by him or his clones. I now have a theory that he has a workshop filled with sculptural elements - turbans, stern eagle-nosed visages, rearing horses, brawny arms, modest lasses, etc - that he simply assembles as needs be.

#6 Amasya being the place that the great man announced his intentions to the rest of Turkey etc etc. The actual sculpture is actually par for the course - it's just that the course itself has so many odd manifestations.

#7 Every second town seems to have a pair of these; in Konya they provided an ironic counterpoint to the famous turquoise-tiled minaret that marks Rumi's tomb. Unfortunately they were unphotographable because of a particularly persistent carpet tout who would try to physically lead one into his adjacent shop if you even looked like stopping still. My favourites so far have been a pair of lurid yellow and orange ones that provided distinction to a little town on the shores of Lake Iznik.

#8 Pontic tombs to be precise - Wikipedia entry: Pontus: ancient district in northeastern Anatolia adjoining the Black Sea. In the 1st century BC it briefly contested Rome's hegemony in Anatolia. An independent Pontic kingdom with its capital at Amaseia, (modern Amasya) was established at the end of the 4th century BC in the wake of Alexander's conquests. Superficially Hellenized, the kingdom retained its Persian social structure, with temple priests and Persianized feudal nobles ruling over a heterogeneous village population. In the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC Pontus gradually asserted itself among the petty Hellenistic states of Anatolia, annexing Sinope (modern Sinop) as its new capital (183 BC). The Pontic kingdom reached its zenith under Mithradates VI Eupator ( c. 115-63 BC), whose program of expansion brought him into disastrous conflict with Rome, resulting in the virtual extinction of the Pontic kingdom and its incorporation into the Roman Empire (63-62 BC).

#9 P. 57, 'The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq', translated by Edward Seymour Forster 1927

#10 Nothing has changed there - I still managed to get completely muddy just leaning against a wall to take a photo...

#11 Or at least their 18 th , 19 th and 20 th century replacements. However it seems to me that these building constitute a kind of 'standing wave' - their materials ensure that they have to be reasonably regularly renewed, but little has changed in aesthetics, materials or building techniques over the centuries. It is likely that they are substantially similar to those B. was unimpressed by. Today, it is true, they are more likely to have plumbing - although we often saw people filling large vessels with water for domestic use from the numerous public fountains, so perhaps that is only very partial too - and the pigments in the annual render-washes are much brighter.

WARNING COMPLETELY UN-FOOTNOTE-RELATED PICTURE