From the cosmic epic poem of Gilgamesh in Mesopotamia to the fantastic wanderings of Sinbad the Sailor in the Thousand and One Nights, the peoples of the Orient have cultivated the spirit of journey, adventure and travel. They are born nomads, explorers, navigators, and merchants, accustomed to discomforts and hardships. In the Middle Ages, when the Islamic world was at the height of its expansion, stretching from the steppes of Asia to the Iberian peninsula, Arab travelers set off to explore this vast territory, bringing back accounts of peoples and their customs, of races that were very different from one another but united by the single faith of Islam. They were men of letters, pilgrims, chroniclers, and ambassadors who followed the caravan routes, moving from oasis to oasis, desert to desert, caliphate to sultanate, always sure of receiving hospitality from Muslim peoples and rulers. The invention of paper, imported from China by the Arabs, encouraged a vast outpouring of literary works, and it is thanks to this literature that such ancient memories and experiences have been preserved.
The oldest descriptions of the Islamic world are to be found in the monumental account - stretching from the creation to the golden age of the Abbasids - written by the erudite historian Tabari, who lived in Baghdad in the ninth century. Many books offering a wide range of knowledge appeared around the year one thousand. These included the Muruj adh-Dhahab ("Meadows of Gold") by the Arab geographer and historian Masudi and the Aja'ib or "Wonders" of the world written by a mysterious figure known as Wasif-shah, who compared the Arab world to a bird, whose head lay in Yemen, heart in Arabia, and wings and body covered Egypt, Persia, and Syria.
In the twelfth century, the Arab writer Ibn Jubayr transformed his pilgrimage from his native Granada to Mecca into an adventurous account of a journey through Sicily, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. Lively and irascible in temperament, Ibn Jubayr relates the hardships of the journey, from ill treatment at the hands of foreigners to problems with customs, and tells of fights between rival tribes and of the hostility between Muslims and Christians in a Jerusalem recently conquered by the Crusaders.
The most popular of the Arab travelers is undoubtedly Ibn Batuta, who in the fourteenth century undertook a journey that lasted thirty years, traveling from Spain to Mecca and visiting the countries of the Maghreb, Sudan, Egypt, Arabia, Iraq, and Persia. He traveled as far as China and the islands of the Indian Ocean. Ibn Batuta was a geographer, chronicler, and poet - he compares cities to pearls, flowers, and fruit - and has left us an invaluable record of the political and economic affairs of his time.
For many centuries, expeditions, journeys, and messages continued to pass from one end of the vast Islamic world to the other. The experiences, observations, reports, and new maps that flowed from this activity were preserved in the libraries of the imperial courts, from Andalusia to Persia, from Baghdad to Cairo. In the Ottoman era the writer Evliya Celebi of Istanbul achieved fame with works like the Seyahat name, a colossal account of his travels that paints a lively picture of the countries ruled by the Ottoman sultans and offers a cultivated description of monuments and peoples, but is also seasoned with genuine flights of poetic fancy.
The path toward an understanding between West and East, on the other hand, was paved with difficulties. Nevertheless the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw an explosion of interest in the exotic. From Europe, a host of writers, adventurers, diplomats, and explorers set off in discovery of the wonders of the Orient, producing diaries, guides, collections of letters, and accounts of journeys. Some were moved by a sincere thirst for knowledge, while others were drawn by the lure of romantic adventure, the prospect of easy profit, or the quest for mystical experience. A new science arose in the West, "Orientalism." This was a convenient pigeonhole in which to place not only serious scientists, archeologists, Islamists, and erudite collectors, but also writers filled with preconceptions and souvenir hunters. The Orient had a permanent grip on the Western imagination.
At dusk, from the top of the minaret, the "muezzin" calls the Muslim faithful to the fourth prayer of the day.
It is a moment of great peace. When the sun sets to the west of Arabia, the lands of North Africa, from Morocco to Libya, are known as the Maghreb, the "Lands of the Sunset."
It is a land of strong contrasts, at once hospitable and treacherous, submerged by the immense dunes of the Sahara, yet abounding in fertile valleys, studded with cities and oases, and cut in two by the barrier of the Atlas Mountains.
It has been a place of encounter and conflict between nomadic and settled civilization, between the cultures of Islam and Christianity.
The first inhabitants of the Maghreb were the Berbers, a semi-settled population that lived a nomadic life by necessity, as stockbreeders and farmers, but warriors too.
A proud and independent race, in their own language the Berbers call themselves tamagzigh or imazighen, free men.
Refusing to accept any imposed authority, they were forced first to defend their kingdoms against an unending series of invaders and eventually to cede them to the Phoenicians in the eleventh century BC, to the Romans between the second and fourth centuries BC, to the Vandals and Byzantines in the sixth century, and finally to the Arabs from the eighth century onward.
In their isolated villages the Berbers, notwithstanding their firm adherence to Islam, have preserved many of their own traditions, whether relating to religious rituals or to social and civil conduct.
In 647, a few years after the death of Muhammad, the Arabs began to make their way into the Maghreb, encouraged by their easy conquest of Egypt.
Despite several resounding victories - Carthage fell and at the beginning of the eighth century the Arab general Oqba founded Kairouan - the undertaking proved more arduous than expected because of fierce resistance on the part of the Berbers.
Over the course of the ninth century, during the reign of the Aghlabid dynasty in Tunisia and that of the Zirids in Algeria, a brief period of peace held sway throughout the Maghreb. But Ifriqiyah, now Arabized and Islamized, was not united, and religious schisms and struggles for supremacy led to the rise of new dynasties from the Fatimids to the Almoravids and from the Almohads to the Hafsids and Merinids.
The fragmentation of the Maghreb into many small fiefs made the region vulnerable to foreign powers, in particular that of Spain under Christian rule. In this situation of crisis a new and powerful force entered the scene in the sixteenth century: the Ottoman Turks.
The bridgehead for the Ottoman conquest of the Maghreb was established by the corsairs.
These new masters and predators of the Mediterranean arrived from the Aegean Sea. The victors included the Barbarossa pirate brothers, led by Khayr ad-Din, who in 1525 conquered Algiers and in 1541 defeated the fleet sent by Charles V to free the seas from this "terror of the civilized nations."
The sultanate of Istanbul bestowed on Barbarossa the official title of "Beylerbey," emir of emirs. In this way it assured itself of a formal sovereignty, sustained by military governors, over almost the whole of the Maghreb.
Imposing fortresses, new mosques, and sumptuous palaces were built in an Ottoman-Moorish style, with a great profusion of gold ornaments, stuccoes, and painted wood.
The totalitarian regime of the Turks, undermined from within by Arab and Berber revolts, was unable to withstand the impact of the new political organization of the countries of Western Europe.
Spiritually and economically weakened, the Maghreb was forced to submit to the most recent of the waves of foreign domination: colonization by the Western powers in the nineteenth century.
The long struggle for independence and the wars of liberation of the indigenous peoples were countered with a harsh repression that left a bloody mark on the history of this period.
The traditional Arab city of the Maghreb is organized around three fundamental elements: the mosque, the "souk," and fortifications.
The architecture, whether random or planned, makes use of local materials like clay, brick, stone, palm wood, and toub, a mixture of straw and clay dried in the sun.
The inventiveness of the structures and their purity of line and volume have inspired many modern architects, including the great Le Corbusier and Fernand Pouillon.
The special conditions of the climate have shaped the desert city: it is a shady labyrinth, an ingenious dovetailing of cubic houses with walls pierced to allow ventilation of the interior rooms that provides a marvelous example of the intelligent use of humble materials.
In the accounts left by travelers, each city is recorded for its wonders and characteristics: celebrated among these are the thousand domes of El Oued, the decorations of Tamelhat, the unbroken mosaic of the roofs of Temacine, and the red herringbone plaster of Timimoun.
All the caravans that made their way north from equatorial Africa were known to stock up on water and food and to trade the first of their goods at the oasis towns that had grown up around rivers or springs.
On the border of Morocco they came to Beni Abbes and Taghit, in the central part they stopped at the towns of El Golea and Bou Saada, while on the Tunisian border they headed for Nefta, near the salt lakes of Chott Jerid.
These were fortified towns, controlled by tribes that exacted a heavy tribute from merchants passing through their territory.
First landing for travelers from Europe and final destination for the caravans, the gaily colored cities that face the Mediterranean are at once commercial ports and citadels of defense, as can be seen in the fortified ribat of Sousse and Monastir on the Tunisian coast.
First built as military structures in the eighth century, the ribat soon developed into universities and schools of thought. They are considered the highest expression of the pact of faith between Muslims and Allah, and for this reason are also known as the "gates of paradise."
The first capital of Islamized Tunisia, Kairouan or "parade ground," is the fourth most important holy city of the Muslims, after Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.
In it stands the oldest Great Mosque in Africa, the Jama Sidi Oqba. A city venerated for its shrines sacred to mystical Islam, Kairouan still attracts large numbers of pilgrims.
In the Algerian region of M'Zab, at the hub of the caravan trade routes of the Sahara, stands the pentapolis of Ghardaia, recognizable from afar by its pyramidal minarets.
The maze of pastel-colored houses huddled around the mosque is an inviolable place for the Ibadite or Mozabite inhabitants, members of a Muslim sect considered heretical by strict adherents to the faith. It emerged from the historic schism in Islam when, after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century, conflict arose over the succession among the leaders of the religion.
The Arabic word from which the name Algiers is derived is "El Djazair" or "the islands," although these vanished centuries ago.
In accounts of Arab travelers, the city was referred to as "The Sultana" or "The Warrior," since it was considered an impregnable city.
The old center that overlooks the harbor took the name "casbah" at the time of the Ottoman corsairs, from the Turkish word for fortress, qasr. The city was then a melting pot of peoples, inhabited by Berbers, Corsicans, Kabyles, Mozabites, Jews who had fled from Spain, and Christian slaves.
A tortuous labyrinth, the casbah is a miraculous fusion of architecture and spontaneous construction, capable of erasing any form of hierarchy. Noble palaces, humble and overcrowded houses, stores, and Koranic schools are set one on top of the other, creating a structure that resembles a pinnacle of stone. Celebrated in the past as a "cosmopolitan city filled with commerce," the modern-day casbah is falling inexorably into decay.
Before the arrival of Islam, Tunis was no more than an insignificant suburb of Carthage. In the eighth century it became the capital of Arab Ifriqiyah and developed into a famous center of culture - it was here that the great historian Ibn Khaldun was born in 1332. It was also celebrated for the vastness of its souks.
The heart of Tunis is the Medina, the historic center that grew up around the Jama ez Zitouna, the Great Mosque of the Olive, from the Umayyad period.
In its narrow alleys, buildings with an apparently austere exterior and spiked doors conceal a great wealth of rooms inside, finely decorated and opening onto patios.
The region of Dahar, in the south of Tunisia, is still inhabited by fifty thousand Berbers, many of whom live in the subterranean villages of Matmata, truly phantom cities set in a lunar landscape.
The houch, as this type of underground dwelling recorded as far back as the time of Herodotus is called, has a complex structure. The central court, looking like a shell set in a crater, is the only part open to the sky and provides access to the rooms excavated in the ground on several levels. These include the rooms of the house itself, storerooms for food, and workshops for those who practice handicrafts.
Life goes on in the court, invisible from the outside. Here clothes are washed, "couscous" ground, and guests received. Matmata is a place of great historical significance, a precious testimony to a past that runs the risk of being destroyed forever by tourism.
The market, souk, or bazaar is the hub of the Arab and oriental city, the pulse of social life, and the place where ideas are exchanged and goods traded.
Odors, perfumes, sounds, contacts: all the senses are involved in the life of the souk. Divided into different sections according to activities and types of merchandise, the souk is a city within the city.
For Arab travelers, who never failed to describe it in its tiniest details, the charm of the markets, in which the souk was "a beautiful sight and filled with fine goods," was an indication of a city's prosperity.
In spite of the changes wrought by human beings - asphalt roads cutting through the dunes, anonymous cities in the middle of the desert, oil wells and gas pipelines, and tank trucks instead of camels - the Maghreb has preserved its spectacular and varied scenery: the disquieting immensity of the biggest desert in the world, shady palm groves, rocky mountains covered with snow in the winter and riven by deep gorges, the "El Kantara," and the "gates of the Sahara."
Caravans setting off from the deep south, whether their purpose was trade or pilgrimage, had to cross the burning sands of the Sahara. These were ruled by the tribes of the Tuaregs, the "blue men," independent of any outside authority and observing their own laws and rituals.
For the peoples of the desert borders did not exist. Limits were imposed by the territorial dominance of the tribes, which could decide to extend or withhold their hospitality.
The story is still told today of the emperor of Mali, Mansa Moussa, who traveled to Mecca with a caravan of a hundred camels loaded with gold, distributing it along his way in order to buy his passage through the desert.
The oasis is a garden in the midst of the desert, a mirage made real, a reward for the fatigues of a difficult journey. It relies on underground springs during the long periods of drought. Essential to the environmental and economic equilibrium of arid zones, it requires constant care.
The oasis provides the bedouin with his al asuadan, the two basic needs of his existence: water and the date. The date is life itself and no part of the tree is wasted: the nutritious fruits are eaten; the trunk is used for building; mats are woven from the leaves; rope is made from the fiber; the scales of the bark are an excellent fuel; and the sap, or laghmi, is fermented to make a strong alcoholic drink, prohibited by Islam.
In the Maghreb grow the most precious of all dates, the deglet en nour or "fingers of light," transparent and as sweet as honey. In the vast palm groves, the rules of ownership, harvesting, and watering are governed by a rigid code that lays down times and means.
Care of the palms is the responsibility of a worker known as the khammes. The word is derived from the Arabic for five, khamsa, since the old feudal laws held that the worker had the right to one fifth of the crop.
People have even succeeded in growing palms in the middle of the desert, by planting them at the bottom of an artificial crate, the gout, which is constantly tended to prevent it from filling with sand.
One of the few islands situated along the north coast of Africa is Djerba, now given over to tourism. In ancient times it was referred to in Homer's Odyssey as the "Island of the Lotus-Eaters." Though it became a dangerous nest of pirates in the Ottoman era, it was inhabited by a peaceful people, of the Ibadite faith, and Jews, who worked as goldsmiths, potters, and fishermen.
For the Muslim the mosque is a place of prayer, assembly, and education.
The classical mosque, such as the Great Mosque of Kairouan from the Aghlabid dynasty of the ninth century, has a rectangular plan, with an immense courtyard enclosed by an arcade and a cistern, sundial, and fountain for purification at its center. From the courtyard, the faithful are able to enter the prayer hall, or haram. This is supported by columns, and at Kairouan, many of these were salvaged from Roman monuments. Inside the hall, whose floor is covered with mats or rugs, is located the minbar, the pulpit from which sermons are preached, and a niche with a cupola, the mihrab, which indicates the direction of Mecca, the qiblah, in which all Muslims must face when praying.
As centuries passed, the structure of the mosque grew more complicated, with the addition of further rooms, domes, and ornaments, though the canons and elements of tradition were retained. The minaret, from which the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer five times a day, can have different forms and volumes, but usually adheres to the square plan inherited from the Andalusian style. An example of this is the "Mansourah" of Tlemcen, resembling the Giralda in Seville.
A spotless white structure, standing on a mountain top or alone in the middle of the desert, the marabout is the tomb of a holy man.
These shrines are places of popular veneration, linked to stories of miracles and belonging to the tradition of the Sufis. The diffusion of mystical Sufism, which first emerged during the early days of Islam in Mesopotamia, took place gradually in the Maghreb, spread by wandering dervishes, or marabouts as they were called in North Africa, who had taken a vow of humility. For this reason they were also known as fakirs, or fuqara, "poor in spirit."
Under the pressure of enemy incursions, the sedentary Berbers built self-sufficient citadels with houses, cisterns, silos, and stables. This type of structure, known as a ksour or kaala, might take the form of a camouflaged aerie perched high among the rocks of the "Djebel" in the Tunisian mountains, or of a labyrinthine fortress amidst the dunes of the Algerian desert.
In the plain of the Sahel stand the ghorfa, originally impenetrable granaries with many closely connected rooms that were soon transformed into citadels. The same principle of the multiplication of cells was adopted in the construction of the ksour, rising to a height of several stories that could be reached by means of a rope or by clambering up narrow steps along the outside wall. Today almost all of the ksour have been abandoned and only a few of them have been restored. What Arab travelers used to call the "kaala of the Muqaddim" or the "castles of fierce fighters" have now lost their function.
Jealous custodians of their own traditions, the Berbers love to celebrate the ancient rituals of their people.
Their festivals, in which families from all the villages of the region take part, serve to recall the tribal ceremonials and legends of the past. These include mock battles between Arabs and Berbers, acrobatic displays by the colorfully dressed "fantastic horsemen," religious and conciliatory dances, camel fights, and horse races. Such gatherings provide an occasion for trading goods, great feasts, the telling of tales around the fire, and pledges of friendship or marriage.
Islam forbids all forms of superstition, but the symbols of ancient beliefs, dating from a period when humanity's place in space and time was still bound up with nature, the stars, and the spirits of earth and water, have survived in the indigenous cultures of the Maghreb.
Each amulet, tattoo, or icon carries a hidden message and is a magical symbol - intended to propitiate the spirits or to avert evil. For example the fish, sun, moon, and stars are good auguries while the eye or the hand of Fatimah (which also symbolizes the five sacred pillars of Islam) serves to ward off the evil eye.
The religion of the Koran has abolished any representation of the human body, although there are a number of exceptions to this, such as popular prints and painting on glass. For the most part, however, art finds expression through calligraphy and ever more refined forms of arabesque.
In the first millennium BC the great civilization of the Sabaeans developed in the southwestern region of the Arabian peninsula. With skill and intelligence, they were able to tame the hostile nature of the land, large stretches of which are taken up by the "Empty Quarter," the deserts of the Nefud and Rub al Khali.
The peoples of the area had accumulated great wealth through their total monopoly of the trade in exotic products, such as incense, gold, spices, silk, ivory, and even slaves and wild animals.
Flourishing cities sprang up along the caravan routes. In ancient times they were ruled by deified kings, but later came under the control of Bedouin tribal chiefs, engaged in fierce rivalry with one another.
It was in this setting, and during a period beset by crisis and a power vacuum, that the Prophet Muhammad was born, and with him, a new religion: Islam.
The five main kingdoms - Saba, Ma'in, Hadhramaut, Himyar, and Qataban - that ruled the lands between the Red Sea and Indian Ocean for fourteen centuries from the year 1000 BC onward were shrouded in mystery. Few ancient travelers had firsthand experience of them and numerous legends grew up about the wonders of those distant countries.
It was said that Saba, or Sheba as it is called in the Bible, the largest and strongest of the kingdoms, had splendid cities, fabulous gardens, and vast treasures.
The figure of the Queen of Sheba remains enigmatic. She may never have existed but is mentioned in the Bible and the Koran as having come to visit King Solomon in Judaea, in the tenth century BC. "And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones." In the Yemen the legendary queen is known as Bilqis (or Balkis), and it is to her that the pillars of the Arsh Bilqis, the "Throne of Bilqis," and the Temple of Marib were dedicated.
It would be a mistake to think that the magnificence of the lands of the Arabian peninsula was linked exclusively to the rich caravan trade. The age-old prosperity of those civilizations was able to endure thanks to a cunning exploitation of natural resources, and in particular of the lands of the Yemeni plateau, intensely cultivated in terraces.
The invention of an ingenious irrigation system dates from the early Sabaean period. We know that the most impressive of the installations, the Marib dam built in the eighth century BC, created a basin of water that was capable of irrigating thousands of acres of land.
A dense network of canals, cisterns, dams, and basins for the storage of rainwater, which arrived each year with the monsoon winds from the Indian Ocean, covered the entire territory. The ancient method used for the collection and conservation of water is far from obsolete. Even today a number of Sabaean basins are still in use in the Yemen, while in Oman the system of irrigation based on the aflaj, long underground canals fed by springs that bring water to the plantations, true gardens in the desert, is still in operation, though brought up to date by modern methods.
Let us picture a caravan on the move. It set out from one of the ports of Oman, where it had picked up the merchandise brought by sea from India, China, and East Africa. It then traveled across the deserts to the great cities of the Eastern and Western Roman empires. Thousands of camels were accompanied by a whole army of men, including merchants, servants, camel drivers, craftsmen, and soldiers to protect the goods and provisions from raids by predatory Bedouins. They carried all sorts of luxuries, such as herbs, spices, incense, exotic animals, and precious stones, destined for the markets of Athens, Rome, Damascus, and Baghdad.
For centuries the cities at which the caravans stopped thrived on the heavy taxes they imposed on travelers and goods.
The long march of the Spice Road from Aden to Mecca slackened its pace at the beginning of our own era, with the opening of new trade routes that were considered safer and with the change in customs - a fall in demand for luxury goods from the crumbling empires and abolition of the use of perfumes at religious functions.
Finally, the growth in maritime trade carried by large vessels, capable of sailing long distances, forced the caravans to restrict their activity almost entirely to domestic trade.
Nomads travel in space and time, following the seasons, shifting their tents from the desert to the plains, raising stock, and tilling fields no more than is strictly necessary. They will harvest the crop on their next passage, for, on the basis of an unwritten law, no one in the desert will ever touch what someone else has sown. The nomadic or semi-nomadic Bedouins live in a tribal society. Their houses are tents and their needs modest, so that it is hard to distinguish the rich from the poor. Raiding has been considered a valid way of making a living since pre-Islamic times and the Koran itself devotes a whole chapter to "spoils." As time went by, the Bedouins, masters of the desert, could not avoid contact with the cities of the merchants, who were Bedouin themselves but led a sedentary life. The unifying effect of Islam has accelerated the process of rapprochement between nomad and urban society, without altering a number of traditional balances. The fourteenth-century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun treats the subject of the disappearance of nomadism with a great deal of circumspection. "The Bedouins, even though they have also turned toward the things of the world," he wrote in the Muqaddimah, "only do so to the extent that is indispensable and not with a view to luxury," [while] the sedentary life marks the culminating point of civilization and of its shift toward evil."
On old maps the immense central region of Arabia was marked by a blank space, the "Terrae Nullius" or empty lands, for no one dared to explore the terrible deserts of the Nefud or the Rub al Khali which form the natural boundaries of Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Emirates. The peoples of the region had found a way to make the mountain areas, coast, and plateaus habitable, living from fishing, hunting, trading, and farming. They were great navigators who crossed the oceans in little boats made of reed and pitch, the dhows that are still in use today. It is no coincidence that the legendary sailor Sinbad, hero of the Thousand and One Nights, was born at Suhar on the Omani coast. With the exception of the Yemen, the tribal society of Arabia was mostly a civilization of villages and oases. The big cities are a modern development, the result of the sudden wealth derived from the production of oil.
Nothing is comparable to the magic of the Yemen. From the coastal belt, the "Tihama," the land rises steeply toward the mountain plateaus, located at an average altitude of 2000 meters (6500 feet). Through stubborn effort, human beings have rendered the wilderness habitable, hoeing and irrigating vast areas of rocky land and creating a sculptural landscape of undulating lines, formed by huge cultivated terraces. They also constructed a habitat for themselves that was well suited to the natural surroundings, with phantom castles, blending into the rock and stone, that are hard to make out from a distance.
The houses of Yemen reach toward the sky. They are century-old skyscrapers with battlements, at once solid and fragile. The capital Sana'a and its sister cities are dreams built out of clay, stone, alabaster, gypsum, and glass, dazzling in the strong sunlight. The tower-houses can reach a height of 30 meters (100 feet) and are built mainly out of pisé, a mixture of clay and straw laid in horizontal strips, or local squared stone. The stone is often salvaged from the ancient Sabaean habitations, prototypes of the characteristic Yemeni buildings. Time has come to a standstill among the towers of Manakka, the white bricks of Zabid, and the green pools of Thula. It is no coincidence that Pier Paolo Pasolini chose to shoot his film The Flower of the Arabian Nights amidst the unspoiled walls of Jiblah and Zabid.
On the map the Sultanate of Oman has the shape of a sharp-cornered crescent, sticking out into the Indian Ocean. Its fortified ports were the first landing place after a difficult voyage bringing merchandise from the Far East. Its strategic position made Oman a natural target for the imperialist powers, from the Portuguese in the sixteenth century to the Dutch and British in the nineteenth. Its people, nature, and habitat offer strong contrasts, linked to the topology of the land: the rugged and mountainous region of the Jabal al Akhdar, the moist coastal fringe of the Hajar, and the burning plain of the Dhufar, where grows the source of the country's great past wealth, the tree known as Boswellia carterii that produces the resin from which incense is made.
Legend has it that, while flying over the desolate lands of the Bedouin, King Solomon - a sacred and magical figure for Muslims - took pity on the thirsty people and ordered a host of jinn, spirits over whom he had power, to create the aflaj, a thousand canals of water a day for the space of ten moons....
In reality, the complex network of canals for the collection of water was based on a system introduced by the Persians. In the oases of the Jabal al Akhdar, the falaj is still indispensable to the rural economy. An underground channel runs for kilometers from the spring, with wells that serve as vents set at intervals along its length, and then splits into a thousand rivulets near the oasis. These are controlled by a register that determines their flow and use. Pools containing water for drinking, purification, washing, and irrigation are kept strictly separate. For the men who created these paradises of water, however, it was forced labor. Hundreds of slaves were employed in the excavation, working bent over, underground in short shifts, so that they would not suffocate.
The religious cults practiced by the Bedouins were polytheistic in character, with deities linked to the sun and moon. During the first few centuries of our era, prior to the birth of Muhammad, both Judaism and Christianity had made converts in Arabia. In addition, among some tribes - such as the Quraish to which the young Muhammad belonged - the idea of a supreme deity had crept into the pantheon. Called al-ilah, or "the God," this figure was worshipped at al Makkah - Mecca - a name which means "sanctuary."
Muhammad's father, a member of the Meccan tribe of the Quraish, died before his birth in 570. At this time, Arabia was a country of little political significance, torn apart by tribal conflicts. After his marriage to the middle-aged and rich widow Khadijah, Muhammad became a respected merchant. At the same time, however, he was drawn to mysticism and meditation. At the age of forty, on Mount Hira, the "Jabal al Nur" or "mountain of light," he had a vision of the archangel Gabriel, who brought him the "Revelation," the Qur'an, which means "to recite" the words dictated by the only and omnipotent God, Allah.
The message of Islam, or "resignation to the will of God," preached by Muhammad was initially accepted only by the humble and opposed by the ruling class. As a result Muhammad was forced to flee Mecca for the oasis of Yathrib, which later came to be known as "Medina," or Madinatu 'n-Nabi, "the city of the Prophet." The year of his migration, 622, was to become the date of the beginning of the Muslim era, the hegira or hijrah. At first a prophet of religion and morality, Muhammad soon proved to be a shrewd politician and jurist, codifying the social and religious rules that were to form the premises for the unification of the Arab state. The Prophet died of fever in 632, leaving his people with an epoch-making ideological heritage. Wielding the Koran and the sword, they were to build the greatest empire of the Middle Ages.
The Koran, or Qur'an, is Islam's sacred book, the Ummu 'l Kitab, the "mother of all books." The text is divided into a hundred and fourteen chapters, the "suras," made up of versets with between two and three hundred and eighty-six rhyming lines. Each of these begins with the formula Bi-'smi 'llahi 'r-rahmani 'r-rahim, "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." The divine book of the Koran, together with the "Sunna" (the example) contained in the "Hadith," the "traditions" or accounts of the Prophet's life, constitutes the foundation of every Muslim's religious faith and social conduct. The principal duties of a Muslim are listed in the "five pillars of Islam":
Shahadah, bearing witness that there is only one, omnipotent God.
Salat, the five daily prayers.
Zakat, charity or donations made to the benefit of the poor or the community.
Saum, fasting during the sacred month of Ramadan.
Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, to be made at least once in a lifetime.
The requirement that the Koran be read in a common tongue, Arabic, is one of the fundamental elements of the universal character of Islam. The spread of Muhammad's message, and the consequent conquest of faraway countries, occurred at a speed that had no precedent in history. Islam put down peaceful roots in Arabia and then vanquished, one after the other, Mesopotamia (637), Syria and Egypt (641), Persia (650), and the Maghreb (670) as far as Spain. Not only armies converted people, who often freely adopted the new religion that promised equality among men and the abolition of slavery, but also merchants, able to reach the most remote places and to distribute the Koran without having to resort to jihad, the holy war against unbelievers.
The first model for the mosque undoubtedly appeared in Arabia as a simple building, with no objects of worship, just a prayer hall and an open courtyard. Inside are located the minbar, the pulpit from which sermons are preached, and the mihrab, the niche indicating the direction of Mecca for prostration. The minaret, al manarah (lighthouse), usually rises above the mosque, but may also be separate. It is used for the call to prayer, which begins with the formula Allahu akbar, "God is great," and ends with the words La ilaha illa 'llah, "There is no god but God." Alongside the mosques, numerous madrasah, schools and universities, were set up, not only to teach and interpret the Koran, but also to study the sciences.
The legal and administrative control of this vast empire was entrusted to the great dynasties of the two main currents of Islam, the Sunni and the Shiah. While the potent Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates established themselves in the newly-conquered territories, the dominant forces in Arabia were the dynasties of the Imams, the religious leaders of the Shiites or Ibadites. There were two periods of greater splendor and cultural ferment: around the year one thousand during the reign of a queen, Arwa, who resided at Jiblah in the Yemen, and in the two centuries of rule by the Rasulid sultans, from 1228 to 1454, whose courts provided a haven for the greatest architects, writers, and scientists of the time. Sultan Ashraf Umar II himself invented the first widely-used astrolabe in 1295 and developed a new system of mathematics.
The pilgrimage to Mecca is the culminating point of every pious Muslim's life. In the middle of the great mosque stands the shrine of the Kaaba, a cubic building in which the Black Stone is set. This is probably a fragment of a meteorite and dates back, according to the Koran, to the patriarch Abraham. The ceremonies commence with a nighttime vigil on Mount Arafat, the Mount of Mercy, the place on the road to Mecca where the Prophet preached his last sermon. After purifying themselves the pilgrims, dressed in a simple length of white cloth, make seven circuits of the Kaaba, stopping each time to kiss the sacred stone.
In 1184 the Arab-Andalusian traveler Ibn Jubayr wrote, "to gaze upon this shrine and the venerated house is a terrible thing that fills the spirit with ecstasy and enchants hearts and minds. The black stone is six palms above the ground and those who are tall must stoop to kiss while those who are short must stretch. It is encircled by a silver band, whose brilliant white contrasts with the black luster of the stone. All those who make circuits of the Kaaba, throw themselves on it like children on a loving mother..."
The historian Ibn Batuta, also born in Spain, describes the pilgrimage to Mecca at the beginning of the fourteenth century as follows: "The great caravan made camp near the spring of Tabuk, and everyone drank from its waters. They stayed there for four days, to rest, to let the camels drink, and to prepare water for the journey through the dangerous desert." On his arrival in Mecca, Ibn Batuta observed, "it is a large city with its buildings packed close together. Mecca is located in a barren valley; but the benevolent invocation of Abraham has worked in its favor, and fruits of every kind have been introduced. While I was there I ate grapes, figs, peaches, and dates whose equal cannot be found anywhere in the world."
The rapid Arab conquest of the countries of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia took place at a moment of great historical crisis. The two opposing empires of Byzantium and the Sassanids, which had struggled over possession of the Middle East until then, were exhausted and weakened from too many battles. The tactics of war used by the Arabs - fast and repeated surprise incursions in the tradition of the raid - soon got the better of their tired armies, who were now poorly motivated. In addition, even before Muhammad's time, two powerful emirates had been created in the East: those of the Ghassanids and Lakhmids. The newborn Islamic government had to deal with a series of problems arising out of the schism in the faith, internal and external rebellions, and the emergence of many independent dynasties. Yet the new religion had appeared at the right time and place. Before long, from the ninth century onward, the Islamic world, supported by an efficient administrative and legal system, saw a great flowering of the arts, sciences, and literature that has ensured it an eminent place in the history of the world.
The moral and political unity, the ummah that Muhammad had given his people, was upset only a few years after his death by struggles between the early caliphs over legitimate rights of succession. The Prophet's mantle was first assumed by the caliphs Abu Bakr and Omar, his loyal and wise companions, who were invested with religious as well as civil authority. But the fourth caliph Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law, was not recognized by the powerful family of the Umayyads, led by the founder of the dynasty Mu'awiyah. The struggle for power was fierce and, in 661, Ali was treacherously killed. In 680 a second revolt led by Ali's son Hussein ended in a blood bath at the battle of Karbala, in Iraq. The Umayyads emerged the victors, but the followers of Ali had grown in numbers. The schism, which led to the creation of the two main currents of Islam, the Sunnis and Shiites, was now irreversible.
Once they had attained power, the Umayyad caliphs shifted the capital from Medina to Damascus. The wave of expansion reached its crest in the first decade of the eighth century, when the standard bearers of the faith conquered cities and vast strips of territory, from the Caucasus to the Indus, from Persia to Palestine, from Egypt to Spain. Europe now had to reckon with Islam. In 711 the commander Tariq ibn Ziyad landed at Gibraltar (Jabal al-Tariq, "Mount of Tariq") and within a few years had crossed the Pyrenees. The Umayyads were unable to keep control of such a vast territory. Undermined by the schism, Berber rebellions, and popular uprisings sparked off by bad government, the kingdom crumbled. In 750 all the members of the Umayyad family were killed, with the exception of Abd al-Rahman. He managed to flee to Spain, where he founded the Umayyad dynasty of Cordoba.
While the Umayyad caliphate flourished in Andalusia, the Abbasid dynasty grew in strength in the East, transferring its capital to Baghdad. A powerful urban civilization developed, governed by a new ruling class based on the institution of the divan, a post comparable to that of a "minister." After 750 and for at least two centuries, the overall supremacy of the Abbasids was acknowledged throughout the Islamic world, although there were also a large number of autonomous dynasties, especially in Persia and the Mediterranean countries. It was an era of great economic and intellectual vitality. The trade routes - by land and sea, from Asia to Europe - were under Arab sway. Between the eighth and tenth century a cultural elite developed that grasped the importance of preserving ancient knowledge. The works of the Greek philosophers were translated and scientific treatises were studied and then rewritten in an original way. The compositions of pre-Islamic Arab poetry were collected.
According to the chronicles, at his death, Muhammad's successor Abu Bakr left nothing more than "his robe, his camel, and his servant." This ideal of simplicity and a wholly inner wealth - of Bedouin origin - formed the basis of Sufi thought. The name is said by some to derive from suf, or "wool," the material used for the clothes worn by wanderers and beggars. The Sufi movement emerged around the tenth century as a reaction against the excessive rationalism and moral laxity of the dynasties. The teachings and example of the Sufis, devoted to the spiritual and mystical quest for God, spread rapidly through the efforts of such great figures as Jalal ud-Din Rumi and Ibn al-Arabi, between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Sufism was not in opposition to the traditional doctrine of the Ulama, the learned doctors of Islam, but pursued what it considered a parallel path.
Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Mesopotamia and Persia were subjected to a series of Mongol invasions, beginning with the expeditions of Genghis Khan and ending with the temporary conquest by Tamerlane, a Turkish-Mongol leader who converted to Islam. In the intervals between Mongol incursions and the pressure from the north exerted by the belligerent Seljuks, Persian society was still able to develop one of the most brilliant and refined of Islamic cultures. This came to its peak during the reign of the Safavid dynasty, established by a Sufi brotherhood in 1252. Safavid Persia reached the height of its splendor under the rule of Shah Abbas the Great (1588-1629), who built his capital at Isfahan. The city is a casket of jewels, replete with architectural and artistic treasures whose beauty seduces travelers today, just as it did in the past. The Safavid realm never attained a great size. The limits of its sphere of influence were more or less the same as the borders of modern Iran.
The Mogul empire was located on the periphery of the Islamic world, but no less important for this reason. Extending from Afghanistan to the north of India, it was founded by Babur (1483-1530), a descendant of the Tamurid Tamerlane. Islam had put down roots in the land of the Hindus as far back as the year 1000, making inroads in a territory stretching from the region of the Punjab as far as the Ganges. The Sultanate of Delhi had been created in 1211. Reconciling Hindu and Buddhist traditions with those of Islam might have seemed an impossible task - in fact there were many episodes of violence and bloodshed - and yet an Indo-Muslim culture and style of great fascination developed at the court of the Mogul sovereigns, from Agra to Delhi.
The evolution of Islamic architecture kept pace with the cultural and social development of the peoples of the East, starting out with modest and simple structures and achieving perfection in works of a grandiose scale. One of the earliest mosques was the "Haram es Sherif," or Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest city. It was built between 669 and 692 on the orders of Caliph Abd al-Malik. His example was followed by the Umayyad Al-Walid, who promoted the construction of the Great Mosque in Damascus and numerous palaces and fortresses in Palestine, Syria, and Jordan, richly adorned with sculptures and mosaics. The Abbasids were responsible for the marvelous structure of the mosque and spiral minaret in Samarra, for the "al-Mal'wiyya" in Iraq, and for the creation, in the ninth century, of the great schools of Baghdad. The mosques of Ibn Thulun and Al Aqmar were built in Cairo. The Middle Ages saw the construction of the impenetrable citadel of Aleppo in Syria, while numerous mausoleums were erected at the far edge of the Islamic world, in Bukhara and Samarkand. The Safavid era, from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries, is rightly seen as the "Renaissance of the East," which took concrete form in the construction of splendid palaces and mosques and in an unconventional approach to the design of urban space. In the Mogul empire, the Hindu tradition was blended with the architectural ideas of Islam, creating an absolutely original style.
The beauty of Arab, Persian, and Andalusian calligraphy has no equal. Illuminated copies of the Koran, compositions in relief on walls, decorated majolica tiles, carved tombstones, and inlays of written texts are among the highest expressions of Islamic art. The styles are varied and numerous. The oldest of them is Kufic, with its angular letters, while Tuluth, Muhaqqaq, and Naskhi are harmonious and pointed. Finally there are the ornamental and interlinked Sini script and the more spacious and accentuated Ta'liq style. The masters of calligraphy were renowned artists who signed their works and were much sought-after by the courts of the great dynasties.
It was thanks to Safavid patronage that the art of painting experienced a golden age around 1500. The great miniaturists who illustrated the epic tales and the life of Muhammad were trained at the artistic centers of Herat and Tabriz. In the fifteenth century, many artists freed themselves from the limitations imposed by the genre of the miniature and experimented with new techniques and figurative compositions. From the school of Isfahan emerged the great landscapists and portraitists of Persian painting, who delighted in realistic and sensual depictions of the human figure, whose representation was otherwise frowned on by Islamic morality.
Ancient Baghdad, the round city on the banks of the Tigris, was founded by the Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur in the eighth century. The sovereign celebrated in the Thousand and One Nights, Harun al-Rashid, enlarged the city, which was known at the time as Medina es Salam, the "city of peace." It became a flourishing cultural center, with many schools, caravanserai, mosques, and bazaars. The university of Mustansiriyyia, constructed in 1232, possessed a library with eighty thousand volumes and the greatest scholars of the age taught mathematics, astronomy, and medicine in its lecture halls. The vestiges of Baghdad were repeatedly sacked, burned, and destroyed by the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The monuments of modern Baghdad seem to be trying to emulate the grandeur of the past.
The battle of Karbala, in the middle of the seventh century, determined the great schism in Islam. The Shiites built two shrines in memory of the victims, the caliphs Ali and his son Hussein. Destroyed and rebuilt many times, they are still the goal of fervent pilgrimages. The domes and minarets of the circular mosques are clad with copper and gold leaf, while the walls are finely decorated with glazed majolica tiles. Recent bombings and demolitions have isolated the two sanctuaries from the heart of the old city.
Isfahan possesses some of the most significant monuments of all ages and is one of the most beautiful cities in the Islamic world. Its royal residences, gardens, vast squares, bazaars, and sumptuous mosques fascinated travelers to the East, who have left us memorable accounts of the city's beauty. It was at Isfahan, in the sixth century, that the Safavid culture found expression in the arts, in architecture, and in generous and sweeping urban planning. On the immense Al-Maydan square, where princes used to play polo, stand the mosques of Lotfollah and the Imam, faced with glazed tiles, a multitude of bowl-shaped vaults and stalactites glittering with turquoise, sky blue, and gold. The pool of water in the central court reflects the image of the ivan, a group of large prayer halls roofed with domes that constitutes the characteristic architectural feature of Persian mosques.
Shiraz, in the south of Iran, was known as the "city of gardens," or sometimes as the "city of poets" as it was the birthplace of two of the greatest figures in Persian literature. Now there are few gardens left and the poets are long deceased, yet Shiraz remains an enchanting city with some of the finest monuments of the Kajar era, in the nineteenth century. The Kajar dynasty was not particularly popular and was considered too worldly and Westernized in its tastes. The rulers renovated the old and severe mosques, using floral patterns, and furnished their palaces with a profusion of mirrors, inlaid work, and gilding.
The fabulous stories told by Sheherazade to the sleepless and vindictive Persian king Shahriyar are an inexhaustible treasure house for lovers of adventure, mystery, eroticism, cunning, and fantasy. Aladdin and Sinbad, demons and genies, thieves and phantoms, ships and caravans, cities and bazaars: no book provides a better illustration of the fascination of the Orient. Harun al-Rashid, the Abbasid caliph who lived in Baghdad from 786 to 809, is its unwitting hero. The legends that grew up around his figure were collected long after his death. The stories in the Thousand and One Nights took on literary form in the fifteenth century, without attracting particular attention in the East. The book's fame is entirely Western and dates from the publishing of the first French translation in the eighteenth century.
The most famous works of the Persian poet Firdausi, known as "the heavenly," are the Shah-nama (Book of Kings), which recounts the exploits of ancient heroes and is regarded as the Persian Iliad, and the poem Yusuf and Zuleyka, which tells of the love between Joseph and Potiphar's wife, a story to be found in both the Bible and the Koran. In Iran it is still possible to find wandering poets who recite the verses of Firdausi in public.
The quatrains of Omar Khayy m, a native of Khorasan, are among the most widely read poems in the world. Khayy m, an astronomer and author of scientific works, wrote solemn verses, imbued with a sense of melancholy and human resignation:
The Persian Nizami was a "Sufi" poet who wrote intense and powerful accounts of the heroic deeds of great commanders and the legendary loves of princesses and kings. From Majnun and Leila:
Sadi is the best-loved poet of the Islamic East. Born at Shiraz and educated at Baghdad, he was an adherent of Sufism and wandered through many countries. A master of the lyric verse known as the ghazal, he wrote two masterpieces, Gulistan (The Rose Garden) and Bostan (The Orchard). A moral poet, he composed numerous aphorisms:
God created you from the mud; be humble as the earth.
The verses of the Persian poet Hafiz, "he who holds the Koran in his heart," are collected in the Divan, the Book of Poems, and sing of love and the beauty of nature.
The creation of the vast empire of the sultans of Istanbul in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries forced the West to turn its attention toward the East. For the first time, the Ottomans had established rule over non-Muslim nations. The Ottoman armies fought in the name of the Jihad, the Holy War, conquering larger and larger strips of land, while at Istanbul their rulers celebrated the acquisition of their new power. The Ottoman empire was a melting pot of the traditions and cultures of different peoples, giving new impetus to the development of the arts and sciences.
In the ninth century, the Seljuk sultanate was established in the northern areas of Iraq and Iran. The Seljuks were Turkoman nomads from the Asian steppes who had been converted to Islam. The arrival of this people, who possessed great organizational skills and were able to impose their own cultural patterns, undermined the Arab hegemony over the Middle East. Their conquest of Syria, their occupation of Jerusalem, seized from the Egyptian Fatimids in 1075, and their first penetration into Anatolia put the Christian West on the alert. At the Council held in 1095, Pope Urban II called for the liberation of the Holy Land, launching the First Crusade.
There were two main objectives that prompted the West to embark on the Crusades: preservation of the alliance with Byzantine Constantinople and the conquest of Jerusalem. For two centuries and over five Crusades - from 1099 to 1291 - bloody battles were fought over the possession of the Holy City, sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Peace treaties such as the one drawn up between the Kurdish commander Saladin and Richard the Lion Heart in 1192 had little effect, and the title of "Rex Hierosolymorum," King of Jerusalem, that Emperor Frederick II assumed in 1228 did not last long. In those tumultuous centuries the city of Constantinople was a flourishing crossroads of the trade between East and West. The place where the representatives of the Maritime Republics were based, it remained essentially untouched until the Fourth Crusade in 1204, when the Crusaders themselves sacked and destroyed the city. But a new power was knocking at the gates of Constantinople: the Ottoman Turks. They took their name from their first emir, Osman, who had set up his capital at Bursa, not far from the Bosphorus.
In the fourteenth century the first Ottoman sultans, Murad I and Beyazid I, extended their offensive from Anatolia to the Byzantine domains in the Balkans, to Thrace and Dalmatia. By doing so they put the resistance of the Genoese and Venetians, masters of the trading ports of the Aegean and Mediterranean, to a harsh test. In 1451 Mohammed II ascended the throne and over the course of two years patiently assembled an army and a well-equipped navy. His aim was to make a final assault on the last bulwark of the Byzantine world, Constantinople. The waterway of the Golden Horn had been blocked by a gigantic chain, but the Turkish fleet was still able to enter the strait, circumventing the obstacle by an astonishing feat. The ships were hauled overland across the Pera peninsula and set afloat again beneath the walls of the city. Artillery, archers, and cavalry did the rest. On May 29, 1453, a breach was opened in the massive fortifications and the Turks entered the city. It was the end of the Byzantine empire.
Mohammed II (1451-81), the conqueror of Constantinople, now renamed Istanbul, proved to be a tolerant ruler. The new legislation of the Ottoman empire, the kanoun-name, permitted freedom of worship, language, and trade. The privileges of the Venetians and Genoese were renewed - naturally in exchange for the payment of tributes and the signing of pacts of non-aggression. The empire swallowed up the Pelopponesus, Albania, and lands bordering the Black Sea. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Ottomans advanced into Iran, put an end to Mameluke rule over Jerusalem, and landed in Egypt and the Maghreb. The powerful Ottoman army, now engaged on several fronts, was made up of cavalry units known as sipahi and a special corps, the Janissaries, whose name derives from the Turkish yan∞ cheri, or new army. It was made up of young men recruited or abducted from Christian families, who were raised as Muslims and generously paid, but obliged to remain celibate so as to devote their entire life to the faith and the sultan. Thus a new era began under the rule of shari'ah, Islamic law as the governing principle of the state.
The reign of Suleiman, from 1520 to 1566, marked the apogee of Ottoman power. Turkish rule now extended from the Balkans to Algeria and from Crimea to the Yemen. Only Vienna still withstood their sieges. Suleiman established important diplomatic and commercial ties with Europe, and with France and the Repubblica Serenissima of Venice in particular. The discovery by the West of the grandeur of Ottoman monuments, the pomp of their courts, the development of their arts and literature, and the usages and customs of the Turks themselves - the hammam (the Turkish bath), coffee, and the harem - caught the West's imagination and led to a fashion for turqueries - music, furnishings, and art objects - in Europe. In spite of the humiliating defeat of the Ottomans by the Holy League of the Christian countries of the Mediterranean at the battle of Lepanto, in 1571, Suleiman's work was continued by Selim II, who consolidated the empire's domains. Despite ups and downs and a series of internal and external crises, the Ottoman empire was to survive for another three hundred years, until the early twentieth century.Isfa
Ever since Emperor Constantine had established the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire on the shores of the Bosphorus, giving it the name of "New Rome," Constantinople had been filled with splendid monuments like basilicas, villas, public buildings, and powerful walls. Around the year One Thousand, during the Byzantine era, the city possessed numerous churches and monasteries, constructed by the greatest Greek architects and decorated by masters of the art of mosaic. In the fourteenth century, under the rule of the Palaeologus dynasty, Constantinople was practically isolated and surrounded by Ottoman settlements, and fortresses were built instead of churches.
In the fourth century, Emperor Constantine dedicated the city's first basilica, built on top of a pagan temple, to Hagia Sophia, Divine Wisdom. Burned down several times, the basilica was rebuilt by Greek architects during the reign of Justinian in the sixth century, on a square plan and with its nave covered by a superb dome. This was to serve as a model, inspiration, and challenge for the mosques that the great Ottoman architect Sinan was to design in the future. Immediately after the capture of Constantinople in 1353, the basilica was turned into a mosque, equipped with four slender minarets, and fitted out with the structures required for Muslim worship, the minbar, mihrab, and Koranic inscriptions. For about five hundred years the "Aya Sofya Camii" remained a mosque, until - after the proclamation of the Turkish republic in 1923 - the building was converted into a museum, with the restoration of the surviving fragments of the Byzantine decoration, which had previously been concealed under the plastering.
The residence of the Ottoman sultans from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century was the Topkapi palace (now a splendid museum). An immense and sumptuous complex of pavilions, courts, and gardens, it stands on the promontory where the inlet of the Golden Horn joins up with the waters of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. The palace is divided into two parts: a public section, with the audience chamber, apartments for functionaries, dignitaries, and ambassadors, libraries, and stables, and the private residence, reserved for the sultan and his family, with the imperial pavilions, rooms for recreation, the harem, and personal mosque. The majority of the constructions date from the mid-seventeenth century, when Istanbul was the gateway between West and East.
It is easy to get lost in Istanbul, a cosmopolitan city that straddles the border between Europe and Asia. You need the spirit of an explorer to find your way through its bazaars, gardens, mosques, palaces, museums, and labyrinthine quarters with their typical houses adorned with a hayat, or wooden veranda. Useful landmarks are provided by the minarets, reaching giddy heights in the case of the Blue Mosque, the Sultan Ahmet Camii, and the majestic domes of the mosques that compete with Hagia Sophia. Travelers of the past told of the wonders of the Bedestan, the largest bazaar in the Near East which had grown up around the goldsmiths' quarter, celebrated for its jewelry, brocades, and Chinese silks. The Bedestan is still a great attraction, as filled with goods and traders as it ever was.
In the middle of the desolate steppes of Anatolia lies the city of Konya. It possesses some of the finest Seljuk monuments of the thirteenth century, when the sultanate of Rum was created. The architecture of the Alaeddin Mosque and the madrasah of Karatay and of Ince Minare, famous schools of Islamic theology, is influenced by Syrian and Persian styles, skillfully reworked with the use of original materials such as multicolored marble and dressed stone.
The House of Mevlana, in Konya, is one of the most venerated shrines of Sufi mysticism. The order of the Mevlevi, or "whirling dervishes," was founded by the poet and educator Jalal ud-Din Rumi, originally from what is now Afghanistan, who is known in Turkey as Mevlana. Around 1250, he wrote one of the most important works in Islam, the Mathnawi, considered the Divine Comedy of Persian literature. The ecstatic, sustained, and flowing dance of the whirling dervishes derives from a tragic episode in Mevlana's life. On the death of his best friend, called Shams ("Sun") of Tabriz, he danced until, exhausted, he was spiritually reunited with his beloved companion.
In the heart of Anatolia is to be found one of the most fascinating landscapes in the world, that of Cappadocia. Erosion of its stones of volcanic origin has created a fantastic scenery, sculpted by wind and rain. It was among these rocks that the early Christians who fled from Jerusalem to Anatolia found refuge. They patiently carved entire subterranean cities, churches, and monasteries out of the friable rock, decorating them with precious frescoes. Christianity spread rapidly but on the fall of Byzantium the rock citadels of Cappadocia were emptied and remained abandoned for a long time.
The Turks controlled the Silk Road from China. At regular intervals along the entire route to Istanbul caravanserai were built. These were large groups of fortified buildings capable of housing people, animals, and goods. They were equipped with large courtyards, covered shelters, refectories, baths, prayer halls, and storehouses.
Along the ancient highways of Central Anatolia not only the monuments - however numerous and extraordinary - testify to the past. It is nature itself - the arid tablelands, the steppes, the secluded villages set amidst loamy soils, and the flocks of sheep and goats - that speaks of the laborious journey of human beings through history and of a mutable and fickle destiny. This is summed up in the words of a great contemporary Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet:
