The Church of Panagia Pantobasilissa in Trigleia (ca. 1336) Revisited: Content, Context, and...

During the thirteenth century, when the Crusadersoccupied Constantinople, the region of Bithynia-situated in what is, today, northwest Turkey- wasthe center of Byzantine government. But, by theearly fourteenth century, it had fallen to the OttomanTurks.1 Over the course of the next several decades,Bithynia witnessed a fascinating range of architecturalactivity. Byzantine social and religious institutionslingered, however, leaving a legacy that was ob-servable especially in the region’s architecture.Today, very few examples of late Byzantine buildingssurvive in Bithynia;2 extant structures include, pri-marily, fortifications, a converted parekklesion inKremasti (Mustafakemalpaşa),3 and the church ofthe Pantobasilissa in Trigleia (Zeytinbağı), with thePantobasilissa Church having emerged as an importantbuilding for the period. Though today a rooflessshell of its former self -dilapidated overall, and

with deteriorated plasters- the sad state of thestructure has prompted urgent calls for its rehabilitationand restoration. Now owned by a local family whoseancestors acquired the land after the population ex-change with Greece in the 1920s, the building is upfor sale. Those who support its thorough rehabilitation-many have not yet gone public with their wishes-believe that a private buyer would not be the idealsteward but rather an organization that would helpthe church to project, to the public, the varied mean-ings it has held across the centuries. Hence mytitle’s suggestion of the three “Cs” of marketing:content, context, and community.

The importance of the Pantobasilissa (whichtranslates from the Greek as “All-Blessed, the VirginMary”) derives from its structural and decorativecharacteristics, which I would like to reexamine inthis paper. To do so, I will divide my paper into

THE CHURCH OF THE PANAGIA PANTOBASILISSA

IN TRIGLEIA (ca. 1336) REVISITED:

CONTENT, CONTEXT AND COMMUNITY*

SUNA ÇAĞAPTAY**

İSTANBUL ARAŞTIRMALARI YILLIĞI, 1 2011

* For an earlier version of this paper titled “The Laskarid Connection: A Few Remarks on the Church of Pantobasilissa (ca.1336)”, see Thirty-Third Annual Byzantine Studies Conference: Abstracts, University of Toronto, 11–14 October 2007, Toronto,2007, 89. I visited the Pantobasilissa church in 2005 and 2006. The research for this paper was made possible by grants from theDan David Foundation, Tel Aviv University, the American Research Institute in Turkey, the Barakat Foundation at theUniversity of Oxford, and Dumbarton Oaks. For all of these grants the author is grateful. I thank Professor Dr. M. Baha Tanman,Director of the İstanbul Research Institute, for kindly inviting me to contribute to this volume, as well as Gülru Tanman andErkan Bora for their kind assistance. This article was submitted to the journal in September 2008. My very special gratitudegoes to Professor Bob Ousterhout who directed my doctoral studies and has remained an unwavering enthusiast for all thingsBithynian. To him I dedicate this work.

** Asst. Prof.; Bahçeşehir University, Faculty of Architecture and Design, Department of Architecture. This paper was submittedto the annual journal of the İstanbul Research Institute (İAE), whose stated mission is to follow the “traces of civilization fromthe center towards the periphery, focusing on the cultural structure and the human profile, including Byzantine, Ottoman and theRepublican periods of Istanbul”. The match is quite appropriate for my piece, which aims to provide the reader with a view fromBithynia, located on the periphery of Byzantine Constantinople.

1 I am indebted to all those scholars whose work on the rise of the Ottoman state I surveyed. Needless to say, their reading and in-terpretation of the textual evidence, even when I disagreed with them, opened new vistas for me. See P. Wittek, The Rise of theOttoman Empire, London, 1967; S. Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamizationfrom the 11th–15th Centuries, Berkeley, 1971; H. İnalcık, The Ottoman Empire; The Classical Age: 1300–1600, London, 1971;ibid., “The Question of the Emergence of the Ottoman State”, International Journal of Turkish Studies, 2 / 2, 1981–1982, 71–80. For recent social and cultural narratives of the period, see R. P. Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia,Bloomington, 1983, 45–50; C. Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London, 1995, 60–89; H. Lowry, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State, New York, 2003, 55–94.

2 For a general introduction to the architecture of the region, see R. Ousterhout, “Constantinople, Bithynia and RegionalDevelopments in Later Byzantine Architecture”, The Twilight of Byzantium: Aspects of Cultural and Religious History in theLate Byzantine Empire, ed. S. Ćurčić and D. Mouriki, Princeton, 1991, 75–110; R. Ousterhout, “Ethnic Identity and CulturalAppropriation in Early Ottoman Architecture”, Muqarnas, 12, 1995, 48–62.

3 For analyses of the Byzantine fortifications and other buildings of the fourteenth century, see S. Çağaptay-Arıkan, “Visualizingthe Cultural Transition in Bithynia: Architecture, Landscape and Urbanism”, unpublished PhD. dissertation, University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. Also see S. Çağaptay “Frontierscape: Reconsidering Bithynian Structures and TheirBuilders on the Byzantine-Ottoman Cusp”, Muqarnas, 28, 2011, 155–191.

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three sections: content, to revisit the magnificentdecorative program it embodied; context, to restudythe setting this building occupied; and a reassessmentof the role the building played within its contemporarycommunity, based on both perceptions and actualuses. Historians of architecture are accustomed toviewing architecture as integral to the larger socialconstructs and cultural encounters of a place and,for these reasons, reflective of broader societal pat-terns. My own research, and the research of others,suggests that the Pantobasilissa stands at the heartof these constructs and encounters.

In glancing at the history of the period, we seethat Trigleia in particular and Bithynia in generalcomprised an area of ethnic diversity and politicalfragmentedness, with various cultural, social, eco-nomic and architectural overlaps. Reaching backbefore the Byzantines to the Latin rulers of Bithynia,we are prompted to look more closely at the conceptof frontierism.4 By exploring the shift first fromLatin to Byzantine hands, and later to Ottomancontrol, we can explore the idea that frontiers donot exist only along strict “national” lines, but ingrayer geographic areas as well. The presence ofsuch a frontier encourages us to see the states andtheir cultures as more fluid than in past portrayals,and also challenges the concept that civilizationsare, for the most part, compartmentalized units.Instead of seeing the borders between Byzantinesand Ottomans as lines of separation, I would like toaccount for an interaction of cultures and peoplesthat transcends cartographic divides.

The Bithynian frontier is a good model for thistype of cross-cultural examination in large partbecause of its urban character, which served as anagent of identity mixing and cultural exchangeduring the transition from Byzantine to Ottomanrule. The strong local characteristics of the architectureof Bithynia -such as alternating brick and stone ma-sonry and banded voussoirs, to be discussed later-that persisted during the transition from the Byzantine

to the Ottoman period suggest continuity, and re-silience against the turmoil brought by changes inleadership. Furthermore, as the Ottomans graduallytook control of Bithynia, they demonstrated nodesire to wipe the slate clean, but rather looked tothe Byzantines for inspiration. For example, byadapting certain Byzantine buildings and publicspaces -such as the tombs of Osman and Orhan inthe upper city of Bursa (known to the Byzantines asProusa), and the bathhouse complex in Çekirge- theOttoman newcomers intentionally transformed anexisting urban order and revived an ancient one.5

The historian Colin Imber has called the fourteenthcentury a “black hole”6 for students of the formationof the Ottoman state in Bithynia, because of theoverall paucity of textual evidence. And, indeed, norecent studies on the early Ottoman state lookbeyond the scarce written evidence in reconstructingthe history of the region. By studying the attributesof structures -and their status as cultural artifacts-we can offer an alternative way of looking at thecomplexities of this period, or for that matter anyperiod, helping move scholarship beyond a consid-eration of solely the textual record.

The Ottomans rose, in the early 1300s, from asmall chieftainship to a great power. This remarkableascendance helps show why recent scholarshipfocuses on the political accomplishments of the Ot-toman state and the power that it exercised.7 In ex-amining the church of the Pantobasilissa within thecontext of the Bithynian frontier, my aim is tocounter scholarly assumptions that attribute thedemise of the Byzantine state and the rise of the Ot-tomans to a series of military conquests that tookplace over a period of several decades. Though theOttomans ruled the region -in towns on the southerncoast of the Sea of Marmara, Trigleia among them-the population remained largely Christian and theinfluence of the Byzantine legacy remained salient.The dates of the construction of the Pantobasilissatell this story of cultural convergence. Constructed

4 Kafadar, Between Two Worlds, xiii–xiv, 1–3, 10, 14–18, 39–40; ibid. 28, defines “fluidity and mobility of identities” as the mostimportant element of the early Ottoman frontier culture.

5 This is true especially in the case of the converted mausolea for Osman and Orhan, the founders of the Ottoman state. For ananalysis of the Ottoman attitude expressed toward Classical and Byzantine buildings within the context of these mausolea, seeS. Çağaptay, “Appropriation vs. Accommodation: Transferring the Confessional Loci in fourteenth-century Prousa/Brusa”, XIInternational Congress of the Social and Economic History of Turkey, Bilkent University, 17–22 June 2008 (Ankara), Ankara,2008, 24. And more recently, S. Çağaptay, “Prousa/Bursa, A City within the City: Chorography, Conversion, and Choreography”,Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 35/1, 2011, 45–69.

6 The seeds of this statement were planted in C. Imber, “The Ottoman Dynastic Myth”, Turcica, 19, 1987, 7–27. For elaborationon the concept of the “black hole” and specific usage, see Imber, “The Legend of Osman Gazi”, The Ottoman Emirate, 1300–1389, ed. E. Zacharidou, Crete, 1993, 66–76, especially 75.

7 See footnote 4.

46 SUNA ÇAĞAPTAY


THE CHURCH OF THE PANAGIA PANTOBASILISSA IN TRIGLEIA (ca. 1336) REVISITED

after 1336 in Trigleia,8 the church is almost con-temporaneous with the Orhan Mosque (built ca.1339) in Bursa, one of the earliest Ottoman com-missions in the region.9

In focusing on historical, ideological, and method-ological questions pertaining to the writing of thehistory of the Pantobasilissa in the modern period10,I plan to hone my focus on the urban environmentas well. Starting in the late eight century, the townof Trigleia was a refuge for the Iconodules fleeingthe Iconoclasm in Constantinople. Their industri-ousness contributed to a boom in construction inand around the town. At the time of the arrival ofthe Ottomans, the town profited first and foremostfrom being the closest port to Prousa and from itslocation on the direct route to Constantinople.11 Inaddition a discussion of the town’s urban mix, Iintend to acknowledge the relationship between thebuilt environment and the representation of ethnic,regional, and religious identities, in an attempt tobreak recent impasses in architectural and urbanstudies that promote only a reading of the four-teenth-century buildings commissioned by the Ot-toman patrons.12 These Ottoman buildings, in turn,have become heavily politicized monuments, withnotions of cultural purity and homogeneity accen-

tuated. I have based my work away from the capitalin Bursa, picking up where Cyril Mango and IhorŠevčenko left off in 1973: that is, by drawing ourattention to a thorough study of Laskarid architecturein western Asia Minor and the nascent Ottoman ar-chitecture in Bithynia to contextualize the lateByzantine architecture in the region.13

CONTENT

Located on the south shore of the Sea of Marmara,the Church of Panagia Pantobasilissa (Figs. 1–2)helps illustrate the Byzantine architectural legacyjust before the arrival of the Ottomans and duringtheir urban enterprise in Bithynia. One of the earliestWestern visitors to the church was the British doctorand traveler John Covel.14 The scholar Tryphon E.Evangelides visited in the late 1890s, with F. WilliamHasluck following in the 1900s and AleksanderPančenko in 1910.15 In the 1970s, Mango andŠevčenko conducted their analyses, and YıldızÖtüken and her colleagues engaged in a study ofthe building in the 1980s.16 The structure was ex-amined further in a doctoral dissertation on thecontext of monastic architecture at Trigleia by M.Sacit Pekak, and by Robert Ousterhout in two briefstudies.17

8 P. Kuniholm and C. L. Striker, “Dendrochronological Investigations in the Aegean and Neighbouring Regions, 1983–1986”,Journal of Field Archaeology, 14 / 4, 1987, 385–398; see Chart 2 on p. 396. R. Ousterhout links the structure withdendrochronological dating in his “Constantinople, Bithynia”, 87 and “Ethnic Identity”, 53. Prior to the date determined by thedendrochronological method, the church was located in the thirteenth century by C. Mango and I. Ševčenko, “Some Churchesand Monasteries on the Southern Shore of the Sea of Marmara”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 18, 1973, 235–277, especially 238.See also S. Y. Ötüken, A. Durukan, H. Acun and S. Pekak, Türkiye’de Vakıf Abideler ve Eski Eserler, 4, Ankara, 1986, 48–88;S. Y. Ötüken, “Karacabey İlçesindeki Tophisar Köyünün Ortaçağdaki Önemi ve Tarihi Eserleri”, Arkeoloji ve Sanat TarihiDergisi, 4, İzmir, 1988, 89–99, especially 97, see illustrations on 29–34; F. Hasluck, “Bithynica”, The Annual of the BritishSchool at Athens, 13, 1906–1907, 287–308, especially 291–292; S. Eyice, “Monuments byzantins anatoliens inédits ou peuconnus”, Corsi di cultura sull’Arte Ravennate e Bizantina, 18, 1971, 309–332, especially 316–317.

9 More on the overlapping nature of architectural production, see Çağaptay, “Frontierscape”, 158.10 See footnote 10.11 K.-P. Matschke, “Commerce, Trade, Markets and Money: Thirteenth–Fifteenth Centuries”, The Economic History of Byzantium:

From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, 2, ed. A. E. Laiou, Washington D.C., 2002, 771–806, especially 783.12 These studies only document the individual Ottoman buildings and fail to integrate this body of information into chronological

and typological analyses of building programs. Nevertheless, the studies are valuable for the information they offer. To name afew: S. Çetintaş, Türk Mimari Anıtları: Osmanlı Devri Bursa’da İlk Eserler, İstanbul, 1946; A. Gabriel, Une capitale turque,Brousse-Bursa, 1–2, Paris, 1958; E. H. Ayverdi, Istanbul Mi’marî Çağının Menşe’i Osmanlı Mimârîsinin İlk Devri (1230–1402), 1, İstanbul, 1966.

13 Mango and Ševčenko, “Some Churches”, 277.14 Covel’s diary has been studied and translated by J.-P. Grélois, Dr. John Covel Voyages en Turquie: 1675–1677, Paris, 1998. For

the section on the church of the Pantobasilissa, see p. 218.15 Post-Byzantine interventions have been described by T. E. Evangelides, who noted that the dome and belfry were demolished

by the earthquake of November 10, 1855. The dome was restored and slightly altered in shape. The belfry was rebuilt in 1883,at which time a women’s gallery was added to the west end of the church. This modification resulted in an increase in the sizeof the building by 5,2 meters, to a total of 18.6 meters. For a pre-1934 publication by Evangelides, see “Peri tinon archaiotatonbizantini monon en bithinia”, Soter, 12, 1889; F. W. Hasluck, “Bithynica”, 285–308.

16 Mango and Ševčenko, “Some Churches”; Ötüken et al., Türkiye’de Vakıf Abideler. Also see M.-F. Auzépy, “Campagne deprospection 2005 de la mission monastères byzantins de la côte sud de la Marmara”, Anatolica Antiqua, 14, 2006, 369–398.Auzépy’s work focuses on the region and not on the church.

17 M. S. Pekak, “Zeytinbağı (Trigleia) Bizans Dönemi Kiliseleri”, unpublished PhD. dissertation, Hacettepe University, Ankara,1991; “Zeytinbağı / Trilye Bizans Dönemi Kiliseleri”, XIII. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı, 1, 29 Mayıs–2 Haziran 1995(Ankara), Ankara, 1996, 307–338; Ousterhout, “Constantinople, Bithynia”, 5–110; “Ethnic Identity”, 48–62.

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The church measures about 11 by 8,5 meters.The dedication and the fresco program, whichdepicts scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, in-dicate that the church was dedicated to the motherof Christ.18 In the northern crossing, facing eastabove a Corinthian capital, is a representation ofJoachim’s offerings being rejected, an early scenefrom the life of the Virgin Mary.19 In the depiction,Joachim moves forward, carrying a lamb in hisveiled hands. Anna, the mother of the Virgin Mary,who appears to be helping to carry the lamb, movesback toward her husband.20

On the south wall of the southwest bay (Fig. 3),a larger-than-life-size figure of the Archangel Michaelcomplements the Marian cycle. Michael is dressed

in an imperial costume, holding a staff in his righthand and a globe in his left. In the lunette abovehim is an eight-pointed star that apparently includedmore details within its lines; whatever those detailswere can no longer be detected. Eight-pointed starsappeared as the representation of heavenly light inthe frescoes of fourteenth-century churches in Serbiaand Greece and post-Byzantine decorative churchprograms in Cyprus.21 The symbol likely had asimilar resonance here.

CONTEXT

Mango and Ševčenko attributed the Pantobasilissato the “Greek school” -and in particular to Mistra-22

on the basis of its architectural plan. They explain

18 The function of the church is a matter of debate, with Evangelides, “Peri tinon”, 94; R. Janin, Les églises et les Monastéres desgrands centres byzantins, Paris, 1975, 185–187 proposing a monastic function; and Mango and Ševčenko, “Some Churches”,238 arguing that such a claim is uninformed -essentially a guess- because adequate evidence simply does not exist.

19 This fresco is in a very bad condition. See Mango and Ševčenko, “Some Churches”, figs. 31–32.20 For an interpretation of the Marian cycle in Byzantine art, see J. Lafontaine-Dosogne, Iconographie de l’Enfance de la Vierge

dans l’Empire byzantin et en Occident, Brussels, 1964–1965.21 Nevertheless, in Serbian, Greek, and Cypriot examples, the octogram does not accompany the figure of Archangel Michael. The

appearance of the octogram above the head of the Archangel in Trigleia might be simply a variation of the conventionalrepresentation of the Archangel.

22 Mango and Ševčenko, “Some Churches”, 274.

48 SUNA ÇAĞAPTAY

Fig. 1: The Church of the Panagia Pantobasilissa inZeytinbağı, interior, looking northeast, after 1336 (S. Çağaptay).

Fig. 2: Exterior from south, after 1336 (S. Çağaptay).

SunaCagaptay1:istanbul.suna 04.03.2012 15:52 8


the connection in terms of the lengthening of thenave, the presence of six columns instead of four,and the interpenetration of the nave and sanctuaryareas. The ground layout of the building is an elon-gated cross-in-square (Fig. 4), a variation of thecross-in-square type seen frequently in the ninth-century monastic context of Bithynia.23 Instead ofsuggesting a typological study of this plan24 andproposing farfetched patterns of transmission betweenMistra and Bithynia, as Mango and Ševčenko hasdone, I have opted to closely analyze the forms andfunctions apparent in the church of the Pantobasilissato understand the local features in its design, whichpreviously has been labeled “imported” from Mistra.25

First, I follow Gabriel Millet’s reading of the planas combining the elements of an aisled basilicabelow and a cross-in-square above. Because thebuilding has one story, the attribution to Mistra isnot convincing. Second, the lengthening of the navemay have been intended to provide more space fortombs and burials.26 The funerary portraits on thesouth (Fig. 5), north, and the west walls of thenarthex, which are contemporaneous with the frescoprogram in the nave, support this assertion. Third,keeping in mind that the Pantobasilissa was thesecond church constructed in the town center ofTrigleia, after the church of St. Stephanos (present-day Fatih Mosque), one can also assume that a

23 C. Mango, Byzantine Architecture, New York, 1976, 178–180; V. Ruggieri, Byzantine Religious Architecture: 582–867, Rome,1991, 139–141; R. Ousterhout, Master Builders of Byzantium, Princeton, 1999, 17. Ibid., 29–30 claims that the association of thistype with monastic purposes fails to explain the wide diffusion of the building type and its use for a variety of other purposes,including as palace churches and burial chapels. Recent archaeological survey in the region conducted under the supervision ofMarie-France Auzépy supports Mango’s and Ruggieri’s claims; see M.-F. Auzépy, “Campagne de prospection”, 369–398; B.Geyer and J. Lefort (eds.), La Bithynie au Moyen Âge, Réalités byzantines, 9, Paris, 2003, 431–458. Finally, for the proliferation ofmonasteries on holy mountains in the ninth century, see K. Belke, “Heilige Berge Bithyniens”, Proceedings of the 21st InternationalCongress of Byzantine Studies, 21–26 August 2006 (London), Ashgate, Aldershot, 2006, 1–14.

24 Writing two decades after his collaborative work with Ševčenko in Bithynia, this time on the Byzantine architectural legacy, CyrilMango, “Approaches to Byzantine Architecture”, Muqarnas, 8, 1991, 40–42, states that one of the approaches to Byzantinearchitecture is “typological” and based on the study of “schools”; quoted verbatim from p. 41: “Buildings are pigeon-holed likebiological specimens according to formal criteria: where a resemblance is found, a connection is assumed even across a wide gulfin time and space”.

25 Mango and Ševčenko, “Some Churches”, 274, follow Millet’s reading of the plan as combining the elements of an aisled basilicabelow and a cross-in-square above. Because the building has one story, the attribution to Mistra is not convincing. H. Hallensleben,“Unterschungen zur Genesis und Typologie des ‘Mistratypus’ ”, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, 18, 1969, 105,challenging and rejecting the view proposed by G. Millet, L’ecole grecque dans l’architecture byzantine, Paris, 1916.

26 Similar cases are said to have happened, including at the church of Theotokos Kosmosoteira at Pherrai, whereby the layout of thebuilding was arranged in response to the necessity to house the tomb of Isaak Komnenos, brother of John II. For more on thissubject, see R. Ousterhout, “Where Was the Tomb of Isaak Komnenos?”, Eleventh Annual Byzantine Studies Conference:Abstracts of Papers, University of Toronto, 25–27 October 1985, Toronto, 1985, 34; Ousterhout, Master Builders, 124–126. Bothstudies offer a new analysis for the function and the choice of forms in the building by reexamining the typikon of the church. Foranalysis and translation of the typikon, see N. Patterson Ševčenko, “The Tomb of Isaak Komnenos at Pherrai”, The GreekOrthodox Theological Review, 29 / 2, 1984, 135–140. For other similar cases in Byzantine architecture, see S. Ćurčić, “ArchitecturalSignificance of Subsidiary Chapels in Middle Byzantine Churches”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 36, 1977,94–110, especially 102–103. For a survey of mortuary practices within Byzantine churches and monasteries, see E. Ivison,“Mortuary Practices in Byzantium (c. 950–1453): An Archaeological Approach”, unpublished PhD. dissertation, University ofBirmingham, 1993; S. T. Brooks, “Commemoration of the Dead: Late Byzantine Tomb Decoration (Mid-Thirteenth to Mid-Fifteenth Centuries)”, unpublished PhD. dissertation, New York University, 2002. Brooks has published some of her results; see“Sculpture and Late Byzantine Tomb”, Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557), ed. H. Evans, New York, 2004, 95–103.

49

Fig. 3: The Archangel Michael on the south wall of thesouthwest bay, after 1336 (S. Çağaptay).


50 SUNA ÇAĞAPTAY

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slightly longer and deeper nave would have beenneeded to hold a larger congregation. Furthermore,the abundance of reused columns seems to be acontrolling factor in the planning of the building.Considering that all the columns, capitals, and shaftsin the church were reused, it seems plausible thatwhen construction started, many columns arrived atthe construction site, some of which were incorporatedinto the masonry (Fig. 6) in the main apse andsouthern-side apse.27

As a result of reuse, the capitals reflect a varietyof dates and styles, ranging from chrismons andvolutes to acanthus and plant scrolls. Also interesting

is the great difference between the reused sixth-century capitals in the church of St. Stephanos andthose of the Pantobasilissa. The fragments at thePantobasilissa, composed of Prokonessian marble,look similar to pieces that date before the sixthcentury all around Bithynia.28 The question this allprompts is whether these pieces were in hand by thetime the Pantobasilissa was constructed or whetherthey were brought over later from neighboring sites.

Like the plan, the masonry technique (Fig. 7)has been regarded as not local, but as the product ofthe “Greek school”. Mango and Ševčenko describedthe masonry technique as “surface cloisonné”,29

27 In the case of the church of St. John Prodromos in the Monastery of Lips, the large capitals adorning the nave were brought froma fifth-century site in Cyzicus, as noted in T. Macridy, “The Monastery of Lips (Fenari İsa Camii)”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers,93, 1964, 260, figs. 6, 25–26. Transportation within Trigleia and its vicinity seems plausible considering that the Prokonessianquarries went out of use after the sixth century, as stated by N. Asgari after archaeological surveys in 1979–1981 and 1986–1992. The published results are located in the Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı from 1983 to 1993.

28 For a recent study on the Byzantine columns and capitals, see A. Pralong, “Matériel Archéologique Errant”, La Bithynie auMoyen Âge. Geographie et habitat, eds. B. Geyer and J. Lefort, Paris, 2003, 225–286; S. Y. Ötüken, Forschungen imnordwestlichen Kleinasien, Antike und byzantinische Denkmäler in der Provinz Bursa, Tübingen, 1996.

29 Mango and Ševčenko, “Some Churches”, 274; E. Reusche, Polychromes Sichmauerwerk byzantinischer und von Byzanzbeeinflusster Bauten Südosteuropa, inaugural-dissertation, Universitat zu Köln, 1971; P. L. Vokotopoulos, “The Role of Con-stantinopolitan Architecture in the Middle and Late Byzantine Period”, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 31, 1981,551–573; R. Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 4th rev. ed. with S. Ćurčić, Yale University Press, NewHaven, 1986, 414–450; S. Ćurčić, “Architecture in the Byzantine Sphere of Influence around the Middle of the FourteenthCentury”, Decani i Vizantijska umetmost sredinom XIV veka, ed. V. Djurić, Belgrade, 1989, 55–69; C. Bouras, “ByzantineArchitecture in the Middle of the Fourteenth Century”, ibid., 49–54.

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Fig. 5: Detail from the funerary group portrait on thesouth wall, after 1336 (S. Çağaptay).

Fig. 6: Apses looking north, columns reused in the walland the niches in the main apse, after 1336 (S. Çağaptay).


consisting of alternating brick and rough stone,30

often separated by upright pieces. A closer inspection,however, shows that instead of reflecting the “Greekschool”,31 the masonry technique finds its earliestparallels, albeit varying appearance, in the rich ar-chitectural heritage of Bithynia, as evidenced in theninth-century churches of Pelekete and Medikion.32

Furthermore, under the reign of the Laskarids in thelate thirteenth century, this masonry techniquebecame abundantly present in the buildings ofwestern Asia Minor and Chios.33 One of these build-ings is the Laskarid Palace at Nymphaion (ca. 1210–1230) (Fig. 8), the upper portion of which is built ofsingle courses of irregular stones, often separated

30 Alternating brick-and-stone masonry was one of the most common ways of building in Byzantium, with origins dating back toat least the fifth century: Krautheimer, Early Christian, 428; Ćurčić, “Architecture in the Byzantine Sphere”, 55–60.

31 Mango and Ševčenko, “Some Churches”, 239; Millet, L’ecole grecque, 225.32 This style of masonry began to be modified in the eleventh century, first with the introduction of the concealed brick technique,

as in the domed pastophoria of St. Sophia in Nicaea; A. M. Schneider, Die römischen und byzantinischen Denkmäler von Iznik-Nicaea, Berlin, 1943, 14.

33 Other Laskarid buildings constructed according to this practice are: Latmos 8 (1240–1255), Latmos 4 (1250–1265), the churchfragment at Eğridere (1230–1245), the church of Panagia Krina in Chios (ca. 1225-1230) and the church of Holy Apostles atPyrghi (mid–thirteenth century). In H. Buchwald, “Lascarid Architecture”, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 28,1979, 261–296, dates given follow Buchwald’s relative chronology and bear inaccuracies. For a long time, the geographicalboundaries of the Laskarid empire-in-exile have been confined to Bithynia, Mysia, Ionia, and the island of Chios. PostdatingBuchwald’s publication, a discovery made on the island of Samos, at the church of the Panagia, near Karlovasi, by Arg.Petronitis in the mid-1980s leads us to reconsider the boundaries of the architectural and spatial context of the emperors-in-exile. See G. Velenis, “Building Techniques and External Decoration during the Fourteenth Century in Macedonia”, L’art deThessalonique et des pays Balkaniques et les Courants Spirituels au XIVe Siècle, Belgrade, 1987, 95–10. G. Velenis’ book alsoprovides a solid account of Laskarid architecture by basing its origins in the capital and its features. See Velenis, Ermineia touezoteriki diakosmou sti bizantini arkitektoniki, 1, Thessaloniki, 1984, 90–96, 152–153, 300–301.

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Fig. 7: North wall, detail of the masonry, banded voussoirs and dogtooth outlining in the arch, after 1336 (S. Çağaptay).



by vertical bricks, and an uneven number of one- tofive-brick courses.34 After the Byzantine recaptureof the capital from the Latins in 1260, this masonrytechnique appears in the buildings of Constantinople,such as İsa Kapısı, Boğdan Sarayı, the south churchof Constantine Lips, and the outer narthex of KiliseCamii.35

Hence, the Pantobasilissa offers a key exampleof a building that acknowledges local constructiontechniques while reflecting relevant developmentsin other centers of production, such as in westernAsia Minor and Constantinople. Relevant featuresare alternating brick-and-stone or the “banded”voussoirs and decorative details such as dogtooth(Fig. 7), tree-of-life, and vertical brick patterning(Fig. 9). The “banded voussoirs”36 have the schemeof two or three bricks alternating with single stonewedges. The appearance of banded voussoirs, com-monly employed in Constantinople, Serbia, andBulgaria,37 show an aesthetic relationship to the al-ternating brick-and-stone construction technique.

The dogtooth frieze formed by bricks set at a45-degree angle is found on the north side (Fig. 7),on one of the arches outlined by a line of dogtoothpattern, and on the roofline. Mango and Ševčenkoattributed this feature to Greece and say it was un-known in Constantinople.38 In a study on the lateByzantine architecture of Thessaloniki, SlobodanĆurčić describes the appearance of dogtooth friezealong with other architectural borrowings from

34 E. Freshfield, “The Palace of the Greek Emperors of Nicaea at Nymphio”, Archaeologia, 49, 1886, 382–390; S. Eyice, “İzmirYakınında Kemalpaşa (Nif) da Laskarisler Sarayı”, Belleten, 25 / 97, 1961, 1–15; Eyice, “La palais byzantin de Nymphaion presd’İzmir”, Akten des XXI. Internationalen Byzantinistenkongress, München, 1958, Münich, 1960, 150–153; T. K. Kirova, “UnPalazzo ed una di età tardo-bizantina in Asia Minore”, Felix Ravenna, 103–104, 1972, 272–305; J. Patterson, “The Palace of theLascarids at Nymphaion”, Fourth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference: Abstracts of Papers, University of Michigan, 3–4November 1978, Ann Arbor, 1978, 34–35; Z. Mercangöz, “Batı Anadolu’da Geç Dönem Bizans Mimarisi: Laskarisler DönemiMimarisi”, unpublished PhD. dissertation, Hacettepe University, Ankara, 1985; Z. Mercangöz and E. Akyürek, “Living Spaces:Architecture”, Kalanlar: 12. ve 13. Yüzyıllarda Türkiye’de Bizans / The Remnants: 12th and 13th Centuries Byzantine Objects inTurkey, ed. A. Ödekan, İstanbul, 2007, 25–29, especially 28. For the most recent analysis on the architectural setting of thebuilding with respect to its location along the Seljuk-Byzantine frontier and its identity as an agricultural and imperial estate,see S. Çağaptay, “How Western Is It? The Palace at Nymphaion and Its Architectural Setting”, 1. Uluslararası Sevgi GönülBizans Araştırmaları Sempozyumu / First International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium, İstanbul ArchaeologicalMuseums, 25–28 June 2007 (İstanbul), eds. A. Ödekan, E. Akyürek and N. Necipoğlu, İstanbul, 357–362.

35 R. Ousterhout, “The Origins of Palaeologan Construction”, Eighth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference: Abstracts of Papers,University of Chicago, 15–17 October 1982, Chicago, 1982, 10–11; ibid., Master Builders, 177.

36 The origins and nature of banded voussoirs have been summarized by Krautheimer, Early Christian, 466–468. A. Pasadaios, HoKeramoplastikos diakosmos ton Byzantinon ktérion tes Konstantinoupoleos, Athens, 1973, 34–38, lists the full range ofvariations on the theme of banded voussoirs in Late Byzantine Constantinople.

37 It must be noted that no Middle Byzantine examples have survived, except in Bulgaria, leading scholars to place the origins ofthe banded voussoirs in Bulgaria. Such a claim remains highly hypothetical. See Ousterhout, “Constantinople, Bithynia”, 77–85.

38 The origins of this pattern date as far back as the eleventh-century churches: namely, the Anargyroi and Kubiliki in Kastoria; onarcades and the drum at the early tenth-century Saint John the Baptist in Nessebar, at the Panagia Chalkeon of early eleventh-century Thessaloniki, and outlining only the arches in the drum in the tenth-century church of Stilo in Italy. In all these cases,this feature becomes an endemic decorative feature. In Constantinople, it is found outlining the window arches in the southchurch of the Pantokrator (1118–1124), the church of Pantepoptes (1081–1087), and on the eave lines of the roof at thePammakaristos, c. 1320.

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Fig. 8: The Palace at Nymphaion in Kemalpaşa, ca. 1220s, façade detail (S. Çağaptay).


Epirus to Thessaloniki.39 In our case, however, sug-gesting that this feature survived from the Laskaridera makes more sense, considering its widespreadappearance in the churches of Laskarid Asia Minor,such as the Church 8 on Kahve Asar Island inLatmos (Fig.10). We may therefore conclude thatthis variant of dogtooth frieze existed in westernAsia Minor in the thirteenth century.

The tree-of-life pattern and band of verticallyplaced brickwork are inserted above the windowsin the main apse (Fig. 9). These two featuresare comparable to features found in Laskarid

buildings, and the tree-of-life pattern echoes patternsfound on the fortress of Smyrna and the fortificationsof Nicaea.40 On the eave line of the central apseof the church, a band of vertically placed brickworkis inserted, while the apses on the eastern side ofthe church have smaller projections on the outside.The central apse has three small niches abovethe window, suggestive of the niches in the southchurch of Constantine Lips in Constantinople(1282).

One might ask why Laskarid architectural knowl-edge was transmitted into Bithynia during this his-

39 Mango and Ševčenko, “Some Churches”, 39; S. Ćurčić, “The Role of Late Byzantine Thessaloniki in Church Architecture inthe Balkans”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 57, 2003, 65–84. Ćurčić questions the nature of Epirote borrowings in the architectureof Late Byzantine Thessaloniki, comparing what he calls the “recessed dogtooth frieze” on the east façade of the church ofParegoritissa at Arta with that of the Thessalonikian St. Catherine.

40 Buchwald, “Lascarid Architecture”, 271–275; T. Wiegand, Der Latmos (Milet III/I), Berlin, 1913; A. Peschlow-Bindokat, DerLatmos: eine bekannten Gebirgslandschaft an der Türkischen Westküste, Mainz, 1996. For a later Ottoman comparison, seeYıldırım’s hospital complex, as cited by Ötüken, “Karacabey İlçesindeki”, pl. 34.

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Fig. 9: The Church of the Panagia Pantobasilissa, detail of tree-of-life and vertical brick patterning in the main apse,after 1336 (S. Çağaptay).



torical period.41 Was it because building is a “con-servative profession”, and “masons learn by doingand by participating in workshop-centered produc-tion”? It is one thing to discuss the region as thehome of the Nicaean (or Laskarid) emperors-in-

exile from 1204 to 1261 -and all their attendant in-fluence on regional culture- but another to visualizethe nature of workshop practices by looking at therelationship between builders’ local knowledge42

and the various types of written and visual accounts

41 For more on the transmission/nontransmission of architectural forms and techniques, see R. Ousterhout, “In Pursuit of theExotic Orient”, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 35 / 4, 2001, 113–118, citation 115, in D. Howard, Essay Review of Venice andthe East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture: 1100–1500, Yale University Press, New Haven-London,2000, 283. Krautheimer has analyzed the modes of transmission in his “Introduction to an ‘Iconography of MedievalArchitecture’ ”, Journal of the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes, 5, 1942, 1–33, especially 17 and 19. Krautheimer claimed thatliterary descriptions played a role in architectural copying in the Medieval Christian world, but noted that these descriptionswere often complemented by detailed plans. For more on the modes of transmission between different cultural and religiouszones, see F. B. Flood, “Umayyad Survivals and Mamluk Revivals: Qalawunid Architecture and the Great Mosque ofDamascus”, Muqarnas, 14, 1997, 57–79; J. Bloom, “On the Transmission of Designs in Early Islamic Architecture”, Muqarnas,10, 1993, 21–28.

42 The term was coined by Gordon Ryle and popularized by Clifford Geertz in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in InterpretiveAnthropology, New York, 1983. The term denotes that knowledge is historically constrained, and produced within particularmaterial settings, which include a particular geographical zone. For its use in an architectural history context, see H. E.Grossman, “Building Identity: Architecture as Evidence of Intercultural Interaction between Byzantines and Latins in MedievalGreece”, unpublished PhD. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2004; Grossman, “Syncretism Made Concrete: The Casefor a Hybrid Moreote Architecture in Post-Fourth Crusade Greece”, Archaeology in Architecture: Studies in Honor of Cecil L.Striker, ed. J. Emerick and D. Deliyannis, Philipp von Zabern, Mainz, 2005, 65–73.

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Fig. 10: The Church 8 on Kahve Asar Island in Latmos (Bafa) Lake, dogtooth frieze outlining the apses, mid-13th century (S. Çağaptay).


at their disposal. At first glance, the masonry anddecorative vocabulary of the Pantobasilissa hint atLaskarid construction techniques. Such techniquesactually offered a hint as to the date of constructionfor Mango and Ševčenko, whose estimate was thelate thirteenth century, and perhaps later.43 Thematerial evidence is further supported by Gregoras,one of the most versatile fourteenth-century Byzantinewriters, who remarked on the extensive and lavisharchitectural program during the time of the Laskariddynasty, which throughout the thirteenth centuryextended from Magnesia on the Meander to Smyrnaand Prousa.44 The migration of masons trained inLaskarid ways of construction probably reachedTrigleia -if they had not been based there already-via western Asia Minor. Thus, further scholarshipon itinerant masons and their workshop practices,as opposed to formal structural comparisons, wouldhelp us to comment on the architectural qualities ofthe Pantobasilissa. Furthermore, in analyzing thetextual record on the movement of masons andbuilders during the Palaiologan period, Ousterhoutcontends that the regulations promulgated by themajor guild do not seem to have held much authorityoutside Constantinople. Nevertheless, our limitedknowledge of the masons and their guilds permitsus to say that the masons of this era were quitemobile, often traveling great distances to earn aliving. We may assume that masons’ activities andmovements were related to the financial means ofpatrons.45

COMMUNITY:

Since its construction, the Pantobasilissa hasgone through several restorations, ranging from theaddition of new frescoes in the main apse right afterits completion, to a new layer of frescoes in 1723,46

to a rebuilding of the dome and belfry and a consol-

idation of the walls and the addition of a new bay in1855 (Fig. 11).47 Such changes hint at a long andfascinating life for the church, which perseveredunder both Byzantine and Ottoman rules. Thoughscholars cannot date precisely the takeover of Trigleiaby the Ottomans, Mango and Ševčenko give a

43 See footnote 8. Mango and Ševčenko, “Some Churches”, 238–240; Ötüken et al., Türkiye’de Vakıf Abideler, 484–486. 44 N. Gregoras, Byzantina Historia, 1, ed. L. Schopen and I. Bekker, Bonn, 1829, 44–45. It should be noted that the scale of

architectural activity in Constantinople and its immediate surroundings in Thrace and Macedonia before the capture of thecapital is flimsy. As suggested by C. Bouras, “The Impact of Frankish Architecture on Thirteenth-Century ByzantineArchitecture”, The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. A. E. Laiou and R. P. Mottahedeh,Washington D.C., 2001, 247–262, and much earlier by Ousterhout, “Constantinople, Bithynia”, 75, the lack of architecturalachievement can be traced to political turmoil and crises involving political figures such as Michael VIII (1261–1282), whosereign was dominated by religious chaos, which led to civil war. For more on this issue, see the seminal work by A. E. Laiou,Constantinople and the Latins: The Foreign Policy of Andronicus II, 1282–1328, Cambridge, 1972, especially 1–5.

45 The regulation that led Ousterhout to make this claim comes from a tenth-century text, prompting him to warn that the samemay not have been true for the Palaiologan period: see “Constantinople, Bithynia”, 76. This view has also been supported by G.Velenis, Ermineia tou ezoteriki, especially in chapter 1. Quoting Ousterhout “Constantinople, Bithynia”, 79, but contradictinghis conclusion on the question of whether Constantinopolitan masons worked elsewhere in late Byzantine period, S. Ćurčić,underlines the importance of builders’ mobility in earning their living: see S. Ćurčić, “Architecture in the Age of Insecurity”,Secular Medieval Architecture in the Balkans (1300–1500) and its Preservation, Thessaloniki, 1997, 25.

46 Mango and Ševčenko, “Some churches”, 238–239 and footnote 15.47 Ibid.

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Fig. 11: The Church of the Panagia Pantobasilissa,exterior, post-Byzantine western bay looking northwest,after 1336 (S. Çağaptay).

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detailed account of primary sources that help pinpointthe town’s handover to the Ottomans.48 In 1317,Andronikos III Palaiologos (then co-emperor) landedat Trigleia and sent provisions to the Byzantines inProusa, then under siege by the Ottomans.49 Trigleiawas still in Byzantine hands in 1334, when theKaresids were crushed by the Crusaders.50 In 1337,according to Gregoras and Kantakuzenos,51 the newswas conveyed from Trigleia to Constantinople thatthe Ottomans were about to attack the settlementson the northern shore of the Sea of Marmara. TheOttomans were repelled52 and retreated inland towardNicomedia, which they ultimately seized in 1337.If we consider the dates when other Bithynian townsand cities fell -Prousa in 1326, Nicaea in 1331- andkeep in mind that Trigleia was an unfortified siteopen to both sea and land attacks, we may assumethat it did not remain under Byzantine control forlong. Nonetheless, records suggest the Christiancommunity remained vital, whether under Ottomanrule or not.

In 1379, for example, a certain “Myron” requestedthat a manuscript of Harmenopoulos53 be copied,the sign of a thriving Christian culture. Further evi-dence comes from the phases of the church’s deco-ration program. As noted by Mango and Ševčenko,the fresco layers in the main apse postdate the exe-

cution of the rest of the program, which the twoscholars date to no later than the first quarter of thefourteenth century, as it overlays the masonry fill. Amuch later fresco phase, as noted earlier, was addedin 1723.54 Additional data is provided by Ottomancadastral surveys, and tax registers collected in theHüdavendigâr Livası Defters. In this defter of 1409,the town of Trigleia (spelled “Dirigle”) was registeredas a part of the Hüdavendigâr and Syke55 (spelled“Siği”) and in 1423 went under the Erdek vaqf.56

Despite Trigleia’s transfer to Ottoman rule, onlyone church in the center of town would be convertedinto a mosque. At the entrance to the church of St.Stephanos (present-day Fatih Camii) an inscriptionreads that a certain Hacı Hasan converted it into amosque in the year 968 H. (1560–1561).57 Additionalevidence from 1580 until the patriarchal act ofMétrophanès III (1639–1645) shows that Trigleia(and Elegmoi, to the east) fell within the church’sjurisdiction, and that Trigleia broke a donation dueto conflicts with the municipality of Prousa. Panto-basilissa is included in the act as an active monastery.58

In examining the Pantobasilissa from the per-spective of Laskarid and Constantinopolitan practices,amalgamated with local Bithynian characteristics -such as the archaizing triumphal arch schemerecalling the façade articulation in the nearby church

48 Ibid., 235–236.49 As cited by ibid., 236 and footnote 12; G. Arnakis, Ho protoi ottomani, Athens, 1947, 156.50 E. Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, Venice, 1983, 29–33. The Western side of the battle has been evaluated by N. J. Housley,

“Angevin Naples and the Defence of the Latin East: Robert the Wise and the Naval League of 1334”, Byzantion, 51, 1981, 548–556.

51 As cited by Mango and Ševčenko, “Some Churches”, 236 and footnote 13.52 Ibid.53 Ibid., “Myron” held the title of ομόναχος ’έξαρχος Τριγκλείας a patriarchal representative charged with supervising monasteries;

see R. Janin, Les Églises et les Monastéres des grands centres byzantins, Paris, 1975, 187. This manuscript is also known as the“Parisinus Graecus, 1387”, studied by H. Omont, Facsimilés des mss grecs dates de la Bib. Nat. du IXe au XIVe, Paris, 1891. Thedate of this manuscript is cited in A. Jacob, “Quelques problèmes de comput”, Revue de Philologie, de Littérature et d’HistoireAnciennes, 13, 1889, 116; E. Trapp, R. Walther, and H.-V. Beyer, Prosopographisches Lexicon der Palaiologanzeit III, Vienna,1978, 46, no. 5473; E. Gamillsheg, D. Harlfinger, and H. Hunger Repertorium II. Frankreich, Vienna, 1989, no. 141, A, 70; B,54–55; C, pl. 76.

54 Mango and Ševčenko, “Some Churches”, 239–240.55 The town of Syke, or Sigi (Kumyaka); see C. F. W. Foss, “Sige”, The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 3, New York-Oxford,

1991, 1893, is an important locale on the way from Mudanya to Trigleia. Like Trigleia, it hosted an enduring Christiancommunity until the population exchange with Greece in 1923.

56 Ö. L. Barkan and E. Meriçli, Hüdavendigâr Livasi Tahrir Defterleri, Ankara, 1988. These three surviving Ottoman tahrirdefters, dating to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, are critically valuable for understanding the demographics of fourteenth-century Bithynia. Since we have written sources for the pre-Ottoman period for the regions occupied by Christians, the deftersprovide an especially important means of analyzing changes in the region.

57 Several studies support the idea of the continuation of Christian life in Trigleia. M. Kleonymos and Chr. Papadopoulos, Vitinika:ē Epitomos monographia tēs Vithynias kai tōn poleōn autēs, Constantinople, 1867, 43 and 137, mention five hundred Christian(with no distinction made as to Christian denominations) and fifty Muslim households, based on their visit in the 1850s.Traveling in the 1850s, A. D. Mortdmann, Anatolien, Skizzen und Reisebri ele aus Kleinasien, Hannover, 1925, 70–74, notes theconsiderable size of Trigleia, which had five hundred households, among them twenty Muslim households. When thepopulation exchange took place with Greece in 1923, the Christian Trigleians moved to Nea Triglia in the prefecture ofChalchidiki and to Thessaloniki and the Ottoman Muslims moved from the areas in Thessaloniki and its environs to Thrace andBithynia.

58 A. Papadopoulos-Kérameus, Hierosolymitike Bibliotheke, 1–4, Saint Petersburg, 1891–1915.

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of St. Stephanos (Fig. 12) we can broaden our un-derstanding of itinerant masons who traveled andmixed with provincial builders during a little-explored period. As a result, we stand to gain abetter sense of the links among architectural worksin different regions and cities.

I now return to my initial question: how can weinterpret the nature of Pantobasilissa at Trigleiaonce the Ottomans established themselves in Bithynia?I have argued that by focusing on the interplay be-tween religious and state-building transitions overthe course of the fourteenth century -rather than,

simply, lines on a map- we can challenge the prob-lematic assumption that civilizations for the mostpart are not intermingled.59 In looking at the Panto-basilissa in the context of Trigleia, we can imagineways in which the boundaries of civilizations arenot necessarily coterminous with the borders ofstates. This discussion brings to mind Huntington,father of the long-debated concept of the “clash ofcivilizations”, and his claim that “throughout muchof history most wars have been ‘intracivilizational’and that this continues to be the case today”.60 Ap-parently Huntington’s cartographic lines were drawnwith a sharp pencil; he saw a world in which soiland blood and cultural loyalties would claim anddefine world states. In this article, I have opposedthe concept that borders and states can be definedstrictly by lines drawn on maps,61 at least within thehistorical context of the rise of the Ottomans in theBithynian frontier. This is not to say that the Greeksand Turks did not engage in bloody wars in thefourteenth century (and afterward), but that onecannot simply demarcate spaces as strictly Muslimor Christian. By viewing cartographic borders ascoterminous with the borders of states, we riskshort-changing the complexity of relations and ma-terial culture in ethnically and politically “fluid andmobile” zones, like Trigleia.

Consequently, the Pantobasilissa stands as asynecdoche62 for its builders and users and hasrelished public appreciation by all members ofTrigleia, Christian and Muslim alike, over the cen-turies. From the period of its construction after1336 up to the population exchange with Greece in1923, the Pantobasilissa remained a church; thenearby church of St. Stephanos, built in the earlyninth century was converted into a mosque in themid-sixteenth century (as noted earlier). But Panto-basilissa, according to the notes of Evangelides, anative scholar of Trigleia, and other historicalaccounts such as those of Hasluck, Markos Kleony-mos, and Christos Papadopoulos,63 never threatenedthe ruling Muslims’ sense of authority, while forChristians, the church served as a reminder thatthey were no longer in power, but that their influence

59 S. P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?”, Foreign Affairs, 77 / 3, 1993, 22–49.60 Ibid.61 M. Baud and W. Van Schedel, “Toward a Comparative History of the Borderlands”, Journal of World History, 8 / 2, 1997, 211.

For a careful study of the frontiers and borderlands of Medieval Anatolia, see S. N. Yıldız, “Reconceptualizing the Seljuk-Cilician Frontier: Armenians, Latins, and Turks in Conflict and Alliance during the Early Thirteenth Century”, Borders,Barriers and Ethnogenesis, ed. F. Curta, Brepols, 2005, 91–120, especially 114.

62 For usage of the term, see D. F. Ruggles, “Vision and Power: An Introduction”, Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation inIslamic Societies, ed., D. Fairchild Ruggles, SUNY Press, Albany, 2000, 5.

63 See footnotes 16–19 and 58.

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Fig. 12: Fatih Camii (St. Stephanos) in Zeytinbağı,exterior, from northwest, early 9th century(S. Çağaptay).

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still persisted. By extension, the nature of the entireChristian-Muslim encounter in Trigleia is aptly ex-pressed in the adaptation of existing buildings. Overthe centuries, the dynamic relationship amongTrigleia’s residents, religious leaders, and rulingpowers has been mapped onto the Pantobasilissa inparticular and reflected in the church’s various func-tions.

With new rulers, there is typically some attemptto shape and modify the built environment of urban(and other) spaces. Central to this piece is the ideathat these changes affect the way new settlers,leaders and subjects alike, view and use their space.Both the builders and the inhabitants of Trigleiahave created their own meanings by claiming andaltering the urban landscape in accordance withtheir needs and goals. In this way, meaning iscreated in urban spaces through the interaction andpower relations of various groups. Moreover, thebuilt environment bears distinct meanings to itsusers and its builders.64

A snapshot of present-day Trigleia (now alsoknown as Zeytinbağı), and the Pantobasilissa, hardlysuggests the town’s glorious, and culturally diverse,past. The church is sandwiched between two much-

later-built urban residences, with its northwesternside forming the foundation of a house, while itssouthern wall is adorned with a series of pottedplants, and the eastern side has arcades from whichthe building earns its Turkish name “KemerliKilise”.65 Visits from local tourists, unfortunately,are spurred not by the town’s architectural legacybut rather a television series that was shot there.For the descendants of expatriated Greeks, however,visiting the Pantobasilissa offers a moving opportunityto reconnect with their roots; in their home country,the chances for such connection are rare, the notableexception being a display at the Benaki Museum inAthens of a post-Byzantine icon from the church ofthe Pantobasillisa.66 Although in a decrepit stateand far from offering a vivid sense of its Byzantineand post-Byzantine lives, the Pantobasilissa stilloccupies a monumental space and announces a“representational presence”.67 That representationalpresence hints at the deep legacy of Byzantine ar-chitecture in Bithynia and signals the difficulty ofdealing with Byzantine (read: Christian) architecturein a regional context as a part of Turkey’s nationalheritage.68

64 A. Rapoport, The Meaning of the Built Environment, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1982, 19–22. Rapoport discusses twotypes of meanings: perceptual and associational. The former belongs to the designers and builders, the latter to users.

65 Photos published in Evangelides’ “Peri tinon” offer several views of the church with its arcading system.66 This is based on an informal discussion around the time of my visit.67 For usage of the term, see Ruggles, “Vision and Power: An Introduction”, 5. 68 For a discussion on the reasons for the perpetual denial and negligence of the Byzantine past in social and art-historical studies

in Turkey, see N. Necipoğlu, “State and Future of Byzantine Studies in Turkey”, Aptullah Kuran için Yazılar / Essays in Honorof Aptullah Kuran, eds. Ç. Kafesçioğlu and L.Thys-Şenocak, Istanbul, 1999, 23–26, and more recently Kafadar, Between TwoWorlds, 1995, 20 and 80–82.

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