THE MEHMED MARBLES: THE OTTOMAN PARTHENON

Had Greece not been liberated, we may have been speaking today of the Mehmed Marbles, rather than the “Elgin” Marbles, a colonialist-imperialist term whose use by our national broadcaster, has recently (and rightly) offended the Greek community.

This is because one of the first muslims to have appreciated the Parthenon, was Sultan Mehmed II, who seized the Acropolis in 1458, not from the Greeks, but rather from the Florentine Duke of Athens, Francesco II Acciaioli. A polymath and lover of history, Mehmed appreciated Athens’ classical heritage. For this reason, he issued an imperial decree safeguarding its remnants, imposing death as the penalty for the destruction or looting of classical monuments. The Parthenon, having served as the Church of the Virgin Mary for nearly eight centuries, underwent a transformation into a mosque.

The process however was a slow one. We know from accounts that as at 1466, the Parthenon was still in use as a church. When conversion took place, drastic renovations were made: the apse was repurposed as a mihrab, this being the Islamic prayer niche indicating the direction of Mecca and a minbar, or pulpit was installed upon which the local imam was to deliver his sermons. The walls of the Parthenon, upon which icons had been painted were whitewashed, in deference to the prohibition on the depiction of sentient beings in the Islamic tradition and the iconostasis was removed. Further, the bell tower at the southwest corner of the cella, was converted into a minaret, from which the muezzin could issue the call to prayer. In sixteenth century Ottoman tax records, the mosque is named as cami il kale i Atina, 'fortress mosque of Athens'.

In 1667 century, the intrepid Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi visited Athens and left a detailed record of the Parthenon mosque, which he found clearly astonishing To Çelebi, its construction seemed beyond human capability and he described the building as "like some impregnable fortress not made by human agency.” Inspired by its beauty, he went on to compose a poetic supplication that the Parthenon, as "a work less of human hands than of Heaven itself,” remain standing until the end time.”

Çelebi noted with wonder, the sculptures adorning the edifice, which he believed depicted "all the creatures fashioned by the Creator of the Universe, from Adam to the Second Coming." Not conversant with the meaning of the reliefs, he went on to describe a myriad of creatures such as fairies, angels, dragons, elephants, rhinoceri, giraffes, scorpions, crocodiles, and numerous others. These sculptures according to him, portrayed processions, one depicting the saved in Paradise and the other capturing those petrified in Hell.

According to Çelebi’s understanding, the Parthenon sculptures adorned a courtyard. Drawing from his familiarity with classical Turkish mosques, he likened the approach to the mosque through a colonnaded courtyard, reminiscent of the magnificent Selimiye mosque in Adrianople. The columns, now separated from the interior structure due to a fire and roof collapse, led him to interpret the Parthenon as a mosque nestled within its courtyard.

The ceiling of the interior to the building, as Çelebi saw it, was made of cypress, gilded and painted.  This was definitely not the ceiling of marble coffers constructed by classical architects Iktinos and Kallikrates.  At some unknown time in the history of Athens between about 250 and 550, Çelebi maintaining that it was on the night of the birth of the prophet Mohammed, a catastrophic conflagration took place in the cella.  It was then that the chryselephantine statue of the goddess Athena by Pheidias was consumed, and the ceiling collapsed, bringing down with it most of the interior structure with the double levels of columns. 

Çelebi also described a second fire, one which was supposedly lit by a mythical Egyptian sultan who looted the church of the Panagia Atheniotissa, as the Parthenon was known prior to its conversion into a mosque of its riches and he maintained that he could see the "wounds" from that fire. Just how much loot could have remained in the building for the mythical sultan to purloin after the conquest of Athens by the Franks after 1204 and the city’s subsequent rule by the Catalans and the Acciaiuoli, is anyone’s guess.

Çelebi’s fascination with the structure of the Parthenon extended to the narthex, where he perceived the holy water font as a colossal goblet, large enough for a person to fit inside—an indication, in his eyes, of the mightiness of people in ancient times. Noteworthy to him was the existence of a pipe organ above the door from the narthex to the church, but what truly captivated him was a column supported by an arch.

The mosque utilized the apse as a prayer niche, adorned with gold mosaics. Multicoloured mosaics covering the arches and walls in the sanctuary invoked memories of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem for him.

 

An astute observer, Çelebi was also careful to record extant evidence of the Partthenon’s Christian history was evident too. Despite a relatively thin layer of whitewash on the walls to obscure the iconography, Çelebi observed a captivating painting of the Last Judgment in the porch. This artwork portrayed the gardens of Paradise and Hell on either side, with the Panayia’s gold and coloured glass mosaic covering the apse. According to legend, a Turk who tried to damage the mosaic suffered a shrivelled arm, dissuading others from vandalizing it

Outside the mosque, Çelebi noticed a cistern, allegedly filled with wine during the temple's construction to cater to the workers. He claimed that Plato used the grand throne in the apse to teach the people of Athens, attributing the translucent panels in the east wall to the philosopher's ingenuity.

Çelebi had seen the great mosques of the Islamic world, but he was evidently moved by the Parthenon to opine:

“Presently there are well-constructed locations which have been disfigured by the wounds from the fire, but still, in the sphere of this ancient world, there is no such sparkling and luminous mosque since, no matter how often you enter it, on each subsequent entrance so many kinds of artful, individual and exemplary illustrations are evident and manifest.

However, the mosque's grandeur came to an explosive end in September 1687. A Venetian mortar round fired at the command of Francesco Morosini penetrated the Parthenon's roof, igniting stored gunpowder and resulting in complete destruction. The magnificent columns, mysterious wall paintings, and the miraculous Virgin mosaic collapsed into rubble, along with the bodies of numerous Ottomans who perished in the catastrophic explosion.

During the 18th century, the Ottomans constructed a replacement mosque at the centre of the building to replace the one lost in the Venetion explosion. According to all accounts, the new structure paled significantly in size and grandeur compared to its predecessor, visitors describing it as a "whitewashed, quadrangular building with a dome."

The ensuing stagnation of the Ottoman Empire, facilitated increased European access to Athens. The picturesque ruins of the Parthenon became subjects for numerous drawings and paintings, fuelling a growing interest in philhellenism. This, in turn, contributed to the emergence of sympathy in Britain and France for the cause of Greek independence. Among the early travellers and archaeologists were James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, commissioned by the Society of Dilettanti to survey the classical ruins of Athens. Their significant contribution was the production of the first properly measured drawings of the Parthenon, which were published in 1787 in the second volume of "Antiquities of Athens Measured and Delineated." In order to achieve this, they had to seek and obtain, the permission of the Ottoman authorities.

In 1801, the British Ambassador at Constantinople, the Earl of Elgin, asserted that he had obtained a firman from the kaymakam, whose existence or legitimacy remains unproven to this day. This edict purportedly granted permission to create casts and drawings of the Acropolis' antiquities and to remove sculptures scattered on the ground. The resulting vandalism to the building and theft of its sculptures should make even Rishi Sunak blush with shame.

Upon Greece gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1832, the section of the minaret extending from the architrave was dismantled. The mosque then functioned as a storage facility for artifacts unearthed on the Acropolis. In the late March of 1841, the great Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen explored Athens, making a daily ascent to the Acropolis and apparently relished the magnificent panorama, deeming the site as a "ruined fairy world." The Parthenon's steps were adorned with wild cucumbers, and remnants of the recent War of Independence were evident in scattered Turkish and Greek skulls. Reflecting on the use of the building coming full circle, he noted that "in the altar, there now stood a torso of an Apollo statue."

In 1842, a portion of the mosque’s walls collapsed, leading to the eventual removal of the entire building. Today, only the minaret's base and the lower part of the spiral staircase remain in place.

It speaks much for the mystique and grandeur of the Parthenon that rather than be destroyed as a vestige of paganism, it was rather appropriated by two of the Abrahamic religions and cherished. Serving today as a temple to the West’s awe of Greece’s classical past, the Parthenon’s Ottoman history indicates just how polyvalent the significance of outstanding architecture can be.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 16 December 2023