The Pantokrator: Monastery, Medrese, Mosqueand Chinese Restaurant James Bradbury

Figure 1: Panoramic view from the Pantokrator site, centered on Sleymaniye Cami

The Pantokrator Monastery complex, including three churches and a 50-bed hospital1, was one of the largest and most important building projects of the Middle Byzantine state, serving most prominently as the mausoleum for numerous Komnenian emperors. Today the Pantokrator is the second largest Byzantine religious building in Istanbul after the Hagia Sophia, and after stints as a medrese, a tekke, and a mosque after the Ottoman conquest it is currently undergoing a multi-decade restoration initiated under the supervision of Robert Ousterhout.2

The overall history of the site is complex and relatively poorly known. The monastery likely succeeded a late antique oikos, and many of the bricks that make it up bear stamps that date from the early Byzantine period. There are several cisterns in the immediate vicinity, most of which are probably also early Byzantine. The monastery itself is known better from textual sourcesits founding typikon survivesthan from archaeological remains; the associated hospital is documented well enough that one scholar has attempted a reconstructionbut its location in the complex remains unclear.3

The three churches that make up the monastery building were built by Emperor John II Komnenos and his wife Irene the Hungarian between 1118 and 1136. The southernmost church was dedicated to Christ Pantokrator and served as the main church for the monastery; the northern church was open to lay

1 Tyler Wolford, Healing on the Fourth Hill: Searching for the Pantokrator Hospital. Honors Thesis, Ball State University, 2012. 2 Robert Ousterhout, Zeynep Ahunbay, and Metin Ahunbay, "Study and Restoration of the Zeyrek Camii in Istanbul: First Report, 1997-98," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000) and Second Report, 2001-2005, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 63 (2009) 3 Wolford, 2012

worshippers and dedicated to the Virgin Eleousa; and the middle church, dedicated to St. Michael, served as the imperial mausoleum.4

The site has suffered ups and downs that neatly parallel those of the city it overlooks: the monastery fell into disrepair and was reduced to just six monks in the decades preceding the Ottoman conquest,5 while it became dilapidated once again in the waning years of that Empire.6

There is perhaps something about the Pantokrator that has drawn religious outsiders. During the Latin occupation it was an important seat for the governing forceseither, as Ousterhouts first restoration update claims, as the palace of the Latin Emperors or, according to his second update, the religious headquarters of the Venetians. Three centuries later the Zeyrek medrese became the home base for Molla Ilahi, the first Nakibendi (Naqshband) Sufi master

in Turkey, who introduced the worlds largest Sufi tradition to the Ottoman capital.7 Both of these groups may have been drawn to the Pantokrator to mark a break with the pastthey could have, respectively, chosen an existing Byzantine palace or Sufi tekkewhile preserving a symbolic connection with the citys overall history and religious traditions.

4 First Report 5 Wolford, 2012 6 Second Report 7 Dina Le Gall, A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandis in the Ottoman World, 1450-1700, pp. 37-38

Figure 2: Plan of extant parts of Pantokrator complex. From Ousterhout et al., "Second Report"

The present state of the complex is best documented in three works by Robert Ousterhout and his team, who provide a detailed survey of the remaining buildings and the restoration work performed on them as well as images and descriptions of the opus sectile floor, covered by a carpet since the mosque moved from the central to the southern church in the mid-20th century and focused on early Christian themes and (uniquely) astrological symbolism.8

But Ousterhouts work is aimed primarily at documenting the restoration, and is not intended to be a complete contextualization along the lines he laid out in a separate paper in the same volume for Dumbarton Oaks.9

The neighborhood surrounding the Pantokrator/Zeyrek is one of the four UNESCO-designated Historic Areas of Istanbul, listed as part of the citys World Heritage Site in 1979 because the vernacular housingprovide[s] exceptional evidence of the late Ottoman urban pattern.10 Topographically speaking, this neighborhood sits on a hill overlooking the Golden Horn and the Sleymaniye complex, and is framed by terraces leading down to what is now Atatrk Bulvar, an eight-lane highway which can only be crossed via a pedestrian tunnel.

Figure 3: Satellite image from July 2014 showing the Pantokrator and its surroundings. DigitalGlobe, Google

8 First Report, Second Report, and Robert Ousterhout, Architecture, Art, and Komnenian Ideology at the Pantokrator Monastery, in Byzantine Constantinople: Monuments, Topography, and Everyday Life 9 Robert Ousterhout, Contextualizing the Later Churches of Constantinople: Suggested Methodologies and a Few Examples. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000) 10 UNESCO World Heritage List, Historic Areas of Istanbul. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/356/

Climbing those terraces, at least when I visited, was a veritable procession of devout Muslims. But the men were not on their way to the Zeyrek Mosqueinstead, they stopped and prayed at the tomb of Zenbilli Ali Efendi, an Ottoman sheikh who lived in the area and founded a primary school.11

The top of the terraced hillthe monastery siteis flat and open, with a gravel road circumnavigating the building and the space to the east taken up by a rather incongruous sculpture garden that directly overlooks the valley below.

A very different effect obtains when approaching the complex from the Zeyrek neighborhood (i.e., from the west). Here the efforts to

retain Ottoman houses are evident only in the occasional well-preserved dwelling and the more frequent thoroughly dilapidated structuresbuildings that would probably be replaced by apartment blocks anywhere else in the city.

And indeed much of the neighborhood has been replaced by apartment blocks, as demonstrated by a survey from a 2008 Istanbul Technical University study, shown at right.12

11 Istanbul Site Management Directorate, Zeyrek Conservation Area. http://www.alanbaskanligi.gov.tr/english/ zeyrek_conservation_area.html 12 T. Kerem Koramaz and Nuran Zeren Glersoy, 3D Visualization of Transformation in Historic Townscape: Case of Zeyrek Urban Site. 14th International Planning History Society Conference.

Figure 4: The Pantokrator from the eastern part of the site (the sculpture garden)

Figure 5 (left): Approaching from the west, the Pantokrator is juxtaposed with a collapsed wooden house Figure 6 (right): A well-preserved late Ottoman wooden dwelling

A comprehensive study of the social aspects of conservation in Zeyrek describes why this happened.13 As Istanbul grew and industrialized after the 1950s, the poorest sectors of the vast waves of migrants from rural Anatolia preferred historic neighborhoods like Zeyrek because of their low rents. Housing policies of the state were inadequate, so the private sector supplied houses for increasing population, and in particular, 5-6 story apartment blocks were constructed on the small lots gained by demolishing historic buildings. Those who live in the remaining wooden housespaying a few hundred TL per monthtend not to have the means to finance rent in a more modern apartment nor to maintain the historic buildings.

Unsurprisingly, then, conservation efforts since the UNESCO designation have taken place largely without involvement from the property owners, and have not met with very much success. Zengin quotes numbers from the Historical Peninsula Conservation Development Plan that show that 20 conservation-listed wooden

13 Utku Serkan Zengin, Urban Conservation as an Ownership Problematic: Zeyrek Istanbul. Masters Thesis, Middle East Technical University, 2010.

Figure 7: Building collapses, from Zengin

houses in Zeyrek (out of a total of 140) collapsed just between 1999 and 2005.

So while the presence of the Pantokrator complex has consciously driven conservation efforts for the surrounding neighborhoodon their own, the wooden houses of Zeyrek would likely not have merited a UNESCO designationthis double impetus for conservation has not been enough to overcome the basic socioeconomic situation of the neighborhood that renders such efforts a relatively low priority in the residents eyes. The result has been a neighborhood that is very alive, very organic, andespecially when seen together with the Pantokratorvery incongruous.

But perhaps the most incongruous occupant of the buildings surrounding the monastery complex, tucked into the foot of the terrace wall, is the (Jing Ya Tang) Chinese restaurant, which appeared no more than two years ago.14 It caters neither to the tourists who (in any case) rarely visit Fatih nor to the (almost entirely Turkish) residents of the Zeyrek area, but rather serves as a cultural center for Istanbuls burgeoning Chinese immigrant population, who commute from all over town in search of familiar food and company, and for social and holiday events. Eager to apply my Chinese skills to a Byzantine history project in a Turkish city, I asked the (Uyghur) host what brought them to Fatih. Well, I see your pointthere are no Chinese people herebut there were similar places already in Taksim and Yenikap, and this seemed like a central location. And so Istanbuls newest migrant community has continued the citys two-thousand-year-old pattern, where the newest arrivals settle in the most historic areas because: the buildings are already there, the locations make just as much sense as they did when they were first built on, and the rent couldnt be cheaper.

14 The restaurants sign is absent in Panoramio imagery from 2012.