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The reuse of marble in the eastern Mediterranean in medieval times

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Godfrey Goodwin
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Extract

Precious building materials have always been used over and over again — the spoils of the architectural war. A section of the Colosseum is now the Palazzo Farnese and the Church of the Wisdom of God in the respectable Surrey town of Kingswood harbours capitals from Ephesus, the Studion, and the Myrelaion in Istanbul, besides a quantity of Byzantine marble. Precious marbles were transported far and wide by sea and, although it is not surprising that porphyry from the Red Sea coast of Egypt is used in the Pantheon, it is interesting that Giallo Antico from Algeria or Tunisia and Pavonazzetto from Phrygia which decorated, for example, the Basilica Julia in Rome have been found at provincial Colchester.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 109 , Issue 1 , January 1977 , pp. 17 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1977

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References

Notes

1 Davey, N., A history of building materials, London, 1961, 5.Google Scholar

2 The column is also important because its use by Byzantines and then Ottomans was a revolutionary advance in terms of structure. The inertia of Roman building was replaced by a quasi-ribbed construction which was to be the greatest achievement of Gothic architects.

3 The depot at Ephesus may lighten the darkness of the balderdash about the provenance of the columns in Hagia Sophia since some may have been purchased there. The author of myths of Hagia Sophia was the Anonymous of Banduri, 11th century, who invented what he did not know.

4 I have been unable to locate large circular slabs, such as those before the great door of Süleyman's mosque or in the Pantheon, which are neither cracked nor patched.

5 At least nowadays, it is impossible to predict before cutting whether a block will open in this manner or not.

6 Harrison, M. and Firath, N., 1964–1965 Saraçhane Arastirmalari, Istanbul, 1966, 133 n.8, and 134Google Scholar. The debris layers fit a 13th-century date for the transportation of the Pilastri Acritani to Venice.

7 Davey, op. cit., 16.

8 See the unfinished columns of the Çifte Minare Medrese, Erzerum, for example. In Cairo there is the Mosque of Sulṭān Ḥasan; see Rogers, M., The spread of Islam, London, 1976, 103.Google Scholar

9 Refik, Ahmet, Istanbul hayati, on altinci asirda (1553–1591), Istanbul, 1935, lists a number of orders in respect of this mosque.Google Scholar

10 ibid., 21, Sect. 15.

11 Refik, Ahmet, Istanbul hayati, onbirinci asirda (1,000–1,100), Istanbul, 1930–1931, 26, Sect. 29.Google Scholar

12 ibid., 33, Sect. 64–5; 34, Sect. 66; and 36–7, Sect. 70.

13 Sandys, G., A relation of a voyage begun Anno Domini 1610, London, 1627, 22.Google Scholar

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17 Information supplied by the Muhtar of Palatya, quarry owner.

18 Rogers, op. cit., 12.

19 Gilles, P. (Gyllius), The antiquities of Constantinople, London, 1729, 219.Google Scholar

20 ibid., 51.

21 Mango, C., “The conciliar edict of 1166”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, XVII, 1963, 315–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 So had the architect of Ibrahim Pasha's mosque at Nevşehir, who for this 18th-century monument purloined the columns of the nearby Sungur Bey foundation of the 14th century. See Gabriel, A., Les monuments turcs d'Anatolie, Paris, 1931–1934, 156.Google Scholar

23 Joggled voussoirs occur as early as A.D. 526 in the mausoleum of Theodoric at Ravenna.

24 Rogers, op. cit., 104.

25 S. H. Eldem, Köskler ve kastrlar, I, Istanbul, n.d., 104.

26 It is worth considering whether the abandonment in mosques such as that of Ahmet I of the lateral columns of a model such as the Süleymaniye, at the cost of a contraction of the diameter of the dome, may not simply be due to the exhaustion of columns after the pair in the Piyale Pasha mosque of 1573.