Showing posts with label Azerbaijan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Azerbaijan. Show all posts

Thursday 20 August 2020

A Collection of Arcs de Triomphe (None of them in Paris) Part 2, Post-1900

Triumphal Arches - What is and What is Not

This is the third iteration of this post. The original, published 01-Apr-2014, was ‘Four Arcs de Triomphe (none of them in Paris). The second, 29-June-2018, included newly collected arches, but also omitted Lutyens’ India Gate from the earlier post on the grounds it was a War Memorial, not a Triumphal Arch.

Defining a Triumphal Arch is difficult. Some arches called Triumphal have no associated triumph, and then there are Monumental Gates and War Memorials which can look very similar.

Although retaining the title, I have chosen a new and more inclusive definition for these posts (there are now two of them, this one and pre-1900). For the purposes of this blog an ‘Arc de Triomphe’ is an arch with no structural purpose. This definition includes war memorials built in arch form – like the India Gate mentioned above and also Monumental Gates as long as they were built to be symbolic i.e. not city gates built as part of a wall, even if the wall has long gone. The other qualification of inclusion is that I have been there and taken the photograph.

Arches of the 20th and 21st Centuries

For Classical Arches and modern arches built before 1900, see part 1.

All the arches below owe a debt to the Parisian Arc, (almost) the first modern Arc de Triomphe. In some cases the debt is very obvious, for others it is more in spirit than in substance.

So, In order of construction:

The Gateway of India, Mumbai

Completed 1924, Visited 14-Mar-2019

India

In 1911 George V became the first British monarch to visit the Jewel in the Crown. The Gateway of India on the Mumbai (then Bombay) waterfront was conceived as a symbolic entrance to the sub-continent for the King-Emperor and Queen-Empress.

Careful planning is not just a feature of the current British government. In 1911 the King and Queen passed through a world-beating cardboard gate, the stone version would be built once the design.was agreed.

The Gateway of India, Mumbai

The foundation stone was laid in March 1913 but another year passed before George Wittet’s Indo-Saracenic gate was given the go-ahead. Work was completed in 1924.

The gateway was subsequently used as a symbolic entrance to British India by important colonial personnel and the last British troops left through it at independence in 1948. Once unpopular as a representation of "conquest and colonisation" it is now a symbol of the city and an attraction to tourists and the army of street vendors that prey upon them.

The India Gate, New Delhi

Completed 1931, Visited 16-Feb-2013

At the start of the 20th century Edwin Lutyens had the rare privilege of designing a new capital for Britain’s most prized possession. The ceremonial Kingsway, leading to the Viceroy’s palace through the administrative heart of his new city, was modelled on The Mall, but with a nod to the Champs Elysées.

The India Gate, New Delhi

In 1921 he was commissioned to build a memorial to the Indian soldiers who died fighting for the Empire in the First World War. It is now a memorial to the 70,000 who died in conflicts between 1914 and 1920. Completed in 1931, The India Gate was placed at the opposite end of the Kingsway (now Rajpath) from the Viceroy’s Palace (now the President’s Palace). If the Kingsway nodded toward the Champs Elysées, the India Gate bows deeply towards the Arc de Triomphe.

Arcul de Triumf, Bucharest

Completed in 1936, Visited 25-Jun-2023

Romania

With the world organised as it is, we do occasionally have to remind ourselves that it was not always thus, and most nation-states, even in Europe, are creations of the 19th century; there was no Germany before 1860 and no Italy before 1861. A Romania, smaller than the present country, achieved recognition as an independent state in 1878 and a wooden Arcul de Triumf was constructed on what would become a roundabout in north east Bucharest.

The end of World War One saw the creation of a larger Romania that included most speakers of the Romanian language. This required the construction of a new arch on the same site. It was designed by Petre Antonescu with a concrete interior and a heavily sculpted plaster exterior. The plaster became badly eroded, so in 1936 Antonescu designed a new, more durable and less flamboyant arch and that has survived to this day (with restoration work in 2014).

Arcul de Triumf, Bucharest

It is not the grandest of Arcs de Triomphe, and rather outside the city centre, though its roundabout is negotiated by all visitors being driven into Bucharest from the airport. Military parades pass beneath it every 1st of December, Romania’s national day.

Monumento a la Revolución, Mexico City

Built 1938 Visited 18-Nov-2017

Mexico

Intended as a neo-classical home for the Federal Legislative Palace, building started in 1910 but was halted two years later by the revolution. In 1938 the completed first stage was adapted as a monument to the revolution that halted the building and it now contains the tombs of five revolutionary heroes including Pancho Villa.

Monument a la Revolucion, Mexico City

Transforming the core of a parliament building into a triumphal arch altered the neo-classical intention into something that has been described as Mexican socialist realism. Whatever the label, I think it’s ugly (sorry Mexico). At 75m high it is the world’s highest triumphal arch, but please don’t tell Kim Jung Un, he would only make his bigger.

Independence Monument, Phnom Penh

Cambodia

Completed 1958 Visited 17th of February 2014

This 37m high sandstone arch was built in 1958 to celebrate Cambodian independence from France some five years previously. It now also commemorates Cambodia's war dead - and there are a vast number for such a small country.

The Independence Monument, Phnom Penh

Designed by Cambodian architect Vann Molyvann to resemble a lotus shaped stupa, it sits at the intersection of Norodom Boulevard and Sihanouk Boulevard, and is the ceremonial, if not geographical, centre of the city. A flame is lit on the inner pedestal, usually by the King, at times of national celebration and commemoration.

Patouxai, Vientiane

Laos

Built 1957-68, Visited 1st of March 2014

Ironically, this Arc de Triomphe was built to commemorate victory over the French. Laos gained its independence in 1954 after the first Indo-China War and Patouxai (Victory Arch) was built in the late 1950s. Less reverently it is known as ‘The Vertical Runway’ as there is a story that it was built from concrete donated by the Americans for airport construction.

Patouxai (Victory Arch), Vientiane

There are stairs inside and shops at three levels. From the top there is a good view over the gardens below one way and down Lan Xang Avenue – Vientiane’s Champs Elysées the other.

The Arch of Triumph, Pyongyang

Built 1982, Visited 9th September 2013

North Korea

North Korea’s Arch of Triumph, in Triumphant Return Square, commemorates Kim Il Sung's return to the capital (in 1948) and his founding of the Democratic People's' Republic of Korea after almost single-handedly driving the Japanese colonialists from his country (DPRK history avoids mentioning the global conflict and ignores contributions made by other combatants, including the Chinese, British and the hated Americans).

It was built in 1982 to celebrate his 70th birthday and is is blatant rip off of the French ‘original’. Two interesting details are that a) it is 10m taller than the Parisian Arch and b) that fact was the first thing we were told when we arrived in the square; delusions of grandeur and a chip on the shoulder being most obvious attributes of Kim Il Sung and the dynasty he founded.

Arch of Triumph, Pyongyang

Pyongyang’s sparse traffic means that it is perfectly safe to stand in the middle of the ‘Champs Elysées’ to take a photograph.

Eternal Flame, Martyrs Alley, Baku

Opened 9th of October 1998 Visited 12th of August 2014

Azerbaijan

The events of Azerbaijan’s Black January are little known in the UK.

In 1990 in, the dying days of its empire the Soviet Union declared a state of emergency in Azerbaijan. The Popular Front responded by imposing roadblocks around Baku which Soviet troops broke through, killing some 130 unarmed protestors. The Russian claims that the first shots came from the Azeri side, are hotly disputed. What our otherwise admirable Azeri guide did not tell us was that the state of emergency was declared to stop a pogrom which had killed 90 of Baku’s Armenian residents. What the Armenians never mentioned when we were there, was that the pogrom was provoked by Armenia granting citizenship to ethnic Armenians in the Azeri district of Nagorno Karabakh. What the Azeris forget to mention..... and so on in a time-honoured chicken-and-egg argument. The resulting Azerbaijan-Armenia war ended in 1994 with Karabakh becoming a de facto independent state (now called Artsakh) and Azerbaijan feeling miffed. Negotiations – and occasional shootings - continue. [Including a major outbreak in 2020.]

In Martyr's Alley the 130 who died in Black January are commemorated with names and photographs in black marble. At the end is an eternal flame.

Eternal Flame, Martyr's Alley, Baku

The eternal flame is the biggest test of my new rule for deciding what should be in and what out. Can it really be called an arch? Is it more of an elongated, heavyweight gazebo? I said I would be inclusive, so it is in.

The Arch of Bender

Built 2008 Visited  27th June 2018

Transnistria

Bender (or Bendery, sometimes Tighina) is a city on the right bank of the River Dniester in the breakaway Republic of Transnistria, officially part of Moldova. Bender was on the front line in many of the wars between the Russian and Ottoman Empires, its fortress being taken by the Russians in 1779, 1789 and 1806 (and lost in between). An arch commemorating the Russian capture of Bender Fort in 1806 was erected in Chişinău, the Moldovan capital, but was destroyed, along with much else, in 1944.

The Arch of Bender, Bender, Transnistria

This arch in Bender is a 2008 replica of that destroyed arch. The major result of the 1806-12 war was the Russian Empire’s gain of Bessarabia (approximately Moldova and Transnistria), so the arch is a message, or warning, from the Russian orientated Transnistrians to the Moldovans and their European ambitions.

Porta Macedonia, Skopje

North Macedonia

Built 2011 Visited May 2015

The Porta Macedonia was designed by Valentina Stefanovska as part of the then Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s ‘Skopje 2014’ project which saddled the capital with a series of grandiose monuments at great expense. Despite its name it is not a gate, nor is it a war memorial, but the design is classic Triumphal Arch, so that is what it must be, though apart from commemorating 20 years of Macedonian independence it is unclear what the ‘triumph’ was.

Porta Macedonia

I am unconvinced that spending €4.4m on a triumphal arch was the best use of money, which is not overabundant in Skopje. Gruevski was prime minister from 2006 until forced to resign in 2016. In May 2018 he started a two years prison sentence for corruption.

and finally....

This space is available free to any country willing to build itself a pointless arch

Friday 22 May 2020

Praying Facing South: The Variety of Mosques Part 1

This post and its companions (Praying Facing East and Praying Facing West) have been developed from the November 2011 post ‘Three Favourite Mosques’. Although the world has many fine mosques we have yet to visit, we have now seen more than enough to make ‘Three Favourites’ a very limited ambition – indeed the 'favourites' now fill three post.

Islam is the world’s second largest religion with 1.9 billion adherents. It is the majority religion in 49 countries, centred on the middle east but with a vast geographical spread. In 2005 we visited The Great Mosque in Xi’an in China. Some distance away an English-speaking person with an overloud voice (his nationality was immediately obvious) was giving his Chinese guide the benefit of his knowledge of Islam. ‘They have to pray facing East,’ he announced.

This map comes from Wikipedia. It is the work of Tracey M Hunter, the figures are from Pew Research Centre
It is reproduced unchanged under Creative Commons Attribution- share Alike

Muslims, of course, pray facing Mecca, the city, now in Saudi Arabia, that was home to the Prophet Muhammed. To make sense of my collection of mosques I have split it into three, depending of the (rough) direction of Mecca. The mosques I have selected are old or beautiful or quirky or have an interesting history, or any combination of those four.

I should point out I am not a believer, in Islam or any other religion, but I do like religious buildings.

For ease of access and because I have occasionally broken my own rules, countries are allocated as follows

Facing East

Jordan, Oman, Egypt, Libya, Portugal

Arab Countries (with one obvious exception!)

Facing South

Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Countries wholly or partly in Europe

Facing West

Iran, India, China, Malaysia

An ethnic mixed bag

9 of the 18 are Muslim Majority countries, the other have or had an indigenous Muslim population.

Turkey

The Islamic world expanded dramatically in the century after the prophet’s death (632CE), much of the expansion coming at the expense of the Byzantine Empire. It was not until 1095 that expansion further into what is now Turkey prompted the Byzantine Emperor to ask the Pope for assistance. He sent the First Crusade, which rather by-passed Constantinople on its way to Jerusalem.

The extent of the Umayyid Caliphate in 750
The work of Gabagool and borrowed from Wikipedia under Creative Commons licence

The Byzantine Empire endured death by a thousand cuts, its suffering finally ending in 1453 when the Ottomans took Constantinople. As Istanbul is the only part of Turkey we have visited, this is where my mosques must be.

Istanbul has many to chose from. There was a mosque just up the road from our hotel in the narrow streets of the old Sultanahmet district. It was small, but the dawn call to prayer was so loud I thought the muezzin was sitting on the end of our bed. That said, Istanbul has 2⅓ of the world’s finest mosques.

Süleymaniye Mosque

If not perhaps Istanbul’s best-known mosque, the silhouette of the Süleymaniye Mosque across the Golden Horn is one of the city’s signature views.

The Süleymaniye Mosque and the Golden Horn, Istanbul

Commissioned by the Ottoman Emperor Süleyman the Magnificent, the mosque was designed by imperial architect Mimar Sinan and built between 1550 and 1557.

The photograph was taken from the top of the Galata Tower, see Istanbul (4) Taksim Square and the Galata Tower (2014)

The Blue Mosque

Built between 1609 and 1616 for Sultan Ahmet I, the Blue Mosque was the last great mosque of the Ottoman classical period. Despite its graceful cascade of domes and semi-domes, it was not without its critics. Such size and splendour, they said, was inappropriate when the Persian war was going badly and Anatolia was in a state of anarchy, and if that was not enough, having six minarets, like the Great Mosque of Mecca, was sacreligious.

The Blue Mosque, Istanbul

Despite the crowds we found the interior retained an air of calm serenity. The blue tiles that gave the mosque its name dominated, but there were pinks and greens too, and over 250 windows giving a feeling of space and light.

Inside the Blue Mosque, Istanbul

The huge dome is beautiful, but the chunky ‘elephant leg’ pillars required to support it look out of proportion.

The dome of the Blue Mosque, Istanbul

Haghia Sophia

Earlier I referred to 2⅓ mosques, Haghia Sophia is the . Door-to-door it is 300m from the Blue Mosque and the photos of each were taken from the same spot. Completed in 536, the church of Haghia Sophia was built for the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. It is perhaps the greatest architectural achievement of the Byzantine Empire and the Blue Mosque, built over a thousand years later, appears to owe something to its venerable neighbour.

Haghia Sophia, Istanbul

With the arrival of the Ottomans, Haghia Sophia became a mosque. The four minarets, rockets on ugly concrete pedestals, are regrettable, but inside the changes were sympathetic. I called it ⅓ a mosque, as it has been a church, a mosque and now a secular museum. Today the Islamic minbar and calligraphy….

Minbar and Islamic calligraphy, Haghia Sophia, Istanbul

…sit easily beside the earlier Byzantine mosaics.

Virgin and Child with the Emperor John II and his wife Irene, Haghia Sophia, Istanbul

[Update: As of 2020 Hagia Sophia is a mosque again. The Turkish government say all the Byzantine mosaics will be respected and treasured. Even so, it is a provocative move, it is not as though Istanbul is short of mosques. I believe the building would be best cared for by those for whom its history and beauty were primary concerns. But my opinion counts for....]

See Istanbul (1) The Blue Mosque, Haghia Sophia and the Bosphorus (2011)

The remainder of this post is in two sections linked by Istanbul the capital of the Ottoman Empire that took Islam into Europe, and along with Persia (now Iran) into the Caucasus.

Mosques in the Caucusus

Featured mosques in the first section are in Baku, Tbilisi, and Yerevan the capitals of the south Caucasus republics,
and in Șamaxi 120km west of Baku (so pretty well on the red ring)

Azerbaijan

Whether the three former soviet republics south of the Caucasus are European states is debatable. Armenia and Georgia think they are, and they do feel European, FIFA thinks all three are but Azerbaijan, the only majority Muslim state among them - and in many ways a detached corner of Asian Turkey - is more ambivalent.

Over 90% of Azeris identify as Muslims, but for many that identification is more cultural and ethnic than religious; after decades of state atheism as part of the USSR, they are not that bothered.

The Muhammed or Siniggala Mosque, Baku

The Siniggala Mosque claims to be the oldest in Baku, dating from the 11th century, though it appears to be a more recent building constructed on ancient foundations. Siniggala (damaged tower) refers to the, now repaired minaret. Stubby but still imposing in the densely packed low-rise Old City, it survives from the original mosque. During the Russo-Persian War (1722-3) a squadron of Russian warships demanded Baku’s surrender. Refusal was followed by a bombardment and the minaret was hit. The sudden storm that then blew the ships out of range was clearly a divine intervention, so the minaret was left untouched for many years.

The Muhammad (or Broken Tower) Mosque, Baku

see Baku (2); The Qobustan Petroglyphs and the Old City (2014)

Friday Mosque, Şamaxı

Şamaxı is a small town 120km west of Baku. The Friday Mosque is sometimes called the second-oldest mosque in the trans-Caucasus but it looks surprisingly new.

Şamaxı Friday Mosque

The first mosque on this site was built in the 8th century, but seismic activity and marauding Georgians and Armenians have seen off a few versions of the building. An early 20th century reconstruction designed by Józef Plośko, a St Petersburg trained Polish architect (and not the only Christian to design a mosque in these posts) forms the basis of the current building, though the major 2011 restoration encouraged Lonely Planet to call it a ’21st century masterpiece.’

Mihrab, Şamaxı Friday Mosque

See Baku to Şǝki(2014)

Armenia

Blue Mosque, Yerevan

Armenia claims to have been the first country to make Christianity its state religion when St. Gregory the Illuminator converted King Tiridates III in 301. However, Armenia is a small country and has spent much of its history wedged between the Ottoman, Russian and Persian empires, so foreign rulers came and went. The Blue Mosque was built in 1765–1766 by Hussein Ali Khan when Yerevan was the capital of his Persian Khanate. It was secularised in 1920 by the communist regime, but was re-opened in 1996 after the fall of the Soviet Union. Armenia has a Muslim population of under 1,000, mainly of Iranian descent, and this is the country’s only mosque.

The Blue Mosque, Yerevan - very Iranian in style

It sits unobtrusively in a dip beside the central Mashtots Avenue, so even the minaret hardly breaks the skyline. It is not generally open, but we asked the nice man in the Iranian tourist office near the entrance and he gave us the key. That was in 2003, I suspect they may be more security conscious now.

Blue Mosque minaret, Yerevan

Georgia

Georgia is another small Christian country that received unwanted attention from surrounding empires. Tbilisi was (off and on) the capital of an Iranian vassal monarchy from the 16th until the 18th century when the Georgians sought Russian support to free themselves. Like others who sought such help, they soon found themselves annexed by Tsarist Russia.

Jumah Mosque, Tbilisi

As part of the Soviet Union, Tbilisi retained a Shia and a Sunni mosque until 1951 when the Sunni mosque was demolished to make way for a bridge. The surviving Shi-ite Jumah Mosque took in the homeless Sunnis and has become the only mosque in the world where Shia and Sunni Muslims worship side by side.

Jumah Mosque, Tbilisi

Tbilisi sits in a gorge, and the mosque is in a side-gorge above the thermal spring. Among the spas are the Orbeliani baths, which look more like a Persian mosque than the mosque itself. Pushkin described this as the ‘most luxurious place on earth’.

Orbeliani Baths, Tbilisi

See Tbilisi (2014)

Mosques in the Balkans

Islam expanded in this area under the Ottoman empire which entered Europe in 1453 and finally retreated to the bottom right hand corner in 1918. Featured Mosques are in the ringed cities except in North Macedonia, where Glumovo is very near Skopje and Prilep is south of the 'E'

Bulgaria

Eastern Orthodox Christianity has always been the dominant religion in Bulgaria but active membership has fallen steadily in recent years. About 8% of the population identify as Muslims, a small number for a country that was part of the Ottoman Empire for 500 years and has a border with Turkey.

Banya Bashi Mosque, Sofia

Sofia has one active mosque, but it is a big one. Unsurprisingly Turkish in style the Banya Bashi Mosque dates from 1566 and, like Istanbul’s Süleymaniye Mosque, was designed by Mimar Sinan. Clearly Sofia was an important city.

The Banya Bashi Mosque, Sofia

Banya Bashi is built beside and partly over Sofia’s thermal spring. The name means ‘Big Bath’ and you can collect the warm mineral water in the square outside.

The hot springs outside the Banya Bashi Mosque, Sofia

See Sofia and the Master of Boyana (2007)

Albania

Converting to Islam under the Ottoman Empire conferred distinct advantages, and some 70% of Albanians were Muslims by the time the empire folded in 1918. For 45 year after World War 2, a nominally communist dictatorship imposed militant atheism. Freedom of religion arrived in the 1990s and was met with displays of mass apathy. Although 57% identified as Muslim in the 2011 census, a 2008 study in Tirana found that 67% of declared Muslims and 55% of Christians were completely non-observant.

Many churches and mosques were destroyed under state atheism – the current freedom has seen no great rebuilding.

The Et’hem Bey Mosque, Tirana

Et'hem Bey Mosque, Tirana

One mosque, though does have particular significance. The early 19th century Et’hem Bey Mosque sits in a corner of Tirana’s central Skanderbeg Square. Scheduled for demolition in the 1960s, it somehow never happened. In 1991 the mosque reopened without the authority’s permission. When 10,000 attended Friday prayers on the 18th of January 1991 and the police did nothing, it was a signal that the old regime had capitulated.

Et'hem Bey has the slimmest of pencil slim minarets,  typical of Balkan mosques.

See Tirana (2019)

North Macedonia

Like their close cousins the Bulgarians, ethnic Macedonians are almost entirely Eastern Orthodox Christians (though whether practising or not is another matter), but they only comprise 64% of the population. Around 30% are Muslims including the vast majority of the substantial ethnic Albanian community. Ironically the best-known Macedonian Albanian (though she was born in the days of the Ottoman Empire) was the Roman Catholic Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Skopje has a few grand mosques, as befits a capital, several understated churches from Ottoman times, and a big modern cathedral, but I will start with a village mosque.

Glumovo Mosque, Near Skopje

Glumovo (it’s better than it sounds) is only 10km outside Skopje. For a village of 1,683 (2002 census) it has a huge mosque, but as 1,646 of those people are Albanians and most of the rest are Muslim Bozniaks, perhaps it needs it.

Glumovo Mosque

Pencil slim minarets are a feature of mosques in the Balkans, and Glumovo has two of the finest.

See The Matka Canyon and Stobi (2015)

Čarši Mosque, Prilep

Although Prilep, 100km south of Skopje, is North Macedonia’s 4th largest city, it has only 70,000 inhabitants. Unlike Glumovo its Muslim population is relatively small.

Macedonia achieved independence in 1991 without firing a shot, but in 2001 the Kosovo conflict spilt over into northern Macedonia with elements of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) trying to inspire ethnic Albanian Macedonians to fight for a 'greater Albania'. For six months until a UN brokered settlement there was considerable fighting along the Kosovan border. On the 7th of August 2001 ten Macedonian soldiers, all from Prilep, were killed in a KLA ambush on the Skopje-Tetovo road. Protests on the 8th turned into riots and Prilep’s 15th century mosque was burned down. None of Prilep's Albanian population were implicated in the atrocity which happened 80km away.

Prilep's burned out mosque

In 2015 the failure of local and national authorities to sanction the rebuilding remained a bone of contention. It seems it still is.

See Prilep and Bitola (2015)

Bosnia and Herzegovina

If Prilep gives a taste of the destruction of the Balkans war, Bosnia provides a surfeit. In 2012 the buildings of Sarajevo were still pock-marked by bullets, but the worst destruction we saw was in Mostar. Nationalism waved its magic wand and families who had been neighbours, and even friends, for generations suddenly turned to killing each other. I find it difficult to understand; there is nothing special about the people of Mostar, so perhaps it could happen anywhere

Before the war the city’s population was, roughly 20% Serb (Eastern Orthodox Christians), 40% Bosniak (Muslims) and 40% Croat (Roman Catholic Christians).

The initial Serb siege destroyed the Catholic Cathedral, the Franciscan monastery, the bishop’s palace and library, and 14 mosques. After they were repulsed the Croats showed the same Christian spirit by destroying the orthodox cathedral, three churches and a monastery – and all but one of the 13 surviving Ottoman era mosques. Eventually in 1993 in an act of symbolic vandalism they destroyed Mostar’s emblematic bridge.

Mostar Bridge, Built 1557-66 by the Ottomans, destroyed 1993, rebuilt 2001-3 by Turkish craftsmen 

The Karađozbeg Mosque, Mostar

The Karađozbeg Mosque is not the largest or finest, but it has been serving its community on the left bank of the Neretva, the Muslim quarter of Mostar, since 1577. The war left it with a gaping hole in the dome and the stump of a minaret. It is now fully restored and open to worshippers and anyone else who wishes to pop in.

Karađozbeg Mosque, Mostar

See Mostar (2012)

The expanding Ottoman Empire swallowed Bosnia in 1460. Sarajevo was founded the following year as the administrative capital for the new Ottoman province and duly acquired an array of mosques to suit its status.

The Alipašina Mosque, Sarajevo

The Alipašina Mosque, Sarajevo, built 1561
Unlike churches mosques only occassionally have an associated graveyard 

In 1991 Sarajevo became the capital of the freshly independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and was promptly surrounded by Serb forces trying to carve out a new Republika Srpska. The Siege of Sarajevo, April 1992 to December 1995, was the longest siege of the 20th century. 14,000 died, 5,500 of them civilians, 1,500 of those children.

Situated in a narrow valley closed at one end, Sarajevo was perfectly designed for a siege. Many of the Muslim dead are buried in the Martyr’s Cemetery which flows down the head of the valley. One evening we walked up to the Ottoman Yellow Bastion above the cemetery from where we could see the city laid out before us.

I could not count the mosques at the time, but I have found 18 minarets in the photograph (ringed in red). The Serbian Orthodox and Catholic Cathedrals (yellow) also stand out as does the bilious yellow cube of the Holiday Inn (blue) overlooking the notorious ‘Sniper’s Alley. As dusk fell the call from mosques started, not all together, but first one, than another, then a third. The sound swelled as more and more joined in, then gradually started to ebb until eventually there was one lone voice. It was a magnificent sound.

The Mosques and Cathedral of Sarajevo (and the Martyr's Cemetary) 2012

A friend who visited in the 1970s described Sarajevo as a perfect multi-cultural city, with people of different traditions living and working together harmoniously. Then it all went wrong, and now it is being put back together. Humans are good at restoring things, be they bridges or communities; it's a pity they have to destroy them first.

See Sarajevo (1) The Old Town, The New Town and Assassination of Franz Ferdinand

and Sarajevo (2) The Siege 1992-1995


Friday 15 August 2014

Into Georgia, The Vineyards of Kakheti: Part 5 of From the Caspian to the Black Sea

Sheki to the Georgian Border

In the morning we left our caravanserai….

Leaving the Caravanserai, Sheki

… under the stern but benign (?) gaze of Azerbaijan's late President Heydǝr Əliyev ….

Heydǝr Əliyev says 'Goodbye'

… and set off westwards towards Georgia. We travelled through flat agricultural land with the Caucasus to our right and behind them Dagestan and the rest of Russia. Away to our left behind lower hills lay Georgia. We would follow this plain jutting out between two ranges until Azerbaijan came to its end at the Lagodekhi border post.

The road was well made and smooth, as were all we encountered in the country. Zagatala and Balakǝn, the last two towns in Azerbaijan looked as neat and tidy as everywhere else, though here, for the first and only time in the Caucasus, we saw horses and carts on the roads, mainly moving loads of freshly dried hay. We passed the end of the road to the locally well-known mineral water producing town of Qax. I love the name, but ‘q’ is pronounced as a hard ‘g’ and ‘x’ as the ‘ch’ in ‘loch’ so it sounds more like a Klingon’s favourite food than the vocalisation of a duck.

The next stage of the journey, Sheki to Telavi

Into Georgia

At the border Yassim and Togrul were well enough known to be able to drive through the preliminary gate. We had our cases x-rayed and our passports stamped, then they drove us into no man's land. We made our farewells and trundled our cases across the invisible line into Georgia where we were welcomed by Dinara, our Georgian guide. It was like being handed over at the Glienicke Bridge in cold-war Berlin, if rather less tense.

Georgia

The Georgian formalities were minimal. We met Alex our driver who deposited our cases in the back of a large black BMW four by four and we set off into a new country, not forgetting to set our watches back an hour because although both countries are in the same time zone Azerbaijan moves its clocks forward for summer and Georgia does not.

From the border post we drove through a series of contiguous villages which looked less prosperous than their Azeri neighbours. We were in now in the valley of the Alazani River in the eastern Georgian region of Kakheti. The valley can be described, without serious exaggeration, as a hundred kilometre long vineyard. Unsurprisingly our first stop was for a wine-tasting.

Khareba Cellars, Kvareli

Khareba is one of Georgia’s largest wine producers. They have vineyards in Kakheti and in the western region of Imereti and own two wineries as well as the storage facility at Kvareli that we visited.

We had a false start, coming through the wrong gate, and having a lengthy walk to find the entrance to the cellars which occupy 8km of tunnels dug into the hillside.

Entrance to the tunnels, Khareba Winery,  Kvareli

The tunnels keep the wine at a steady 10º throughout the year and we walked past thousands of slumbering bottles on our way to the museum and tasting area.

Maturing wine, Khareba Winery,  Kvareli

The Georgians are convinced (and they may actually be right) that wine making was invented by Georgians; there is certainly solid evidence that they were at it 7,000 years ago. Their technique involves treading grapes in stone or wooden vats and then putting everything – juice, skins, stalks and pips - into a clay pot known as a qvervi. The qvervi is buried in the ground for temperature control and is covered but not sealed. The juice ferments on the skins and then stays on them for far longer than in the western European tradition. The resulting wines have a flavour from the clay pot and are heavily oxidized, the whites are brown - the colour of tea is deemed appropriate - and the taste is unfamiliar to the western European wine drinker, though much appreciated by Georgians. The reds are more mainstream but the best red grape, Saperavi, has so much colour - having red flesh and juice as well red skin - that it is as much a dye as a drink.

Vat for treading grapes, Khareba Winery, Kvareli

Georgia has over five hundred native grape varieties, but subtle differences are lost in the qvervi. In the past they would have also been transported in a goatskin and drunk from a cow’s horn - I doubt much of the character of the grape would have survived that! There are now wines made by 'the European method' too, though at some wineries that still involves the use of a qvervi. For an appreciation of the wines we tasted here and elsewhere see the Tasting Georgian Wine post. At Khareba we tasted the produce of several different grape varieties vinified using both European and Georgian methods. The overall standard was high, and one or two were excellent.

About to start tasting, Khareba Winery, Kvareli

After our tasting we took the lift up to the roof - or ground level as we had been down a hole – to the restaurant and chose a table on the terrace overlooking the Alazani valley. Knowing we were eating in our guesthouse that evening and aware that Georgian tradition demands that the meal would be vast, we settled for a light lunch, ordering one green and one chicken salad. We expected the chicken salad to be slices of meat with some foliage, but it was just chicken, somewhat reminiscent of rillettes, or maybe a Lao meat salad. We washed this down with water, we had already drunk wine and there was another tasting to go, so restraint seemed wise.

Gremi, the Church of the Archangel (front) and the Tower Palace

Gremi

Gremi, a little further up the valley, was the capital of Kakheti from 1466 to 1672. Georgian history is, to say the least, complicated. Separate eastern and western kingdoms in antiquity were united in the eleventh century leading to a Georgian golden age which lasted, despite intervention of the Mongols, until the start of the fifteenth century. Weakened by the Black Death and buffeted by repeated visits from Tamerlane and his hordes, Georgia fracturing into four petty kingdoms of which Kakheti was the easternmost. The tower palace, on a bluff above the road, is a small, modest palace as befits a small, modest kingdom.

Inside the Tower Palace, Gremi

The Church of the Archangels beside it was built by King Levan in 1565 and the frescoes painted shortly afterward.

Inside the Church of the Archangels, Gremi

There was also a winery within the main complex (well this is Georgia) ….

Old qvervi in the winery Gremi

...while at the foot of the bluff are the remains of a caravansary, baths and market. What we saw was largely restoration; the originals were reduced to rubble by the Persian Shah Abbas in 1616. The eastern Georgian kingdoms were under constant pressure from the Persian Empire while the western kingdoms were harried by the Ottomans.

Lynne outside the restored caravansarai, Gremi

Twins Winery, Napareuli

At Napareuli we dropped in on the much smaller Twins Winery where they were kind enough to show us around. They have Georgia's, and hence the world's largest qvervi, but they use it for showing an introductory film rather than for wine making.

The world's biggest qvervi, Twins Winery, Napareuli

We saw the vineyards and inspected their brand new qvervis set in a concrete floor ready for this year's vintage.

Brand new qvervis ready for this year's harvest, Twins Winery, Napareuli

Less willing to compromise with western techniques, they even make their ‘European style’ wines in qvervis - which makes them semi-European at best. Whatever my western trained palate may say about qvervi wines, the Georgians love them, so much so that they have had ‘winemaking in qvervi’ inscribed on the UNESCO list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (see Tasting Georgian Wine)

The wines, Twins Winery, Napareuli, Saperavi, Georgian style white, European style white

Guesthouse in Telavi

From Gremi the capital of Kakhetti moved to Telavi which, with 20,000 inhabitants is still the region’s chief town. We arrived in the early evening and thought the town had a sad post-Soviet look, although we were to partly revise that opinion in the morning.

Telavi sits on the hills that are the southern boundary of the vineyard-filled Alazani Valley. Our guest house was at the top of the town so our room and the balcony on which we had dinner had superb views over the valley to the distant foothills of the Caucasus beyond.

Looking over Telavi and the Alazani Valley

Dinner was as vast as we had expected. Bread, tomato and cucumber salad, aubergine purée, pork stew, pancakes stuffed with a walnut paste, slabs of fried pork, flaky pastry stuffed with meat and finally our first khachapuri – the cheese pie that is ubiquitous through Georgia, though each region takes pride in its own variation on the basic theme of melted cheese.

The four of us, Lynne and I, Dinara the guide and Alex the driver, made a spirited effort but could eat less than half the food on the table. This, we discovered, is the Georgian way; they would hate a guest to go hungry - or thirsty, a litre jug of murky brown white wine was also plonked on the table. By the time we reached the bottom I was developing a taste for it.