|
|
| |
|
A MEDIEVAL CASTLE
HASANKEYF
|
|
|
Children
leapt
into the water from the long bridge linking the opposite
banks of the river and swam ashore. One of them remained
sitting cross-legged on the bank. He took some large
pebbles from his pocket and tossed them one by one into
the centre of the river. After he departed, shadows from
the hills of the mediaeval town lengthened and merged as
twilight fell.
The
river is the Tigris. A myth concerning this name, which
means tiger. is told about the god Dionysus, who fell
desperately in love with the nymph Alphesiobia. She
fled from him, at which Dionysus turned himself into a
tiger and chased her. |
|
The remains of the
ancient bridge in the centre
of the Tigris and the rock first used as a natural
fortress by the Romans |
The
name of the medieval town is from the Arabic Hisn Kayfa
meaning 'rock fortress, since it stands on a great rock
one hundred metres in height. The Turkish version of the
name has inspired its own legend, according to which a
youth called Hasan was 'sentenced to life imprisonment
In the castle by one of the sultans. One day when the
sultan was in a good mood (keyf) he spoke to Hasan and
asked if he wanted anything, upon which |
|
Hasan
said he would like a horse to ride within the castle
walls. The sultan provided the horse and Hasan spurred
it into a gallop, leapt over the walls and plunged into
the river below. The horse died in the fall but Hasan
swam to freedom. Hasankeyf is situated in the Turkish
province of Batman. Attempts are still being made to
find a way to save the town from the rising waters of
the Ilısu Dam. Still standing in the middle of the river
are the remains of the medieval bridge which has
withstood natural disasters and human ravages for so
many centuries. |
|
The
town perched on a natural fortress of rock. which was
first used by the Romans, and six thousand cave
habitations hollowed out of the rock. seem to whisper
their ancient story to the wind which blows from the
oil-rich Raman Mountains to the north. At night the
river glistens in the Ii\,ht of the moon, and the
ancient bridge appears as a dark. silhouette. Across it
marched legions of Roman soldiers, followed by the
Byzantines, Sassanids, Ummayads, Abbasids, Hamdanids,
Mervanids, Artukids, Ayyubids, Mongols, Akkoyunlu and
Ottomans. The present stone bridge was constructed by
the Artukid ruler Fahrettin Karaaslan in 1116, probably
in place of an earlier ancient bridge. With a length of
over 100 metres and a central arch spanning 40 metres,
in its time it was the largest bridge in existence. In
the centre was a wooden drawbridge that could be lifted
up in the event of attack to prevent the enemy crossing
the river and reaching the town. A few of the carved
symbols thought to represent the signs of the zodiac
still remain on the central pillars. A shooting star
appears in the sky over the Midyat Mountains to the
south and seems to fall and explode above the castle.
|
Remains of one of
the secret
passageways through which the
ingabitants of the castle fetched
water from the river in
times of siege |
|
The
Ulu Mosque built on the remains of an old church by the
Artukids rises on the summit. Just below it are the
remains of a small palace in the form of a tower with
two lions carved in relief on its northern façade that
is one of the first buildings constructed at Hasankeyf
by the Ayyubids.
|
Yolgeçen Han, an inn
carved into the rock,
is now a cafe |
Further down are the other surviving Ayyubid
monuments: a minaret whose shaft contains two
separate spiral staircases belonging to the ruined
EI-Rızk mosque, Sultan Süleyman Mosque, and Koç
Mosque with Its remarkable plasterwork decoration.
All of them can be seen in turn as you climb the
winding road towards the hilltop, greeting you on
your journey back in time. You pass the castle
gates, |
|
a caravanserai called Yolgeçen Han that is now a
cafe, and innumerable caves. The cry of a hoopoe is
heard from the opposite bank of the Tigris, as if
reminding you of the monuments there. One of these
is the turquoise tiled mauseoleum of Zeynel Bey son
of Uzun Hasan, which is the only Akkoyunlu structure
remaining here, and another the imam Abdullah
Zaviye, a dervish lodge whose date of construction
is unknown. Hasankeyf was a centre of learning in
Mesopotamia, with its medrese or college,
observatory, hospital and other institutions. |
|
Eb-ul Iz EI-Cezeri, an Artukid scholar and engineer
celebrated for his Book of Automatons, studied and
taught here. Cezeri might be described as the first
cyberneticist, since he designed clocks and
machines in the form of people and animals that
worked on hydraulic principles, and presented these
early robots to the Artukid sultan.
The first studies of Hasankeyf were carried out in
1940 by the French archaeologist and architectural
historian Albert Gabriel, who also took the first
photographs of the monuments here and published his
findings in Paris. In 1978 the town became a first
grade conservation site.
In
its spectacular setting on the massive rock rising
above the Hasankeyf is hauntingly beautiful. As the
light changes at different times of day so does the
aspect of the town, absorbed in its its myriad
memories of the past. Below the Tigris fiows on,
endlessly changing colour in its turn.
|
The mausoleum
belonging to Zeynel Bey,
son of Uzun Hasan, stands on the
opposite bank of the river |
|
|
|
|
Source: Skylife 08/03 |
|
Ersin
Toker&Servet Dilber |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
