The Sultan of Byzantium Read online

  I ploughed through books containing pictures of icons, mosaics and frescoes. The everyday clothes of Byzantium citizens, the uniforms of foot soldiers, even the saddles and stirrups of their warhorses flaunted charming designs.

  I came across it in the architecture books section, as if it had been waiting just for me on its special stand. In gilded letters on the purple leather binding of the giant book was stamped Promenade in Byzantium. This monumental example of the art of the book was number 003 in an edition of 999. It was the work that would be the turning point of my life. But my first job of the morning was to inhale the scent of the copyright page and then wrap the book in a great hug. No matter how often I turned the 333 pages as slowly as I could, I remained as unsatisfied as a child called in early from the playground. The book was a compilation of computerized reconstructions of all of the existing great but run-down Byzantine monuments.

  Here were 111 architectural masterpieces, all functional and respectful of space and of an aesthetic reinforced by plain and symmetrical elements! Palaces, churches, city walls, hippodromes, aqueducts, triumphal arches, towers, barracks, schools, hospitals, libraries, cisterns, pools, parks, bridges, stadiums, hotels, bath houses, municipal buildings, fountains, stables … every one of them had an authentic and proud face, and it grieved me to think what a symbolic metropolis Istanbul could have been if only these buildings had survived. Below the image of each building, portrayed from different perspectives, was a description of it in four languages. It was natural for the Great Palace to receive the lion’s share of attention. It was a monumental city in itself, begun by the father of Byzantium, Constantine himself, in the fourth century and continued for another six centuries with one beautiful addition after another. The palace complex began where the Sultanahmet Mosque stands now and continued without interruption to the Marmara shore. This masterpiece for the centuries was turned into a ruin by the crusaders who stopped off at Constantinople, ostensibly to break their journey, on their way to Jerusalem. I used to trace the Arabian Nights-like Great Palace stone by stone and curse that benighted mob the Byzantines put down as ‘Latins’, along with the Pope who manipulated them and the Venetian duke who collaborated with him. I remembered how the Conqueror extended protection to all the Byzantine monuments beginning with the church of Haghia Sophia, which he took over for a mosque. And has Europe, I wonder, shown the crusaders who plundered Constantinople – not excepting its matchless library – one-tenth of its reaction to the Arabs’ destruction of the Alexandrian library?

  Emperor Constantine I had no hope for a Rome riddled by polytheism. Converting to Christianity, he founded a new capital for himself. His goal in 330, as he laid the foundations of the new city – first called East Rome and then Constantinople after him – was to make it more magnificent than the original Rome. Most of the emperors who followed him embraced this goal as well. In the end, Constantine’s city lasted nine centuries as the capital city of earth.

  I was fascinated by the four-page engraved map in the middle of Promenade in Byzantium. I saw the refinement of miniatures reflected in the drawings of the 111 architectural sites. For turning the pages there was a pair of white gloves, and a magnifying glass to examine the engravings. I took the glass in hand, murmured a short prayer for an auspicious beginning, and set off on a journey between the fourth and fifteenth centuries. I heard the curses of the fishermen sailing out to open sea from Eleutherios Harbor; the grumbling of the night watch patrolling the Nike Way; the weary murmur of water flowing through the Valens Aqueduct; the buzz of the crowd ready to explode at the Hippodrome; the quavering prayers rising from the Church of the Pantocrator; the giggling of young women strolling the Mese Boulevard; the aroma of spices diffused by a ship putting into Phosphorion Harbor; the loud voices emanating from a tavern at the Platea Gate; the breeze off the Golden Horn timidly caressing the Fener seawalls; the whisper of mold in the Aegeus cistern; and the sorrowful plaint of an emperor going to bed with a long face. I heard them all.

  The residential districts of the city, which boasted 500,000 people by the fifth century, were represented by gray-edged squares. The richer folk had courtyards, but all the other houses at least had bay windows or balconies. I read that the details of urban planning, such as the width of streets and the height of buildings, were all spelled out in written regulations.

  I didn’t put down the purple-handled magnifying glass until there was not a single cistern or street left unexplored. The element of mystery in my journeys constantly grew. And the common feature of the emperors I met in the palaces, when it wasn’t desperation, was unreliability.

  My education at the Center would be over when I read two more books and watched a six-part documentary on the Palaeologus dynasty and Constantine XI. My tutelary period, which began as instructive, ended as beguiling. If Nomo was watching me they should have been impressed by my opening act.

  *

  The Imperial Twilight was a striking title for a book about the last dynastic period and that drew me to it. The book by Constance Head seemed to stumble slightly as I helped it out of its corner on the shelf. The second reason I chose it was that it was 169 pages long and I didn’t want to read a long and tedious tragedy about my ancestors. First I dove into the black-and-white photographs, most of which were reproduced palace engravings now held by public libraries in Europe. There was a hint of slight innuendo in the expression of the contrarian Michael Palaeologus, the founder of the dynasty. In another engraving all nine emperors looked as if they’d got an order to smile timidly. Or were they sending a message of apology? They all had horse-faces, long noses and goat-beards. I wouldn’t have had much difficulty in visualizing my grandparents on a branch just above them on a schematic family tree.

  The Palaeologi were Byzantium’s last and longest-lasting dynasty (1261-1453). The eleven emperors of the eleventh dynasty were installed from father to son, older brother to younger brother, or grandfather to grandson. John V Palaeologus shared the throne with his father-in-law John VI Cantacuzenus for some time. The Palaeologus dynasty ended the plunder-and-confiscate period of the Latin Empire (1204-1261). With limited resources they made great efforts to reconstruct the ruined capital and tried to live in peace with European kings, the Vatican, the Seljuks and the Ottomans. Besides Constantinople what remained of the Empire consisted of five islands in the Aegean plus Mistra and its surroundings in the Southern Peloponnesus. On the other hand, the throne-wars, in which the women were also involved, looked like a fight for the captain’s chair of a rusty and soon-to-be-sunk Titanic. Recorded history catches up with Michael for the first time in Nicaea, now Iznik, at the palace of John III Vatatzes (1222-1254), the emperor-in-exile. The emperor regarded the noble Palaeologus as an adopted son. Michael was charismatic, ambitious and a good soldier. While serving as governor of Thrace he came under suspicion for his anti-imperial rhetoric. But he saved himself from serious punishment with his silver tongue and, what’s more, managed to marry Theodora, the daughter of the emperor’s nephew. The following year the emperor died from an asthma attack and his son Theodore II Lascaris (1254-1258) succeeded him. Since Michael understood all too well what the new emperor was thinking where he was concerned, he hid out with the Seljuks and fought alongside them against the aggressive Mongols. Theodore II established good relations with the Seljuks and took Michael back, installing him in his previous position after swearing him to fealty. Michael however seized the first opportunity to be thrown into prison again, and talked his way out of it again as well. The emperor ruled for four years before he became ill and died; the son who replaced him, John IV Lascaris, was only seven. Michael had the new emperor’s mentor killed and became co-emperor, keeping his young partner in the background.

  In the winter of 1261 the most delicate method of blinding was used on the unfortunate eleven-year-old emperor: his eyes were exposed to a strong ray of light until they could no longer see. Patriarch Arsenios excommunicated Michael for this cruel act; Michael in turn den
ounced Arsenios and appointed a new patriarch who would approve him as emperor. There are conflicting reports about how John IV’s story ends: that he was held captive in a castle on the Black Sea or the Marmara coast until his death; that he was imprisoned in a monastery; and that he regained his sight and departed for Sicily.

  During the summer of 1261, as Michael VIII Palaeologus was entering Constantinople the Latin army slunk away without a fight. The emperor assigned his army to reconstruct the ‘city of cities’ that lay in ruins and levied special taxes for the work. Once domestic peace was achieved, he conspired with the Genoese against the Venetians and with the Mongols against the Seljuks. This is when the settling of the Genoese in Galata took place. The Sicilian king, Charles, was an in-law of the Latin king, Baldwin II, whom Michael had evicted from Constantinople. He had a revenge attack in mind, for which the Pope gave approval. Michael VIII went to the Pope for help in negotiations with Charles. What he got was the reply that unless the Orthodox church joined the Catholics and thus resolved the ‘religious dilemma’, Byzantium could go to hell.

  The emperor promised the desired union, but back home he encountered fierce opposition from the church, the army and the people. Luckily, thanks to certain fortuitous developments, Europe was unable to carry out its planned attack. But when the emperor died of a cold he caught while going to Thrace to suppress a revolt, he was treated like a traitor. Michael VIII Palaeologus, who had worked so hard to save the future of Byzantium, was, with the consent of the church, damned by his widow.

  From that time on Byzantium lost much of its attraction for the ambitious kings of Europe, and also much of its power, freeing its emperors to make critical mistakes. Inter-family throne-wars helped speed the sands of time, though they slowed occasionally when an emperor of common sense managed to get hold of the throne. Until Manuel II Palaeologus was crowned, Byzantium was treated like a bankrupt merchant. When his turn as emperor came up, Manuel II – a philosopher diplomat, bibliophile and aesthete – had just turned forty. (I call attention to his habit of keeping a diary.) He had a respectful attitude and enjoyed generally good relationships with both the European powers and the Ottomans. Suffering a stroke at the age of seventy-four, he tried, with the help of Brother Mathias, to become a priest but died in a couple of weeks. He had six sons by the Serbian princess Helena. The eldest of these, John VIII Palaeologus (1425-1448), succeeded him.

  John VIII was an aristocrat. A social creature, a music lover and somewhat mysterious, he was also a good soldier and hunter. His heart was on the side of a united Orthodox and Catholic church. He married three times but never had a child. Because of his Catholic sympathies he was refused a proper imperial funeral. Of his three brothers, John trusted only the oldest one, Constantine, and in his will bequeathed the crown to him. Despite this the least talented brother, Demetrius, tried to snatch it; but their alert mother, Helen Dragases, stepped in to prevent it.

  The mother of Byzantium’s founding father, Constantine the Great, was named Helen. There was an oracle that when a second Constantine with a mother named Helen became emperor, the end of the empire was nigh. Of course, when Helen Dragases’ son Constantine XI Palaeologus (1449-1453) became emperor at the age of forty-five and did not change his name, the oracle was happily relegated to a marginal note by all the historians.

  *

  I read the book carefully and like a diligent student took a lot of notes. It was as if I were patiently writing a talisman for myself by reducing the feckless behavior of my forefathers to dry sentences. I stopped at page 143 and took up a thin biography, hoping to get the Constantine XI story over with in three short chapters. I planned to finish Donald M. Nicol’s The Immortal Emperor in two sessions. I thought about browsing the shelf of ‘Turkish sources’, and so I did. Every one of the 150 books, most of them from university presses, had been rebound, probably because of their cardboard covers. My hand reached for Semavi Eyice’s The Architecture of Late Byzantium, on the monuments of the Palaeologan period.

  Under the section written in Ottoman on the Chora church restoration was a note in English, in purple ink: ‘These frescoes are what make the Chora even more important than Haghia Sophia!’ I was amazed. That graceful Gothic handwriting was not unfamiliar to me. Hadn’t I seen a message from that pen in Istanbul? I photocopied the page for later study. If my hunch was right I would follow it up in the US, and do so without informing Nomo. Perhaps my mission had just taken a more sensitive turn. To visit America would require a plausible excuse; I resorted to the Internet. Among Byzantine centers there, Dumbarton Oaks stood out. Located in Washington, DC, it had a research library and a small museum.

  ‘It’s number one in its field,’ said Jocelyn, with a sneer in her tone.

  The Immortal Emperor was available at academic bookstores. I was a little surprised to catch myself admiring the statue of Constantine XI on the cover of the copy I bought at Blackwell’s. I decided I would wait until Istanbul to read it; I would head home after two more days of watching documentaries at the Center. I informed Askaris of my desire to complete my education at Dumbarton Oaks after, of course, visiting the Byzantine monuments of Istanbul. He nodded respectfully, I was glad to see, after first greeting the idea with widened eyes.

  *

  The library closed at 5:30. I usually exited my adventures in ancient time with a buzzing head. It was a pleasure to regain my balance by falling into the charming rhythms of London. Had my grandmother sent the angel Hâtif, whose voice was just loud enough to be heard, to look after me? At a private moment of my day he would whisper two or three words in my ear and slip away.

  Every other evening I walked to Heave(geteria) on Bentinck Street for dinner. I discovered this vegetarian restaurant on my way to Daunt’s bookshop across from which on a corner of the three-way crossing, was a building that resembled the Galata Tower. If I had no particular agenda for the evening I would stop in after dinner at Waterstone’s, across from my hotel. More important than the 2 million books sprawling throughout its five storeys was that it stayed open until ten. There I discovered the poet Pascale Petit and read Aeschylean drama. I tried to guess which of the drooping people around me were Nomo operatives. But I didn’t want this game to turn into a habit. If I believed that I was being followed, I preferred to think that it was for my own security rather than for fear of my betraying the mission. I probably shouldn’t have stopped in at that café in Golders Green with chess-lovers for regulars. I decided to hide my deeper self from Nomo while allowing my normal habits and desires to show through. (Emperor Basiliscus died of hunger in prison in 477, Emperor Zeno was buried alive in 491 … )

  My excursion to see my usual dealer in antiques and rare books and to peer into the windows of the clock and watch emporium coincided with rush hour. I began to think that the Brits all locked themselves in their houses because there were people from seventy different nations murdering their language. Some evenings I went on bus tours of shop windows full of international brands. I saluted the weary mannequins. At twilight I followed the trail signposted by the great stone buildings. I dove into bars with tragicomic names and drank chamomile tea to amuse the dull drunks. In my room the vodka bottle was never far from my hand as I watched DVDs of Coen Brothers films one by one. (Emperor Maurice had his throat cut in 602, Emperor Phocas was torn to pieces in 610, Emperor Heraclius died in 641 under torture … )

  On my first weekend in London I asked Askaris to find two prostitutes for me. We were both embarrassed as I specified: ‘They should not be bony or quarrelsome.’ That night M. from Prague and O. from Brno went with me up to my room; both were lively, and taller than me. To impress them I recited a stanza of their compatriot the poet Jaroslav Seifert – Nobel Prize, 1984 – and they were as startled as a couple of novice nuns who’ve stumbled on a pornographic graffito. (Emperor Constantine III was poisoned in 641, Constans II beaten to death in 668, Emperors Leontius and Tiberius II beheaded in 705 … )

  I went to see the lions incarc
erated in the London Zoo. Abi, a playful cub the last time I saw her, was now the princess of the cage. Lying on the wooden platform, she was on the brink of dozing off, while her mate Lucifer was already in deep sleep.

  ‘Abi, hey girl, Abi,’ I called.

  Suddenly she perked up. Our eyes locked, and she began to nod her head up and down. Slowly she rose onto her front legs as if posing for a sculpture. With a movement of her head she indicated the sleeping Lucifer, suggesting, ‘I can’t come down to you now because of this guy.’

  I went to the London Aquarium. There I was at first annoyed by the endless hordes of children screaming their heads off in the dim cavernous space, but then I remembered that I’d never screamed so happily in my own childhood. I looked at the stingrays and the sharks and the sea monsters that occupied a niche somewhere between seahorses and plants. Did the stingrays seem to be challenging mankind? No? With menacing looks they nosed up to the humans standing at their end of the tank, then retreated with wings flapping like a curse on the crowd. Were I an emperor, I thought, I would definitely have an aquarium full of stingrays and sharks.

  I went quickly past my old student lodgings and into the British Museum. It was something of an embarrassment to see the weakness of the Byzantine section amid the treasury of objects pilfered from the four continents. I took up a position on the bottom step of the quiet stairs in the courtyard, closed my eyes and rested my head on my arms and my arms on my knees. Four silent tornadoes rose up from Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egypt and China and united high in the air. In a discipline of constellations music was improvised while being tossed to and fro … (Emperor Justinian II was beheaded in 711, Emperor Philippicus had his eyes gouged out in 713, Emperor Constantine VI lost his eyes in 797, Emperor Leo V was stabbed and then beheaded in 820, Emperor Michael III was stabbed to death in 867 … )