Turkey 2024: Sultanhani Caravanserai (I)

The Sultanhani Caravaserai, built in A.D. 1229 in Konya, is a rare instance of a Seljuk building which remains intact.   The Seljuk Empire, as you might recall, had an inland empire in Anatolia prior to that of Ottoman Turks, reigning over a large area of the now Middle East and Central Asia from A.D. 1037 to 1194, reduced in size from A.D. 1194 to their final defeat in A.D. 1308.

The purpose of the caravanserai was to encourage trade - in this case, trade along the Silk Road that led from China to the Mediterranean and eventually Western Europe and Africa.  Many traders did not make the entire trip across Asia; they would stop at trading posts like this to exchange goods for certain portions of the route.  Thus, the caravanserai became a meeting point of different cultures and peoples.

A caravanserai (or caravanseray) was a sort of roadside in for traders and travelers.  In the case of the Sultanhani Caravanserai, strong walls made both for protection from the elements as well as protection from potential thieves and robbers.

(One of the entry gates)

The Caravanserai was divided into two main parts, an outer part consisting of an open space, an arcade on one side and a series of small rooms on the other, and a small building in the center (below) which was a small mosque.

The arcade:

An entry door to one of the rooms:

An interior room.  These could serve as storage rooms, quarters, or work areas.

Another view of the mosque.  This is the oldest square mosque in Turkey.

Another interior:

Do Right, The Rest Lies With God

Re-reading a history of The Crusades of the Middle Ages, I was struck by the great and often vast chasm between what Christians say that they believe and what they actually sometimes do.

The Crusades in what is now Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, and Syria were a combination of many factors coming together including Byzantine need for troops, commercial hunger for markets, a sincere faith and belief that heresy needed to be combatted, and some element of an outlet for channeling elements eager for war to other lands (instead of next door).  The City of Christ was in the hands of the Infidel (said the apologists); how could that be allowed to stand - ignoring, of course, the fact that it had been that way for 450 years or so prior to the First Crusade (A.D. 1099 - 1100) and even in the time of Christ Himself had been controlled by a foreign power, Rome.

And so, the Crusades of the East (not to be confused with the Crusades of The Reconquista of Spain or against the Balts in Prussia), 200 years of what essentially became a thin layer of Western Christian civilization (the Eastern Orthodox had been there all along, of course) punctuated with war an occasional bloodbaths (in the taking of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, the slaughter was so immense of Muslims  that "...when Raymond of Aguliers later that day went to visit the Temple area he had to pick his way through corpses and and blood that reached up to his knees." - A History of the Crusades Vol.1, p. 287. Steven Runciman).  

It is easy to look back on such things and realize that if spreading Christianity was the goal, perhaps that was not the way to do it (although arguably that was not the only point of The Crusades if you look into them. There was a lot of land and power and politics involved).  It is harder to look at ourselves and realize we can have the same tendencies.

For myself, how often in the past have I thought to do something "for God", when I was either pushing my own agenda in His Name or seeking to succeed on my terms in such a way that I took moral or ethical shortcuts (it is more than I care to admit, honestly).

That is where Lewis' comment hits the hardest. Our job is not to succeed - a great temptation in a society and culture where success, especially measured in the world's terms - but rather to do right, to be a credit to God and to His message and His morality. 

Should we work hard?  Of course.  Should we put our best foot forward? Absolutely.  But we should never confuse our goal as that of first and foremost being successful.  Our first goal is to be God's representatives on earth.  "God's work God's way", as the saying runs.

The rest, as they say, is up to Him.

 

A Bit Of Good News

Apologies - due to a combination of work, Iaijutsu training, and travel preparations, today's missive is brief - but at least happy.

As you may recall, my Aunt Pat was diagnosed with cancer in late October, and in mid-November had gone into the hospital with a reaction to the chemotherapy.  She was able to return home but was put on hospice.

We received an update from my cousin last night.  She is doing well - so well, in fact, that she may be able to "graduate" from hospice (this is not unknown to me; it happened to my father's elder brother as well).  It does not change the underlying situation of course, but it is good news and will enable her family to have a much more merry Christmas than they otherwise might of.

Thanks for all of your prayers, kind thoughts, and well wishes.

One old-time radio preacher, the name of whom escapes my memory now, always opened his program with "God is still on the throne, and prayer changes things".  

Thank you for your part in "changing things".

An Elegy For An Automobile

Next week we are donating TB The Elder's car.

The car - a 20XX Ford Focus - has made the rounds of our family.  It originally was purchased by my Aunt J and driven by her for years, until it was sold to The Outdoorsman, who gave it to his son (my nephew) to drive.  It then went to my niece, then back to TB the Elder who drove it for many years until 2021, when the driving stopped.  The car then came out to New Home, where it became Nighean Dhonn's car from high school. It went away with her to college last year, then came back this year.

Unfortunately, it has reached the end of the economic value line:  a major freon leak which would require getting under the dashboard to trace and repair and a broken window mechanism means that we would be putting more into the car than likely it is worth (and Nighean Dhonn has other options now:  The Master Sergeant's car, long undriven for many years prior, has now made its own way to New Home to begin a second life).  Add to that it will not immediately pass the emissions portion of the testing (or at least without difficult) and the expense of a car that we do not really use on our insurance, and it was clear that something had to be done.

There were two options of course, sell it or donate it.  I am terrible at selling cars in person (and it stresses me out), so donation seemed like the more easily accessible course.  And the fact that I would be back in town next week to finish the transaction made things all the more handy.

I find myself surprisingly sad about this.

I have written before that I tend to invest things with personalities and emotions; my ability to get rid of  things has always been weak at best and it is simply better for me to not have things than to have them and then try and get rid of them.  Things are invested with memories to me, having almost a sort of conscious existence in that they represent something:  a person, a place, an experience, a moment in time.

The car - for all I have not seen it in the last seven months and did not use it the previous three years - represents - is another tie to my parents, a tie that is now disappearing.

This was the car that for years in which my father would take my mother for drives because that is what my mother, in her increasingly forgetful state due to Alzheimer's, liked to do.  Every day they would take a drive around the back roads of the county they lived in, roads that my father knew well from years of living and working in the area and that my mother always saw as fresh because she never remembered them from one day to the next.  They would stop for lunch somewhere - fancy places like McDonald's or Chick-fil-A. Maybe they would stop for a coffee on the way out or the way home (my mother loved stopping for mochas).  And then they would head back, ready to do it again tomorrow.

But those now remain only my memories, and perhaps the memories of my sister.  My parents - at least here in this world - no longer remember.  And the car, for all of the emotion I invest in it, is a combination of metal and plastic and vinyl and cloth and pieces and parts.  It, too, has no memory.

So next week I will be home, sign the title, and watch it get loaded up for a tow away. I will sign my declaration of non-ownership and wait thirty days to duly remove the insurance.  At some point  I will get a letter thanking me for my donation.

At that point - like so many things in life - the car will pass into our family lore, the grey small car that lived with us and in a way, shared our own adventures and life.  

But perhaps that is enough - in my children, the car will live far longer than it probably was ever designed to.

The Collapse CLXXII: Changing Seasons

 03 Oct 20XX +1

My Dear Lucilius:

Fall is in the air.

It has always been indefinable to me, that last moment when one season turns into another. Occasionally abrupt, there are years where the season is something on one day and something else on another day: the day that careens from the cool of Spring to the heat of Summer or contrariwise, the last day of Autumn that suddenly turns to Winter with a quick plunge in temperatures and precipitation that will not end until the following Spring.

But more often than not it remains a soft sort of thing, something that is more perceived than grasped: the tilt of the sun, the sound of the birds, the change in the behavior of plants and animals long before something as noticeable as the weather starts change. Perhaps it is more noticeable to me now as I have a great deal more time to pay attention to it.

The past few days (and the next few) have been consumed with scraping off the last gleanings of Pompeia Paulina’s and Statiera’s garden (now Statiera’s and Young Xerxes’) – a handy thing, to have two gardens to comb through. Pompeia Paulina and I rise, take care of our own chores, and then walk the half mile to their house to work in the garden there as well starting to prepare their house for Winter.

From what I can see, the street they live on remains maybe 75% occupied now, likely from those that have picked up and aggregated at other locations (there have no further deaths that I am aware of). Walking down the street is a somewhat eerie experience, the houses sitting empty and staring as one passes by.

In some ways you would not know that they are empty – after all, in a community which has a combination of year round residents and Summer residents, one becomes used to the fact that some houses always look unlived-in for long portions of the year. And yet there are signs – the local flora that grew up and was never cut back, small maintenance items that would have been attended to in years past but not now, the absence in many driveways of motor vehicles (that now go nowhere of course), the ubiquitous indicator of life in the United States.

There are still noises – we are not the only ones preparing for Winter of course – but it is much less than it would be for this time of year. It is more of a background sense of presence than an active sense of others nearby, the much more quiet sounds of a non-mechanical society punctuate only very occasionally by the sound of an engine performing a task that once was taken for granted.

Young Xerxes and I cut and dig and pull in this silence, passing our yield to Pompeia Paulina and Statiera, who figure out what is to be done with them. Likely today was our last day in the garden; like ours, theirs is now stripped of anything remotely resembling food, their greenhouse (like ours) holding the promise of whatever can be grown in the Spring.

A quick meal with them (black eyed peas, boiled potatoes, and greens) and then Pompeia Paulina and I make the trip back across the streets with their slight cracks that will only get worse with this Winter and the occasional sound of a bird overhead.

In some ways, Lucilius, it is the last dying silence of Autumn before Winter. The fact that it feels like it is last dying silence of a civilization that may very well not be at this level next year haunts my steps as I walk home.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2024 Turkey: Tomb Of Rumi (IV)

 Originally the tomb of Rumi served not only as a tomb, but all as a religious center where the sufis would live in isolation (in some ways like a Christian monastery. The out buildings - like the kitchen we saw last week - have been preserved with exhibits.

Instruments for the sufi ceremony of dikhir:

Ney, the flutes used in the ceremony.  This sort of flute has been used for 4500 years.

Kudum.  Small drums.

A book.  I failed to note the marker.  

A calligrapher's set of pens.  19th Century A.D.

Calligraphy tools, 19th and 20th Century.

Mevlana prayers.  A.D. 1880, Ottoman.

Bonus round:  Dinner, dessert, and breakfast.

2024 Turkey: The Tomb of Rumi (III)

 Along with the tomb of Rumi itself, the building also had a collection of ancient texts.

It is me.  Of course I took pictures of them.

A copy of the Mesnevi, A.D 1278., Seljuk.  This was written within 5 years of his death.

Koran.  15th Century A.D., Ottoman.

Koran.  A.D. 1296, Seljuk.

Koran, A.D. 1314, Karamanid

Koran, 9th Century A.D.  Written on gazelle skin.

A book of collected poems of Hafix-I Sirazi.  16th Century A.D., Ottoman.

Subhat-ul Ebrar, A.D. 1492.  Ottoman

Subhat-ul Ebrar, A.D. 1492.  Ottoman

Miniscule Koran, 16th Century A.D.  Ottoman.

Miniscule Koran, 16th Century A.D.  Ottoman.