TURKEY TRAVEL GUIDE
The
history of Cappadocia has to begin with the geological background to
the remarkable landscape here. A long, long time ago a series of eruptions
from the cones of Mt. Erciyes and Mt Hasan covered the area in a thick
layer of volcanic ash which solidified to form the soft tufa that characterises
the surface strata here. Both these volcanic mountains are still extant
and dominate the landscape. There's some reasonable skiing on Erciyes
in the winter.
The processes of erosion started the work of carving out valleys and gorges and continue to act to this day. The signature of the region, the 'fairy chimney' is formed when a cap of resilient stone protects the column of softer material beneath it while the surrounding tufa is removed. The area is now a warren of caves, underground cities, rock churches and chambers and it's almost certain that there are more such sites waiting to be rediscovered.
Cappadocia makes its first entrance into history courtesy of Heroditus,
writing in the 5th Century BC but it is with the advent of Christianity
that it becomes of interest to the average contemporary tourist. Christianity
came early to the region with St. Paul passing through on his way
to Ancyra (Ankara) and 3 Saints originating here in the 4th Century.
The remote and sometimes harsh nature of the landscape and climate
here appealed to the early anchorites who favoured an ascetic existence
in which hardship brought them closer to God. Gradually these individuals
formed loose knit communities here to benefit from a social structure
but nevertheless retained their individuality. These communities were
formalised as a result of St. Basil's pronouncements on the rules
of monastic life in the 4th Century and slowly grew over the next
few hundred years. The arrival of Arab raiding parties in Anatolia
in the 7th and 8th centuries drove the monks underground and they
took local Christian communities with them forming the underground
cities you can explore today, several of which are staggering in their
scale. The Christian communities dwindled after the Turks arrived
in Asia Minor and local inhabitants moved into the more convenient
of the excavations that were left behind. Cappadocia effectively vanished
from the point of view of the West until it was rediscovered by a
French Jesuit priest in 1907.
The frescoes that many tourists come to see can be divided up into Pre and Post-Iconoclastic. The earlier works rely entirely on symbolism to communicate their messages and may look childish and simple in comparison to later works. Their form is a result of the early church's disapproval of the portrayal of the human form in religious art. The works which postdate the resolution of the Iconoclastic controversy (mid 9th Century) are much more figurative. It is interesting to compare them and realise that both styles are telling the same stories of Christ and the Saints. It is very difficult to find a section of fresco work that hasn't been damaged, usually maliciously and the root of this lies partly in the abhorrence of representations of the human form felt by strict Muslims at various times over the last half millennia. Another, possibly apocryphal, story tells us that local maidens believed that the blue eyes of the figures in the frescoes, if removed and powdered, could be incorporated to make a powerful love potion. An awful lot of figures have their eyes removed.
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