An old Antakya house

    After more than four years in a modern house of concrete, we managed to move into one of the old houses in the central quarter of Antakya. The house is located between what used to be the Colonnaded Street and the Orontes inside the area that used to be within the first Seleucid wall. In fact, it may even be located at the spot of Bottia, the small town at the bank of the Orontes at the time of Alexander the Great.
    It is uncertain how old the house is. One thing is sure: it can be found on a photo of Antioch taken from an airplane by the French in 1932. Consequently, it very likely dates back to the big earthquake on April 3, 1872 that counted VII-VIII in Antakya.[1]
    But it may in fact be older. Part of the house is made of big stones while another part is evidently built later. If part of the house is older than 1872, it may have been built after the earthquake  on August 13, 1822 that destroyed most of the city (estimated as VIII).[2]
    Originally it was one of the classical houses in this area with a big courtyard with trees and a well surrounded by buildings, all of them with their doors opening towards the courtyard. The house where we are living used to be part of such a complex but was later divided up in two plots.
    In the part of the old courtyard that belongs to us whe had the concrete that covered the yard removed so that the original pavement was seen. However, in the middle of it a hollow was found. Modern Antiochenes told us that it in Arabic was called a jurn, a place where women used to grind wheat and make purée of tomatoes and pepper. We placed a big flower pot with a palm tree in it so that people would not fall into it. In fact, some of our workers did.

    Later we found out that water collected in the jurn, so we had a hole drilled in its bottom and realised that there was a well underneath it.
    The toilet and the kitchen were in a separate building with access from the yard. We kept it like that. Removing the plaster from the kitchen wall, the workers found a fireplace in the wall. Although we do not need a fireplace there, we kept it as it used to be.

    There was no bathroom, but we found out why.
    The floor of the living room is elevated about 40 cm over ground level; but when entering the room, there is an area of marble on about two square meters at ground level where you can leave your shoes before stepping up into the living room.

   
    By the locals we were told this was where people used to take a bath with a bucket of hot water at their side.
    The floor of the living room was covered with concrete as was the yard. We had it removed and had tiles of original pattern put on the floor. When the concrete was removed, the workes found a small hole made of stone in the floor.

  

    It showed up the be a primitive way of heating. In old times the hole was filled with glowing charcoal and people sat around it, probably covering the their legs and the charcoal with a wool or goat hair blanket.
    The walls of the living room are filled with build-in cupboards. We have kept them in their original colour.

    The windows are tall with internal shudders.

    To the right in the wall towards the part of the house that has been added later (perhaps after the earthquake in 1872), there is a clear evidence that the originally was a door towards the outside.

    The newer part of the house is less interesting. It is shown on the French aireal photograph from 1931, so we may assume that it was added after the earthquake in 1872. We use it as a studio.

    It has been an interesting experience to move into an old Antakya house. Although it in many respects is different from the houses in ancient Antioch, it has some of the same flavour. The centre of Antakya has many houses of the same sort, many of the a lot larger than ours. Unfortunately they are left to decay.

An Antakya house from about 1850 [3]

 
  
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1.  Mohamed Reda Sbeinati, Ryad Darawcheh & Mikhail Mouty, "The historical earthquakes of Syria: an analysis of large and moderate earthquakes from 1365 B.C to 1900 A.D." Annals of Geophysics, Volume 48, N. June 2005, 414
2.  Ibid. 413, 414
3. F. A. Neale, Evenings at Antioch (London: Eyre and Williams, 1954)

The Colonnaded Street / Kurtuluş Caddesi

  .

            Antioch was founded in 300 B.C. by the Seleucid king Seleucus I (d. ca. 281 B.C.). The city was built according to the so-called Hippodamian plan where the streets were straight and met at right angles. The city was fairly rectangular. To the one side a long wall followed the river Orontes and parallel to this there was a wall following the present streets of Kurtuluş Caddesi and Süreyya Halefoğlu Caddesi from the point where the street Kırk Asırlık Türk Yurdu Caddesi meets Kurtuluş Caddesi to the point close where Süreyya Halefoğlu Caddesi meets İzmir Caddesi. At this point a road is coming in from Beroea (today: Aleppo). This road most likely continued along the city wall towards the south. Most travellers very likely entered Antioch through the Eastern Gate (later changed to the Middle Gate as the city grew towards the north).

            The ill-famed king Antiochus Epiphanes (175-163 B.C.) incorporated the city quarters between the wall and Mount Silpius into the city calling it Epiphaneia after himself. A new gate was built close to the present junction of Kurtuluş Caddesi and Kırk Asırlık Türk Yurdu Caddesi. This gate was later called the Cherubim Gate as the Roman general Titus is said to have put up cherubs from the Jewish temple in Jerusalem at this gate.

            With this new addition to the city, the road from Beroea (Aleppo) to Daphne (Harbiye) some kilometres further south went right through the city.

As mentioned above, the city had grown towards the north and a big bean-shaped island in the middle of the river Orontes had been incorporated. The Eastern Gate was now situated close to where Mount Staurin meet Antakya Reyhanlı Yolu near its junction with Atatürk Caddesi. This made the thoroughfare through Antioch more or less three kilometres long.

            As time went by, this street was to grow in importance. Herod the Great, the ruler of Judaea, financed some improvement of the street, and also the Roman Emperor Tiberius (A.D. 14-37) has been credited with some contribution. When the street was finished it was 27 metres wide: nine metres for the street itself and nine metres for the colonnades on each side of the street where shops of various sorts were located. The saying goes that the Roman Emperor Anthonius Pius (A.D. 138-161) had the street paved with Theban granite.

On the picture above we see the course of the Colonnaded Street from the Cherubim Gate (that was located at the crossroad near the bottom of the pictures) up to Mount Staurin (the small mountain just beside the street). The densely populated area to the left used to be the original Seleucid city. The populated area to the right, up the slopes of Mount Silpius, is roughly equivalent to Epiphaneia. On the left side of the street, opposite Mount Staurin, there is a green area. This is where the bean-shaped island used to be. Today there is no island as the eastern branch of the Orontes has dried up.

            During the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II (A.D. 408-450) the street was extended towards the south and a new wall was built from a point close to the present waterworks on the slopes of Mount Silpius to a point close to where the streets Kurtuluş Caddesi and Hastane Caddesi meet. There a new gate called the Daphne Gate, or the Golden Gate, was built. Thus the quarters of Rhodion (today probably the quarter of Güllü Bahçe: Rose Garden) and Kerateion were incorporated into the city.

The picture above shows the quarters that were added to the city by Theodosius II. The Daphne Gate was located just behind the building with the white roof in the foreground. The quarter of Kerateion was somewhere in the area to the right of Kurtuluş Caddesi and Rhodion most likely to the left. The torrent of Phyrminus came down through a gorge in Mount Silpius. Now it is hidden under the street that is entering our picture above the barracks in the front. It is continuing down towards the Orontes under the houses between the two curved streets in the left side of the picture.

            Today the part of Antioch or Antakya that is situated east of the river Orontes has shrunk. Consequently, only about half of what used to be the Colonnaded Street runs through densely populated parts of town. In the downtown area the old street is hidden several metres under the present level. Furthermore, Kurtuluş Caddesi is a very narrow street compared to the Colonnaded Street, measuring only about a third of the old street.

Nearly a hundred years ago and during the time of the French occupation in the thirties, beautiful houses were built in this street. Later ugly concrete boxes were put up beside them.

            Lately some renovation of the Kurtuluş Caddesi has begun. At least the facades of the old houses are being renovated and it is said that also the shops eventually will have a front similar to that of old.

            Some discussion has been going on about closing the street to traffic turning it into a sort of pedestrian street as has been done with Hürriyet Caddesi (popularly called Saray Caddesi) close to the Bridge. It has been suggested that a "nostalgic" tram like the one in İstiklal Caddesi in Istanbul should run along the street. Also horse drawn gigs like those on the islands across from Istanbul have been suggested. [i] However, this solution would leave the city with the same stench as that on the island Büyükada.

            It is sad that Antakya, like many other Turkish cities, has suffered from the widespread lack of appreciation for history. Nevertheless, it is good to see that many locals now try to preserve the values they have inherited from the past.

Kurtuluş Caddesi towards the south

Kurtuluş Caddesi, the southern extension

[i] "Antakya tarihi ve kentsel SİT alanları sürdürülebilir koruma-geliştirme planı," Güney Rüzgarı, sayı 140, August 2011, pages 9-12.

The Iron Gate

It is said that the Iron Gate was built by Justinian, but he may just have improved it. It is situated at the gorge between Mount Cassius and Mount Staurin. Procopius, a Byzantine scholar from the sixth century, gives us the following description:

“It is proper to describe also what he did with the torrent which comes down from these mountains. Two precipitous mountains rise above the city, approaching each other quite closely. Of these they call the one Orocassias [Mount Cassius] and the other is called Staurin. Where they come to an end they are joined by a glen and ravine which lies between them, which produces a torrent, when it rains, called Onopnictes.[1] This, coming down from a height, swept over the circuit-wall and on occasion rose to a great volume, spreading into the streets of the city and doing ruinous damage to those who lived in that district. But even for this the Emperor Justinian found the remedy, in the following way: Before that part of the circuit-wall which happens to lie nearest to the ravine out of which the torrent was borne against the fortifications, he built an immense wall or dam, which reached roughly from the hollow bed of the ravine to each of the two mountains, so that the stream should no longer be able to sweep on when it was at full flood, but should collect for a considerable distance back and form a lake there. And by constructing sluice-gates in this wall he contrived that the torrent, flowing through these, should lose its force gradually, checked by this artificial barrier, and no longer violently assault the circuit-wall with its full stream, and so overflow it and damage the city, but should gently and evenly glide on in the manner I have described and, with this means of outflow, should proceed through the channel wherever the inhabitants of former times would have wished to conduct it if it had been so manageable.” [2]

The Iron Wall – or what is left of it – is still to be seen up behind Mount Staurin where the spurious Church of St. Peter is located. This grotto attracts a lot more attention that the real thing some hundred metres behind it. You hardly meet any tourist if you visit the Iron Gate.

Mankind is more interested in fakes than facts.

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[1] “Donkey-Drowner”, the nickname of the torrent Parmenius. During the winter this torrent swelled as it came rushing down between the two mountains and swept away anything in front of it.

[2] Procopius, Buildings – Book 2, Ch. 10:15-18. Evidently there already was some device for that purpose at the place. But most of the masonry is from the time of Justinian. – Glanville Downey: A History of Antioch in Syria, Princeton 1961, p. 551