History
of Cappadocia
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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