Üçayak Kilisesi

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Üçayak Kilisesi
Üçayak total.jpg
Data
place Taburoğlu (Kırşehir), Turkey
Construction year approx. 10./11. century
Coordinates 39 ° 24 '47.7 "  N , 34 ° 10' 14.8"  E Coordinates: 39 ° 24 '47.7 "  N , 34 ° 10' 14.8"  E
Üçayak Kilisesi (Turkey)
Üçayak Kilisesi

The Üçayak Kilisesi (" tripod church") is the ruins of a Byzantine church in the province of Kırşehir .

Location, name and condition

The ruin is located about 37 km north of Kırşehir on the edge of a wide treeless plain about 3 km from the village of Taburoğlu , about 6 km west of the road from Kırşehir via Çiçekdağı to Yerköy and Yozgat . It cannot be seen from the village and can only be reached via a poorly navigable dirt road. The ruin takes its name from three supporting arches that have survived to the modern era, which collapsed with the remains of the dome drum during the great earthquake in Kırşehir in 1938. The ruin continues to decline. The apses still described by the first visitors in the mid-19th century have now largely disappeared. Nothing has survived from the church's decoration and sculpture. During archaeological recordings, remains of paint and plaster from frescoes and colored window glasses were found. The still impressive remains of the wall reach half to two thirds of the reconstructed original height.

architecture

The church is largely made of bricks, which is a rarity. From the usual construction, in which the core of the walls consisted of rubble stone and only the outer skin of bricks, the one used in the building differs in that such a rubble stone core was only used in a few places. Stones were only used for the foundations. For decorative reasons, brick layers alternate with almost equally thick layers of mortar. A special feature of the church parallel two connected by a wide opening Ships ( Naoi ) each with a vestibule , but a common today exploitable only on the foundations narthex on. A crypt and architectural references to a reliquary could not be discovered. The building is monumental and stylistically shows a connection between local traditions and strong influences from the capital, Constantinople. The church was last dated to the second half of the 11th century and thus to the last decades of Byzantine rule in Central Anatolia.

function

Nothing is known about the church itself. The entire interior is lost, its location in the church is unknown. From an inscription originally in the church, only a barely legible copy is accessible. Neither the patronage nor the function of the church are known. Byzantine and Seljuk pottery shards were found in the area, as well as tombstones of a Muslim cemetery that have disappeared from the surface today, but no traces of a settlement or a monastery were found. Based on the fact of the double ships, a number of hypotheses on this and on the patronage have been expressed.

Eyice suspects that it was a church under the patronage of two emperors ruling at the same time and that it was built in memory of the victory of the general of the emperors Basil II and Constantine VIII , Bardas Phokas , over the usurper Bardas Scleros in the battle of Pankalia was built. He equates the place of the battle, which, according to an Armenian inscription, took place on the Sarwenis plain with the plain on the edge of which the church is located.

Mihaljević, on the other hand, sees the church building as a burial place under the patronage of a member of the local aristocracy with ties to the capital. The double nave served to perform several liturgical acts at the same time.

The remarks that can be found here and there in Turkish web sources, on the other hand, that it was a simultaneous church of several denominations, namely the Catholic and Protestant, are inaccurate crude and in extreme cases grossly unhistorical.

discovery

Üçayak Kilisesi in 1900

The ruin was first mentioned in 1842 by the English traveler HI Hamilton and then visited in 1843 by the Englishman William Francis Ainsworth , who also published an engraving of the site. He suggested that the church was built in succession of by Strabo to identify mentioned Jupiter Temple of Gadasena. In 1900 the ruin was visited by the traveler W. Crowfoot, who also made drawings and photographs of the object, which were then published in 1903 by J. Strzygowski and thus made the ruin known to the public. Strzygowski dated the building in the 5th to 6th centuries. In the period that followed, the ruins attracted little interest.

Archaeological research was carried out by Semavi Eyice in 1966 and 1970.

swell

  • Semavi Eyice: The ruine byzantine dite "Üçayak" près de Kirşehir en Anatolie centrale. In: Cahiers Archéologiques; Fin de l'Antiquité et Moyen Âge. 18 1968, p. 137.
  • Semavi Eyice: Kırşehir'de Üç-Ayak adındaki yapı kalıntısında araştırmalar - Investigations in the "Üç-Ayak" ruined site near Kırşehir. In: Anadolu Araştırmaları. 17, No. 2 2004, pp. 125–168, Turkish and German ( [3] ).
  • Marina Mihaljević: Üçayak: a forgotten Byzantine church. In: Byzantine Journal. 107, No. 2 2014, pp. 725-754.

Web links

Commons : Üçayak Kilisesi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Semavi Eyice: Kırşehir'de Üç-Ayak adındaki yapı kalıntısında araştırmalar investigations in the "Üç-Ayak" ruined site near Kırşehir. In: Anadolu Araştırmaları. 17, No. 2 2004, pp. 125-168 ( [1] ), p. 151
  2. ↑ Marina Mihaljević: Üçayak: a forgotten Byzantine church. In: Byzantine Journal. 107, No. 2 2014, pp. 725-754, p. 754
  3. ↑ Hüseyin Cumhur: Kırşehir - Üçayak Kilisesi. , accessed July 9, 2015.
  4. ^ William Ainsworth: Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, and Armenia . John W. Parker, 1842, p. 162 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. ↑ Crowfoot's photography and description
  6. ↑ Semavi Eyice: Kırşehir'de Üç-Ayak adındaki yapı kalıntısında araştırmalar investigations in the "Üç-Ayak" ruined site near Kırşehir. In: Anadolu Araştırmaları. 17, No. 2 2004, pp. 125-168 ( [2] ), pp. 143-145