Tbeti
Tbeti ( Georgian ტბეთი ) is the ruin of a medieval cathedral on the territory of the former Georgian Kingdom of Tao-Klardschetien in what is now the northeastern Turkish province of Artvin . Monks of the Georgian Orthodox Church built the first monastery church at the beginning of the 10th century, which was expanded around the middle of the 11th century. The former Our Lady 's Cathedral in present-day village of Cevizli in the district Şavşat was the most important church in the former Georgian principality Schavscheti. It was well preserved until 1961, after which large parts collapsed.
location
Coordinates: 41 ° 25 ′ 18 ″ N , 42 ° 29 ′ 11 ″ E
The expressway from Hopa on the eastern Black Sea coast to Kars runs between Artvin in the west and Ardahan in the east upstream in a gorge that becomes increasingly narrow and steeper up to Şavşat along the Berta Suyu (Georgian Imerchewi ), a tributary of the Çoruh . The ruins of the churches of four Georgian monasteries have been preserved along this route on the right (northern) bank of the river. They are located at the foothills of the Imerchewi Mountains (Turkish Imerhevi Deresi ), which represent the southern drop of the Karçal Mountains ( Karçal Dağları ) up to 3415 meters high . The first branch from the valley leads to the Dolisqana monastery church in Hamamlıköy village. Another narrow dirt road branches off about 20 kilometers to the east, which leads to the former Opiza monastery . This path runs at about the same height on the rocky slope above the valley floor a few kilometers further to Chandsta (Turkish Porta). The cathedral of Tbeti near Şavşat ends the series of monastery churches.
Four kilometers west of the city, a medieval fortress (Sveti, early 11th century?) Sits enthroned on a steep rock in the valley that has become wider here. At the fortress, a side road branches off to the northwest in the valley of the Şavşat Dere (stream that flows into the Berta Suyu). After five kilometers, it reaches the village of Ciritdüzu slightly uphill through open hill country with cow pastures and continues via Veliköy 20 kilometers to Meşeli Karagöl, a lake in the Karagöl-Sahara National Park. In Ciritdüzu a narrow asphalt road turns left and after three kilometers you reach Cevizli with the church between the trees in the center of the village. Cevizli is a scattered settlement with 361 inhabitants (2011) at an altitude of about 1500 meters, whose farmsteads are surrounded by pastureland and in the north by wooded hills. The economic basis of the place is cattle breeding.
About 30 kilometers south of the Berta-Suyu, in the side valley of the Ardanuç Çay (Georgian Artanudschistskali ), the ruins of Yeni Rabat , the alleged location of the former Schatberdi monastery, have been preserved near the small town of Ardanuç . Other Georgian monasteries were built in equally remote side valleys of the Çoruh, the well-preserved group there includes Haho , Öşk Vank and Barhal .
history
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Monastic life in Eastern Georgia was in distress in the 8th century by the Arab emirate of Tbilisi (736-1080). Opiza was the oldest Georgian monastery in Tao-Klardschetien, which was built in the middle of the 8th century, far from Muslim rule. Around 782 the priest Grigol Chandsteli (759–861), who was born in Kartlien , came to Opiza and a few years later founded the nearby Chandsta monastery. He and his students founded other monasteries in the 920s and 930s in remote and difficult-to-access places in the mountains.
The first stone church in Tbeti was built during the reign of the Bagratids Ashot I or Ashot Kuchi before his death in 918. He was from 896 to 918 Eristawi ("Grand Duke") of Tao-Klardschetien and son of the Kuropalaten Gurgen I († 891). The design followed the principle of central buildings that emerged in Georgia in the middle of the 6th century . Their floor plan in the form of a Greek cross formed the basis of the Georgian church building, which was often lengthened to the west by combining it with the older basilical building type. In the first half of the 11th century, parts of the church were rebuilt and enlarged. This possibly happened during the tenure of the monastery director Saba Mtbevari, who had a castle and a tower built near Tbeti in 1027/28. He called the castle Sveti ("pillar"), as the historian Sumbat Davitisdze reports in his "History of the Bagratids" in the 11th century. Some of the interior wall paneling, the east wall of the apse and the outer area of the north arm of the cross date from this period . The southern arm of the cross contains some ornamental stones from the 11th century, but probably dates in its entirety to the 13th century. Further structural changes between these three main construction phases cannot be ruled out.
Tbeti became a center of religious learning during Ashot's reign. The monk Giorgi Mertschule wrote the hagiography "The Life of Grigol Chandsteli" about the founder of the monastery, Grigol Chandsteli, in Chandsta in 951 . This work describes in detail not only the origin of the Chandsta monastery, but also the social life of the monastic communities in the region. Mertschule speaks highly of Stephane Mtbevari from Tbeti, who, inspired by Aschot, wrote the historical work "The Martyrdom of Gobron". It pays homage to Gobron († 914), a Christian Georgian martyr who led the defense of the fortress Queli (Georgian Q'ueli tsikhe, Turkish Kol Kalesi ) against the Azerbaijani emir Abu'l-Kassim and who was beheaded after the defeat. The work is an important source of the raids of Abu'l-Kassim in Armenia and Georgia in 914. It has been passed down in several copies, the oldest surviving comes from Gabriel Saginaschvili from 1713 on the instructions of Patriarch Domenti (r. 1704–1741 ).
The word Mtbevari generally designates bishops from Tbeti, it is composed of the plural suffix ev and ar , an additional syllable common in Mingrelian and Lasic , according to the root tb . Tba is translated as "lake" and the derived Tbeti means something like "place with many lakes".
Another 10th century scholar who worked in Tbeti was Ioane Mtbevari, whose collection of 15 chants ( dasdebeli ) composed in an elegant linguistic style was intended to complement the psalms . He also published the Gospel of Tbeti, which is now in Saint Petersburg . In the 10th century the monk David Tbeli translated "The Life of Saint Martha" from Greek in Tbeti . She was the mother of Symeon Stylites the Younger (521–597). Akvila Mtbevari copied “The Life of the Saints” in 1002, which is now kept in the Iviron Monastery on the Greek peninsula of Athos . Other scholars working in Tbeti are known by name from the 12th century. In addition to Opiza and Gelati (in western Georgia), Tbeti owned the most important workshops for gold and silversmiths.
The earliest description from more recent times comes from Giorgi Kazbegi (1840-1921), a nobleman and general in the service of the Russian army, who came to the Georgian territories under Ottoman rule in 1873 as part of a reconnaissance mission . In his travel notes he mentioned the churches there. We owe a description from 1879 to the Georgian historian and archaeologist Dimitri Bakradze (1826–1890). In 1888 the Russian architect Andreĭ Mikhailovich Pavlinov (1852–1898) visited the site, he published his observations together with a basic plan and six photographs. In June 1904, the linguist Nikolai Marr stayed in Tbeti for four days. In his closer examination of the largely intact church used as a mosque , he described many details that have now disappeared. They can be found in his travel diaries published in 1911. Around 1960, Nicole and Jean-Michel Thierry were the first art historians who were allowed to undertake research trips to the Tao-Klardschetien, which had been difficult to access until then, after the Second World War. Wachtang Djobadze examined Tbeti in 1973 and 1981. The building was still in good condition in 1961, after which the entire western part collapsed because a regional Kaymakam (administrative officer) had stones removed. The church was used as a mosque until that time
architecture
The basic plan of the cross- domed church of Tbeti after the extension in the 11th century appeared as such on the outside, as in the monastery churches of Haho and Opiza, in Dolisqana and Chandsta, however, the cross shape was hidden within a rectangular structure. The internal dimensions were 22.8 meters on the east-west main axis and 22.4 meters for the transepts. The chancel, with the floor level raised by three steps, was delimited by a semicircular apse that lay within a straight east wall. The two rectangular side rooms of the altar ( pastophoria ) had no apses and no doors to the central nave, but rather unusual accesses from the chancel. This was illuminated by a central arched window in the upper area, which was retained in the apse wall that was upright up to the gable; the blind niche below the window was broken out to the floor. Two narrow side window slots one above the other in the east wall belonged to the two side rooms on the ground floor and the almost dark chambers above, which could only have been accessible through a hole in the floor.
The two aisles differed in width and design. A barrel-vaulted room with a round apse was added to the north arm of the older building , which had a window in the north and east wall and was accessible via a door to the church. Another door in the western narrow side led into a long rectangular chamber without light, which is missing today. The north arm was 8.2 meters in length and about 11 meters in width; the southern arm was 7.4 meters long and 10.5 meters wide. The main room in the west has been completely destroyed, according to Marr it should have been 10.65 meters long. In the west, a gallery was built over two arches, which rested on a central pillar and pilasters on the north and south walls. Such a gallery, reserved for women, was common in churches from the 10th century and is also found in Dörtkilise , Barhal and Öşk Vank , but no longer occurs after the 13th century.
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In the center of the church there were four mighty pillars arranged in a square, connected by round arches on which the dome rested. The two eastern columns framed the access to the apse, the two western ones were connected to the inner wall corners of the transepts. The column shafts were octagonal, this only occurs in İşhan besides Tbeti and is otherwise unique for Georgian and Armenian church architecture, which only has rectangular pillars and never round columns as a supporting structure. Another special feature was revealed during excavations. A one meter lower floor level of the original church came to light under the flooring. Below a carefully decorated circular column base, the exposed column section shows a completely different shape with a slightly smaller diameter. The complex shape of the shaft of an octagonal star can hardly have been built into the first church as early as 918. It is possible that the church underwent considerable changes in the statics around the middle of the 10th century at the same time as İşhan, when a similar lower pillar appeared. In the first half of the 11th century, the column shafts were reinforced to form an octagon with stone slabs placed in front. The four column bases differed from each other. Above the horizontal bulge (torus) at the base of the north-eastern column, there were sweeping waves in a circular motion on the shaft. Each wave was filled with six-petalled rosettes , a pattern that does not occur except in Tbeti in Tao-Klardschetien. The earliest comparable ornament can be found on the cathedral of Mtskheta with the construction period 1010-1019 on a window frame and similarly above the central window of the east facade of İşhan. The entire preserved architectural ornamentation is dated to the first half of the 11th century.
The drum was circular on the inside and sixteen-sided on the outside . The wall fields were delimited by flat half-columns and blind arches, every other wall field was broken through by a long, narrow window slot. A pyramid roof covered with stone slabs formed the outer edge above the dome . Inside, the transition from the arched square to the circular shape of the drum is made by pendentives . The roof of the nave is only partially preserved above the upper floor of the north arm. Here you can see that the roof structure consisted of tree branches that were covered with mortar and embedded in it. Clay roof tiles were laid over this.
Building sculpture and painting
On the north wall of the western arm or on the north-western pillar there was once the relief of the ruler Aschot Kuchi carved out of a gray stone block. The 1.13 meter high, blocky and not very detailed figure of Aschot is executed in high relief. The donor holds a model of the church in his outstretched hands. The face and a large part of the body were subjected to multiple blows and, like the largely broken off church model, are badly damaged. Nevertheless, the realistic design shows that the figure has a beard and a kabalachi, a long headscarf woven from coarse wool. Aschot's feet are in shaft boots, his long robe is also made of thick fabric and is embroidered with images of lions. Another piece of clothing with diamond-shaped patterns peeks out from under the half-open robe, which is held in place by a wide leather belt.
The three deep wall niches on the eleven meter wide east side are framed by double columns and arcade arches. The decoration on the otherwise flat outer walls was distributed unevenly: there were no blind arches on the west side and a single blind arch was attached to the south and north sides of the west nave. The simple half-columns generally have a diameter of 20 centimeters, the double columns of 14 centimeters each. The middle arch field of the east wall is twice as wide as the side ones. These dimensions differ significantly from the proportions of other churches. In the churches of Dörtkilise, Öşk Vank and Barhal, for example, the ratio of the middle and side niches on the east wall is between 1: 1 and 1: 1.4. Instead, in Tbeti, the elegant elevation of the central arched area of the churches mentioned was dispensed with, with the result that an undivided, monotonous-looking gable surface was created.
Braided bands in three steps surround the central arched window. The carefully executed, guilloché-like, intertwined circular shapes are only completely preserved above the window and lie one above the other so seamlessly that they can all date from the beginning of the 11th century. The small side window slots are unadorned. A relief stone above the southern window slot on the east side shows a Star of David , formed from a single bead. On the gable, three circular holes in square relief stones provided some light in the storage rooms that were up there. The ornaments on these stones are unique except for the middle one, which was used in a similar way on the south wall in Yeni Rabat. In terms of scale, they correspond to the reliefs on the lower wall areas, while in the earlier church of Öşk Vank the stonemason took the greater distance from the viewer into consideration and enlarged the reliefs on the gable.
The east walls on the north and south cross arm show a different quality of the material used and the processing. The small remains of the north arm, especially an inscription fragment above the arched window, are sufficient to date this part to the first half of the 11th century. The gable wall of the southern arm of the cross is better preserved. The middle blind arch is 3.25 meters wide and narrows in four steps to an inner width of 2.60 meters 0.6 meters lower. The two lateral arch fields are 2.08 meters wide on the outside and jump back to 1.44 meters wide. The decorative patterns on the south side are generally more numerous than on the east side, but appear more schematic and sterile, which indicates a later construction period.
According to Marr's 1904 description, paintings covered all the walls in the church except for the north and south arms of the cross. The accompanying writings on the figurative representations were written in the old Georgian script mrgvlovani . The central apse wall was filled with Christ seated majestically on his throne; In 1990 his right arm and right foot as well as parts of the throne were still recognizable. Christ was surrounded by the guardian angels Cherub and Seraph . Mary and some of the apostles below are stylistically assigned to the time of the Byzantine Komnenen dynasty.
literature
- Wachtang Djobadze: Early Medieval Georgian Monasteries in Historic Tao, Klardjetʿi and Šavšetʿi. (Research on Art History and Christian Archeology, XVII) Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 1992, pp. 218–231 (plates 317–346)
- Volker Eid : East Turkey. Peoples and cultures between Taurus and Ararat . DuMont, Cologne 1990, pp. 201f, ISBN 3-7701-1455-8
- Thomas Alexander Sinclair: Eastern Turkey: An Architectural and Archaeological Survey. Vol. II. The Pindar Press, London 1989, pp. 20f
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Population of city, towns and villages - 2011. ( Memento of September 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Turkish Statistical Institute
- ↑ Martin Nadler: Anatolian impressions. (PDF; 332 kB) In: Loop, Sledge, Wheel and Carriage. On the question of early means of transport north of the Alps. (Hemmenhofener Skripte 3) Janus, Freiburg 2002, pp. 93–98 (description of traditional farm implements with photos from 1991)
- ^ Edith Neubauer: Old Georgian architecture. Rock towns. Churches. Cave monasteries. Anton Schroll, Vienna / Munich 1976, p. 32f
- ↑ V. Silogava, R. Shengelia: Tao Klardjeti. Chapter IV. Eparch of Tbeti . Iberiana, Tbilisi 2006
- ^ Neubauer, p. 184
- ↑ Sinclair, p. 20; Djobadze, pp. 218, 230-231.
- ↑ Djobadze, pp. 222-224
- ↑ Djobadze, p. 224; by Russudan Mepisaschwili, Wachtang Zinzadze: The Art of Ancient Georgia. Edition Leipzig, Leipzig 1977, p. 246: referred to as the “pillar figure of the church from the years 891–918”
- ↑ Djobadze, p. 224; Mepisaschwili, Zinzadze, pp. 223, 246. Relief today in the National Museum in Tbilisi
- ↑ Djobadze, pp. 228-230
- ↑ Oath, p. 202