Dr. Mine Kadiroðlu Leube

Dr. Mine Kadiroðlu Leube

Before the Turkish-Georgian borders were opened and we had a chance of coming to

Turkey to see the old Georgianmonuments, the name Dr.Mine Kadiroðlu was amystery. I knew

from the late professor W. Djobadze, that the only official way to have access to Georgian

monuments was to be a member of Mine Kadiroðlu’s group. I knew that going to north-eastern

Turkey in search of Georgian churches was risky, without any official permission, not knowing

Turkish and, even worse, not knowing the modern names of the villages, but still I went. How

could I dream of meeting Mine Haným, who at the time was nearby, leading her annual survey

with her students (Dr. Fahriye Bayram, Dr.TurgayYazar, Dr. Bülent Ýþler) and with whom I would later become friends? I had never been her student, nor was I lucky enough to be a member of her team, but, as a colleague, I enjoyed learning not only from her publications but also from her devotion to cultural heritage.

I met this legendary lady only in 2004, and since then we have encountered each other

on many occasions, at conferences, work-shops, on field trips, at friendly dinners, etc. in many

different countries and under many circumstances, but we have talked always about something

very sensitive and special for both of us - Tao-Klarjeti.

Still very few people know what Tao-Klarjeti means1. Thirty years ago, when Dr. Mine

Kadiroðlu started to study this subject, nearly nobody knew of it is in Turkey or in the west. For

Georgian scholars, this cultural heritage was unreachable, as we were divided by the iron

curtain between Soviet Georgia and NATO member Turkey. I can imagine how difficult it must

have been to work on Georgian Christian monuments in the north-eastern provinces of Turkey

and to obtain official permission to survey them. Dr. Kadiroðlu was rediscovering villages and

monuments which were known only through E. Takaishvili’s and N. Marr’s publications of the

early 20th century written in Georgian or in Russian. Dr. Kadiroðlu became the first Turkish

scholar who drew attention to this heritage and during 1995-2003 she was the officially

authorized director of the field surveys on the medieval Georgian monuments of Tao-Klardjeti

in north-eastern Turkey. During nine successive field surveys, Dr. Kadiroðlu’s team worked at

eighty sites and revealed the presence of over one hundred and forty remnants of edifices

belonging to sixteen fortifications, twenty-seven monasteries, twenty-eight churches and the

remainder to single-naved structures, mostly chapels. The aim of the survey was a systematic

documentation of the medieval Georgian monuments in Tao-Klarjeti. New measurements and

brilliant drawings were made, together with photographic and textual records. Dr. Kadiroðlu

trained a valuable number of scholars, who are successful in many universities of Turkey.

Before I start discussing my favorite publications of Dr. Kadiroðlu, I would like to mention

the pamphlets and calendars published each year displaying the better preserved monuments

of Tao-Klarjeti. In this way, Dr. Kadiroðlu has achieved an increased awareness of the

monuments and has supported the development of tourism in the region. The local authorities

very often reprint the texts by Dr. Kadiroðlu on their billboards; villagers proudly name Mine

Haným, when they learn that scholars come to see the churches in their villages. If these

monuments are a subject of cooperation between Turkish and Georgian governments, we

should especially and additionally appreciate the great work carried out by Dr.Mine Kadiroðlu,

her team and all her colleagues who supported her during her mission.

Ishkhani, a church building in the historic Tao region, was once an important religious and

cultural center of medieval Georgia. Ishkhani was the research subject for the PhD dissertation

which Mine Haným worked on at the Hacettepe University of Ankara; the research was later

published as a monograph in English The Architecture of The Georgian Church at ..þhan in the

series on the History of Art by Peter Lang of the European University, Frankfurt-am-Main, Berlin,

NewYork, Paris, 1991.

This book of Dr. Kadiroðlu must be considered as the first monograph published in the

west on the Georgian heritage in Turkey and the first monograph dedicated to a single

monument of Tao-Klarjeti.

In every book of art that deals with Georgian architecture, some of the churches in Tao-

Klarjetie (Oltu-Bereket)2 are mentioned in a few paragraphs that give repetitive information.

There is no monographic research on any of these monumental edifices, nor has there been any

attempt to make them known worldwide (Kadiroðlu 1991, 5)

However the most precious aspect of this book is not the author’s attempt to publicize

the monument but her identification of the building and its construction layers and also Dr.

Kadiroðlu’s discussions of the architecture of Ishkhani within its historical setting, including

written sources and inscriptions and her comparisons of its architecture with that of

Armenia, Byzantium and Syria: The church at Ishkhan (Ýþhan) remained the center of

interest to all who dealt with Georgian or Armenian art and architecture and especially its

colonnaded apse and the story behind it. (Kadiroðlu 1991, 9)

Mine Kadiroðlu, having the chance of working in situ, suggested a different vision of

the identification of the various layers of construction and especially of the eastern arcade

and two-storey ambulatory. She assumed that it is not the remains of the Nerses3 building,

as was suggested by E. Takaishvili in his field survey of 1917, published in 1960 and whose

views was shared by the other scholars. The scholars who dealt with the church at Ishkhan

(Ýþhan) adhere to the idea that this statement found in a tenth century manuscript was a

proof of the presence of an earlier part within the existing church (Kadiroðlu 1991, 16)4 Dr.

Kadiroðlu does not agree and is arguing that the main core of the modern building,

including the eastern and central parts of the church, were constructed simultaneously by

the Bishop Saba (early 9th c). To explain the unique form of the arcade, Dr. Kadiroðlu

believes that: The arcade of the existing church could have been constructed with spolia

from the previous edifice. Such a hypothesis needs however factual evidence. Without an

excavation it is not possible to state that any spolia from an older church, supposedly from

the tetraconchos of Nerses III, was employed in the existing structure (Kadiroðlu 1991, 70).

According to a project resulting from Turkish-Georgian negotiations on the

rehabilitation of a shared cultural heritage, Ishkhani is on the list of the most endangered

monuments to be restored. The knowledge acquired and the observations of Dr. Kadiroðlu

on Ishkani are most valuable and I do hope that her recommendations will be taken into

account.

Another most important finding related to Dr. Kadiroðlu is connected with the region

of Klarjeti. She has identified Shatberdi, one of the most significant monasteries of medieval

Georgia, famous for its fruitful monastic life and founded by Grigol of Khantsta. Despite the

special investigation of Niko Marr, the publisher of the life of Grigol of Khantsta and of the

intensive search by Georgian scholars, Shatberdi remained unknown or was mistakenly

identified as Porta or Yeni Rabat.

Dr. Kadiroðlu discovered an unknown monastic structure of a considerable size in the

village of Þerbet and correctly identified it with Shatberdi, her opinion being now shared by

most scholars of Tao-Klarjeti.

On the way from Þerbet, a local villager took us to the neighboring village of Gurcan,

where we faced the ruins of a domed church, totally unknown to us. Later I shared this

discovery with Mine Haným, but of course she knew of these ruins long before we went there!

This short anecdote I decided to write, just to emphasize that despite the fact that all

findings are recorded in survey reports, some valuable information remains only in Turkish. Dr.

Mine Kadiroðlu and members of her team have intensively published articles on Tao-Klarjeti,

but still I think that valuable findings, have yet to be published for a wider public, especially

now when the interest in the heritage of Tao-Klarjeti has much increased.

Dr. Kadiroðlu has contributed to numerous international conferences on Byzantine,

medieval Georgian, Turkish and Islamic art. I wish to call your attention to one paper

followed by the publication: “Islamic Features in the Architecture of Tao-Klardjet”. At first I

thought that she had discussed the appearance of some elements used by Georgian masons

in medieval times which could be argued as being inspired by Islam. But when I read the

paper, a unique approach appeared. Dr. Kadiroðlu gives a vivid picture of how the church

building was used to create a sacred space for a mosque. We should mention that

Georgians, as traditional Orthodox Christians, are very critical and sceptical when churches

are used as mosques, but Dr. Kadiroðlu in her paper shows the tolerance of religions during

the usage of the building; also she gives a list of those church buildings which were pulled

down to build a mosque with the same stones. She gives examples of how the local

population appreciated the curved stones and used these as a decoration for the mosques.

At the same, relying on historic sources, Dr. Kadiroðlu suggests that the churches were

converted into mosques only in the 19th c. In Khakhuli and Parkhali, the south doors were

used to place the mihrab. The stone curvings, figured and ornamental reliefs, together with

inscriptions were left on display for Muslims, who were coming to the mosque, or ex–

church, to worship. I think Dr. Kadiroðlu’s publication is very instructive for Georgians, to

see the positive side in converting the churches to mosques, and for Turks to regret how

much of the Turkish heritage was needlessly destroyed.

In the last few years, after she had finished the survey in the region, Dr. Kadiroðlu founded

and became, and still is, Editor-in-Chief of the periodical Anadolu ve Çevresinde Ortaçað/

Anatolia and its Vicinity in the Middle Ages, an annual volume, where leading scholars from all

over the world contribute articles on the medieval art of Anatolia and its neighborhood.

In 2006, Mine Kadiroðlu published a Turkish translation of C. Mango’s famous book

Byzantine Architecture and in this way she made a huge contribution to the studies of the

Byzantine heritage for students of many Turkish universities.

In 2010, together with Dr. Bülent Ýþler, Dr. Mine Kadiroðlu published a 250 page

monograph on Georgian Art Gürcü Sanatýnýn Ortaçaðý, Ankara, 2010. This Turkish publication

illustrated with brilliant pictures and drawings, maps and tables gives a comprehensive picture

of all aspects of medieval Georgian art, beginning with a general introduction on its history,

followed by a complete bibliography of Georgian art studies. The cultural heritage of Tao-

Klarjeti is set out as the main stream, from which the different aspects of Georgian art are

discussed.

For art history scholars in Turkey this book will bring them closer to Georgian Art,

neighboring but still unfamiliar. It will open a new page in the study of Georgian art in Turkey.

Hence Dr. Kadiroðlu’s contribution to the exploration of Georgian art is invaluable.

* Dr., Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut.

giviashvili_irene@yahoo.co.uk

1 The name Tao-Klarjeti was coined by scholars of the 20th c. It is a general name for the medieval Georgian heritage which survives in the north-eastern provinces of Turkey. Tao and Klarjeti once were Georgian provinces.

2 Dr. Kadiroðlu when writing the term Tao-Klarjeti each time places in brackets the artificial term Oltu- Bereket, which is confusing for most of the readers knowing the meaning of the term Tao-Klarjeti. Here I would like to explain that the existing names of the old toponimics, Oltu for Tao and Bereket for Klarjeti helped Dr. Kadiroðlu to avoid the missunderstanding as to why she was using only the historic Georgian toponims and not the modern ones.

3 Nerses III, Catholicos of Armenia in the mid-seventh century, was in exile for his Orthodox faith in his native village of Ishkhan.

4 According to vita: By the will of God, Saba became bishop in Ishkhani of the Catholic church built originally by the blessed Nerses and of his throne which for many years had been widowed. Now again took place the spiritual wedding of the cathedral which was built a second time by our blessed Saba with the material support of those God-imbued kings. Giorgi Merchule, The Life of Grigol of Khantzta, kept at the Patriarchate Library in Jerusalem, chapter 26.