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Today we visit the Ishak Pasa Palace and the city and citadel of Van.
Ishak Pasa Palace
This huge, empty palace and administrative center was second only to Topkapi in Istanbul in its grandeur and scope. Built by the regional governor and his heirs from 1685 to 1784, it is still massive and elaborate in scale, but much of its ornamentation has disappeared to plunderers, including Russian occupiers in the early part of the 20th century.
The word Pasa (pronounced "pasha") means military hero. Ishak was the name of the bey, or governor of the Kars/Dogubeyazit provinces, and ruled during Ottoman times. The 366 room palace has evidence of Ottoman, Persian, and Seljuk architectural styles. Because it is a relatively recent structure, in this area of thousands of years of history, it boasted a central heating system and indoor plumbing, including running water and a sewage system. Like Topkapi, it had a variety of structures within the main building, such as a turbe (tomb), library, mosque, medrese, and soup kitchen. Additionally, there are other buildings in the complex nearby.
Today the buildings are a museum complex, in the midst of ubiquitous renovation. The only visible structures in this remote, mountainous, beautiful countryside, are another small mosque and a few peasant huts.
On our way out of the harem rooms, who do we run into again—Jane, David, and other friends from the Australian tour. This is getting kind of fun, guessing where and when we are likely to run into this tour again. We are on different itineraries. For example, they had seen Ani the day before we did. But we are all visiting the major tourist sites in Eastern Turkey, so we were bound to run into one another; I just wouldn’t have thought we would see them as often. Jane accepted a slip of paper I had prepared in advance – just in case—with my email and blog address. I hope to hear from them after they complete their seven week (!) tour of Turkey.
On the road to Van
I am so excited about finally being able to visit the famous Lake Van, with its renowned Armenian church on an island in the middle of the lake. But first we have at least one more stop on the way.
While on the bus to Van, Erhan, the bus attendant served tea again. First he handed me a cup of scalding hot water, to be followed by a package with the tea bag, stirrer and sugar. While I was reaching for the bag, however, the bus began a fairly steep incline, knocking the water into my lap, scorching me and boiling the insides of my camera, which I had put on my while accepting the tea. Ouch! Although my clothes dried fairly quickly (after I briefly changed my seat), and there was no lasting harm to my legs, I tested my camera, only to find that it was working erratically. Sigh, wouldn’t you know after all these years of waiting to see Van, I would be unable to record it.
Sadly, I disembarked from the bus when we stopped for a tea house break (I hate tea today!) and a brief visit to the Muradiye Waterfall. I’m not sure which body of water flows down these falls, but they originate in the volcanic moonscape upriver. I was unable to get good photos of the landscape while I fooled with my camera. But I was eventually able to get pictures of both the falls and the scary suspension bridge that swayed precariously as we walked over the ravine and the river.
After that – kaput – my camera never worked again. Sad.
Rock of Van
When we reached the fortress of Van, on top of a huge outcropping, we first visited on one side of the rock a beautiful small mosque that had been designed by the famous Sinan in the 16th century, and renovated as recently as 2007. Since the gold leaf on the mihrab had been stolen, reportedly by local Kurds, the current gold was donated by nearby jewelers. The mihrab sparkles amid new tiles and carpets in the beautifully restored building.
At the base of the rock, we could see evidence of earlier homes which were destroyed by Russian supporters of Armenia in 1915.
Taking the bus to the other side of the huge outcropping, we split into two groups—those who wanted to climb to the top of the rock to visit the castle and other fortifications, and those who chose to stay behind at the teahouse. Since our new friend Gisela did not want to climb the rock, and since she knew about my camera’s demise, she entrusted me with her camera to take pictures for both of us. I was nervous about being responsible for her camera while I climbed some steep pathways, but I’m glad she trusted me. I was able to take some good pictures; her camera is great. After this visit, all pictures are from Gisela’s camera; after the Rock, though, she took them herself and graciously mailed a CD to me from Germany with her pictures. Thank you so much, Gisela.
As for the Rock and the castle:
As we climbed up the Rock of Van, the first adventure was to climb up, then down a scary looking metal stairway hugging the steep cliff, with a fence that looked like it should keep us from falling. The fence looked precarious to me, but then everything does at this height. To the side of us, on a flat surface of the cliff were long passages of text carved into the stone using a cuneiform script. These words , written in the Assyrian language, date from the kingdom of Urartu, my new reading interest, which dates from 1300 to 700 B.C. Inside an opening next to the script, we entered the burial tomb of one of the Urartian kings. I don’t remember which one was buried here (I think it was Sarduri), if in fact, he was, but I will fill in the blank as I continue my reading about that ancient kingdom. I do know that the Rock served as a fortification throughout successive civilizations as competition for land and plunder continued among clashing civilizations.
The entire rock and its various structures overlook the beautiful Lake Van, and the modern city of Van, which once served as the capital city of Urartu, called Tushpa at the time.
We continued our climb along the summit, to view other edifices constructed over the ages, most of which are made from bud brick and seem to jut out of the underlying stone as natural outcroppings. Some of the ruins are Urartian, some Roman, Assyrian, Byzantine, Seljuk, Ottoman, and so on through time. This is a very old place. Somewhere on the rock is even a tablet in cuneiform from the time of Xerxes the Great, which enabled modern scholars to crack the linguistic code of ancient Persian.
City of Van
Back in the city, a large group of us decided to take an after dinner stroll to a specialty silver shop where a local jeweler makes articles from ancient Urartian designs. As much as I am interested in Urartian art, I found the jewelry far too elaborate for my taste. So Larry (who was waiting patiently outside the crowded shop entrance) and I decided to explore the main street. We were greatly surprised by the large number of people with the same interest in promenading on this warm evening. Larry and I were not successful in finding a Migros grocery store, where we had hoped to purchase some soy milk for breakfast, but we did find a great sweet shop where we bought some dried fruit and nut treats, and the attendant gave me some free chocolate samples. Yum!
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