Sadegh Hedayat is probably the preeminent Iranian author of the 20th century. In spite of or because of this his works are banned in his homeland. His best-known work is "The Blind Owl," a strange and disconcerting novella on identity, obsession, human connectivity and the power of the past to shape the present. Nonetheless, he is also the author of numerous short stories. One of them is called “Fire-Worshipper.”
In its English translation, this is a mere four pages long. Yet what this story lacks in length, it more than makes up for in profundity. The story is set in Paris and focuses on a character who has just come back from an extensive journey in Iran. Through his character, Hedayat makes the observation, which many if not all of the travelers in this series must have felt, that when a traveler is on a journey if it is of a prolonged and arduous type, they can find themselves preoccupied with thoughts of their distant home. This can even turn into an obsession. But, once they have returned there, they may equally find that their feelings of longing have now transferred to the place they have left. Hence Hedayat has his character exclaim that now he is back in France he wishes he had not returned and has the feeling as if he had lost something.
His second observation, and the point of the story, is to postulate that there may be a religious impulse even in people who regard themselves as being liberated from what they would hold as senseless superstition. Since Hedayat’s death, a supportive scientific claim for this has been advanced with the so-called “God gene” that supposedly inclines human beings to have a spiritual sense. This does not, of course, prove that religion in general, let alone any specific religion, is necessarily true, but it does demonstrate that there may be hardwired into the human psyche a need to believe. This is an especially interesting idea to be raised by Hedayat, who was himself no champion of the majority religion of his homeland.
As for the character in the story, he is a fictionalized version of a real person. That person is the 19th-century French painter Eugene Flandin (1809-1889). He is the 12th visitor to Türkiye in this series. This piece focuses on Flandin in Istanbul, a city he knew from two visits. Flandin is probably best known for his trip to Persia, that trip being the one featured in Hedayat’s story. However, on his return from there to France, he stopped off in Istanbul. Then, he returned to Istanbul in 1844 on his way to join the French archaeologist Paul Botta in his excavations at the site of what he wrongly identified as the ancient Assyrian capital of Nineveh. In both cases, that Istanbul was not the final destination of Flandin’s travels should not in any way suggest that he lacked interest in the city. His drawings and their accompanying writings prove how much Istanbul meant to him.
Though French, Flandin was born in Naples where his father was serving Napoleon’s brother, Joseph Bonaparte, the king there at the time. Later, it appears that young Flandin taught himself art. He went on to serve as a military painter during the French invasion of Algeria in 1837. One result of this was his great "The Capture of Constantine," which was bought by the then-French King Louis Philippe. Algeria must have whetted his appetite for the lands of the Islamic world, and it was two years later that he was sent off on his famed trip to Persia.
He was tasked, as Lynne Thornton puts it, “to make a complete inventory of (Persia’s) monuments, both ancient and modern.” He is regarded as having succeeded in his task, and this reveals something about Flandin. It is that although he belongs to the Romantic era, in his depictions which are noted for their accuracy, he reflects the observatory exactness that is born of the Enlightenment. This is surely why Hedayat has used him for his story, for Flandin’s being an enlightened European gives his momentary embrace of religion more impact than if he were a Romantic at the mercy of his own vacillating emotions.
The accuracy of Flandin’s drawings can also be seen in his Istanbul work. However, it is not always matched by the opinions in his accompanying text, which are not always correct. All the same, the work makes interesting reading. Before moving on to his views of Istanbul, a note must be made on the source material for this piece. There is little in English on Flandin, and I was unable to find French source material either. So, I have relied on the book "Istanbul" ("L’Orient"), which is a translation of Flandin into Turkish by Orhan Koloğlu. This seems to be a very competent work, but rendering it in turn into English means translating from a translation, which can be like the commencement of the children’s game of Chinese whispers, and result in text quite different from the original. Therefore though I have tried to stay as close to the Turkish text as possible, I have not, as I usually do, used direct quotations, as I can only be sure of the sense and not the specificity of Flandin’s writings
To contextualize the Ottoman capital of Istanbul, Flandin notes that it divides into a Turkish and a European city. He wrongly claims, though, that only Muslims live in the old city of Istanbul. He feels that the Turkish city is undoubtedly the most interesting. He notes that not only is it the largest part with the largest population, but more importantly it includes every kind of monument and building, including the palace of the sultan, the greatest and most beautiful mosques, tombs and markets. He sees everything that makes a city great and magnificent as being in Istanbul and calls the city the queen of the East. He asserts that from the perspective of the shore of the Golden Horn, all of the domes, black cypresses and numberless minarets make an astounding sight. Flandin takes particular note of the four greatest mosques of the city. They are the Süleymaniye and Sultanahmet, often known to foreigners as the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and Sultan Bayazıt mosques. With these standing prominent within it, the other elements of the city combine with them to form a whole. He feels that this whole is one of the most astonishing views that a person can come across, striking an impression on the soul that will never be effaced.
Here his eyes are drawn to the Yeni, or New, Mosque.
He sees a busy market in its environs, as there still is today. Flandin praises its magnificent architecture and its clean white stone. He notes the main dome soaring above the huge plane trees that protect it from the sun and between its graceful minarets. Flandin notes another tradition connected with the New Mosque that can still be seen today, albeit now it is produced through electric lighting. He notes at night in Ramadan, illuminated Quran verses formed from colored glass hang over the mosque.
Flandin also notes the lovely caiques in the Golden Horn. Nevertheless, his interest in the New Mosque and his remark concerning the four great mosques reveal his interest in the mosques of the city in general. They take up a fair bit of his text, so I have mainly focused on them here myself too. The Süleymaniye he describes as being the biggest and most impressive of all the mosques of Istanbul.
He describes its formidable dome as creating the most amazing space inside. In passing on to its environs, he claims that the surrounding plane trees are of equal age and almost equal height to the minarets of the mosque and that they form a spacious area for strolling. He says that in the shade provided by their branches, mullahs wander with their prayer beads, and the students of the madrassah of the mosque complex relax smoking their narghiles. He also notes that a little further on, carriages that have brought venerable ladies to the mosque are drawn up and the oxen that pull them are swatting away flies with their tails while they feed on the grass. As for the attached tomb of Suleiman the Magnificent and his favorite consort Roxelana, it is a place of peace being in a space surrounded by a wall with expansive grated windows is a garden full of cypress trees and decorated with deep green lilacs and rose buds interspersed with bunches of jasmine.
There is nothing to break the silence there save for the chirping of birds. Amid the smell of honeysuckle, two domes can be seen marking the tombs and final resting places of this famous pair, although Flandin is perplexed as to how such a dictatorial and cruel woman could be honored with such a tomb, considering her murderous career in harem politics.
Flandin’s interest in mosques is not simply limited, however, to the obvious grand examples. For instance, he looks too at the Şehzade Mosque, describing its graceful appearance, with its dome, minarets, cypresses, and iron or golden grating, forming for him a delightful impression. Moreover, his interest in mosques also takes him outside of the old walled city. For instance, he is impressed by the newly constructed mosque at Tophane, which he describes as magnificent and graceful. Indeed, he argues that it is one of the most beautiful mosques in the whole city. Then, on the other side of the Bosporus, averring that in Türkiye, the need for religion and faith is never forgotten, he writes of Selim Mosque, built alongside the military barracks of the Selimiye. He admires its dome and its rich minarets rising into the sky.
Much like Lord Byron, Flandin is impressed by the numerous cemeteries of Istanbul. His writing on one will suffice here for an example – that of the cemetery in Üsküdar. Flandin notes its enormous size, claiming that this has come about due to the religious Turks who live in the old city on the other side of the Bosporus wishing for themselves to be buried here in the belief that for the peace of the deceased, the soil of Asia is safer than that of the soil of Europe. I have never come across this myself anywhere, so I cannot vouch for whether there is any truth to what Flandin affirms here. Flandin also notes that the cemetery is shaded by a forest of cypress trees, underneath which is the world of the dead in a crowded space of graves. Indeed, he claims that according to calculations, it would be possible to completely rebuild the city walls of Istanbul with its gravestones. In the cemetery, at one particular family tomb, whose structure he admires, he notes the sweet smell of the roses and jasmines that surround it.
As for Flandin’s later life, he witnessed the 1848 revolution that overthrew Louis Philippe. One victim of the revolution was the aforementioned Flandin painting that the monarch had purchased. It was stabbed with revolutionary bayonets. This incident is symbolic in that Flandin as an artist himself falls victim to two revolutions – the technological and artistic ones mentioned in my earlier piece on Fausto Zonaro. With the camera now producing accurate monochrome representations on one side and with the new artistic movement of impressionism capturing color and vibrancy on the other, there was no longer any interest in the work of Flandin, and he retired from art in the 1870s.
But from the perspective of today, a comparison of the very different types of artwork of Zonaro and Flandin enables us to see what value Flandin has. Zonaro’s work gives us a feel for what Istanbul is like. It draws us in, tricking us into seeing movement in the stillness and almost hearing the noises and smelling the smells of the great city. His work gives a Gestalt impression – one of a whole. But the detail is lost in this whole, save for the individualization of the people in his paintings. Flandin’s work is the reverse. It is still and accurate, and the human figures in his work appear to have only a decorative function. He seems uncomfortable with them; they are somewhat stock figures rather than the individuals that Zonaro so brilliantly portrays. Indeed in Flandin’s picture of Eyüp Sultan Mosque, the figure in the foreground is difficult to make out, while the gravestones, atilt as Ottoman gravestones often are, are clearly enough depicted for details to be seen on them.
The explanation is surely that Flandin is less interested in the fleeting life of human beings than in the lasting monuments that they build. Also, by depicting these in a technical manner, he prevents us from being engulfed in the whole of the picture, instead allowing our eyes to freely wander and take in details, such as each individual stone in the wall of a mosque or the frets of the lattice of a house. This impression of Flandin as a seeker of the manmade rather than the human element is heightened by his writings in which details of buildings seem to be given prominence.
So in terms of providing the viewer with how late Ottoman Istanbul would feel in its dynamism, Zonaro must be the artist of choice. But the detached accuracy of Flandin allows us to methodically compare his work with the city of today to reveal what has changed and what has remained the same. And from his work, for instance, we see, unsurprisingly, that the mosques that he admired so much have changed little. Other scenes enable us to see both continuity and change together. For example, his “A Street in Galata” belongs very much to the 19th century, with the apparel of those in the street and its wooden houses with their charming overhanging latticed upper floors. Yet, anyone who has made the steep climb up this street from Karaköy in our time will surely immediately recognize this view from the accurately drawn perspective and the huge Galata Tower looming over the view in the background.
In his picture of Beşiktaş, we can see just how much Istanbul has changed. There is a point of continuity from his time to ours in the lovely Mosque of Sinan Pasha near the water’s edge. There is also some continuity in Beşiktaş’s role as a landing stage for carrying passengers across the Bosporus, but here the appearance of the passengers and the types of ferries – i.e. caiques – are now very different. But what strikes the eye for one familiar with modern Istanbul is the copious trees and the green Arcadian hill in the background. In the picture, Beşiktaş appears as a waterside village rather than being part of the metropolitan concrete jungle of Istanbul as it is today.
So, it is probably the case that Flandin would appeal more to the historian than the art lover, but that is not a negative thing. It means that those who want to accurately understand the past are provided by him with a suitable visual record of the city before photography would take over this role.
