KEMALIYE
In the Munzur Mountains in eastern Turkey is the
small town of Kemaliye, known in Ottoman times as Egin. It lies
on the River Karasu, a tributary of the upper Euphrates, which over
the ages formed a natural barrier between the states warring for
supremacy in Anatolia. The valley of the Karasu, which in this region
is largely rugged and rocky, here widens slightly, allowing the
town a foothold. But the real source of life for the town is the
spring of Kadigölü at the foot of the mountains. The streams
fed by the spring wander all through the town, along the edge of
the streets and beneath houses where they cool the larders; pour
from fountains in gardens, courtyards and squares, occasionally
forming pools and turning water mills; and lend their background
music to the singing of birds. The earliest mention of the town
in written records dates from the 11th century, when it is thought
to have been founded.
Foreign travellers always spoke eloquently of the
town, as in the case of Helmuth von Moltke, who visited Kemaliye
in 1839 and described it as the loveliest town that he had seen
in Asia, equalled only by Amasya. The limited amount of land available
for farming and its remoteness from the main trade routes were the
main factors in the social, economic and cultural destiny of Kemaliye.
The town's wealth depended instead on the fact that
the men of the town were granted the right, by imperial edict, to
supply the Ottoman capital of Istanbul with wood and coal, and were
by tradition bankers to the court and ruling classes.
From a young age the men therefore worked in Istanbul,
where they became acquainted with the culture of this large city,
and later in life used the money they had earned to build fine homes
in Kemaliye. The women, who remained behind, poured their yearning
for their menfolk into beautiful needlework and other handcrafts.
Kemaliye is one of few Turkish towns to have preserved
its late 19th century architecture, and its beauty is enhanced by
its magnificent setting in the steep valley. Beyond the orchards
and fields along the river bank the town rises in terraces, the
houses interspersed with shops, mosques, churches, schools and public
buildings. Only at the point where the mountain rears into a sheer
rock wall do the buildings and greenery come to an end.
Throughout its history Kemaliye was home to communities of Turks
and Armenians, and the architecture reflects a synthesis of both
cultures.
The traditional houses of the town are set amidst dense greenery
consisting of mulberry, walnut, plane and poplar trees, providing
one of the loveliest illustrations of the harmony that can exist
between architecture and the natural environment.
Factors like the need to make economic use of the
limited land available and the harsh continental climate meant that
the houses were designed for compactness, and instead of spreading
horizontally, they rise vertically in three, four and even five
storeys.
However, the terrain is so steep that each storey
opens on to the street or garden, with the result that the inhabitants
are not isolated from their environment as in modern high-rise flats.Due
to the extremes of climate, each house has separate rooms for summer
and winter use, whatever the social class or ethnic origin of the
occupants, the houses of rich and poor varying only as to the number
of rooms, their size and distribution amongst the floors. The area
of the central room used for sitting in is known as the divanhane,
and the room for receiving guests as the selamlik.
The selamlik is also known as the direkli oda or
'pillar room', and forms a self-contained apartment with its small
kitchen for preparing coffee and its own outside entrance. Each
house has two kitchens, one for the preparation of meals and another
large one known as the tandir yeri for preparing and preserving
foodstuffs for the long winter. In addition there is a larder, a
cellar, lavatory, byre, and store for straw.The steep terrain means
that the main rooms of every house command a spectacular view of
the river to the east, no house blocking the view of another.
The eastward facing façades therefore have
the most windows, and smaller stained glass above the main windows.
On every floor there is a jutting bay, whose size indicates the
importance of the room to which it belongs. In this carefully graduated
hierarchy the most protruding bay belongs to the divanhane, which
is the main living-room in summer, and the next to the selamlik,
followed by the other rooms. The façades are symmetrical
in their design.
The outer surface is then clad with good quality
pine boards arranged vertically. The lower edges of these boards
are decoratively cut or carved. The wooden shutters over the windows
consist of two sections hinged at either side, and sometimes a third
horizontal section. These have wrought iron fittings, and when closed
the only light admitted into the rooms is through the ornate upper
windows. A wooden parapet surrounds the top floor, part of which
consists of a flat pebbled terrace known as rihtim or yetme. Here
fruit, herbs, sheets of boiled fruit known as pestil, and a dough
of flour, yogurt and various other ingredients known as tarhana
are dried in the hot sun during the summer. Opening onto this terrace
are rooms known as kaçak used for storage or for sitting
during the summer.
The door-knockers of Kemaliye's traditional houses are an interesting
feature of the façades. They consist of two parts, one for
use by men which produces a deep sound, and the other for women
which produces a higher pitched sound.
These distinctive houses in their spectacular setting
are fascinating examples of the varied architecture of Ottoman Turkey,
reflecting local culture and climatic conditions in their design
and structure.
* Associate Professor Berrin Alper is a lecturer
at Yildiz Technical University Faculty of Architecture
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