Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
79
result(s) for
"Temples Turkey."
Sort by:
Between Tarhuntas and Zeus Polieus : cultural crossroads in the temples and cults of Graeco-Roman Anatolia
Anatolia is an area of the ancient world with a remarkable borderland character between the Greek and the Near Eastern worlds. The present book studies several ancient Anatolian cults and sanctuaries, focusing on the process of interaction between local cultures, Persians, Greeks and Romans. Each specific contribution presents a case study with a thorough analysis of the available epigraphic, numismatic, literary and archaeological evidence from a linguistic, historical and religious perspective. Gathered from a vast geographical area this book explores different examples of these interactions expressed through local versions of major Greek and Anatolian deities: the Xanthian Leto, Ma of Comana, the Carian Sinuri, Mên Askaenos, Meis Axiottenos, Apollo Syrmaios, Artemis Sardiane, Meter Sipylene, a Cilician Zeus Ceraunius and the river gods.
Book
Community identity and archaeology
Community Identity and Archaeologyexplores the concept of community identity and its application in archaeology, using the modern Turkish sites of Aphrodisias and Beycesultan as case studies to illustrate the formation and dissolution of communities over time. The concept of the community is vital to the way we understand human societies both past and present, and the last decade has seen widespread interest in communities from both the popular and academic spheres. The concept is also central to archaeology, where the relationship between sites and communities remains controversial. Naoíse Mac Sweeney aims to take the debate one step further, setting out a comprehensive framework for the archaeological investigation of community identity, encompassing theoretical approaches for its conceptualization, practical methodologies for its investigation, and detailed case studies in Anatolia to test and illustrate its arguments. This book contributes to discussions in archaeological theory and material culture studies and is particularly relevant to archaeologists working on different types of cultural identity.Community Identity and Archaeology's readership will include undergraduate and graduate students as well as academic specialists. In addition, the book contains material of direct historical interest for Classics and Near Eastern departments. It includes valuable new research relevant for those working on Aegean, Mycenaean, or Early Greek antiquity, as well as specialists in Anatolia including scholars working on the Hittite, Phrygian, and Lydian empires.
eBook
Structural Behaviour of 13th and 14th Century Seljuk Mosques and Acculturation of Construction Knowledge
This study aims to demonstrate the acculturation of Seljuk architecture and construction techniques by tracing the development of peripheral walls in Seljuk wooden hypostyle mosques built in 13th and 14th centuries. To track the exchange of construction knowledge two Seljuk mosques (the Hanönü Mosque in Kastamonu and the Ahi Elvan Mosque in Ankara) are selected for comparison in this study. The main difference between the two mosques is their structural systems: one has a wooden peripheral wall and wooden skeleton system, while the other has a masonry peripheral wall and wooden pillars. In this study, a comparison of the structural systems and performances of these examples of wooden mosques exhibiting different wall systems was made together with structural analyses under basic loads. A series of structural analyses provides significant data about the structural behaviour of these types of structures, indicating acculturation of elements from Asia and Byzantium within Seljuk architecture and construction techniques.
Journal Article
Charting the “Geography of the Heart”: The Diyanet’s Civilizational Vision and Its European Frontiers
Recent scholarship has studied the extensive transformation of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) over the past two decades as embodying a form of religious populism that mobilizes civilizational antagonisms. Based on a directed qualitative content analysis of Friday sermons, official publications, online material, broadcasts, and public statements by Diyanet leaders, this article makes three contributions. First, while confirming that the Diyanet promotes the civilizational unity of the ummah and casts Turkey as the spiritual custodian of a transhistorical Islamic world, the analysis shows that anti-elitist framings characteristic of populism are barely present in its rhetoric. Second, the article provides a detailed examination of gönül coğrafyası (geography of the heart), a widely invoked yet understudied concept through which the Diyanet reimagines Ottoman-Islamic heritage as a sacred topography of civilizational belonging and responsibility. Third, it examines how Europe is situated both outside and within this imagined geography: at once a constitutive and menacing “other” marked by Islamophobia and cultural decay yet also a moral frontier inhabited by Muslim diasporas through whom Turkish Islam extends its reach. By drawing such symbolic boundaries, the Diyanet frames Islam as both religious patrimony and ethical alternative to Western modernity, portraying itself as a key actor in the re-sacralization of modern life across borders.
Journal Article
So Fair a House
Archaeologists have proposed that quite a number of structures dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B in southwest Asia were nondomestic ritual buildings, sometimes described specifically as temples or shrines, and these figure large in some interpretations of social change in the Near Eastern Neolithic. Yet the evidence supporting the identification of cult buildings is often equivocal or depends on ethnocentric distinctions between sacred and profane spaces. This paper explores the case of Göbekli Tepe, a large Pre-Pottery Neolithic site in Turkey that its excavator claims consisted only of temples, to illustrate weaknesses in some kinds of claims about Neolithic sacred spaces and to explore some of the problems of identifying prehistoric ritual. Consideration of the evidence suggests the alternative hypothesis that the buildings at Göbekli Tepe may actually be houses, albeit ones that are rich in symbolic content.
Journal Article
A Proposal for Reinforcement of Historical Masonry Minarets: Gaziantep Kabasakal Mosque Minaret
This study investigated the historical Kabasakal Mosque minaret’s seismic performance in the Şahinbey district of Gaziantep province. After the 6 February 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquake, the cone and honeycomb sections of the minaret were damaged. The minaret is a typical masonry structure with a cylindrical body and open balconies belonging to the Ottoman period, and the damage that occurred primarily in the weak areas, such as the honeycomb and the cone, caused serious structural problems due to the earthquakes. In the study, a finite element model (FEM) of the minaret was created. Nonlinear time-history analyses were performed using earthquake records recorded in the district where the minaret is located in the finite element model. First, the original state of the minaret (OM model) was analyzed, and its collapse mechanisms were investigated. Then, a proposal was developed to strengthen the minaret’s honeycomb and cone sections with steel rings. This reinforcement was tested with numerical analyses, and the dynamic performances of both the original and reinforcement models were compared. The durability and seismic performance of local materials commonly used in regional structures, such as Urfa stone, were evaluated. It was observed that the proposed reinforcement method reduced the displacement demands in critical areas and increased the overall rigidity of the structure. The study emphasizes the importance of reinforcement methods in protecting historical structures and reveals the proposed solution’s applicability to similar structures.
Journal Article
Feasibility-Oriented Assessment of Physical Modeling Approaches for Shaking Table Testing of RC Minarets
Slender structures such as minarets are highly susceptible to earthquake-induced damage in seismically active regions. Although various methods, including analytical and observational techniques, have been employed to study the seismic response of reinforced concrete (RC) minarets, the use of scaled physical models and shaking table testing remains limited. This research examines the numerical feasibility of employing scaled physical models for shaking table investigations of RC minarets under realistic laboratory constraints. A representative RC minaret with a height of 33.2 m was selected and a geometric scale ratio of 1:10 length was adopted. Established physical modeling approaches were evaluated through numerical implementation, with particular attention to similitude requirements, material properties, and laboratory limitations. Within this framework, the Artificial Mass Model (AMM) and the Neglected Gravity Model (NGM) were examined as candidate strategies for scaled modeling. Both approaches necessitate the use of a material with a reduced modulus of elasticity or an increased mass density relative to the prototype material. To satisfy these requirements, two micro-concrete mixes, designated as Mix-1 and Mix-2, incorporating partial replacement of the binder with lower-stiffness constituents such as plaster gypsum and fly ash, were developed and characterized. Numerical results indicate that both the AMM and NGM approaches are viable for modeling slender RC minaret structures. Although the AMM provides slightly higher accuracy in reproducing the prototype dynamic response, the NGM offers greater practical applicability by eliminating the need for additional artificial mass. Overall, this study presents a preliminary numerical feasibility assessment that supports the selection of appropriate physical modeling strategies and provides a rational basis for the subsequent execution of shaking table experiments.
Journal Article
Use of Religion in Blame Avoidance in a Competitive Authoritarian Regime: Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet)
Blame avoidance has been one of the most applied strategies by policy makers in both democratic and non-democratic regimes to avoid responsibility and accountability in cases of failure and tragic events. It is also known that politicians have used religion for Machiavellian purposes, as exactly advised by Machiavelli. However, a systematic empirical analysis of how religion is used for blame avoidance by politicians has not been conducted. In this article, we aim to address this gap by examining the empirical data derived from the weekly Friday sermon texts produced by Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs and delivered in more than 90 thousand mosques every week to a large segment of the population in Turkey, where the majority claims to be religious. Starting with its violent response to the peaceful Gezi protests in 2013, the ruling AKP has opened up a new phase in Turkish political history by resorting to civilizational populism: it blamed the Western world for financing and masterminding the protests, using the protestors as internal pawns to attack Turkey and the Muslim World, suppressed the protests brutally and entered into a populist authoritarian regime. Our paper shows, following this turn, how the Diyanet sermons started using religion to help with the AKP’s blame avoidance. The Diyanet either parroted the AKP’s conspiratorial narrative or tried to convince the citizens that all negativities are works of God and with these humans are being tested by God. The AKP’s use of religion to avoid blame is a text-book case of how both a religious institution and religious discourse can be used to help the incumbent avoid responsibility. Whenever, there was a problem that would the AKP votes, the Diyanet’s sermons tried to shift the blame to either God or citizens or conspiratorial enemies.
Journal Article
Between Mezhep and Minority: Twelver Shiʿism in the Turkish Public Sphere
Despite the growth in scholarship on diverse religious communities in Turkey, little attention has been paid to Twelver Shiʿi Muslims. Since the founding of the Republic, the Turkish state's foundational secularist agenda has attempted to control and promote a single hegemonic form of Islam, and Shiʿa have faced continuous issues practicing their faith in public as a result. While the liberalization of the past three decades has allowed Shiʿism to enter the public sphere, the community has had to continue navigating limitations on their expression of religious difference. Based on fieldwork in Eastern Anatolia, this article deepens understandings of Islam in Turkey by showing how Shiʿa have negotiated their position vis-à-vis both secularist and Sunni-majority actors and policies across various religious and political currents. Rejecting categorization as either mezhep (sect) or minority, Shiʿa have demanded independence from state religious control while also asserting their allegiance to the Republic and nation as Turkish Muslims.
Journal Article
The Third Conquest of Constantinople: The Symbolism of Hagia Sophia’s Reconversion to a Mosque
This article discusses the conversion of Hagia Sophia to a mosque in 2020. Examining this act through the prism of the neo-Ottoman political platform and with consideration of the meaning and importance of this historic cultural monument, it is inferred that the reconversion constitutes a political decision par excellence, intended to symbolically mark the beginning of a new era for Turkey while closing the chapter of Kemalism. In doing so, the current political establishment seeks to communicate its resolution to invert the process of secularisation, as a form of revanche for the Westernisation of the country and the identity erosion that it caused. Further, the reconversion symbolically connotes the conquest of Constantinople and the triumph of Islam over Christianity anew, harking back to past glories and upholding them as guidelines for the future, thus hinting to a revisionist political agenda, applicable both domestically and abroad, intended, according to rhetoric at least, to consolidate Turkey as a regional power and a worthy successor of the Ottoman Empire.
Journal Article