Adnan Rashid – From Roman Nicaea to Ottoman Iznik – July 2024
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AI: Transcript ©
Assalamu, everyone. Now we have arrived in Iznik, also called
Nicaea. The ancient name of this city was Nikiya, or Nicaea. This
is where the famous Council of Nicaea took place. Once upon a
time, this was a very important city. The Ottomans took this city
in 1331, Sultan or Han Ghazi, took the city, and Inshallah, we will
be visiting the city. But for now, we are going to Yusuf donor. This
is one of the most famous donor places, or kufta places, in the
country, and they meat is absolutely delicious. And we're
going to show you when it's cooked and when it's in front of us. You
can have a look at it as well everyone we are inside, and this
is what the Costa looks like. Is just gone. Okay?
You can see the variety of food we have here.
Okay? The salads, metabolic.
And the koftas
fresh meat. And there's a meat shop in the back as well. So the
meat belongs to the company. They do their own meat, and it's
absolutely amazing. And once the kofta is cooked, we will show you
more, Inshallah, what it looks like. Okay, everyone, this is what
kofte here looks like, amazing, absolutely delicious. This place
is well known for the quality of meat, for the taste and generally.
Istanbul, the food is not very nice because it's very
commercialized. Too many tourists around. They don't really put too
much attention on quality. But when you leave Istanbul, and we
are now in Iznik, which is about two hours drive from Istanbul, the
food has gone so much better, right? There is salad, there is
soup, so good quality meat. So just wanted to share this with
you. Yusuf is the place. If you ever come to Iznik, Yusuf is the
place. And I'm not getting paid for this, by the way, in case you
think that I'm doing advertisement, now I'm not getting
paid for this. This is confirmed. Okay, I love this food, and this
may be a reason for you to come and join one of her tours. Okay?
Vinal, Rahmanir Rahim, everyone. I am now standing in front of the
great walls of the city of Nicaea, now called Iznik. Okay, this was
an ancient city very important for the Greeks, and then the Romans.
The walls you see right next to me were built by Romans,
and they were strengthened or fortified further by Emperor
Hadrian in about 123 CE, 123 CE, they are nearly 2000 years to 2000
years old. Actually 1900
years old, to be precise, when the last major improvements were made.
You can see how far the wall goes. Okay,
this wall runs around the city for five kilometers, about 4970
meters. Okay, about five kilometers of wall around the city
of Nicaea. So let's move that way Inshallah, with the group. Okay,
so we started the tour from Nicaea, because this is where the
history starts. This is where the history of the Roman Empire, and
before that, the Greeks were here during the period, just just after
Alexander the Great, the city was established. Okay,
the city was named after the wife of one of Alexander's general
later on, King lismachus, his wife was called Nikia, and then the
city became Nicaea. Now you can see these.
This is one of the major gates, one of the four major gates of the
city of Nicaea will go down inshallah and see it's still very
much intact. Look at the blocks. How big they are, massive work
gone into this. Imagine slaves, workers carrying these blocks. You
can still see some of the inscriptions there, some of the
artwork, carvings. They have lasted for nearly 2000 years
now. You remember that Roman road we just saw.
Same technology here, the same technology here. This is a Roman
This is what a Roman road would look like, typically. Okay, it
looks a bit uneven, but Roman roads were beaten roads. They were
made of stone, mainly because they had to use these roads for
transportation, bull and cart horses, things like that. There is
Greek written on the gate. You can still see Greek there, very
visible. Okay, I cannot read coin Greek, right? It's written high
right here. Okay, so.
So there is an inscription on the middle door arch,
one on the inside and one on the outside. The one on the inside
reads these walls were built in the name of the Imperial dynasty
and Emperor Hadrian under the supervision and control of the
famous Nicene metropolitan Cassius. The one on the outside
reads, the people of the city had this structure built with the
money sent to the Empire in the year off. And the year is not
there, unfortunately, right? So you just got the translation of
the inscription that is there. In other words, Emperor Hadrian and
Cassius are mentioned there. Hadrian ruled in the first half of
the second century, CE, very powerful emperor. Okay, he ruled
from Britain all the way to current day, Iraq, on the borders
of Iraq. Okay, Hadrian's Empire stretched from Britain to Spain to
France to parts of North Africa, even the Middle East, okay, and
all the way meeting the borders of the Persian Empire at that time.
So he was one of the most powerful men
in the world at the time, and he was one of the five good, five
good Roman emperors with Marcus Aurelius. So Marcus Aurelius was
one of the successors of Hadrian, who came after Hadrian and
Hadrian. You can see his face very distinct on his coins or his you
can see statues made. You
can find them in museums. He had very distinct features, very long
neck. If you have seen Hadrian, who's seen Hadrian the pictures,
right?
He had very distinct looks, right? So, very well known emperor, and
this was built during his time, okay, obviously, because the gate
mentions name. Now, if you look at it, how it's been constructed, it
still stands to this day, 2000 years later. This is Roman
construction.
This is what the Romans were made for. This is what they made a name
for,
right? Yeah. So there would be a gate in the middle. That's why you
see this empty spot. The empty spot, because there was a gate
standing here. So the gate would be opened and closed for people,
right? If you are allowed to come in, you go in, otherwise you stay
out. Okay, so they would come in from this side. Okay? They would
come because that the city is. So the gate would open and close from
this side, okay,
I don't know. I don't know.
So the inscriptions are there. You can see, unfortunately, over time
they have gone blurry.
They are in Greek.
So the name of the emperor is in Greek, because, primarily, this is
a Greek city. Can see very clearly there, and there
should be two statues, yeah. So these empty spaces were, of
course, there were statues. There, possibly a Roman emperors or
deities, like, where were the soldiers and how was it?
Depended. There are defended? Well, yeah, so look, this is a
wall. This is an outer wall. This is the inner space, okay, buffer
zone. And then there's, that's the gate over there. So this is not
easily broken. You cannot get inside unless you have some
serious technology at your disposal. This is why these cities
look at the blocks here we call big,
yeah, imagine how many people carried them. Imagine how many
people would have carried those stones on the arch and placed them
together. And it still stands to this day after 2000 years. This is
nice here.
Okay, so if you come out
very quickly,
you can see pillars carved of marble on that side. They're lying
around.
You can see this carving here,
yeah,
and there is some carving outside here as well,
that remains from that period. There are soldiers, Roman soldiers
depicted.
You can see there are soldiers carrying shields in their
distinctive Roman
cloth clothing.
You can see the pillar in the middle. Can you see the pillar in
the middle? Everyone? Yeah, so this represents
something i.
That we have lost, unfortunately, and the walls go quite far.
If you all come this side, please? You
This is how you get an idea
of
how the city walls were built and what was used for the foundations.
Look at these blocks. These are heavy blocks, very big, and the
wall was resurrected on top of these blocks. And look
the foundations. Go back to the Greek period as well, because the
first walls were built during the Greek period, and then later on
Roman emperors came Vespasian and Trajan, and then after that
Emperor Hadrian, they built this, this magnificent structure that
stands to this day. Okay? So, a very imposing structure, very
important for people to know, okay, and then these are the very
walls the Ottomans had to face in 1331 Sultan Urhan Ghazi was
standing in front of these very walls built during the Roman
period. This is how strong these walls were, and this is how long
they lasted. And then he had to besiege the city, and took it
successfully in 1331 and since then, it has been in
Turkish hands or Ottoman hands, okay, this was Greek territory,
and then it became Roman territory. Then from Roman
territory, it became Byzantine who were also Romans territory, and
then the Ottomans, okay,
I don't know saljus ruling all this territory. But the Seljuks,
at that time, they were not, they had not come this far. No, okay,
this was even during the Seljuk period. This was Roman territory,
Byzantine territory. Seljuks did take much of Anatolia after the
Battle of manzikert in 1071, but they had not come this far. This
was later on when remember Emperor Michael the eighth, you said,
Yeah, had taken back Constantinople. They these towns
fell into neglect, and this is when the Turkish
tribes nomadic or tribes, nomadic tribes, they rose and they took
this territory and eventually became a power. So the Chi tribe
of the Ottomans was actually a nomadic
entity. And later on, they became expert fighters. They settled down
in towns, and they built cities and towns. And over time, they
became expert architects, and they created a civilization of their
own, as you can see, okay, having, of course, taken knowledge from
other civilizations, other models they followed. Okay, when you look
at the architecture in Bursa it's very different to what you see in
Constantinople, because once the Ottomans took Constantinople,
they saw higher Sophia, which was a magnificent structure. They
found new ideas, new skills, new techniques to build. And then they
resurrected some monumental, giant, gigantic mosques, as you
can see Soleimani Fateh mosque and all the other great masterpieces
built by architect Sinan who was working for Sultan Suleiman, the
magnificent we'll talk more about him when we are in Istanbul
inshallah. On that note, thank you so much. Let's kick let's walk
back in. Okay, everyone. This is the tomb of the famous vizier of
Sultan Muhammad Al Fatih.
His name was shantali Khalil Pasha. He's even
given a very important role in a series produced by Netflix season
one. You see chandali Khalil Pasha his role in trying to help the
Sultan take the city, but Sultan somehow came to believe that he
was collaborating with the Romans and he was undermining his
authority. You see when Sultan Muhammad Al Fatih was put on the
throne for the first time, when he was a very young man, okay,
and he tried to rule, but shandali, shandali hale Pasha, he
he believed that Sultan Muhammad Al Fatih is not ready. He
undermined him and asked for his father to come back to take power
again, Sultan Murad the second and Sultan Muhammadu Fatiha never
forgot that undermining he he kept it inside him.
He made it personal. It became a personal thing, but chandali
Khalil Pasha
was doing the right thing, in my opinion. You know.
He wanted the dynasty to survive, the state to function properly.
And because Murad, the second Rahmatullah, was an able ruler, a
very strong ruler, he wanted him to come back to deal with the
Crusader Crusader threat, because the Crusaders were coming and they
were attacking the Muslim territories. So Sultan Murad came
back and dealt with the Crusaders, and then sultanate party was put
on the throne again, the second time. Now, his mission was to take
the city of Constantinople, and he does that in 1453
okay? And one of the first things he does after taking the city, he
kills shandali Ali Pasha.
Now, whether the accusations against him were true or not is a
very good question. Scholars have wrestled with these questions for
a very long time, but I believe Sultan Muhammad apathy was not a
fool. He was not someone who would just act and do self harm by
killing an able wazier. So he must have strong reasons. He must have
strong reasons to do what he did right. You can't just remove or
kill because Sultans are generally, usually very pragmatic.
They look at pros and cons. They will ignore your weaknesses and
focus on your strengths and use you for the strengths. So he must
have had strong reasons to believe what he believed, just like that,
another mystery is kulkan Suleiman, the magnificent killing
his own son, Mustafa, is a mystery.
After killing him, kulkan Suleiman sat next to his dead body for
three days without eating
and eating three days,
right? Moaning.
But he had strong reasons. People accused roxalana, or in Sultan,
for creating a conspiracy against Mustafa to get him killed so that
her son can become the Sultan. But I believe Suleiman was not a fool.
He had reasons. He killed his own Son, but he must have reasons to
believe that his son was causing intrigues.
Yeah, this is a very good question. Why did somebody
Yeah, either father, when a Sultan would come to power later on,
Ottomans, and this was started by Sultan Muhammad, that what we call
fragicide, okay, killing of your siblings. That's what Mughals did
do, no. Mughal system was different. Mughals did it
differently. They did it, but they did it differently. Here in this
case, once the sultan comes to power, he rounds up close
relatives, and they are strangled to death, right? Why did they do
this? Because they wanted to rule
with peace, and the threat was from these princes to launch
rebellions and the Byzantines, the Romans were always happy to
support such rebels and rebellions, so any prince who
would rise in rebellion could easily found support with the
Romans. So the Sultans, they decided that to do away with this
problem, we just
kill the royal
princes and princesses.
They had two choices.
They kill 1020, 30 people, or they kill 100,000
or 200,000
because when there's a rebellion, what happens in a rebellion.
Cities rebel. These princes go and take cities, then the Sultan has
to besiege the city to crush the rebellion, to go and do more
important things, like fighting the Romans, right? So these
princes would rise in rebellion, and they would fight the Sultans,
and as a result, hundreds of 1000s of people could be killed.
One of the examples is after Timur defeated Sultan by Yazid jalgram
In the Battle of Ankara,
five sons of Sultan by Yazid are fighting each other for 20 years,
for nearly 20 years, and the Ottoman Empire was devastated,
completely wrecked. It almost crumbled. I'm not justifying
feticide, by the way, in case you think I'm, I'm saying this is the
logic. This is the rationale. They used to do what they did. These
are very brutal times. You have to be very brutal in execution of the
law and to to maintain law and order. So they had to make very
difficult decisions. Of course, you cannot justify that Islamic
Islamically speaking, you cannot justify there were other
solutions. If you're scared, the princes put them under house
arrest. But they tried all that. They tried all that. One Prince
escaped. That's it came over now you have a big problem at hand.
You have to fight.
Rebellion coming back to shandali Hari Pasha. The tomb is on the
road of lefty gate the famous shandali hale Pasha, who is the
eldest son of shandali Ibrahim Pasha, and the grand reveal of the
priest of Murat the second and parthutan Muhammad, was executed.
Shandali halifaxha was executed after the conquest of Istanbul and
buried next to his sons who died before him. Shaandali Elite
pharasha served as a grand Brazil of the Ottoman Empire for 14
years, between 1439 and 1453 and was the first grand Brazil to be
executed in the Ottoman Empire due to his cautious attitude during
the siege of Istanbul and his alleged secret cooperation with
the Eastern Roman Empire. He was arrested in jail after the
conquest of Istanbul, and then he was executed.
So just because he was very cautious, he wasn't in favor of an
aggressive policy, he was trying to
persuade or dissuade the Sultan to pursue a very, extremely
aggressive policy. He was suspected of collaborating with
the Romans, and here he lies in front of us in a very humble tomb,
the most powerful man in the Ottoman Empire after the Sultan
himself, shaanda, ali, Harit, Pasha,
okay, we are here in front of higher Sophia. Now, this is not
the higher Sofia of Constantinople or Istanbul. This is the higher
Sophia of Iznik. This was the Central Church in Iznik built by
the Romans, okay, and of course, Romans continued to add to it. It
was renewed in the 11th century, and then later on, in 1331, when
Sultan or Han Ghazi took the city of Nicaea, now Iznik, from the
Romans, this was naturally turned into the masjid because the city
was taken by force. And according to the rules and the conventions
of the time, when you take a city by force, everything within the
city belongs to you. So Sultan owns it. So he took the building
and turned it into a mosque, and since then, it's been a masjid. It
is claimed that there was a church on this site originally that may
have been the site, that may have been the site
of the famous Council of Nicaea. This is one of the candidates.
So this could be one of the sites where the Council of Nicaea took
place. There is another site that we will look at tomorrow before we
leave the city of Iznik,
which is now under water. And it was only recently when they
discovered that site, due to an aerial view, they could see in the
water that there was a building in the shape of a basilica, right?
And then they realized that this was actually a church that is now
under water, and it's very close to the ancient
palace of Emperor Constantine. And the sources tell us that
Constantine convened this council, this Ecumenical Council, the or
the church church council in this city, very close to his palace
now, close to his palace. Can mean that basilica right next to his
palace, underwater now, or it could be this, because this is
also very close. It's literally five minutes walk from the palace
of Constantine. So these are the two candidate sites that
basically are thought to be the sites where the Council of Nicaea
took place. The Council of Nicaea, they discussed the nature of
Christ. Christians, they were brought together by Emperor
Constantine, because now he is the emperor of the Eastern Roman
Empire, and he is interested in peace. He wants harmony in his
empire. And Christians are fighting each other over the
nature of Christ. One group of Christians, the majority, believed
that Jesus was a creation of God. He was not God, like God the
Father. If he was God, if He was God, He was God in some lower
capacity. He was a subordinate creator, a creation of God.
But other group of Christians, they were insisting, no Jesus
Christ is as God, as God the Father. So he is on par with God
the Father. God basically consists of, by this time, at least two
people, or two personalities, two persons. The third personality is
still not discussed at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, the third
personality will be discussed 50 years later, at the Council of
Constantinople, where the doctrine of the Trinity was finally
formalized in 381 CE in the constant the Council of
Constantinople during the reign of Emperor Theodosius. We will see
the site of that council as well, which is in the church of Saint
Irene. Right The Church of Saint.
Irene. It is now part of the Topkapi Palace complex. We will
see that church where that council took place. So here the issue of
Jesus Christ was discussed. Who is he God, or a creation of God,
or some kind of lower God, a demi demigod, right? And Emperor
Constantine, he intervened, and he forced all the bishops to sign the
doctrine that Jesus Christ was of the same essence as God the
Father. So he was,
he was the very God from very God. Basically, he was God with capital
G. And whether that site was this or the one underwater we will see
tomorrow. It is not clear, but one lesson is clear, where this kufr
was actually formalized, this shirk, this blasphemy against
Allah, was actually formalized. One side potentially is a masjid.
The other side is underwater.
Where? Where the Christian religion as we know it today was
born and it is, this is why it is in sharp decline. Christianity is
losing numbers rapidly. It is the most declining religion in the
world today, right? Because people are losing faith in Christianity.
They are either becoming atheist or something else. They are going
into Islam or Buddhism and other faiths because they found, or they
find Christianity to be very unsatisfying, right? And the
reason is these kind of absurdities that were formalized
here, that Jesus, Christ, a human being, was God
on par with God the Father, God the Creator. Okay? So one side,
one candidate side is a masjid. Now, the other candidate side is
underwater, so you can only imagine what happened to the
creed. Okay, the creed of Nicaea was formalized here, yes. Who
started that idea that Jesus could be
called? Who started that idea? It started with the Hellenic Greek
believers in Jesus Christ. Basically, this was not the Jewish
people who came up with this idea. This was, this were the Romans.
Romans already believed in many gods, right? For them to add
another god, another man God was on a big deal. They believed in
Apollo, Jupiter, Minerva, Heracles, these Zeus. They had
these stories, right? Sorry. The Greeks and the Romans. The Romans
also followed some of these, these deities. They adopted these
deities from the Greeks, right? So the Romans, For them, this was not
a big deal, okay? Another God, another god, like figure God, man
walking on Earth. So they are the ones who came with this idea. And
this is a huge topic, okay, when Jesus became God and how He became
God. Books have been written on this very topic, okay.
There is a book by,
if I'm not mistaken, his name is the author. Is called Rubenstein.
He's a Jewish author, and he writes about how Jesus became god,
okay, how he turned into God suddenly, right? There are, there
are other authors who have written like these are Vermis, okay,
Changing Faces of Jesus, right? That's another book where he
discusses the gospel narrative, the Gospels, the whole gospel, how
there was a transition from one version of Jesus to another by the
time we reach the Gospel of John. So this is a vast topic that we
cannot discuss in this vlog, but remember, this is one of the
sites, and we will go inside now. Inshallah, have a look. Keep Keep
coming. Keep recording. Inshallah,
you can tell by these inscriptions
they from the Roman period. They still survive.
The building is very much Byzantine Roman infrastructure.
Which one
the temple? The temple? Yeah, so, yeah. So there was a Roman temple
at this site, and then a church was built, and now a masjid.
This is the original floor, potentially okay. Now you can see
this is in the shape of a basilica. Tibula. Is that way when
Sultan or Han Ghazi took the church and turned it into a
masjid, the mehrab was built there, in that corner over there.
Unfortunately, there was a fire in the 16th century, and that fire
burned a lot of the early Ottoman design, or Ottoman artwork, that
was done. And you can see the signs of burning on the walls.
They are all black. The roof is there. It was in the 16th century
when the fire burned. There are some remain.
From the Christian period, there are depictions of Jesus, imagined
depictions of Jesus and Mary.
Do you have a light
the heart?
Like.
So they are very faded, but you can see the face there. Can you
see the face? Can you can you see the face? Everyone? That is
supposed to be a depiction of Jesus. This is from the Christian
period. Okay, so this remains as part of the church from the Roman
period. And again, when we go back here,
where the where the altar was Inshallah,
can see the signs are burning. You
No, this is where the altar was. This is very Christian in design.
You can see the design is pretty thin. The mehrab is in there. The
Qibla is that way, okay?
And if you come here, we have some,
oh, there's a sacrophagus here as well. Someone was buried here. Now
it's empty, and when you look up there, there are still depictions
and some paintings from the Christian period that survive in
this building. This building was taken by Sultan or hanukwadi in
1331, after the city of Iznik, or the city of Nicaea, fell to the
Ottomans, and it was in Roman hands.
So everyone, I want to tell you, we are doing these tours so that
we can educate the Muslims about
the history of Muslim dynasties, including the Ottomans. We do
visits of Al Andalus, Islamic Spain and Morocco. We are starting
Shala in the future. We will launch more tours of other Islamic
sites. We welcome you on to join all you to we welcome you all to
join these tours and these trips so that you can educate
yourselves. You can check out the future dates and destinations on
Halal getaways.com.
Have a look inshallah and join in one of these destinations
inshallah.