Bana cathedral

Bana(k)
300px The ruins of the cathedral in 2007
Shown within Turkey
Basic information
Location	Şenkaya, Erzurum Province, Turkey
Geographic coordinates
Status	Abandoned
Architectural description
Architect(s)	Kvirik from Bana (during the rule of Adarnase II of Tao-Klarjeti)
Architectural type	Monastery, church
Architectural style	Armenian, Georgian
Completed	c. 653–658, rebuilt c. 881–923
Specifications
Height (max)	37.45m

Bana (Georgian: ბანა) or Banak (Armenian: Բանակ) is a ruined early medieval cathedral in present-day Erzurum Province, eastern Turkey, in what had formerly been a historical marchland known to Armenians as Tayk and to Georgians as Tao.

It is a large tetraconch design, surrounded by a near-rotunda polygonal ambulatory and marked with a cylindrical drum. After the construction of this monastery by the Georgian king Adarnase II of Iberia in the 7th century the church was reconstructed by another Georgian ruler Adarnase IV of Iberia at some point between 881 and 923, and emerged in written records in the 11th-century Georgian chronicles. Henceforth, it was used as a royal cathedral by the Bagrationi dynasty until the Ottoman conquest of the area in the 16th century. The former cathedral was converted into a fortress by the Ottoman army during the Crimean War in the 1870th monastery was almost completely ruined during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78.

Location and etymology

File:83principality-taykc.gif

Tao/Tayk, c. 780 - 1000

The Bana cathedral is located on the north bank of the Penek (Irlağaç) river near the village of Penek, in the Şenkaya district of Erzurum Province. "Penek" is a Turkified typonym deriving from the original name of the area: "Banak". Banaki means "camp" in Georgian and "army" in Armenian. Name Bana is mentioned in Georgian Chronicles The name entered Georgian usage in the form of Bana because of Georgian phonology makes the "k" sound silent.

History

The Bana cathedral is first mentioned in the 11th-century chronicle of Sumbat, who reports that the Georgian prince Adarnase IV (r. 881-923) ordered the building of the church of Bana "by the hand" of Kwirike, who subsequently became the first bishop of Bana. While the scholars such as Ekvtime Taqaishvili, Shalva Amiranashvili, and Stepan Mnatsakanian tend to interpret the passage literally, Chubinashvili, Vakhtang Beridze and Tiran Marutyan identify Adarnase as a renovator, not a builder of the church. This view, now shared by most art scholars, dates the Bana church – clearly modeled on the contemporaneous Zvartnots cathedral near Yerevan – to the mid-7th century. It was when the Chalcedonian-Armenian catholicos Nerses III, who presided over several important religious projects Zvartnots included, resided in exile in Tayk c. 653-58.

File:Bana reconstruction (Kalgin, 1907).jpg

A hypothetical reconstruction of Bana by the Russian architect Anatoly Kalgin, 1907

Devastated during the 8th century by the Byzantine–Arab war, the region of Tayk/Tao was gradually resettled by its new masters, the Georgian Bagratids, and under their patronage a monastic revival took place. With the settlements gradually expanding from the predominantly Georgian-populated north to the predominantly Armenian populated south and south-west, the Georgian princes reconstructed a number of monasteries abandoned by Armenians and built new foundations.

File:Bana cathedral (ruined interior).JPG

The arched outer wall of the ambulatory

File:Bana cathedral (capital).JPG

The sole surviving aisle column with its carved capital

From the time of Adarnase IV's reconstruction, the cathedral of Bana was one of the principal royal churches of the Bagrationi dynasty. It was used for the coronation of Bagrat IV in 1027 and his marriage to Helena, a niece of the Byzantine emperor Romanos III Argyros in 1032. In the 15th century, King Vakhtang IV of Georgia (r. 1442-1446) and his consort khatun were buried at Bana. It was also the seat of the Georgian Orthodox bishop of Bana, whose diocese also included the neighboring areas of Taos-Kari, Panaskerti, and Oltisi. With the Ottoman conquest of the area in the 16th century, Bana was abandoned by Christians. During the Crimean War (1853–1865), the Ottoman military converted the church into a fortress, adding the crude bulwark still visible on the south side. During the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78, it was shelled by the Russian artillery, blasting the dome off and inflicting severe damage on the edifice. Later the Russians carted off much of masonry to build a late 19th-century church in Oltu.

The church was first described and sketched by the German botanist Karl Koch in 1843. He declared it the most remarkable church in the East after the Hagia Sophia. Koch was followed by the Russian ethnographer Yevgeny Veidenbaum in 1879 and the Georgian historian Dimitri Bakradze in 1881. The latter two found the church already without a dome, but reported about still surviving frescos and a Georgian inscription in the Asomtavruli script. From 1902 to 1907, the ruins of Bana were scrupulously studied by an expedition led by the Georgian archaeologist Ekvtime Taqaishvili. Inaccessible to Soviet nationals, the monument was a subject of study of some Western scholars during the Cold War era.

Architecture

Bana is an interpretation of the tetraconch-in-ambulatory (aisled tetraconch) design that was probably influenced by the "Golden Octagon" at Antioch. Bana was a large tetraconch with three-tiered choirs and arcades in the lower parts of each apse. The tetraconch was contained in a continuous polygonal ambulatory, almost a rotunda, with a diameter of 37.45m and with façades adorned with colonnades. The interior was essentially a large pyramid formed by the exterior polygon, tetraconch and the cupola resting upon a cylindrical drum. The pylons, located between the arms of the tetraconch, accommodated galleries on three levels.

The lower portions of each of the four apses, rather than having an unbroken wall, opened through arches into the surrounding ambulatory. The building was more than 30 m tall. The architectural details are notable for high craftsmanship and artistry. Round pillars, located within the span of the apses and galleries, were provided with capitals adorned with volutes. The façade had a blind arcade along its perimeter, the arches adorned with floral ornaments. What remains of the church is part of the lower level floor half-submerged in its own ruins, including the east apse with one column of its colonnade with a carved capital.

Further reading

• (Georgian) Abashidze, Irakli. Ed. Georgian Encyclopedia. Vol. IX. Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, 1985.
• (Georgian) Amiranashvili, Shalva. History of Georgian Art. Tbilisi, Georgian SSR: Khelovneba, 1961.
• (Armenian) Marutyan, Tiran (2003). Հայ Դասական Ճարտարապետության Ակունքներում (From the Sources of Classical Armenian Architecture). Yerevan: Mughni Publishing. ISBN 99941-33-03-9.
• (Armenian) Mnatsakanian, Stepan. Զվարթնոցը և նույնատիպ հուշարձանները [Zvartnots and Similar Monuments]. Yerevan, Armenian SSR: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1971.
• The Treasures of Tbilisi, New York Times. September 30, 1990.
• Rosen, Roger. Georgia: A Sovereign Country of the Caucasus. Odyssey Publications: Hong Kong, 1999. ISBN 962-217-748-4
• (Armenian) Toramanian, Toros. Նյութեր հայկական ճարտարապետության պատմության (Materials for the History of Armenian Architecture). vol. ii. Yerevan, Armenian SSR: ArmFan Publishing, 1948.