The Medresse
On Aeridon Square in the Plaka, opposite the Tower of the Winds. Currently open to the skies but not to the
public
Behind these wooden doors directly opposite the Tower
of the Winds lies a bit of history which Greeks have been quite happy to leave
moldering along with the masonry.
Constructed as
a seminary in 1721, the Medresse was meant to educate
Muslim students in the Qur’an, its companion texts, and with some law thrown in
too. This modest temple to learning may have been tiny in comparison to Medressen
in other parts of the Ottoman empire, but it is proof positive that in the
eighteenth century the Ottomans thought they were in Athens to stay.
Its plan was similar
to that of a Greek monastery in that it was a square fortress like structure. The
original plan looked like this:
http://chain.eu/?m3=34044
Lining the inner walls like so many monk’s cells were small
rooms, most fronted by a colonnade, and all
facing a large inner courtyard whose biggest feature was an immense old plane tree instead of a katholikon.
The students living in these rooms were boarders. Many
rooms had domed roofs with a chimney poking out the top presumably so that the
students could have a fire on some sort of central hearth during the cold
winter months.
This one in the Kasariani monastery gives you the idea
A nineteenth century print showing the chimneys
Thanks to http://ottomanmonuments.blogspot.gr/
Thanks to Lisa Micheli’s Unknown
Athens(1)
A small room off the entrance was reserved for the Hodja or teacher. There was a domed room
with a mihrab for prayers, a kitchen, and latrines so it was an enclosed, self-contained community right in the center of the
city. The perimeter walls were rubble masonry, nothing fancy.
Let’s start
with entrance because that is all
that you will see except the exterior walls and one small dome. An arched wooden doorway is set inside a
barrel vaulted porch crowned by a peaked roof.
The overall effect is rather grand.
The Medresse entrance as I saw it on a cloudy day
There is an inscription in a square above the door
telling us that its founder was one Mehmet Fakri and giving the date as 1721.
Those ‘target’ or shield-like circular designs appearing
several times on the façade are quite attractive and apparently there is a
little story about them that the builders did not know:
This motif would have been chosen in accordance with
the rules of Islamic art but they appear to be replicating the ancient shallow wine bowls used for pouring out
ceremonial offerings to the gods. (The downtown Benaki museum has quite a
few examples of these vessels.) With so much ancient stone lying around
Athens, it must have been tempting to choose a motif spotted on a piece of
marble from some old temple or plinth and go with it. Who knew? (2) The use of spolia or designs from spolia has
produced more than one interesting conjunction in Greece!
From Seminary to Notorious Prison
Before the Greek revolution in 1821, the Medresse became
a meeting place for Ottoman dignitaries, a spot in a predominantly Christian city
where Muslim movers and shakers could feel at home. In fact, they gathered at
the Medresse to discuss the outbreak of the Greek Revolution. (I would love to
have the minutes of that meeting!) As the revolution progressed, however, the
Ottomans saw fit to change their seminary and meeting place into a jail. It was
a convenient spot within the city limits to contain and, in some cases,
eliminate enemies of the state. There was even that handy plane tree for
hangings.
The Medresse was
partially destroyed during the revolution. But in 1834, the fledgling Greek
government was having a few problems of its own with criminals and political
opponents and it decided to reopen the prison. (3)
There is plenty of evidence that the change in governance did not improve the
facilities. The plane tree continued to come in handy. There was a saying:
The plane
tree in the Medresse has two branches;
One says ‘death’ and the other
‘10 years’
In 1843 a mass jail break occurred. There was an uprising of the Greek army against
King Otto who didn’t seem to think that his new kingdom needed a constitution.
On the evening of the revolt, Dimitrios
Kallergis, the leader of the Athens’ cavalry ordered all of the doors of the prison left unlocked
and the rough and tough Medresse prisoners were thus invited to add a little
muscle to the rebels’ cause as they confronted
the king at the Palace.
In the Museum of the History of
Athens, Kallergis
confronts the king and queen in a romantic representation after the event!
The result?
Kallergis was declared ‘First Citizen of Athens’ (4), Otto promised a constitution which he delivered in
1844 and the garden in front of the palace would get a new name: Syntagama or Constitution Square. The
fate of the ‘extras’ from the Medresse is not recorded. Their ‘release’ suggests
that some were political prisoners – or why let them out?
Conditions at the Medresse in 1852
There is an account by Jonas King, (5) an American
Protestant missionary, who had the misfortune to be incarcerated there in 1852 and
wrote all about it back home in The
Missionary Herald. It is an
interesting story as much for what it tells us about the Greek Orthodox Church during
that period as for what it says about the dreadful conditions in the Medresse.
King describes the tremendous overcrowding. 125 men
were squeezed in together no matter if they were hardened criminals, first time
offenders, or those awaiting trial and appeals. Bad as it was, he records that days
earlier the prison population had numbered 180!
The sight…is
enough to move to pity the heart of anyone who has the least degree of kind
feeling towards his fellow man.
If you walk to the south west corner of the Medresse,
there is an iron gate through which you can see the perimeters of the wall and just
how small an area the prison covered:
King goes on to say that two men slated for execution were
being kept in chains. Hanging, in
Greece, as elsewhere at the time, was a very communal affair and that tree must
have created a terrible sense of dread for those condemned to live under its
shade until their execution.
This picture gains resonance when you know the story!
Jonas King’s ‘Crime’
In Greece in 1852
it was not a crime to be a Protestant or a Catholic, but it was a crime to proselytize. The exceptional and favoured status of Orthodoxy
was legally and constitutionally protected; all other religions were merely ‘allowable’. Therefore, anyone
trying to gain recruits for a different Christian sect could be prosecuted as a
criminal. King was not unknown to the Orthodox Church. He had been a missionary
for years. In fact, the Church had excommunicated him twice in the 1840s
although how they thought this would impress a Protestant is a moot point.
Mr. King had been
preaching in a private home in the Plaka, something which was allowed as long
as he was not recruiting, but many indignant locals thought he was (of course
he was!) and called in the authorities. The American flag he had placed outside
the door of the house may not have helped either!
He was charged for ‘preaching
contrary to Orthodoxy’ and for saying things ‘injurious to religion and morals’
(shades of Socrates). He was accused of speaking
against icons, belittling Mary, and - even more outrageous – suggesting that
baptism could be accomplished by a little sprinkling of water instead of full
immersion. He was sentenced to spend 15 days in the Medresse, to pay the expenses
of the court, and to be banished from the country when his sentence was served.
The
higher court threw the case out and
a good many Athenian journalists who had been granted considerably more freedom
to criticize the government in King Otto’s 1844 Constitution, expressed their
support.
Jonas King, was quite a
personality– a traveler and a linguist, and a long time resident of Athens. He wrote his memoirs, and weathered yet another anathema
declared against him by the Orthodox Synod in 1863 (6 ).
It
was largely through his efforts that Athens got its first Evangelical Church in
1874.
Jonas’
book
As the 1800s drew to a close, the Medresse and its hanging
tree, remained a prison in the heart of the city, hidden from view behind high
walls but hardly forgotten.
The sounds and laments of the prisoners could be heard by
all passersby until
1911 when the government demolished most of it in order to
conduct archaeological dig, perhaps hoping to find a more attractive layer of
Greek history to put on display.
It appears that they didn’t succeed.
They dug more than two
meters below the original level of
the Medresse and there is not much to show for it today except a few marble
bits and pieces. The infamous plane tree is long gone, having been replaced at
this lower level by a rather impressive eucalyptus.
It's just right for puss though…
Knowing the history of a place changes your
perspective. Whenever I pass those ruined walls and those blank, implacable doors,
I always feel a little chill…
Footnotes
(1) Liza
Micheli’s lovely little book Unknown
Athens is worth searching out. The illustration she uses and I borrowed is
from a book by Stephanos Xenos(1860).
(2) John
Mc Gregor knew. He discusses this in his book Athens. Is it true? I
can’t be sure but it is an interesting speculation…
(3) Christian
Hansen, the famous nineteenth century architect of the old university in the
Plaka and the National Library of Greece on Panamistimiou Street, was hired to make the needed alterations.
This was early on in his career and you can be sure that the prison would never
have been the showplace his other efforts became!
(4) Kallergis
was widely rumoured to be a favourite flirt of King Otto’s wife, Queen Amelia,
something that has absolutely nothing to do with churches in Greece, but it is
interesting to speculate on her feelings
on that particular evening.
(5) What I love about “Churches in Greece” is that
you never know where the journey will take you. I had never heard of Jonas King
and didn’t feel the loss, but it turns out he was a veritable evangelical Lawrence of Arabia, fluent in many
languages, and with a romantic portrait to confirm his near eastern
credentials.
Not quite what I had expected of an
evangelical!
(6) See
Anathema under the ABCs of Orthodoxy
on this blog.
