Camii, the third of Manisa's imperial Ottoman mosques.
This imposing mosque was built in 1488 by Beyazit II for his mother, the Valide Sultan Hüsnü Şah Hatun, a wife of Mehmet II. The mosque is preceded by a five-bay porch supported by col-mns with Byzantine capitals. The minaret, vvhich rises from the „orthwest comer of the mosque, has a shaft with decorative brick-work in zigzag flutes. The central area of the prayer hail is covered by a dome on Turkish triangles, with two bays each to east and west covered by smaller and lovver cupolas.
The oldest dated Islamic structure in Manisa is İlyas Bey Mescidi, a small mosque built in 1362 by the father of İshak Bey. The mosque is preceded by a two-domed portico closed in with side walls, with the prayer room covered by a dome on squinches. Besides the three imperial foundations, there are eleven other Ottoman mosques in Manisa, ali of them dating from the second half of the fîfteenth century. Those dated by inscriptions are Çeşnigir Camii (1474), Hoca Yahya Camii (1474), Sinan Bey Camii (1474), Attar Hoca Camii (1480), İvaz Paşa Camii (1484), and Göktaşlı Cami (1493). The others are Nişancı Paşa Camii, Çatal Camii, Aynı Ali Camii, Emir Hıdır Camii, and Serabat Camii. Only the minaret and one wall of the latter mosque remain standing today.
We now proceed by taking the road below the citadel, con-tinuing past Ulu Cami until vve come to the turn downward. There above us we see a curious rock formation about tvventy meters high at the entrance to a gorge where a stream flows down from Mt. Sipylus. This rock has been identified as the figüre of the "vveeping Niobe," vvhich is mentioned by several ancient vvriters, including Homer, Sophocles, Ovid and Pausanias. Pausanias ap-parently lived in the region at one time, and he gives a descrip-tion of the rock formation that is stili accurate today: "I myself have seen Niobe when I vvas climbing up the mountains to Sipylos. Niobe from up close is a rock and a stream, and nothing like a vvoman grieving or othervvise; but if you go farther you seem to see a vvoman dovvncast and in tears." According to the myth, Niobe had six sons and six daughters. Ali of them vvere killed by Apollo and Artemis, the twin offspring of Leto, who were angered at Niobe for having mocked their mother because she had only two children, vvhile she herself had a dozen. Homer telis the story in Book XXIV of The lliad, vvhere Achilles is trying to persuade Priam to eat while the old king is grieving över the body of his dead son Hector:
For even Niobe, she of the lovely tresses, remembered
to eat, whose twelve children were destroyed in her palace,
six daughiers and six sons in the pride of their youth, vvhonı Apollo
killed \vith arrows from his silver bow, being angered
with Niobe, and shaft-showering Artemis killed the daughters;
because Niobe likened herself to Leto of tbe fair-colouring
and said Leto had borne only two, she herself had borne many;
but the two, though they were only two, destroyed ali Üıose others.
Nine days long they lay in their blood, nor was there anyone
to bury them, for the son of Kronos made stones out of
the people; but on the tenth day the Uranian gods buried.them.
But she remembered to eat when she was wom out with weeping.
And now somewhere among the rocks, in the lonely mountains in
Sipylos, where they say is the resting place of the goddesses
who are nymphs, and dance beside the vvaters of Acheloios,
there, stone stili, she broods on the sorrows the gods gave her.
We now leave Manisa on highvvay 250, which takes us east-wards along the northern flanks of Mt. Sipylus. About six kilome-ters out of Manisa we stop at a place called Akpınar, where high above the road on the right we fmd a relief known as Taş Suret, the Stone Figüre. The carving is more than ten meters high, and though it is badly eroded it is stili possible to make out the form of a female figüre seated upon a throne. Scholars have for long sug-gested that the Taş Suret is a work of the Hittites, probably dating from the fourteenth century B.C. This has now been substantiated by an inscription on the relief, vvhich has been shown to be in the Hittite language, though the date is undetermined. The Taş Suret is
undoubtedly the figüre on Mt. Sipylus that Pausanias describes as being "the most ancient of ali statues of the Mother of the Gods." This fertility goddess was the one that Anatolian people of the Bronze Age, including the Hittites, vvorshipped as the Great Earth Mother, while in the archaic period the Phrygians revered her as Kubaba, the Lydians as Cybele, and the Greeks as Artemis. She was worshipped as a mountain goddess under different names in various places: on Mt. 1da in the Troad she was called the Idaean Mother; at Cyzicus she was Öindymene, Mother of the Gods; and here on Mt. Sipylus she was called the Sipylene Mother.
We now turn back toward Manisa and go as far as the turnoff for highway 565, vvhere we turn right and head northeastvvard toward Akhisar, a drive of
Akhisar is on the site of an ancient city known originally as Pelopia, according to Pliny the Younger. During the wars of the Diadochi, follovving the death of Alexander, the city was refounded by Lysimachus, who renamed it Thyatira. Thyatira became part of the Pergamene kingdom after the battle of Magnesia in 189 B.C., and then it came under Roman rule in 129 B.C. after the establish-ment of the province of Asia. Hadrian visited Thyatira in A.D. 124, and Caracalla (r. 211-17) stayed here for a time as well, endowing a number of buildings and receiving the title of "Bene-factor of the City."
Christianity came early to Thyatira, vvhich was one of the Seven Churches of Revelation. But apparently some of the Thyatirans stili vvorshipped the older gods of Anatolia, for the Evangelist's letter to the Christian community there warns them against a "Jezebel," vvhom the German scholar Schürer believes to. have been "a prophetess and priestess of the temple of a Chaldaean Sibyl in Thyatira, vvhere a mixture of pagan rites with Jewish ideas was practised."
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