4. 4 Portable Images of Asian Architecture in Europe
4.6 Gateway Cities
4.6.4 Gates
Topkapi Palace in Istanbul had many gates (for example, the Imperial Gate, Gate of Salutation, and Gate of Felicity), and the name and appearance of its main gate (the Imperial Gate) was famous across the Islamic world, even to distant locations such as Lucknow in Mughal Northern India, and Isfahan in the Safavid Empire. In Lucknow the gateway with associations with the gates of Topkapi is called the Rumi Darwaza of the Bara Imambara Complex. This gateway also has further connections to a Roman arch and the world of Byzantine Constantinople (see Chapter 7). A gateway in Isfahan, an entryway to the Imperial Palace, the ‘Ali Qapu, which means a “high, eminent, or sublime gate”, was named after one of the main entryways to Topkapi, the Bab-i Hümayun, or the “Imperial Gateway”. The two words used to label this palace gate, with
‘Ali translating as “high, eminent, noble, sublime” in Persian, and Qapu being Turkish for
door, or gate, further reinforces the descriptive literary associations with the famous Topkapi ceremonial gate (see Chapter 5).195
Western diplomats (and European historians) used the term ‘Sublime Porte’ to refer to the sultan and his court officials, or the heart of the Ottoman Empire. This particular phrase (Sublime Porte), referring to the location of imperial rule and government (the Topkapi palace) in the Ottoman Empire, was used in European diplomatic documents.
The ‘Sublime Porte’ was also the name of a gate to the Grand Viziers’ quarters, where diplomats and foreign ambassadors assembled. Thus this gateway city has many symbolically significant and physical gates leading to its main palace, for the many ambassadors, travellers and diplomatic personnel who brought information from distant lands into its hub. This city can be visualized as a portal to information about the architecture of Asian, North African and European palaces and their court cultures.
Istanbul is a gateway city par excellence not only because of its exchanges with European architecture but also because of its complex inter-Islamic and inter-Ottoman exchanges (see Chapter 5).
Aleppo is inland from the Mediterranean coast and thus is not a Porte in the sense that Istanbul is a sea port, though it is situated, like Lucknow on a river. However, it had many land gates providing access to its various markets, mosques, the Judayda quarter, and the citadel. Some of the gates to the city were named after the destination to which they led outwards such as the Antakya (Antioch) gate (see Chapter 6). Jerusalem which had connections to Aleppo also had its gates frequently described by pilgrims journeying to the city (see Chapter 6), and this emphasizes its importance as a city of religious significance, where religious architecture was dominant and pilgrims from many faiths and empires travelled in and out of its gates, and religious exchanges could be expected.
One of the gates of Jerusalem is called the Damascus Gate (Chapter 6, Fig 6.21), and this gate led to the city that was at the head of the pilgrimage route to Mecca. Jerusalem is also seen as a gateway to the spiritual realm in Islam.
195 Blake, Half the World, 62.
In Lucknow the gateway, which could be a gate or door, the entrance to a new portal, or an independent structure at the entrance to a forecourt, was generally called a “darwazah”
in northern Indian languages, and were an important feature of early and late medieval buildings commissioned by both Hindu and Muslim patrons in India:
Sometimes they assumed grand proportions, as especially at Fatehpur Sikri…sometimes they were free-standing works, not forming entrances to buildings; generally…they were placed at entrances to buildings-whether of a religious or of a secular usage. The Nawabs, too, commissioned a very large number of sometimes imposing gateways, some of which formed entrances to forts, palaces, houses, baradaris, gardens, ganjes, bazaars, baolis, imambaras, karbalas, mosques…some were self-subsisting edifices.196
Fig 4.17 The Mermaid Gateway, Lucknow.
Thus the gateway was an important architectural structure in the gateway city of Lucknow, perhaps even more so than in Istanbul, as many gateways surrounded Islamic structures in the city. As previously mentioned, the Rumi Darwaza of the Bara Imambara Complex has associations with Istanbul and its Byzantine era. The colourfully painted
196 Banmali Tandan, The Architecture of Lucknow and its Dependencies, 1722-1856, A Descriptive Inventory and Analysis of Nawabi Types (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, PVT Ltd, 2001), 123.
Mermaid gates of Lucknow displayed the symbols of the nawabs (the mermaid and double fish) and their city. The mermaid motif has possible links to buildings in Indo- Portuguese territories (see Chapter 7). The gates directed the flow of pilgrims and travellers through the monumental buildings. They were also considered to be monuments in their own right, and could be built in isolation from a building.
Highly decorated gates were not a new architectural feature of Lucknow. Mosques in Delhi had screened gateways and even before the Islamic presence in Northern India, the Buddhist Stupa of Sanchi had four decoratively detailed and visually informative gateways (Fig 4.18) that surrounded the Stupa housing the relics of Buddha. This earlier structure could have influenced the building of gateways by the nawabs as well as being the model for the development of the decorative and narrative gateways, going well beyond its purely functional form as an entryway. The complexity of symbolism and design of the gates in these cities is also indicative of architectural complexities and the extent to which architecture needs to be seen in terms of portability, mutability and exchanges.
Fig 4.18 Sanchi, front view of the Eastern Gateway (torana), one of four surrounding the Buddhist Stupa of Sanchi. Located in Madhya Pradesh, Central Northern India, dating to the second and first century B.C.