Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the city. Several sainted Arab heroes of that campaign are buried in
the vicinity, all having been violently dispatched to paradise by the
defenders on the walls of Byzantium. The burial place of Hazret Hafız
was only 'discovered' in the eighteenth century by the Chief Eunuch
Beşir Ağa, who thereupon built this türbe, thus blocking the road.
From Eğri Kapı we continue along the path just inside the walls
to see the remainder of the wall of Manuel Comnenus, which ends
at the third tower past the gate. The rest of this section of wall, from
the third tower to where it joins the retaining wall of the Blachernae
terrace, appears to be of later construction. The workmanship here is
much inferior to that of Manuel's section, as can clearly be seen where
the two join, without being bonded together, just beyond the third
tower from Eğri Kapı. This section contains four towers, all square
and also much inferior to those built by Manuel. Manuel's wall bears
no dated inscription; the northern and later one has three: one dated
1188 (Isaac II Angelus), another 1317 (Andronicus II Palaeologus),
and the third 1441 (John VIII Palaeologus). There is also in this
northern section a postern, now walled up, which is thought to be
the ancient Gyrolimne Gate. This was an entryway to the Palace of
Blachernae, whose outer retaining wall and two towers continue the
line of fortifications in this area.
WALLS OF LEO AND HERACLİUS
The fortification from the north corner of the Blachernae terrace
to the Golden Horn consists of two parallel walls joined at their
two ends to form a kind of citadel. The inner wall was built by the
Emperor Heraclius in 627 apparently in an attempt to strengthen
the defences in this area, which the year before had been breached
by the Avars. The three hexagonal defence towers in this short stretch
of wall are perhaps the finest in the whole defence system. In 813
the Emperor Leo V decided that this wall by itself was inadequate
and therefore added to it the outer wall, protected by four small
towers. (The city was then being threatened by Krum of the Bulgars.)
However, Leo's wall is thin and much inferior to the older one behind
it. These walls were pierced by a single entryway, the Gate of the
Blachernae; that part of the gate which passed through the wall of
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