Haghia Sophia - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 43

other verd antique of the building were expressly hewn for Haghia
Sophia from the famous quarries in Thessaly near Molossis. But
about the eight porphyry columns in the exedrae, there is a problem,
for there is some evidence that the porphyry mountain at Djebel
Dochan near Thebes had ceased to be quarried in the fifth century.
If this is true, the eight exedra columns - which, by the way, difer
very appreciably in height and diameter - must have been taken from
some older building. But there is no evidence to connect them to
any particular ancient building; we simply do not know where they
came from.
The only other kind of marble used for columns in the church is
that from the island of Proconnesus in the Marmara. It is a soft white,
streaked with grey or black, and is used for the 24 aisle columns of
the gallery and the eight rectangular pillars at the ends of the ground
floor aisles. The floor of the church, too, the frames of doors and
windows, and parts of the wall surfaces are also of this marble. It is
very common to this day in Istanbul, and is used for everything from
tombstones to toilets.
For the superb revetment of the piers and walls, a great variety of
rare and beautiful marbles was used. Besides those already discussed,
the Silentiary mentions at least eight diferent varieties: the deep
green porphyry from Mount Taygetus near Sparta; a “fresh green”
from Carystus in the island of Euboea; the rose-red Phyrygian marble
from Synnada and a variegated one from Hierapolis in Asia Minor;
“Iassian, with slanting veins of blood red on livid white,” probably
from Lacedaemon; a marble “of crocus yellow glittering like gold,”
from Simittu Colonia near Tunis; and one from the Pyrenees, “the
product of the Celtic crags, like milk poured on a flesh of glittering
black”; and finally the precious onyx, like alabaster honey-coloured
and translucent. In order to obtain the elaborate symmetrical patterns
of each panel, the thin blocks of marble were sawn in two, sometimes
in four, and opened out like a book so that the natural veining of the
stone was reduplicated, very much like the ink blots of a Rorschach
test. And spectators, both ancient and modern, respond as patients
do to the Rorschach test by finding in the veined panels likenesses of
men and animals, devils and angels, giving form to the ghosts and