Glowing messages lighting up Istanbul's mosques
Just 3 men in the whole of Turkey are keeping alive a religious & visual art form – the mahya – whose glittering messages have burned themselves into memories of generations of Istanbulites.
By Tuncay Kayaoğlu
ISTANBUL
Kahraman Yildiz and his friends enter the dark and dusty basement of Dolmabahce mosque by the banks of the Bosporus. They drag their heavy load of cables, lamps and plugs into the cramped workspace. With them they hold instructions from their former master, Munir Can.
After hours of backbreaking work they will hang one of the famous ‘mahya’ – a huge glittering sign, illuminated by hundreds of glowing lamps – strung between the minarets of Istanbul’s iconic Blue Mosque, beaming its Ramadan message across the hills and waters of the ancient city.
These signs have changed over the centuries. From oil-lit displays of Ottoman ostentation and piety to electric lightbulbs broadcasting secular messages after the birth of Ataturk’s new Turkey; their messages have been emblazoned on the minds and memories generations of Istanbulites.
Kahraman Yildiz recalls the day he fell in love with mahya: “When the electric turned on, I saw the illumination: ‘Happy Conquest’. It was the 29th of May 1975, the anniversary of Istanbul’s conquest. It was beautiful.”
Now, however, the mahya art form is endangered, only kept alive by three men in the whole of Turkey.
Kahraman, 59, a cheerful and direct former electrician, has spent the last 40 years giving up his free time to build and erect mahya – the word having purported Arabic and Persian origins, meaning ‘lunar’.
Alarmingly, there is no one to replace him, so he continues the tradition alone with his two companions, Aziz and Suleyman.
Mahya has a longer history: it is an Ottoman tradition. The ruling dynasty began adorning mosques with mahya in the early 1600s. Some claim that it was an imam’s assistant of the Fatih Mosque, the calligrapher Hâfız Ahmed Kefevi, who hung the first mahya between two minarets of the Blue Mosque in 1616 or 1617.
The first official document regarding mahya points a later date. In 1723, Ottoman Grand Vizier Damad Ibrahim Pasha ordered mahya to be hung all “sultan” mosques; that is those constructed by sultans using their own wealth. Since such mosques had at least two minarets, they were suitable for the illumination work, in contrast with more austere forms of mosque building in other parts of the Islamic world.
Apart from the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, mahya were also hung in mosques in Bursa and Edirne, which also served as Ottoman capitals. Yet mahya remains a distinctly Istanbul art form.
Ismail Kara, professor of theology at Istanbul Marmara University, reveals how the city’s bumpy topography was suitable for mahya to seen and read from a distance.
“Mahya’s cost was provided by mosques’ budgets in Ottoman times but it was expensive considering that a master was needed along with many tools and tons of olive oil. Not every mosque could meet that expenditure,” Kara says. Until Turkey began to produce electricity, mahya masters used oil to light their messages.
Kahraman, today’s mahya master, says that Istanbul’s importance as a former capital is the main reason why the signs have decorated the city’s mosques for centuries.
“Mahya was the only visual entertainment Ottomans had in that time,” he adds, revealing how during Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting and prayer, some Ottomans toured the city to see and read as many messages as they could.
Although the mahya messages are mainly religious as they are hung during Ramadan and important days such as Istanbul’s conquest, there have been times especially in the early days of the Turkish Republic when political messages were conveyed through this unique art form.
Kara reveals how those more political messages were hung between 1923 and 1950, a period characterized by the rule of the avowedly secular Republican People’s Party. The surname of the founder of the republic, Ataturk, would be strung across a mosque. After Ataturk’s death, Turkey’s second president’s name, Inonu, also decorated a mosque.
“People who founded the Turkish Republic did not prefer total separation between religion and politics,” Kara says. Nevertheless, secularism is still one of the pillars of Ataturk’s party and inserted in Turkey’s constitution.
Kara also says that during the Ottoman era, political messages adorned mosques as well. For example, he says, a message was hung to greet 19th century ruler Abdulhamid II upon his return from battlefield to Istanbul, but in the Ottoman era, there was no separation between religion and politics. On the contrary, Ottoman sultans were also the Muslim caliph.
The language of mahya has also been flexible. Apart from Arabic and Turkish messages, English messages have also adorned Istanbul's mosques. According to historian Mustafa Armagan, in 1946 officials ordered a “Welcome” message to be hung from Dolmabahce mosque which could be seen from the American warship, the USS Missouri, which was anchored in the city at the time.
However, for a long time mahya messages have been chosen from a list prepared by a government department for Turkish Religious Affairs.
“We selected a few messages among them. For example, the first message for incoming holy month that we are going to string at the Blue Mosque is ‘Welcome O Ramadan!’,” Master Kahraman says. During Ramadan, Kahraman and his team change the message weekly to keep people’s attention.
In practical terms, mahya making is no easy task. The length between two minarets plays a huge role in determining which message is going to be hung at a mosque. “For instance, the height of single letter for the Blue Mosque is two meters while the width is also two meters,” Kahraman says.
Roughly 250 filament lamps with fifteen watts power are needed to complete the message as that wattage is the closest to reproducing Ottoman-era illumination.
“If a lamp has more power than 15 watts, the message becomes blurred and cannot be read from a distance,” Kahraman says. It takes a day to prepare the basic structure of a message and few hours to hang it over 200 feet in the air between minarets.
There is no formal education on mahya. Rather, the art is learned in the master-apprentice tradition. Kahraman had two grand masters. After learning some techniques from his first master, Munir Can, he honed his skills by studying with then-master Haci Ali Ceyhan.
Now, there are only three masters left, fuelling fears among Turkish officials that the centuries-old art may flicker out. Fearing this loss, the government has recruited a handful of young people to preserve the art.
Nevertheless, Kahraman has doubts whether younger generation can keep these skills alive. "Their aspirations and expectations are different than us," he says, adding that a new recruit needs time to master mahya.
Kahraman’s gloomy outlook makes some think the art could eventuallydisappear: “I am retired but still construct mahya. I am looking for a responsible person to teach this art."
“I and my team do not want this art to die,” the master says.
Kahraman – the retired electrician and master craftsman – has not let this uncertainty stop him from working on mahya. He and his team still work tirelessly to please Istanbulites and the Turkish people. His devotion to a 400-year-old visual art has remained unshaken although it requires heavy labor and delicate skills.
What explains this devotion? “My love for mahya,” he replies simply.
