This is a fully illustrated account of the rock-cut monasteries, hermitages and other complexes in Cappadocia, Turkey.

Based on four seasons of fieldwork, this book presents the results of the first systematic site survey of a region rich in material remains. From architecture to fresco painting, Cappadocia represents a previously untapped resource for the study of material culture and the settings of daily life within the Byzantine Empire.

Cappadocia, a province in central Turkey, offers the traveler a startling rockscape whose cones, pleats, and folds conceal hundreds of monasteries and churches carved from the soft, porous "tuff" and used by Christian communities over nearly two millennia for shelter, burial, and sanctuary. This region in the Turkish hinterland is recognized as one of the centers of Byzantine mural painting. However, numerous hermitages, monasteries, and independent chapels dating from the seventh century onward reveal it also as one of the most concentrated areas of Eastern monasticism.This book serves a double purpose: it provides a thorough and lucid introduction to the rockcut churches and monasteries and their painted decorations, while it critically examines current scholarship on the monastic environment of Byzantine Cappadocia--particularly in regard to the architecture, which has been generally neglected by art historians.Scooped out rather than constructed, this anonymous architecture has its own unique appeal. Kostof writes: "The Cappadocian carver-architect was not inhibited... by statics or the nature of materials. His structure stood, a monolith, before he started to work on it. And he could cut into this monolith quickly, effortlessly. It might take a single man about a month to carve out a large room of two to three thousand cubic feet. Loads and thrusts were negligible. One was free to try any structural symbol with little concern for structural safety. Cupolas could bubble from flat ceilings, or be placed over square bays by means of the most cavalier transition elemenis. No shape need be perfect: extemporaneous geometry is everywhere the rule. Wall lines sag, one half of an arch doesn't quite match the other, carefree deviations, here and there, mark the general outline of the building."Following an account of the region, its environmental, political, and religious history, the author discusses in detail the building types and painting programs in the context of their creation--answering such questions as what was the nature of monasticism in Cappadocia, and who were the builders, the artists, their patrons? The author was born and educated in Turkey, and his personal knowledge of the monuments is a convincing factor in his handling of chronological and stylistic uncertainties. Throughout, Kostof's mind's eye never leaves the total environment, observing the inseparability of landscape, buildings, paintings, and the ritual that informs them.

The focus of the book is a particular region of the Byzantine Empire, Cappadocia, within Anatolia, in the centre of what is now Turkey. Its history as a part of this confederation of territories coincides with the medieval period in Europe. This monograph deals with various aspects of the province; it begins with its environment and climate, goes to some of its institutions and buildings, and ends with the paintings which the art-ists employed to decorate the latter, as well as with a particular type of inscriptions (those along the frontiers). It also considers education in Cappadocia during the Byzantines. The study is a scholarly/professional work that draws on the author's current research as well as on the material which the author developed in the last four years while teaching for the University of Ox-ford.

The book is a clear, up-to-date, reassessment of the Byzantine empire during a crucial phase in the history of the Near East. Against a geopolitical background (well-illustrated with 14 maps), it covers the last decade of the Roman empire as a superpower of the ancient world, the catastrophic crisis of the seventh century and the means whereby its embattled Byzantine successor hung on in Constantinople and Asia Minor until the Abbasid Caliphate's decline opened up new perspectives for Christian power in the Near East. Not confined to any narrow definition of Byzantine history, the empire's neighbours, allies and enemies in Europe and Asia also receive extensive treatment.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.