While I was wandering on the lane curving between the stone houses, I raised my head to a repeating, rhythmic sound. The sound, which was obviously human-made, wasn’t a melody, but it wasn’t a metallic din either. As I paid more attention, I caught the inner voice, the melody of the sound.

On the roof of one of the stone houses, which is masterpiece and built meticulously, a stone master was shaping the stone. In front of him were stones peculiar to the region… He was sitting on the floor, or more precisely, he was sitting on the roof at the same level of the upper street, while he was holding a longish stone in a certain angle, he was carving the stone with his distinctive rhythm. With bittersweet blows, as if trying not to hurt the stone… I was about to discover another perspective. While the stone master was shaping the stone with great attention as if he was talking to the stone, Mount Erciyes was standing tall and completing the whole horizon behind him. Despite all the distance, the stone master was shaping the stone under the gorgeous view of (or should I say under the shadow of) Erciyes…

I will never forget this image, which had been etched into my memory, when I went to the village where Sinan was born for the first time. God knows for how many centuries and even millenniums this land’s spirit had blown things onto that stone. Stone masters, who are gaining inspiration from Erciyes’ image appearing in sheets and its magnificence that leads to heavens, are still continuing this tradition. People, who had visited Agirnas, Gesi and Dimitri, will be able to see that good old stone houses are still standing. They will be able to feel what kind of spirit had been blown onto the stones of these houses. These houses almost reflect a piece of beauty, a piece of magnificence from Erciyes… Again, another matter that had taken my attention when I was touring the region: Most of the houses, which possess that stone mastery, belong to the 1950s. This means that until today that tradition had continued. The stone masonry has survived through the years. Though, not too many stone houses of traditional architecture exist anymore.

As I watched the master, who shaped stone by the inspiration it took from Erciyes’ splendor, I looked at the stone he sculpted and the image of Erciyes, which was shaping in the distance. Also, five centuries ago the Great Architect Sinan had shaped his art and aesthetic perception with this image. He had reached the climax of poetry. Then, by taking inspiration from it, he had placed Süleymaniye in Istanbul.

This must be the difference between the Western tradition, which created the Masonic organization from stone masters, and our civilization, which had taken over an aesthetic from Sinan. Richard Sennett had portrayed how sensual desires shaped the city architecture of the Western civilization, which cannot observe the human body’s sensitivity, in his book named ‘Skin and stone’, in which he evaluates the history of Western cities from Ancient Greece to modern times.

The basin of civilization that blows spirit to the stone against the architectural understanding shaped by physical experiences…

Are we the inheritors of this civilization?!

On another day, I visited the town of Agirnas, particularly, the house in which Sinan was born. Questions had rushed to my mind… How could a freaky and artificial history have been edited from such a glorious tradition? A house had been built with antique Greek inspiration. Its interiors had been filled with a décor, of an origin that cannot quite pinpoint. Under the Atatürk posters, which are abundantly visible in the house accepted as Mimar (Architect) Sinan’s house, the sentence ‘The power that you require is existing in your royal blood that is in your veins’ had been written as if to allegorize Sinan. The official warden explains a memorized Sinan profile and Ottoman description in his way. He is trying to present historical proof showing that Sinan was a genuine Turk. Does it matter if he was a genuine Turk or not? Didn’t the Ottoman’s greatness come from uniting countless discrepancies in a single civilization pot?

When looking at Sinan’s heritage, which had been turned into a museum, it becomes easier to understand how this weird, degraded embrace is drying up that rich weather, which Sinan was feeding on.

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