Islamic Middle East and Africa

Al Hanners is a retired geologist who worked worldwide for a major U.S. oil company for nearly five decades. He worked in the Middle East for the company in the early 1970s.

Part 3

My experience in Tripoli during a business year in Libya was the most depressing of my career. I had arrived there only a few days after the reigning monarch had been overthrown, possibly because he had been too tolerant of Western influences. The city of over 130,000 had a significant European and American population and Tripoli even had street signs and billboards in English. Now all signs were gone. Four decades later I still remember how I went from my hotel to the nearest restaurant. Turn right when leaving the hotel, walk three blocks, turn right again and there it was. I was very concerned that I might not be able to find my way back to the hotel or to find anyone to ask directions.

Women were covered by burkas from the top of their heads to their feet. Even their faces were covered by veils. Strangest of all, one could see bare pinkish white feet in sandals. Apparently Libyan Muslims don’t find feet sexy. As for the men, I could sense a sullen look in their eyes.

My job, as oilmen say, was a dry run. I was sent there by Texaco to find a way to sustain the declining production of a specific oil field. Some things are hard; the impossible is difficult.

Shakespeare said “Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.” That jewel was Leptis Magna. Phoenicians probably founded three cities between 700 B.C. and 146 B.C. (or B.C.E.) in what now is Western Libya: Tripoli, Leptis Magna and Sabrantha. They were under Roman occupation from 146 B.C. until 450 A.D. (or C.E.). The area was Rome’s breadbasket and Leptis Magna was a port where Romans built the temple I visited. In the 11th century Arab invasions destroyed Sabratha and Leptis Magna but the Roman temple was preserved.

Prehistoric art of tropical animals found in the Sahara Desert indicate that during the last ice age Northern Africa was much wetter that it is now. As the climate became drier, the Sahara Desert border moved northward. Tripoli, an oasis, escaped the sandstorms but they covered Leptis Magna and the inside of the temple with up to 10 feet of sand.

When Italians occupied Libya in the 1930s, Italian archeologists excavated the sand in the temple and left it as I saw it. The temple’s inside walls were decorated by two rows of niches each holding a statue. All protuberances including noses and penises were knocked off the upper row of statues but not off the lower row, thus indicating the depth of sand excavated and the time of vandalism. I left marveling at both what I had seen and Shakespeare’s wisdom.

In the 1990s after retirement, as our tour bus entered Istanbul, Turkey, I was amazed when I could read some signs along the way. After Banki sure enough a bank building came into sight. How was that possible? It had a lot to do with the leadership of Kemal Ataturk, the head of the nascent republic’s single political party. He and his colleagues were sick and tired of being part of the Ottoman Sultanate. They were determined to westernize Turkey.

The Ottoman Turks are said to have been driven out of Central Asia by the Mongols and settled in Anatolia where they were a very important part of the Ottoman Empire. During World War I the Ottomans, overextended and deeply in debt, supported the losing side. Germany was unable to meet its commitments. In 1918 the Turks expelled the Ottoman dynasty and became a secular republic called Turkey. The Ottoman Empire was extinct and palaces became museums.

The Ottomans had made some progress toward religious tolerance and the rights of women, which were accelerated under the republic. The republic’s constitution established Islam as the state religion but later efforts were made to grant freedom of religion and freedom of speech. From 1926 through 1934 the national assembly freed legislation from Islamic influences. Polygamy was officially abolished, all men and women were entitled to vote by age 31, the Arabic alphabet was discarded, the Roman alphabet was adopted and English became the principal language taught in public schools. Circa 1950 the Republican party was defeated in an election and a de facto two-party system began.

Saint Sophia, famous for its architecture, gold leaf art and its history, is a leading attraction in Istanbul, formerly Constantinople. It was built circa 400 A.D. as a Greek Orthodox Church. When the Czar of Russia decided to change the official religion from Pagan to Christianity, he was undecided whether it should be Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox, so he sent a delegation to St. Sophia. They were so impressed that Russia became Greek Orthodox. The effect of that decision on religious tolerance in Turkey will be treated below.

The church has a large dome supported by half domes below. There are no flying buttresses or other supports like English cathedrals, A balcony completely circling the dome is still in use today. Along the balcony are very large gold leaf mosaics. One mosaic is of Jesus, the others are of Christian saints. Islamic armed forces conquered Constantinople in 1453 A.D. Later when Saint Sophia was converted into a mosque, the gold leaf art was covered. Still later, probably after the birth of the Turkish Republic, the gold leaf art was uncovered and St. Sophia was converted to a museum. Ironically tourists who wanted a piece of gold leaf as a souvenir did far more damage than the Muslims. The name Saint Sophia means Saint Wisdom, not a person, and through the centuries the name remained the same. Evidently wisdom is widely respected. The Greek Orthodox Church on Sunset Drive in Bellingham is St. Sophia, apparently named after the original Saint Sophia in Turkey.

I never learned when the gold leaf was covered, but there was some tolerance of people-of-the-book, Jews and Christians, centuries ago. The road to tolerance has been rocky. Religious tolerance evolved as much because of duress and need as a sense of fairness. The decision of Russia to convert to Greek Orthodox was crucial. In 1774 a treaty gave Russia the right to protect Greek Orthodox churches. In 1853 Russia sent an ultimatum to Constantinople saying that Russia had the right to protect Greek Orthodox churches. In the 17th and 18th centuries the Turks failed to learn European languages and used Jews and Christians as interpreters. While in Turkey we were shown a very large Jewish cemetery still in good condition, but we saw no Jewish communities.

At the beginning of World War II Turkey was not equipped to fight and wisely remained neutral, but incurred heavy expenditures modernizing its armed forces. It passed a capital levy in 1942 fairly applied to Turks and foreigners but ruthlessly applied to citizen ethnic minorities accused of war profiteering: Jews, Greeks and Armenians. On November 15, 2003, two synagogues in Istanbul were attacked killing 23 and wounding 200. It seems that hatred of Jews stimulated by the Israel Palestinian conflict has no end in sight.

Following three days in Istanbul our tour of Turkey was by cruise ship to visit archaeological sites along the northern coast of Turkey. They were the remains of cities still prosperous into the early Christian era. There is no fertile coastal plain. The coast is hilly and the shoreline very irregular. Each of the ancient cities was at the head of an inlet that then had sufficient water for passage of boats to the sea and to support fish. Each night our ship moved to a new site and anchored in deep water off a headland. We went ashore in small boats and by bus and foot to the site. Typically, ancient cities depended on agriculture near them to feed their population. What we saw were former inlets filled with soil eroded as the result of agriculture around the cities, so much so that there were a few small vegetable gardens in them. Hills were rocky with a thin soil cover and scrubby shrubs. The demise of that ancient civilization is history to be remembered by Americans who are unaware that we have already lost up to one half of our topsoil and almost depleted some aquifers.

The tourists were Christian, the head tour guide Muslim. Discussion of religion was inevitable. He said that Turks tolerated people-of-the-book. He and his fellow Muslims thought Jesus was a prophet but not a god.

The highlight of the trip was a visit to the stadium at Ephesus where Apostle Paul spoke to the Corinthians. The stadium was well preserved and still in use. The night before our visit a rock concert held there left a lot of trash including many soft drink cans but no cans that had contained alcohol. As we arrived a crew of three men were cleaning up by sweeping the trash down from the top. Our tour guide for the day was a slender young woman dressed in jeans and a shirt who tried to tell us about the stadium, but the cans made so much noise that we couldn’t understand her. She yelled at the men to make them stop but they continued. To our admiration she kept yelling at them until they stopped. That single event speaks volumes about the role of women in Turkey in the 1990s. §