The Prison of Anemas (Turkish: Anemas Zindanları) is a large Byzantine building attached to the walls of the city of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey). It is traditionally identified with the prisons named after Michael Anemas, a Byzantine general who rose in unsuccessful revolt against Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) and was the first person to be imprisoned there. The prison features prominently in the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire, when four Byzantine emperors were imprisoned there.
Turkish, also referred to as Istanbul Turkish, is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around ten to fifteen million native speakers in Southeast Europe and sixty to sixty-five million native speakers in Western Asia. Outside Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official language, even though Turkey is not a member state.
The Walls of Constantinople are a series of defensive stone walls that have surrounded and protected the city of Constantinople since its founding as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Constantine the Great. With numerous additions and modifications during their history, they were the last great fortification system of antiquity, and one of the most complex and elaborate systems ever built.
Constantinople was the capital city of the Roman Empire (330–395), of the Byzantine Empire, and also of the brief Crusader state known as the Latin Empire (1204–1261), until finally falling to the Ottoman Empire (1453–1923). It was reinaugurated in 324 from ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine the Great, after whom it was named, and dedicated on 11 May 330. The city was located in what is now the European side and the core of modern Istanbul.
The so-called Tower of Isaac Angelos, with its characteristically irregular masonry with the reused stone columns.
The building is located in the suburb of Blachernae, between the mid-12th century stretch of walls constructed by the Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (r. 1143–1180) and the earlier walls of Byzantine emperors Heraclius (r. 610–641) and Leo V the Armenian (r. 813–820). A small stretch of wall connects the structure to the east with the wall of Manuel Komnenos.[1] The structure's outer wall itself is extraordinarily high, rising as high as 23 m above the ground in front of it, and is 11–20 m thick. Behind the outer curtain wall, the building consists of twelve three-storied chambers. Its outer face features two rectangular towers built side-by-side, with one shared wall. The twin towers are in turn supported by a massive buttress, which stands almost 8 m above the ground level and projects from 6.5–9 m in front of the towers themselves.[2]
Blachernae was a suburb in the northwestern section of Constantinople, the capital city of the Byzantine Empire. It is the site of a water source and a number of prominent churches were built there, most notably the great Church of St. Mary of Blachernae, built by Empress Pulcheria in c. 450, expanded by Emperor Leo I and renovated by Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century.
Manuel I Komnenos was a Byzantine Emperor of the 12th century who reigned over a crucial turning point in the history of Byzantium and the Mediterranean. His reign saw the last flowering of the Komnenian restoration, during which the Byzantine Empire had seen a resurgence of its military and economic power, and had enjoyed a cultural revival.
Heraclius was the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 610 to 641. He was responsible for introducing Greek as the Byzantine Empire's official language. His rise to power began in 608, when he and his father, Heraclius the Elder, the exarch of Africa, led a revolt against the unpopular usurper Phocas.
Despite their proximity, the two towers differ greatly in construction, a difference that extends to the breastwork as well, pointing to a construction at different dates.[3] The southern tower is an irregularly quadrilateral two-story structure. Its masonry is very uneven, including several stone pillars that have been inserted into it, often not fully, and its counterfort is made of small, irregularly fitted stones.[4] Its interior arrangement, with its spacious upper story, large windows, and westward-facing balcony, suggests a use as a residential tower. Combined, these factors strongly support its traditional identification with the so-called Tower of Isaac Angelos: according to the historian Niketas Choniates, that tower was built by Emperor Isaac II Angelos (r. 1185–1195, 1203–1204) both as a fort and a private residence, and made use of materials from ruined churches.[5] In contrast, the northern tower, which is identified as the Tower of Anemas proper, is a carefully built structure, displaying the typically Byzantine alternating layers of stone masonry and bricks. Its buttress is built of large, regular, carefully fitted blocks.[3] The strength of the walls and the buttresses is explained by considering that this structure formed the westernmost retaining wall of the large terraced hill upon which the late Byzantine Palace of Blachernae was built.[6]
A breastwork is a temporary fortification, often an earthwork thrown up to breast height to provide protection to defenders firing over it from a standing position. A more permanent structure, normally in stone, would be described as a parapet or the battlement of a castle wall.
Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar; the term masonry can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are brick, building stone such as marble, granite, and limestone, cast stone, concrete block, glass block, and adobe. Masonry is generally a highly durable form of construction. However, the materials used, the quality of the mortar and workmanship, and the pattern in which the units are assembled can substantially affect the durability of the overall masonry construction. A person who constructs masonry is called a mason or bricklayer. These are both classified as construction trades.
A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (sideways) forces arising out of the roof structures that lack adequate bracing.
Interior view of the vaulted chambers of the Prison of Anemas, from a 19th-century illustration.
The main structure consists of thirteen transverse buttress-walls, pierced by three superimposed brick arches, which create twelve compartments, each 9–13 m wide. The two lengthwise walls are not parallel, but steadily move apart as they go north.[7] The eastern wall features a pair of superposed corridors on its upper two levels, built inside the wall's body and lit by loopholes in the wall's façades. The basement-level compartments have no windows, but the upper levels are lit through small openings in the western wall.[8] A spiral stairway tower connects the main structure with the two towers.[9]
A brick is building material used to make walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Traditionally, the term brick referred to a unit composed of clay, but it is now used to denote any rectangular units laid in mortar. A brick can be composed of clay-bearing soil, sand, and lime, or concrete materials. Bricks are produced in numerous classes, types, materials, and sizes which vary with region and time period, and are produced in bulk quantities. Two basic categories of bricks are fired and non-fired bricks.
Inconsistencies in the placement of windows, which are partially covered by later additions, as well as other evidence of successive alterations, show that the structure was built and modified in separate phases. The eastern, city-ward wall came first, as a simple defensive wall with galleries from which arrows and other missiles could be discharged through the loopholes.[10] The rest of the main structure was added later, probably as a strengthened revetment for the palace hill. The role of the compartments is unclear; they have been identified with prison cells, which led to the name "Prison of Anemas" being transferred to the entire structure, but such hypotheses cannot be conclusively proven. It is possible that they functioned as storage rooms or (the upper two levels at least) as barrack rooms.[11]
In stream restoration, river engineering or coastal engineering, revetments are sloping structures placed on banks or cliffs in such a way as to absorb the energy of incoming water. In military engineering they are structures, again sloped, formed to secure an area from artillery, bombing, or stored explosives. River or coastal revetments are usually built to preserve the existing uses of the shoreline and to protect the slope, as defense against erosion.
As for the towers, they are presumed to have been added last, with the southern tower being earlier than the northern one, since they share a wall that manifestly belongs to the former.[12] This, however, throws their identification, respectively as the towers of Isaac Angelos and Anemas, in confusion, since the Tower of Anemas is recorded as extant already in the first years of the 12th century, more than 70 years before the construction of the Tower of Isaac Angelos.[13] Various hypotheses have been introduced to account for this. One theory is that their traditional identification is reversed, or that together they constitute the same building under different names. Another proposes that the actual Tower of Anemas lay further north and was one of the towers of the wall of Heraclius.[14] All theories, however, contain various problems, and the traditional identification remains in standard use today.[15]
Inmates
According to Anna Komnene (The Alexiad, XII.6–7), Michael Anemas was the first man to be imprisoned there, and after him the tower and prison were subsequently named.[16] Michael had conspired against Anna's father, Emperor Alexios I, but the plot was uncovered and he and his fellow conspirators were captured and sentenced to imprisonment and blinding, the usual punishment meted out to traitors. His pleas for mercy, however, as he was being led through the Mese, aroused the sympathy of the people and of Anna herself. Together with her mother, she interceded on his behalf with Alexios. Anemas was indeed shown clemency: he was not blinded, but confined for several years to the tower that was to bear his name.[17] The next prisoner arrived at the tower even before Anemas was finally pardoned and released. It was Gregory Taronites, the doux of Chaldia, the region around Trebizond. Taking advantage of his province's relative isolation, he had tried to make himself an independent ruler in 1104.[18] Even after his capture, however, according to the Alexiad, he remained defiant, leading to a long period of incarceration before he was finally released and pardoned.[19]
The prison was once again in demand in the dynastic conflicts of the Palaiologoi during the 1370s. Emperor John V Palaiologos (r. 1341–1376, 1379–1391) imprisoned his eldest son, Andronikos IV, here after a failed rebellion. Andronikos, however, escaped, and with Genoese and Ottoman aid, he managed to usurp the throne from his father for three years (1376–1379). During this time, John V and his younger sons, Manuel – the future Emperor Manuel II (r. 1391–1425) – and Theodore, were imprisoned in the Anemas Prison.[23]
Related Research Articles
Alexios III Angelos was Byzantine Emperor from March 1195 to July 17/18, 1203. A member of the extended imperial family, Alexios came to throne after deposing, blinding, and imprisoning his younger brother Isaac II Angelos. The most significant event of his reign was the attack of the Fourth Crusade on Constantinople in 1203, on behalf of Alexios IV Angelos. Alexios III took over the defense of the city, which he mismanaged, then fled the city at night with one of his three daughters. From Adrianople, and then Mosynopolis, he unsuccessfully attempted to rally his supporters, only to end up a captive of Marquis Boniface of Montferrat. He was ransomed, sent to Asia Minor where he plotted against his son-in-law Theodore Laskaris, but was eventually arrested and spent his last days confined to the Monastery of Hyakinthos in Nicaea, where he died.
Andronikos I Komnenos, usually Latinized as Andronicus I Comnenus, was Byzantine Emperor from 1183 to 1185. He was the son of Isaac Komnenos and the grandson of the emperor Alexios I.
Isaac II Angelos was Byzantine Emperor from 1185 to 1195, and again from 1203 to 1204.
Isaac Komnenos or Comnenus, ruled Cyprus from 1184 to 1191, before Richard the Lionheart, King of England conquered the island during the Third Crusade.
Komnenos, Latinized Comnenus, plural Komnenoi or Comneni, is a noble family who ruled the Byzantine Empire from 1081 to 1185, and later, as the Grand Komnenoi founded and ruled the Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461). Through intermarriages with other noble families, notably the Doukai, Angeloi, and Palaiologoi, the Komnenos name appears among most of the major noble houses of the late Byzantine world.
Alexios I Megas Komnenos or Alexius I Megas Comnenus was, with his brother David, the founder of the Empire of Trebizond, which he ruled from 1204 until his death in 1222. The two brothers were the only male descendants of the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos I, who had been dethroned and killed in 1185, and thus claimed to represent the legitimate government of the Empire following the conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Although his rivals governing the Nicaean Empire succeeded in becoming the de facto successors, and rendered his dynastic claims to the imperial throne moot, Alexios' descendants continued to emphasize both their heritage and connection to the Komnenian dynasty by referring to themselves as Megas Komnenos or Grand Komnenos.
Euphrosyne Doukaina Kamaterina or better Kamatera was a Byzantine Empress by marriage to the Byzantine Emperor Alexios III Angelos.
The AIMA prophecy was a prophecy current during the reign of the Byzantine emperor, Manuel I Komnenos and at the same time an example of a medieval contrived acronym.
The Angelos family, feminine form Angelina (Άγγελίνα), plural Angeloi (Ἄγγελοι), was a Byzantine Greek noble lineage which gave rise to three Byzantine emperors who ruled between 1185 and 1204. From the 13th to the 14th century, a branch of the family ruled Epiros, Thessaly and Thessaloniki under the name of Komnenos Doukas.
Syrgiannes Palaiologos Philanthropenos was a Byzantine aristocrat and general of mixed Cuman and Greek descent, who was involved in the civil war between Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos and his grandson Andronikos III. Loyal only to himself and his own ambitions, he switched sides several times, and ended up conquering much of Macedonia for the Serbian ruler Stefan Dušan before being assassinated by the Byzantines.
The Palace of Blachernae was an imperial Byzantine residence in the suburb of Blachernae, located in the northwestern section of Constantinople. The area of the palace is now mostly overbuilt, and only literary sources are available as to its description.
Basil II Kamateros, was the Patriarch of Constantinople from August 1183 to February 1186.
Alexios Palaiologos was a Byzantine nobleman, son-in-law of Emperor Alexios III Angelos and his heir apparent from 1199 to his death. Throughout this time, he was actively involved in the suppression of several revolts and riots against the emperor. Through his daughter, he became one of the progenitors of the Palaiologan dynasty (1261–1453).
Andronikos Doukas Angelos was a Byzantine aristocrat related to the ruling Komnenos dynasty. During the reign of his cousin, Manuel I Komnenos, he served without success as a military commander against the Seljuk Turks, and as envoy to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Following Manuel's death, in 1182 he was sent to stop the rebellion of Andronikos I Komnenos, but was defeated and eventually defected to him. Shortly after, he led a failed conspiracy of leading aristocrats against AndronikosI. When it was discovered, Andronikos and his sons fled the Empire, ending up in Acre, where he died. He was the father of emperors Isaac II Angelos and Alexios III Angelos.
Andronikos Angelos can refer to:
Constantine Komnenos Angelos was a Byzantine aristocrat and military commander, and the older brother of the emperors Isaac II Angelos and Alexios III Angelos. He was blinded by the usurper Andronikos I Komnenos, and raised to sebastokrator by his brother Isaac upon the latter's accession.
John Komnenos was the second son of the Byzantine aristocrat, and emperor in 1183–1185, Andronikos I Komnenos. His father appointed him co-emperor over his older brother Manuel, but when Andronikos was deposed on 12 September 1185, John was also seized and probably killed.
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