Introduction: In the Courtyard

The Fatih Mosque today.

“Lieux de memoire,” Pierre Nora writes in his essay “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire," “originate with the sense that there is no spontaneous memory, that we must deliberately create archives, maintain anniversaries, organize celebrations, and notarize bills because such activities no longer occur naturally.” In Nora’s paradigmatic shift from subconscious memory to conscious remembrance, these “sites of memory” serve as arguments within cultures’ self-conscious historical narratives. History, according to Nora, is memory commodified: a tool that can be used in service of modern agendas and values.

By this argument, the geographic site that currently houses the Fatih Camii—“Mosque of the Conqueror”—in Istanbul, Turkey, would not be regarded as a lieu de memoire, but as two distinct ones. Located in Istanbul’s historic Fatih district, the mosque’s current 18^th-century structure hides the site’s layers of repurposed urban symbolism. The Fatih Camii rests on or near the former site of the Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles, one of the Byzantine Empire’s holiest sites and a lieu de memoire for its emperors in both life and death. The church’s subsequent demolishment to make way for the mosque established another lieu celebrating the Ottoman conquest of the city. Since then, the mosque’s continual rebuilding following successive disasters has proven its longevity as an assertion of Ottoman authority, even in the modern era.

I will argue in this essay that these two lieux de memoire are neither mutually exclusive nor mutually disruptive. The Byzantine church established an intangible architectural and cultural legacy that can still be seen today, while the Fatih Camii’s religious significance is founded upon that of its predecessor. Further, the juxtaposition of the two cultures’ historical traditions creates a third lieu de memoire: the site itself can be viewed as a representation of Istanbul’s hybrid cultural heritage. 

1. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire.” Representations, no. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989, p.12. Web.