Illicit Antiquities
Research Centre
against the theft & traffic
of archaeology

Return of the Birgi ulu Camii mimbar doors

Augusta McMahon

Culture Without Context

Issue 2,
Spring 1998

It is not just ancient or 'archaeological' material which is at risk in Turkey or other countries of the region. The increased appreciation of and high prices now fetched by Islamic antiquities and antiques on the market have led to thefts of more recent material. For instance, among the thousands of objects looted from the regional museums of Iraq were many of Islamic date, including decorated bronze vessels and lamps, glazed pottery, etc. None of these have yet been recovered.

Even Islamic objects which are still in situ and in use are at risk. One such case of theft (a success, story, rather than the usual depressing tale of total loss) is that of the wooden double mimbar doors from the Ulu Camii (Aydinoglu Mehmet Bey Mosque) in Birgi, near Izmir on the West coast of Turkey. This area is perhaps better known outside Turkey for its rich heritage of Ionian and Hellenistic sites such as Ephesus, Pergamum and Didyma; but these sites make up only a small part of the total. A number of mosques in Turkey contain beautiful wooden carvings, an art form which reached its peak under early Ottoman rule. The doors in this case date to 1322 (722 Hijra) and thus fall well within the rubric of Turkish antiquities regulations, which prohibit export from Turkey of items made before 1914. The doors are a matched pair with the fronts completely covered by ornate carved plant and geometric motifs, surmounted by a line of gilded Arabic script (Fig. 1). They are only just over 1.5 metres high and each about half a metre wide, an unwieldy package, but not above what could be carried by a single person. 

Figure 1: The Ulu Camii doors after recovery Return to text

The doors were stolen in May 1993. Details of their actual removal from the building are unfortunately unclear. But the path taken by the doors after their removal has been tracked by the Turkish authorities and New Scotland Yard. They were sent by British Airways Cargo from Istanbul to Sofia, Bulgaria, and from there to London. Ultimately, they were sent to Christie's auction house for sale, but only after they had been missing and unheard of for about two years (presumably they were stored in a warehouse during this time, until it was assumed they were no longer being actively sought). By then, Interpol had been alerted, and detailed information about the doors, including photographs taken while they were in situ in the mosque, had been widely disseminated to antiquities dealers, museums, and customs authorities. An employee from Christie's was able tentatively to identify the doors which came to them as being the same as those in the Interpol information. The police were informed on 15 May 1995, and the doors were subsequently identified for certain by Turkish officials. The complexity is such, however, that even given the straightforward and unarguable identification possible in this case, the doors were not returned to Turkish hands until five months later, 9 November 1995.

The success of this case rests on a number of aspects; the primary one being that there was a good photograph of the doors in situ, documenting their provenance and proving ownership beyond a doubt. The distinctive nature of the carving and the inscription were also important in matching the photograph to the actual objects. The co-operation of the British police, the Turkish authorities and the antiquities dealer were also vital. This is one of the earliest cases of such fruitful co-operation between the UK and Turkey; previous attempts by Turkey to involve the British police had not achieved such good results.

This success story stands in stark contrast to an earlier case of illegally exported objects from Turkey, in this case the sale of Urartian bronze objects at Sotheby's in London in the mid-1970s (as related by Rachel Maxwell-Hyslop). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a large number Urartian bronzes began to appear on the market in Munich and London (one estimate of the number of pieces is about 6,000). Although the ancient Urartian kingdom (c. 9th-7th Century BC) is located in an area now divided among the modern nations of Turkey, Iran and Armenia, the bronzes appearing in London were identifiable as most probably coming from the sites of Giyimli and Patnos, in eastern Turkey. Giyimli in particular was known to have been systematically looted and to have contained bronze items which closely matched those arriving in London. Patnos was under excavation by a Turkish team during part of the year and had also produced comparable bronze objects, and while the archaeologists were not on the site it would have been vulnerable to looting. Sotheby's was apparently informed of the likely provenience of the objects but nevertheless persisted with their sale.

Sir James Bowker, then Chairman of the Council of the British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, informed the Turkish Embassy of the objects in one sale, and a representative of the Turkish Antiquities Department was dispatched to London with £5,000 to attempt to buy back as many objects as possible. The sale was also attended by the Turkish Cultural attaché to London and by Mrs Maxwell-Hyslop on behalf of the British Institute at Ankara. In the event, £5,000 proved not enough to retrieve all of the objects and many were bought by private collectors and thus dispersed. The catalogues of the relevant sales (8 December 1975, 12 July 1976 and 8 November 1976) described them as 'Urartian bronzes from Iran', despite the fact that Sotheby's had been informed that the likely provenance of many of the objects was Turkey. Many of the objects in fact remained in Munich and are now in the Prähistorische Staatssammlung of the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, where a special exhibit was put on from early September to early December 1976.

Urartian bronze statuettes, weapons, and reliefs have been collected in the West for more than 150 years. A. H. Layard, the excavator of Nimrud in northern Iraq in 1845-47, purchased several Urartian bronzes on behalf of the British Museum during his travels through the region. The objects are skillfully made and often elaborately decorated and inlaid, with an intriguing decorative style, a fusion of Assyrian and local idiom. Their popularity and attendant market demand has undoubtedly led to greater looting of sites. And meanwhile the awkward location of the Urartian sites in politically sensitive areas in modern terms has meant that not very many systematic excavations of Urartian sites have taken place. Thus we are almost in the same situation with Urartian bronzes as with Cycladic figurine, that as many unprovenanced objects are known as are well-provenanced excavated ones. And this has a devastating impact upon our reconstruction of what, exactly, makes up 'Urartian style' in metalwork. The situation is only complicated by the presence of some obvious forgeries among the known bronzes; there may be less obvious forgeries in some collections, still unknown. And since these are be default being used to formulate our concept of 'Urartian' art, they will never be identifiable as fakes.

These two cases offer an interesting contrast; why did one end in success and the other in failure? Clearly the key element is that of documentation. Since the Urartian bronzes had been looted from illegally excavated sites, there was no documentation of their origin; while the mimbar doors had been studied and photographed in place. The stylistic arguments applied to locate the origin of the Urartian bronzes may be persuasive but can never be conclusive. Uniqueness of the objects in question is also an important aspect. The nature of the Urartian objects (in particular such items as weapons and vessels, but also to a lesser extent such items as statuettes also) is such that there are many which are broadly similar in function, scale, even artistic detail, in contrast to the mimbar doors with their unique carving. So what is the damage? The sale and dispersal of the Urartian bronzes, following upon their illicit excavation, destroyed a chance for better definition of art and even correction of our reconstruction of Urartian art and its relationship with contemporary Scythian art and the earlier, possibly related, metalwork of Luristan. Both archaeologists and collectors have lost valuable knowledge of the past.

First posted October 1998;  Page design updated September 2006