That Seljuk Style

A few years ago, during The Great Turkey Road Trip, I collected photos of marble carvings and sculptures at early Christian sites near Roman and Greek ruins such as Heirapolis and Ephesus.  The Christian church was very much in its infancy then, using architectural motifs and techniques taken from Roman temples.  I found the workmanship fascinating, and also was surprised to realize that I was standing in a Turk-less Turkey.  There were no Turks for the first few hundred years AD because they didn't exist yet.

Having spent time in Central Asia, where the precursors of modern Turkey hailed from, I wanted to express the overlapping demography of Turkey's history.  So I marched myself down to the Grand Bazaar, found my ikat person, and bought some Central Asian silk ikats.  This is a traditional style of weaving from Central Asia, which I use here to demonstrate the richness that comes from overlapping these two cultures:  the Greco-Roman early Christian church, and the Seljuk settlers who arrived a few centuries later.