|
text
|
There are many cellars and cisterns and chambers below ground in Santa Sophia which are wrought in a fashion that is very marvellous to behold, also we saw many houses with other outbuildings round and about, but these for the most part are already falling to decay. The outer walls here are all in ruin, and various doorways that lead into the church have recently been walled up or are blocked by fall of stones. But indeed they say (that of old) the outer circuit of the church buildings enclosed a space that measured ten of miles round. There is in Santa Sophia underground an immense cistern, holding much water, and it is stated to be so large that a hundred galleys might easily float in it. All these marvels that we have spoken of, we were shown in this church of Santa Sophia with many others, and they are so innumerable that it was impossible in brief to describe all, or even to enumerate the greater part.
Comment by Crow 2008: See also van der Vin (1980), 632-3. Dagron (1984b), 282-3 believes Clavijo is referring to the Yerebatan Sarayı cistern, which was a short distance to the west of, but not underneath, Haghia Sophia. The tradition of a cistern beneath the church, he suggests, may have had scriptural and cosmological origins, 'celle d'une église non plus surge d'un terrain fertile, mass descend our one plate-forms flottante.' Yet in addition Buondelmonti, Pero Tafur and, more importantly, Covel refer to such a cistern beneath Haghia Sophia.
|