Architecture and Planning in Asia Minor

For the Turkish poet Nazım Hikmet, writing in 1930s, the peninsular geography of Asia Minor – or what its modern inhabitants call Anatolia, or Turkey – evoked the image of a stallion’s head galloping to the Mediterranean from the depths of central Asia. From the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries, that was the direction, east to west, that most Turkic peoples entered Asia Minor controlled mainly by a weakening Byzantine Empire. For most of its earlier history, however, Anatolia served as a land bridge between Asia and Europe facilitating passage and settlement of a great many peoples and races in both directions.