Up to the time of Fossati’s restoration there was an immense polygon of probably some sixty feet diameter of iron rods suspended from the dome. Grelot[200] described it in 1680 as a large circle of iron rods hanging down to within eight or ten feet of the pavement and having fixed to it “a prodigious number of lamps, ostrich eggs, and other baubles.” In the mosque of Achmet, several rings are bound together by straight rods, making overhead a geometrical arrangement of bars, from which the lamps are suspended; although these are all Turkish, the system remained from Byzantine times. Fig. 23 is re-drawn from Fossati. (Aya Sophia, Constantinople, 1852.) One of the most beautiful methods is that of suspending the lamps to long straight iron bars running the whole length of the building as at S. John Studius.

In the mosque of Damascus, before the recent fire, there were hanging assemblages of circles one above another somewhat similar we may suppose to the trees of the poet. At Salonica a network of lamps which hangs almost like a curtain before the bema of S. Demetrius may illustrate the “nets” if nets there were. During Ramazan festoons of lamps are hung from minaret to minaret arranged in inscriptions; in 1676 Dr. Covel of Cambridge saw illuminations before the Sultan at Adrianople which represented “castles, mosques, peacocks, Turkish writings, &c., extremely pleasant and wonderful to behold.” These were formed by lamps hung to light frames; the method was probably derived from Byzantine illuminations such as the fireworks mentioned as being exhibited in the Hippodrome.

The four marble pillars that stand up out of the parapet at the western gallery of S. Sophia (Fig. 41) must always have carried lights on metal branches at the top, much as at present; and the long metal stakes with hook ends, that project from the first cornice at the angles of the exedras, and from which chandeliers hang, are possibly original in some cases.

The multiplication of small lights is the most brilliant system of illumination, for not only is there light everywhere but flame, and hence no shadows. Whoever sees the great church lighted for the solemn services of Ramazan, when, according to Fossati, “six thousand lamps are suspended at various heights,” may imagine the splendour of the lighted interior in Byzantine times. When, after one of the services, the lamplighters walked round and extinguished the lamps with a whisk from long fan-shaped brooms, we saw the need of the passages above the different cornices; and leaving Constantinople one April evening, as we slowly wound round the point, while the circle of windows in the lighted dome seemed to hang above the city, we realised that it was no idle saying of the poet’s that the mariner guided his laden vessel “by the divine light of the church itself.”