Under the Galata Tower

In late May I visited Istanbul for the first time in 28 years. It's hard to believe that so many years have gone by. Most difficult to comprehend is that I am 28 years older than the boy I was then. In 1982 I had hitch hiked from Groningen, in the Netherlands, to Istanbul, on a trip that would bring me across Asia. I spent two weeks in the city, in a cheap hotel next door to the famous café The Pudding Shop, a spit away from the Blue Mosque and the Aya Sophia. Turkey was under a military dictatorship at the time and a strict curfew was in place from 11:00 PM until 5:00 AM.  Nevertheless, I had a blast during my two months in the country. Although I have been back to Turkey since, I somehow had not revisited the magnificent Ottoman city that straddles two continents.

It has changed enormously – boutique hotels, cappuccinos, shopping arcades with fixed prices, none of these had been available in 1982. The Pudding Shop is still there, but now celebrates its infamous past with a sign that says "The World Famous Pudding Shop" and a photo that shows Bill Clinton visiting the restaurant. Inside, its walls are decorated with black and white photos of the long-haired clientele in the 1970s and '80s, when everything was available for a price. In other words, The Pudding Shop has become a museum of itself. I looked in vain for photos of a young Irishman with a beard and Jimi Hendrix hairstyle.

But the incredible friendliness and hospitality of the locals has not changed and the ancient sites are of course still there and the views in the centre of the old European quarters are more or less the same as they have been for centuries. In 1982 the Galata Tower was closed to visitors. Now, two lifts whisk visitors to the viewing platform on this 15th century monument to Italian renaissance architecture. The views from the tower are, well, you can judge for yourself.

This view shows the Bosphorus on the left and the Sea of Marmara in the far distance.  The coast on the far left, across the Bosphorus, is Asia. The water in the foreground is the Golden Horn.  In the centre, amidst the small wood, one can see the Topkapi Palace, home to the Sultans from the 15th until the 19th centuries.  To the right one can see the Aya Sophia, built as the biggest church in the world in the 6th century, changed to a mosque in the 15th (when it acquired its four minarets), converted into a museum in the 20th century.

Here is a close-up of the Aya Sophia.

 
 
 
And a little distance to its right, below is a view of the Blue Mosque, the only mosque in the world outside of Medina to have six minarets (two more than the whole of Switzerland, but the Swiss have decided that that is too much and have banned the contsruction of anymore).
 

 
 
Below is a shot of Galata itself, the medieval, Genoan part of town, with the Galata Bridge spanning the Golden Horn.  To the far left, the Topkapi Place, the Aya Sophia to its right and the Blue Mosque further to the right.  As you can see, Istanbul is a city of minarets.  On the far side of the bridge, slightly to the left, The New Mosque. ("New" as in 17th century.)

Here is the view further up the Golden Horn.

 
 
Below is the Süleymaniye Mosque across the Golden Horn.
 

And finally, a different view. Below is a view up the Bosphorus, towards the Black Sea. In the distance you can see one of the two bridges that span the continents of Europe and Asia. Can anyone guess from which point this last photo was taken?

Fountain of Ahmed III in Istanbul

In the blog THE BLUE LANTERN Jane posted an entry on the Fountain of Ahmed III in Istanbul.  Seeing as I was travelling to Istanbul I was wondering if I would see it. My first stop was the Topkapi Palace. Of course I was impressed, not just by the harem, the library, the jewels and buildings and the view over the Bosphorus and across to Asia, but I was also impressed by this young Turkish woman with whom I fell into conversation. As you can see, she was pretty upset because that morning she and the rest of the Turkish nation discovered that nine of their compatriots had been killed by the Israeli armed forces. My whole week there was punctuated by funerals of the victims and anti-Israel demonstrations.

I left the Palace by the main entrance, the Imperial Gate, and there was the kiosk, or fountain, immediately recognisable.  Unfortunately there were no attendants giving water or sherbert free of charge.  Instead the kiosk is surrounded by a sturdy fence and locked gate and there is no running water in sight.  Still, the building is a little gem.

Eyup in Istanbul and The Legitimisation of Power

I have just returned to Zurich having spent most of the past week in Istanbul, Turkey.  I took the above photo of these two little chaps in the courtyard of the Eyup Mosque. The boys are dressed like princes because this is a very special day in their lives.  They are about to be circumcised.

After Mehmet the Conqueror, Sultan of the Ottomans, succeeded in taking the Byzantine capital Constantinople on May 29th 1453, he faced one major problem. How could he justify the fact that he was now the greatest ruler in the Islamic world? Earlier, powerful rulers of Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo could all claim descent from the prophet Muhammad. Mehmet II however, couldn’t even claim to be an Arab. In other words, he suffered from what political scientists and historians refer to as a "legitimacy deficit".

      Entrance to Eyup

The problem was solved when Mehmet’s spiritual advisor had a dream which indicated the location in Constantinople/Istanbul of the remains of one of the Prophet Muhammad’s right hand men, Abu Ayyub Al-Ansari. Ayyub had hosted Muhammad in his home in Medina way back in the 7th century. Ayyub thereby gained the title “Host of the Prophet”. After Muhammd’s death in 632, Ayyub participated in wars of conquest in Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Cyprus. In 669, at the age of 80, he died at a siege of Constantinople and, according to legend, was buried near the infamous walls. Now, nearly a thousand years later his body had been miraculously found.

        The ancient walls of Constantinople, near Eyub

This was very convenient for the Ottomans. As Philip Mansel put it in his book Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire 1453-1924, “This convenient discovery provided a charismatic link between the new capital and the Prophet himself”. Clearly the leaders of the most powerful Muslim military force in the world, Mehmet II now found his regime being blessed by the Muslim devout. It was taken as a sign of Allah’s good will towards Ottoman rule that the remains of the Host of the Prophet had been miraculously recovered. Naturally Mehmet ordered for a new mosque to be built in 1459 and for Ayyub’s remains to be interred within the mosque. The Ottomans were now the protectors of the holy city, with its holiest of mosques. The new mosque, known as Eyup, is still the most revered Muslim site in Turkey and one of the ten holiest places in all of Islam. It is a conservative mosque, always busy, even at night, with pilgrims at prayer. Last week it was particularly busy as some of those killed by Israel’s attack on the Turkish flotilla were buried near Eyup.

        At prayer in Eyup
 
By building Eyup Mehmet II had legitimised his rule and turned Istanbul into one of the holiest cities of Islam.  The Ottoman Sultans had therby become protectors of the faith.