7/29
Since I didn’t do a blog yesterday (shame on me!), I just have to mention a few highlights. First, before preports SAS always plays music that is connected to the port we’re about to visit, and here they played the “Istanbul not Constantinople” song, which I’m sure will be playing in my head off and on for the next five days. Also, Turkish is written in Roman?, not Arabic, script ever since Ataturk (the father of the modern Turkish state) hired German linguists to make Turkey its own alphabet in the 1940s and then instituted the change to this new written language in three months. Most of the Turkish history and whatnot I learned in the preport will be sprinkled throughout the rest of my blog.
My first day in Istanbul, I went on the SAS-organized Istanbul city orientation, which went to the Mehmet II Mosque, Hagia Sofia, Basilica Cistern and Blue Mosque…basically all the major monuments I would have wanted to hit anyway.
To begin the tour, our guide gave us some background on Istanbul in general and interesting facts about the places we were passing by. Istanbul is the only city on two continents, and as the Bosporus separating the two halves is a natural waterway, all commercial ships are welcome to pass through it without paying. But, the Bosporus is only open in one direction at a time, a few hours in each, so ship must wait at either end for their turn to pass through. We passed by 970 meters of Roman aqueduct, which is still almost entirely intact now and was in use up to the 19th century. The handrails along the bridges we passed over were lined with flower baskets, as were some of the lampposts throughout the city. Istanbul is no longer the capital (Ataturk moved the capital to Ankara, closer to the heart of Turkey), but it has about 15 million people, twenty percent of Turkey’s population. The city hall we passed is a more recent monument than the ones we would be seeing soon: 1960s concrete block architecture, but with an attractive fountain outside at least. We also passed the Galata tower, a remnant from the Genoese area in Renaissance Istanbul. It has a beautiful view of the city, but other than that isn’t much of a monument.
The purse I carry for my tours around Turkey has slightly different contents than the other countries I have visited. A plastic bag to put my shoes in when I take them off to go into mosques. A pair of clean socks to wear when I walk on the floor of mosques, covered with thick, clean carpet to which worshipers touch their foreheads during prayer five times a day. A scarf wrapped around the strap of my purse to pull over my head as a hijab when I enter a mosque or any other conservative feeling area. Of course, to enter a mosque your legs must be fully covered, so I wear my one long dress (hopefully I’ll be able to get another one here…I’ll definitely need it in Morocco as well).
So we entered the Mehmet II (or Mehmet the Conqueror or Mehmet Fatih) Mosque, and for many of us it was the first mosque we had ever been inside. Our guide grew a little frustrated when people started taking their shoes off on the stone steps leading up to the entrance of the mosque rather than on the carpet in front of the mosque, because the whole point of taking off shoes was to keep the carpet inside the mosque clean, and taking shoes off before you got to the clean carpet defeated the purpose. But once everyone’s bare or socked feet and the women’s covered legs, heads and shoulders were all approved, we entered the mosque. It felt completely different in side than a church. It was much more open and lighter: our guide said that mosques were always built with the intention of allowing in lots of light, and there were low-hanging (just above head height) highly functional chandeliers to light the mosque at night. The dome above was 19 meters wide, and supported, just as many others are, by the “elephant leg plan,” or four large columns. This plan leaves a large amount of open floor space, rather than the forest of smaller columns in churches and cathedrals, to provide space for all the Muslim worshipers. The women either pray behind the men or in a special section in the back or on the second story. Our guide assured us that this was not a reference to women’s standing in the Muslim world, but rather to address a very “human problem”. In prayer, men and women bow from the hips both (standing and kneeling on the floor), and if women are doing so in front of the men, this is a distraction from prayer. This ruffled my feminist feathers, and I bit back the question of whether or not women could also have this “human tendency” and be distracted by men during prayer. Also, there is a section in the back for older people who are unable to kneel in prayer, where they can sit or stand and pray instead. In Islam, it is forbidden to have any images as decoration, so the mosque was decorated with beautiful painted and tiled geometric patterns, floral designs, and Arabic calligraphy.
After this first mosque, we drove around the city a little more. We passed through the Pera, an area of town that now houses the consulates and has done since the first ambassador to the Roman Empire (the Venetian) was there in Constantine’s time. Here was also a very famous hotel that people like Ataturk, Agatha Christie, Kind Edward, and Winston Churchill all stayed in. Istanbul is a very hilly city, and for that reason it reminded me a little of San Francisco. When we came to the top of one of the hills, I could look down at the rest of the buildings. They were surprisingly colorful, and while some skyscrapers stand out against the skyline, for the most part buildings were fewer than ten stores high and more than four. We drove by Taksim Square: a main center of the city for hotels, bars, clubs, theaters, protests, and festivals.
Most people were dressed conservatively, most with long pants and shoulders covered, but some people wore long shorts or sleeveless shirts. I saw many more men than women walking around the city, but I still saw women walking by themselves, although this would be more rare than seeing a woman walking with other women or men. A fair number of the women I saw in Turkey (maybe ¼ to 1/3) wore hijabs (headscarves), and I saw a few women in the full burqa with the face below the eyes covered and everything, although many of these women were in touristy places (visiting the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia or Topkapi Palace), so I assume they were not living in Istanbul. Istanbul was full of people—the trams, roads and sidewalks were packed with people walking to this place or that, and it made the city feel so vibrant and alive. This was a welcome sight after Athens and Varna, both of which felt a little dead and empty in terms of people walking around the city. There were also tons of taxis (spelled “taksi”) and many streets were lined with open-front stores with their owners wandering the sidewalk catching (sometimes physically by grabbing a shoulder or shaking a hand and not letting go) the attention of passersby. The architecture was pretty varied in the city overall, and this was magnified by the fact that the buildings were not very wide, so the color and style of the façade would change every few windows or so. Some of these were once-grand 18th century style houses, now run down and crumbly or with boarded up windows and looked like they had stories to tell. If only walls could talk!
The name “Istanbul” was not actually an official change by the Ottomans from the Roman name for the city “Constantinople” (which Emperor Constantine changed from the original “Byzantium”), but rather a slow evolution from “Constantinopolis”, which is difficult and time-consuming to say in Turkish, to a friendlier version, which today has arrived at “Istanbul”. In English, these sound nothing alike, but hearing them both said in Turkish, I can understand how the change happened over the years. Istanbul (and whatever it was called in the past) has long been a seafaring center, and the oldest sea vessel in the world (from about 8,000 BC) was found here in Istanbul while digging to make a subway. We also passed a seafood market that is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So if you ever have a 3am craving for oysters in Istanbul…
After this bus tour of parts of the city, we were dropped off near the Hagia Sophia (in Turkish: Ayasofya, pronounced eye-ya-sophia, so no “h” or “g” sounds). This area is incredible. The Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque face each other with only about 300 meters separating them. Several other mosques are also located nearby, so being in this area for the call to prayer (which I was several times in my trip since it happens five times a day) was quite an experience. The call starts from the minaret of one mosque and then is taken up by others, so you hear the singing Arabic reverberating around the city from many sides. Throughout my trip, I realize that I only remember distinctly hearing the call to prayer about four times, even though I was in the city and near mosques for most of the five days I was in Istanbul. Maybe I just started getting used to it, or maybe wherever I was at prayer time was just too noisy for me to hear the call.
We had a little free time before going into the Hagia Sophia, and as it was snack time (but for me, it’s always snack time), my friends and I went to one of many cafes along the street and ordered a lamb donner (a kind of Turkish wrap where they saw the meat off one of those giant slow-cooking pillars). Cafes with these giant pillars of meat cooking in the window were everywhere, and I ate my fair share of the wraps while I was in Istanbul. It was perfect street food because it’s all wrapped up and doesn’t explode or drip like a burrito and they serve it wrapped around with paper for you to hold while you walk, like old-style fish and chips or a crepe in Paris. We also took some pictures by the fountain between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. There were lots of other people here, including a Turkish family with two little boys that were sticking their heads into the water spurting up from the fountain. To be honest, I wanted to do the exact same thing (but didn’t). We walked through a little shopping street, where we got our first taste of Turksih rug stores, Turkish pottery, Turkish jewelry, and aggressive Turkish salesmen.
Outside the Hagia Sophia, our guide gave us a little background. First, Hagia Sophia means the Church of Holy Wisdom, a concept usually described as Mary and Jesus together, so the original church was built by Roman Emperor Justinian in 537. In 1453, Sultan Mehmet II converted the Hagia Sophia to a mosque after leading the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. The Eastern Orthodox church was covered with mosaic icons of Mary, Jesus, angels and saints. The presence of images is strictly forbidden in Islam, but instead of destroying the mosaics and paintings, the Ottomans plastered and whitewashed over them to redecorate with the geometric patterns, floral designs, and Arabic calligraphy you expect to find in a mosque. In 1935, after carefully revealing the original Christian decoration in some places and leaving the Muslim in others, the Hagia Sophia was opened as a museum, and it remains such today (so you can wear shoes and don’t have to have head or shoulders covered to enter). As it is a museum today, no prayer or worship of any kind may occur inside, although I would hate to be the guard that has to enforce that rule. The entire exterior was once covered with marble slabs, but they were stolen in the Middle Ages by the western European crusaders during what our guide called the “Latin occupation.” The term totally makes sense, but I found it fascinating because I probably never would have heard it if I had not come to Istanbul and had a Turkish guide. Tangible proof that history can be, and is, spun in different directions depending upon who writes it and for what purpose it is written. For about 1,000 years, the Hagia Sophia was the largest house of worship in the world, and if it were still a church or mosque today, it would be the fourth largest in the world, which is incredible considering that it was built in the 6th century and architecture technology has increased greatly since then. But, I guess today we don’t have the same fervor to build bigger and bigger cathedrals or mosques as in past centuries.
Finally, it was time to enter the Hagia Sophia. It was breathtaking. I would put it up with the Notre Dame and St. Peter’s Basilica in terms of buildings that I will never forget my feeling upon entry. The space inside is huge. The dome is 29 meters wide and looks like it’s floating because it is supported by half domes which are supported by quarter domes which are supported by two tiers of beautiful colored marble columns, eight of which supposedly came from the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The column tops are in the highly detailed Justinian style, which makes the Hagia Sophia one of only four buildings in the world that sport this time-consuming and labor intensive style. Painted in each of the four quarter domes below the main dome were four angels. They were mostly wings, so when the Ottomans converted the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, they just covered their faces with gold plaques. Today one of the angel’s faces is uncovered, and it looks like the four angels are supporting the main dome. Overall the building felt old and just breathed history and a sense of grandeur that is rarely reached by any structure. The modifications made by the Ottomans were quite interesting to see. In the main church niche, they places another, slightly slanted niche (the mihrab) that faces southeast, toward Mecca, so people would know in which direction to pray. All mosques have four large wooden medallions on the high corners displaying certain words from the Koran, but in the Hagia Sophia these medallions are huge because they needed to cover the sculpture of the saint and archangels in the corners of the church. Also, the Ottomans put a new wooden floor over the stone one of the church to make praying easier, but this floor has been removed in all but about 10% of the Hagia Sophia today, so you can see the original stone flooring. Low-hanging chandeliers were also added to provide light to the Muslim worshippers. The ones in the Hagia Sophia today are not the originals, but replicas because the originals were too heavy and placing too much strain on the already strained ceiling. There was originally an iconostasis, a large screen with icons that blocked the altar from view of the congregation in the Christian Orthodox church, but during the “Latin occupation” they church was looted and these were cut into pieces and given as gifts to western European knights. Despite this looting, about 5-10% of the gold tiles in the mosaics are still the originals. Our guide said he and the other guides knew where they were but weren’t allowed to tell for security reasons. Good thing, because I was totally planning on breaking into the Hagia Sophia that night with a ladder and bringing myself home a real souvenir. They are now holy relics in Orthodox churches there. The white marble inside the Hagia Sophia comes mostly from the Sea of Marmara, which means Sea of Marble (surprise).
To get up to the second story, which is where the women prayed when the Hagia Sophia was a mosque, we walked up with pretty creepy dark stone tunnel. It was a surprisingly long way up…I guess seeing the height of the building didn’t quite translate into a hike to get up to the second story until I was actually doing it. On the second floor, we could get an up-close look of several mosaics of Jesus and Mary they were almost perfectly preserved. But best of all, we had a fantastic view of the Hagia Sophia overall. I especially loved how the chandeliers looked from above: like scalloped rings of light hovering over the floor.
Throughout my tour of the Hagia Sophia, I found myself thinking of lectures I had heard recently about Ataturk’s legacy in modern Turkey and Turkey’s current attempt to join the EU. In the wake of WWI reparations, Mustafa Kamal lead a revolution in Turkey to modernize and secularize the state, in the process earning the name “Ataturk” or father of the Turks, and founding the modern Turkish state. His legacy is so strong in Turkey today that not only is he on all their money, but it is illegal to say anything bad about him. Turkey has been trying to join the EU since 2006, but recently there is waning interest on both sides (Europe and Turkey) due to seemingly irresolvable issues. Both of these deal with the question of Turkish identity: whether they are more western or more eastern, whether they can truly be a bridge between the two or whether they have to choose more one or the other. As I toured the Hagia Sophia, I could really feel the history leading up to such a conflicted identity, as well as an idealistic (probably Atatutk-like) presentation of what the modern Turksih identity could be: acknowledging the Roman and Ottoman past, but moving on in a modern, secular state. Of course, Turkish identity is much more complex than this, but I find it really amazing for one building to even begin to convey the complexity of such a multi-cultural state with such a wide range of historical heritages it could claim as its own.
After the Hagia Sophia, we went to something I had never heard of before: the Basilica Cistern. This 140 by 70 meter rectangular cistern was built by Emperor Justinian in the 6th century to help provide Constantinope with water. It is underground and a grid of columns. All these columns were recycled from other building projects, so they are different widths, styles and materials. The ceiling is brick and vaulted with multiple arches on each of the columns. Walking down into the Cistern was so cool…and a little creepy. I didn’t really know what I was getting into, and when I entered it was dark, wet, cool (which felt fantastic) and echoing with eerie noises (never figured out what they were, but they sounded like distant singing, so I’m going to go ahead and say the Basilica Cistern is haunted). Each of the columns was lit from below with an orange light, which made gave the entire underground chamber an unearthly glow that was only intensified by the few feet of water in the base of the cistern. We walked on a raised platform that zigzagged through the cistern, which honestly felt like something out of a video game or the Chamber of Secrets in HP 2. There were also fish (I think they were catfish) in the water, some over a foot long. Our guide told us that during a summer music festival, this is a venue for concerts. I’m bummed we weren’t in Istanbul for one of those, I bet the acoustics in there would have been really strange but the setting is unreal. There were also two large stone Medusa heads (one set upside down and one sideways) at the base of two of the columns toward the back of the cistern. In Roman times, they would have been places there as extra protection. I was wearing my navy Toms today, which I am wearing to death on this trip. The tread on the soles is completely gone, and the floor in the cistern was slick with water dripping from the ceiling, so I was slipping the entire time, but luckily never fell…I probably would have come back with the curse of Medusa or something.
Next, we went into the Blue Mosque. The official name is the Sultanahmet Mosque because it was built by Sultan Ahmet between 1609 and 1616. Is it not blue on the outside, but was given the name “Blue Mosque” by western travelers who greatly admired the beautiful blue tiles on the interior. Sultan Ahmet built this mosque facing the Hagia Sophia on purpose, almost as a challenge. The Blue Mosque’s central dome is 43 meters high and 23.5 meters in diameter, larger than the Hagia Sophia. Also the architectural plan is different: this mosque had the same “elephant leg” plan that leaves a large amount of free floor space rather than the rows of columns in the Hagia Sophia. But, for some reason when I was inside, the Blue Mosque felt smaller than the Hagia Sophia. It was incredibly beautiful: a wonderful example of mosque decoration and brightly colored tiles, but it didn’t take my breath away like the Hagia Sophia had. My memory of the Blue Mosque may have been slightly tarnished by the two screaming and playing children right next to our tour group. Everyone was giving them dirty looks and our tour guide said something to them in Turkish, and eventually their parents scooped them up and removed them from the premises. It was also very hot inside the Blue Mosque, made even more so by my headscarf and complete body covering. For me, one of the most interesting parts of the Blue Mosque is that it is very much an active mosque: several people were praying while we were there. I really wanted to watch, but I didn’t want to be disrespectful or flat our rude, so I tried to watch from the corner of my eye while semi-paying attention to our tour guide’s talk.
This evening, we wandered down along the water from our ship and found a restaurant from which we could see the lit-up bridge. It was dancing just like the night we passed through the Bosporus on our way to Varna, and I was staring at it smiling through most of my meal. There were also fireworks just behind the bridge at the beginning of our meal, because Istanbul at night just isn’t pretty enough without a good weekly firework show along the straight. For dinner, we started with hummus and pita bread, which came out hot and delicious (the bread, not the hummus…which was cold and delicious). I had a veal and lamb kabob with pistachios, which was very tasty. Turkish food doesn’t use pork (Muslims don’t eat pork and Turkey is 99% Muslim), but they do use a lot of other meats, mainly beef, chicken and lamb, and lots of nuts such as pistachios and almonds.
After dinner, we went to an outdoor hookah bar with a canopy of vines as the ceiling and had my first apple tea of the trip. It was so good that I had at least one apple tea every other day in Istanbul and bought a thing of apple tea to bring home with me. They also gave us a bowl of sugar cubes, which of course made us all revert to six year olds and giggle while eating whole sugar cubes.
7/30
This morning my friends and I met for breakfast, and, well-feed, we set out on the tram to go to Topkapi (pronounced tope-cop-uh) Palace, the palace of the Ottoman sultan. Once on the tram, we accidentally went to the stop labeled “Topkapi,” which is about six stops past the location of the actual Topkapi palace. Luckily, this was where the land walls from Constantinople, built in successive layers to be stronger and stronger by many different Roman emperors in the first few centuries AD, with the strongest and final layer built by Justinian in the 600s. The were surrounded by scrubby grass, stray dogs, crow-like birds and Efes (a popular Turkish beer) bottle caps. I was a little surprised to see no signs anywhere near them explaining their history, but we didn’t walk down their entire length, so it’s possible there was one somewhere else. Of course, Istanbul doesn’t highlight it’s Roman history much today so far as I have seen (although the Alexander sarcophagus and many other Roman artifacts are housed in the Archaeological Museum here), so it wasn’t that surprising.
Near the walls was a large, grassy park studded with fountains and with a small building exhibit called “Panorama 1453.” While I certainly didn’t come here on purpose, I was glad I ended up here because it was interesting to see the vestiges of Roman Byzantium/Constantinople in modern Istanbul. Throughout the trip in general, seeing all the Roman ruins has been a tangible reminder of the size, power, organization and remarkable uniformity (all the cities were laid out pretty much the same and all the architecture and engineering are pretty much the same) of the Roman Empire.
After our tour of the walls, we took the tram back to the Sultanahmet stop, where the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and Topkapi palace are all located. The Topkapi Palace was about a ten minute walk, just on the other side of the Hagia Sophia. This area of Istanbul still amazes me…I can’t believe so many incredible monuments are located directly on top of each other.
The palace was constructed by Mehmet II (Mehmet the Conqueror) in 1466-78, after his conquest of Constantinople. He chose one of the hills of the city near to the water and built his palace there to be visible to everyone as a symbol of Ottoman power. The palace remained in use from 1465 to 1859 as the center of the sultan’s personal household and the Ottoman state. The Ottoman state was a multicultural one, which meant the sultan had problems the Doge in Venice did not: he had to convince many different groups of peoples (with completely different ethnicities, cultures and religions) of his power and right to rule. This was part of the purpose of the grandeur of Topkapi palace: to be an expression of what the Ottoman’s were and of the Sultan’s power. The 700,000 square meter palace is basically a series of gates and courtyards surrounded by buildings. As you progress further into the palace through the gates, you get closer to the sultan’s private quarters and therefore into increasingly private areas. Initially, about 400 people lived in the palace, but eventually the palace would be packed with up to 10,000 people on feast days.
We entered the palace through the first gate, the Imperial Gate, which was large and surrounded with beautiful Arabic calligraphy. This gate was free of charge today, just as it would have been open to the most people when it was in use in the Ottoman Empire. Inside was a huge park area with large shady trees and a beautiful view of the rest of the city and the small bay poking off the Bosporus into the European continent at a right angle: the Golden Horn. We then bought our tickets and entered the next gate, which was even more grand and imposing than the first and flanked with two towers topped with pointed blue tile roofs. Now, a Turkish flag hangs directly above the pointed arch of this entrance gate, originally the Gate of Salutation. Again, there was a large courtyard inside with many trees and grassy areas, but this was surrounded with buildings and had several buildings in the center, all made of beautiful marble and ornately decorated with geometric patterns, floral designs and elegant Arabic calligraphy, likely passages from the Koran. This was the location of the Divan Court, where the Sultan’s ministers would hold court. Next we went through the Gate of Felicity, which lead us into a slightly smaller but more beautifully decorated courtyard. The reception hall where the Sultan and his ministers would receive important guests was in this third court, as was the Imperial Treasury. Interestingly, the Topkapi Palace was never sacked, so now the buildings surrounding the edge of this court have been lined with glass cases to hold pieces from the Ottoman sultan’s treasury.
It was incredible. I have never seen more diamonds, emeralds and rubies studding every imaginable piece of jewelry or other object the sultan would have used. One of my favorite pieces was an ebony throne covered in mother-of-pearl floral and geometric designs. We unfortunately could not take pictures in this part of the museum, but the pieces were all so fantastic they clearly were in line with the purpose of the Topkapi Palace in general: to emphasize the power and the sultan. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to come into the Topkapi Palace, full of guards and incredible splendor, as, for example, a Western European ambassador and see the sultan decked out in these jeweled pieces and sitting on such an ornate throne.
Through the fourth and most private gate, we entered what was once the sultan’s personal living quarters. The Harem was also located in this section of the palace. To enter, we had to buy another ticket, but it was totally worth it. All the walls and ceilings were covered with beautiful, brightly colored and intricately patterned tiles. This was the section where the sultan’s mother (the Valide Sultan), the sultan’s wives, the sultan’s concubines and the slave girls would live, guarded by eunuchs. The Valide Sultan had a surprising amount of influence over what the sultan did, especially in terms of which women he could marry or which concubines he could sleep with. Unfortunately, my camera decided to die the moment I stepped into the Harem. Luckily, I was there with a friend who has a very good camera, so I will be stealing all his pictures from the Harem. There was also the circumcision room in this most private portion of the palace. As circumcision is a very important part of Islam, the circumcision of the Muslim Ottoman sultan’s son was a day of celebration and pomp. Fountains could be found throughout the palace, but they were everywhere in the Harem. Ritual ablution and cleanliness in general are very important in Islam, and I noticed this frequent presence of fountains is a clear point that separates Topkapi Palace from other European palaces like Versailles. I hadn’t thought much about it before, but religion really can dictate the layout and contents of any structure, especially a palace, and this was quite clear in the case of Islam and Topkapi Palace.
I came back to the ship on the most crowded tram ever and rested a little bit at the ship before heading out to the grand bazaar. It was awesome. Jewelry stores, stores selling pottery, lanterns, tea sets and hookahs, rug stores, stores with every kind of clothing possible (especially scarves), stores full of knock-off Chanel, Michael Kors, etc., bags and other leather goods, stores with hand-made soaps, stores with tea and Turkish delight, stores with any number of other touristy things, and between them a sea of people. The men working the stores do their best to attract passersby into their stores (including calling us the Spice Girls, Angelina Jolie, and Jennifer Lopez), and you have to bargain everywhere you go. It was indoor, but the wed of narrow, cobblestone streets surrounding the grand bazaar were really just an extension of the bazaar itself, and held an even wider array of stuff for sale. There were a few cafes sprinkled through the bazaar, and more outside. It was quite an experience wandering through, and when I first entered I couldn’t even look in any of the stores, I just had to walk by and try to take everything in visually and try to talk to my friends over the cacophony of bargainers, yelled advertisements, and different languages ad accents. Eventually I got over my initial overwhelmed feeling, and was able to shop properly…but you’ll just have to wait until I get home to see what I bought!
Tonight we went to Taxim Square, which is the center of nightlife in Istanbul. There is a main square with a wide pedestrian street leading off of it. This street was draped with lights, and completely packed with people—most of which were men. Inside clubs the ratio was even worse, and I don’t know why so many Turkish men go out when not very many women do.
More love from Istanbul,
Ginny
