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İstanbul During
Turkish Era :
When Istanbul came under
Turkish rule Mehmet is known to have brought people from
various parts of his empire and settled them in the deserted
and devastated city so that it could be rebuilt. Thus the
names of some of its districts, such as Aksaray, Karaman and
Carsamba, are related to the places from where these settlers
came. In the first years after the conquest there were areas
within the city almost entirely populated by Christians. Then
gradually the non-Muslims became concentrated in certain parts
of the city, such as Samatya, Edirnekapi and Fener and the
remaining area of the city was populated by Turks. In the late
Ottoman period the Galata district was preferred by
non-Muslims and the protective presence of foreign embassies
meant that this part of Istanbul became almost a new city.
This is how the Beyoglu district was created. The Turks
settled in certain places along the Bosphorus, Uskudar (Scutari),
on the bank of Golden Horn between Tophane and Kas_mpasa
and within the city walls while the non-Muslims preferred the
islands, some of the villages along the Bosphorus and the
villages on the outskirts of the city.
From the period of the
conquest onwards the city was rebuilt on entirely Turkish
lines. Running water was brought to the city by means of
supply lines coming from outside its boundaries, public
fountains and baths were built. The great mosques, which made
Istanbul look a truly Turkish city and were great Turkish
works of art, and the complexes surrounding them, were erected
as well. After the construction in Bayezid of a palace known
as Eski Saray (old palace), another palace then known as
Yenisaray (new palace), and now known as the Topkapi Palace
was built. In order to increase trade, rows of shops known as
'arasta' were built under archways, as were large buildings
referred to as 'hans',in which the goods were stored. In this
new centre of Ottoman-Turkish civilisation madrassas and
libraries were set up so that scholarly activities could take
place and hospitals (darussifa) were built.. A concept of town
planning completely different from that of the Byzantines
dominated all of this construction and development. In a short
space of time the new palaces, water distribution systems,
mosques, shipyard, Janissary barracks, markets and shopping
centres, shrines, graveyards and dwellings endowed the city of
Istanbul with an entirely different aspect.
Together with the
great mosques and surrounding complexes built by the sultans,
its leading citizens built mosques both large and small, madrassas, hans, public baths, public fountains and charity
fountains, all of which made Istanbul into a Turkish city. The
wealthy founders of charitable trusts also played their part
in this development. However, during the Turkish period the
terrible earthquake which took place in 1509, known as "the
Little Day of Judgment", dealt a terrible blow to the city's
brick and stone houses. Fearing the effects of further
earthquakes people began to build their houses of wood instead
and in a short space of time Istanbul became a city of wooden
houses. In keeping with this trend, the palaces and mansions
of the artistocracy were all made of wood. In spite of decrees
regarding fire precautions which even aimed at preventing the
construction of wooden buildings in the commercial and
shopping centres, the use of wood could not be halted. This
inevitably led to a rapid increase in the number of fires in
the city. As well as the earthquakes of 1765 and 1894, which
also caused terrible destruction, Istanbul's greatest enemy
has always been fire. I one of these fires, which were fanned
and driven south-wards by the north wind, happened to start
anywhere on the banks of Golden Horn this meant that the
city would be doomed to burn for days, leaving thousands of
people homeless, and that priceless treasures and magnificent
mansions would be reduced to ashes. Sometimes these fires
would start from the banks of Golden Horn and burn until
they reached Aksaray or even the Sea of Marmara.
The last
great fires of Istanbul were the Hocapasa fire of 1865, the
Beyoglu fire of 1870, the Laleli fire of 1912 and the
Cibali-Fatih-Altinmermer fire-fighting organisation in the
city and the prevention of further construction in wood meant
that fires were contained to a given area. The last big fire
of this kind destroyed a large pat of the Fener district in
1941. The effects of the fire of 1782, which reduced almost
half of the city to ashes, can be judged be looking at a map
of that period published by a Spaniard. However, it should be
stated that after these big fires leading statesmen paid for
the rebuilding of pious foundation buildings out of their own
pockets. Wooden houses were built to replace the ones that had
been destroyed and within a few months the traces of the fire
had, to a great extent, been removed. It was only the effects
of the fires that took place between 1908 and 1918 that could
not rapidly be removed, due to the fact that the country was
then at war.
In is known that apart from
the destructive effects of these frequent fires and the major
earthquakes that strike the city at intervals of between 120
and 150 years, Istanbul has also occasionally been affected by
hurricanes. One of these took place shortly after the conquest
in 1492, leaving in its wake many casualties and a great deal
of destruction. In Hartmann Schedel's book "World History",
mentioned in the preceding paragraphs the writer describes
this event, recounted to him by "reliable" Italian traders and
brings it to life in an engraving. In Turkish records of this
event mention is made of a thunderbolt which fell onto an old
Byzantine church then being used as a powder arsenal, causing
a violent explosion. This event is also depicted in Schedel's
engravings.
After the conquest an
immediate and planned campaign was launched to make it a
Turkish city. A count was made of the number of dwelling
houses in the city on a scale quite impressive for that age
and Istanbul was redeveloped according to certain principles.
Twenty five years after the conquest according to records kept
by Muhiddin Celebi, the cadi (Muslim judge of Istanbul and
Mahmud Celebi, zaim (the person who held the fief of the
city), of Istanbul there where were 975 Muslim Turkish, 31
Romany, 4893 Christian and 1647 Jewish households in Galata.
Mehmet the Conqueror, who possessed all the qualities of a
European renaissance ruler, brought craftsmen to Istanbul from
Italy. This tradition continued for many years. After Bellini
had been employed in the palace, mention was made of inviting
Michaelangelo and even Leonardo da Vinci to Istanbul to build
a bride over Golden Horn.
Towards the end of the 15th
century, in the reign of Bayez_d II, Istanbul was visited by a
German named Arnold von Harff, who stated that is was "a great
and magnificent city", and went on to remark that the system
of administration in the city was an extremely vigilant one.
Von Harff, who had left his ship at Galata and entered a han
without notifying anybody was horrified to hear the next day
that he had been summoned to the palace. With the aid of an
interpreter known as Frenk Hasan, a German converted to Islam,
the traveler had an audience with the Sultan, and was unable
to conceal his astonishment when asked to work in the service
of the Ottoman authorities. The first of the European
travelers to carry out a detailed archaeological survey of
the city was the Frenchman Pierre Gilles. Gilles (or Gyllius).
He lived in Istanbul between 1544 and 1547 and carried out
investigations. He wrote two separate books about he results
of his survey, one about Istanbul and one about the Bosphorus.
These books are still considered to be
valuable source
material. Gilles, who had been sent by the king of France and
was in fact a botanist, appreciated the natural beauty of
Istanbul and the value of its geographical location. He had
the following to say about it "All the earth's cities are
doomed to perish sooner or later, but as long as mankind
remains on earth this city will endure." M. d'Aramon, who was
French ambassador to Istanbul during the same period, that is,
in the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent, had the following to
say in the travel memoirs he dictated to his private secretary
Jehan Chesneau; "It is abundantly clear that Istanbul is now
an entirely Turkish city. Its hills are adorned with mosques,
the hillsides are covered with houses and groups of buildings
can be seen between the trees." With the aid of certain
paintings executed during this period it is possible to get
better impression of the appearance of the city. Two woodcuts
by the Dutch painter Pieter Koeck van Alst were published in
1533. In the first we can see the city from the other side of
Golden Horn and in the other, Sultan Suleyman the
Magnificent passing through the Hippodrome with his suite.
In
the background we can see a statue brought from Budin by the
art-loving grand vizier Ibrahim Pasa in 1526, which was still
standing at that time but was later destroyed after the murder
of the latter. However, the picture which depicts Istanbul in
the reign of Suleyman most accurately and is at the same time
the liveliest and the most monumental is that by Melchior
Lorch (or Lorich) of Flensburg. This panorama, eleven metres
in length, was painted in 1599 and is now kept in the Dutch
city of Leiden. It depicts, perhaps with a certain amount of
imaginative additions, and attractive view of he city from the
hills of Galata, Kas_mpasa and Haskoy. The flotilla of boats
and sailing ships that fills Golden Horn, the cupolas and
minarets to be seen at frequent intervals between the groups
of houses, the magnificent mosque complexes adorning the high
ground all combine to convey a far more accurate and colourful
impression of the Ottoman capital during the reign of Suleyman
than many books of travels. Lorich took a considerable
interest in the Suleymaniye Mosque and surrounding complex,
construction of which was being completed when he was in the
city. He painted a fine picture of Sinan's great work and
later published it in the form of an engraving.
Together with this panorama
of Istanbul, executed in the reign of Suleyman (which can also
be considered the golden age of the Ottomans), by Lorich of
Flensburg, there is a travelogue by another German, Hans
Dernswan, who lived in Istanbul and in Turkey and in Turkey in
around 1554. It is possible to find the Turkish Istanbul, with
all its beauty and individual features in Dernswan's book.
This traveller, who was also a keen researcher, tried to see
and investigate everything in the reign of Suleyman and he did
not neglect to keep a detailed record of his life in the
Istanbul of that time. It is also possible to judge what 16th
century Istanbul looked like from the miniatures of the
Turkish artist Nasuh-u Silahi (Matrakci Nasuh), for at the
beginning of his book about the Iraq campaign there are some
miniatures of Istanbul and Galata.
These graceful compositions
show Istanbul with the great mosque complexes, the shipyard at Kasimpasa, the royal palace, (Saray-i Humayunlari), all of
which had been built before that date, and details of the
inner city with all the structures that existed at the time
such as its covered markets and wooden shops (for they had
still not been rebuilt in brick and stone). In the miniature
of Istanbul that adorned Seyid Lokman's work "Hunername",
written in the 16th century, we see the main mosque complexes
and a tightly-packed mass of houses. In some of the versions
of Piri Reis's navigation guide "Kitabu'l-Bahriye" (the author
died some time between 1553 and 1554), we see another
miniature of Istanbul. The quality of the copies made of the
pictures in this handwritten work varies. In the best of these
we see Istanbul with its major mosque complexes, its houses
and Golden Horn, which resembles an inner harbour.
Augier Ghislain de Busbeck (Busbeke),
who came to Istanbul an ambassador and lived in the
ambassador's residence opposite Cemberlitas (now the
Darussafaka block) between 1555 and 1562 states, in a
description of Istanbul in a book of travels that he wrote in
the form of a letter: "It is as if Nature has created this
place to be the world's capital." "It is impossible to
conceive a more beautiful, better laid out city," he goes on
to say, but he complains about the narrowness of its streets
and the densely-packed character of its houses, saying without
hesitation that they are "an obstacle to a good view of any
kind". A writer who stayed in Istanbul for three months in
1573 had this to say about the view of the city he say from
the high ground of Galata: "When I behold all this beauty, the
extraordinary quality o the hills leaning against the gentle
green slopes of the city, it cast such a spell on me that I
felt an astonishment amounting to an assumption that I had
arrived in a new paradise." This young French aristocrat goes
on to say that the Turks refarded flowers "with the love
accorded to a sacred object and states that in Istanbul "there
are so many gardens and cypress trees that when viewed from
afar Istanbul appears to consist of a number of small
buildings within a forest.
No large palaces can be discerned
and it is only the minarets that are outside the framework of
each group of buildings. "The well-arranged and beautiful
shops of this prosperous city, which was adorned with more
than 300 mosques of magnificent construction, more than 100
public baths, hospitals and caravansarays are also lavishly
praised by the same traveller. In the summer of the same year
the German priest Stephan Gerlach visited the city. He stated
that he literally "drank in" the view of the city that
confronted him, adding that he considered no-one else capable
of experiencing its beauty so strongly. Another German,
Michael Heberer, who was a prisoner in Istanbul from 1585-87,
remarked that apart from the public buildings and mansions of
the pasas, the houses were small and made of wood and the
streets rather narrow.
It was not possible for these
Christian traveller, who came from various countries in
Europe, to be able to see absolutely everything in an
environment which was foreign to them. Some Muslim travelers,
who arrived in Istanbul in the same year provide more useful
information in this repsect; they include El-Gazzi who arrived
from Cairo in 1530, Kudbuddin Mekki (from Mecca), who saw
Istanbul in 1536 and finally Ebul Hasan Ali bin Muhammed, who
came as far as the Bosphorus leading an ambassador's
delegation from Morocco in 1590. The latter states that the
city occupied a magnificent site and was one of the biggest
cities in the world, that Golden Horn was literally
swarming with ships and smaller craft, and that all parts of
it were inhabited, so much so that there were even houses
built on piles over the water along the coast. He then goes on
to provide a breakdown of the damage inflicted by a
catastrophic fire that broke out on 7 April 1588, stating that
28 mosques and mesjids, 22,000 houses, 15,000 shops and 9
public baths were completely destroyed.
After describing this
disaster, which was one of a number of famous fires in
Istanbul, the Arab ambassador commends the paved streets of
the city, emphasises that fruit of all kinds can be found even
in winter and ends by saying "Be it in the public libraries or
in the secondhand bookshops, there is an astonishing quantity
of books to be found. Books from all over the world come
here." This last statement points to the fact that the city
was a major cultural centre. We gather from the book of
travels of the Englishman John Sanderson, who arrived in
Istanbul in 1594, that a great deal of building was taking
place. This traveller, who was ingenuous enough to statethat
there were 18,000 mosques and mesjids in the city, goes on to
describe Suleyman's water supply system, the magnificent
additions to the Topkapi Palace, the organisation of and the
rich income derived by the Fatih Mosque, reflecting the
powerful impression left by Istanbul on all foreigners in its
golden age. In that period Istanbul was such an object of
curiosity andinterest for Europeans that to see a picture of
the citysufficed for those unable to visit it. In the middle
of the 16th century, which was the golden age of the Ottoman
empire, a large volume entitled "Cosmographie" was published
circa 1544 by a German named Sebastian Munster (he died in
1552).
The book contains, apart from descriptions of various
European cities, an engraving of Istanbul occupying two pages.
The picture of Istanbul in this book, which was published in
German, Latin, Italian and French until 1628, representeda
sort of bird's eye view of the city from the Anatolian side.
The original of this picture, which appeared in thirty
editions over a period of eighty years, was in fact a woodcut.
This was published in about 1520 by Giovanni Andrea Vavassore,
who is known to have worked as an editor in Venice. In these
engravings of Istanbul, first seen in Munster's work and then
in the extended editions of the book published in Cologne by
Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, the presence of the Fatih
Mosque and surrounding buildings and, on the other hand, the
absence of the Bayezid Mosque complex, completed in 1505,
demonstrate that the source of these engravings must have been
a picture executed towards the end of the 15th century,
between the construction dates of these two great mosques.
This Picture , in the various
engravings of which small differences can be detected,
constitutes an important documert as far as many details of
Istanbul, the great Turkish capital, are concerned. It can be
seen in the engraving that the Kad_rga Harbour was still being
usedas a shipyard. The Fatih Mosque and surrounding buildings,
the Tekfur palace with its roof still intact, the walls which
surrounded it in Bayezid, the Old Palace (Saray-i Atik), the
walls surrounding the New Palace (Saray-i Cedid), only
referred to as the Topkap_ Palace in the comparatively recent
past, the shops in the Buyuk Carsi, the streets, and the
Hippodrome, which although its is in a semi-ruined state, has
been shown as a semi-circular structure on the Marmara side,
are all marked in this engraving However, the buildings inside
the walls of the Topkapi Palace are a production of the
imagination. In some versions of this engraving there is a row
of sultan's portraits at the bottom. The last of these, all of
which are in round frames, is that of Selim II, who died in
1574. In other editions the last sultan to be depicted is
Murad III (1574-1595). It would be deceptive to assume from
these details that this picture dated from the reign of Selim
II or Murad III. However, in spite of everything, these
pictures, which are referred to as the Vavassore, munster or
Braun-Hogenberg engravings, provide a valuable record of the
Istanbul of the early 16th century.
As far as the Italian Pietro
Valle, who wrote letters about Istanbul
between 1614 and 1615, was
concerned, the streets of the city were dirty and full of
potholes and the houses did not look solid. This sentence
demonstrates that, according to Della Valle, the inside of the
city "was not in keeping with its beautiful exterior" . A
Spanish priest, Otavio Sapienca, noted that the exteriors of
the houses were not appealing. On the other hand the Flemish
traveller De Stochove, who visited Istanbul in 1630, states
that upon seeing the city he forgot all the fatigue and
hardships of the journey; But like all the other travellers,
he complains of the narrowness of its streets and the small
and unassuming appearance of its houses. In the books of
travels written by two French travellers, Du Loir, who was in
Istanbul from 1639 to 1641, and de Monconys, who arrived in
1648, there are long descriptions of the works of Turkish
architecture adorning the city. In the same years another
Frenchman, Jean de Thevenot, mentions the discrepancies
between the exterior and interior view of the city.
He gives
detailed information about its commercial buildings, palaces,
fires and public baths, in short, about everything that is
Turkish. Laurent d'Arvieux, who came here in 1672 as an
official at the French embassy, states that because he had
previously lived in other Islamic countries he had no
difficulty in harmonising with his surroundings andwas able to
comprehend the spirit of this city far better than that of the
others. This Frenchman, who adopted the Ottoman mode of dress,
took long walks on the cypress-covered hills and strolled
among the small houses on the hillsides, experiencing the
beauty peculiar to them and falling in love with it all.
Robert de Dreux, appoin-ted chaplain to the French embassy,
explored Istanbul between 1665 and 1669. "I cannot remember
having seen anything so beautiful," he says, continuing with
these words: "There are seven hills in the city on the
peninsula, and on the summit of each of these hills, which
give the impression of having been created especially for the
purpose, there is a large mosque... The houses are surrounded
with evergreen trees such as cypresses and pines. However, one
is forced to confess that however attractive the city may
appear from the outside its interior is, on the contrary,
extremely ugly. The roads are bad, and because of the hilly
nature of the place they are not level. However, the rooms of
houses whose exteriors are not in the least attractive are
comfortable and very clean.
On the other hand the shopping centres... the hospitals, the palaces and mosques are all
beautiful buildings," he remarks in conclusion. G. Joseph
Grelot, who visited Istanbul, which he described as "the city
of wonders" at about the same time, adorned his book of
travels with both general views of the city and with
engravings of some of the mosques. The Frenchman Jacob Spon
and the Englishman Smith, who managed to endow their
travelogues with an unpleasantly pedantic air, and the
Frenchman Jouin de Rochefort, who compared Istanbul to all the
cities of Europe, both large and small, between Amsterdam and
Warsaw are personages who visited Istanbul in 1675 or
thereabouts. They expressed their displeasure at being unable
to find the pretty views and the orderliness of European
cities in Istanbul, while on the other had the Dutchman
Cornelis de Bruyn had greatly admired "the world's most
beautiful fort". The latter, who visited Istanbul in 1680, in
spite of all his good intentions fell ill before he was able
to carry out much work and was only able to draw a few good
pictures. Among the pictures in his travelogue is a broad
panorama depicting Istanbul from the Galata side, and this
picture can be described as a successful work of art.
A rich and colourful
description of everything to do with Istanbul in the 17th
century is to be found in the first volume of the book of
travels of a distinguished Turkish traveller known as Evliya
Celebi. The latter, who is thought to have been born in 1611
and to have died in or around 1680, dealt with the features of
Istanbul at that time in a truly encyclopaedic manner. We
learn from him how, just before the sultan was due to return
from his Revan (Iran) campaign, its buildings, were repainted
and spruced up in a very short space of time, how a coast road
was built which ran parallel to the Sea of Marmara along the
foot of the city walls from Sarayburnu to Yedikule. Again, we
learn about palaces the whereabouts of which are unknown
today. If we regard the Ibrahim Pasa standing on one side of
Sultanahmet Square (and of which half has undergone
considerable changes) as an exception, we can obtain
information about the Mihrimah Sultan Palaca in Bayezid and
the palace of Siyavus Pasa, with its three hundred rooms,
seven Turkish baths and bay windows on enclosed balconies,
which "had the whole sea at its feet, and kitchens and stables
the like of which would not be seen even in the royal palace".
No trace remains of either of these palaces. Evliya Celebi
also describes, in minute detail, the social topography of
Istanbul; this is done in a suave, tongue- in-cheek manner.
The famous taverns of Galata are described in the following
words; "Behind the inner wall of the city there are two
hundred or so disreputable taverns, one on top of the other,
and in each one of them five or six hundred sinners are
guzzling, swilling their liquor and raising their voices in
such a drunken cacophony that it defies description." In
Evliya Celebi's time the Yahya Efendi picnic place in Besiktas
was described by him as "a narrow valley with green turf in
which the sun never shows itself so thickly adorned is it with
planes, willows, gum trees, cypresses and walnuts."
Another product of Europe's
interest in Istanbul was the work of Matthaeus Merian
(1593-1650). Merian had producted a number of etchings in
which general views of Europe's main cities were depicted and
when these were published in volumes as series, a view of
Istanbul was added to the set. This engraving, which is 70cm
in length and was published in 1653, like Lorich's broad
panorama, claims to represent a view of Istanbul from the
heights of Galata and Beyoglu. However, the view of Galata in
the foreground bears no resemblance whatsoever to that
district. It does, however, convey the main feature of the
city stretching along the side of Golden Horn, the
silhouettes of its great mosques which appear to "crown" its
heights. This engraving of Merian's was reproduced many times
in the years that followed and it was even placed below the
map of Istanbul contained in atlases published in Nurnberg.
This engraving was the first of a number of a number of
strange 18th century engravings depicting Istanbul as a city
consisting only of minarets.
At the beginning of the 18th
century another Frenchman, Paul Lucas, made a detailed study
of the Turkish aspect of the city and on 1July 1715 he
witnessed the fire that cut a great swathe through the city
from the Old palace in Bayez_d as far as Kumkapi, destroying
15,000 houses in the process. The beauty of the city's
location was described by the French nobleman Comte de Caylus
in 1716; "minarets rise at intervals among the small,
unassuming houses". Indeed, strangely enough, it would
seemthat in the whole of Turkish architecture it was only the
minarets that appealed to the taste of this art critic. As
Comte de Caylus describes a fire that destroyed 7000 homes, he
also mentions the dangercaused by brigands who took advantage
of the panic and chaos that always accompanies such disasters
to commit various offences. On the other hand we gain what is
perhaps the very first information from a European about
prostitution in Istanbul.
According to Caylus, it was possible
by slipping some money into the hand of one of the hand of one
of the employees of the Galata Palace (which was close to the
French embassy) to obtain the services of a woman. Judging by
the fact that, in older Turkish documents, there are
references to so-called concubines, purchased in order "to
gain experience" and a few days after this had been
"accomplished", being returned to their owners in return for a
fee and a gift for the woman in question it is quite obvious
that prostitution had existed for a long time in this big,
cosmopolitan city and in Beyoglu in particular. At the
beginning of the 18th century an attractive young
Englishwoman, Lady Montague, described Istanbul in letters far
superior to Caylus's dull descriptions, letters that matched
the warm, lively personality of their author. This lady was
the wife of the English ambassador, and she had the following
to say about Istanbul: "It is an extremely large city. The
fact that its site is not a level one makes it look even
bigger. Here the elegant gardens, pine and cypress trees,
palaces, mosques and other public buildings are set out in the
well-arranged manner of pieces of china and porcelain in a
glass-fronted cupboard." After referring to Ayasofia, she then
precedes to a description of "other Turkish mosques which I
liked much more". This young Englishwoman, who accompanied a
bridal party to a Turkish bath and admired everything about
Istanbul, made a great deal of effort to correct some of the
erroneous impressions that existed about the Turks and about
Istanbul "because I have become accustomed to the air, have
learnt the language and like this place very much."
We now encounter Abbe Sevin,
who had come to Istanbul in 1729 to collect rare handwritten
books for the king of France. In one of his generally pompous
and pedantic letters he recounts a small incident worth noting
because it reflects two features of the city, namely its stray
dogs and the population's talent for witty remarks. "When the
news was received that an ambassadorial delegation was to
arrive from a foreign country, the Grand Vizier ordered that
all the houses along the route he was to take be painted red
(probably with red ochre paint)...And because here, just as in
other places, there are persons who try to make the state's
regulations look ridiculous, they painted a large number of
stray dogs the same colour and let them loose..." The author
adds this brief sentence of his tale: "This joke almost ended
in the mass destruction of the animals."
At about the same time a
Dutch artis, Jean Baptiste van Mour, was producing pictures of
Istanbul. Unable to earn sufficient money, he died in Istanbul
in 1737 , but he had committed to canvas a great many details
of the Tulip Period, which had changed the appearance of the
city, the ceremonies accompanying audiences held by Ahmet III
in the palace, the banquets organised in places along the
Bosphorus, views of Istanbul and the Hippodrome, even Patrona
Halil, who, with his rebellion, had succeeded in reducing part
of the city to ruins. The period of history at the beginning
of the 18th century, felicitously described by Yahya Kemal and
Ahmet Refik as "the Tulip Period" was a period in which good
taste and optimism reigned. The developments of this era,
which were encouraged by Ahmet III and his Grand Vizier,
Nevsehirli Ibrahim Pasa and immortalised in the poems of Sair
Nedim, were a rarely experienced period of peace and
tranquillity that lasted until the rebellion of Patrona Halil,
when it was all swept away in bloodshed, fire and horror. The
picnic places by Golden Horn and at Kagithane had become
the city's main centres of entertainment. The Bosphorus and
the Kagithane Creek were lined with waterside palaces and
summerhouses. In the course of the efforts being made in the
reign of Mahmut I to repair the damage caused by the
rebellion, the influence of French baroque art began to make
itself increasingly felt. The French merchant Flachat, who
came from Lyons and remained in Istanbul for many years, noted
in his book of travels that considerable interest was being
shown in articles from the West, especially from France. This
interest was also focussed on the use of gold leaf in
decoration schemes. Flachat, who during his long life made
many friends, both in the palace and among the general public,
was even able to stroll in the palace because of his
friendship with the Kizlaragasi, or chief of the Harem. He
notes in his travelogue that he knew a Turk who was extremely
intelligent and possessed a remarkable degree of technical
knowledge.
The artist A de Favray, in
the pictures he painted in 1762, made a great deal of effort
to depict the beauty of Istanbul viewed from the sea, from Sarayburnu and particularly from the Bosphorus. Shortly
afterwards, in 1763, the city was reduced to ruins by a
terrible earthquake and because many buildings, among them the
Fatih Mosque, had been damaged beyond repair, it was decided
to demolish it. The mosque that was built in its place is the
present one. However, in spite of its natural beauty, the
magnificence of its buildings and the loveable quality of its
more modest districts, Istanbul had not yet achieved the
appearance of a really clean city. Baron de Tott, who lavishly
praised the beautiful panorama he saw in 1755 went on to
complain about the dirtiness of its streets. He described the
fire he witnessed on October of the same year. This fire,
which reduced Babiali and the surrounding neighbourhood to
ashes, even threatened Ayasofia at one point. The heat of the
flames melted the lead covering the cupola, and the molten
metal ran down the drainpipes.
Two foreigners of a very
different kind are known to have visited Istanbul during the
second half of the 18th century, and their works occupy a
special place in people's libraries. One of them was Casanova
de Seingalt and the other was Donatien Alphonse de Sade, who
gave his name to the cult of sadism. Casanova does not mention
Istanbul a great deal in his memoirs, but among the rakish
adventures filling these volumes is an unpleasant and rather
comical incident that happened while he was here. On the other
hand, the Marquis de Sade, in one of his books (which is
filled with horrifying descriptions) recounts in disgusting
detail various lustful scenes that are supposed to have taken
place in the sultan's harem.
The Swede Jacob Jones
Bjonstahl, who stayed in Istanbul in about 1778 during his
trevels in the Ottoman empire, saw the great religious feasts
which make the city even more colourful. He also had the
horrifying experience of being present during a plague
epidemic and was unfortunate enough to die on his return
journey in Salonika without ever seeing his homeland again.
Towards the end of that century an art academy was founded
with the efforts of the French ambassador, Comte de
Choiseul-Gouffier; this academy was a research centre where
men of the arts and sciences engaged in recording the beauties
and treasures of the city gathered. A topographer named
Kauffer drew the very first plan of the city was f any
scientific value and artists produced a number of large
paintings. In 1786, an Englishwoman who had observed all this
work, Lady Elizabeth Craven, remarked about it and expressed
her own views about Istanbul in the following sentence: "The
Turks revere the beauty of nature so much that they do not cut
down trees in the places where they build their houses.
On the contrary, they set aside a place for the tree inside their home
and the branches of the tree are considered to be the finish
adornment for the roof." She then remarks about the narrowness
of the streets, saying that "as the houses become higher the
people living on either side of the street could reach across
and hold the hands of their neighbors on the other side."
With this sentence she stresses a feature that many other
travellers had noticed as well. However, the thing that
angered the young Englishwoman most was the laziness of the
people of Istanbul. "I have even seen people who sit on the
seashore watching the kites in the sky or children getting
into boats and taking trips for a whole day, from morning to
evening." The English traveller Jacques Dallaway, who filled
his work with pedantic observations, states that according to
records, in 1975 there were 88,185 houses and 130 Turkish
baths in the city and that its population was at least
400,000. He comments that a great deal of natural beauty was
destroyed because of the interest in making gardens like the
ones in Europe and states quite openly that an excessive love
of luxury and display had spoiled Turkish tastes, which were
based on tradition. European fashions and tastes were now
quite openly dominant in Istanbul. According to Dallaway the
streets were narrow and dirty and all this filth could be only
partially cleared away by the large number of stray dogs in
the city. The houses were made of wood and appeared to
unsound. The streets, however, were safe and shops remained
open all day, even if their owners were nowhere to be seen.
"Offences such as theft are entirely foreign to the Turks," he
concludes.
A number of pictures were
produced that depicted the Istanbul of the 18th century in a
far more realistic manner than the panorama of Merian, which
was filled with imaginary details. One of these was painted by
an officer names Loos who accompanied King Karl XII of Sweden
on his visit to Istanbul at the beginning of the 18th century.
His pictures, which depicted the city and its monuments, were
only discovered in recent years and are just like photographs
of Istanbul taken three hundred years ago. The Austrian Baron
von Gudenus drew a general view of Istanbul from the heights
of Beyoglu with Taphane and Galata in the foreground, and the
city divided into sections. Etchings of these different
sections and published. Their most interesting feature is the
houses in traditional Turkish architectural style with broad
eaves and windows decorated with plaster ornaments.
In later
years, when Galata assumed a more cosmopolitan character,
these houses disappeared. Apart from these persons, at the end
of the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries,
two European artists, Antoine Louis Castellan and Ignaz
Melling, were at work trying to record all the beauty of
Istanbul. Castellan painted the New Mosque (Yen Cami), the
Sultan Ahmet Mosque, Sarayburnu, the Shrine of Suleymaniye,
Incili Kosk (the Pearl Summerhouse) and other suchplaces, thus
having something by which to remember his journey to Istanbul,
which he described as "a ravishing dream". Melling, who was
rightly known as "the unrivalled painter of the Bosphorus",
produced froty large paintings, each of which could be
described as a work of art, of Istanbul and the Bosphorus.
These pictures were obviously published, for, as stated in an
anonymous travelogue written in about 1817, "Sometimes these
pictures contain an excessive amount of detail in an endeavour
to reflect the reilaty but they depict the modern buildings
and landscapes of this city, every view of which is
attractive, in a manner more successful than that achieved in
the most sensitive written descriptions."
When two English travellers,
William Wittman and D Clarke, arrived in Istanbul at the
beginning of the 19th century they were disillusioned by the
inside of the city. They considered that the streets were so
narrow and so dirty that not even a breath of air could
penetrate. In 1806 the famous French man of letters A de Chateaubrian stated that "there are three details that strike
the eye in this extroardinary city." These were the fact that
no women were to be seen in the streets, that there were no
wheeled vehicles and the large number of stray dogs. The city
was very silent. "It would seem that the shooping centres are
followed by the graveyard. It is as if the Turks are entirely
absorbed in buying goods, selling goods and dying. It is as if
the graveyards, which are not bounded by any wall and resemble
a graveful grove of cypress trees, extend to the very middle
of the street. The wood pigeons nesting among their branches
share in the peace of the dead." Although it was in keeping
with his character, this atmosphere did not really suit the
romantic man of letters and he immediately set out again in
order to escape from a visit that was "stifling to the
spirit". Another French ambassador, Comte Andreossy, wrote a
book in 1812 about Istanbul and the Bosphorus which gave
detailed information about the sea; this took place shortly
after the departure of the famous Ottomanist J. von Hammer.
Von Sturmer, the ambassador who was the cause of von Hammer's
departure, described Istanbul in 1816 as "a city enthroned on
seven hills". For Compte de Forbin, who was in Istanbul at
about the same time, it was "a city that seems to have been
built to give pleasure to the eyes".
Charles Pertusier,
another person who explored the city at about that time, wrote
a long travelogue about it. According to Pertusier, "there is
no need for all the animals and particularly the birds to pray
to God to save them from the traps set by people here... and
the birds make more noise than all its other inhabitants." The
trees, roads and houses surrounded by gardens exercised a
great attraction for this French artillery officer. Among
Pertusier's accounts of life in Istanbul was an incident in
which an inhabitant of Istanbul who had had the audacity to
remark that 'a decree is a three is a three-day wonder',
encountered the wrath of the Grand Vizier who was roaming the
streets in disguise! In addition to Pertusier's three-volume
travelogue, there is also an album containing engravings by
the artist Preault. In this album the shipyard on the Golden
Horn, Anadolu Hisari (fortress), the Goksu and Bebek lodges,
which reflected the old Turkish architectural style and were
surrounded by thick groves of trees, were depicted with great
realism. Vicomte de Marcellus describes his departure from
Istanbul, to which he had come as an ambassador, one autumn
day in 1820: "Upon reaching the highest part of the hills
above Eyub and turning round I bade a last farewell to the
most beautiful city in the world, the ruins of Constantine's
palace, the great city walls of the emperors, the gleaming
domes of the mosques and the sea shimmering in the sunlight."
The Western travellers who arrived in Istanbul in the 19th
century had began to experience the city's inimicable
attractiveness in a more immediate way.
As MacFarlane stated
during his journey in 1828, travellers stay here "in order to
breathe in an entirely different air". The French poet and man
of letters Alphonse de Lamartine, for his part, had this to
say about the city in which he first set foot one May morning
in 1833. "One looks at the most beautiful veiw to be found
anywhere on earth, one which was created by the joint efforts
of God and man, art and nature." For Lamartine there could be
no place more beautiful, because "it would be an insult to
creativity to seek any resemblance whatsoever to this graceful
integrity," and this statement is followed by pages of cloured
pictures. Istanbul, which he saw in all the glory of spring,
was, according to Lamartine, "the most perfect and pleasurable
view the human eye could possible partake of at any hour of
the day or night." The same pleasure was experienced in 1820
by Colonel Rottiers, who described it as "a dreamlike state
that would be induced by partaking lightly of laudanum," and
stated in all sincerity that he was "lost for words" as far as
his feelings towards Istanbul were concerned. It is sufficient
to browse through the pictures in two books published at about
this time to gain an impression of the "dreamlike state"
induced by these landscapes. The finest of these were the
pictures executed for Walsh's book by Thomas Allom, in which
steel engravings were used for the first time. The pictures
drawn by W Bartlett for Miss Julia Pardoe's book about
Istanbul are not of the same quality but they are works of
pictorial merit. These books were in such demand at the time
that editions were published in German, French and Italian.
These engravings were then coloured, framed and hung in many
people's homes as decoration. It is worth noting that Miss
Pardoe, a sensitive and refined young Englishwoman, was very
fond of Istanbul and described it in a separate two-volume
book of travels.
A general view of Istanbul
from Galata Tower, printed in colour by a different method,
was produced in a workshop especially setup for the purpose by
Baker, an Englishman. This large picture depicts in great
detail the area around Golden Horn. In the foreground we
can see Galata and its old houses, the walls and towers of
Galata, which were still intact at that time, the mosques and
mesjids behind them, its graveyards and treasures and the
layout and features of the streets- all of which are extremely
realistic.
The changes that were being
made by Sultan Mahmud II also affected the appearance of the
city. The Mekteb-i Tibbiye-i Sahane (Medical Faculty), which
had been set up on Western lines, the Muhendishane-i Berri
Humayum (Technical University) and other such extablishments
were the first products of this westernisation. In parallel
with this, buildings constructed on Western principles changed
the architectural fabric of the city.
The students of the Technical
University drew an excellent plan of the city in 1848, showing
the locations of Istanbul 400 or so mosques and the street
layout of the entire city. This was published as a lithograph.
Shortly afterwards, the first photographs of Istanbul were
taken between 1853 and 1855 during the Crimean War. These
photographs, taken by Robertson, an Englishman who used time
exposures, recorded for posterity the buildings of Istanbul,
its people and their manner of dressing, the life of the city
and the objective reality of that time.
A large number of men of
letters visited Istanbul during the second half of the 19th
century. In the books they wrote one can find reflections of a
world that had unfortunately begun to disappear. The
well-known American satirist Mark Twin was among these
visitors and he recounts the journey in one of his books.
Istanbul did not make a favourable impression on this visitor
from the New World. There is also a book of travels by Reuter,
whose works are difficult to understand because they are
written in a dialect of German, not the standard language.
However, just as we encounter foreigners who did not like
Istanbul we also meet poets and men of letters who loved it
very much. For Gerard de Nerval "its green and mobile
horizons, houses of many hoes, lead-covered cupolas and
slender minarets" made it "magnificent city." According to
Maxime du Camp, it was "As if all creativity's works of art
had been collected inside a semicircle". Charles de Mouy, who
was resident in Istanbul between 1875, described his first
encounter with the city in these words: "Suddenly, rising out
of the waters like a dream from the world of fairies, a vague
silhouette composed of cupolas, minarets, palaces and gardens
becomes visible." Without doubt the city possessed muddy,
unprepossessing streets "but one's eyes are constantly drawn
to an attractive and fantastic picture in vivid colors". The
Italian man of letters Edmondo de Amicis, who explored
Istanbul in the same period, produced one of the most
beautiful books ever to be written about the city." The
corners of these quiet streets meet in a small square usually
shaded by the spreading branches of an enormous plane tree.
There is a drinking fountain on one side and on the other, a
rush mat is spread in front of the cafe upon which men lie
asleep or smoke and next to its door there is a large fig tree
and a shady verandah. Between its leaves one can glimpse tiny
patch of blue sea on which there are a few white sails in the
distance. These lights and tranquil places draw one
irresistibly towards Eyub, where one loses all concepts of
time and distance... However, one is astonished to find that
upon reaching the end of these little roads everything changes
abruptly. You are now in one of Istanbul's main streets. You
are surrounded on all sides by monuments that fatigue the
eyes. You wander among mosques, mansions, vaulted corridors,
marble fountains, shrines with inscriptions in gold leaf and
walls covered with enameled tiles... There is a whiteness, an
architectural beauty everywhere, the sound of running water
and shady coolness, all of which caress one's senses like
mysterious music.
Amicis states that the dogs of Istanbul were
"so many in number that they resembled a caste of city
dwellers lower than its human inhabitants" and goes on to say
that they were like "a gang of vagabonds that enjoyed extreme
freedom", thus enriching the realistic aspects of his
narrative with these vivid and colourful descriptions. Edmond
about and De Blowitz, who came to Istanbul in 1883 with a
largegroup as guests of the Wagon Lit company, rightly
commented on the "invasion" by European fashions that was
beginning to make its presence felt in Istanbul at that time.
About, who felt that the neglect of elegant and tasteful
Turkish goods on the one hand and the excessive demand for
showy and tasteless articles imported from Europe on the other
were inappropriate, made the acquaintanceship of Hamdi Bey,
museum curator, to whom he regretfully confided that he had
been unable to explore as he wished "thiscollectivity of
miracles, Istanbul, a city full appreciated neither by
European guides nor by its inhabitants." De Blowitz, for his
part, was captivated by "this radiant world of dreams, a
beauty the like of which can be found nowhere else, nor can it
be imitated," to such an extent that he "had never seen a
thing of such extreme beauty and had no desire to do so."
The eminent French man of
letters Theophile Gautier, who visited Istanbul in the middle
of the last century, dressed as a Turk of the Tanzimat
(reform) period, (circa 1839), with a fez on his head, a
redingote on his back and a six-month growth of beard; he
explored the city in minute detail and his descriptions are
unparalled in terms of colour and vividness. Gautier found
Istanbul so beautiful that "one suspects this lovely view to
be unreal". These lines of Theophile Gautier, in which he
describes a view of the city from what is now Tepebasi one
night in Ramazan from the crux of his modest anthology about
this incomparable city: "On the other side of Golden Horn
the city was shimmering like the jewelled crown of an eastern
emperor; each balcony of the minarets was adorned with
bracelets of lanterns, and verses from the Kuran picked out in
lights like the pages of a sacred book upon the dark blue sky
were strung in the manner of bunting from one minaret to the
other. Ayasofia, Sultan Ahmed, the New Mosque Suleymeniye and
all the places of worship that rise along the coastline
stretching from Sarayburnu to the heights of Eyub were blazing
with light and announced the verses of Islam in sentences of
fire. The moon in the form of a crescent with its accompanying
star resembled the coat of arms of the state embroidered upon
a heavenly flag."
A French doctor by the name
of A. Brayer visited Istanbul in 1815 and remained here on and
off over a period of thirty years. He studied the plague
epidemic and came to the conclusion that it was not
infectious! The first volume of his two-volume work contains a
description of Istanbul and the second is devoted to his
opinions abut the plague. Brayer begins with complaints about
the dirtiness and narrowness of the only main street in
Beyoglu and remarks that it is impossible to walk there at
night without a lantern. After referring to the filthy state
of the Kasimpasa Creek goes on to describe in some detail the
districts and neighbourhoods of Istanbul and settlements along
the Bosphorus. Hisdescriptions of the commercial and shopping
centres in these neighbourhoods and of their craftsmen are
extremely interesting. For this reason it could be said that
it is this French doctor who was able to provide the most
accurate information about certain districts of Istanbul at
the beginning of the 19th century. He mentions that between
Yenikapi and Samatya there were little summerhouses built on
pies driven into the sea bed that had a wonderful view of the
Sea of Marmara and a number of cafes along the sea front. The
thing he enjoyed most of all were boat trips on the Bosphorus
in one of those light, clean, graceful craft with three pairs
of oars. His description of the clean and well-dressed
appearance of the oarsmen and the gracefulness of these
caiques occupies many pages.
Many men of letters visited
Istanbul during the 19th century. In the books that they wrote
it is possible to detect reflections of a world that was
unfortunately beginning to decline. One of these men was
Gerard de Nerval (1805-1855). During his journey to the Middle
East in 1843 he was able to explore Istanbul and decsribe it
in a romantic manner. The first thing to attract his attention
in Beyoglu's main street was the fortress-like building of the
Russian Embassy. The French Embassy, Which cost millions to
build, was under construction at that time. Further down on
the left was the Italian Theatre and the Galatasaray School,
which he referred to as the university, and beautiful, houses
with gardens lay between these two buildings. The picturesque,
mysterious and cool park at the end of the street was in fact
a graveyard. Nerval, who preferred to study the way of life of
the city's Greeks and Armenians, gives a lengthy account of a
punch and judy show. He also visited the Sahilsarayi Palace
which stood on the site of the present Beylerbeyi Palace and
gives detailed information about all the European items inside
it and mentions its internal layout. For Gerard de Nerval it
was the "green and mobile horizons, houses of many hues,
lead-covered cupolas and slender minarets" that made Istanbul
"such a magnificent city". Maxime du Camp, a less-known
writer, stated that "all creativity's works of art had been
collected inside a semicircle, and in his book of travels he
recounts an interesting incident that he witnessed in Istanbul
in 1850. While he was boarding a ship on Golden Horn, a
French merchant dropped a purse into the sea containing twenty
five thousand golden francs. A driver was sent down and a
search made, but the gold coins were nowhere to be seen;
however, about twenty bronze cannonballs were discovered.
Sultan Abdulmecid presented the cannonballs to the Frenchman
to console him for his loss.
During the years when
Theophile Gautier, who had appreciated the beauty of Istanbul,
was writing his book of travels (this coincided with the
Crimean War), there was also a by no means small number of
foreigners who did not like Istanbul at all. In the memories
of a doctor named F. Maynard, which was published in 1855 by
Alexandre Dumas (1803-1870), this person was said to have
found Istanbul incredibly beautiful when viewed from the sea.
However, "Alas, alas! 'Twas a
dream that was painfully destroye before I had taken a hundred
steps along its narrow, rutted, muddy, dark, filthy streets
that never saw sunlight or fresh air... You begin to wonder if
an evil genie has thrown a loathsome veil over this queen of
cities, pearl of the east, the centre of beauty, dreams of
which always appear in the misty skies of the north simply in
order to deceive." The writer, in these words, expresses the
worry of not being able to find the Ottoman city of old. This
is an important opinion. The tendency towards westernisation
that began in the Tanzimat period had meant that the Ottomans
of those times had, without questioning their suitability,
adopted a number of Western ideas, expressed mainly in fashion
but also including architecture, bureaucracy and many other
things that had changed the face of Istanbul. The same writer
goes on to say that he had found the last of the old Istanbul,
which no foreigner would dare to enter, in the Eyup district.
"In some places the side of a street resembles a vine-covered
verandah from one end to the other, and in others the branches
of the of the lime trees reach down to cover the pavement;
sometimes a plane tree with light filtering between its leaves
spreads its gigantic shade; the cypress trees, of which many
are to be found in this part of the city, give it an even more
melancholy air with their dark green verdure. At every step
one encounters a play of light and shade that no artist would
ever be able to get out of his mind."
A. von Warsberg, who spent
the summer of 1864 in Istanbul, expresses his feelings for the
city in this single line printed on the first page of his
travelogue: "This book has been written only for those who
have lived in and loved the country in question." With these
lines about the Eyup district of the city, which he explored
on 23 May, von Warsberg gives us an idea of how he saw the
city. "The street is paved with clean stones and to either
side there are walls faced with marble to which a feeling of
mobility is given by half-columns and archways. At the end can
be seen shrines protruding into the street at intervals. Their
windows are covered with gilded lattice-work; thick clumps of
rose bushes lie between them and ancient plane, mulberry and
maple trees form a cupola above. This is a city of the dead
but instead of the horror of death one finds a place where
those tired of living may take refuge in the tranquility of
being forgotten in the wonderful garden of sleep until they
are awakened by the trumpets of the Last Judgment to a new
and better eternal life."
The famous American satirist
Mark Twain (1835-1910), who sailed to Istanbul in 1867, states
in his book "Innocents Abroad" that he found Istanbul
interesting viewed from afar; however, as soon as he
disembarked, this incomparable view dissolved. Its inhabitants
wore a motley assortment of clothing, some were dressed in
traditional clothes with crimson fezzes on their heads, "their
apparel being whatever happened to please them". Among the
street sellers who aroused such astonishment in Twain was a
goose herd who walked the streets driving a flock of up to one
hundred geese in front of him. For the American writer, who
found Ayasofia dark and dirty, the dance of the Mevlevi
dervishes was "the most barbaric manifestation I have seen to
this day". The most striking pages of his book of travels are
those about the salve market. He states that female slaves
were sold quite openly there, and tongue in cheek, records the
price in dollars of the slaves bought and sold. This visitor
from the new world did not enjoy his visit to a Turkish bath,
either.
E. Jouve, a Frenchman who was
an Istanbul in 1854 as correspondent of Courier de Lyon (this
was during the Crimean War), found the city in a wretched
state. The Turkish troops had European-style uniforms that did
not suit them at all. He compared the shrine of Mahmut II,
which had recently been built on Divanyolu to the Trianon and
described this shrine with its gilded railings as "un joli
palais Parisian" (a pretty Parisian palace). Jouve dwells on
the famous stray dogs of Istanbul, recounting a strange piece
of gossip as he does so: namely that of an English family of
eight who had been foolish enough to walk in the city at night
only the heels of his lordship's shoes and the handle of her
ladyship's umbrella had ever been found and that not of trace
remained of their six children(!) The French journalist,
however, had no complaints about these dogs. 'Rigoletto' wa on
at the theatre in Beyoglu, the construction of the Dolmabahce
Palace was under way and the Greeks of Istanbul, whom Jouve
did not like at all, were of the one belief that it was the
site of the emperor's palace of a recrudescent Byzantine
empire.
In criticism of a European diplomacy that was bent on
creating a Greek state, he stressed that the Turks had created
a city far more beautiful than the one exiting on their
arrival in Istanbul on 29 May 1453. Jouve stated that many
things in Istanbul were much better than the in the West and
pointed to the superiority of the military hospitals. He went
on to say that the attempts of the Turks to westernize had
been unjustly criticized. He expressed the opinion that many
things seemed to be a random nature but that the people who
created this disorder were mainly Levantines guided by their
own interests. These persons were "neither do nor wolf and
they exploit the fortunes of both the Turks and the
Europeans." L. Bunel, who spent several weeks in Istanbul at
about this time, described the magnificence of the homes of
the Greeks in the Fener district and the wealth of their
inhabitants, contrasting them with the poverty of the Jews in
nearby Balat.
However, the thing that astonished him most was
the fact that the residential area of Galata had a graveyard
inside it. This was the "kucuk Mezaristan", or "Little
Graveyard" of which no trace now exists, that was located
between the Tepebasi and Sishane neighbourhoods. This was the
place referred to by Europeans as "Le Petit Champs des Morts",
a place where Turks sat in the shade of the Cypress trees to
rest, a quiet corner in which to smoke a pipe. Bunel was able
to explore the Dolmabahce Palace, which was still under
construction and described the various sections of the
building in considerable detail. The writer considered it to
be magnificent, although its style was European.
The part he
admired most of all was the Throne Room (muayene salonu). He
put the predominantly red, white and blue colour scheme down
to the excessive nationalism of the French decorators working
under the supervision of the person who had been in charge of
the decorations in the Paris Opera. The name of this anonymous
person was Sechan Bunel considered that, in spite of certain
discrepancies of proportion, the Dolmabahce Palace was, in
terms of art, superior to the Louvre and Tuilleries palaces in
Paris. According to Bunel, there were things worth seeing in
Uskudar, which was populated entirely by Turks; these were the
convent of the Rufai dervishes the Karacaahmed Graveyard and
the Selimiye Barracks. He stated that the graveyard resembled
a magnificent forest of cypresses that "I have never seen such
a vast and impressive cypress wood in the whole of my life";
he went on to say that it was a favourite place for walks of
the women of Istanbul. Bunel gives us a detailed description
of the ceremony preceding the Friday services attended by
Sultan Abdulmecid, how he travelled from Dolmabahce to
Sarayburnu by sea, and how the procession made its way to
Ayasofia. He does not omit the street dogs of Istanbul and its
famous fires, both of which are unfailingly mentioned by
travellers. As the traveller describes the beauty of the
Kagithane pastures, he also mentions the unkempt state of the
waterside palace. As it is known that this palace was built by
Mahmut II toreplace the old Sadabad Palace, subsequently
neglected by Abdulmecid and finally demolished by abdulaziz,
who had the Caglayan Pavilion built on the same site, Bunel's
description can be considered an accurate one.
Xavier Marmier (1809-1892),
who was famous for his travelogues and also a member of the
French Academy, sailed to Istanbul from the Black Sea shortly
before the Crimean War in 1846. "The beautiful views of the
Bosphorus begin at Buyukdere," hesays, and goes on to complete
his observations with this sentence: "No painter's brush would
be able to convey the harmonious combination of the displays
of colour, layout and light, no writer would be able to
express this boundless beauty... Those who have houses built
here in order to enjoy this beauty do not adhere to any system
like the one in Europe, but build their houses upon piles
driven into the bed of the sea. A person who owns a house in
this place has acted according to his own tastes and upon his
own impulses". Marmier did not neglect to briefly mention the
famous triple-deck galleon Mahmudiye, which belonged to the
Ottoman navy, in his descriptions of the Bosphorus. "when the
Sultan's gilded caique, rowed by twenty oarsmen with
arrow-like swiftness from the Old Palace, drew level with
Mahmudiye the applause of the white-uniformed sailors lined up
along the booms mingled with the gun fired in salute from the
ship and those fired from the Tophane barracks.
And this was
perhaps the only great and wonderful landscape in the whole
world that represented pomp and magnificence." However, Marmier was disappointed by the inner city. Naturally, the
street dogs of Istanbul, which the Turks could not bring
themselves to destroy, occupy a large part of his narrative.
The writer did not care much for Pera (Beyoglu), the main
street of which was full of potholes and the side streets
extremely narrow and he considered that the palatial buildings
of the foreign embassies did not beautify it, but, on the
contrary, were an ugly contrast. His thoughts about the
unkempt graveyards are expressed in these words: "The City of
the Dead is no better maintained than that of the living."
However, when the city is viewed not from its interior but
from a little further afield the dazzling view materializes
once more: "It is only then, when the large groups of
buildings merge with the verdure of the trees, the picturesque
hillsides covered with houses and gardens, the slender
minarets rising from their peaks, the azure firmament that
frames it all and the crystal-clear water in which it is
reflected that this beauty reveals itself." Charles Roland
came to Turkey to manage the farm at Burgazovasi near Izmir
that had been given to A. de Lamartine as a present.
While he
was staying in Istanbul in 1852 he made the acquaintance of a
number of well-known Turks such as Ahmed Vefik Pasa and was
invited to stay in their homes as a guest. When the traveller
saw the waterside residence of Resit Pasa at Baltalimani,
which was being built at that time "in the Italian style", he
revealed that although this house would, when completed, be
one of the most splendid to be found anywhere on the Bosphorus,
he still preferred the Turkish mansions of old, in spite of
their unassuming appearance. He wondered why the Ottomans
preferred "a style inferior to that of their own national
tastes". Roland's view was a reflection of that expressed by
many other foreigners who disliked the imitation of everything
European that was so conspicuous during the 19th century. The
only quay for passengers disembarking in Istanbul was at
Tophane.
Here the building of an Italian-style terrace, one of
the products of modern taste, in place of the "monumental
fountain" with its wooden eaves and roof was, as the
art-loving Roland stressed, an affront to the eyes. A few
pages further on he stated that he disliked Pera, which
entirely resembled a Western city, and found it
"characterless". When Roland was exploring the palace at
Sarayburnu, which was completely destroyed by fire in 1863, he
caught sight of a number of acajou armchairs, gilded clocks
and imitation Boule furniture that had been imported from
Paris and found them extremely ugly. Another famous French
writer to visit Istanbul during the mid 19th century was
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880). He stayed in the city in the
winter of 1850 for two months and tells us about it in
sentences of telegraphic brevity: the old structure he liked
most was "the ivy-draped walls of the city with greenery
sprouting all over-they have never been praised sufficiently".
He, too, mentions the incident of the golden coins falling
into Golden Horn, as recounted by Maxime de Camp. Although
he explored even the most distant corners of Istanbul, he did
not write any description of the city worthy of his fame in
the literary world.
Fritz Reuter (1810-1874), who
wrote in a dialect spoken in northern Germany, provides a
brief description of a journey he made to Istanbul in 1864
with a group of colleagues in his book "Reis'nah
Konstantinopel"; however, this book can only be understood by
those with a knowledge of the dialect. E. About, a French
writer whose actual profession was archaeology, showed no
interest whatsoever in Byzantine or Ottoman structures during
his visit to the city. In his book "De Pontoise a Stamboul" he
does not show a great deal of interest in the beauty of the
surroundings or in the historic past. About had come as far as
the Balkans as a guest of the wagon Lit company on the very
first Orient Express and had continued his journey to Istanbul
by sea. The writer stayed at the Luxembourg Hotel in Beyoglu,
which was run by F. Belon. He stated that his guide was Ahmet
Pasa (Seker). The Pasa had taken him to the Dolmabahce Palace,
which was furnished with items manufactured in France. About
said he was frankly astonished to find that while Indian,
Persian and Turkish carpets were the subject of much bidding
in the auction rooms of Paris, in Istanbul furniture from Rue
de Saint-Antoine and silk from Lyon were in demand. He states
quite openly that the opulent French furniture to be found in
Istanbul "could not hold a candle to a lamp in a mosque or an
enamelled wall tile..." About also mentions the dogs. The
Times correspondent De Blowitz was one of the persons
accompying About. Blowitz took a great interest in the
waterside residences of the ambassadors and in the summerhouse
built by Ismail Pasa on the hills above Beykoz.
De Blowitz was trying to play
a part in some of the political intrigues going on in Istanbul
and for this purpose was doing all he could to insinuate
himself into palace circles. During this time he met Namik
Pasa, Sheikh Ebu'l Huda and Ahmet Vefik Pasa. As a matter of
fact the English economist N. W. Senior(1790-1864), who
visited Istanbul between 1857 and 1858, had already met this
extremely original Ottoman Turk.
Edmondo de amicis, mentioned
in the previous paragraphs, was the author of "Constantinopoli",
a classic in the Italian language printed in 1874 and
published in all the major languages, including Turkish. De
Amicis describes the disappearing Turkish Istanbul and goes on
to criticise the European tastes that were replacing it. He
admired many of the things he had seen because of their good
taste and refinement and it was namely these things that were
on their way out at the time the book was written. Now they
are no more, and live on in the illustrations in De Amicis's
book so beautifully illustrated by C. Biseo. Perhaps it was
because this Italian writer himself came from the
Mediterranean that he was able to gain a better knowledge of
the city than the other travellers and to describe it so
vividly.
C. Guys (1802-1855), who was
employed as an illustrator by The Illustrated London News was
making illustrations of the Crimean War between 1853 and 1855
and his signature is also to be found on drawings depicting
the streets of Istanbul and the clothing of its inhabitants.
One of these, drawn in pencil and ink, which is to found in Musee des Arts Decoratifs, depicts a little-known corner of
the city with its brothels and inhabitants. The number of
artists who painted pictures of Istanbul in the mid 19th
century was by no means small. Apart from the works of
Schrantz, which show in a panoramic manner the beauty of both
sides of the Bosphorus (published as lithographs) there were
the paintings of the Maltese artist Preziosi, who acquainted
the public with Istanbul, its streets and even some of its
beggars in his coloured illustrations. A number of other
artists from various countries depicted the parts of the city
they found interesting in oils or watercolours. Some of these
were reproduced in a book entitled Les Peintres du Bosphorus
XVIII Siecle, which as its title states, was devoted to the
18th century, published in 1989.
One also encounters in
auction catalogues the works of 19th century artists who
portrayed Istanbul. However, from the middle of the 19th
century onwards it was the art of photography, which gave a
more realistic impression of the city, that began to yield its
first fruits. Robertson (referred to previously), who lived in
Istanbul for many years, preserved Istanbul, its buildings and
its people for posterity in his photographs, each of which is
now a valuable historical document. A good plan of old
Istanbul was drawn in 1870 where the layout of the streets at
that time and the city's major buildings are shown. Istanbul
was an object of considerable interest for Europeans and books
on the subject were continually being published. Some of the
most perfect descriptions of Istanbul were penned by Ahmet
Rasim (1864-1932), a Turk. Such works as "Sehir Mektuplari"
(letters from the city), "Fuhs-Atik" (Prostitution in the Old
Days), "Hamamci Ulfet" (Ulfet of the Public Baths) and "Falaka"
(Bastinado), all describe a world which was beginning to
disappear into the depths of history, a forgotten Istanbul, at
the end of the 19th century.
The most valuable aspect of these
descriptions is that they depict the Turkish and Muslim
Istanbul, a world which no Western writer was ever able to
enter. The journalist Mehmed Tevfik (1843-1932), who was also
known by the nickname Caylak (kite) published a number of
brochures, which had extremely simple illustrations, under the
title of "Istanbul'da Bir Sene" (A Year in Istanbul). A series
of booklets describing the people of Istanbul and their way of
life is a valuable source in this respect. The appearance of
Istanbul at the end of the 19th century was sometimes
described by foreign writers in an extremely negative manner.
This attitude is quite apparent in the travel notes kept by K.
Krumbacher, the founder of Byzantine studies in the West,
during his visit to Istanbul in 1884. Krumbacher, sees
everything from the Greek point of view in this "greatest of
Greek cities". The only items that interested him were the
mosaics in the Kariye Mosque (Eminonu), and the newly-founded
Archaeological Museum.
A French doctor who nursed a particular
grudge against the Ottoman state because he had become
involved in a political intrigue at the end of the 19th
century during the reign of Abdulhamid II published a series
of books under the pseudonym of Paul de Regla. In a book
entitled "Les Bas-Fonds de Constaninople" (The Shallows of
Constantinople), he provides a description of Istanbul's
ethnic composition, its stray dogs, Galata and Pera (Beyoglu
at night), its intrigues, narcotics centres and disreputable
taverns. G. des Godins de Souhesmes, in his books "Au Pays des
Osmanlis" (In the Land of the Ottomans) and "Turks et
Levantins" (Turks and Levantines) tells us what people ate and
drank, how houses were built, describes the servants, the
streets and the nature of the city; he then dwells on the
stray dogs, guardians of the streets, the goods sold by street
sellers and the hawkers cries-all of the 19th century and the
early years of the 20th, when the Ottoman state was on the
verge of collapse, a large number of people continued to visit
the city and write about it. Istanbul also provided a
background for a number of novels written at that time. The
German novelist Kral May (1842-1912), in "Von Baghdad nach
Stambul" (From Baghdad to Istambul), puts his hero through a
number of adventures in the Istanbul of the 1870's; however,
the city merely serves as a backdrop for the novel. On the
other hand, there is a description of Istanbul in the famous
novel "Aziyade" by J. Viaud, otherwise known as Pierre Loti
(1850-1923).
The descriptions of Istanbul adorning a love
story that unfolds during the 1870's reflect the last traces
of a city that was being lost forever at that time. However, Loti's novel contains so many things that do not fit in with
the topography of the city that it is difficult to believe
they are true. Many references to Istanbul are to be found in
the European novels of the period. "Pages d'Orient" (Pages of
the Orient), by an unknown writer named M. Noe is a mixture of
travelogue and detective fiction. A similar technique is
employed in "De L'Homme qui Assasina" by Claude Farrere
(1876-1957), who, like Loti came to Istanbul as a naval
officer. |
Although
Istanbul has a past of more than two thousand years, it's not a city whose
antiquity is apparent at first glance. Much of the cultural heritage that
Istanbul has acquired as a result of its being a capital of several empires is
hidden away amidst modem buildings lining streets that have frequently been
redrawn from one generation to the next. Palaces, mansions, fountains, and
monuments of every kind lurk silently within the bustling vitality of this giant
metropolis' day-to-day existence and patiently wait to be discovered and seen by
those with a more discerning and inquisitive eye.
Topkapi Palace, that maze of buildings
that was the focal point of the Ottoman Empire between the 15th and
19th centuries. In these opulent surroundings the sultans and their
court lived and governed. A magnificent wooded garden fills the outer, or first,
court. In the second court, on the right, shaded by cypress and plane trees,
stand the palace kitchens, which now serve as galleries exhibiting the imperial
collections of crystal, silver, and Chinese porcelain. To the left is the Harem,
the secluded quarters of the wives, concubines, and children of the sultan,
charming visitors with echoes of centuries of intrigue. Today the third court
holds the Hall of Audience, the Library of Ahmet III, an exhibition of imperial
costumes worn by the sultans and their families, the famous jewels of the
treasury and a priceless collection of miniatures from medieval manuscripts. In
the center of this innermost sanctuary, the Pavilion of the Holy Mantle
enshrines the relics of the Prophet Muhammed brought to Istanbul when the
Ottomans assumed the caliphate of Islam. (Open every day except Tuesday).
