Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (18 page)

Leaving the Çinili Kö
ş
k we walk back again through the courtyard. As we do so we might be tempted to wander through the gardens in the museum precincts. In the gardens opposite to the museum and beside the Çinili Kö
ş
k, there is a fascinating collection of antique fragments which one can examine leisurely while having a drink in the café there. The most extraordinary object there is a block of marble carved into the form of two colossal Gorgon heads, identical to another pair we will subsequently see in the Basilica Cistern (see Chapter 7). All four of these heads were apparently part of a frieze in the Forum of Constantine (see Chapter 7) on the Second Hill, and probably originated in a temple in Asia Minor.

Passing through the courtyard exit we turn right on the road outside and follow it downhill, flanked by ancient columns and capitals. This road takes us almost to So
ğ
uk Çe
ş
me Kap
ı
s
ı
, the entrance to Gülhane Park, through which we will now stroll.

GÜLHANE PARK

Gülhane Park was once part of the outer gardens of the Saray. Originally this area would have been the lower town of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium, whose defence walls followed the same line as the outer walls of Topkap
ı
Saray
ı
that we see to our left. The acropolis of ancient Byzantium was on the present site of the Saray, whose high retaining wall we see on our right. The kiosk just above the retaining wall is that of Osman III, built in the mid-eighteenth century in a baroque style. In the park below the kiosk we see an ancient structure that has been restored and is now open to the public. This is a Roman cistern dated to the early fourth century, its brick roof supported by 12 columns in three rows of four each.

On the left side of the park we now come to the new Museum of Islamic Science and Technology, which opened in 2008. The museum, which was conceived by the Turkish historian of science Fuat Sezgin, is devoted to the history of Islamic science and technology from the ninth through the sixteenth century. The instruments and other objects on display here were reconstructed by the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at Goethe University in Frankfurt, based predominately on illustrations and descriptions found in original sources and, to a lesser extent, on surviving originals.

Once past the walls of the inner palace, we follow the path leading uphill to the right and come to one of the very oldest monuments in the city. This is the so-called Goth’s Column, a granite monolith 15 metres high surmounted by a Corinthian capital. The name of the column comes from the laconic inscription on its base: FORTUNAE REDUCI OB DEVICTOS GOTHOS, which means: “To Fortune, who returns by reason of the defeat of the Goths.” The column has been variously ascribed to Claudius II Gothicus (A.D. 268–70) or to Constantine the Great, but there is no firm evidence either way. According to the Byzantine historian Nicephorus Gregoras, this column was once surmounted by a statue of Byzas the Megarian, the eponymous founder of Byzantium.

Taking a path leading off from the column towards the park exit, we pass the ruins of what appears to be an early Byzantine structure, consisting of a series of small rooms fronted by a rather irregular colonnade. These ruins have never been thoroughly investigated and their date and identity have not been established.

Passing through the park exit we cross the highway and walk out to Saray Point. As we do so we pass a large bronze statue of Kemal Atatürk, the father of modern Turkey and the first President of the Turkish Republic. This monument, which was made in 1926 by the Austrian sculptor Kripple, was the first statue of a Turk ever to be erected in this country.

Walking out onto Saray Point itself, we find ourselves at the confluence of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, as they flow together into the Sea of Marmara. Seated here at one of the seaside cafés, we command one of the most sweeping views in the city. From Saray Point we can stroll back to the Galata Bridge along the shore road. Along the way, we pass on our right the recently-reconstructed Sepetçiler Kö
ş
kü, a rather handsome Ottoman structure standing on the seashore. The kiosk was built in 1647 by the guild of the Sepetçiler, or Basket-Weavers, fot Sultan Ibrahim the Mad, and served as a sea-pavilion and boat-house of Topkap
ı
Saray
ı
. In Ottoman times there was a line of such pavilions stretching from Saray Point to where the outer walls of the palace came down to the Golden Horn, but now only the Sepetçiler Kö
ş
kü remains.

The east side of the At Meydan
ı
, the ancient Hippodrome, is occupied by Sultan Ahmet Camii, usually known to tourists as the BlueMosque. The Blue Mosque is thought by many to be the most splendid of the imperial mosques in the city, with its graceful cascade of domes and semidomes, its six slender minarets accentuating the corners of the courtyard and the building, the lovely grey colour of the stone set off by gilded ornaments on domes and minarets, and its generally imposing but gracious proportions. It is one of the principal adornments on the skyline of the old city, particulary when one sees it from a ship approaching Istanbul across the Sea of Marmara.

The Blue Mosque was founded by Sultan Ahmet I and constructed by the architect Mehmet A
ğ
a between 1609 and 1616. Tradition has it that the young Sultan was so enthusiastic about his mosque that he often pitched in himself, to hurry along the construction. The same tradition tells us that the Sultan appeared at the dedication ceremony wearing a hat shaped like the Prophet’s foot, in token of his humility. But Ahmet was given little time to enjoy his mosque, for he died the year after its completion, when he was only 27 years of age.

Sultan Ahmet Camii is preceded by a courtyard as large as the interior of the mosque itself, with monumental entryways at each of three sides. The central or western gate is the grandest of these; its outer façade is decorated with a calligraphic inscription by Dervish Mehmet, the father of Evliya Çelebi. The courtyard is in the classic style, bordered by a peristyle of 26 columns forming a portico covered by 30 small domes. At the centre of the courtyard there is a handsome octagonal
ş
ad
ı
rvan which, like the one at Yeni Cami, now serves only a decorative purpose. The ritual ablutions are actually performed at water taps in the outer courtyard, beneath the graceful arcade which forms part of the north and south walls of the avlu.

The main entrance to the mosque itself is at the eastern side of the courtyard, with smaller entrances from the outer courtyard beside the central minarets on the north and south sides. (Tourists are asked to enter through the south door and are restricted to the west end of the prayer hall.)

The interior plan of Sultan Ahmet Camii, like that of Yeni Cami and other imperial mosques, recalls in a general way that of Haghia Sophia; but in this case the differences are greater than the resemblance. It is very nearly a square (51 metres long by 53 metres wide) covered by a dome (23.5 metres in diameter and 43 metres high), resting on four pointed arches and four smooth pendentives. To east and west are semidomes, themselves flanked by smaller ones. So far, it is not unlike Haghia Sophia. But in Sultan Ahmet, instead of tympanic arches to north and south, there are two more semidomes, making a quatrefoil design. This so-called “centralized” plan would seem to have two disadvantages: the reiterated symmetry becomes lifeless and tedious, and it gives too much prominence to the necessarily bulky piers that support the dome. In this case, the architect has gone out of his way to call attention to these supports by making them colossal, clear-standing columns, five metres in diameter, and has emphasized their squatness by dividing them in the middle by a band and then ribbing them above and below with convex flutes. The effect is somewhat disconcerting; nevertheless one has the impression that the mosque interior is in general the most admired in the city.

The mosque is flooded with light from its 260 windows. These were once filled with coloured glass which would have tempered the too-crude brightness; now they are slowly being replaced with modern imitations. The painted arabesques in the domes and upper parts of the building are feeble in design and crude in colouring, as almost always in these modern imitations of a type of decoration that was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries richly elaborate in design and somberly magnificent in colour. Here the predominant colour is a rather blatant blue, from which the building derives its popular name of the Blue Mosque. What is original and very beautiful in the decoration of the interior is the revetment of tiles on the lower part of the walls, especially in the galleries. They are Iznik tiles of the best period and they deserve study. The magnificent floral designs display the traditional lily, carnation, tulip and rose motifs, also cypresses and other trees, all in exquisite colours; subtle blues and greens predominating. The mihrab and mimber, of white Proconnesian marble, are also original; they are fine examples of the carved stonework of that period. Of equal excellence is the bronzework of the great courtyard doors and the woodwork, encrusted with ivory and mother-of-pearl, of the doors and window-shutters of the mosque itself. Under the sultan’s loge, which is in the upper gallery to the left of the mihrab, the wooden ceiling is painted with floral and geometrical arabesques in that exquisite early style in rich and gorgeous colours, of which so few examples remain.

A ramp at the north-east corner of the mosque leads up to the hünkâr kasr
ı
, a suite of rooms used by the Sultan whenever he came here for services, with an internal passageway leading to the hünkar mahfili, or imperial loge, within the mosque. The hünkâr kasr
ı
is now used to house the Vak
ı
flar Carpet Museum, a remarkable collection of Turkish carpets from all over Turkey and covering all periods of Ottoman history, including a number that were made for use in the Sultan’s tent when he was on campaign.

Beneath the k
ı
ble end of the prayer room of the mosque there were storerooms and stables, and these have been restored to house the Vakiflar Kilim Museum, whose collection includes works ranging in date from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, including rare and beautiful examples. This museum has a separate entryway from the courtyard below the mosque on that side, just above the restored Ottoman market-street (see p. 129) on Kaba Sakal Soka
ğ
ı
, the Street of the Bushy Beard.

The külliye of Sultan Ahmet was appropriately extensive, including a medrese, türbe, hospital, kervansaray, primary school, public kitchen and market. The hospital and the kervansaray were destroyed in the nineteenth century, and the public kitchen was incorporated into one of the buildings of the School of Industrial Arts, which stood at the southern end of the At Meydan
ı
before it burned down in the late 1970s
.
It has since been restored and serves as the office of the rector of Marmara University. The primary school, which has recently been restored, is elevated above the northern wall of the outer precinct of the mosque.