Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (2 page)

Note on Turkish Words and Spellings

One feature of this book may at first puzzle and irritate the reader: we have consistently used the modern Turkish spelling of Turkish proper names and we have employed many Turkish words for specifically Turkish things. Turkish spelling, however, is rigorously logical and phonetic and the traveller here for any length of time will have to accustom himself to it; the few letters which differ in pronunciation from English are indicated below. As for Turkish terms, chiefly for buildings of various sorts, these are useful words for the traveller to know, their meaning is frequently indicated in the course of the text, and is explained in detail in the appendix on Ottoman Architectural Forms.

TURKISH SPELLING

All letters have one and only one sound. No letters are silent.

Vowels
have their short Continental value as in French, German, or Italian, i.e.:
a
as in
father, e
as in
get, i
as in
sit, o
as in
doll, u
as in
bull.
(In modern Turkish pronunciation there is little distinction between long and short vowels.)
Note:
ı
(undotted) is between
i
and
u
, as the final
a
in Anna;
ö
as in German or the
u
in further;
ü
as in German or French
u
in
tu.

Consonants
as in English, except:

c
as
j
in
jam:
e.g.
cami
(mosque)
= jahmy

ç
as
ch
in church, e.g.
çe
ş
me
(fountain) =
cheshme

g
is always hard as in
give
, never soft as in
gem

ğ
is almost silent; it tends to lengthen the preceding vowel

s
is always unvoiced as in
sit
, never like
z

ş
as
s
in sugar; e.g.
çe
ş
me =
cheshme

Turkish is very lightly accented, most often on the last syllable, but all syllables should be clearly and almost evenly articulated.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to Selçuk Altun, whose very generous support made the publication of this new edition of
Strolling Through Istanbul
possible. I am grateful to Emre Gençer for all of the technical help he gave me in preparing the manuscript for publication. I would also like to thank Anthony E. Baker for the photographs I have used as illustrations.

Preface to the Revised Edition

This is the first thoroughly revised and updated edition of
Strolling Through Istanbul
since the book was first published in 1972. The senior author, Hilary Sumner-Boyd, passed away in the interim, and so I have taken the responsibility of revising our book and bringing it up to date, trying to live up to his standards of scholarship.

Istanbul has changed greatly since this book was first written. The population was then somewhat over 2 million and now, according to some estimates, it is more than 12 million, spread out over an area four times as great as it had been in 1972, with the addition of 25 new municipalities to the city to absorb the influx from the provinces of Turkey. New highways have been constructed in and around the city and two intercontinental bridges now span the Bosphorus, linking the European and Asian suburbs which have spread out along the coast of the Sea of Marmara and up both shores of the strait to within sight of the Black Sea, with sky-scraping office buildings creating a new skyline on the Thracian hills and satellite towns springing up in what were once virtually uninhabited woodlands and pastures.

But this explosive growth has in many respects spared the historic heart of the city, that is to say the seven-hilled peninsula bounded on the north by the Golden Horn, on the south by the Marmara, and on its landward side by the ancient Theodosian Walls, though in the areas frequented by most tourists its streets are now clogged with traffic and its sidewalks thronged with pedestrians, as I learned when I began revising this guide. But as I began strolling through the old city again I found that even in the busiest areas it was still the same enchanting place that I first came to know in the autumn of 1960. As I left the crowded avenues and stepped into the quiet courtyard of an old mosque or medrese, I found there the Istanbul of my first memories. Thus I have not changed the original itineraries, though I have updated the descriptions of the monuments and museums to reflect the changes that have taken place since the original edition was published. Along the way I have noted what has been lost forever, such as the little village that once flourished in the great Roman reservoir on the Fifth Hill, where the tree tops and chimneys and the minaret of the mosque came up only to the level of the surrounding streets, and where an old man raised peacocks for sale, perhaps to princes. Now I pass that scene on to those who might stroll that way with this guide in hand, along with other remembrances of things past that still linger on in the civic memory of Istanbul.

J.F.
Bosphorus University

Preface to the First Edition

This book is meant to be a useful and informative guide to the city of Istanbul. The first chapter gives a brief topographical description of Istanbul as seen from the Galata Bridge, followed by a short history of the city, largely with reference to the conspicuous monuments of the past which are visible from the bridge. Each of the subsequent chapters focuses on a particular part of the city and follows an itinerary which takes one to most of the ancient monuments in that area. Major monuments are described in some detail, principally in terms of their history, architecture and art; minor monuments are more briefly mentioned in passing. Although the main emphasis of the book is on the antiquities of Istanbul, the city is not treated as if it were merely an in habited museum. Instead, the ancient monuments are described in the context of the living, modern town of which they are an integral part, that intimate juxtaposition of old and new which makes Istanbul such a fascinating city. The itineraries are designed so that each takes one to a different part of Istanbul, for the town itself is as interesting and picturesque as the antiquities it preserves. Each of the itineraries can easily be completed in a day or less, some in only a few hours.

On the other hand, tourists with restricted time should also find the book easy to use, for each of the principal monuments – the “musts” on anyone’s list – has been given a chapter to itself: Haghia Sophia (Aya Sofya), the Topkap
ı
Palace, the Süleymaniye Mosque, the Church of St. Saviour in Chora (Kariye Camii). Moreover, each chapter is provided with a map of the district covered so that the reader may find his way easily either on foot or by car to those monuments which seem most interesting while ignoring those of minor importance.

This book came into being as a result of many years of study of various aspects of the city and its history by both of the authors, each of whom had prepared a long and detailed work on the subject from a very different point of view. Both works proved too lengthy and elaborate for convenient publication, so it was decided to conflate the material from each that was suitable for a guide book, leaving for later independent publication matters likely to appeal to a different audience. Such, for example, are discussions of date and attribution of buildings, the details of architectural form and artistic style, the wealth of folklore, local custom, and dissenting sects with which the city abounds, or an account of the hundreds of foreign visitors to the city who have left us such fascinating descriptions of it in former times. Two of these, indeed, we have not been able to resist quoting fairly frequently: the Frenchman Pierre Gilles (Petrus Gyllius), resident here from 1544 to 1550, whose two books on
The Topography of Constantinople
and
The Thracian Bosphorus
give an unrivalled account of what the city was like toward the middle of the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent; and Evliya Çelebi, an Istanbullu by birth, who prefaces his
Seyahatname
, or
Book of Travels
, with a vivid and detailed description of his native city as it was in the mid-seventeenth century; these have been our constant companions.