Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (57 page)

On the north-east side of the mosque, entered from the main street, we see the double hamam of the foundation which has recently been restored. There is nothing unusual about the plan of this hamam: the eyvans of the hararet have semidomes, the hücre domes are on simple pendentives, and the entrance is, as often, off-centre through one of the hücres. At the corner of the hamam is a simple but attractive çe
ş
me.

ED
İ
RNEKAPI TO TEKFUR SARAY

The Theodosian walls continue for about 600 metres beyond the Edirne Gate; the inner wall in this stretch is well preserved and has nine towers which are more or less intact. (The remaining stretch of walls leading down to the Golden Horn was built in later times, from about the seventh to the twelfth century.) At the very end of the existing Theodosian wall, just next to the last tower in the inner wall, is the site of a small portal which played a fateful role in the last siege. This is the Porta Xylokerkou, the Gate of the Wooden Circus, named after a hippodrome which once stood outside the walls in this area. It was through here that the Janissaries first made their way into the city. And it was from the tower beside the Porta Xylokerkou, the very last bastion on the long line of the Theodosian walls, that the Turkish ensign first waved over this city.

TEKFUR SARAY

Just beyond the site of this gate there stands one of the most remarkable buildings remaining from the days of Byzantium. It is known in Turkish as Tekfur Saray, or the Palace of the Sovereign, though it is sometimes called the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus. The palace was probably built in the latter part of the thirteenth or early in the fourteenth century, and served as one of the imperial residences during the last two centuries of the Empire: it was perhaps an annexe of the nearby Palace of Blachernae. It is a large three-storeyed building wedged in between the inner and outer walls of the last stretch of the Theodosian fortifications. On the ground floor an arcade with four wide arches opens onto the courtyard, which is overlooked on the first floor by five large windows. The top floor, which projects above the walls, has windows on all sides, seven overlooking the courtyard, a curious bow-like apse on the opposite side, and a window with the remains of a balcony to the east. The roof and all the floors have disappeared. The whole palace, but especially the façade on the court, is elaborately decorated with geometrical designs in red brick and white marble so typical of the later period of Byzantine architecture; compare the façades of St. Saviour in Chora and of St. Theodore, both of the fourteenth century.

After the Conquest the palace was used for a variety of purposes. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was used as a menagerie, particularly for larger and tamer animals such as elephants and giraffes. (The latter animal particularly amazed European travellers, for they had never seen one before. In 1597, Fynes Moryson describes it thus: “a beaste newly brought out of Affricke, (the Mother of Monsters) which beaste is altogether unknowne in our parts, he many times put his nose in my necke, when I thought my selfe furthest distant from him, which familiarity I liked not; and howsoever his Keepers assured me he would not hurt me, yet I avoided those his familiar kisses as much as I could.”) Before the end of the seventeenth century the animals were moved elsewhere and the palace served for a while as a brothel. But it was soon redeemed from this misuse; for in 1719 there was set up here the famous Tekfur Saray pottery. This works produced a new kind of Turkish tile, the so-called Tekfur Saray type, inferior indeed to those of Iznik and beginning to show European influence, but nevertheless quite charming. The project, however, was short-lived and by the second half of the eighteenth century the palace was in full decline and finally lost its roof and floors. During the first half of the nineteenth century Tekfur Saray served as a poorhouse for the indigent Jews of Stamboul. About 1860, the American missionary Cyrus Hamlin, searching for a site for the future Robert College, seriously considered purchasing the palace and restoring it for use as an educational institution; perhaps fortunately, the idea was abandoned in favour of the present site of the College (now Bo
ğ
aziçi University) on the Bosphorus. In recent years the palace has served as a bottle works and storehouse – the lamentable history of a palace down on its luck. The building is now a mere shell; but in recent years the surviving structure has been well restored.

Just beyond Tekfur Saray the Theodosian wall comes to an abrupt end, and from there the fortifications are continued by walls of later construction. There has been much discussion about the original course of the Theodosian walls from Tekfur Saray down to the Golden Horn. It would appear that they turned almost due north at Tekfur Saray and from there followed a more or less straight line down to the Horn, whereas the present walls are bent in an arc farther out into Thrace. Stretches of what are undoubtedly the original Theodosian wall can be seen at Tekfur Saray and also along Mumhane Caddesi, which we reach by turning right in the little square beyond the palace and then taking the first left. The ruined walls along this street are quite impressive and picturesque.

The present stretch of walls from Tekfur Saray to the Golden Horn is quite different from the Theodosian fortifications. It is a single bulwark without a moat; to make up for this deficiency it is thicker and more massive than the main Theodosian wall and its towers are stronger, higher and closer together. The part of the wall that encloses the western bulge between Tekfur Saray and the Blachernae terrace can be fairly well inspected if we follow the street closest to the wall and walk through the gardens of the intervening houses.

WALL OF MANUEL COMNENUS

The first part of this section of the walls was built by the Emperor Manuel Comnenus (r. 1143–80). This wall begins just beyond Tekfur Saray, where it starts westward almost at right angles to the last fragment of the Theodosian wall, then turning north at the third tower. The wall of Manuel is an admirably constructed fortification consisting of high arches closed on the outer face and containing nine towers and one public gate, now called E
ğ
ri Kap
ı
. Most authorities identify E
ğ
ri Kap
ı
with the ancient Gate of the Kaligaria. It was here that Constantine Dragases was last seen alive by his friend, George Phrantzes, who would later write a history of the fall of Byzantium. On the night of 28 May 1453 the Emperor, accompanied by Phrantzes, had stopped briefly at the Palace of Blachernae after returning from his last visit to Haghia Sophia.

According to Phrantzes, Constantine assembled the members of his household and said goodbye to each of them in turn, asking their forgiveness for any unkindness he might ever have shown them. “Who could describe the tears and groans in the palace?” Phrantzes wrote, “Even a man of wood or stone could not help weeping.” The Emperor then left the Palace and rode with Phrantzes down to the Gate of the Kaligaria. They dismounted there and Phrantzes waited while Constantine ascended one of the towers nearby, whence he could hear the sounds of the Turkish army preparing for the final assault. After about an hour he returned and mounted his horse once again. George Phrantzes then said goodbye to Constantine for the last time and then watched as the Emperor rode off to his post on the Murus Bacchatureus, where he met his death the following morning in defence of his doomed city.

E
ğ
ri Kap
ı
, the Crooked Gate, is so-called because the narrow lane which enters the city there must detour around a türbe which stands almost directly in front of the gate. This is the supposed tomb of Hazret Haf
ı
z, a companion of the Prophet, who, according to tradition, was killed on this spot during the first Arab assault on the city. Several sainted Arab heroes of that campaign are buried in the vicinity, all having been violently dispatched to paradise by the defenders on the walls of Byzantium. The burial place of Hazret Haf
ı
z was only ‘discovered’ in the eighteenth century by the Chief Eunuch Be
ş
ir A
ğ
a, who thereupon built this türbe, thus blocking the road.

From E
ğ
ri Kap
ı
we continue along the path just inside the walls to see the remainder of the wall of Manuel Comnenus, which ends at the third tower past the gate. The rest of this section of wall, from the third tower to where it joins the retaining wall of the Blachernae terrace, appears to be of later construction. The workmanship here is much inferior to that of Manuel’s section, as can clearly be seen where the two join, without being bonded together, just beyond the third tower from E
ğ
ri Kap
ı
. This section contains four towers, all square and also much inferior to those built by Manuel. Manuel’s wall bears no dated inscription; the northern and later one has three: one dated 1188 (Isaac II Angelus), another 1317 (Andronicus II Palaeologus), and the third 1441 (John VIII Palaeologus). There is also in this northern section a postern, now walled up, which is thought to be the ancient Gyrolimne Gate. This was an entryway to the Palace of Blachernae, whose outer retaining wall and two towers continue the line of fortifications in this area.

WALLS OF LEO AND HERACL
İ
US

The fortification from the north corner of the Blachernae terrace to the Golden Horn consists of two parallel walls joined at their two ends to form a kind of citadel. The inner wall was built by the Emperor Heraclius in 627 apparently in an attempt to strengthen the defences in this area, which the year before had been breached by the Avars. The three hexagonal defence towers in this short stretch of wall are perhaps the finest in the whole defence system. In 813 the Emperor Leo V decided that this wall by itself was inadequate and therefore added to it the outer wall, protected by four small towers. (The city was then being threatened by Krum of the Bulgars.) However, Leo’s wall is thin and much inferior to the older one behind it. These walls were pierced by a single entryway, the Gate of the Blachernae; that part of the gate which passed through the wall of Leo has now collapsed but it is still open through the Heraclian wall, passing between the first and second towers.

The citadel between the walls of Leo and Heraclius is in its own peculiar way quite fascinating. At one end of the citadel there is a small Muslim graveyard which contains the graves of Ebu
Ş
eybet ül-Hudri and Hamd ül-Ensari, two other martyred Companions of the Prophet. We find here also the türbe of Toklu Dade, the Muslim saint who would seem to be the reincarnation of St. Theca, whose church just outside the citadel became Toklu Dede Mescidi when it was converted into a mosque.

At the northern corner of the citadel the walls of Leo and Heraclius come together and there link up with the sea-walls along the Golden Horn. This, then, is the end of our tour. We leave the citadel through the Gate of the Blachernae and turn left on the street outside, Toklu Dede Soka
ğ
ı
, down which we walked on a previous tour. This brings us out to the main road along the Golden Horn, where we finish our long stroll along the land-walls.

Eyüp, a village far up the Golden Horn, had in the nineteenth century the reputation of being wildly romantic and picturesque. Surrounded on two sides by high hills covered with groves of cypress trees and turbaned tombstones, commanding magnificent views of both shores of the Golden Horn, it was a peaceful back water devoted to death and religion. The modern world in its most dreary form of shabby factories and warehouses and cheap housing developments has unfortunately caught up with it and is investing it on all sides, though the view down the Golden Horn is still romantic at sunset.