Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (69 page)

Yahya Kemal Beyatl
ı
(1884–1958) might best be described as the G.K. Chesterton of modern Turkish poetry, and he resembled Chesterton in other ways as well: one used to see his enormous bulk ensconced at one of the cafés in Bebek imbibing vast quantities of beer or rak
ı
and holding forth to a group of admirers, among whom the senior author of this guide once or twice had the honour to be included.

Opposite Barbarossa’s türbe is a brick and stone mosque, another work of Sinan; this was founded by another High Admiral, Sinan Pa
ş
a, brother of the Grand Vezir Rüstem Pa
ş
a. Inscriptions on the
ş
ad
ı
rvan and over the entrance portal give the date A.H. 963 (A.D. 1555–6) as that in which the mosque was finished, two years after the death of its founder. The mosque is interesting architecturally, though not particularly attractive. Its plan is essentially a copy of Üç
Ş
erefeli Cami (1447) at Edirne. Its central dome rests on six arches, one incorporated in the east wall, the others supported by four hexagonal pillars, two on the west, one each to north and south; beyond the latter are side-aisles each with two domed bays. Thus far the plan is almost like that of Üç
Ş
erefeli Cami, but while there the western piers are incorporated in the west wall, here Sinan has added a sort of narthex of five bays, four with domes, the central one cross-vaulted. The proportions are not very good and the interior seems squat and heavy. The same indeed is true of the courtyard, the porticoes of which are not domed but have steeply-sloping penthouse roofs; the cells of the medrese occupy three sides of it. Sinan seems to have been least happy when he was more or less copying an older building; thus the mosque of K
ı
l
ı
ç Ali Pa
ş
a at Tophane, a miniature copy of Haghia Sophia, and this copy of Üç
Ş
erefeli Cami, also much smaller than the original, are among his least successful works.

There are also two Greek churches in Be
ş
ikta
ş
, both of them dedicated to the Panaghia (Blessed Virgin). Both churches in their present form date to the mid-nineteenth century. There is also an Armenian church, Surp Asvadzadzin (the Immaculate Conception), which is known to have existed on this site since 1655; the present building was erected in 1856 and restored in 1987.

Just to the left of the ferry-landing we see the Naval Museum. In the garden of the museum there are arrayed a number of ancient cannon, many of them captured by the Turks when the Ottoman Navy was the scourge of the Mediterranean. The most important exhibit in the museum itself is the famous chart of North America done in the first half of the sixteenth century by Piri Reis, the great Ottoman admiral, explorer and cartographer. Within the museum there are exhibits from all periods of Turkish naval history, ranging in date from the Ottoman period up to the present century. A separate building houses the museum’s incomparable collection of pazar caiques, the beautiful rowing barges that were used by the sultans to travel to their seaside palaces and pavilions along the Bosphorus and Golden Horn.

ÇIRA
Ğ
AN PALACE

About 500 metres beyond Be
ş
ikta
ş
the ferry passes the Ç
ı
ra
ğ
an Palace Hotel, also known as the Kempinsky. The hotel, which was completed in 1987, is built on the site of Ç
ı
ra
ğ
an Saray
ı
, and its seaside section preserves the original façade of the palace. Ç
ı
ra
ğ
an Saray
ı
was built during the reign of Abdül Aziz and was completed in 1872; the sultan died there on 4 June 1876, five days after he had been deposed. His death was officially declared to be a suicide, but the suspicious circumstances suggested to many of his contemporaries that he had been murdered. His nephew and successor, Murat V, was so mentally disturbed at the time of his accession that he proved unable to rule and was soon after deposed in favour of his brother Abdül Hamit II, who chose to live in Y
ı
ld
ı
z Saray
ı
rather than in Dolmabahçe or Ç
ı
ra
ğ
an. After the adoption of the Constitution of 1908, Ç
ı
ra
ğ
an was restored and used for a time to house the second Turkish Parliament. Then in January 1910 the palace was destroyed by fire, leaving only the blackened façade on the Bosphorus, which was restored when it was built into the new hotel.

YILDIZ PALACE AND PARK

A short way beyond the Ç
ı
ra
ğ
an Palace Hotel we come to the entrance of Y
ı
ld
ı
z Park and the grounds of Y
ı
ld
ı
z Saray
ı
. Just beside the entrance to the park stands Mecidiye Camii, built by Sultan Abdül Mecit in 1848; it has a very quaint, but ugly, minaret, in a pseudo-Gothic style. At the north-eastern corner of the gardens, just outside the upper entrance to the park, is Hamidiye Camii, built in 1886 by Sultan Abdül Hamit II.

The gardens here, originally known as those of Ç
ı
ra
ğ
an, are first mentioned in Ottoman history in the reign of Murat IV (r. 1623–40), who bestowed them upon his daughter Kaya Sultan and her husband Melek Ahmet Pa
ş
a. The gardens of Ç
ı
ra
ğ
an became famous during the reign of Ahmet III (1703–30), the Tulip King, who gave them to his son-in-law, the Grand Vezir Nev
ş
ehirli Ibrahim Pa
ş
a. Ibrahim Pa
ş
a hosted the Sultan and his court in the Gardens of Ç
ı
ra
ğ
an in a series of parties that began each year on the night of the first full moon in April, a delightful custom that lasted throughout the epoch known in Turkish history as the Lale Devri, the Age of Tulips. The first imperial structure known to have been erected here was a pavilion built for Mihri
ş
ah Sultan, mother of Selim III (r. 1789–1807), but this has now vanished. Y
ı
ld
ı
z Saray
ı
, the Palace of the Star, first began to take form during the reign of Mahmut II (r. 1808–39), and the buildings that one sees today date from his reign to that of Abdül Hamit II (r. 1876–1909), with most of the structures dating from the latter period.

One can enter Yildiz Park either from the Bosphorus road or from the upper entrance (Da
ğ
Kap
ı
s
ı
), which is situated off Barbaros Bulvar
ı
. Either way, one can walk through the park, which is virtually the last extensive bit of greenery left on the European shore of the Bosphorus. A number of kiosks and greenhouses on the palace grounds have been restored by the Turkish Touring and Automobile Club, including Malta Kö
ş
kü, Çad
ı
r Kö
ş
kü, Lale Sera (Pink Conservatory), and Ye
ş
il Sera (Green Conservatory), with the first two now serving as cafés and the latter two as tea-rooms. The setting of the café outside the Malta Kö
ş
kü is superb, with a romantic view of the Bosphorus through a frieze of greenery, giving one some idea of how beautiful the shores of these straits were in times past.

The grandest and most interesting structure at Y
ı
ld
ı
z Saray
ı
is the
Ş
ale, so-called because of its resemblance to a Swiss chalet. This consists of two buildings, the first erected in 1889 and the second in 1898, the latter apparently the work of the Italian architect Raimondo D’Aronco, who brought the Art Nouveau style of architecture to Istanbul under the name of the Stile Floreal. The
Ş
ale has some 50 rooms, the largest and grandest being the magnificent Reception Hall, with its ceiling decorated in gold leaf; other splendid chambers being the Hall of Mother-of-Pearl and the Yellow Parlour. The
Ş
ale was used principally as a residence for distinguished guests, one of the most notable being Kaiser Wilhelm II, who in his visit with Abdül Hamit II in 1895 formed an alliance between Germany and the Ottoman Empire. The
Ş
ale has been restored in recent years and is now open to the public as a museum.

TÜRBE OF YAHYA EFEND
İ

A few yards beyond the entrance to Y
ı
ld
ı
z Park a steep but short street leads to the very picturesque türbe of Yahya Efendi, a foster-brother of Süleyman the Magnificent, whom his mother nursed as an infant. The little külliye, consisting of a türbe and a medrese built by Sinan presumably shortly before Yahya’s death in 1570, is now enveloped by various wooden structures of the nineteenth century, and it is hard to see either or even to ascertain what is left of the medrese; its dershane at least appears to be intact. The türbe communicates by a large grilled opening to a small wooden mosque with a baroque wooden dome. The various buildings themselves are picturesque, but even more so are their surroundings, where topsy-turvy tombstones lie scattered among a lovely copse of trees, through which one catches occasional glimpses of the Bosphorus. The appearance of this place seems not to have changed across the centuries, for Evliya describes it as being “in a deep shaded recess of the hills, luxuriant with plane, cypress, willow, fir, and nut-trees.” Evliya goes on to say that “Yahya Efendi is buried on the top of a hill overlooking the sea; the four walls of his türbe are covered with the inscriptions of a hundred thousand divine lovers breathing out their feelings in verse. Even now he converses every Friday night with H
ı
z
ı
r Ilyas, taking from him lessons in mysticism.” The place is evidently very holy and is always thronged with pious people at their devotions.

ORTAKÖY

The next village on the European shore of the Bosphorus is Ortaköy, the Middle Village; one is not sure between what: it is very far from the middle of the Bosphorus. There was a Byzantine church of St. Phocas here and the village was called after the saint as late as the sixteenth century; the modern Greek church preserves this dedication.

On the main street in Ortaköy there is an ancient hamam which appears to have been wholly overlooked by writers in modern times; it was built by Sinan for a certain Hüsrev Kethüda. This has recently been restored and now houses a café. The interior is curious and unlike any other existing Sinan hamam. From a camekân of the usual form (though confused by a modern gallery), one enters a rather large so
ğ
ukluk consisting of a central area in two unequal bays each covered by a cradle-vault; at one end are the lavatories, at the other a bathing cubicle. From the central area one enters the hararet which, instead of being the usual large domed cruciform room, consists of four domed areas of almost equal size; the first two communicate with each other by a wide arch and here, instead of the central göbekta
ş
ı
, there is a raised marble sofa or podium against one wall and with larger domes than those in the sofa-rooms; these serve as bathing cubicles. There is also another cubicle, cradle-vaulted, which is entered from the sofa-room. An arrangement of this general type is seen in a number of the older and smaller hamams, but here, where the area is large enough, the reason for it is not apparent. The bath is double, the women’s section being exactly like the men’s.

There is also at Ortaköy a very striking mosque on a little promontory at the water’s edge; Arseven picturesquely says that to one sailing up the straits from the Marmara “it seems to be placed here like a Ma
ş
allah that wards off the evil eye from the Bosphorus”! It was built in 1854, on the site of an earlier mosque, by Sultan Abdül Mecit and its architect was Niko
ğ
os Balyan, who built the Dolmabahçe mosque and palace. But it is a much better building than those; although the style as usual is hopelessly mixed, there is a genuinely baroque verve and movement in the undulating walls of the tympana between the great dome arches.

On the shore road near the mosque there is a Greek church dedicated to St. Phocas. The church was built in 1856, but the parish undoubtedly dates back to the Byzantine period. One block farther along the road and on the same side we see the Etz Ahayim (Tree of Life) Synagogue. The original synagogue here dates back to the Byzantine era, though the present building was erected only in 1913. Elsewhere in Ortaköy there is an Armenian church dedicated to St. Gregory the Illuminator, dated 1837–8.

THE BOSPHORUS BRIDGE

Just outside Ortaköy we pass under the first Bosphorus bridge, opened on 27 October 1973, the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic. At the time it was the fourth longest suspension bridge in the world, 1,074 metres in length between the great piers (just seven metres longer than the George Washington bridge over the Hudson), with its roadway 64 metres above the water. Surprisingly enough the new bridge, with the graceful curve of its cables and the thin line of carriageway, actually enhances the beauty of the lower Bosphorus.