Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (71 page)

The Turkish Touring and Automobile Club has now restored a number of old Ottoman kiosks around the Emirgan gardens and converted them into cafés known as Pembe (Pink) Kö
ş
k, Sar
ı
(Yellow) Kö
ş
k, Beyaz (White) Kö
ş
k and the Kir Kahveleri, thus making this one of the most delightful places on the Bosphorus to spend an afternoon or early evening enjoying a drink in beautiful surroundings.

At the northern edge of the village we see the Atl
ı
kö
ş
k, the Kiosk of the Horse, which takes its name from the bronze statue of a horse on its front lawn. This is the former residence of the late Sak
ı
p Sabanc
ı
. An annexe to the mansion now houses the Sabanc
ı
Museum, which has a distinguished collection of Turkish calligraphy and paintings, as well as other objects of Turkish, European and Far-Eastern art.

IST
İ
NYE

Beyond Emirgan comes the deep indentation of the bay of Istinye which, says Gyllius, “after the Golden Horn must be acknowledged the largest bay and the safest port of the entire Bosphorus, rich as this is in bays and ports.” Its Turkish name, Istinye, is a corruption of the Byzantine, Sosthenion, itself a corruption, according to one account, of the ancient Leosthenion, from the name of a companion of Byzas who is said to have settled here; another version says that the Argonauts erected a statue here in thanksgiving
(Sosthenion)
for aid given by a winged genius of the place against their enemy on the opposite shore, King Amycus.

YEN
İ
KÖY TO TARABYA

At Yeniköy, the Greek Neapolis (the names have the same meaning, New Town, in both Turkish and Greek), the Bosphorus turns sharply north-west. This is an attractive village with seaside restaurants, a beautiful avenue of plane trees, and handsome yal
ı
s mostly modern and luxurious. There are three churches in the village, two of them Greek and the other Armenian Catholic, all of them dating from the mid-nineteenth century. There is also a synagogue dating from the 1870s; this is thought to have been endowed by Abraham de Camondo, the famous banker and philanthropist.

At Yeniköy begins the long line of summer embassies with their beautiful gardens and parks: first that of Austria, then a little farther on at the small village of Kalender that of Germany; still farther on at Tarabya a succession of them: England, burnt down in 1911; France, burnt in 1923; Italy, rebuilt in 1906; but all still with lovely parks. When towards the beginning of the nineteenth century the seashore came to be preferred to an inland site, the summer embassies moved from the village of Belgrad in the midst of the forest of that name to Tarabya and acquired or were granted land by various sultans. The village retains in a slightly modified form its Greek name Therepeia (cure, healing) given by the Patriarch Atticus (r. 406–25) from its salubrious climate, the older name having been Pharmakeus, the Poisoner, because Medea had there thrown away her poison. The waterfront in Tarabya is lined with excellent but expensive restaurants where well-off Stamboullus come to watch one another eat. The village once had one of the largest Greek communities on the Bosphorus and there are still three Greek churches there, though services are held there only on the feast days of the saints to whom they are dedicated.

BÜYÜKDERE AND THE BELGRAD FOREST

From Tarabya the shore curves almost directly westward and one comes in a short distance to Kireçburnu (Lime Point), anciently known as Kleidai tou Pontou, Keys of the Pontus, because from here one can see directly into the Black Sea. A kilometre or so beyond this, at the end of the westward reach of the Bosphorus, stands the large village of Büyükdere at the north end of a wide bay; here are the summer embassies of Russia and Spain. Its Turkish name means Large Valley, while one of its older Greek names is Kalos Agros, the Beautiful Meadow. It is indeed a very lovely and fertile valley with fine old trees through which a road leads into the Belgrad Forest. In the midst of this forest once stood the village of Belgrad, made famous by the encomiums of Lady Mary Wortley Montague. The village was founded in 1521 by Süleyman the Magnificent after his conquest of the city of Belgrade, when he transported a certain number of the inhabitants of that city and settled them here in order to look after the reservoirs and other waterworks with which the forest abounds. The village has long since disappeared, but its name survives in that of the forest.

The waterworks, aqueducts and reservoirs, which are scattered here and there in the hills between this place and the upper end of the Golden Horn, are very impressive indeed. The aqueducts are almost entirely the work of Süleyman the Magnificent and his great architect Sinan, though some of them doubtless replaced more ancient ones. The first aqueduct one comes to, indeed, not far up the valley of Büyükdere, is later, the work of Mahmut I, finished in 1732, and conveys the water from his reservoir and several others to the taksim in Taksim Square. Mahmut’s reservoir, or bend in Turkish, is a very magnificent one, with its great dam of Proconnesian marble.. The two aqueducts of Sinan that are most easily visitable because they are on the main road are also the longest and most impressive. Both are near the village of Burgaz, the ancient Pyrgos. The first is called the Bent Aqueduct
(E
ğ
rikemer)
because it consists of two segments that meet in an obtuse angle; it is 342 metres long. This aqueduct seems to have been built originally by Andronicus I Comnenus (r. 1183–5); it was in ruins when Gyllius saw it, and Sinan must have rebuilt it pretty completely, for all the visible masonry appears to be of his time. Sinan’s other aqueduct, Uzunkemer, the Long Aqueduct, is beyond Burgaz; it is 716 metres in length and strides across the valley in a most Roman fashion. These two aqueducts span the valley of the Barbyzes, the stream now called Ka
ğ
ı
thane Suyu, which flows into the Golden Horn. This stream and its twin, the Cidaris or Alibey Suyu, together form the once-famous Sweet Waters of Europe, which in the eighteenth century was a favourite resort of Ottoman society. The Alibey Suyu is also spanned by two aqueducts of Sinan; these are much harder to find for the road is quite bad. They are also much smaller but at the same time more picturesque because they are closely hemmed in by high hills. The one across the Alibey Suyu itself is generally called Justinian’s (in Turkish, however, Maglova Kemeri); Gyllius saw this too in ruins, but it was entirely rebuilt by Sinan. The other, across a tributary of the Alibey, is appropriately called Güzelce Kemer, the Handsome Aqueduct, for it is indeed very pretty. All these four aqueducts, together with several smaller ones, conduct the water from various reservoirs scattered throughout the district and convey it to the taksim at Egr
ı
Kap
ı
on the Sixth Hill, from where it is distributed throughout Stamboul. Sinan was working on this elaborate system of aqueducts during the years 1554–64.

SARIYER

Returning to the Bosphorus, we now sail on to Sar
ı
yer, a very lively village inhabited largely by fishermen and their families. The Sar
ı
yer fish market, the closest outlet for the Black Sea fisheries, is one of the best and most colourful in the city. It is located right next to the little harbour of the village, where the picturesque local fishing boats unload their catch. There are a number of good restaurants on the quay of the fishing-port itself.

One of the old mansions along the shore highway leading into Sar
ı
yer, the Azaryan Yal
ı
s
ı
, now houses the Sadberk Han
ı
m Museum, a unique and rich collection of antiquities and Turkish works of art, including beautiful examples of Ottoman costumes and embroideries.

THE EUROPEAN SHORE OF THE UPPER BOSPHORUS

Those proceeding by road up the Bosphorus from Sar
ı
yer will notice a little roadside shrine on the side of the hill above the Bosphorus just before coming to Rumeli Kava
ğ
ı
. This is the türbe and shrine of a Muslim saint named Telli Baba, who is reputed to have the power of finding suitable husbands for young women who pray there. After their weddings the brides come here in their gowns to fasten talismanic coils of silver wire around Telli Baba’s tomb and offer up to him their prayers of thanksgiving. The saint’s tomb is housed in an ancient stone building that looks as if it might have been a Greek church, perhaps once the shrine of a Christian saint venerated by the local Greek mariners praying for safe return from voyages on the Black Sea.

Two kilometres beyond Sar
ı
yer we come to Rumeli Kava
ğ
ı
, the last ferry-stop on the European shore of the Bosphorus. Above it are the very scanty remains of a Byzantine castle, later taken over by the Genoese, by whose name it is usually known. This castle formed a pair with Yoros Kalesi on the Asian hill opposite, the much more considerable remains of which are a dominant feature of the view from most parts of the upper Bosphorus.

At Rumeli Kava
ğ
ı
, not only the ferry but the public motor road comes to an end. Anyone wishing to explore the upper Bosphorus must hire a boat at Sar
ı
yer or Rumeli Kava
ğ
ı
and take to the sea. The excursion is one of extreme delight for the country is wild, rugged and desolate, but very beautiful. Now for the first time on the Bosphorus one finds sandy beaches hidden away in romantic coves; grey herons haunt the cliffs, black cormorants dive into the limpid water, great clouds of sheerwaters, those “lost souls” of the Bosphorus, skim the surface of the sea, torn by frequent schools of dolphins. The scene is still much the same as when Jason and his Argonauts sailed past on their way to Colchis in quest of the Golden Fleece, and these upper reaches are particularly rich in memories of that stirring adventure.

Except for the two Byzantine or Genoese castles above Rumeli and Anadolu Kava
ğ
ı
, the fortifications of the upper Bosphorus all date either from the end of the eighteenth century or from our own time. Thus the batteries below the castles at the two Kavaks were built in 1783 by Toussaint and increased in 1794 by Monnier, two French military engineers employed by Abdül Hamit I and Selim III.

Just beyond Rumeli Kava
ğ
ı
and still accessible by the public road is Alt
ı
n Kum, Golden Sands, the first of the sandy beaches, with a restaurant under a pleasant grove of acacia trees. But beyond this point we sail along for two or three kilometres below precipitous cliffs, sparsely covered with scrub and uninhabited, nay uninhabitable. At length one reaches a wide but shallow harbour called Büyük Liman, anciently the Harbour of the Ephesians; one sees the ruins of a number of stone buildings, among them a hamam; the beach is sandy and the valley behind is wooded and attractive, a pleasant place to swim.

After another kilometre or so past even more cliffs, one comes to a strangely shaped and craggy point well named, Garipçe (strange or curious), or, anciently, Gyropolis, Town of Vultures. This too has a fortress built in 1773 by the Baron de Tott. Here King Phineus lived and here he was plagued by the Harpies who seized his food and befouled his table until he wasted away to a wraith; at last the Argonauts arrived and the winged sons of Boreas, Zetes and Kalais, taking pity on the ancient king, their brother-in-law, chased away the noxious creatures. In return Phineus, who was a prophet, advised them about the rest of their journey and especially about how to avoid the baleful Symplegades. These, indeed, were clearly visible from his very palace, two great rocks at the mouth of the Bosphorus, one on either side, which were supposed to clash together with great rapidity and violence, thus making it very dangerous if not impossible for ships to enter or leave the strait. Phineus told the Argonauts to let loose a dove which would fly between them; if it was caught, they were to give up their journey, but if it got through safely, they were to wait till the rocks opened once more and then row their hardest. The Symplegades just shaved off the tailfeathers of the dove and slightly damaged the stern-works of the Argo.

The Symplegades, the Clashing Rocks, were also called Cyanean, the Blue Rocks, or in Turkish Öreke Ta
ş
ı
, the Distaff Rock or Midwife’s Stool. The European one is a striking feature at the very mouth of the Bosphorus, formerly some 100 metres offshore at Rumeli Feneri, the Rumelian Lighthouse. There is a tiny village here and the remains of a fort built in 1769 by a Greek engineer. The Rock, which is now joined to the shore by a concrete mole, is about 20 metres high and something less than 200 metres long, divided by deep fissures into several parts. On the highest plateau stands what is left of the so-called Pillar of Pompey. “The ascent to this peak,” says Gyllius, “is not open except by one approach, and this, extremely narrow, so that one must climb up on all fours.” Nowadays there are two approaches, one slightly easier than the other, but both disagreeable enough for one who is terrified of heights. The reward of intrepidity is a fine view of the Black Sea and the Bosphorus, and the base of Pompey’s column. It is not really a column base but an ancient altar, decorated with a garlanded ram’s head and other reliefs now much worn; it once had a Latin inscription, no longer legible, the transcription and interpretation of which are matters of discussion. Certainly neither altar nor column had anything to do with Pompey, and we do not know who first gave it this misleading name: it was after Gyllius’ time evidently, since he does not mention it. He thought the altar was probably a remnant of the shrine to Apollo which Dionysius of Byzantium says the Romans erected on one of the Cyanean Rocks. The column itself, with its Corinthian capital, toppled down in April 1680 and had utterly disappeared by 1800. There is now a simple fish restaurant on the Rock, with its tables set out on the breakwater at the very end of the Bosphorus.