Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (15 page)

We now retrace our steps through Murat’s Salon and antechamber and come on the left to a pair of very beautiful rooms until recently identified as the Cage, the place of confinement of the Sultan’s brothers. This was never a very convincing identification and has at last been definitely abandoned, the Cage being now identified with the many small and dark rooms on the upper floor over the Council Place of the Jinns, from the west end of which opens the first of the rooms we have come to. It is not known exactly when or why they were built, but they must date from the end of the sixteenth century or the first years of the seventeenth, for their tiles are of the very greatest period, indeed perhaps the most beautiful anywhere in the Palace. The first room has a dome magnificently painted on canvas; the ceiling of the inner room is flat but also superbly painted. And it has a wonderful brass-gilt fireplace, on each side of which, above, are two of the most gorgeous tile panels in existence. Beyond the fireplace the paving stones have been removed to reveal at a depth of 30 cm. or so another pavement and a surface of tiles, also of the great period but of a totally different design and colour from those which now line the room. This was the level of the antechamber to Murat’s Salon, which was cut in half to provide space for this room. This chopping up of rooms in order to fit in new ones occurs frequently in the Harem, and although one would not willingly lack this room with its wonderful tiles, it does seem wanton to have so badly botched Sinan’s antechamber.

We come out again into the colonnade known as the Council Place of the Jinns, a name which seems to have no traditional origin – perhaps the Sultan felt that since the incarcerated princes lived above it they might be taking council with the Jinns for his overthrow. The colonnaded way leads to a large open courtyard known as the Gözdeler Tasl
ı
ğ
ı
, the Terrace of the Favourites, which overlooks the lower gardens of the palace. The apartments of the Sultan’s favourites were in the long suite of rooms on the upper floor of the building to the rear of the courtyard. These rooms are still undergoing restoration and are not open to the public. When we first saw them in the early 1960s these apartments looked as if they had been untouched since their last occupants left when the Harem was officially closed in 1909, deserted and hung with cobwebs, inhabited with the ghosts of those who lived there in the past. The windows were shuttered and the rooms were in almost total darkness; we could see the dull gleam of an old brass bedstead under a tottering canopy, and discern the forms of sagging divans draped in rotting cloth. The dust-covered mirror of an old dressing-table reflected the dark image of a deserted room.

At the far end of the Hall of the Favourites there is a sitting-room once used by the Sultan when he came to call on his ladies. It has a pleasant balcony from which the Sultan could look out over the gardens of the Saray and across the Golden Horn to the green hills of Pera on the other side. In all the Saray there could have been no more agreeable place for the Sultan to enjoy his
keyif
than there, cooled by gentle breezes from the Bosphorus, watching the lights twinkling like captive constellations on the hills of his beautiful city, listening to the soft voices of his women whispering along the Hall of the Favourites. It is no wonder that they once called this place Darüssaadet, or the House of Felicity.

Tours of the Harem end at the Gözdeler Ta
ş
l
ı
ğ
ı
, and from there we head back to the exit. We follow the Golden Road, passing the staircase where in the year 1809 the slave girl Cevri Khalfa fought off the assassins who were trying to kill Prince Mahmut, the future Sultan Mahmut II. We then pass through the Cümle Kap
ı
s
ı
, the main gate of the Harem, and turn left twice to pass through Ku
ş
hane Kap
ı
s
ı
, the Birdcage Gate, where in 1651 the Sultan Valide Kösem was killed by the Chief Black Eunuch, Tall Süleyman. Here we leave the Harem and return to the Third Court, having completed our stroll through the House of Felicity.

Our present stroll will take us from Haghia Sophia through the outer courtyard of the Saray and its lower gardens. This area, at the very apex of the old city, is almost totally cut off from the turbulent life of modern Stamboul, shielded as it is by outer walls of the Saray. Walking through these quiet gardens, it is difficult to imagine that this was the site of the ancient town of Byzantium.

We shall begin our stroll in the great square before Haghia Sophia, the heart of the ancient town. Before we leave the square we should at least glance at a building which most tourists miss, prominent as it is, probably because it is dwarfed by the imposing monuments around it. This is the Hamam of Haseki Hürrem, which stands at the eastern side of the park between Haghia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. This splendid bath was commissioned by Süleyman the Magnificent in the name of his wife Haseki Hürrem, better known in the West as Roxelana. The hamam was designed by Süleyman’s Chief Architect, the great Sinan, and completed by him in the year 1556; it is perhaps the finest bath which Sinan built in his long and illustrious career. It is a double hamam, one end being for men, the other for women. Each end consists of a great entrance hall with a vast dome; from here one passes through a corridor with three small domes to the hararet, also domed and surrounded by a series of little chambers for washing. Notice the charming symmetry of the building and its gracious lines; it is the most attractive and one of the most elaborate of the Turkish baths in the city. The hamam has been splendidly restored, and it is now open to the public as a gallery for the display of modern Turkish carpets.

It is interesting to learn that the Hamam of Haseki Hürrem stands near the site of the ancient Baths of Zeuxippus, first built by Septimius Severus in about A.D. 196 and later enlarged by Constantine the Great. Excavations carried out in this area in the years 1927–8 brought to light early Byzantine foundations which some scholars have identified as belonging to this bath, the most celebrated in ancient Constantinople. These remains, which have since been covered up, are about midway between Haghia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.

We now leave the square and pass behind the apse of Haghia Sophia. The street on which we are now walking was known in Byzantium as the Embolos of the Holy Well. This was a porticoed way by which the Emperor could walk from the Palace of Chalke to the Holy Well, which was located at the south-east corner of Haghia Sophia. From there the Emperor could enter Haghia Sophia, passing through the large gate which we can still see in the east bay of the south aisle. The area to the right of this street is now under excavation by the Archaeological Museum, where extensive remains of the Great Palace of Byzantium (see Chapter 6) have been unearthed. The site will soon be open to the public.

Farther along this street, at the north-east corner of the church, we come to a large Turkish gate in rococo style. This is the back door to the precincts of Haghia Sophia and leads to a building which was once the skeuophylakion, or treasury of the church. The building is not open to the public. To the left is So
ğ
uk Çe
ş
me Soka
ğ
ı
, the Street of the Cold Fountain, where a row of elegant nineteenth-century Turkish houses is built up against the outer defence wall of Topkap
ı
Saray
ı
. These houses were restored from near ruin in 1984–6 by the Turkish Touring and Automobile Association (TTAA), headed by Çelik Gülersoy, and now form the Aysofya Pansoyonlar. One of the houses is now the library of the Çelik Gülersoy Foundation, an extraordinary collection of books, maps, engravings and paintings of Istanbul in Ottoman times.

FOUNTAIN OF AHMET III

We are now in the square before the Imperial Gate of Topkap
ı
Saray
ı
. In the centre of this square we see the grandest and most handsome of all the street-fountains in Istanbul. This fountain was built by Sultan Ahmet III in 1728 and is a particularly fine example of Turkish rococo architecture. It is a square structure with an overhanging roof surmounted by five small domes. On each of the four sides there is a çe
ş
me, or wall-fountain, and at each of four corners a sebil. Each of the wall-fountains is set into a niche framed in an ogival archway. The voussoirs of the arches are in alternating red and pink marble and the façade is richly decorated with floral designs in low relief. The corner sebils are semicircular in form, each having three windows framed by engaged marble columns and enclosed with ornate bronze grilles. The curved wall above and below each sebil is delicately carved and elaborately decorated with relieved designs and ornate inscriptions. Above each of the four fountains there is a long and beautiful inscription in gold letters on a blue-green ground; the text is by the celebrated poet Seyit Vehbi, who is here praising the fountain and comparing its waters with those of the holy spring Zemzem and of the sacred selsebils of Paradise. The inscription ends with these modest lines: “Seyit Vehbi Efendi, the most distinguished among the word-wizards of the age, strung these pearls on the thread of his verse and joined together the two lines of the chronographic distich, like two sweet almonds breast to breast: With what a wall has Sultan Ahmet dammed the waters / For astonishment stopped the flood in the midst of its course!”

HAGH
İ
A E
İ
RENE

Passing through the Imperial Gate into the first courtyard of the Saray, we see a little way forward on the left the rose-red apse of a Byzantine church. This is Haghia Eirene, the former church of the Divine Peace. According to tradition, the original church of Haghia Eirene was one of the first Christian churches in the old town of Byzantium. The church was rebuilt on a larger scale by Constantine the Great or his son Constantius, and it served as the patriarchal cathedral until the completion of the first church of Haghia Sophia. During the reign of Constantius, Haghia Eirene was at the centre of the violent disputes then taking place between the Arians and the Orthodox party, the upholders of the Nicene Creed, and in the year 346 more than 3,000 people were killed in a religious riot in the courtyard of the church. The final triumph of the Orthodox party came in Haghia Eirene in the year 381, when the Second Ecumenical Council there reaffirmed the Nicene Creed and condemned the Arians as heretics. Haghia Eirene again came into prominence after the destruction of Haghia Sophia in the year 404, when for a decade it again served as the patriarchal cathedral. But then, after the reconstruction of Haghia Sophia by Theodosius II, Haghia Eirene took its accustomed second place and seldom thereafter played a leading role in the religious life of the city. At the time of the Nika Revolt in 532, Haghia Eirene shared the fate of Haghia Sophia, when the two churches were totally destroyed by fire. Justinian immediately afterwards began to rebuild Haghia Eirene along with Haghia Sophia, and both churches were rededicated at about the same time, in the year 537. The new churches of the Divine Wisdom and the Divine Peace were thenceforth closely linked together and formed two parts of what was essentially one religious establishment. Although Haghia Eirene was dwarfed in size and eclipsed in importance by its great neighbour, its ancient origins were always honoured by the people of Byzantium, who called it Palaia Ekklesia, or the Old Church.