Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (19 page)

The large medrese, dwarfed somewhat by the great scale of the mosque itself, is just outside the precinct wall towards the north-west. It is rectangular in plan, with 24 cells arrayed around the four sides of a portico, with its entrance at the west end of the north portico. The lavatories are located at the south-eastern corner of the building.

The large square türbe is just beside the medrese to the south. Here are buried, besides Ahmet I, his wife Kösem and three of his sons, Murat IV, Osman II and Prince Beyazit. Prince Beyazit, the Bajazet of Racine’s great tragedy, was killed by his brother, the terrible Murat I V, who now shares the türbe with him. Osman II, as Evliya Çelebi tells us, was “put to death in the Castle of the Seven Towers by the compression of his testicles, a mode of execution reserved by custom to the Ottoman Emperors.” And Kösem, as we know, was strangled to death in the Harem. This extraordinary woman had dominated the Harem for half a century during the reigns of her husband, Ahmet I, two of her sons, Murat IV and Ibrahim, and the early years of that of her grandson, Mehmet IV. She was originally named Anastasia, the daughter of a Greek priest on the Aegean isle of Tinos, and was sold into the Harem when she was only 13. Sultan Ahmet renamed her Kösem, or Leader of the Flock, since she was first in a group of slave girls presented to him one morning. She was also known as Mahpeyker, or Visage of the Moon, because of her great beauty.

THE HIPPODROME

As we have noted previously, the square in front of Sultan Ahmet Camii is located on the site of the ancient Hippodrome. It has often been remarked that just as Haghia Sophia was the centre of the religious life of Constantinople, so the Hippodrome was the centre of its civil activities. The interests and the passions of the populace were about equally divided between theological controversy and the chariot races of the Hippodrome. Frequently, indeed, the two became involved together, since the Blues and the Greens, the rival circus factions, would generally adopt different sides in religious disputes, which constantly served as a convenient mask for political and economic struggles. Thus on many occasions, riots and insurrections began in the Hippodrome, the most famous being the Nika rebellion in January 532. This revolt ended when Justinian’s general, Belisarius, trapped the rebels in the Hippodrome and there slaughtered 30,000 of them. There is an ancient tradition that the partisans were buried where they fell and that their bones still inhabit the site.

The Hippodrome was an immense structure begun in 203 by the Emperor Septimius Severus; later Constantine the Great extended and remodelled it. It was 480 metres in length and 117.5 metres wide; it could seat, according to one estimate, about 30,000 spectators. The central line, or
spina
, of the course was marked by obelisks and columns, three of which are still the outstanding monuments of the At Meydan
ı
. The royal enclosure, the
kathisma
, was probably situated midway along the eastern side of the arena. The straight northern end of the arena, where the spectators and chariots entered through vaulted passageways, was located about where is now the fountain of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The semi-circular southern end, or
sphendone
, is today concealed far beyond the buildings at the south end of the square. The great vaulted substructures at this end of the Hippodrome are visible from the streets below the At Meydan
ı
on the Marmara slope of the First Hill. At the top of the outer wall there ran all around the structure an arcade of columns with an epistyle in the classical manner. Many of these were still standing nearly a century after the Turkish Conquest, but in 1550 they were pulled down and used for building material.

Some idea of the substructures and the internal anatomy of the Hippodrome may be obtained from the excavations made in the 1960s on the western side. Here we see various sustaining arches, remains of staircases leading to the seats, and a few of the seats themselves. Unfortunately the excavations were very badly done, being merely diggings for the foundations of the Law Courts which it was originally proposed to build there.

The first of the monuments on the
spina
, beginning at the northern end, is the Egyptian Obelisk. This was originally commissioned by the Pharaoh Thutmose III (1549–1503 B.C.), who erected it at Deir el Bahri opposite Thebes in Upper Egypt to commemorate one of his campaigns in Syria and his crossing of the Euphrates River. As can be seen, the shaft of the Obelisk, which is now nearly 20 metres high, has been broken off; according to Sir Flinders Petrie, it was originally 30 metres in height and weighed about 800 tonnes. The Obelisk was brought to Constantinople some time during the fourth century A.D., perhaps by Constantine the Great, but, though a mere fragment, it could not be raised and lay for some years on the seashore. It was finally erected on its present site by Theodosius the Great in 390. The Obelisk is mounted on four brazen blocks which rest on a marble basis with sculptured reliefs. These represent the Emperor and his family in the imperial box in the Hippodrome: on the south side he is watching the races depicted in the lower block; on the east he is crowning the victors; on the north he is assisting in the erection of the Obelisk itself, the method of which is represented in the lower block; and on the west he is receiving homage from vanquished enemies. Inscriptions in Greek and Latin on the base praise Theodosius and his Prefect Proclus for erecting the Obelisk; the Latin inscription tells us that 30 days were required to do the job, while the one in Greek says that it took 32. (Were the Greek and Latin scribes not on speaking terms?) The total height of the monument including the base is about 26 metres and the bottom of it represents approximately the original level of the race-course, some 4.5 metres below the present surface of the ground.

The second of the three monuments on the
spina
is the Serpent Column. The three intertwined bronze serpents which form the column were the base of a trophy that once stood in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. This trophy was dedicated to Apollo as a token of gratitude by the 31 Greek cities which defeated the Persians in the battle of Plataea (479 B.C.); according to tradition the bronze serpents were cast from the shields of the fallen Persian warriors. The names of the 31 cities are inscribed on the coils of the serpents near the bottom. The column was brought from Delphi by Constantine the Great; it seems to have stood at first in the courtyard of Haghia Sophia and to have been moved to the Hippodrome only at a later date. There are several stories about what became of the missing serpent heads, but the most likely one is that they were chopped off by a member of the Polish Embassy one night in April of the year 1700. The upper part of one of the serpent heads was found in 1847 and is now, as we have seen, on exhibit at the Archaeological Museum. Like the serpents themselves, it is a very beautiful and finished piece of bronze sculpture, as is to be expected of a Greek work of that period.

The third of the ancient monuments on the
spina
is a roughly built pillar of stone 32 metres high which stands near the southern end of the At Meydan
ı
. The sixteenth-century French traveller, Gyllius, called it the Colossus, but most modern writers refer to it, incorrectly, as the Column of Constantine Porphryogenitus. Both names stem from the Greek inscription on its base, where the pillar is compared to the Colossus of Rhodes, and where it is recorded that the pillar was restored and sheathed in bronze by the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (r. 912–59). But the inscription also says that the pillar was decayed by time, so that it must date to an earlier period, perhaps to that of Theodosius the Great or Constantine the Great. It seems to have been a favourite pastime in the early Turkish period to climb this column as an acrobatic feat – at least if one can judge by a Turkish miniature which shows a man at the top of it, another in the act of climbing the obelisk, and a monkey on a pole higher than both! And Gyllius tells a rather grim story of having, himself, seen two young men climb the pillar one after the other; the first came down safely but the second lost his nerve, jumped, and was, of course, instantly killed.

Occupying a large part of the west side of the Hippodrome, but partly concealed by an ugly nineteenth-century building, are the remains of the vast palace of Ibrahim Pa
ş
a, built around 1520. Ibrahim Pa
ş
a was a Greek convert to Islam who became an intimate companion of Süleyman the Magnificent during the early years of his reign. In 1523, Ibrahim was appointed Grand Vezir and the following year he married Süleyman’s sister Hadice, at which time he was given this palace on the Hippodrome. Some idea of the enormous wealth and influence which Ibrahim had at this time can be gained from even a casual view of the palace, the grandest private residence ever built in the Ottoman Empire, far greater in size than any of the buildings in Topkap
ı
Saray
ı
itself. But the very magnitude of this wealth and power was the ultimate cause of Ibrahim’s ownfall. Later in Süleyman’s reign, when he fell under the influence of his wife Roxelana, the Sultan was persuaded that Ibrahim must be eliminated, for he was taking on the airs of royalty. And so one night in the year 1536, after having dined alone with the Sultan, as he had so often in the years of their intimacy, Ibrahim retired to an adjacent room in the Saray and was there murdered while he slept. Immediately afterwards all of Ibrahim’s wealth and possessions were confiscated by the state, including the palace on the Hippodrome. For a time, Ibrahim’s palace seems to have been used as a dormitory and school for the apprentice pages in the Saray. The great hall, that part of the palace which fronts on the Hippodrome, was in Ibrahim’s time the Audience Room of the Grand Vezir, and afterwards it was probably the High Court of Justice. In later times it seems to have been used as a barracks for unmarried Janissaries and also as a prison. By the beginning of the nineteenth century much of the palace was in ruins, but then it was restored and opened to the public in 1983 as the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art.

After passing through the entrance lobby, one enters the northeast corner of the great central courtyard; this has been restored very attractively, with marble paving around a garden and with a balcony overlooking the Hippodrome. Part of the north wing has been fitted out as an old-fashioned Istanbul coffee-house, an ideal place to relax before or after seeing the exhibits in the museum.

Before going through the galleries, one might pause to survey the structure of the palace. What one sees here is the main part of the original palace of Ibrahim Pa
ş
a. In addition to this there was another section of almost equal size adjoining the present structure to the north-west, apparently an enormous han-like edifice, which has vanished except for the wing nearest the Hippodrome. The most important part of the present structure is the great hall, which takes up most of the upper level of the south wing on the side overlooking the Hippodrome; this would have been Ibrahim Pa
ş
a’s Hall of the Divan, and the two large rooms to its west would have been antechambers to this. The long western or inner side of the palace on the upper floor has at its rear a row of 13 cell-like cubicles opening onto a long corridor with a stone sofa overlooking the garden. This corridor turns the corner to pass along the north wing, which is only half as long as the south wing, with five cells along the inner side and a sixth overlooking the courtyard. The southern end of the corridor here is connected with the coutyard by a stairway, the entrance below being through a foyer with a great round-arched entryway. The lower level of the palace around the courtyard consists of a series of splendid vaults, supported by a single row of piers in the north and south wings, creating two aisles, while in the south wing there is a triple row of piers, one row engaged in the walls on the courtyard side, thus creating three aisles there. Some of these vaults are used to house the ethnographical collection of the museum, while the other exhibits are on the upper level of the palace.

The main collections on the upper level include rare and beautiful works from all periods of the Turkish and Islamic world, including objects from the Ummayid, Abbasid, Mamluk, Selçuk, Beylik and Ottoman periods, ranging in date from the seventh century to the nineteenth. The collections include carpets, manuscripts and calligraphy, miniatures, wood work, ceramics and glassware, metalwork and folk-arts, altogether an extraordinary exhibit, superbly displayed. The ethnographical collection consists principally of objects belonging to the Yürük, the nomadic Turkish people of Anatolia, whose way of life has not changed in its essentials since the first Turcoman tribes made their way into Asia Minor after the battle of Manzikert in 1071. The most fascinating exhibits here are the black goat-hair tents of the Yürük, furnished with objects that these nomads still use in their daily life, a living heritage of Anatolian Turkish culture.