Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (37 page)

The northern slope of the Fourth Hill in this area is rather thickly dotted with small mosques, many of them ancient but few of much interest; some are in a state of ruin or near ruin; others have been restored, often quite badly. We will mention just two in the vicinity of the Pantepoptes; but it should be understood that they are of minor interest and one could be forgiven for passing up these detours.

The first of these mosques is reached by taking
Ş
air Baki Soka
ğ
ı
, the continuation of Küçük Mektep Soka
ğ
ı
, the street which brought us to the Pantepoptes. The mosque is two blocks along on the right, at the corner of Esrar Dede Soka
ğ
ı
. This mosque, constructed of alternate rows of brick and stone, was built in 1564. It is called A
ş
ı
k Pa
ş
a Camii, A
ş
ı
k Pa
ş
a having been a poet of the time of Orhan Gazi, long before the Conquest; it was built for the peace of his soul by one of his descendants,
Ş
eyh Ahmet Efendi. Beside it is a tekke, also called after A
ş
ı
k Pa
ş
a, built somewhat earlier – about 1522 – by a man called Seyyidi-Velâyet Efendi, but in the same general style; and opposite the mosque stands the grand türbe of the founder. Although not exactly planned as a complex, these buildings in their walled garden nevertheless have an attractive unity; a moderate amount of tactful restoration could make them one of the more charming of the minor classical groups.

YARH
İ
SAR CAM
İ
İ

Returning to the Pantepoptes, we turn right off Küçük Mektep Soka
ğ
ı
immediately after the church. If we follow this street past the intersection and two blocks farther along, we will come on our left to an ancient mosque at the corner of Kad
ı
Çe
ş
me and
Ş
ebnem Sokaks. This is Yarhisar Camii, the second oldest mosque in the city, apparently pre-dated only by Sa
ğ
r
ı
c
ı
lar Camii, which we saw earlier on our tour. According to the register of pious foundations
(Hayrat Kaydi)
this mosque was built in 1461; its founder Musliheddin Mustafa Efendi was Judge of Istanbul in Fatih’s reign. It was once a handsome edifice, built entirely of ashlar stone, its square chamber covered by a dome on pendentives, preceded by a porch with two domes and three columns. It was burned in the great fire of 1917 which consumed most of this district, but even in its ruined state it was a fine and dignified structure. In 1954–6 the building was restored, with a thin veneer of brick and stone,
à la Byzantine
, covering the original structure, and the interior was redecorated. In our opinion the restoration was unfortunate: it obscures what was still attractive, and is not true to the spirit of the original structure.

Returning to the Pantepoptes, we now retrace our steps to
Ş
eyh Süleyman Mescidi. (Those who don’t care to follow the same route back might look for an alternative way through this run-down but picturesque old neighbourhood.) Once arrived at the mescit we continue on past it to the end of the street. There we find ourselves once again on the stepped path which led up from Atatürk Bulvar
ı
, a little way above the mektep of Zenbelli Ali Baba. Here we turn right and continue uphill along Itfaiye Caddesi.

Ç
İ
N
İ
L
İ
HAMAM

A short distance along on our left we come to an ancient hamam of considerable interest. This is Çinili Hamam, the Tiled Bath, an early work of Sinan: it was built in about 1545 for the great admiral Hayrettin Pa
ş
a, known in the West as Barbarossa. It is a double bath, the men’s and women’s sections lying side by side and the two entrances, rather unusually, being in the same façade: the plans are almost identical. In the centre of the great camekân is an elaborate and beautiful marble fountain with goldfish swimming in it. The narrow so
ğ
ukluk with two little semidomes at each end leads to the cruciform hararet, where the open arms of the cross are covered with tiny domes, the rooms in the corners each having a larger one. Here and there on the walls are small panels of faience and the floor is of
opus sectile.
In the camekân fragments of a more elaborate wall a revetment of tiles of a later period may be seen. A half-century ago this fine hamam was abandoned and fell into a state of decay, but now it has been restored and is now once again in use.

MEDRESE OF GAZANFER A
Ğ
A

Beyond the hamam, Itfaiye Caddesi widens and becomes quite pretty, with a double row of plane trees shading the open stalls of a colourful fruit and vegetable market. We follow this avenue for a few blocks and then turn left just before the aqueduct, taking the street which runs parallel to it.

Just before we come to the intersection with Atatürk Bulvar
ı
we see on our right a small classical külliye built up against the aqueduct. Established by Gazanfer A
ğ
a in 1599, it includes a small medrese, the türbe of the founder, and a charming sebil with handsome grilled windows. Gazanfer A
ğ
a was the younger brother of Cafer A
ğ
a, whose medrese we saw next to Haghia Sophia. He was Chief of the White Eunuchs in the reign of Mehmet III. Gazanfer was the last of the White Eunuchs to control affairs in the Saray, for after his time the Chief Black Eunuch became the dominant figure. He and his brother were born in Chioggia, in the lagoon south of Venice. They were captured by pirates in their youth and, after being castrated, they were sold as eunuchs in the Istanbul slave market, where they were purchased to serve in Topkap
ı
Saray
ı
, thus beginning their illustrious careers as the last two great Chief White Eunuchs. Gazanfer A
ğ
a was executed in 1603, having involved himself too deeply in the affairs of the Harem.

The külliye was restored in 1945 and originally housed the Municipal Museum; it now serves as the Museum of Cartoons and Humour. Like most city museums, it has a rather provincial and neglected look, though some of the exhibits are not without interest. The cells of the medrese have had doors cut between them to form the galleries of the museum.

THE AQUEDUCT OF VALENS

After leaving the museum we continue along to Atatürk Bulvar
ı
and turn right so as to pass under the aqueduct. We should perhaps pause here for a moment to study this ancient structure, which has been looming on the skyline for much of our stroll. The aqueduct was built by the Emperor Valens in about the year A.D. 375 as part of the water-supply system which he constructed. The water, tapped from various streams and lakes outside the city, appears to have entered through subterranean pipes near the Edirne Gate and to have been led underground along the ridge of the Sixth, Fifth and Fourth Hills to a point near the present site of the Fatih Mosque. From there the water was carried by the aqueduct across the deep valley that divides the Fourth from the Third Hill. On the Third Hill, near the present site of Beyazit Square, the water was received in a large cistern, the
nymphaeum maximum,
from which it was distributed to various parts of the city; this
nymphaeum
seems to have been not far distant from the modern
taksim
which distributes the present water supply from the Terkos Lake. The length of the aqueduct was originally about one kilometre, of which about 900 metres remain, and its maximum height, where it crosses Atatürk Bulvar
ı
, is about 20 metres. The aqueduct was damaged at various times but was kept in repair by the emperors, both Byzantine and Ottoman, the last important restoration being that of Mustafa II in 1697. The long march of the double arches across the valley has a grand and Roman look, and is almost as essential a characteristic of the city’s skyline as the great procession of mosques that crowns the ridge along the Golden Horn.

Continuing on along Atatürk Bulvar
ı
under the aqueduct, we soon come to the
Ş
ehzadeba
ş
ı
intersection, which we cross to the south-west corner. This intersection is approximately the site of the ancient Forum Amastrianum, where public executions were held in the days of Byzantium. At the Forum Amastrianum, the Mese divided into two branches, one of which followed much the same course as
Ş
ehzadeba
ş
ı
Caddesi, while the other went along roughly the same route as Atatürk Bulvan to the Forum Bovis, the modern Aksaray.

THE CHURCH OF ST. POLYEUKTOS

Perhaps the best thing that can be said about the
Ş
ehzadeba
ş
ı
intersection is that it has at least advanced the cause of archaeology. For when the ground was being cleared for the underpass in 1960, there came to light the extensive ruins of an ancient church; we see these just to the right of the underpass road to Aksaray. An excavation was taken in hand by Dumbarton Oaks under the direction of Mr. Martin Harrison, who identified the ruins as those of the church of St. Polyeuktos, about whom Corneille wrote one of his great tragedies,
Polyeucte.
It was built in the years 524–7 by the Princess Anicia Juliana. The church was an enormous edifice measuring 52 by 58 metres (compare the Süleymaniye, which is about 52 metres square), fronted by an atrium measuring 26 by 52 metres, with a small apsidal building on the north that may have been a martyrium or a baptisry, as well as a structure at the north-west corner of the site that may have been the palace of Anicia Juliana. The church was essentially basilical in form but very probably domed, divided into a nave and two side aisles by an arrangement of piers and columns. The church was already abandoned at the time of the Crusader sack of Constantinople in 1204, and its surviving works of art and architectural members were taken off to adorn churches in western Europe. Two pilasters of the church have been identified in the church of San Marco in Venice; these are the Pilastri Acriani, the Pillars of Acre, so called because they were believed to have come from Acre in Syria. Other fragments, as we have seen, were used in the mimber of Zeyrek Camii, the mosque in the south church of the Pantocrator. Other architectural and sculptural fragments are preserved in the Archaeological Museum, including part of a long and beautifully-written inscription by which the church was identified. But the site itself is now desolate, with only a single column standing amidst the ruins.