Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (50 page)

BLACHERNAE AYAZMA

We now return to Mustafa Pa
ş
a Bostan
ı
Soka
ğ
ı
and continue on in the same direction as before. At the next corner on the left we come to the entrance of the famous
ayazma
, or holy spring, of Blachernae. This
ayazma
, like countless others in the city and elsewhere in the Greek world, has been venerated since pre-Christian times, and its waters are believed to possess miraculous powers. The
ayazma
at Blachernae was one of the most popular in the city and even the Emperor and Empress came here to partake of the life-giving waters. In 451 a great church was built over the spring by Pulcheria, wife of the Emperor Marcian. A few years later the church served to house the celebrated robe and mantle of the Virgin. These garments, which had been stolen from a Jewess in Jerusalem by two Byzantine pilgrims, were considered to be the most sacred relics in Constantinople, “the palladium of the city and the disperser of all warlike foes.” Thus Blachernae became the most important shrine in the city and remained so throughout the history of Byzantium. The ancient church of the Blachernae was destroyed by fire in 1434, but its site is still occupied by a modern Greek chapel above the sacred spring.

IVAZ EFEND
İ
CAM
İ
İ

After leaving the
ayazma
we turn left and then right at the next corner onto Dervi
ş
zade Soka
ğ
ı
, the Street of the Dervish’s Son. At the northern end of the terrace, built almost up against the towers of the Byzantine city-walls, we see Ivaz Efendi Camii. This is a very attractive mosque and while of no great size it is the only monumental building in the whole district. Some scholars have attributed it to Sinan, but it does not appear in his
Tezkere
and there seems to be no definite evidence to identify the architect. There is no historical inscription and the date of construction is given variously as 1581 or 1585, the latter being the year when Ivaz Efendi died. The mosque is almost square, its dome resting on four semidomes with stalactite cornices; the mihrab is in a projecting apse and is decorated with Iznik tiles of the best period. The centre of the west wall is occupied by a gallery in two stories supported on slender marble columns. There are also wooden galleries to north and south, but these are probably not original – certainly not in their present form. The interior is very elegant and gives a great sense of light, illuminated as it is by many windows in all its walls. The west façade is most unusual: instead of a central entrance-portal there are double doors at each end of the façade, the rest of it being filled with windows; the effect is very pretty. Another odd, indeed unique, feature is that the minaret is at the south-east corner. Originally there was a porch, evidently with a sloping roof supported by columns, which ran round three sides of the building.

THE PALACE OF BLACHERNAE

The terrace on which Ivaz Efendi Camii stands is the site of the famous Palace of Blachernae, of which now only a few ruined towers and some substructures remain. The first palace on this site was built by the Emperor Anastasius in about the year 500. The palace was thenceforth used by the imperial family whenever they came to visit the nearby shrine of Blachernae. Over the centuries the Palace of Blachernae was rebuilt and enlarged several times, particularly during the reign of the Comneni dynasty during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. From that time on Blachernae became the favourite residence of the imperial family, gradually supplanting the Great Palace on the First Hill. The splendours and magnificence of the Palace of Blachernae particularly impressed the Crusaders, some of whom have left glowing accounts of it. This may have heightened their desire to take the city for themselves. After the restoration of the Empire in 1261 the Great Palace on the Marmara was abandoned altogether, and for the remainder of the Byzantine period the imperial family lived exclusively at Blachernae; they were still in residence there when the city fell to the Turks on 29 May 1453.

The two towers which we see just behind Ivaz Efendi Camii are a part of the palace. The one to the left is traditionally called the Tower of Isaac Angelus and that to the right the Prison of Anemas, although there are scholars who would identify the latter with one of the towers closer to the Golden Horn. The Prison of Anemas appears frequently in the history of the last centuries of Byzantium. A half-dozen emperors were at one time or another imprisoned, tortured and mutilated in this tower, and two of them were murdered there. The Tower of Isaac Angelus is so-called because it was most probably built by that emperor, in about 1188, perhaps as a private apartment with its upper level serving as a belvedere. Certainly the upper storey of the tower, on a level with the terrace, commands a superb view of the Golden Horn and of the surrounding countryside; notice outside the windows the shafts of columns which once supported a balcony. Seven years after he completed his tower, Isaac Angelus was incarcerated in the Prison of Anemas and blinded – the traditional Byzantine disfiguration of deposed emperors. He was restored briefly in 1213, ruling as co-emperor with his son, Alexius IV, but the two were deposed early in the following year. Isaac and Alexius were then confined to the Prison of Anemas and were strangled there shortly afterwards.

A modern concrete stairway in the terrace leads down to the substructures of the palace. These are quite impressive, but to visit them one must be equipped with a flashlight. The penetralia consist of two nearly parallel walls some 60 metres long, the space between which varies from 8 to 12 metres in width, being divided by arched cross-walls into three storeys of compartments – 42 in all. Since the wooden floors have long since decayed, these vast dungeons give an impression of immense height. From this passage one can enter the towers of Isaac Angelus and Anemas, where a ramp leads down to a small entrance at the foot of the wall; here one gets a good view of the enormous towers from the outside and notices the curious “counterfort” by which they were surrounded at the bottom.

TOKLU DEDE MESC
İ
D
İ

Leaving the Palace of Blachernae, we retrace our steps for a short way down the Street of the Dervish’s Son; then we take the first left along a winding lane that leads us downhill towards the Golden Horn. A little way along, at a bend in the road to the right, there were once visible the fragmentary remains of a tiny Byzantine church. Not many years ago the apse and two walls of the church were still standing and traces of frescoes could still be discerned within. But since then one wall and the apse have disappeared and all that remains is the south wall, which now forms part of a house. The church was converted into a mosque after the Conquest and called Toklu Dede Mescidi, in honour of Toklu Ibrahim Dede, a companion of the Prophet who died in the first Arab siege of the city in 673. We mention this now almost unidentifiable wall because a lot has been written about it by the Byzantinists – but to no great purpose. It used to be identified as the church of St. Thecla, founded by a daughter of Theophilus the Unfortunate in the ninth century, but this ascription has now become unfashionable; the arguments both for and against it, or any other identification, are exceedingly tenuous. Undoubtedly the remaining wall of the church will soon disappear as well; then the tedious arguments can at last be laid to rest.

A few feet farther on, the lane comes to an end and we find ourselves once more on the main coast road. We are now on the site of the last sea-gate in the walls along the Horn, the Porta Kiliomene, of which not a trace remains. To our left on the avenue, we see the last stretch of the maritime fortifications, a massive wall and the impressive ruins of three defence-towers. Here the land-walls ended their long march and joined the sea-walls along the Golden Horn.

The first six hills of the city march in an almost straight line along the Stamboul shore of the Golden Horn. The Seventh Hill stands by itself towards the Marmara shore, covering most of the south-western part of Stamboul. Its highest point is at the Gate of Romanus (Topkap
ı
), whence it slopes down to the north towards the valley of the Lycus, which divides it from the Sixth, Fifth and Fourth Hills, while to the south it approaches the sea, leaving sometimes a wide, sometimes a narrow plain along the shore. Our present tour will take us along the Marmara slopes of the Seventh Hill, through one of the most pleasant and picturesque parts of the city. This region, like the slopes of the Fifth and Sixth Hills above the Golden Horn, preserves much of the flavour of Ottoman Stamboul, with its winding cobbled streets lined with old wooden houses, its vine-covered teahouses sitting under venerable plane-trees, and its ancient mosque courtyards still serving as communal centres as they did in centuries past. This lovely old district is one of the most enchanting quarters of Stamboul, and nowhere else in the city can one enjoy more pleasurable strolls than there.

AKSARAY AND VAL
İ
DE SULTAN CAM
İ
İ

We will start our tour at the crossroads in Aksaray, the second of the two great squares in modern Stamboul. Like Beyazit Square, Aksaray occupies approximately the site of an ancient Roman forum, in this case the Forum Bovis. At the Forum Bovis the Mese once again divided into two branches, one leading off to the north-west along the route of the modern Millet Caddesi, the other south-west following approximately the course of Cerrah Pa
ş
a Caddesi. Up until a few years ago Aksaray was a lively, bustling crossroads and market square, but now it has been utterly destroyed by a massive clover-leaf intersection. We will begin our stroll at this point, where stand almost cheek-by-jowl examples of the first interesting beginnings of Ottoman architecture and of its bitter end. The latter, Valide Sultan Camii, can be seen just to the north of the overpass. It combines elements from Moorish and Turkish, Gothic, Renaissance and
Empire
styles in a garish rococo hodgepodge. The mosque was built in 1871 for Pertevniyal Valide Sultan, the mother of Sultan Abdül Aziz. It used to be ascribed to the Italian architect Montani, but it seems actually to be by the Armenians Hagop and Sarkis Balyan, who built some of the late Ottoman palaces we will see along the Bosphorus.

At the west of the overpass and to the left down the first cross street, we come to a handsome sibyan mektebi. This was founded by Ebu Bekir Pa
ş
a in A.H. 1136 (A.D. 1723–4); it has recently been restored and is now in use as a children’s library, like so many others of its type.

Beyond the western end of the overpass the two new highways meet in an acute angle; the southern one, Millet Caddesi, runs up along the back of the Seventh Hill to Top Kap
ı
and is a very busy and important thoroughfare; the northern one, Vatan Caddesi, follows the course of the Lycus River which is canalized beneath it.