Yesterday was an incredibly long, incredibly exhausting, but incredible day. It was our day trip to see the less traveled neighborhoods, mosques, and monuments of the Old City. Our group, which had about 20 people at its peak, was led by Yavuz, the same guy who led our Edirne trip the last time I was here. He is a PhD student in architecture, and knows everything there is to know about everything built in Istanbul. It is staggering, the amount of detail he was able to go into.
We took a university-owned bus to the Süleymaniye Camii (mosque), passing the bridal district along the way. Store after store full of headscarf and tesettür-friendly wedding dresses, some of them so ornate they put Queen Amidala to shame. Boom. Star Wars reference. Deal with it. At the mosque, which was closed off to non-Muslims because it is being renovated inside, and only one corner is open for praying, we were treated to a 45 minute lecture on its significance under the hot, hot sun. The tomb of Süleyman was also closed, but we were again treated to a long discussion of its significance for having an ambulatory around the outside. Apparently, the entire complex was designed to sort of be a new Temple of Solomon. Süleyman is the Islamified version of the name. The dimensions of the complex almost exactly coincide with the Old Testament's listed dimensions for the Temple, and even the columns inside were build of material taken from temples of Alexander and of the Queen of Sheba, trying to link Süleyman physically with the line of ancient rulers in the same sort of pantheon as Solomon.
Pretty neat.
We got to visit the inside of a madrassa on the grounds of Süleymaniye, too, which was probably a pretty rare opportunity, since they wouldn't let us take pictures. Inside, there were hundreds of angry teenagers armed to the teeth and bearded to their knees. Just kidding, there was actually a really cool display of ancient Arabic texts, many of which featured really old maps of the "world" as it was known at the time. Shiho, the Japanese woman in our group, noted with a hint of sadness that Japan did not appear on any of them. The largest item was a beautifully framed illuminated text, for lack of a better word (I forget the Arabic one). I jokingly suggested to on of the Ottoman History guys in our group that it was a description of a portrait, as depicting the human form was generally frowned upon in early Islamic art. He said "actually, it is a description of the Prophet, with the names of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs placed around him." Bam. I can now tell the future, and read Arabic. The head of the madrassa was a friendly older man who carried around a pointer that made me nervous, but fortunately, he was not one for wild gesticulation.
We checked out the mosque's old soup kitchen complex, which is now a restaurant, and while we were there, Murat, the PhD student, pointed out this Greek kid in the group that nobody knew. I had noticed him too; he was lanky, had a bit of acne, a baseball hat, and the strangest body language I'd seen in a long time. Murat suggested that he had a bit of a "Prince" thing going on, and then did a phenomenal impression of Prince, saying "Come here, bitch!" So that made me start laughing, and every time that kid did something for the rest of the day, Murat would look at me and I would start laughing again. The kid had the habit of leaning on, or should I say, molesting things that people wanted to take pictures of, so he will invariably appear in dozens of photos on the web at some point, and I will be sure to point him out to you then.
After a much-needed lunch break, during which "Dimples" sat with us at our table and chatted, we checked out one of the nicer monuments I have seen, design-wise, but certainly one of the lamest in terms of what it commemorates. It was called the "Flying Martyrs Memorial," and it basically commemorated three Ottoman airmen who crashed in 1913 on their way back from Cairo. Not in combat, not saving lives, just on their way back from a flight to Cairo designed to demonstrate the power of the Ottoman military. Lame.
We also saw a column that was older than the Hagia Sophia, and it now is just sitting in the middle of a traffic roundabout. It used to be inside of a private home, but a fire destroyed the entire neighborhood (the houses were all made of wood), and so the column was left standing. It was called the Maiden Tower because it has two angles carved into the base. It is located right near a place called "Kiler Köfte," so come for the köfte, stay for the column. After that, we went to the national library, which was a small but cool space renovated recently and still used by researchers. The centerpiece of the collection, which was not open to the public, was the first example of written Turkic language. If I were to make an Ocean's Eleven type film in Turkey, that would be the item we would steal. No doubt. It would probably be a really short movie, though, because the place was not heavily guarded, unless you could four overweight, tea-sipping guards with shirts that don't fit as security, in which case, it was quite heavily guarded. Solution: the Don Cheadle puts sleeping pills into their teapot. That's the game, folks. For good measure, though, we would drill underneath it and explode an EMP device. And play poker.
We continued to walk deeper into the neighborhood of Fatih, which is notoriously conservative, and then entered Fener, which is apparently even more conservative. I was shocked by what I saw, because it was unlike anything in Istanbul I'd ever seen. In Fener, every woman we saw was wearing at least a tesettür, and almost a third of the women were completely covered, wearing a çarşaf, which covers the entire body but the eyes and nose, usually, but sometimes also is worn under the chin. All the men had stereotypically "Islamist" facial hair, meaning not only long, full beards (far longer than my own), but also the super long sideburns-to-under-the-chin beards. Their dress was also very, very different from the rest of the city I had seen. There were many wearing turbans and robes. Nobody was smiling. Most of the people on the street, in shops and cafes, were men. The women were never sitting and relaxing. I think the non-smiling might have been, in part, due to our presence there, since we are strangers in their neighborhood.
In Fatih, we walked under old Roman aqueducts, and I saw two guys wearing kitchen gloves throwing sheep skins, fur still on them, into the back of a truck. It smelled horrible. Another job I am thankful not to have. Turns out, that was a butcher shop district. Shops full of sheep heads and carcasses. While there, we went to the Caricature Museum, which is housed in an old madrassa, and featured late Ottoman and early Turkish political cartoons, some of which were the originals of those I had seen in articles before for class.
Yavuz took off really quickly toward Fener, I think irresponsibly so, because our group had a hard time keeping up with him, and as we got deeper and deeper into the already intimidating neighborhood (see above), the streets became increasingly narrow, winding, and hilly. It would have been all too easy to get lost, if those of us who could keep up with him hadn't sort of stretch ourselves out and kept a line of sight open to him and the rest of the group. He wanted us to make it to the Fethiye Museum before it closed. We got there late, and he spent 10 minutes bargaining with the guards to open it back up for 15 minutes. We had to pay to get in, but it was totally worth it. Inside the tiny old Byzantine church were some of the most beautiful and ornate mosaics I have ever seen. The main dome featured Jesus surrounded by the 12 Apostles, the side arches featured the Archbishops, scenes of Jesus' baptism, and the main space over the alter had Jesus blessing those below. It was all done in gold, and looked incredible. They had been there since the 1200s, and were remarkably preserved. It was the type of place that I would have never, ever found on my own.
Afterwards, we made our way down the winding, narrow streets, past ancient and abandoned houses, and some still occupied by the neighborhood's poorer residents. There were groups of kids playing in the streets and stopping to stare at us. One little boy said "Hello, money money!" His dad emerged and quickly hushed him. We checked out a few more old Greek mansions that were now in disrepair and full of apartments before heading down a really shady flight of stairs past some shanties with satellite dishes on them, before ultimately taking public transit back to our dorms. It was a really, really valuable trip. I saw things and people I would have never seen on my own, or even known existed. I feel like I have a much better picture of the city now, who lives here, how they live, and what where they live used to be. Talk about an old city. Those kids were playing ball on streets that had been there for maybe a thousand years. The places we walked around were where the old Ottoman bureaucrats once lived, and where the city's once bustling 160,000-strong Greek population lived (out of 1,000,000), and now represents just 1,600 of the city's 12,000,000+ inhabitants. There is so much to see and do here, and we have only just scratched the surface.
