Hello once more! It sure has been a long time since I last posted on here. I never quite got around to finishing my blog post on Istanbul – winter term snuck up on me quicker than expected – but luckily, I thought ahead and made notes for my future self. At the time of writing this, I have completed winter term at Carleton and I am back at home for the foreseeable future. I hope you enjoy!
Day 0:
The Carleton squad reunited once more for a final adventure in Istanbul before making our return to the frozen north for winter term. We actually planned this trip exceedingly far in advance, having booked our tickets and Airbnb way back in May when we committed to the program. In addition to Rosemary, Anya, and Margot, we would be meeting up with our friend Nick, another Carleton Arabic student. Nick studied in Amman over the summer with a different program before spending fall semester studying political science at UCL in London.
There’s a student in our program, Clark, who happened to also spend his fall break in Malta, independent of our own plans. A week later, when we took our trip to Palestine, we saw him on the bus towards the land border, again by coincidence. It so it turns that he was also visiting Turkey after the program’s end, and he was on our flight! Funny how these things happen.
Like all travel days, it wasn’t particularly fun, but we made it safe and sound. I had a mild panic about getting my tourist visa, which was entirely my own fault. Turkey offers e-visas that take about five minutes to fill out and obtain online, but they require you to submit your request 24 hours in advance. Me being silly, I kept putting it off until the morning of the plane, when I was blocked by their website from submitting my application. A mild panic ensued after reading online that they ceased offering visas upon arrival, but Anya assured me that was not actually the case. In the end, it took all of 10 seconds to purchase my visa when we landed in Ankara, and it only cost me $10 extra. Turned out fine, but I was lucky, and I’ll make sure to be more prepared next time.
We hit another speedbump when our luggage didn’t arrive at the carousel in Istanbul after our second flight, but it turns out they held all of the luggage from international flights separately and we managed to find it with a little effort. The taxi to our apartment was a fun exercise in Google translate and made me appreciate how much a little Arabic came in handy when I was in Jordan. Because we landed on the Asian side of the city and our apartment was on the European side, we got to cross over one of the bridges spanning the Bosphorus. It was the perfect welcome to the city, with all of the lights of the city shining through the night and reflecting off of the water. It looked very grand.
When we arrived, we took a few minutes to catch up with Nick and explore the apartment before dividing up the beds and heading to sleep. It’s crazy how tired travel makes you, despite it being a day full of sitting and waiting. As for the apartment, it was as vertical as an apartment could be. It took two sets of tight stairs just to get to the first floor, which held one bedroom and the bathroom. The next landing had the kitchen and another bedroom, and the third was the third bedroom. It was quite a lot of stairs to drag our luggage up, but it was kind of fun.
Day 1:
Unfortunately, our trip was marked by illness, and Anya had to remain in the apartment for our first full day in Amman. Not wanting to do anything too exciting without her yet still wanting to go explore, we decided to walk around the city and see some of the neighborhoods on foot. Most of the touristy destinations are on the European side in the district of Fatih, which includes the oldest parts of the city. Our apartment was still on the European side but in Beyoglu, a district separated from the old city by an inlet of water called the Golden Horn. The city is quite pedestrian-friendly, especially compared to Amman, and it took us about an hour to cross over to the old city from our apartment.
The streets of Istanbul are beautiful and surprisingly quiet. Most of the lanes are just wide enough for a single car, although they aren’t one-way streets. They say Istanbul combines elements of European and Middle Eastern cities, but to me it felt much closer to its European counterparts. Actually, the proximity of the water, colorful buildings, nearby skyscrapers, and rolling hills reminded me a little bit of San Francisco. Like Amman, there are plenty of cafes, although it differs in the abundance of Turkish flags. Turks tend to have an abundance of national pride and are similarly proud of their country’s founder and first president, Ataturk. Famous for secularizing the country despite its large Muslim majority, his image is displayed in many shops and streets of the city.
We ate lunch at a café in the Balat neighborhood and did some shopping in some of the souvenir and vintage stores before heading back to check on Anya. Turkish cuisine features primarily meat and bread, and it can be difficult to find suitable options for vegetarians (sorry Margot!). However, she managed to get by with some carefully chosen restaurants and lots of lentil soup.
That evening we explored Istiklal Cadessi (Independence street), one of the hubs of the modernized city. The street, which is fully pedestrianized with the exception of a classic red trolley that passes along it, is lined on either side by retail stores. As you walk along it in the direction of Taksim square, they tend to get more high-end. There are about ten sweets shops along its length selling baklava, Turkish delight, and other candies, so of course we had to stop and each eat a giant baklava the size of our palms. You can also find numerous vendors of simit, a type of Turkish bagel coated in sesame, and roasted chestnuts.
The street ends in Taksim square, which was constructed shortly after Turkey’s independence and is considered the heart of modern Istanbul. Adjacent to it is a huge mosque under construction, one of the initiatives of the current president, Erdogan. It stands out in the middle of the modernized, secular plaza as a replica of the classical mosques from the Ottoman Empire. The construction is strongly symbolic of Erdogan’s vision to strengthen Turkey into a regional superpower as it once was in the Ottoman era.
Day 2:
Sunday was Nick’s last full day in Istanbul (he was flying back earlier than the rest of us to spend Christmas with his family), so we decided to hit up the big sites of Hagia Sophia and the Sultanahmet mosque. Plus, Anya was feeling well enough to come with us today, so we didn’t feel guilty about leaving her out! We walked over after a quick, light breakfast in the apartment, passing the Spice Bazaar on the way. While not as large as the famous Grand Bazaar, it was full of colorful spices, nuts, cheeses, and sweets.
As we walked towards the Hagia Sophia, we kept pointing at different mosques and asking, “Is that it!?” and Anya kept having to disappoint us. The old city is full of dozens of mosques, dotting the skyline with their huge domes and pointed minarets. All of them are built in the same Ottoman-Islamic style, so from a distance it almost looks like someone copy-and-pasted the same mosque all over the city. The high density of mosques stands tribute to the long history of the city and its identity as an Islamic city for the past several centuries, although in the present day it feels more secular than, say, Amman. Compared to Amman there were a lot fewer women wearing Hijab and it was common for restaurants to serve alcohol along with dinner, which was never seen in Jordan. This in part due to a gradual secularization of Turkey and partly due to international/tourist influences in the city, but it certainly does not reflect the more rural parts of Turkey which remain much more conservative.
If you keep a close eye, you can learn to differentiate between the many mosques of the city. Depending on their design, they have anywhere from zero up to six minarets. Some come with a courtyard and gardens, others are more compact. The Hagia Sophia is particularly easy to identify in that it is the only mosque painted red, a remnant of its past as a church. Well, to be accurate, it’s no longer a mosque either; it was converted into a museum by Ataturk nearly a century ago, and no longer hosts any religious worship. As such it sports an entrance fee to all visitors, whereas the mosques are free for anyone to visit, Muslim or otherwise.
From the outside, the Hagia Sophia looks like a big old pile of square rooms stacked on top of each other, like a man-made mountain. It hides the fact that the majority of the inside is, in fact, hollow. What struck me most as soon as I entered the Hagia Sophia was simply the height of it. The dome is immense, creating a vast open space within. This style of architecture is all about the feeling of space inside, the outside is just the shell that defines its boundaries. The engineering is pretty spectacular: the central dome is supported by half domes on either side. These are held up by pendentives that are partway hidden in the walls, given the appearance that the dome is floating with little to no support. The technology was ground-breaking at the time, and there actually still exists a Little Hagia Sophia a few blocks away that was built as the test run for that groundbreaking dome design.
One of the oldest sites in the city, the Hagia Sophia was originally built on the site of a pagan temple by order of Constantine the Great, founder of the Byzantine emperor. Its original form was much humbler, consisting of a simple wooden-roofed basilica, consecrated in 360. It burned down in 404 in a riot before being rebuilt by Theodosius II in 415. It then burned again in 532 and was rebuilt by Emperor Justinian I in what is essentially the structure that stands today. He had the church constructed in just five years, which was incredible considering its size and architectural ingenuity. The dome has suffered a few partial collapses over the years, but it was always reconstructed. After the Muslim conquest in 1453, Mehmet II converted the building into a mosque. In the process, the walls were fortified to prevent collapse, four minarets were added, a mihrab (prayer niche) was built instead of an altar, and many of the original mosaics were destroyed and painted over.
Visiting the site now, one can see the competing influences of its Christian and Islamic pasts. In addition to the minarets, the building features eight enormous pendants hanging in the upper corners of the museum. The names, written in Arabic, say: Allah, Muhammad, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali, Hasan, Hussein. The first two are the names of God and his final prophet, while the following four are the four righteous caliphs. These were the four leaders of Islam after the death of Muhammad, and they are greatly respected in the Sunni tradition. The last two names are the two grandsons of Muhammad, both of whom were martyred for political motives. It’s a little curious to see their names up here because they are much more important in the Shia tradition than for Sunnis (these being the two main branches of Islam). However, they are still generally respected by Sunni Muslims, and I noticed their names in some of the other Ottoman-era mosques in the city. The Mihrab, a widespread feature of Islamic architecture, is a wall niche in the direction of prayer, towards Mecca. In the Hagia Sophia it is off-center: The original church was built to face Jerusalem, and it was easier to just place the Mihrab off-center than try and move the foundations of the building.
As for the Christian elements that still remain, the most obvious is a painting of Jesus and Mary that hangs high above the front of the church. There are also several fragments of Byzantine mosaics that remain, although the majority of them were removed. It is curious that a few of these Christian icons survived the Islamization of the site, because although Muslims recognize Jesus as a prophet, Islam bans all depictions of humans in art so as to prevent the worship of people (such as Jesus or Mohammad) instead of God. Another remnant of its Christian past is the Omphalion, a marbled area on the floor roped off to visitors. The Omphalion, meaning “navel” in Greek, is believed to have been the site of coronation ceremonies for the emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire. As such, it was the seat of power for the Byzantine emperors and the center of their world. Pretty neat!
By the way, when I was in Istanbul taking notes on my adventures during the evening, I had difficulties accessing Wikipedia as I tried to learn about the history of the Hagia Sophia. It turns out that Erdogan blocked all access to Wikipedia following certain articles on the site that insinuated that Turkey acted as a sponsor country for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda. While only a minor inconvenience for me, it is a worrying display of the restriction of knowledge by the government. Just a few weeks ago, the Turkish courts ruled the ban a violation of human rights, and access to Wikipedia was restored in January 2020, less than a month after we visited.
After visiting the Hagia Sophia, we stopped for lunch (my first time eating salmon in months!) and walked down to the Blue Mosque. The Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque (officially the Sultanahmet mosque) are about a 5-minute walk from each other and are separated by a public garden. The twin majesties of these two buildings on either side of the park is quite a view. Strangely enough, we kept seeing bald men walking through the park with bleeding scalps, drops of blood drying on their heads. We couldn’t figure out for the life of us who they were until we got back to the apartment and I googled “bloody scalp Istanbul”. It turns out that Istanbul is a hub for hair transplant operations, and people from all over the country and the Middle East fly in to pay for a full head of hair. Who knew?
While the Hagia Sophia no longer holds any religious practices, the Blue Mosque and others are open to Muslims for prayer 5 times a day, to the exclusion of all other visitors. We happened to time our visit perfectly in the one hour gap between prayer times that afternoon. While all visitors can enter the mosques for free, they are required to remove their shoes (bags are provided to carry them while inside), dress modestly (no shorts) and all women must wear headscarves. Headscarves and large baggy skirts are provided at the entrance for those who need it. This being the most famous mosque in Istanbul, there was a bit of a line to get in, but it wasn’t that crowded on the inside.
Compared to the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque is much more recent, having been built between the years 1609 and 1616. It caused a stir at the time of its construction because it has a grand total of six minarets, which was equal to the number of minarets at the great mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam. In response, they added a seventh minaret to the Masjid Al-Haram in Mecca and there you go, problem solved. To this day, very few mosques have six minarets, but none except the Masjid Al-Haram have seven or more. The Blue Mosque also hosts a school, a hospice, and the tomb of Ahmet I.
Unfortunately, the dome of the mosque was under construction at the time of our visit, so we didn’t get the full experience, but it was marvelous to behold all the same. The walls are covered with incredible blue patterned ceramic tiles (hence the name Blue Mosque) while the ceilings are painted in intricate floral patterns. The floor, not to be outdone, is a lush red carpet with more floral patterning (and soft on my shoeless feet). The large (hidden) dome is supported by four mammoth “elephant leg” pillars and bordered by four semi domes on each side. We spent a good half an hour in there just looking at the walls and the ceilings.
The mosque was sectioned off by the religion and gender of the visitor. The front portion, about 60% of the total area, was reserved for Muslim men to pray. Even during public visiting hours you could find people praying on their own. The middle section was where visitors were allowed to walk. The back strip was a smaller area for Muslim women to pray. The uneven gender segregation reminded me of the Western Wall, where the men’s section was both larger and closer to the site of the ancient temple.
Leaving the Blue Mosque, we took one more stop at the Basilica Cistern, a short jaunt over from the Hagia Sophia. Constructed by emperor Justinian I in the sixth century, it is a giant underground cavern supported by even rows of columns. When in use, it had a water storage capacity of 100,000 tons, although it was nearly empty when we visited. It collected water from the surrounding mountainous regions for use by the residents of the city. Most of the pillars were unadorned, but one in the center was covered in tear-like motifs, said to be in honor of the hundreds of slaves who died during its construction. Two pillars in the back of the cistern are famous for incorporating giant Medusa heads at their base. No one quite knows why these heads, which were scavenged from previous ruins, were included in the cistern seeing as they would be underwater and unseen, but some suggest that they were to protect the cistern from contamination as an extension of Medusa’s power to turn enemies to stone. Tradition has it that the heads, one of which is upside down and the other sideways, were intentionally placed that way so that they wouldn’t turn onlookers to stone with their gazes.
After a pit stop at our apartment, we walked to a Turkish/Armenian restaurant called Ficcin, where I dined on some sort of crepe-quesadilla hybrid filled with potato. This was one of the restaurants that Anya had visited when she lived in Istanbul for a year with her family when she was a kid, so it was cool to revisit. Afterwards we stopped at the famous sweets store Hafiz Mustafa, primarily just to gaze at the rows upon rows of Turkish delight and baklava. Rosemary and I were seduced by the cakes they had on display and decided to each order a slice. After we told the attendant which cakes we wanted, he asked us if we wanted to go to the terrace, to which we said sure. We board this cramped little elevator and take it all the way to the top, then climb an extra flight of stairs until we emerge on the rooftop. We got to sit on the roof and eat our cakes and tea and enjoy the fresh air. We weren’t very near the edge, but had we chosen a different table we would’ve been able to look out over the crowds walking along Istiklal street. The cake, by the way, was stupendous, a sort of tres leches cake soaked in cream and sprinkled with pistachio. With waiters in fancy suits and even a dumbbell, we felt so fancy, and all together it amounted to about 7.5 USD for both cakes and the tea. Istanbul is really quite cheap for such a touristy location.
Day 3:
We began our third morning in Istanbul with a trip to the Galata tower, one of the major landmarks of the city. Now that Anya was feeling better it was Margot’s turn to get sick, and she decided to stay home, rest, and avoid the damp, chilly weather. Nick also stayed in to pack for his flight that afternoon. The tower itself was a quick 15-minute walk from our apartment in the Beyoglu neighborhood, near Istiklak street and across the Golden Horn from the Hagia Sophia and the other major mosques. It is a medieval tower built in the fourteenth century for military purposes, and as such it has stone walls built 12 feet thick to protect against attacks. After the Muslim conquest of the city it served as a prison before being converted into a watchtower for fires throughout the city. While no longer the tallest building in Istanbul by far, it stands 206 feet tall and offers an excellent view of the city. There is limited space at the top terrace, so we were fortunate to have gotten there early before the crowds appeared.
After saying goodbye to Nick and checking in on Margot, we took the bus over across the Golden Horn for more sightseeing. One of Nick’s friends had visited Istanbul before us and loaded up on bus credits before passing his bus card down to us, so we more or less had free transportation for the week. Right after crossing the Golden Horn, we stopped by the shore of the inlet to buy lunch from the fishermen docked nearby. There was only thing on the menu: fish sandwiches, with freshly caught fish grilled on the boat, skin on, and placed between sliced bread with some lettuce, onions, and lemon juice. They were fantastic! It took a little concentration and effort to pick out all of the bones that had been left in, but it was worth it for the freshness of the fish. Anya and I had heard of the fishwich vendors only that morning when we were watching clips from Rick Steves’ travel documentary on Istanbul while waiting for everyone to get dressed and ready for the day. By happy coincidence we recognized the boats from the documentary and figured we couldn’t say no.
We moved on to visit the Grand Bazaar, one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world. The core section was completed in 1461, but it stretches out beyond its original designated are into several of the adjacent streets. It is a confusing labyrinth of alleys lined with a hodgepodge of different vendors. It is somewhat organized by type of goods (jewelry, antiques, clothes, leather, carpets, pottery, art etc.) but there tends to be overlap. We gave up hope of trying to orient ourselves in there and just enjoyed wandering around and taking turns at random.
The Grand Bazaar is mostly full of tourists, and the vendors are well-aware of this and try to rip you off with every purchase. A decent haggling should let you decrease the price by at least half their original offer, but even this is probably well above the actual value. I found that prices I paid after haggling were still greater than the listed prices I found on Istiklal street, which itself is a very touristy area and probably overpriced as well. While I was a bit uncomfortable and clumsy with all of the haggling, this was Rosemary’s time to shine. They have a real knack for it and aren’t afraid to drive a hard bargain, and many of the vendors were impressed, or otherwise annoyed, by their relentless haggling.
Afterwards we visited the nearby Süleymaniye Mosque, one of the largest and greatest in the city. It was built by the master architect Sinan, considered by some to be Michelangelo’s equivalent in the Ottoman empire. He designed around 79 mosques, 34 palaces, 33 bathhouses, and many more structures besides. His Süleymaniye Mosque, one of his most famous designs, is a huge structure with four minarets and lovely courtyards surrounding it. It was much less crowded than the Blue Mosque and was not under construction, so it we got the full dome experience. While it has a somewhat less ornate interior than the Blue Mosque, it is elegant in its relative simplicity (and still rather ornate when it comes down to it). Rosemary, Anya, and I enjoyed the chance to sit on the carpet and take in the space at our own leisure. It’s difficult to describe the sense of calm that permeates these Mosques, even with the other tourists milling about, but I could’ve spent an hour or two just sitting there in silence. However, we got kicked out for daily prayers after some time.
The courtyard adjacent to the mosque were beautiful and contained the tomb of Suleiman I, one of the greatest Sultans of the Ottoman Empire and the patron of the mosque. While we ambled about and played with the cats there, we got to hear the call to prayer echoing from the nearby minaret as well as the calls from the neighboring mosques (of which there were many), creating a strange echoing atmosphere. The mosque is built on top of a hill, so we were also gifted a sweeping view of the city.
We went out that evening once more for dinner, eating Pide and Lahmacun, two types of Turkish flatbread/pizza. We decided on an early bedtime so that hopefully everyone would be feeling well-rested for the following day.
Day 4:
With Margot still sick, Rosemary, Anya, and I decided it would be a museum day. With such a long and fascinating history, it is no surprise that Istanbul boasts a large number of museums ranging from art to history and religion and beyond. Our first stop were the Istanbul Archeology Museums, which is actually a group of three adjacent museums for the price of one ticket. The main Archaeological Museum featured predominantly Greek-era art from different regions of Turkey and the Levant. We saw several statues and relief sculptures as well as rooms upon rooms filled with sarcophagi, including a mummy or two. The scale of some of these works was massive, and my eyes swam from all of the entangled limbs bursting out from the stone face in high relief. While we tend to associate the region with Turkish people nowadays, the citizens of Anatolia in ancient times were a lot closer to the Greek than to modern Turks. In fact, the ethnic Turks didn’t even arrive in Anatolia until the 11th century with the invasion of the Seljuk empire, originally from the Central Asian steppe. That is why we find so much classical Greek art in ancient Anatolia before the introduction of the Turks and Islam.
The second museum was the Museum of Islamic Art in the Tiled Kiosk. Apparently, the word “kiosk” in Turkish means a small garden pavilion, not the newspaper stands we think of today. The word, originally from Persian, passed through Turkish then to French and finally to English to arrive at the meaning we are used to today, but this was not what the word originally meant. Anyway, this was certainly the nicest kiosk I’ve ever seen, and it displayed some of the finer works of Turkish ceramics. Turkey is known for its exquisite tiles, and especially for their blue ceramics (this is where the word “turquoise” comes from). The Tiled Kiosk had excellent examples not just of tilework but also of pottery and a mihrab, among other things.
The third museum was the Museum of the Ancient Orient, which focused on Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures. One of the coolest things in this museum was the Hieroglyphics and Cuneiform on display. Cuneiform looks about as hard to read as a surgeon’s scrawl, it looked like chicken scratch to me.
Three museums back to back was cool but tiring, so we stopped for a late lunch before heading back home. We found another one of the restaurants that Anya’s parents had recommended for us, this time specifically to try their Iskender Kebap. This type of Kebap (Kebab in English) consists of thin slices of meat covered in tomato sauce and yogurt, over chunks of bread. Turkey has various types of Kebap other than the Shish kebab we normally think of in the US, which is grilled meat on a stick. Döner Kebap is similar the Arabic shawarma, consisting of stacks of meat grilled vertically on a rotating stick and shaved off upon serving. It’s a little disconcerting to be walking around in the morning and see the raw stacks of Döner Kebap in the windows before they’ve been cooked. There is also Cag Kebabi, which is like Döner Kebap but roasted horizontally instead of vertically. Adana Kebabi is a log made from minced meat with some spices (we were warned it would be spicy, but that was hardly the case. Spicy is not really part of Turkish cuisine, or Arabic cuisine for that matter).
During our meal, this precious stray dog wandered quietly up and sat by our feet. Istanbul, just like Amman, is dominated primarily by stray cats, but there are quite a few stray dogs as well. Unlike in Amman, which is populated by mangy, thin cats, the stray cats in Istanbul are clearly well-loved and with luxurious fur coats. The dogs are some of the most docile dogs I have ever met, I only ever saw them napping and calmly befriending tourists, never once barking or even running for that matter. By the end of the meal a second dog had wandered up, and I had to pause my meal to pet them a few minutes.
We made a pit stop at the grocery store to pick up some ingredients for dinner. Despite being away from our families for the holidays, we decided to have a joint celebration on that day, the third night of Hanukkah and Christmas Eve, by making some latkes and having a small feast. We had to improvise slightly: yogurt took the place of sour cream, and applesauce was nowhere to be found so we made our own from fresh apples, which ended up being way more delicious than the store-bought stuff anyway. It turned out sublime, and we followed our meal by watching Home Alone, except unlike Macaulay Culkin it was the kids who were abroad and our families who were home.
Day 5:
Christmas day! While we couldn’t get a tree and had decided not to give gifts to each other, we treated ourselves to a fancy brunch and a visit to the Topkapi palace. The good thing about spending Christmas in Istanbul is that everything is open! Not many Turks celebrate Christmas, but many of them wished us Merry Christmas upon seeing a group of white tourists. And you’d be forgiven for thinking the lights strung up everywhere were Christmas lights, when they in fact were for New Year’s, which is a much larger celebration in Istanbul.
We went to a restaurant near the Galata tower for a full Turkish breakfast, which is an experience everyone should have. Just for fun, we dressed up a little fancy, and they sat us in what felt like an old house masquerading as a restaurant. We sat on some couches around a coffee table and soon it was filling up with little plates of jams and cheese and meats and other delights. The jams were incredible, with chunks of preserved fruits such as kiwi and pear or otherwise nuts. The walnut jam was my favorite, I need to figure out where to find it again. They had a hazelnut spread that changed my world, and delicate clotted cream with fresh honey. This was all to be eaten with slices of warm, soft, fresh bread, or with the small little pancakes they served. On the savory side there was an avocado spread, some kind of red spiced chili paste, a bowl of fresh olives, and a variety of soft white cheese as well as cheese pancakes, grilled halloumi, and a few slices of Turkish sausage and some fried eggs. All of this was accompanied by some salads (one of shredded carrots, another of herbs and pomegranate) and menemen, a Turkish dish of eggs cooked in tomato sauce similar to shakshuka. Plus some tea and coffee, of course. We ate until we were stuffed because everything was so delicious and there was so much of it, too. By far one of my favorite meals from my time abroad, it was really quite special.
After brunch we walked over to the Topkapi palace, a sprawling expanse of luxurious buildings and courtyards that served as the home and courts of the sultans of the Ottoman empire from the 15th to the 19th centuries. Sort of like the Turkish Versailles. It’s built on the tip of the peninsula, next to the Hagia Sophia, overlooking the Bosphorus and the golden horn. At its peak it housed up to 5000 residents, including the sultan’s family, concubines, children, and servants.
There are three or four courtyards around which the buildings are arranged. Visitors can tour the official meeting room, the private library of the sultan, the political council room, and even the circumcision room. Anya informed me that circumcision is an important ritual in Turkey, and it traditionally consists of a party where the boy dresses up as a sultan and his family gathers to celebrate the occasion. This is usually done sometime before the boy reaches school age. For a prince, the circumcision ceremony might last 10-15 days. Had I not read the plaque designating the room to be meant for circumcisions, I would have had no idea: it was beautifully tiled along all of its walls and its ceiling. Other than these rooms, there were also several kiosks (garden courtyards), each decorated in a different color and style.
One of the most famous areas of the palace is the Harem, where high-class women and children lived. The word harem comes from the Arabic root حرم (Ha-ra-ma), meaning to forbid. The Harem was forbidden to anyone except the wife and concubines of the sultan, their children, and the black eunuch servants of the sultan. The most important women would be the queen mother, the sultan’s concubine who had born him his eldest son. Keep in mind that in many Islamic dynasties, the sultan often did not marry, but kept an entourage of concubines instead. While Islam allows up to four wives for any man, but only if he is completely equal and fair to all of them and none of them feel any jealousy, many saw concubinage as a way around this restriction. This is a complicated topic, and Islamic scholars differ on whether Islam allows for concubines or not. However, it was generally accepted that a child through a concubine was a legitimate heir, and many sultans were born out of marriage without any problems.
I enjoyed walking through the Harem in particular because, while being just as splendidly decorated as the rest of the palace, it felt like an actual home. We walked through the apartments of the queen mother and the prince as well as their private baths, private mosques, and some of the kitchens. Most of the rooms were empty of their furnishings, but I could imagine the people going about their daily lives in here.
While wandering throughout the palace, we had noticed one extremely long line stretching about 100 meters out the entrance of an unlabeled building. Without knowing what we were getting into, we hopped in. It turned out to be a museum displaying various Islamic artifacts. Pictures were forbidden within the building, with vigilant guards posted throughout the room. We snaked through the building in a queue, passing displays on various artifacts from the prophet and his companions (including his teeth, his beard, his sword, his footprint, etc.). We were not allowed to linger too long on any one artifact for risk of getting yelled at by the guards.
After spending several hours at the museum, we were pretty exhausted, so we grabbed some dinner and headed home for the night. It was my first Christmas away from home, and while it wasn’t a traditional Christmas, it certainly was a fun and exciting one! Besides, I knew my family would be waiting for me when I got home in a few days, and we could have our own belated Christmas celebration. I was super excited to gift them some of the treasures I found in my travels, I had even made a spreadsheet to make sure that everyone got a fair distribution of gifts. Last time I traveled abroad four years ago I had forgotten to get souvenirs for anyone but myself and my sister Anna still teases me about it, so I was determined to do a better job this time around.
Day 6:
We got moving a little slowly that morning, and by the time we were out of the house for breakfast it was practically lunch already. We sat in a café for a little while to wait out the rain, which lasted longer than expected and we had to buy desserts to keep ourselves busy (which I was not going to complain about). Once it cleared up a little, we crossed the Golden Horn once more to visit the Carpet Museum, built directly behind the Hagia Sophia. Turkey is famous for its carpet-weaving tradition, and this museum offered several fine specimens detailing the history and development of the art form. These carpets were all hand-woven and hand-dyed, and the intense amount of labor poured into them accounts for their high value. Over time there developed a standard set of motifs and symbols that could be read by the admirer as a secret code written in the carpets. However, as detailed and precise as the weavers were in their designs, they always made sure to make a few minor mistakes in each carpet they made. This tradition started as a way to show reverence for God, since only God can create perfection. The weavers admitted their humanity by inserting small defects that would ruin the perfection of the carpet without detracting from the overall effect.
Margot was still feeling a little sick and tired from our big day yesterday, so she headed back after the carpet museum to rest some more. Anya, Rosemary, and I headed over to the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, but before doing so we stopped for an ice cream break. Turkish ice cream is different from what we are used to in the states because it incorporates mastic, a plant resin, and salep, a powder made from the ground roots of orchids. The salep thickens the ice cream and keeps it from melting, while the mastic creates a chewy texture. Ice cream vendors in the more touristy areas like to play games with their customers by taking advantage of the stickiness of the ice cream. Using a long, flat paddle, they will keep offering the ice cream to the customer before slipping it from their grasp. It’s hard to describe, but there are lots of videos online worth watching! Just search for Turkish ice cream and you’ll find plenty.
Salep (or sahlab in Arabic) is also a popular hot beverage in Turkey and the Middle East. It is made by dissolving salep powder in milk with sugar and toppings such as cinnamon, coconut, and ground pistachios. It actually reached popularity in the UK and other parts of Europe before tea and coffee did, which were more expensive at the time, but has since been overshadowed. Because of its popularity in Turkey, the orchid used to make it is endangered, and it is illegal to bring any salep powder outside the country. Fortunately, a substitute can be easily made using cornstarch.
The Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts followed a roughly chronological path through the different Islamic dynasties that rose and fell following the death of Mohammad. It was interesting to see how each dynasty had its own distinctive art design. I especially enjoyed their collection of Quranic folios, hand-painted editions illuminated with intricate designs and gold paint. The oldest Arabic scripts were written without any dots on the letters to distinguish them, which I can’t even imagine reading. For example, the letters ب، ت، ث (b, t, th) and the letters ح، خ، ج (j, kh, h) would all be indistinguishable. It’s hard enough to learn to read without vowels, it’s staggering to imagine reading with multiple letters represented by a single symbol. I’m glad they updated the system.
Day 7:
Our last full day in Istanbul, I decided to make it a work day. I had a few scholarship application deadlines and I wanted to finish writing my essays before getting on the plane home so I could have them edited. Besides, I had seen most of the big sites in the city, so I didn’t feel too bad about missing out. Rosemary and Anya went out separately to walk around on their own while Margot and I stayed inside to rest and work.
We had waited all week to board a ferry along the Bosphorus, hoping to go on a clear day in the evening to catch the sun setting behind the Hagia Sophia. Unfortunately, the sky proved to be cloudy every day and by our last night we had decided to give up and be content with a cloudy ferry ride. We took a boat across the Bosphorus over to the Asian side of the city for dinner at a pizza restaurant. It was rather cold that evening, but we went up to the deck anyway to see the skyline. It soon started hailing, which then turned into a downpour. We walked through the rain to our restaurant and arrived soaked. We were most worried about Margot, who was still feeling a little sick but had rallied her strength to go out one last night.
By the time we took the ferry back, the lights of the city and the bridges were brilliantly shining. The call to prayer went off as we were on the water, and we heard the voices echoing towards us from both banks. I’ll miss hearing the call to prayer when I’m back in the states, it had becamo a welcome and familiar part of my day.
We dropped by the apartment to change into some dry socks then stopped by Hafiz Mustafa one last time for deserts. I ate my last Kanafeh as we sat on the edge of the terrace and said our goodbyes to the city.
Day 8:
It was finally time to head back home. We left for the airport by 10am, and I was feeling both excited to be back with family and heading to school in just over a week, but nervous for the transition as well. I had spent nearly four months outside of the US (only six days short), which was certainly the longest I’d been away from home. Goodbyes with my friends was a funny affair, since we were going to be in class together again in just a week.
Since I’m writing this a couple months after the fact, I can tell you that I managed to adjust back to home and to school successfully. It took a few weeks to adjust and feel comfortable again, but I had lots of friends coming home from study abroad in different places that felt the same. I’m not sure how to end this post without going too far into clichés, so I will just say that I had an amazing adventure and I will treasure these memories for the rest of my life. I hope you enjoyed reading along with me, wishing you all the best!
Gregor in Jordan 