Istanbul: The Ornament of Turkey

Day 208, Sunday August 18, 2019

“Borders? I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.”

― Thor Heyerdahl

Sites Covered in this Post
• Hagia Sophia
• Blue Mosque
• Basilica Cistern

Lesson Learned: Turkey is a secular country. Sure, there is a mosque on damned near every corner, many women cover, there isn’t much alcohol sold in local-frequented cafés, and forget about finding pork on any menu, but this is definitely not a theocracy, or intolerant Muslim culture. You’ll also find young girls in skirts as short as they were in Paris, London or Athens. Many times, you’ll find them walking with friends that are covered from head to heel. It’s kind of amazing to see. We really like this country. We also enjoy hearing call to prayer 5 times a day, I find it rather soothing.

This place is different than most of Europe, but incredibly moderate compared to Egypt. Most of the people don’t speak English, but we muddled our way through and managed to learn a few Turkish words.

The people here are friendly, even though the taxi drivers are sort of like Parisian waiters. The food is sort of like Greece, but sort of not. The wine good, and the people fiercely proud of Turkey and critical of their government (hey, that sounds familiar). As far as I know, they haven’t tried to buy New Zealand, or Iceland, or South Dakota, so, they must be somewhat reasonable.

You should visit Turkey if possible. There is so much to see and do, it would be a shame to avoid Turkey and much more of the Islamic world because of fear of a culture so much different than the US or Europe. We found the people generous, the weather wonderful, the sights without compare.

Hagia Sophia – Historic Jewel with a Little Patina on its Surface

On this day, we did what every single tourist to Istanbul must do. The Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and the Basilica Cistern. They are all located next to each other, and no matter where you are staying in the city, do them on the same day. My best advice is to start early in the day (the exhibits open at 9 AM), and avoid Saturdays. Saturdays are horrible, because all the tourists are headed this way, and also the Bizarre is open as well, and its only about 6 blocks up the road. Sundays are good, and probably any other day of the week besides Friday (Muslim Holy day) or Saturday.

We did something we haven’t done since Cairo, hired a guide to walk us through Hagia Sophia and the Cistern. We wanted to hear a little trivia along the way, be able to ask questions, but mainly we got to skip the lines, which were already getting long when the museum opened. It wasn’t much, 110 Lire each (which included the ticket for the museum, and 110 Lire each for the Cistern), and after we were done, I just gave him an extra $20 American for a tip, which seemed good for him. The best part, there were only 4 of us on the tour, Ellen, me, and a nice couple from Uruguay.

The Hagia Sophia, the largest church built by the East Roman Empire in Istanbul, has been constructed three times in the same location. The first church, though, not its name, became known as Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) church, and the name stuck. The church was commissioned by Emperor Konstantios (Constantine (337-361)) in 360 CE. The church was burned during the public riot in 404 CE as a result of the disagreements between Emperor Arkadios and Istanbul’s patriarch Ioannes Chrysostomos, who was exiled.  

The second church was constructed by Emperor Theodosios II (408-450) in 415 CE. Again, like the first, the church was demolished in January 13, 532, during the Nika revolts.  The current structure (third church was a charm) was constructed by Emperor Justinianos’s (527-565). Construction began in 532 CE, and was completed in a short period (due to reuse of construction materials from the first two churches and other Greek and Roman odds and ends found in temples all over Turkey), of five years and opened on December 27, 537 (damn, just missed Christmas).

From the date it opened in 537 until 1453, it served as an Eastern Orthodox cathedral and the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, except between 1204 and 1261, when it was converted by the Fourth Crusaders to a Roman Catholic cathedral under the Latin Empire. The building was later converted into an Ottoman mosque from 1453 until 1931. It was then secularized and opened as a museum in February 1935. It was the world’s largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520.

Although some parts of the city of Constantinople had fallen into disrepair, the cathedral had been maintained with funds set aside for this purpose. That was a long time ago, but Hagia Sophia has still fallen into disrepair. I’ve seen the long lines to get into this museum paying full fare for entrance, have seen the state of its condition, and can do the simple math that a lot of money is being skimmed off the revenues which should be used to keep it in better shape. There was a lot of work going on while we were taking our tour, but they are behind the curve. Turkey is kind of like Egypt in that it doesn’t take as good care of its antiquities as it should and they are a little rough around the edges. I’m sure there’s a lot of competition for government funding (like building new mosques).

The tour guides claim that Islam respects Christianity, so they preserved, and just covered over the Christian symbols, but in actuality, the bells, altar, iconostasis, and other relics were destroyed and the mosaics depicting Jesus, his Mother Mary, Christian saints, and angels were also destroyed or plastered over. Its an amazing structure, and I’m very pleased that it is still here given what’s going on all over the world when Isis takes over a territory. The first thing that group of terrorists does is to destroy invaluable antiquities that don’t belong to Allah. Some things really suck.

The Blue Mosque – Scaffolds on Display

There is a mosque on every corner in Istanbul (well, almost). But, have no doubts, all mosques are not created equal. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque, or Blue Mosque, as it is more commonly called, is an amazing building. Even if its shrouded in construction scaffolds.

The mosque was constructed between 1609 and 1616 during the rule of Ahmed I. Its Külliye contains Ahmed’s tomb, a madrasah and a hospice. Hand-painted blue tiles adorn the mosque’s interior walls, and at night the mosque is bathed in blue as lights frame the mosque’s five main domes, six minarets and eight secondary domes. It sits next to the Hagia Sophia, so you can get two-for-one bang for your buck as there is no fee to enter the Blue Mosque.

After the crushing loss in the 1603–18 war with Persia in which the Peace of Zsitvatorok was forced on the Ottomans, Sultan Ahmet I decided if he couldn’t out fight Persia, he’d out build them by constructing a large mosque in Istanbul to reassert Ottoman power. It would be the first imperial mosque for more than forty years.

The mosque was built on the site of the palace of the Byzantine emperors, in front of the basilica Hagia Sophia (at that time, the primary imperial mosque in Istanbul) and the hippodrome, a site of significant symbolic meaning as it dominated the city skyline from the south. Big parts of the south shore of the mosque rest on the foundations, the vaults of the old Grand Palace.

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque is one of the five mosques in Turkey that has six, which is very unusual. According to folklore, an architect misheard the Sultan’s request for “altın minareler” (gold minarets) as “altı minare” (six minarets), at the time a unique feature of the mosque of the Ka’aba in Mecca. When criticized for his presumption, the Sultan then ordered a seventh minaret to be built at the Mecca mosque.

The up side of this place its very beautiful from the outside, even though about half of it is having extensive repairs and renovations performed. The down side is, its having extensive repairs performed, over half of the outside and insides are covered. Its also very crowded. You will have to wear a skirt (guys and gals) if you are wearing shorts. Girls can’t wear yoga pants, you have to put your shoes in plastic bags, women have to cover their heads, and there isn’t a lot to see due to the construction. It’s a good thing its free.

It took a little over an hour to do the visit. Most of that was spent standing in line. Once inside it was disappointing how much was covered. I was told the renovations would go on for another two years (which is what they always say) so hold off on your visit until 2021 or 2022 to be safe if you want to see this mosque in all its splendor.

Basilica Cistern: See Medusa, But Don’t Drink the Water

The Basilica Cistern is the largest of several hundred ancient cisterns that lie beneath the city of Istanbul. The cistern is located across the street from Hagia Sophia (490 ft), right next to the Blue Mosque. This is a pretty cool part of the city. You are also about a kilometer away from the Grand Bizarre. The cistern was built in the 6th century during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. You can get a pretty good look at it in the Tom Hanks movie “Inferno”.  

The cistern is huge, approximately 138 meters (453 ft) by 65 meters (213 ft) – about 9,800 square meters (105,000 sq ft) in area – capable of holding 2,800,000 cubic feet of water which is about 21,000,000 gallons. The ceiling is supported by a forest (I think that forest is a wonderful description of these columns) of 336 marble columns, many of them stolen from other temples, monuments, and old Greek edifices that the Byzantines didn’t give a damn about, each 9 meters (30 ft) high, arranged in 12 rows of 28 columns each spaced 5 meters (16 ft) apart.

One of the columns is engraved with raised pictures of a Hen’s Eye, and tears that pay tribute to the hundreds of slaves who died during the construction of the cistern. Walk up to it and stick your thumb in a hole drilled on the side. It’s supposed to be good luck. The cistern is surrounded by a firebrick wall with a thickness of 4 meters (13 ft) and coated with a waterproofing mortar. The water to fill the cistern came from the Belgrade Forest, which is 12 miles north of the city. It coasted gently down the 971-meter-long Valens Aqueduct, and the 115-meter-long (377 ft) Mağlova Aqueduct, which was built by the Emperor Justinian. Only about 800 feet of those aqueducts remains today.

This is a really impressive structure. We really liked the Medusa columns. These two columns are located in the northwest corner of the cistern, and reuse blocks carved with the visage of Medusa. The origin of the two heads is unknown, though it is thought that the heads were brought to the cistern after being removed from a building of the late Roman period. It’s a mystery, but fun to see down at the back of the cistern. Superstition has it that the blocks are oriented sideways and inverted in order to negate the power of the Gorgons’ gaze, but more than likely its that one was placed sideways because that made it the proper size to support the column. The upside-down Medusa was placed that way specifically because the bottom of her head was flat and made a better base for the column.  No matter what, these are pleasant little surprises you find as you are walking along the dimly lit catwalk, looking over the creepy, murky cistern.

Unfortunately, the cistern was undergoing repairs, just like everything else in this city. I shouldn’t gripe, it needs to be done, but I will anyway. The same damn thing happened to us in England. Big Ben, the clock tower, and most of the Parliament building were scaffolded and hidden. The damn clock tower was surrounded by scaffolds the last time Ellen and I were there in 1995. It’s a conspiracy. No matter what, do visit the Basilica Cistern, its worth the price of admission, even if it’s been drained and half the site is screened off from visitors. We were surprised. Given the number of people visiting the mosques, only a fraction were at the cistern. That’s their mistake, that Ellen and I sure didn’t regret.

An invitation of a Beautiful Street is an Invitation to Walk Within a Dream

Istanbul is a beautiful city that begs you to search for its secrets on foot. This can take time, but time spent walking the boulevards, busy streets, and steep alley ways will reward you with the secrets of the city. It’s a place you can’t see all it has to share from the seat in a bus, taxi, or metro car, you have to walk it to experience its richness.

We walked a lot in Istanbul, and when we were footsore, we’d hop a bus or taxi. You will be amazed at what you’ll discover when you get lost, take a wrong turn, or better yet leave your hotel with no particular destination in mind. Enjoy this city. Its streets and people welcome the intrepid wanderer with pleasures for the eye, nose, stomach, ears and soul.