(no subject)
Hello from Istanbul!
I took a budget airline here from Stuttgart several days ago. My Dad (the amateur historian) flew out from Seattle to meet me here. We're staying at a little backpackers hotel in Sultanamet, only a few blocks from Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. There's a different classical Turkish poem in every room. Ours is "Out of Time".
Yesterday we walked to the Topkapı Palace, which was the sprawling palace of the sultans during the period of the Ottoman Empire. In their treasury, the have diadems and thrones, jeweled swords, and the supposed arm and piece of a scull of John the Baptist. In a separate chamber, they have holy Islamic relics. A man/guard takes shifts reciting/singing prayers 24/7 from a little glass booth in the corner, occasionally taking sips of water from a glass at his bookside. In the cases in the room, they have beard hairs and teeth of Mohammad, his footprints, sabres, writing boxes, decrees, boxes of his ashes, doors from holy temples, etc. People become very quiet when they get into this room.
We also visited the palace harem (oh yeah!), the beautifully carpeted and colorfully tiled living quarters of the sultan, his family, his concubines, and his black African eunuchs. The Turks inherited and embraced the baths and waterways of the Romans. All over the palace grounds were hand/foot-washing fountains, bathing pools, indoor His and Hers marble toilet chambers, and covered sewage systems. When my medieval European relatives were picking lice off of each other and shunning bathes, Turks were already having pool parties, scrubbing down, grooming their mustaches, anointing their clean bodies with delicately fragranted oils, and changing their socks.
After a scenic and windy look out over the Bosphorus to Asia (hi Asia!) we walked to the Grand Bazaar, an enormous labyrinthic covered marketplace with hundreds of aggressive rug merchants, antique shops, lamp shops, stores selling tea and coffee devices, colored plates, nargile/shisha/hookah/waterpipes, and leather goods, and anything else you could imagine. After losing ourselves, we settled at a little cafe and had lamp shish kebabs and Turkish beer. The placemats on our table were actaully maps of the bazaar, including street names and a sort of "You are Here". The waiter saw us studying the placemats furiously and desparately and offered us two smaller clean copies along with our bill. Oh how we were grateful! We then found our way out of the bazaar, down some winding un-touristy streets to the mouth of the Egyptian spicemarket where we poked our heads into some bird shops (mmm! chicken!) and looked quizzically at buckets of leeches in water - for sale by the liter. Hm.
Today we went to Hagia Sophia, which was once the greatest and largest Christian church/temple/basilica and was built during the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine, and rebuilt a few years later by the Emperor Justinian. In the 1400s, it was converted to a mosque and its Christian mosaic iconography was plastered over. With the reforms of Atatürk in the 1920s, it ceased being a mosque and instead became a museum. They have been uncovering and restoring the mosaics ever since; nearly one quarter of the basilica was filled with scaffolding up to the dome. We also visited the remains of the Hippodrome and the Basilica Cistern, a giant underground Roman reservoir built with vaulted ceilings and pillars. Those crafty Romans!
Tomorrow we catch an early morning bus out to Gallipoli (site of the famous slaughtering of Australians and New Zealanders) and the presumed ruins of the ancient city of Troy.
I took a budget airline here from Stuttgart several days ago. My Dad (the amateur historian) flew out from Seattle to meet me here. We're staying at a little backpackers hotel in Sultanamet, only a few blocks from Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. There's a different classical Turkish poem in every room. Ours is "Out of Time".
Yesterday we walked to the Topkapı Palace, which was the sprawling palace of the sultans during the period of the Ottoman Empire. In their treasury, the have diadems and thrones, jeweled swords, and the supposed arm and piece of a scull of John the Baptist. In a separate chamber, they have holy Islamic relics. A man/guard takes shifts reciting/singing prayers 24/7 from a little glass booth in the corner, occasionally taking sips of water from a glass at his bookside. In the cases in the room, they have beard hairs and teeth of Mohammad, his footprints, sabres, writing boxes, decrees, boxes of his ashes, doors from holy temples, etc. People become very quiet when they get into this room.
We also visited the palace harem (oh yeah!), the beautifully carpeted and colorfully tiled living quarters of the sultan, his family, his concubines, and his black African eunuchs. The Turks inherited and embraced the baths and waterways of the Romans. All over the palace grounds were hand/foot-washing fountains, bathing pools, indoor His and Hers marble toilet chambers, and covered sewage systems. When my medieval European relatives were picking lice off of each other and shunning bathes, Turks were already having pool parties, scrubbing down, grooming their mustaches, anointing their clean bodies with delicately fragranted oils, and changing their socks.
After a scenic and windy look out over the Bosphorus to Asia (hi Asia!) we walked to the Grand Bazaar, an enormous labyrinthic covered marketplace with hundreds of aggressive rug merchants, antique shops, lamp shops, stores selling tea and coffee devices, colored plates, nargile/shisha/hookah/waterpipes, and leather goods, and anything else you could imagine. After losing ourselves, we settled at a little cafe and had lamp shish kebabs and Turkish beer. The placemats on our table were actaully maps of the bazaar, including street names and a sort of "You are Here". The waiter saw us studying the placemats furiously and desparately and offered us two smaller clean copies along with our bill. Oh how we were grateful! We then found our way out of the bazaar, down some winding un-touristy streets to the mouth of the Egyptian spicemarket where we poked our heads into some bird shops (mmm! chicken!) and looked quizzically at buckets of leeches in water - for sale by the liter. Hm.
Today we went to Hagia Sophia, which was once the greatest and largest Christian church/temple/basilica and was built during the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine, and rebuilt a few years later by the Emperor Justinian. In the 1400s, it was converted to a mosque and its Christian mosaic iconography was plastered over. With the reforms of Atatürk in the 1920s, it ceased being a mosque and instead became a museum. They have been uncovering and restoring the mosaics ever since; nearly one quarter of the basilica was filled with scaffolding up to the dome. We also visited the remains of the Hippodrome and the Basilica Cistern, a giant underground Roman reservoir built with vaulted ceilings and pillars. Those crafty Romans!
Tomorrow we catch an early morning bus out to Gallipoli (site of the famous slaughtering of Australians and New Zealanders) and the presumed ruins of the ancient city of Troy.