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We will begin our final tour of Istanbul where we began our first, at the Galata Bridge, where we will board a ferry to sail up the Bosphorus. Here we have saved the best for last, for the Bosphorus and its shores are by far the most beautiful part of Istanbul.
The history of the Bosphorus begins with the “Inachean daughter, beloved of Zeus” Io, who was turned into a heifer to conceal her from Hera. Pursued by the jealous Hera’s gadfly, Io plunged into the waters that separate Europe from Asia and bequeathed them the name by which they have ever since been known, Bosphorus, or Ford of the Cow. The next event in Bosphoric history is the passage of the Argonauts on their way to seek the Golden Fleece in Colchis at the far end of the Black Sea. On our own journey up the Bosphorus we will stop at several places which ancient and local tradition associated with Jason and his fabulous crew.
The first fully historic event connected with the Bosphorus is the passage across it in 512 B.C. of the huge army which Darius led against the Scythians. From that time onward it played an important and even decisive role in the history of the city erected at its southern extremity in 667 B.C.; for, as Gyllius eloquently points out, the Bosphorus is “the first creator of Byzantium greater and more important than Byzas, the founder of the City.” And he later sums up the predominant importance of this “Strait that Purpasses all straits” by the epigram: “The Bosphorus with one key opens and closes two worlds, two seas.”
The Bosphorus is a strait some 30 kilometres long, running in the general direction north-north-east to south-south-west, and varying greatly in width from about 700 metres at its narrowest to over 3.5 kilometres at its widest. Its average depth at the centre of the channel is between 50 and 75 metres, but at one point it reaches a depth of over 100 metres. The predominant surface current flows at a rate of three to five kilometres per hour from the Black Sea to the Marmara, but, because of the sinuosity of the channel, eddies producing strong reverse currents occupy most of the indentations of the shore. A very strong wind may reverse the main surface current and make it flow north, in which case the counter eddies also change their direction. At a depth of about 40 metres there is a subsurface current, called kanal in Turkish, which flows from the Marmara north towards the Black Sea. Its waters, however, are for the most part prevented from entering the Black Sea by a threshold just beyond the mouth of the Bosphorus; these lower waters, denser and more saline than the upper, are turned back by the threshold, mingle with the upper waters, and are driven back towards the Marmara with the surface current. The lower current is strong enough so that under certain conditions, if fishing nets are lowered into it, it may pull the boats northward against the southerly surface current.
The casual visitor to Istanbul, especially if one comes in summer, might find it difficult to believe that the Bosphorus can be a perverse and dangerous body of water. Seen from the hills along its shore as it curves and widens and narrows, it often looks like a great lake or series of lakes; while its rapid flow from the Black Sea to the Marmara gives it something of the character of a river. Yet anyone who has observed its erratic currents and counter-currents, the various winds that encourage or hinder navigation, the impenetrable fogs that envelop it, even occasionally the icebergs that choke it, will realize that it is indeed a part of the ungovernable sea. Here Belisarius fought the invincible whale Poryphyry, that Moby Dick that wrecked all shipping; here Gyllius observed the largest shark he had ever seen; while even now one still sees schools of dolphins sporting in its waves. Since it is an international waterway, the Bosphorus is busy day and night with a traffic of cargo ships, oil-tankers and ocean-liners, as well as with the local and more colourful ferries and fishing boats. The frequent sharp and unexpected bends in the straits, the tricky currents and occasional storms and dense fogs can make the passage quite difficult at times. Nearly every year large ships collide with one another on the Bosphorus or run aground on its banks, smashing into the houses along its shores. Old Bosphorus-dwellers will regale you with tales of having been awakened from their slumbers by a terrific crash, to find their home tumbled in wreckage about them and the rusty prow of a tramp steamer protruding into the library; or of how a quiet supper was suddenly disrupted when the yardarm of a passing schooner smashed through the dining-room window and swept the table clear.
Both shores of the Bosphorus are indented by frequent bays and harbours, and in general it will be found that an indentation on one shore corresponds to a cape or promontory on the other. Most of the bays are at the mouths of valleys reaching back into the hills on either side, and a great many of the valleys have streams that flow into the Bosphorus. Almost all of these are insignificant; only the Sweet Waters of Europe and the Sweet Waters of Asia have any claim to be called rivers, and these are quite small. Both shores are lined with hills, none of them very high, the most imposing being the Great Çamlıca (267 metres) and Yuşa Tepesi (201 metres), both on the Asian side; nevertheless, especially on the upper Bosphorus, the hills often seem much higher than they are because of the way in which they come down in precipitous cliffs into the sea. In spite of the almost continuous villages and the not infrequent forest fires, both sides are well-wooded, especially with cypresses, umbrella-pines, plane-trees, horse-chestnuts, terebinths and Judas-trees. The red blossoms of the latter in spring, mingled with the mauve flowers of the ubiquitous wisteria, and the red and white candles of the chestnuts, pervaded by the songs of nightingales and blackbirds, give the Bosphorus at that season an even more superlative beauty.
Let these general observations suffice, and let us now explore this most fascinating strait in more detail from the deck of a Bosphorus ferry. But Bosphorus ferries are whimsical boats, flitting back and forth between the continents without apparent reason. And so our description will have to be a somewhat idealized one, which assumes that we sail up the European side of the strait and down the Asian, stopping where we please along the way.
The first village (though now part of the city) on the European shore of the lower Bosphorus is at Beşiktaş, a short distance beyond the Palace of Dolmabahçe, which we visited on our last stroll. Various explanations have been advanced for the name Beşiktaş, or Cradle Stone, the most probable being that it is a Turkish adaptation of the Greek name, Diplokionion, the Twin Columns, from two lofty columns of Theban granite which stood near the shore. In Byzantine times there was a famous church of St. Mamas here, a port, a royal palace and a hippodrome. These have vanished without a trace, but there are still two or three Ottoman monuments of some interest.
The first of these is the türbe of another great pirate-admiral of the Golden Age, the famous Hayrettin Paşa. This is one of the earliest works of Sinan, dated by an inscription over the door to A.H. 948 (A.D. 1541–2). The structure is octagonal, with two rows of windows. The upper row has recently been filled in with stained glass; and the dome has been rather well-repainted with white arabesques on a rust-coloured ground. Three catafalques occupy the centre of the türbe, and in the little garden outside is a cluster of handsome sarcophagi.
Hayrettin Paşa, better known in the West as Barbarossa, died in 1546 and on the fourth centennial of his death a statue was unveiled to his memory in the square facing his tomb. It is by far the best public statue in the city, a vivid and lively work by the sculptor Zühtü Müridoğlu. On the back are six verses by the poet Yahya Kemal which may be translated thus:
Whence on the sea’s horizon comes that roar?
Can it be Barbarossa now returning
From Tunis or Algiers or from the Isles?
Two hundred vessels ride upon the waves,
Coming from lands the rising Crescent lights:
O blessed ships, from what seas are ye come?
Yahya Kemal Beyatlı (1884–1958) might best be described as the G.K. Chesterton of modern Turkish poetry, and he resembled Chesterton in other ways as well: one used to see his enormous bulk ensconced at one of the cafés in Bebek imbibing vast quantities of beer or rakı and holding forth to a group of admirers, among whom the senior author of this guide once or twice had the honour to be included.
Opposite Barbarossa’s türbe is a brick and stone mosque, another work of Sinan; this was founded by another High Admiral, Sinan Paşa, brother of the Grand Vezir Rüstem Paşa. Inscriptions on the şadırvan and over the entrance portal give the date A.H. 963 (A.D. 1555–6) as that in which the mosque was finished, two years after the death of its founder. The mosque is interesting architecturally, though not particularly attractive. Its plan is essentially a copy of Üç Şerefeli Cami (1447) at Edirne. Its central dome rests on six arches, one incorporated in the east wall, the others supported by four hexagonal pillars, two on the west, one each to north and south; beyond the latter are side-aisles each with two domed bays. Thus far the plan is almost like that of Üç Şerefeli Cami, but while there the western piers are incorporated in the west wall, here Sinan has added a sort of narthex of five bays, four with domes, the central one cross-vaulted. The proportions are not very good and the interior seems squat and heavy. The same indeed is true of the courtyard, the porticoes of which are not domed but have steeply-sloping penthouse roofs; the cells of the medrese occupy three sides of it. Sinan seems to have been least happy when he was more or less copying an older building; thus the mosque of Kılıç Ali Paşa at Tophane, a miniature copy of Haghia Sophia, and this copy of Üç Şerefeli Cami, also much smaller than the original, are among his least successful works.
There are also two Greek churches in Beşiktaş, both of them dedicated to the Panaghia (Blessed Virgin). Both churches in their present form date to the mid-nineteenth century. There is also an Armenian church, Surp Asvadzadzin (the Immaculate Conception), which is known to have existed on this site since 1655; the present building was erected in 1856 and restored in 1987.
Just to the left of the ferry-landing we see the Naval Museum. In the garden of the museum there are arrayed a number of ancient cannon, many of them captured by the Turks when the Ottoman Navy was the scourge of the Mediterranean. The most important exhibit in the museum itself is the famous chart of North America done in the first half of the sixteenth century by Piri Reis, the great Ottoman admiral, explorer and cartographer. Within the museum there are exhibits from all periods of Turkish naval history, ranging in date from the Ottoman period up to the present century. A separate building houses the museum’s incomparable collection of pazar caiques, the beautiful rowing barges that were used by the sultans to travel to their seaside palaces and pavilions along the Bosphorus and Golden Horn.
ÇIRAĞAN PALACE
About 500 metres beyond Beşiktaş the ferry passes the Çırağan Palace Hotel, also known as the Kempinsky. The hotel, which was completed in 1987, is built on the site of Çırağan Sarayı, and its seaside section preserves the original façade of the palace. Çırağan Sarayı was built during the reign of Abdül Aziz and was completed in 1872; the sultan died there on 4 June 1876, five days after he had been deposed. His death was officially declared to be a suicide, but the suspicious circumstances suggested to many of his contemporaries that he had been murdered. His nephew and successor, Murat V, was so mentally disturbed at the time of his accession that he proved unable to rule and was soon after deposed in favour of his brother Abdül Hamit II, who chose to live in Yıldız Sarayı rather than in Dolmabahçe or Çırağan. After the adoption of the Constitution of 1908, Çırağan was restored and used for a time to house the second Turkish Parliament. Then in January 1910 the palace was destroyed by fire, leaving only the blackened façade on the Bosphorus, which was restored when it was built into the new hotel.
YILDIZ PALACE AND PARK
A short way beyond the Çırağan Palace Hotel we come to the entrance of Yıldız Park and the grounds of Yıldız Sarayı. Just beside the entrance to the park stands Mecidiye Camii, built by Sultan Abdül Mecit in 1848; it has a very quaint, but ugly, minaret, in a pseudo-Gothic style. At the north-eastern corner of the gardens, just outside the upper entrance to the park, is Hamidiye Camii, built in 1886 by Sultan Abdül Hamit II.
The gardens here, originally known as those of Çırağan, are first mentioned in Ottoman history in the reign of Murat IV (r. 1623–40), who bestowed them upon his daughter Kaya Sultan and her husband Melek Ahmet Paşa. The gardens of Çırağan became famous during the reign of Ahmet III (1703–30), the Tulip King, who gave them to his son-in-law, the Grand Vezir Nevşehirli Ibrahim Paşa. Ibrahim Paşa hosted the Sultan and his court in the Gardens of Çırağan in a series of parties that began each year on the night of the first full moon in April, a delightful custom that lasted throughout the epoch known in Turkish history as the Lale Devri, the Age of Tulips. The first imperial structure known to have been erected here was a pavilion built for Mihrişah Sultan, mother of Selim III (r. 1789–1807), but this has now vanished. Yıldız Sarayı, the Palace of the Star, first began to take form during the reign of Mahmut II (r. 1808–39), and the buildings that one sees today date from his reign to that of Abdül Hamit II (r. 1876–1909), with most of the structures dating from the latter period.
One can enter Yildiz Park either from the Bosphorus road or from the upper entrance (Dağ Kapısı), which is situated off Barbaros Bulvarı. Either way, one can walk through the park, which is virtually the last extensive bit of greenery left on the European shore of the Bosphorus. A number of kiosks and greenhouses on the palace grounds have been restored by the Turkish Touring and Automobile Club, including Malta Köşkü, Çadır Köşkü, Lale Sera (Pink Conservatory), and Yeşil Sera (Green Conservatory), with the first two now serving as cafés and the latter two as tea-rooms. The setting of the café outside the Malta Köşkü is superb, with a romantic view of the Bosphorus through a frieze of greenery, giving one some idea of how beautiful the shores of these straits were in times past.
The grandest and most interesting structure at Yıldız Sarayı is the Şale, so-called because of its resemblance to a Swiss chalet. This consists of two buildings, the first erected in 1889 and the second in 1898, the latter apparently the work of the Italian architect Raimondo D’Aronco, who brought the Art Nouveau style of architecture to Istanbul under the name of the Stile Floreal. The Şale has some 50 rooms, the largest and grandest being the magnificent Reception Hall, with its ceiling decorated in gold leaf; other splendid chambers being the Hall of Mother-of-Pearl and the Yellow Parlour. The Şale was used principally as a residence for distinguished guests, one of the most notable being Kaiser Wilhelm II, who in his visit with Abdül Hamit II in 1895 formed an alliance between Germany and the Ottoman Empire. The Şale has been restored in recent years and is now open to the public as a museum.
TÜRBE OF YAHYA EFENDİ
A few yards beyond the entrance to Yıldız Park a steep but short street leads to the very picturesque türbe of Yahya Efendi, a foster-brother of Süleyman the Magnificent, whom his mother nursed as an infant. The little külliye, consisting of a türbe and a medrese built by Sinan presumably shortly before Yahya’s death in 1570, is now enveloped by various wooden structures of the nineteenth century, and it is hard to see either or even to ascertain what is left of the medrese; its dershane at least appears to be intact. The türbe communicates by a large grilled opening to a small wooden mosque with a baroque wooden dome. The various buildings themselves are picturesque, but even more so are their surroundings, where topsy-turvy tombstones lie scattered among a lovely copse of trees, through which one catches occasional glimpses of the Bosphorus. The appearance of this place seems not to have changed across the centuries, for Evliya describes it as being “in a deep shaded recess of the hills, luxuriant with plane, cypress, willow, fir, and nut-trees.” Evliya goes on to say that “Yahya Efendi is buried on the top of a hill overlooking the sea; the four walls of his türbe are covered with the inscriptions of a hundred thousand divine lovers breathing out their feelings in verse. Even now he converses every Friday night with Hızır Ilyas, taking from him lessons in mysticism.” The place is evidently very holy and is always thronged with pious people at their devotions.
ORTAKÖY
The next village on the European shore of the Bosphorus is Ortaköy, the Middle Village; one is not sure between what: it is very far from the middle of the Bosphorus. There was a Byzantine church of St. Phocas here and the village was called after the saint as late as the sixteenth century; the modern Greek church preserves this dedication.
On the main street in Ortaköy there is an ancient hamam which appears to have been wholly overlooked by writers in modern times; it was built by Sinan for a certain Hüsrev Kethüda. This has recently been restored and now houses a café. The interior is curious and unlike any other existing Sinan hamam. From a camekân of the usual form (though confused by a modern gallery), one enters a rather large soğukluk consisting of a central area in two unequal bays each covered by a cradle-vault; at one end are the lavatories, at the other a bathing cubicle. From the central area one enters the hararet which, instead of being the usual large domed cruciform room, consists of four domed areas of almost equal size; the first two communicate with each other by a wide arch and here, instead of the central göbektaşı, there is a raised marble sofa or podium against one wall and with larger domes than those in the sofa-rooms; these serve as bathing cubicles. There is also another cubicle, cradle-vaulted, which is entered from the sofa-room. An arrangement of this general type is seen in a number of the older and smaller hamams, but here, where the area is large enough, the reason for it is not apparent. The bath is double, the women’s section being exactly like the men’s.
There is also at Ortaköy a very striking mosque on a little promontory at the water’s edge; Arseven picturesquely says that to one sailing up the straits from the Marmara “it seems to be placed here like a Maşallah that wards off the evil eye from the Bosphorus”! It was built in 1854, on the site of an earlier mosque, by Sultan Abdül Mecit and its architect was Nikoğos Balyan, who built the Dolmabahçe mosque and palace. But it is a much better building than those; although the style as usual is hopelessly mixed, there is a genuinely baroque verve and movement in the undulating walls of the tympana between the great dome arches.
On the shore road near the mosque there is a Greek church dedicated to St. Phocas. The church was built in 1856, but the parish undoubtedly dates back to the Byzantine period. One block farther along the road and on the same side we see the Etz Ahayim (Tree of Life) Synagogue. The original synagogue here dates back to the Byzantine era, though the present building was erected only in 1913. Elsewhere in Ortaköy there is an Armenian church dedicated to St. Gregory the Illuminator, dated 1837–8.
THE BOSPHORUS BRIDGE
Just outside Ortaköy we pass under the first Bosphorus bridge, opened on 27 October 1973, the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic. At the time it was the fourth longest suspension bridge in the world, 1,074 metres in length between the great piers (just seven metres longer than the George Washington bridge over the Hudson), with its roadway 64 metres above the water. Surprisingly enough the new bridge, with the graceful curve of its cables and the thin line of carriageway, actually enhances the beauty of the lower Bosphorus.
Kuruçeşme, the next village on the European shore, was up until recent years disfigured by coal, sand and gravel depots, but these have now been removed and replaced by an attractive park and promenade, part of a programme to restore the shores of the Bosphorus to their former beauty. There are three old churches in the village, two of them Greek and the other Armenian. The Greek churches are St. Demetrios and St. John the Baptist, both of which were first mentioned in 1684. The present church of St. Demetrios dates from 1798, while St. John was rebuilt in 1834. Both of them have sacred springs, that of St. Demetrios dating back to Byzantine times. The Armenian church, Surp Haç (Holy Cross), may date from the Byzantine era, though the present structure is due to a rebuilding in 1834 by Karabet Balyan. The wooden mosque on the shore road in the village was built in the eighteenth century by Tezkireci Osman Efendi, with a handsome çeşme in front.
ARNAVUTKÖY
Arnavutköy, the Albanian Village, has one of the most picturesque harbours anywhere along the Bosphorus; its sea-front is lined with picturesque old wooden houses. The oldest house along the shore is the red yalı, or seafront mansion, of Halet Çambel, the distinguished archaeologist, which was built in the years 1820–30. Along the shore there are several excellent fish restaurants.
There are two Greek churches in the village, which still has a small Greek community. Both churches in their present form date from the late nineteenth century. The one near the shore road, the Taxiarkes, is dedicated to the Archangels Michael and Gabriel; the one in the upper village to Profitis Elias (Prophet Elijah). Both churches have sacred wells. The large mosque on the seafront, Tevfikiye Camii, was commissioned by Mahmut II and built in 1832 in the neoclassical style.
The interior of Arnavutköy is also quite charming and picturesque, particularly if one takes the back streets and lanes and climbs the slopes of the hills and valleys on which they are perched. On the hill above in a superb position are the buildings of Robert College, an American coeducational lycée, founded in 1871 as the American College of Girls. The American College for Girls was the first modern lycée of its kind in Turkey and produced many women who played a leading part in the life of their country, the most famous being the writer Halide Edip Adıvar. In 1971, on the occasion of its centennial, the American College for Girls was amalgamated with the boy’s lycée of the old Robert College, a little farther up the Bosphorus, with the new institution taking the latter name and occupying the site in Arnavutköy.
Off the point of Arnavutköy, Akinti Burnu (Cape of the Current) is the deepest part of the Bosphorus, over 100 metres in depth at the centre of the strait. Here the current flows so fast that it is very hard for sailing vessels to round the point. Apparently crabs also found it difficult and leaving the sea walked overland across the point, for Gyllius, after quoting Dionysus Byzantius and Aelian in his support, says: “I myself saw there stones worn down by the long procession of crabs;” and he adds: “And even if I had not seen it, I should not have thought it far from the truth that stones should be worn down by the hard claws of crabs, since we see that ants can dig out furrows and make a path by the continuous attrition of their feet.”
Rounding Akinti Burnu, we enter the calm waters of Bebek Bay, one of the most beautiful on the Bosphorus. Lush rolling hills with groves of umbrella pines and cypresses rise up to form a verdant backdrop to the bay, a green frieze of trees between the blues of sea and sky. Just before the village we see on the water’s edge the old Egyptian Embassy; then, just past the landing-stage, a little mosque built in 1913 by Kemalettin Bey, a leader of the neoclassical school of Turkish architecture. Like most of his buildings it is a little lifeless and dull, although the setting is quite pretty. The village itself is still attractive, though it is rapidly being ruined by the proliferation of restaurants, cafés and bars. There are still a few old wooden houses of the late Ottoman era in the back streets; the oldest is the Kavafyan Konağı, dated 1751. There is also a Greek church dedicated to St. Haralambos, dating from the mid-nineteenth century; in times past this was a dependence of the Iviron Monastery on Mount Athos in Greece.
BOSPHORUS UNIVERSITY
On the hill between Bebek and Rumeli Hisarı, the next village along the shore, stand the buildings of Boğaziçi Universitesi, or Bosphorus University. This Turkish university was established in 1971, occupying the buildings and grounds of the old Robert College. Robert College, which in its time was the finest institution of higher learning in Turkey, was founded in 1863 by Cyrus Hamlin, an American missionary who had baked bread and washed clothes for Florence Nightingale’s hospital in Üsküdar. The College was named after Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist who provided the funds to build and run the institution. During the 108 years of its existence the College had on its staff or itself produced a number of men of some importance. Several of its professors occupied themselves with the antiquities of this city, and some of their works have been much used in the preparation of this guide. The most important of these were the works of Alexander van Milligen (1840–1915); his two great books, The Walls of Constantinople and Byzantine Churches in Constantinople are still the standard works on their subject. Largely through the munificence of van Milligen, the University has a very important and extensive library of books about the city, including a remarkably complete collection of foreign travellers to the Levant in ancient and rare editions. Graduates of Robert College–Bosphorus University include two prime ministers of Bulgaria and two prime ministers of Turkey, Bülent Ecevit and Tansu Çiller, the latter being the only woman ever to hold that post.
The site of the University is superb and from its terrace one commands a stunning view of this most beautiful part of the Bosphorus. Just below the terrace is the attractive house which once belonged to Tevfik Fikret (1867–1915), for many years professor of Turkish Literature at Robert College and one of the leading poets of his time. His house, which is now a memorial museum, is called Aşıyan, or the Nest; it is on the left of the graveyard road which leads up to the University. Like most house-museums it is a little dreary, but the man was not. He was an idealist and utopian socialist, convinced that the salvation of Turkey lay in its youth, which he idealized in the person of his son Haluk, to or about whom he wrote a moving series of poems. But the young man had his own ideas about his future, for when he came of age he went off to the USA. and became a Presbyterian minister!
RUMELİ HİSARI
After Bebek Bay the Bosphorus quickly diminishes to its narrowest stretch, about 700 metres in width. It was here that Darius chose to construct his bridge of boats, designed by the Greek engineer Mandrocles of Samos, when in 512 B.C. he led an army of 700,000 men against the Scythians. While his army crossed the Great King watched from a stone throne cut into the cliff about where now stands the north tower of the castle. The throne of Darius and the two commemorative columns which he erected on the site used still to be shown in antiquity.
The village of Rumeli Hisarı is dominated by and takes its name from the fortress of the same name built by Fatih Mehmet in 1452, the year before he conquered the city. It is a splendid late medieval fortification, the object of which was, in cooperation with the older castle on the other side, Anadolu Hisarı, to cut the city off from communication with and possible aid from the Black Sea; hence the castle was originally called Bogaz-kesen, a sort of pun which means both “cut-throat” and “cutter of the strait”. In this object it was perfectly successful, but after the fall of the city it had no further military function, and the north tower was used as a prison, especially for members of foreign embassies. The castle spans a steep valley with two tall towers on opposite hills and a third at the bottom of the valley at the water’s edge, where stands the sea gate protected by a barbican. A curtain wall, defended by three smaller towers, joins the three major ones, forming an irregular figure some 250 metres long by 125 metres broad at its maximum. Fatih himself selected the site, drew the general plan of the castle, and spent much time in supervising the work of the 1,000 skilled and 2,000 unskilled workmen he had collected from the various provinces of his empire. He entrusted each of the three main towers to one of his vezirs: the north tower to Saruca Paşa, the sea tower to Halil Paşa, his Grand Vezir, and the south one to Zaganos Paşa, with the three of them striving with one another to complete the work with speed and efficiency. Over the door to the south tower an Arabic inscription records the completion of the castle in the month of Recep A.H. 856 (July–August 1452); it had been begun just four months previously. The castle was restored in 1953, in connection with the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Conquest of Constantinople. Unfortunately the restoration demolished the little village of picturesque wooden houses inside the fortifications, but this was probably inevitable. The area inside has been made into a charming park, and the circular cistern on which once stood a small mosque (part of the minaret has been left to mark its position) has been converted into the acting area of a Greek-type theatre: here in summer productions of Shakespeare and other plays are given against the stunning background of the castle walls and towers, the Bosphorus, and the glittering lights of the villages of Asia.
There are three mosques along the shore in Rumeli Hisarı. The first of these that we see is Kayalar Mescidi, built in 1877 by Şeyh Ahmet Niyazi Efendi to replace the mescit of the dervish tekke that had been erected there in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The second is Hacı Kemalettin Camii, commissioned by Mahmut I in 1743 to replace the original mescit from the time of Fatih. The third is Pertev Ali Paşa Camii, at the foot of the main street in the village; this was erected in the mid-seventeenth century and restored in 1972. There is also an Armenian church dedicated to St. Santuht; the present building was erected in 1856, but the original church may go back to the time of Mehmet the Conqueror.
FATİH MEHMET KÖPRÜSÜ
Fatih Mehmet Köprüsü, the second Bosphorus Bridge, spans the strait just above the two fortresses of Rumeli Hisarı and Anadolu Hisarı, the same place Darius constructed his bridge of boats in 512 B.C. The new bridge opened in 1988, exactly 2,500 years after Darius first spanned these straits between Asia and Europe. The palatial seaside mansion just before the bridge is the Zeki Paşa Yalısı. This is believed to have been built by the French architect Alexandre Vallaury in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
BALTALİMAN AND EMİRGAN
From Rumeli Hisarı onwards the Bosphorus, even on the European side, becomes more and more rural, a succession of picturesque villages following one another with wider and wider spaces of open country between. At Baltaliman, which comes next, there is a long and fertile valley watered by a perpetual stream and flanked by a long avenue of plane trees. Contiguous is Emirgan, named after that Persian prince, Emirgüne who sur rendered the town of Erivan to Murat IV without a battle. Emir güne later became the Sultan’s favourite in drinking and debauchery and was rewarded by the gift of a palace in this village. There are still the remains here of an ancient yalı, parts of it possibly going back to Emirgüne’s time, but mostly built later by a Şerif of Mecca, Abdullah Paşa. The Şerifler Yalısı, as it is now called, has recently been restored. The village square is very picturesque, shaded by plane trees beneath which throngs of people are continually imbibing coffee which the excellence of the local water makes particularly delicious. Beside the square stands a baroque mosque, partly of wood, built in 1781–2 by Sultan Abdül Hamit I. It consists of a large almost square room curiously unsymmetrical, and its decor is quite elegant in its baroque way. Just above the village are the famous tulip gardens of Emirgan, well worth a visit in spring.
The Turkish Touring and Automobile Club has now restored a number of old Ottoman kiosks around the Emirgan gardens and converted them into cafés known as Pembe (Pink) Köşk, Sarı (Yellow) Köşk, Beyaz (White) Köşk and the Kir Kahveleri, thus making this one of the most delightful places on the Bosphorus to spend an afternoon or early evening enjoying a drink in beautiful surroundings.
At the northern edge of the village we see the Atlıköşk, the Kiosk of the Horse, which takes its name from the bronze statue of a horse on its front lawn. This is the former residence of the late Sakıp Sabancı. An annexe to the mansion now houses the Sabancı Museum, which has a distinguished collection of Turkish calligraphy and paintings, as well as other objects of Turkish, European and Far-Eastern art.
ISTİNYE
Beyond Emirgan comes the deep indentation of the bay of Istinye which, says Gyllius, “after the Golden Horn must be acknowledged the largest bay and the safest port of the entire Bosphorus, rich as this is in bays and ports.” Its Turkish name, Istinye, is a corruption of the Byzantine, Sosthenion, itself a corruption, according to one account, of the ancient Leosthenion, from the name of a companion of Byzas who is said to have settled here; another version says that the Argonauts erected a statue here in thanksgiving (Sosthenion) for aid given by a winged genius of the place against their enemy on the opposite shore, King Amycus.
YENİKÖY TO TARABYA
At Yeniköy, the Greek Neapolis (the names have the same meaning, New Town, in both Turkish and Greek), the Bosphorus turns sharply north-west. This is an attractive village with seaside restaurants, a beautiful avenue of plane trees, and handsome yalıs mostly modern and luxurious. There are three churches in the village, two of them Greek and the other Armenian Catholic, all of them dating from the mid-nineteenth century. There is also a synagogue dating from the 1870s; this is thought to have been endowed by Abraham de Camondo, the famous banker and philanthropist.
At Yeniköy begins the long line of summer embassies with their beautiful gardens and parks: first that of Austria, then a little farther on at the small village of Kalender that of Germany; still farther on at Tarabya a succession of them: England, burnt down in 1911; France, burnt in 1923; Italy, rebuilt in 1906; but all still with lovely parks. When towards the beginning of the nineteenth century the seashore came to be preferred to an inland site, the summer embassies moved from the village of Belgrad in the midst of the forest of that name to Tarabya and acquired or were granted land by various sultans. The village retains in a slightly modified form its Greek name Therepeia (cure, healing) given by the Patriarch Atticus (r. 406–25) from its salubrious climate, the older name having been Pharmakeus, the Poisoner, because Medea had there thrown away her poison. The waterfront in Tarabya is lined with excellent but expensive restaurants where well-off Stamboullus come to watch one another eat. The village once had one of the largest Greek communities on the Bosphorus and there are still three Greek churches there, though services are held there only on the feast days of the saints to whom they are dedicated.
BÜYÜKDERE AND THE BELGRAD FOREST
From Tarabya the shore curves almost directly westward and one comes in a short distance to Kireçburnu (Lime Point), anciently known as Kleidai tou Pontou, Keys of the Pontus, because from here one can see directly into the Black Sea. A kilometre or so beyond this, at the end of the westward reach of the Bosphorus, stands the large village of Büyükdere at the north end of a wide bay; here are the summer embassies of Russia and Spain. Its Turkish name means Large Valley, while one of its older Greek names is Kalos Agros, the Beautiful Meadow. It is indeed a very lovely and fertile valley with fine old trees through which a road leads into the Belgrad Forest. In the midst of this forest once stood the village of Belgrad, made famous by the encomiums of Lady Mary Wortley Montague. The village was founded in 1521 by Süleyman the Magnificent after his conquest of the city of Belgrade, when he transported a certain number of the inhabitants of that city and settled them here in order to look after the reservoirs and other waterworks with which the forest abounds. The village has long since disappeared, but its name survives in that of the forest.
The waterworks, aqueducts and reservoirs, which are scattered here and there in the hills between this place and the upper end of the Golden Horn, are very impressive indeed. The aqueducts are almost entirely the work of Süleyman the Magnificent and his great architect Sinan, though some of them doubtless replaced more ancient ones. The first aqueduct one comes to, indeed, not far up the valley of Büyükdere, is later, the work of Mahmut I, finished in 1732, and conveys the water from his reservoir and several others to the taksim in Taksim Square. Mahmut’s reservoir, or bend in Turkish, is a very magnificent one, with its great dam of Proconnesian marble.. The two aqueducts of Sinan that are most easily visitable because they are on the main road are also the longest and most impressive. Both are near the village of Burgaz, the ancient Pyrgos. The first is called the Bent Aqueduct (Eğrikemer) because it consists of two segments that meet in an obtuse angle; it is 342 metres long. This aqueduct seems to have been built originally by Andronicus I Comnenus (r. 1183–5); it was in ruins when Gyllius saw it, and Sinan must have rebuilt it pretty completely, for all the visible masonry appears to be of his time. Sinan’s other aqueduct, Uzunkemer, the Long Aqueduct, is beyond Burgaz; it is 716 metres in length and strides across the valley in a most Roman fashion. These two aqueducts span the valley of the Barbyzes, the stream now called Kağıthane Suyu, which flows into the Golden Horn. This stream and its twin, the Cidaris or Alibey Suyu, together form the once-famous Sweet Waters of Europe, which in the eighteenth century was a favourite resort of Ottoman society. The Alibey Suyu is also spanned by two aqueducts of Sinan; these are much harder to find for the road is quite bad. They are also much smaller but at the same time more picturesque because they are closely hemmed in by high hills. The one across the Alibey Suyu itself is generally called Justinian’s (in Turkish, however, Maglova Kemeri); Gyllius saw this too in ruins, but it was entirely rebuilt by Sinan. The other, across a tributary of the Alibey, is appropriately called Güzelce Kemer, the Handsome Aqueduct, for it is indeed very pretty. All these four aqueducts, together with several smaller ones, conduct the water from various reservoirs scattered throughout the district and convey it to the taksim at Egrı Kapı on the Sixth Hill, from where it is distributed throughout Stamboul. Sinan was working on this elaborate system of aqueducts during the years 1554–64.
SARIYER
Returning to the Bosphorus, we now sail on to Sarıyer, a very lively village inhabited largely by fishermen and their families. The Sarıyer fish market, the closest outlet for the Black Sea fisheries, is one of the best and most colourful in the city. It is located right next to the little harbour of the village, where the picturesque local fishing boats unload their catch. There are a number of good restaurants on the quay of the fishing-port itself.
One of the old mansions along the shore highway leading into Sarıyer, the Azaryan Yalısı, now houses the Sadberk Hanım Museum, a unique and rich collection of antiquities and Turkish works of art, including beautiful examples of Ottoman costumes and embroideries.
THE EUROPEAN SHORE OF THE UPPER BOSPHORUS
Those proceeding by road up the Bosphorus from Sarıyer will notice a little roadside shrine on the side of the hill above the Bosphorus just before coming to Rumeli Kavağı. This is the türbe and shrine of a Muslim saint named Telli Baba, who is reputed to have the power of finding suitable husbands for young women who pray there. After their weddings the brides come here in their gowns to fasten talismanic coils of silver wire around Telli Baba’s tomb and offer up to him their prayers of thanksgiving. The saint’s tomb is housed in an ancient stone building that looks as if it might have been a Greek church, perhaps once the shrine of a Christian saint venerated by the local Greek mariners praying for safe return from voyages on the Black Sea.
Two kilometres beyond Sarıyer we come to Rumeli Kavağı, the last ferry-stop on the European shore of the Bosphorus. Above it are the very scanty remains of a Byzantine castle, later taken over by the Genoese, by whose name it is usually known. This castle formed a pair with Yoros Kalesi on the Asian hill opposite, the much more considerable remains of which are a dominant feature of the view from most parts of the upper Bosphorus.
At Rumeli Kavağı, not only the ferry but the public motor road comes to an end. Anyone wishing to explore the upper Bosphorus must hire a boat at Sarıyer or Rumeli Kavağı and take to the sea. The excursion is one of extreme delight for the country is wild, rugged and desolate, but very beautiful. Now for the first time on the Bosphorus one finds sandy beaches hidden away in romantic coves; grey herons haunt the cliffs, black cormorants dive into the limpid water, great clouds of sheerwaters, those “lost souls” of the Bosphorus, skim the surface of the sea, torn by frequent schools of dolphins. The scene is still much the same as when Jason and his Argonauts sailed past on their way to Colchis in quest of the Golden Fleece, and these upper reaches are particularly rich in memories of that stirring adventure.
Except for the two Byzantine or Genoese castles above Rumeli and Anadolu Kavağı, the fortifications of the upper Bosphorus all date either from the end of the eighteenth century or from our own time. Thus the batteries below the castles at the two Kavaks were built in 1783 by Toussaint and increased in 1794 by Monnier, two French military engineers employed by Abdül Hamit I and Selim III.
Just beyond Rumeli Kavağı and still accessible by the public road is Altın Kum, Golden Sands, the first of the sandy beaches, with a restaurant under a pleasant grove of acacia trees. But beyond this point we sail along for two or three kilometres below precipitous cliffs, sparsely covered with scrub and uninhabited, nay uninhabitable. At length one reaches a wide but shallow harbour called Büyük Liman, anciently the Harbour of the Ephesians; one sees the ruins of a number of stone buildings, among them a hamam; the beach is sandy and the valley behind is wooded and attractive, a pleasant place to swim.
After another kilometre or so past even more cliffs, one comes to a strangely shaped and craggy point well named, Garipçe (strange or curious), or, anciently, Gyropolis, Town of Vultures. This too has a fortress built in 1773 by the Baron de Tott. Here King Phineus lived and here he was plagued by the Harpies who seized his food and befouled his table until he wasted away to a wraith; at last the Argonauts arrived and the winged sons of Boreas, Zetes and Kalais, taking pity on the ancient king, their brother-in-law, chased away the noxious creatures. In return Phineus, who was a prophet, advised them about the rest of their journey and especially about how to avoid the baleful Symplegades. These, indeed, were clearly visible from his very palace, two great rocks at the mouth of the Bosphorus, one on either side, which were supposed to clash together with great rapidity and violence, thus making it very dangerous if not impossible for ships to enter or leave the strait. Phineus told the Argonauts to let loose a dove which would fly between them; if it was caught, they were to give up their journey, but if it got through safely, they were to wait till the rocks opened once more and then row their hardest. The Symplegades just shaved off the tailfeathers of the dove and slightly damaged the stern-works of the Argo.
The Symplegades, the Clashing Rocks, were also called Cyanean, the Blue Rocks, or in Turkish Öreke Taşı, the Distaff Rock or Midwife’s Stool. The European one is a striking feature at the very mouth of the Bosphorus, formerly some 100 metres offshore at Rumeli Feneri, the Rumelian Lighthouse. There is a tiny village here and the remains of a fort built in 1769 by a Greek engineer. The Rock, which is now joined to the shore by a concrete mole, is about 20 metres high and something less than 200 metres long, divided by deep fissures into several parts. On the highest plateau stands what is left of the so-called Pillar of Pompey. “The ascent to this peak,” says Gyllius, “is not open except by one approach, and this, extremely narrow, so that one must climb up on all fours.” Nowadays there are two approaches, one slightly easier than the other, but both disagreeable enough for one who is terrified of heights. The reward of intrepidity is a fine view of the Black Sea and the Bosphorus, and the base of Pompey’s column. It is not really a column base but an ancient altar, decorated with a garlanded ram’s head and other reliefs now much worn; it once had a Latin inscription, no longer legible, the transcription and interpretation of which are matters of discussion. Certainly neither altar nor column had anything to do with Pompey, and we do not know who first gave it this misleading name: it was after Gyllius’ time evidently, since he does not mention it. He thought the altar was probably a remnant of the shrine to Apollo which Dionysius of Byzantium says the Romans erected on one of the Cyanean Rocks. The column itself, with its Corinthian capital, toppled down in April 1680 and had utterly disappeared by 1800. There is now a simple fish restaurant on the Rock, with its tables set out on the breakwater at the very end of the Bosphorus.
THE ASIAN SHORE OF THE UPPER BOSPHORUS
We now cross the Bosphorus and sail down the Asiatic coast. Curiously enough the Asian shores of the upper Bosphorus are very imperfectly known and seem to have been rarely visited even by the few authors who write about them. The only safe guide is Gyllius, for he alone appears to have explored the region in detail. Even Gyllius’ account, however, is not altogether free from difficulties, for he never gives the Turkish names of places in this region, perhaps because in his time they didn’t yet have any. Nevertheless, there are four places in his narrative which can be identified with certainty; the Rhebas River, the Promontorium Ancyraeum, the Promontorium Coracium and the Fanum Jovis; and from these the others can be worked out. The Rhebas still retains a version of its ancient name: Riva or Irva Deresi; it is a river that flows into the Black Sea about four kilometres beyond the mouth of the Bosphorus, and just beyond it is the great table-like rocky islet in the sea which he calls Colonean but is now known as Eşek Adası, Donkey Island. Riva is very attractive and picturesque with its Genoese castle at the end of a long sandy beach; it is a fine place to swim and picnic.
The Ancyraean Cape is Yum Burnu, Cape of Good Omen; as its hopeful name might imply, it is just at the mouth of the Bosphorus. In Gyllius’ time it was called Cape Psomion; it was here that Jason took aboard a stone anchor for the Argos, hence its ancient name of Ancyraean. The reef or rock which has the best claim to be the Asian Cyanean stands immediately under the southern cliff face of Yum Burnu and is thus described by Gyllius, a description which is perfectly applicable to this day: “The reef is divided into four rocks above water which, however, are joined below; it is separated from the continent by a narrow channel filled with many stones, by which as by a staircase one can cross the channel with dry feet when the sea is calm; but when the sea is rough waves surround the four rocks into which I said the reef is divided. Three of these are low and more or less submerged, but the middle one is higher than the European rock, sloping up to an acute point and roundish right up to its summit; it is splashed by the waves but not submerged and is everywhere precipitous and straight.”
The bay to the south of Yum Burnu is now called Kabakoz Limanı, the Harbour of the Wild Walnuts; in Gyllius’ time it was known as the Bay of Haghios Sideros (that is, St. Anchor – the half-remembered story of the Argonautic anchor had given rise in the minds of the medieval Greeks to an apocryphal holy man!). On the south this bay is bounded by a point not named by Gyllius but nowadays called Anadolu Feneri Burnu, after the lighthouse (fener) on the promontory above. Below the lighthouse a village of the same name clings perilously to the cliff. Just south of this is the bay which Gyllius calls Ampelodes, now Çakal Limanı, the Bay of Jackals, fringed by savage and rocky precipices. The next promontory beyond this, unnamed by Gyllius, is now called Poyraz Burnu. (In Turkish Poyraz is the fierce north-east wind which howls down the Bosphorus in winter; its name is a cor ruption of Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind.) On Poyraz Burnu, just opposite Garipçe and like it strangely shaped, is a fortress built in 1773 by the Baron de Tott, and another small village. The long sandy beach to the south is now known as Poyraz Bay; the Greeks of Gyllius’ time called it Dios Sacra, “because, I suppose, there was once an altar here either of Jove or of Neptune, the other Jove.” This is one of the most pleasant places on the Bosphorus to swim and spend a leisurely afternoon. This bay is bounded on the south by Fil Burnu, Elephant Point, called in Gyllius’ time Coracium, Rooky, “because the Greeks of this age say that ravens are wont to build their nests there.” The long stretch of concave coast between here and Anadolu Kavağı is hardly to be described as a bay, so rugged and precipitous is it. It is now called Keçili Liman, Goats’ Bay, and we have seen not only goats and sheep but even cows grazing on its rather barren slopes.
We now come to Gyllius’ Fane of Jove, by which he means the temple of Zeus Ourious, Zeus of the Favouring Wind, and the Hieron or holy precinct where there were shrines of the Twelve Gods. Keçili Liman is bounded on the south by a cape still known by a version of its ancient name, Yoros or Yeros Burnu, doubtless from Ourious. The temple or temples were founded by Phrixos, evidently on a “stop-over” while the winged ram with the golden fleece was flying him towards Colchis. Another version is that the shrines were founded by Jason on his return journey; but we must refer our readers to Gyllius’ lengthy and erudite discussion of the pros and cons: he did like his mythology to make sense! At all events, the Hieron must have been somewhere near the site now occupied by the so-called Genoese Castle. Like the opposite castle above Rumeli Kavağı, this one is not really Genoese but Byzantine, as is shown by various Greek inscriptions still to be found in the walls. About the middle of the fourteenth century both castles were taken over by the Genoese who assumed responsibility for the defence of the northern approaches to Constantinople; they may have repaired and extended the fortifications. Gyllius rather oddly describes this castle as small though it is in fact by far the largest fortress on the Bosphorus, almost twice the area of Rumeli Hisarı; doubtless he was thinking not of the long surrounding walls but only of the citadel itself, probably the only part still inhabited in his day. Evliya tells us that Beyazit I built a mosque there and that Fatih Mehmet restored and garrisoned it.
ANADOLU KAVAĞI TO BEYKOZ
Below the castle to the south is the village of Anadolu Kavağı, the first village of any size on the Asiatic shore and the last stop on this side of the Bosphorus ferry. The fortifications here, like those at Rumeli Kavağı, were built in 1783 by Toussaint and increased in 1794 by Monnier. To the south of the village, above the capes of Macar and Sütlüce, is the hill now known as Yuşa Tepesi, Hill of Joshua, though the Joshua in question seems not to have been Judge of Israel but a local Muslim saint. The hill, except for Çamlıca the highest on the Bosphorus – over 200 metres – was anciently called the Bed of Hercules, but is better known to Europeans as the Giant’s Grave. This is the place of which Byron wrote:
The wind swept down the Euxine, and the wave
Broke foaming o’er the blue Symplegades,
‘This a grand sight from off the Giant’s Grave
To watch the progress of those rolling seas
Between the Bosphorus, as they lash and lave
Europe and Asia, you being quite at ease:
There’s not a sea the passenger e’er pukes in,
Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.
The sight is grand indeed, for one can see almost the entire course of the Bosphorus from the Black Sea to the Marmara. On top of the hill is an enormous “grave” some 12 metres long: it was a very large giant evidently.
Opposite Büyükdere the coast forms a long shallow bay with rather dangerous sandbanks in the sea and a rugged and inhospitable coast-line. At Selvi Burnu, Poplar Point, the coast turns east to the charming valley of the Tokat Deresi. Here Fatih himself built a kiosk and so also later did Süleyman, a place described by Gyllius as a “royal villa shaded by woods of various trees, especially planes”; he goes on to mention the landing stairs, “by which the King, crossing the shallow shore of the sea, disembarks into his gardens.” It is from these landing stairs that the place gets its modern name, Hünkâr Iskelesi, the Emperor’s Landing Place, which in turn gave its name to the famous treaty that was signed here in 1833 between Russia and the Sublime Porte. The present little palace was only built in the middle of the nineteenth century by the Armenian architect Sarkis Balyan; it is now used as a hospital, but is still shaded by a lovely grove of plane trees.
The large village of Beykoz, Prince’s Walnut, is still extremely pretty and rural in spite of several large factories that have been erected in the neighbourhood. Here, Dionysius, Gyllius and Evliya agree, is the one place in the Bosphorus where swordfish are caught, and Evliya gives an entertaining account of the method:
There is a dalyan or structure for fanging the swordfish; it is composed of five or six masts, on the highest of which sits a man who keeps a lookout for the fish that come in from the Black Sea. When he sees them drawing near, he throws a stone into the sea in order to frighten them, wherein he succeeds so well that they all take the direction of the harbour, where they think to find security, but fall into the nets laid for them in the water. The nets being closed, on warning given from the man sitting in the lookout, the fishermen flock round to kill them without their being able to make any resistance with their swords. The fish if boiled with garlic and vineyard herbs is excellent.
There is still a dalyan at Beykoz that is used to catch different sorts of fish, though no longer the swordfish. The modern method of catching a swordfish is to harpoon it from a rowboat while it naps on the surface of the water.
Gyllius is at pains to show that Beykoz was the home of the savage Amycus, king of the no less savage Bebryces. He insisted on boxing with any stranger who landed on his coast and, since he was the son of Poseidon and the best boxer in the world, he always killed his opponent. At last, however, he met his match in one of the Argonauts, Polyduces (Pollox), son of Zeus and Leda, who was even better than he and killed him. The grave of King Amycus was pointed out in antiquity and it is rather strange, as Lechevalier remarks, that Gyllius failed to identify it with the Giant’s Grave. On the spot where King Amycus was killed there grew up an insana laurus, an insane bay-tree, which resembled Banquo’s “insane root which takes the reason prisoner.”
Beykoz has a very extraordinary çeşme in the public square. “This fountain,” says the Hadika, “has not its equal in beauty in all the villages of the Bosphorus.” It forms a sort of domed and columned loggia, very pretty indeed, and quite unlike any other Bosphorus fountain; its inscription dates it to A.H. 1159 (A.D. 1746) and the Hadika says it was built under the superintendence of one Ishak Aga, inspector of the customs.
BEYKOZ TO KANLİCA
South of Beykoz at Incir Köyü, Figtree Village, is the charming valley of Sultaniye Deresi, where Beyazit II established extensive gardens. A little farther on is Paşabahçe, the Pashas Garden, so called from the palace and gardens established here by Hezarpare Ahmet Paşa, Grand Vezir under Murat IV; its mosque was built in 1763 by Mustafa III. The village now manufactures glass as Beykoz used to do, and as at Beykoz, various factories have been erected here without, however, entirely destroying its attractiveness. About Çubuklu, the next village to the south, Evliya tells an amusing story: “Beyazit II, having brought his son Selim I from Trebizond to Constantinople, gave him in this place in a fit of anger eight strokes with a cane (çubuk), which eight strokes were prophetic of the years of his reign. At the same time, he said to him, ‘Boy don’t be angry, these eight strokes shall fructify during eight years of reign.’ Selim stuck the dry cane into the ground, praying to heaven that it might strike root and bear fruit. The Şeyh Kara Şemseddin and Beyazit himself said, Amen;’ the cane began to take root and even now bears cornels, five of which weigh a drachma.”
The village was anciently called Eirenaion, Peaceful, and had a very famous monastery founded in 420 by St. Alexander for his order of Akoimetai, the Unsleeping, who prayed in relays day and night. Now it has gasoline installations, but is still in a very beautiful and fruitful valley.
On the hill above the village is the palace of the Khedive of Egypt with its distinctive tower, a characteristic landmark on this part of the Bosphorus; it was built by Abbas Halim Paşa, the last Khedive (that is, hereditary Viceroy), about 1900, and for a palace of that date has considerable charm. Its western façade overlooking the Bosphorus is semicircular with a handsome marble-columned porch and a semicircular hall within; the trees have grown up too much and spoil the outlook from here, but the upper floor, especially the tower room and a charming loggia on the roof, command some of the finest views on the Bosphorus. The Turkish Touring and Automobile Club has restored the mansion and redecorated it superbly in its original Art Nouveau style; it now serves as a luxury hotel and restaurant.
KANLİCA TO ANADOLU HİSARI
Kanlica has, since the time of Evliya at least, been famous for its yogurt, the best in the Istanbul area, which it is pleasant to eat in one of the little restaurants that are to be found around the very attractive, plane-tree shaded square by the iskele. The village, which is unspoiled by industry, boasts a mosque of some interest. The mosque, on the far side of the square, was founded in A.H. 967, or A.D. 1559–60, as the Arabic inscription over the door tells us, by the vezir Iskender Paşa; it is a minor work of Sinan. Of the very simplest type, it has a wooden porch and roof with a flat ceiling; but both porch and roof are clearly later, indeed modern, reconstructions, for Evliya says that it had a wooden dome inside. The founders türbe is nearby.
Between Kanlica and Anadolu Hisarı are the remains of the oldest yalı on the Bosphorus, that of the Grand Vezir Köprülü Amcazade Hüseyin Paşa, built about 1698. All that exists of the original house is the wreck of a once very beautiful room built out on piles over the sea. The central area has a wooden dome with spacious bays on three sides of it; a continuous row of low windows in these bays lets in the cool breezes and gives views of the Bosphorus in all directions. But the astonishing thing about it was the exquisite and elaborate moulding and painting of ceiling and walls with arabesques, geometrical designs, floral garlands, in enchanting colours and in gold; especially lovely was a long series of panels above the windows each with a vase of different flowers. Towards the beginning of the twentieth century an attempt to rescue this unique room from ruin was made by the Society of the Friends of Istanbul, who published a sumptuous album of hand-gilded and coloured plates with a preface by Pierre Loti and descriptive text by H. Saladin. Since then, however, the room has been totally neglected and is now in the last stages of decay. It is said that a restoration is planned in the near future; one hopes that it is not already too late to save what is left of this once beautiful and historic yalı.
ANADOLU HİSARI
We come now to the Anatolian Castle opposite the Rumelian one. The castle was built by Beyazit I Yıldırım, the Thunderbolt, probably in 1390 or a few years later. This is the Beyazit whom Marlowe makes introduce himself as the Turkish Emperor:
Dread Lord of Affrike, Europe and Asia,
Great King and conquerour of Grecia,
The Ocean, Terrene, and the cole-blacke sea,
The high and highest Monarke of the world.
Tamburlaine, 1, 940 seqq.
But a few scenes later we find Tamburlaine entering in triumph and “two Moores drawing Baiazeth in his cage, and his wife following him.” Beyazit appears to have committed suicide soon after; and the legend has it that in order to avoid the ignominy of seeing his wife perform menial services for a possible conqueror, as Beyazit had had to do, no subsequent Ottoman sultan ever contracted a legal marriage. This tale is singularly unfounded since several later sultans were in fact legally married, including Fatih Mehmet and Süleyman the Magnificent.
The castle is a small one consisting of a keep and its surrounding wall, together with an outer wall or barbican guarded by three towers; parts of the barbican have been demolished. Gabriel suggests, on the basis both of historical sources and methods of construction, that only the keep and its wall were built by Beyazit, the barbican and towers being added later by Fatih Mehmet at the same time that he was building the fortress opposite. It is a pretty little castle and well deserves the name of Güzelce, the Handsome or Charming One, by which it was originally known. And the village which surrounds it is very attractive; from the quiet and picturesque street that borders the castle along the sea, there is one of the best views of the superb fortifications of Rumeli Hisarı. In this street also is one of the very few surviving namazgahs, or open air mosques; it consists simply of a stone mihrab and a stone mimber standing at one end of a grassy plot of ground surrounded by low walls. Since the namazgah is mentioned in the Hadika but not by Evliya, one may take it that it was established some time between 1660 and 1780. Unfortunately it is in a rather dilapidated condition.
THE SWEET WATERS OF ASIA
The village is bathed on the south by one of the two rivers known to Europeans as the Sweet Waters of Asia. This one is called in Turkish Göksu, or Sky Stream; the other, a few hundred metres to the south, is Küçüksu, or Little Stream. Between them, in what was once a lovely meadow, there are a small palace and an elaborate çeşme, the favourite resort on holidays in Ottoman times of the beau monde: it is still a resort, though the monde is not so beau (at least not socially), and beside Küçüksu is a swimming place with an artificially sandy beach.
The Küçüksu Çeşme, one of the most beautiful baroque fountains in Istanbul and a favourite subject for artists in the nineteenth century, was founded by Selim III in 1806. The Sultan’s name and the date of foundation of the fountain are given in a long calligraphic chronogram of 32 lines inscribed across all four faces of the çeşme, ending with these lines:
And our course wishes to be of this water now,
And to be as tall as a cypress tree, a fragile beauty in the meadow
Hatif, tell us a date worthy of this soul-caressing fountain
Küçüksu gave to this continent brilliance and light.
The palace of Küçüksu, a pretty little edifice on the lip of the sea, was erected for Sultan Abdül Mecit in 1856–7 by Nikoğos Balyan on the site of several earlier imperial residences, the first of them apparently dating from 1752. Abdül Mecit at first used Küçüksu only as a pied-à-terre on day-trips from Dolmabahçe, and so the palace did not include bedrooms in its original design. But several chambers were converted into bedrooms later in the nineteenth century, when Küçüksu was used to house visiting dignitaries, a role it continued to serve in the first half-century of the Republic. In recent years the palace has been restored and it is now open as a museum.
Just next to the beach at Küçüksu stands the largest and grandest yali of them all, that of Kıbrıslı Mustafa Emin Paşa. Built originally about 1760 but added to and redecorated later, its façade on the Bosphorus is over 60 metres long, mostly of one storey only but with a central part of two. The rooms are arranged with great symmetry around three, rather than the usual two, great halls: of these the eastern one is perhaps the most beautiful, paved in marble with a marble fountain in the centre under a vaulted ceiling decorated with exquisite mouldings and painted panels of bowls of flowers; to north and south slender wooden columns with Corinthian columns divide the central space from two bays, one giving directly onto the sea, the other providing the entrance from the garden. Four superbly proportioned rooms open from this hall, two overlooking the Bosphorus, two the garden Still farther to the east is an enormous ballroom and a charming greenhouse with a pebble-mosaic pavement and a great marble pool with a curious fountain. The harem occupied the western wing of the house and was the oldest part of it: unfortunately it was demolished in the early 1970s.
KANDİLLİ TO ÇENGELKÖY
We are now in the village of Kandilli, where there are several charming yalıs, of which perhaps the handsomest as well as the best preserved is that of the Counts Ostrorog, built about 1790, distinguished by its rust-red colour. It is named after the Ostrorogs, a noble French-Polish family who moved to Turkey in the late eighteenth century. The last of the line, Count Jean Ostrorog, died in 1975. On the hill above is the palace of Adile Sultan, sister of Sultan Abdül Aziz. The palace was built in 1856 and restored after a fire in the 1980s; it is now a secondary school for girls.
The next ferry stop is the adjacent village of Vaniköy. Above Vaniköy we can see the tower of the Istanbul Rasathane, an astronomical observatory and seismological research centre. The Rasathane has a small but interesting astronomy museum, with a collection of the instruments and manuscripts of the sixteenth-century Turkish astronomer Takiuddin.
The large and imposing building on the shore south of Vaniköy is the Kuleli Officers Training College. The original building here was a barracks erected in 1828 by Mahmut II; Sultan Abdül Aziz replaced this in 1863 with the present Empire-style building, whose flanking conical-capped towers are landmarks on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus.
It was more or less on this site, probably, that the Empress Theodora, Justinian’s wife, established her famous hospice for fallen women, called Metanoia, or Repentance, of which Procopius writes with such bitter irony: “Theodora also devoted considerable attention to the punishment of women caught in carnal sin. She picked up some five hundred harlots in the forum, who earned a miserable living by selling themselves there for three obols, and sent them to the opposite mainland, where they were locked up in the monastery called Repentance to force them to reform their way of life. Some of them, however, threw themselves from the parapets at night and thus freed themselves from an undesired salvation.” The irony consists in the fact that, according to Procopius, Theodora was herself a harlot, and utterly un repentent.
Çengelköy, the Village of the Hooks, so-called according to Evliya because after the Conquest a store of Byzantine anchor hooks was found here, is an exceptionally pretty village with at least one extremely handsome yalı, that of Sadullah Paşa, dating from the late eighteenth century. The seaside village square is very picturesque, shaded by venerable plane trees and graced by a lovely baroque fountain. There are good restaurants on the square where one can dine while gazing down the Bosphorus towards the skyline of Stamboul.
BEYLERBEY
We now approach the Bosphorus Bridge once again as we come to the village of Beylerbey, known anciently as Stavros, or the Cross. Next to the iskele there is an imperial mosque known popularly as Beylerbey Camii. According to its dedicatory inscription, this was built in 1778 by Abdül Hamit I as part of a very extensive pious foundation, the other buildings of which, however, are not grouped round the mosque, as is the usual practice, but are near Yeni Cami in the old city. The mosque, a work of the architect Mehmet Tahir, is an attractive example of the baroque style, its dome arches arranged in an octagon, vigorously emphasized within and without, its mihrab in a projecting apse, richly decorated with an assortment of tiles of different periods from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. The mimber and kürsü are unusually elegant and beautiful works, both of them of wood inlaid with ivory. It has two minarets, the second one added later by Mahmut II.
Beyond the village, and almost directly under the Bosphorus Bridge, we now come to the Palace of Beylerbey. The palace and the village were named after a Beylerbey, an Ottoman title that literally means Lord of Lords; this was Mehmet Paşa, Governor of Rumeli in the reign of Murat III (r. 1574–95). Mehmet Paşa built a mansion on this site at that time, and though it eventually vanished, the name Beylerbey lived on. The present Palace of Beylerbey was built for Abdül Aziz in 1861–5 by Sarkis Balyan, brother of Nikoğos Balyan, architect of Dolmabahçe Sarayı. Beylerbey was used mainly as a summer lodge and as a residence for visiting dignitaries, one of the first being the Empress Eugénie of France, later visitors including the Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, the Shah Nasireddin of Persia, and King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson of England. Abdül Hamit II lived here after his return from exile in Salonica, dying in Beylerbey in 1918. In recent years the palace has been splendidly restored and is now open as a museum.
The palace is divided into the usual selamlık and harem. The ground floor of this three-storey building houses the kitchens, with the state rooms and the imperial apartments on the two upper floors, a total of 26 elegantly furnished rooms, with six grand salons. The grandest of these salons are the Yellow Pavilion and the Marble Pavilion, the latter focused on a large pool with an elaborate cascade fountain. Beylerbey is as elaborately furnished and decorated as Dolmabahçe, including Hereke carpets; chandeliers of Bohemian crystal; French clocks; vases from China, Japan, France, and the imperial Ottoman workshops at Yıldız; and some superb murals by painters such as Aivazovski. The Royal Stables have also been restored; these occupy the building to the right of the palace as one looks at it from the sea. From the sea the palace is extremely attractive, with its two little marble pavilions at either end of the marble quay and bordered by lovely gardens.
Beyond Beylerbey we come to Kuzguncuk, another pretty village adorned by a very handsome yalı with a rounded façade on the Bosphorus. After this we come to Üsküdar, the last (or the first) town on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus. From here our ferry sails back to the Galata Bridge, where we complete our journey up and down this most beautiful and historic strait.