Istanbul - City of Forgetting and Remembering by Richard Tillinghast

Author:Richard Tillinghast
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Istanbul
Publisher: Haus Publishing
Published: 2016-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

The Fourth Court: stately pleasure domes

Leaving the Harem and passing again into the innermost sanctums of the palace grounds, one finally reaches what in Ottoman days were the sultan’s private gardens, enhanced by some of the broadest and most exquisite panoramas in Istanbul. Gardens were, for these formerly nomadic people whose ancestors had crossed the steppes, mountain ranges and deserts of the ancient Middle East on horseback, earthly paradises that both symbolised the life that, the Qur’an promised, awaited believers after death, and the perfect setting on earth for a life of contemplation and ease. Delimited as Topkapı is by its position within the modern city that has grown up around it, one needs to remind oneself that at one time the buildings of the saray were surrounded by acres of gardens, including hanging gardens descending in terraces from the back walls of the Harem down to where the Archæological Museum stands today.

At the heart of all this, the jewel in the crown is a small triad of structures that brought together some of the most meaningful elements of life for the Ottoman dynasty – religious, political, military and recreational. The Revan and Baghdad kiosks and the Sünnet Odası, or Circumcision Pavilion, with the tiny but exquisite İftariye Köşkü in their midst, all stand within the range of the sound of water from the nearby fountain. Sünnet, or circumcision, the ritual by which a Muslim boy becomes a man, is central to the life of Islam. The tiles with which the front wall of this structure is revetted are among the finest in Turkey and, in their variety of styles, form a museum-in-miniature of the ceramic art.

The appeal of one’s favourite buildings tends to cast reflected glory onto the architectural patrons who caused these buildings to be built. Sinan’s masterpieces are eternally associated with his great royal patron, Süleyman the Magnificent, and with his daughter Mihrimah Sultan, as well as with his Grand Viziers, Sokollu Mehmed Paşa and Rustem Paşa – though, as we know, Sinan could work equally well under royal nonentities such as Selim the Sot and Murad III. Murad IV, who had the Baghdad and Revan pavilions built, was described even by an ardent admirer, the traveller and chronicler Elviya Çelebi, as ‘the most bloody of the Ottoman Sultans’. Never was there a prince, according to Elviya Çelebi, ‘so athletic, so well-made, so despotic, so much feared by his enemies, or so dignified’.

Coming to the throne during the Reign of the Women, when the sultanate was overwhelmed by chaos caused by weak leadership, corruption, palace coups and factionalism, Murad set things right by force. It was said that he could shoot an arrow so forcefully that it penetrated a sheet of metal four inches thick; could leap at full gallop from one horse to another; and hit with his javelin a raven perched atop a distant minaret. When a giant in the Persian army challenged any man among the Ottoman forces to single combat, Murad went out to meet him and with one stroke of his sword clove the giant’s head in two from crown to chin.

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