The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (37 page)

The Conqueror’s City

Istanbul is a much larger and more populous city than it was in the time of the Conqueror, though some aspects of it are essentially unchanged, for most of the monuments erected by Mehmet II and members of his court remain standing, many still performing the same function for which they were first built.

The first census of Ottoman Istanbul, including Galata, was ordered by Mehmet II in 1477, twenty-four years after his conquest of Byzantine Constantinople. The census, which counted only civilian households and did not include the military class or those residing in the two imperial palaces, Topkapı Sarayı and Eski Saray, registered the number of families in the various religious, ethnic and national categories. It recorded 9,486 Muslim Turkish, 4,127 Greek, 1,687 Jewish, 434 Armenian, 267 Genoese and 332 European families from places other than Genoa. The total population of Istanbul is estimated from this census as being between 80,000 and 100,000, about double what it had been in Byzantine Constantinople just before the Conquest. Seventy per cent of those living within the walled city of Istanbul were Muslim Turks, with the rest non-Muslims, mostly Greeks and Armenians and some Jews, with just the reverse being true in Galata. The Jewish population greatly increased in the early 1490s, when the Conqueror’s son and successor Beyazit II gave refuge to the Jews who had been evicted from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella.

The population of the city increased to some half a million by the mid-sixteenth century, during the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent. It then remained constant until the last half-century of Ottoman rule, when Muslim Turkish refugees from the lost territories of the empire in the Balkans poured into Istanbul, increasing its population to over a million.

The first census under the Turkish Republic, taken in June 1924, showed that Istanbul had a population of 1,165,866, 61 per cent of whom were Muslim Turks, 25 per cent Greeks, 7 per cent Armenians and 6 per cent Jews. The population began increasing in the late 1950s, when people from the rural areas of Anatolia began moving to Istanbul and the other large cities of Turkey in search of a better life. The population of Istanbul has been increasing at an accelerated rate since then, reaching approximately 1,466 million in 1960, 2,132 million in 1970, 4,433 million in 1980, 7.5 million in 1990, and just under 10 million in 2000, with the number today estimated at between 12 million and 15 million. The size of the city expanded as well, beginning in 1980, when its area increased by a factor of four, so that Istanbul now stretches up both shores of the Bosphorus to within sight of the Black Sea, extending far along the European and Asian shores of the Marmara. The ethnic composition of Istanbul has changed as well, for about 99 per cent of the present population is Muslim Turkish, with about 50,000 Armenians, 40,000 Jews and 3,000 Greeks, the latter three minorities being those that were recognised as separate
millets
, or nations, by Mehmet the Conqueror.

Two bridges now span the Bosphorus. The first of them opened on 29 October 1973, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Turkish Republic, crossing the strait about 6 kilometres from its southern end at the Sea of Marmara. The second bridge, which opened in the summer of 1988, crosses the strait some 12 kilometres upstream from the Marmara. The upper span is called Fatih Mehmet Köprüsü, the Bridge of Mehmet the Conqueror, honouring the first Ottoman sultan to rule in Istanbul, whose conquest of Constantinople is commemorated each year on 29 May.

Fatih Mehmet Köprüsü spans the Bosphorus just upstream from Anadolu Hisarı and Rumeli Hisarı, long known in English as the Castles of Asia and Europe, respectively. As may be recalled, Anadolu Hisarı was built in 1395 by Beyazit I when he began the first Turkish siege of Constantinople, which was aborted when he was defeated and killed by Tamerlane in 1402, while Rumeli Hisarı was constructed by Mehmet II in the summer of 1452 in preparation for his attack on the Byzantine capital the following year.

Rumeli Hisarı is a splendid late medieval fortification, the largest fortress ever built by the Ottoman Turks. The fortress 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 thirteen smaller towers, joins the three main bastions, forming an irregular triangle some 250 metres long by 125 broad at its maximum. Sultan Mehmet himself selected the site, drew the general plan of the fortress 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 the construction of each of the three main towers to one of his vezirs, whose names are still associated with them. The north tower was assigned to Saruca Pasha, the south one to Zaganos Pasha and the sea tower to Halil Pasha, his grand vezir, all three of whom competed 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 fortress in the month of Recep 856 (July-August 1452), just four months after it was begun.

The fortress was restored in 1953 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Sultan Mehmet’s conquest of Constantinople. At that time the picturesque little village of wooden houses inside the walls of the fortress was demolished, and its residents, some of whom claimed descent from men of the Conqueror’s army and workforce, were resettled in the village of Rumeli Hisarı. The area inside the fortress has been made into a charming park, and the circular cistern on which once stood a small mosque (part of its minaret has been left to mark its position) has been converted into the acting area of a Greek-type theatre. Here in the summer productions of Shakespeare’s and other plays are given against the stunning background of the castle walls and towers, the Bosphorus and the gleaming lights of the villages of Asia.

Immediately after the Conquest, Sultan Mehmet built another fortress in the south-eastern corner of the old city, near the Marmara end of the Byzantine land walls at the famous Golden Gate. As Kritoboulos writes, after recording Mehmet’s efforts in rebuilding the city and starting work on the Eski Saray: ‘He further ordered the construction of a strong fortress near the Golden Gate where there had formerly been an imperial castle, and he commanded that all these things should be done with all haste.’

The fortress at the Golden Gate is known as Yedikule, the Castle of the Seven Towers, a curious structure partly Byzantine, partly Turkish. The western side is formed by that part of the ancient Theodosian city walls that includes the Golden Gate, part of a triumphal arch built c. 390 by Emperor Theodosius I. Along this side are four of the seven towers: the two square marble pylons flanking the Golden Gate and two polygonal towers belonging to the Theodosian wall itself. Eastward of these, inside the city, Sultan Mehmet constructed three large towers connected with each other and with the Theodosian walls by tall and massive curtain walls. The area thus enclosed forms a rather irregular hexagon. The structure was never used as a castle in the usual sense, but two of the towers saw service in Ottoman times as prisons; the others were used as storage places for part of the state treasure.

Yedikule has been restored and is now open as a museum, with its entrance in the middle of the inner wall of the enclosure. The bastion to the left of the entrance is called the Tower of Inscriptions, because some of the many unfortunates who were imprisoned there have carved messages on the walls, in Greek, Latin, French and German. The southern pylon of the Golden Gate was used in Ottoman times as a prison and a place of execution, one of the exhibits being the ‘well of blood’, a pit down which the executioner threw the heads of those he had executed. Osman II was executed here on 19 May 1622, although not by being beheaded, according to Evliya Çelebi, who writes that the young sultan, who was only nineteen, ‘was deposed by a rebellion of the Janissaries and put to death in the Castle of the Seven Towers, by the compression of his testicles, a mode of execution reserved by custom for the Ottoman emperors’.

Istanbul’s largest and most famous marketplace is still the Kapalı Çarşı, or Covered Bazaar, which Sultan Mehmet founded on the Third Hill in 1456, three years after the Conquest. The Turkish architectural historian Ayverdi claims that more than half the shops in the bazaar go back to the time of the Conqueror, though they have certainly been restored on several occasions, most recently after the earthquake of 1894 and the fire that ravaged the marketplace in 1954.

The Kapalı Çarşı is probably the largest market of its kind in the world. At first it seems a veritable labyrinth, but its central area forms a regular grid, with shops selling the same kind of merchandise congregated in their own streets, the names of which come from the various market guilds that originally had their establishments in these places in the time of the Conqueror. Thus there are streets of jewellers, goldsmiths, silversmiths and rug dealers, though others named for sword makers, turban merchants and armourers now deal in more modern merchandise. The streets are roofed with vaults and domes, the wide ones often flanked with columned arcades, side alleys leading into ancient
hans
, or inner-city caravanserais.

The grid is centred on the Old Bedesten, one of the original structures erected by the Conqueror, used then and now for the storage and sale of the most precious objects. Sultan Mehmet built an almost identical
bedesten
across the Golden Horn in Galata, where it now serves as a market hall for heavy machinery, identified by a sign as the Fatih Çarşısı, the Marketplace of the Conqueror.

The first mosque complex that Sultan Mehmet erected in Istanbul was Eyüp Camii, outside the city walls on the upper reaches of the Golden Horn. Eyüp Camii was built by Mehmet in 1458, and its original
külliye
, or building complex, included the great mosque itself, the tomb (
türbe
) of Eba Eyüp Ensari, Companion of the Prophet, a
medrese
, a refectory (
imaret
) and a public bath (
hamam
). The original mosque was destroyed, perhaps by the great earthquake of 1766, and the present structure was erected in 1800 by Sultan Selim III. The
medrese
has vanished, the
imaret
is in ruins and only part of the
hamam
survives (a very fine panel of twenty-four Iznik tiles from this bath is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum). But the
türbe
of Eba Eyüp Ensari survives intact, and its superb decorations make it one of the masterpieces of Ottoman art.

The mosque is approached through a picturesque outer courtyard with two great baroque gateways. Another gateway leads into the inner court, bordered by an unusually tall and stately colonnade along three sides. The inner court is shaded by venerable plane trees, in which grey herons and storks nest in the spring, a few of the latter remaining behind in a hollow of one of the trees when they can no longer fly. The flocks of pigeons are as numerous and pampered as those of the Piazza San Marco in Venice, and the courtyard is always thronged with pilgrims and with young boys celebrating their rites of circumcision. The tomb of Eyüp is opposite the central door of the mosque. Although the tomb was restored and redecorated in later times, its interior still appears to retain the form that it had in the days of the Conqueror.

From the time of Beyazit II onwards it was the custom for new sultans to be girded with the sword of their ancestor Osman Gazi at Eyüp’s tomb, a ceremony equivalent to coronation. The newly girded sultan would then lead a procession to Fatih Camii, the Mosque of the Conqueror, where he would pay obeisance to Sultan Mehmet II. The first to do so was Beyazit II, who had buried his father there earlier that day, 21 May 1482, beginning a practice that continued down to the end of the empire.

Fatih Camii is on the Fourth Hill of the city, built on the site of the famous church of the Holy Apostles, which the Conqueror demolished to make way for his
külliye
, the first imperial mosque complex to be erected in Istanbul. The complex was built in the years 1463-70, dates given in the calligraphic inscription over the main gateway to the outer courtyard. The architect was Atik (Old) Sinan, tentatively identified as a Greek named Christodoulos, who was apparently executed by Sultan Mehmet in 1471, supposedly because the dome of the Conqueror’s mosque was smaller than that of Haghia Sophia, although that story is most probably apocryphal.

The original mosque was completely destroyed by an earthquake on 22 May 1766, and the other buildings in the complex were damaged in varying degrees. Sultan Mustafa III immediately undertook the reconstruction of the complex, and the present baroque mosque, completed in 1771, was designed on a wholly different plan from the original. The caravanserai, hospital and library have disappeared, but all of the other structures in the
külliye
survive from their restoration by Mustafa III, presumably in their original form.

Fatih Camii was the largest and most extensive mosque complex ever built in the Ottoman Empire, laid out on a vast, nearly square area - about 325 metres on a side - with almost rigid symmetry. This and other
külliyes
became the civic centres of the new Ottoman city of Istanbul, with the mosque itself surrounded by other religious and philanthropic institutions serving the Muslims of the surrounding quarter, which in this case is still known as Fatih. The original Fatih Camii
külliye
consisted of the mosque, eight
medreses
, a refectory, a hospice, a caravanserai, a hospital (
darüşşif
a), a library (
kütüphane
), a primary school (
mektep
), a market (
çarşı
) and two tombs (
türbe
), one for Sultan Mehmet and the other for his wife Gülbahar, mother of his son and successor Beyazit II.