Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (55 page)

We then return to the courtyard, in the middle of which there was once a small mosque for the garrison; the remains of its minaret are still standing. We next enter the pylon to the left of the Golden Gate; this too was used as a prison and place of execution in Ottoman times. One is shown the instruments of torture and the infamous “well of blood”, a pool said to communicate with the sea, down which were supposed to have been thrown the heads of those executed here. (We do not guarantee the truth of this story.) Sultan Osman II was one of those executed here, on 22 May 1622, when he was only 17 years old. Evliya Çelebi gives this account of the execution of Young Osman, as he was called: “They carried him in a cart to Yedikule where he was barbarously treated and at last most cruelly put to death by Pehlivan (the Wrestler). Whilst his body was exposed upon a mat, Kafir A
ğ
a cut off his right ear and a Janissary one of his fingers for the sake of a ring upon it.”

The much celebrated Golden Gate between the pylons was originally a Roman triumphal arch erected in about 390 by Theodosius I the Great. At that time the present city walls had not yet been built and the triumphal arch, as was customary, stood by itself on the Via Egnatia, about a mile outside the walls of Constantine. The arch was of the usual Roman type with a triple arcade containing a large central archway flanked by two smaller ones. The outlines of the arches can still be seen clearly although the openings were bricked up in later Byzantine times. The gates themselves were covered with gold plate – hence the name – and the façade was decorated with sculptures, the most famous of which was a bronze group of four elephants, placed there to commemorate the triumphal entry of Theodosius after his victory over Maxentius. When Theodosius II decided to extend the city two decades later, he incorporated the Golden Gate within his new land-walls. It was presumably in connection with this new wall that he built the small marble gate outside the triumphal arch; the arch itself, of course, could have had no gates, except for ornamental iron or bronze grilles, and would have been indefensible. The outer gateway is part of the general system of defence and forms, with the curtain wall which joins it to the city walls near the polygonal towers, a small courtyard in front of the Golden Gate.

After the time of Theodosius I, the Golden Gate was several times the scene of triumphal entries by victorious emperors: Heraclius in 629 after his defeat of the Persians; Constantine V, Basil I, and Basil II after their victories over the Bulgars; John I Tzimisces after his defeat of the Russians; Theophilus and his son Michael III after their victories over the Saracens. Perhaps the most emotional of all the triumphal entries was the one that occurred on 15 August 1261, when Michael VIII Palaeologus rode through the Golden Gate on a white charger after Constantinople was recaptured from the Latins. But that was the last time an Emperor of Byzantium was to ride in triumph through the Golden Gate, for the history of the Empire in its last two centuries was one of continuing defeat, and by then the gateway had been walled up for good.

YED
İ
KULE TO BELGRAD KAPISI

From Yedikule to the next gate, Belgrad Kap
ı
s
ı
, it is possible to walk either on top of the great wall or on the terrace below, for the walls here are in quite good condition. All of the 11 towers which guard the inner wall in this stretch are in quite good condition, as are all but one of those in the outer wall. An inscription on the eighth tower in the inner wall records repairs by Leo III and his son Constantine V in the period 720–41, and one on the tenth tower of the outer wall notes that it was restored by John VIII Palaeologus in 1434.

We now come to Belgrad Kap
ı
s
ı
, known in Byzantium as the Second Military Gate. This is the largest of all the military gates and in Byzantium it may have been used as a public gate, as indeed it has ever since the Conquest. The gate took its Turkish name from the fact that Süleyman the Magnificent settled in its vicinity many of the artisans he brought back with him from Belgrade after his capture of that city in 1521.

BELGRAD KAPISI TO S
İ
L
İ
VR
İ
KAPISI

The stretch of walls from Belgrad Kap
ı
s
ı
to the next gate, Silivri Kap
ı
s
ı
, is also in good condition, with all 13 towers still standing along the inner wall and only one missing in the outer. These towers also have inscriptions recording repairs by Leo II, Constantine V and John VIII. Silivri Kap
ı
s
ı
is the first of the large public gates we come to when walking from the Marmara. Like all of the public gates it is double, that is with gateways through both the inner and outer walls. The most memorable day in the history of the Silivri Gate was 25 July 1261. On that day a small body of Greek troops led by Alexius Strategopoulos overpowered the Latin guards at the gate and forced their way inside, thus opening the way for the recapture of Constantinople and the restoration of the Byzantine Empire.

THE SACRED SPRING OF BALIKLI

Silivri Kap
ı
s
ı
was known in Byzantium as the Gate of the Pege because it led to the famous shrine of the Zoodochus Pege, or the Life-Giving Spring. The shrine, known in Turkish as Bal
ı
kl
ı
Kilise, or the Church with Fish, is so called because of the fish that swim in its sacred spring; it is reached by walking out from the gate along Seyitnizam Caddesi for a short distance and veering right along Silivrikap
ı
Bal
ı
kl
ı
Caddesi. The shrine has been popular since the early days of Byzantium, and several emperors built churches on the site; the present one dating only from 1833. The outer courtyard is particularly interesting because it is paved with old tombstones in the curious Karamanl
ı
script, that is, Turkish written in the Greek alphabet. The inner courtyard is filled with the elaborate tombs of bishops and patriarchs of the Greek Orthodox Church. The entrance to the shrine is in the corner between the two courtyards. We descend down a long flight of steps and find ourselves in a small chapel at the west end of which is the
ayazma
, or sacred spring. The spring is said to be inhabited by a species of fabulous fish which are brown on one side by virtue of their ancestors having leaped from a monk’s frying-pan into the water five centuries ago, on hearing the news that Byzantium had fallen. However, closer inspection will reveal that the fish in the sacred spring have since reverted to a uniform gold.

Returning to the Silivri Gate and entering the city there, we find immediately inside a fairly large and charming mosque by Sinan. This was built in 1551 for Had
ı
m (the Eunuch) Ibrahim Pa
ş
a, the second of the two Grand Vezirs of that name under Süleyman the Magnificent. The mosque has a fine porch with five domed bays and a portal surmounted by an elaborate stalactited baldachino. In form it is an octagon inscribed in a rectangle with galleries on each side; it has no columns but in the angles of the octagon, pretty pendentives in the form of shells support the dome. The marble mimber and sultan’s loge are of admirable workmanship, as are the panels of the doors, inlaid with ivory. Over the mihrab are tiles with inscriptions; these must be a subsequent addition, for they appear to be from the very latest Iznik period or even perhaps from the eighteenth-century potteries of Tekfur Saray. In the mosque garden is the attractive open türbe of the founder with a marble sarcophagus. The pious foundation, whose date is given in inscriptions over the garden gates, originally included a mektep and a hamam, but these have perished.

S
İ
L
İ
VR
İ
KAPISI TO MEVLEV
İ
HANE KAPISI

Returning to the Silivri Gate we proceed along the walls, which are here not as well preserved as in the previous sections. Less than midway along there is a curious jog, or indentation, in the wall known as the Sigma from its resemblance to the uncial form of that letter – like the letter C. Just beside the Sigma is the Third Military Gate, now walled up. Over this little gate there once stood a statue of the Emperor Theodosius II, builder of these walls; it did not disappear until the fourteenth century.

Mevlevihane Kap
ı
s
ı
takes its name from the tekke of Mevlevi dervishes which once stood outside the gate. This tekke was founded in the sixteenth century by Merkez Efendi, the son-in-law of the Sümbül Efendi whose türbe we have seen in the courtyard of Koca Mustafa Pa
ş
a Camii. In Byzantium this entryway was called the Gate of Rhegium, or sometimes the Gate of the Reds, after one of the four factions of the Hippodrome. On the south corbel of the outer gate is the inscription which we have already mentioned, recording the construction of the walls by Theodosius and the Prefect Constantine. There is also an inscription on the lintel of the outer gate which reads in part: “This tower of the Theodosian wall was restored under Justin and Sophia, our most pious sovereigns, and by Narses, the most glorius Spatharius and Sacellarius...” The emperor referred to here is Justin II, nephew and successor of Justinian the Great, who ruled from 565 till 578. The strain of his imperial duties must have been too much for poor Justin, for he ended his days in total madness, being pulled through the halls of the Great Palace in a toy cart. Narses, who succeeded Belisarius as commander of Justinian’s army conquered Totila, King of the Goths, and so saved for a time the Western Empire. Narses later became the Byzantine ruler of Italy, the last before the peninsula fell to the Lombards. He was perhaps the greatest of all the eunuchs who served Byzantium.

MEVLEV
İ
HANE KAPISI TO TOPKAPI

The line of walls extending from Mevlevihane Kap
ı
s
ı
to Topkap
ı
, the next public gate, forms the centre of the long arc of walls between the Marmara and the Golden Horn. On the seventh tower along, where the walls extend farthest into Thrace, there is this inscription: “Oh Christ, God, preserve thy city undisturbed and free from war. Conquer the wrath of our enemies.”

Before reaching Topkap
ı
we come to the Fourth Military Gate, now walled up, and then to the wide new breach in the walls made for the passage of Millet Caddesi. If we turn into Millet Caddesi and walk about 300 metres we come on the right to a vast bus depot. Just inside the gate of the depot there is a tiny Byzantine building known by its Turkish name, Manastir Mescidi. Its Byzantine name and its history are unknown; various identifications have been proposed, none of them with any conviction or probability. It is of the very simplest form: a long rectangular chamber ending at the east with the usual three projecting apses and preceded at the west by a small narthex with two columns. It is most probably to be dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth century.

Opposite this on the north side of Millet Caddesi is an equally insignificant little mosque called Kürekçiba
ş
ı
Camii, founded by one Ahmet Bey in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent. It is rectangular in form and with a wooden roof. It once had a fine porch of which only the columns now remain; they are Byzantine with crosses on the shaft and interesting Byzantine capitals.

We now stroll up the side street, Topkap
ı
Caddesi, past this little mosque, and at the end of it on the left we find still another but even older mosque. This is Beyazit A
ğ
a Camii and dates from the age of Fatih. It is of the same type as Kürekçiba
ş
ı
Camii, that is, rectangular with a wooden roof, and appears to be built on top of an ancient cistern. Like the other buildings we have seen on this little detour, this is worth only a passing glance.