Ornament of the World

A 12th Century Byzantine writer, away from his beloved Constantinople, wrote in a fit of homesickness, “Oh, land of Byzantium, oh thrice-happy city, eye of the universe, ornament of the world, star shining afar, beacon of this lower world, would that I were within you, enjoying you to the full! Do not part me from your maternal bosom.” The Vikings called it Mikklegarth, the Great City. There's no doubt of its greatness: consider a population of 16 million spreading across the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, one of the Seven Wonders glowing on the hill above the water, and a long history influenced particularly by two of the world's great religions.

Arne and I flew in Tuesday and after checking into our hotel room, a small room on the top floor of a rehabbed older wood building overlooking the Sea of Marmara, we headed uphill to the Sultanahment Mosque, or the Blue Mosque as it's more often known. And we fell like the naivest of tourists right into a trap. As we passed into the inner courtyard before entering the mosque a young man came up to us and began chatting casually. The next thing we knew he was our unofficial tour

Sultanahmet Mosque

guide, professing knowledge of architecture (which we discovered after a few questions to be untrue), and taking our picture in a key location. Then we left the mosque together and once outside the main gate he said, “And now, you come to my rug store!” Getting out of that rug store took a good hour and many variations on the theme of “No, we are not going to buy a rug.”

On Wednesday and Thursday Arne attended the conference of international energy economists, hearing interesting talks, meeting smart people from all over the globe, and giving his own well-received talk. Meanwhile, I explored. In 1979, when I traveled around Europe, it was my intention to get to Istanbul, but I heard too many stories about single female travelers having a hard time of it, so I changed my itinerary. Now, thirty years on, I'm weathered--interpret that how you like--and not easily intimidated. What was intimidating was the heat--well into the 90s with high humidity and no air conditioning in many places. Fortunately water is available wherever you go, and if you're shopping, shopkeepers even hand you a paper towel to sop up your own burst system. And if you're on the right side of the hill, there is even a nice breeze off the water.

Istanbul must be an archaeologist's idea of hell: several thousand years of history buried beneath mosque, church, palace, house, and cobble-stoned street, utterly inaccessible, but calling out to be uncovered. It turned to heaven though, when, in 1912 fire struck an area just downhill from the Blue Mosque and the Haghia Sophia (an area where our hotel was located, as it turns out) revealing some of the remains of a palace Justinian, one of the most famous of the Byzantine Emperors, built in the early 500s. What they eventually found were the remains of a mosaic floor from the main hall of the palace, a floor that covered 2,000 square meters. These remains are now on display in a little museum below the Blue Mosque and beside a pleasant though touristy market. One archaeologist calculated that it would require 80,000,000 tessarae (each about 1/4 inch square) to cover a floor this size. The tiles are pottery, glass, and stone, and show every sort of scene, from bucolic to violent.

Justinian was also responsible for one of the Seven Wonders, the Haghia Sophia, Church of the Holy Wisdom. Built as an orthodox church, it was the patriarchate until 1453 when Constantinople was sacked by the Ottoman Turks and the church was converted to a mosque. Part of the conversion involved plastering over the mosaics that covered the walls, ceilings, and enormous dome, the largest in the world until St. Peter's was built. Ataturk, in the early 20th Century, like a modern-day Solomon, solved the problem of Christians and Muslims clamoring for the right to the holy property, by turning it into a museum. Plaster was removed from many of the mosaics, but additions made to the building by the Muslims were protected. Today the building reveals the beauty of expression and, until the 20th century, the mutual tolerance of the two faiths in Turkey.

Everywhere we went in the old part of Istanbul we were reminded of this long history of peoples from two continents, on a key point of the Silk Road, and of two faiths making a home for themselves. Shortly after arriving we were having a coffee on the rooftop patio of our hotel, looking out at the Sea of Marmara where some 30 tankers were anchored and awaiting berth in the port (the Electronics Road, perhaps?), when muezzins from five different mosques nearby began chanting the azan over loud speakers. Below us a train rumbled by with young Turks hanging out the doors catching a little wind over the tracks.

The Blue Mosque is so named for the luscious tiles, predominantly blue, that are made even today in Iznik, in Asian Turkey. The design of these tiles was inspired originally by the blue and white Delft tiles from Holland. Inside the Harem in the Topkapi Palace, the official palace of the Ottoman sultans that was begun in 1459, the Sultan's inner sanctum is tiled in Delft tiles. The Silk Road has led to another interesting Dutch-Turkish connection. One group of rugs woven by the Anatolian masters are known as Holbein rugs--because one of them was featured in a painting by Hans Holbein, who, I'd like to think, purchased the rug from some itinerant rug merchant who just wouldn't let Hans get back to his painting until he'd spilled the contents of his purse.

We, however, exited the rug seller's empty-handed, though the temptation was indeed great.