Topkap Saray - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 81

were built, but they must date from the end of the sixteenth century
or the first years of the seventeenth, for their tiles are of the very
greatest period, indeed perhaps the most beautiful anywhere in the
Palace. The first room has a dome magnificently painted on canvas;
the ceiling of the inner room is flat but also superbly painted. And
it has a wonderful brass-gilt fireplace, on each side of which, above,
are two of the most gorgeous tile panels in existence. Beyond the
fireplace the paving stones have been removed to reveal at a depth of
30 cm. or so another pavement and a surface of tiles, also of the great
period but of a totally diferent design and colour from those which
now line the room. This was the level of the antechamber to Murat's
Salon, which was cut in half to provide space for this room. This
chopping up of rooms in order to fit in new ones occurs frequently
in the Harem, and although one would not willingly lack this room
with its wonderful tiles, it does seem wanton to have so badly botched
Sinan's antechamber.
We come out again into the colonnade known as the Council
Place of the Jinns, a name which seems to have no traditional origin -
perhaps the Sultan felt that since the incarcerated princes lived above
it they might be taking council with the Jinns for his overthrow.
The colonnaded way leads to a large open courtyard known as the
Gözdeler Taslığı, the Terrace of the Favourites, which overlooks the
lower gardens of the palace. The apartments of the Sultan's favourites
were in the long suite of rooms on the upper floor of the building to
the rear of the courtyard. These rooms are still undergoing restoration
and are not open to the public. When we first saw them in the early
1960s these apartments looked as if they had been untouched since
their last occupants left when the Harem was officially closed in 1909,
deserted and hung with cobwebs, inhabited with the ghosts of those
who lived there in the past. The windows were shuttered and the
rooms were in almost total darkness; we could see the dull gleam of
an old brass bedstead under a tottering canopy, and discern the forms
of sagging divans draped in rotting cloth. The dust-covered mirror of
an old dressing-table reflected the dark image of a deserted room.
At the far end of the Hall of the Favourites there is a sitting-room
once used by the Sultan when he came to call on his ladies. It has