The Fifth and Sixth Hills - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 269

the columns!), but the general efect of which is pleasing except for
its glazing. On the interior there is a very pretty - perhaps unique -
triple arcade in two storeys of superposed columns repeated on the
south, west and north sides and supporting galleries; perhaps because
of these arcades the dome seems unusually high. At the back of the
courtyard is a small medrese, or more specifically a dar-ül hadis,
school of tradition. It has been greatly altered and walled in, but it
is again being used for something like its original purpose, a school
for reading the Kuran. All-in-all this little complex is quite charming
with its warm polychrome of brick and stone masonry; it was on the
whole pretty-well restored from near ruin in 1952.
CISTERN OF ASPAR
Returning once again to Manyasizade Caddesi, we continue along
for a few paces and then take the next left into Sultan Selim Caddesi.
As we walk along we now see on our right a great open cistern, the
second of the three ancient Roman reservoirs in the city. This is the
Cistern of Aspar, a Gothic general put to death in the year 471 by
the Emperor Leo I. This is the largest of the Roman reservoirs; it is
square, 152 metres on a side, and was originally ten metres deep.
Some years ago one could still see its original construction in courses
of stone and brick, with shallow arches on its interior surface. Up
until 1985 the cistern was occupied by a very picturesque little farm
village whose house-tops barely reach to the level of the surrounding
streets, but then the houses were demolished to convert the cistern
into a market area. Nevertheless, it is a superb setting for the great
mosque of Sultan Selim I that looms ahead at the far end of the
cistern.
MOSQUE OF SULTAN SELİM I
The mosque of Sultan Selim I rises on a high terrace overlooking
the Golden Horn with an extensive and magnificent view. And the
building itself, with its great shallow dome and its cluster of little
domes on either side, is impressive and worthy of the site. The
courtyard is one of the most charming and vivid in the city, with its
columns of various marbles and granites, the polychrome voussoirs