Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
it perhaps the most popular market in the city. In the domed rooms
above the arched entrance there is a very picturesque and excellent
restaurant called Pandelis, or the Mısır Lokantası, which serves both
Turkish and western dishes.
The mausoleum, or türbe, of the Yeni Cami külliyesi is the
handsome building at the eastern end of the garden of the Egyptian
Bazaar. Here are buried the foundress of Yeni Cami, Turhan Hadice,
her son, Mehmet IV, and several later sultans, Mustafa II, Ahmet
III, Mahmut I, Osman III and Murat V, along with countless royal
princes and princesses. The small building to the west of the türbe is a
kütüphane, or library, which was built by Turhan Hadice's grandson,
Ahmet III, who ruled from 1703 till 1730. Ahmet III was known as
the Tulip King, and the period of his reign came to be called the Lale
Devri, the Age of Tulips, one of the most charming and delightful
eras in the history of old Stamboul. It is entirely fitting that the tomb
of the Tulip King should look out on a garden which is now the
principal flower-market of the city.
Directly opposite the türbe, at the corner of the wall enclosing
the garden of the mosque, is a tiny polygonal building with a
quaintly-shaped dome. This was the muvakkithane, or the house and
workroom of the müneccim, the mosque astronomer. It was the duty
of the müneccim to regulate the times for the five occasions of daily
prayer and to announce the exact times of sunrise and sunset during
the holy month of Ramazan, beginning and ending the daily fast. It
was also his duty to determine the date for the beginning of a lunar
month by observing the first appearance of the sickle moon in the
western sky just after sunset. The müneccim, like most astronomers
of that period, also doubled as an astrologer, and the most able of
them were often asked to cast the horoscopes of the Sultan and his
vezirs. In more recent times the müneccim often served as the watch
repairman for the people in the local neighbourhood.
At the next corner, on the same side of the street as the türbe,
is the sebil of the Yeni Cami külliyesi. The sebil is an enclosed
fountain which was used to distribute water free to thirsty passersby.
Sebil means literally “way” or “path”, and to construct a sebil was
to build a path for oneself to paradise. There are some 80 sebils still
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