Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
women were more sequestered than they are now, the hamam was the
one place where they could meet and exchange news and gossip. Even
in modern Istanbul the weekly visit to the hamam is often the high
point of feminine social life among the lower classes. And we are told
by our lady friends that the women of Stamboul still sing and dance
for one another in the hararet - another old Osmanlı custom.
BEŞİR AĞA CAMİİ
Leaving the Cağaloğlu Hamamı, presumably cleansed and purified,
we continue on along Hilaliahmer Caddesi for another 100 metres
and then turn left on Alay Köşkü Caddesi. About 100 metres along
we come on our left to a small mosque with an elegant sebil at the
street corner. This mosque and its külliye were built in 1745 by Beşir
Ağa, Chief of the Black Eunuchs in the reign of Sultan Mahmut I.
In addition to the mosque and sebil, the külliye of Beşir Ağa includes
a library, a medrese and a tekke, or dervish monastery. The tekke is
no longer occupied by dervishes, of course, since their various orders
were banned in the early years of the Republic.
THE SUBLIME PORTE
A block beyond the mosque we come to Alemdar Caddesi, the avenue
which skirts the outer wall of Topkapı Sarayı. Just to the left at the
intersection we see a large ornamental gateway with a projecting roof in
the rococo style. This is the famous Sublime Porte, which in former days
led to the palace and offices of the Grand Vezir, where from the middle
of the seventeenth century onwards most of the business of the Ottoman
Empire was transacted. Hence it came to stand for the Ottoman
government itself, and ambassadors were accredited to the Sublime Porte
rather than to Turkey, just as to this day ambassadors to England are
accredited to the Court of St. James. The present gateway, in which it is
hard to discover anything of the sublime, was built about 1843 and
now leads to the various buildings of the Vilayet, the government of
the Province of Istanbul. The only structure of any interest within
the precinct stands in a corner to the right of the gateway. This is the
dershane, or lecture-hall of an ancient medrese; dated 1565, it is a
pretty little building in the classical style of that period.
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