From the Galata Bridge to Haghia Sophia - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 29

THE ALAY KÖŞKÜ
Opposite the Sublime Porte, in an angle of the palace wall, is a large
polygonal gazebo. This is the Alay Köşkü, the Review or Parade
Pavilion, from whose latticed windows the Sultan could observe the
comings and goings at the palace of his Grand Vezir. One sultan,
Crazy Ibrahim, was said to have used it as a vantage point from which
to pick of passing pedestrians with his crossbow. The present kiosk
dates only from 1819, when it was rebuilt by Sultan Mahmut II, but
there had been a Review Pavilion at this point from much earlier
times. From here the Sultan reviewed the great official parades which
took place from time to time. The liveliest and most colourful of
these was the Procession of the Guilds, a kind of peripatetic census of
the trade and commerce of the city which was held every half-century
or so. The last of these processions was held in the year 1769, during
the reign of Sultan Mustafa II.
It might be worthwhile to pause for a few moments at this historic
place to read a description of one of these processions, for it reveals
to us something of what Stamboul life was like three centuries ago.
This account is contained in the Seyahatname , or Book of Travels ,
written in the mid-seventeenth century by Evliya Çelebi, one of the
great characters of old Ottoman Stamboul. Evliya, describing the
Procession of the Guilds which took place in the year 1638, during
the reign of Sultan Murat IV, tells us that it was an assembly “of all
the guilds and professions existing within the jurisdiction of the four
Mollas (Judges) of Constantinople,” and that “the procession began
its march at dawn and continued till sunset... on account of which
all trade and work in Constantinople was disrupted for a period of
three days. During this time the riot and confusion filled the town to
a degree which is not to be expressed by language, and which I, poor
Evliya, only dared to describe.”
Evliya tells us that the procession was distributed into 57 sections
and consisted of 1,001 guilds. Representatives of each of these guilds
paraded in their characteristic costumes or uniforms, exhibiting on
floats their various enterprises, trying to outdo one another in amusing
or amazing the crowd. The liveliest of the displays would seem to
have been that of the Captains of the White Sea (the Mediterranean),