Appendices - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 484

centre and a basin below: up until recent years scores of these were
still in use to provide much of the population of the city with all the
water they received.
Of the secular buildings the most important are the inn or hostel,
the Turkish bath and the library. The hostel was usually called han if
in a city, kervansaray if on the great trade routes; while tabhane was
a hostel originally designed for travelling dervishes. Like so many
other buildings it was built round one or more courtyards but was
in two or three storeys, the lower one being used for animals and
the storage of merchandise (since most travellers were merchants
journeying in caravans), the upper ones as guest rooms (see the plan
of Valide Hanı). The bath or hamam, a rather elaborate building, is
fully described, including a plan, in connection with the Cağaloğlu
Hamamı. The library (kütüphane) was often a simple domed room
with bookcases in the centre; like the mektep it was sometimes built
above the monumental gateway of a mosque enclosure, but it was
sometimes independent and more elaborate (see the description of
the Atif Efendi library).
Except for Topkapı Sarayı and the unique palace of Ibrahim Paşa,
all other palaces until the nineteenth century, however grand, were
built almost entirely of wood and have long since perished in the
many fires that have ravaged the city. For the seaside mansions (yalı)
along the Bosphorus, a few of which still survive, see the description
of the Kıbrıslı Yalı.
In Turkish architecture there are no “orders” as these are
understood in the West, and how this did infuriate the classically
minded travellers in the old days: it was chiefly on this ground that
as late as the eighteenth century they kept making such remarks as
“the Turks know nothing of architecture,” even though they often
greatly admired the building they were describing! Nevertheless
in the great period there were two recognized types of capital: the
stalactite and the lozenge . The stalactite is an elaborate geometrical
structure chiefly of triangles and hexagons built up so that it resembles
a stalactite formation or a honeycomb. It is directly derived from
Selçuk architecture and is used not only for capitals but often for
portal canopies, cornices, and even pendentives and squinches. The