Topkap Saray - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 69

At the south end of this portico, a door called the Gate of the Dead
(Meyyit Kapısı), because through it were borne the bodies of those
who died in the Saray, leads down to the area of the Privy Stables
on the lower slope of the hill. We come first to the mid-eighteenth-
century mosque of Beşir Ağa. This is chiefly interesting for its curious
minaret corbelled out from a corner of the building; the minaret has
no balcony but, instead, an enclosed space at the top with openings
for the müezzin to make the call to prayer. The Privy Stables (Has
Ahır), which housed only 20 or 30 horses for the use of the Sultan
and his favourite pages, occupied the long building which runs from
end to end of this area. Built by Fatih, it consists of two parts, the
long stables themselves and at the far end two smaller rooms, that
of the Imrahor, or Master of the Horse, and the Raht Hazinesi, or
Harness Treasury, for the bejewelled harnesses and trappings. These
are very pretty rooms, one with a charming eighteenth-century
painted ceiling, the other domed and with a quaint gallery. In both
are now displayed the valuable imperial harnesses, while the long
stable now houses carriages, mostly of the nineteenth century and
not very interesting.
Returning to the Orta Kapi, we now take the right-hand path
towards the kitchens. On the way we notice an enormous fifth- or
sixth-century Byzantine capital, dug up here in the 1960s. If we enter
the kitchen area by the southernmost gate, we find another capital of
the same type, slightly smaller but more interestingly carved. Both
capitals obviously bore statues, but whose statues and why they came
to be buried in the Saray are still unanswered questions.
Beyond the three gates a long, narrow courtyard or open
passageway runs the entire length of the area. The palace kitchens
open of from this on the right; on the left are the storerooms for
food and utensils and rooms for the various categories of cooks, as
well as two mosques. The southern part of the area and rooms on the
left have been much reconstructed in modern times and are used as
museum storehouses and offices. The kitchens consist of a long series
of ten spacious rooms with lofty domes on the Marmara side - a
conspicuous feature of the Istanbul skyline - and equally lofty dome-
like chimneys on the side of the courtyard. The two southernmost