Topkap Saray - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 75

are some beautiful ancient Kurans; the solid gold covering for the
Hacer-i Esved, the stone which fell from heaven and is built into
the Kaaba at Mecca; also water-gutters from Mecca of chased and
moulded silver-gilt, and other precious objects. Returning to the
room with the fountain, we pass into another chamber where are
preserved the more personal relics of the Prophet: hairs from his
beard, one of his teeth, his footprint, his seal, and so on. Through a
grilled door in this room one looks into (one cannot enter) the room
where the Holy Mantle itself is preserved in a golden cofer under
a magnificent golden baldachino, and in another cofer is the Holy
Standard, unfurled at times when a holy war was declared against
the infidel. This room has the most superb tiles of the greatest Iznik
period, but has been somewhat marred by the heavy rococo fireplace
added by Mahmut II.
Leaving the room by the door opposite that by which we entered,
we find ourselves in the open L-shaped Portico of Columns. This
portico surrounds two sides of the Pavilion of the Mantle and opens
onto a marble terrace bordering a pool with a fountain; at one end is
the Rivan Köşkü, at the other the Circumcision Room. This is one of
the most charming parts of the Palace and commands excellent views
of Pera and the Golden Horn. It was here that Thomas Dallam set up
the famous mechanical organ which Queen Elizabeth I had sent as
a gift to Sultan Mehmet III. The Rivan Köşkü at the east end of the
portico was built in 1636 by Murat IV to commemorate his capture
of Rivan, or Arivan, in Persia. It is a cruciform room entirely revetted
with Iznik tiles dating from just after the greatest period but still
beautiful; the outside has a polychrome revetment of marble. At the
other end of the portico is the Circumcision Room (Sünnet Odası)
built by the mad Sultan Ibrahim in 1641; it is entirely sheathed inside
and out in tiles. They are rather a puzzle, for they date from several
diferent periods from the greatest Iznik style in cuerda seca technique
through the great period in the second half of the sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries; few if any belong to the time of Ibrahim
himself; as it is they form a sort of museum of Turkish tiles of the best
periods. The marble terrace with the pool is the meeting place of the
Third and Fourth Courts.