Istanbul, Turkey, Thursday May 22nd

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What a night! The hostel itself is great and we enjoyed chatting to our room mate from Mexico City but he, and we, had been kept awake for hours by the snoring of the fourth mystery man who arrived at about 1am and departed before we were up for breakfast. Nevertheless we were keen to visit Aya Sofia and the Topkapi Palace so fatigue was brushed away by excitement.

The queues at Aya Sofia were daunting so we headed off to the palace. I liked the thought of going to a palace and certainly the Topkapi fulfilled every possible idea I had of a luxurious and regal lifestyle combined with eastern mystique. We were there for six hours and only left because it was closing time; the palace is a complex series of exhibitions, buildings and grounds. My advice to anyone going there would be to allow a whole day and to take food and drinks for lunch and regular digestion (of information and sights, not food). The following is a bit of an overview, with some items that struck us in particular, and the fact that I would love to go there again in a couple of days probably shows how wonderful and enormous it is.

The palace was built by the Ottomans and was started soon after they took over in 1453. All the Ottoman sultans and characters we have learnt about during our travels in Turkey lived here or visited here. It was like a city within a city, with the Sultan venturing out now and then, particularly to lead armies to extend the empire, but with the women staying within the palace walls. There were three interior courtyards, with guarded gates for each, and rooms leading off all around. Now the courtyards have gardens with lawns and trees, but in the past at least the first one would have been paved for horse traffic. Only the Sultan and his mother were allowed to ride into the second courtyard.

The first court was open to all citizens, and is still free to all as a park during the day. The second courtyard was surrounded by buildings used for running the empire and which now house exhibitions of carriages (impossible to see with the reflections on the glass), ceramics and sweet making equipment. Apparently there had to be a different type of sweet produced every day of the year and I am sure that it was lollies, not rice pudding that they meant. The kitchens were enormous and the cooking equipment large enough to cook people in.

We visited the Sultan’s stables to see an exhibition on the Surre, a kind of tax that was paid to Mecca and Medina, the major Muslim centres. Each year the Agha, who looked after the running of the palace, would gather together treasures such as jewelled Koran covers and gold and silver ceremonial maces, and organise letters and an enormous caravan to convey everything. Many people would be going to perform the Hajj at Mecca and undertake religious duties at Medina, with the Sultan staying at home. The presentation of the Surre items for the Sultan’s approval was a very ritualised ceremony which was described in detail, right down to the sherbert that was to be given to the attendants who carried the letters. If the Agha was to retain his position for another year, he would be congratulated and the captain of the Surre would head off with the caravan. If he was to be sacked, he was wished well on his trip leading the caravan.

The ornate decorations in the Divan Salonu (Imperial Council Chamber) were breathtaking but proved to be only a glimpse of the over the top decorative style adopted throughout any of the rooms that concerned the Sultan, his family or his ministers. The sultan did not attend Council meetings but sat in comfort in the tower of justice and listened to proceedings through a grill into the chamber. After meetings Ministers would be called up to give their accounts, so I hope they realised what the fancy fret work high on the wall really was and didn’t try to give a false impression. It was difficult to be the Vizier and I heard a guide say that many were strangled by Sultans in the line of duty. Even my favourite sultan, Suleyman the Magnificent, the Lawmaker, strangled his vizier, Ibraham Pahsa, who had been his boyhood friend and great supporter, when Roxelana, intriguing for the succession of her own son, convinced him that he was not loyal.

The exhibition of arms in the Inner Treasury showed that even swords, guns and armour were finely decorated. One sword was nearly three metres long and many rifles were gigantic so how they were ever carried and used in the heat of battle is a mystery.. There were displays of items belonging to each sultan, with Suleyman the Magnificent showing some restraint in ornamentation compared to the others.

The Harem was an extra 10 lira to enter but was worth it for the insight into the private life of the Sultan and his family. Decoratively, it increases in ornamentation and colour according to status, with the black eunuchs, who were responsible for the running of the concubines’ area, having small chambers, and the Sultan’s apartment being almost a parody of royal richness.

White eunuchs served the Sultan. The Sultan’s sexual needs were met by concubines and the four wives he was allowed as a Muslim. The Sultan’s mother was very powerful, having a lot of influence in politics and also running the household, concubines and wives. Beautiful and intelligent young girls, usually slaves or prisoners but sometimes girls sold to be slaves by their parents, started on the lowest rungs of the ladder. They were trained and eventually might take the Sultan’s fancy. If they became pregnant they progressed in status as the mother of a Sultan’s child. The first son was not necessarily the heir, so there was a lot of jockeying and skullduggery among the mothers to have their sons favoured. If they became wives they rose in status again. The mother of the heir was powerful, as she would end up as a Sultan’s mother, in charge of everything.

The third courtyard was the Sultan’s domain, where there is an elaborate audience chamber. Ambassadors and such would file past, presenting gifts. We saw divan covers and curtains which were heavy with embroidery featuring thousands of real jewels, with favourites obviously being pearls and emeralds. Other buildings around the courtyard were originally for the Expeditionary Forces, pages, sacred objects and treasury and a library.

Now many contain exhibitions. The display of imperial robes was intriguing because the rich kaftans were long and very wide, with sleeves twice the length of any modern arm. As we left we saw the reproduction of a painting that showed the Sultan with a wide band around his waist and sleeves all rumpled for being pulled up to the right length.

The treasures of the Treasury are displayed in different chambers. The number of jewel encrusted thrones, swords, imperial items and simple things, such as gold water flasks covered in jewels to be used on important occasions, was enormous. Some of the items had been Surre items, but during the 1^st World War Fahreddin Pasha, defender of Medina had the foresight to place a fatwa on the items and had them transferred to Istanbul, rather than be taken by the English..

We marvelled at the golden gazebo that the Sultan sat in to look out to sea, and his kiosk - a room for lounging about in while watching sporting events in the paddocks just beyond the walls. Everywhere was special but, at that late stage of the afternoon, we raced into the sacred relics room. Here we saw hairs from Mohammad’s beard, the arm and skull of John the Baptist and old golden gutters from the Kaaba. Apparently Sultans took on the responsibility to replace the gutters when needed but only considered precious metals to be up to the task. It was a great pity that we didn’t have enough time to read all the information and that we didn’t see the collections of glass or miniatures and portraits at all.

It was only five o’clock but we were tired enough to sit on a wall and rest as we watched all the people passing by. Snippets of language blended into an international linguistic soup and every fashion possible was being worn by someone. Far from being annoyed by other tourists, we were beginning to see them as an interesting aspect of Istanbul which created its own subculture.

At last we had revived enough to walk through the bazaar district to another suburb, where the magnificent Suleymaniye mosque stands. It was designed by the famous architect, Sinan, and is large and impressive on the outside, but unfortunately closed for restoration on most of the inside. We were too late to go into Suleyman the Magnificent’s tomb or that of his wife, Roxelana, but enjoyed the peaceful atmosphere of the rose garden where there were many smaller gravestones. A family of cats lived there and a young girl was coaxing a kitten out of a drain pipe. Another cat strolled proudly past but raced to investigate when sounds of a cat fight could be heard behind the tomb.

The bazaar district extends for a long way and has many stalls. Beyond it there are streets of sellers of the same type of item, with the street of fastenings being the last before we reached the grand gate at the university entrance. I do need a particular colour of button, but nowhere in this sea of zips and studs was there a humble button.

Opposite the university entrance the Beyazit Mosque is also very grand and imposing, and gradually we are putting these land marks together to find our way about. For every area we feel at home in, the next place we venture is unknown, and this was the case as we wandered the back streets seeing a different side of life to the tourist venues. Darkness fell and we had not much idea of where we were to know how to return to the hotel. I had completely lost all sense of direction and lots of things looked familiar but I couldn’t recall in what context I had seen them. Keith was much better and more confident in our ramblings, but we ended up heading to a suburb far away that had the same name as a tourist site near our hotel. Eventually we realised our error and retraced our steps.

There are beggars in Istanbul, usually older women in traditional clothing and headscarves, who are sometimes accompanied by disabled children. In one spot a lawn came down to the pavement, creating a little ledge, upon which was sitting a toddler of less than three years old. She held a margarine container and looked pathetically up at the passing crowd. Some people had stopped to watch her, and to look around to see if there were any supervising adults nearby. No-one seemed to have any connection to her as she held out her container. The other people gave her some food to eat which she stuffed in her mouth quickly. Then, forgetting her duties, she happily did some little half handstands on the grass ledge. Looking around suddenly, she sat down again and resumed her initial pose. Presumably someone had set her to work there and was watching but we could not detect who. Even in Egypt we had not seen a child beggar under about five years old.

Back at the hostel we did some domestic chores and gratefully fell into bed.