Soğukçeşme Street

Soğukçeşme Sokaği ('Street of the Cold Fountain') is a lovely cobblestoned street squeezed in between the Hagia Sophia and the wall of Gülhane Park, part of the Topkapı Palace grounds. Its late 19th century wooden townhouses were restored or rebuilt in the 1980s; most of them are now run as expensive hostels. One house contains a library full of books about Istanbul.

An Ottoman water tap.

There are an art gallery and some fancy cafes, towards the end of the street.

Men carrying large trays of things through crowds are a common sight in Istanbul, but it was not crowded today.

Looking back up the street from the end:

Street art outside an art gallery:

It was the middle of a weekday in the off-season, so this cat had the cafe to itself.

A stream in shady Gülhane Park:

Gülhane Park is very popular with couples, young families, and tourists. Girls in hijab and their boyfriends are often seen kissing among the trees - maybe they think people can't see them, or they just don't care if anyone does, I don't know which.

There are birdhouses way, way up in the trees. I don't know what sort of birds they house, but they look tropical. They were too high up to get a good picture.

Begonias planted at the feet of the trees.

Masjid Sultan Ahmed

I visited Sultan Ahmed Masjid for the second time a little while ago; it's one of my favourites. People frequently advise me that women's prayers are better at home, and it is difficult for me to pray in public, so I should just stay home. I agree with them, but I love praying in masjids, and I would go nuts if I stayed home all the time.

Built by Sultan Ahmed I, who became sultan at the age of 13, and began work on the masjid in 1609 at the age of 19. He was a devout Muslim who decided not to participate in the Ottoman tradition of fratricide to secure his throne, and sent his brother Mustafa to live with their grandmother after becoming sultan. The masjid was officially opened in 1617, but was not quite completed when Ahmed I died the same year of typhus, at the age of 27. He was interred in a mausoleum outside the masjid, and his brother and successor Mustafa I signed the final accounts for the completion of the masjid.

(An image of the masjid taken prior to 1895).



I took this photo from the upper story of a museum of Islamic art across the square from the masjid. It's so big that it's hard to photograph the whole thing except from a distance. The masjid has the capacity to hold 10,000 worshippers, it is BIG.



This one was taken from across the square, outside the Hagia Sophia.



The gardens are lovely; I took these photos on my last visit, in the spring. I have spent enough time in Istanbul that I don't photograph absolutely everything anymore.






Here are two of the entrances. There is a very heavy green flap over the door, you lift a corner of it to enter.



Two of the huge old doors.


Some views of the courtyard. The little gazebo-like building in the middle is the men's wudu station; they are usually much larger and more ornate at the big Ottoman masjids.





Some of the beautifully painted ceilings in the courtyard.




And, finally, the interior of the masjid, lined with 20,000 blue tiles handmade at Iznik, patterned with flowers, fruit, and cypress trees. Sultan Ahmed I decreed a fixed price to be paid for the tiles, but the price of tiles necessarily increased over time, so their quality decreased over the eight years it took to build the masjid.


The interior is dimly lit by 260 stained glass windows. The original glass is gone, but they are still very beautiful. The original lamps are gone as well, mostly to museums.




Notable for its six minarets (most masjids have one, two, or four), I have heard tour guides telling an apocryphal story that people were scandalized when Sultan Ahmed built the masjid, because the only masjid at the time to have six minarets was the Masjid Al-Haraam in Mecca. Supposedly, the sultan sent a crew to the Masjid Al-Haraam to build a seventh minaret and solve the problem. However, the seventh minaret on the Masjid Al-Haraam was added more than a century before the Masjid Sultan Ahmet was even thought of.

As we were leaving the masjid after prayers, a little old lady walk toward me, filming me with a digital video camera. Her friend, who barely came up to my shoulder, hugged me and spoke to me in what turned out to be Chechnyan, filming the whole time.  I think she thought I was Arab. This happens a lot at tourist sites, and I don’t mind. I appreciate if they ask before photographing me, but most people don’t.

On the way out of the masjid:

Eyüp Sultan a second time

On the last night of Ramadan, we went to Eyup Sultan masjid (this is the second time I’ve been there). It reputedly holds the tomb of one of the Sahabah, and a footprint of the Prophet (salallahu alayhe wa sallam). It certainly contains the tombs and graves of many Ottoman emperors and officials.

Eyup Sultan is always busy, but on that night the courtyard, the paved square outside the gates, and the nearby streets were thronged with people, milling about and jockeying for spots big enough to lay down mats.

My host’s large family somehow scored a spot inside the courtyard near the relics, and we ate pizza and orange drink after the Maghrib athan and then prayed inside.

It is not unusual to see trees like these in masjids and historic sites in Istanbul, often over 500 years old.

People line up to see the tomb of the Sahabi (radiallahu anhu) and the footprint of the Prophet Muhammad (salallahu alayhe wa sallam).

After praying Maghrib, the whole family hiked up a cobblestoned path up the side of a very large hill next to the masjid, overlooking the Golden Horn. From a distance, this hill looks like a huge jumble of white blocks and trees – it is covered with tightly packed marble tombs dating from Ottoman times to the present, with trees planted among them here and there, and threaded with tiny footpaths trodden by all the people who visit the tombs. It was very dark, and all the surfaces were covered with worm-like centipedes as big as my fingers. It was a little creepy.

Up near the top of the hill was a brightly lit cafe, where people sat at little tables next to the tombs, smoking and drinking sweet tea. Cable cars ran up the side of the hill, and the passengers took an elevator up to a cobbled viewpoint overlooking the cemetery, the Bosphorus, and the Asian side of Istanbul across the water. The city and the two bridges between the continents were brightly lit and very beautiful. People took turns standing on a stool to look through a telescope at the city, and had a good laugh when my turn came and I just stood on the ground below the stool – at 5’5 I'm taller than a lot of people here.



Up at the top of the hill was a small masjid, a tea shop, and an ancient hand-pumped well purported to be ‘like Zamzam,’ having healing powers. People were lining up to pump water and drink it out of a tin cup on a chain, but I didn't drink because I didn't want to risk getting sick.

My we sat around outside the masjid drinking tea and well-water, and then all walked back down through the cemetery.

There are some gorgeous photos of people in the masjıd courtyard here, and some interesting epitaphs from tombstones here (I don't understand Turkish well enough to translate them).

More from Eyup Sultan

An Ottoman-style military band plays in front of Eyup Sultan Masjid on Friday mornings before prayers.

Waiting in line to see what is supposed to be a footprint of the Prophet Mohammed (salallahu alayhe wa sallam) pressed into a polished stone, and the supposed tomb of the companion of the Prophet, Khalid ibn Zayd (radiallahu anhu). He died so long ago, it’s hard to say exactly where his grave actually lies. We saw another reputed footprint of the Prophet at Topkepi Palace, also in Istanbul.

You can see some of the famous Ottoman ceramic tiles on the walls, and Rukiye telling me to hurry up and quit taking pictures of everything. The Thuhr athan had been called, and we thought we were going to pray in the masjid, but we had to wait for the men to finish.

We wandered around looking at tombs for quite a while, and then wandered around the markets near the masjid, and had a look at the beautifully restored old row houses nearby. Some of the women were standing in a circle praying around a deep spring or well of some sort, flush with the paving stones outside a tomb.

By this point we had been waiting for several hours, and Thuhr prayer was almost over. The masjid and the courtyards around it were still packed with men praying on straw mats.

Here we are waiting outside a tomb, just down the path from the men praying. I admit I look a little freaky in that outfit, and my niqab was misbehaving, but that lady on the left blatantly stared at me all afternoon. You would think the novelty would wear off after a few hours.

I voted to find a private spot and pray by ourselves, rather than miss the prayer entirely, but I was overruled. It's not appropriate for ladies to pray outside.

Thuhr wasn’t quite over, so I waited, and we eventually made our way into the masjid and up the tiniest spiral staircase I have ever seen (I wish I had a picture of that), to the women’s balcony – except that there were still men sitting around up there, damnit. There was plenty of room downstairs by that point, I really think the men should have moved down so the women could pray in privacy, while there was still time. I have to take my niqab off to pray, and I didn’t want the men sitting around staring at me, so I stood behind a group of women.

The men file back out of the masjid after prayers. That gold and white bay window on the right is the tomb of Khalid ibn Zayd (radiallahu anhu), and just to the left of it, under the red Turkish flag, is the footprint of the Prophet (salallahu alaye wa sallam).