Boat Rides around Istanbul

After passing through Turkey my companions and I spent a number of days in Istanbul. Since my last visit, I have read about Byzantium and Byzantine monuments still existing in Istanbul so I visited a number of additional Byzantine sites and revisited many others (I have added many notes to the February 2008 blog entry on this topic). But one of my companions is a photographer in search of the scenic regardless of historic significance and he wasn't especially interested in historic monuments. He prefered to roam far beyond the walled old city that is so full of historic sites that I was content staying there. I found that there is a lot to see beyong the city walls. Much of our roaming involved walks through picturesque neighborhoods and much was by boat.

Our first scenic boat ride was from the mouth of the Golden Horn to a point beyond the old city wall at a historic and religious neighborhood. From there, we hiked through a moslem cemetary to a scenic outlook where there is a cafe and gift shop dedicated to the French author Pierre Loti. I paid the $6 for his first novel and read a little less than the first third before shelfing it for perceived lack of depth. I haven't yet encountered much of the descriptiveness of late 19th century Istanbul which make his works marketable to visiters to the city. But the view is worth the excursion.

The second excursion by boat was up the Bosphorus--much longer and more rewarding.
Along the way, there are a pair of Ottoman Castles that were used by the Ottomans to cut off supplies to the Byzantines during the seige that lead to the ultimate demise of the Byzantine Empire. The final destination is a Byzantine castle that must have played a role in controlling the strategic Bosphorus. We walked up from the village to the castle and from there caught a glimpse of the Black Sea.

I had taken ferries before to get from the European side to the Asian side but it took a friend's fresh prespective to provide me with the different angle on the city I'm becoming quite familiar with.

Konya

I felt like the stars where aligned for us when we arrived in Konya and heard that once a week there was a free whirling dervish ceremony in the order’s cultural center. We had dinner and went in search of the place. The ceremony was certainly less energetic than folk dancing concerts I have witnessed. In fact, it was relaxing enough and my bed time is early enough that if it had gone on much longer I would have probably fallen asleep. But it was interesting and reading the short explanation about it in the guide book (again, afterwards as intellectual preparation wasn’t a theme of this trip) enhanced my appreciation.

The guidebook description of The Mevlevi worship ceremony, or sema:

The dervishes dress in long white robes with full skirts that represent their shrouds. Their voluminous black cloaks symbolize their worldly tombs, their conical felt hats their tombstones.
The ceremony begins when the hafiz, a scholar who has committed the entire Quran to memory, intones a prayer for Mevlana and a verse from the Quran. A kettledrum booms out, followed by the plaintive sound of the ney (reed flute). Then the sheyh (master) bows and leads the dervishes in a circle around the hall. After three circuits, the dervishes drop their black cloaks to symbolize their deliverance from worldly attachments. Then one by one, arms folded on their breasts, they spin out onto the floor as they relinquish the earthly life to be reborn in mystical union with God. By holding their right arms up, they receive the blessings of heaven, which are communicated to earth by holding their left arms turned down. As they whirl, they form a ‘constellation’ of revolving bodies, which itself slowly rotates. They sheyh walks among them to check that each dervish is performing the ritual properly. The dance is repeated over and over again. Finally, the hafiz again chants passages from the Quran, thus sealing the mystical union with God.

The museum surrounding the tomb of the poet Rumi (whose followers created the Dervish society) was another highlight.

The mosque on a small hill in the center of town had remnants of Byzantine buildings in the doorway and reused Byzantine columns in the worship area. However, the more interesting part of the site were two tombs in front of the entrance. These were the tomb of Seljuk rulers including: Alaeddin Keykubat I, Sultan Mesut I, Kilic Arslan, Kilic Arslan IV, Rukneddin Suleyman II, and Giyaseddin Keyhusrev I, II, and III.

We met the master felt maker at his workshop. I didn’t know the first thing about felt so my basic questions led to an explanation of what fur from the sheep is initially harvested and a bit about how the process works. We saw some felt at different stages of the process but mostly admired finished and near finished products. It was clear that he was a provider of felt hats to the dervishes and he explained some of the process of making the hats. He told of how he goes to wool festivals in the U.S.A. and that he will be bringing a couple of yurt to sell during his next trip.

At the end of the day, we got on an overnight train to Istanbul. I had been exposed to a new corner of the world that was foreign enough to be full of surprises.

Urfa Style Dinner Party Anyone?

As we left Mardin, I realized that Tekin’s pattern was to feel hungry and duck into the first restaurant he encountered. It didn’t seem to matter what was on the menu or what the atmosphere was. I guess it was a fast food mentality although the restaurants were certainly not party of any chain. I read through the restaurant section of the tour book for Mardin and noticed the experience we could have had and then searched for restaurants in Urfa which was our next destination. I noticed that there was a restaurant that “occupies a wonderful old Urfa house where you dine on floor cushions in a series of rooms set around a courtyard.” I have vivid memories of eating in such a room in the home of a Druze family in the village of Majd al-Shams in the northern Golan Heights and in a restaurant in Jerusalem and would like to create such a room someday so I recommended to the companions that we go there. I also determined that paying 2 or 3 dollars more for better food would help me as I scout out dishes that I would like to learn for a chapter on Turkish food in the next edition of my next dinner party cookbook.

Finding the restaurant in Urfa required a little of extra effort but the wandering paid off in that it lead us to a CD shop that had traditional Urfa style music CDs for 4 dollars each. I bought two and sensed that the Turkish dinner parties I will throw will be done Urfa style. When we reached the restaurant, we were initially disappointed. Rather than food served nearly instantaneously in the cheap restaurants on the corner, we had to wait for food to be prepared—and this after we found that various menu items were unavailable because the main cook was not there. It may have been because it was well after normal lunch time (two in the afternoon) and he was home taking a nap. But the wait was worth it. The food was excellent and I noted the name of the dishes to later search for the recipes—Bostan and Et Sote. I took some pictures of the rooms with pads around the walls and in a niche in the wall—I imagine stick some pillows and pads in a closet and set up the room for dinner parties and then clear it our for other uses.

Back in Istanbul, it finally sunk in that one of my favorite restaurants here features Urfa’s cuisine. It is even called Halil Ibraham—Halil means friend as Abraham is known in the middle east as the friend of God—I think that’s Biblical. Anyways, Hebron is also called Al-Khalil, which makes sense since it has the Tomb of Machpaleh where Abraham was buried. The restaurant had paintings of scenes from Urfa on the walls. I then noticed that other restaurants in the area mentioned Urfa and Tekin confirmed that this little corner of the Aksaray section of the old city of Istanbul, for some reason, features a concentration of restaurants from Urfa. I returned in search of Et Sote a few more times--once to the Aksaray neighborhood when I had some time alone as well as with the group in restaurants in other sections of the city, including one featuring cuisine from Hatay, which is near Urfa in southern Turkey. There, a sojourner had et sote with mushrooms which I liked even better. If anyone wants to get a taste of it before I refine the recipes and invite you all over, http://www.turkish-cuisine.org/english/ seems to have a good collection of turkish recipes.

Second Oasis: Ihlara Valley

My second oasis was exactly what the doctor ordered. I think the doctor in this case was a psychiatrist. I used to half go crazy on long road trips and then learned that if I take hikes along the way I can manage just fine. So when I planned on a trip across Turkey and scheduled in a number of hikes. Unfortunately, the first couple of these, which were both to have happened around Lake Van, didn’t happen. By the time we left Urfa, I was in serious need of some added variety to the routine.

So I split off from Tekin and David at Belichek and took an overnight bus to Aksaray—a modern city of around 100,000 people on the west end of the Cappadocia region. It was a bit after 4:00 a.m. and I was at the new central bus station and needed to get to the new one. So I started walking the few kilometers figuring that I had plenty of time before the mini-bus would leave from the old central bus station to Ihlara Village. After a minute or two of walking someone pulled over and offered me a ride. My knowing no Turkish eliminated the possibility of a conversation with that man and another who, at the old central bus station, invited me in to a café where I couldn’t explain why I was refusing his offer of coffee or tea. I left the café after a while and happened upon a young man who spoke English and the remainder of the wait passed comfortably. After a bit of grocery shopping the mini-bus to Ihlara Village finally arrived and I was off towards my long awaited first hike in Turkey.

I arrived at the hostel at mid-morning expecting to find numerous tourists sitting around exchanging tips and making arrangements for day trips. Instead, I found the place a ghost town—perhaps all the hikers all hit the trail earlier. I read a bit and took a nap to supplement the negligible amount of sleep I caught on the bus. I awoke again around 10:30 or 11:00 a.m. and decided to get to the valley for some hiking.

I started the hike and determined that I would hike now and catch the featured cave-churches later. I walked and walked and walked along the flat riverside trail. It was scenic but I wasn’t in the mood to take many pictures. This was a break from being a tourist. When I arrived at the Selime Monestary—a point where I felt okay with turning back—I decided to take in the site. Perhaps the cone shaped hills I saw across from a village I walked through piqued my interest. I then headed back towards the valleys entrance at Ihlara Valley. At the end of the hike I looked at a few of the cave churches. The frescoes of the snake church seemed most interesting.

I returned to the hostel to find out that I was the only client of the hostel. I found that out at 10:00 p.m. after having gone to sleep at least an hour before. The manager hadn’t asked for my passport which always happens at hotels and hostels in Turkey—some registration requirement for the police—and his replacement knocked on the door dispite there obviously being no light on inside. I told the stranger that I wasn’t going to give him my passport as he could be any Joe and that I’d deal with it in the morning unless he was willing to bring the manager who I had met before. He accepted my reasoning and waking up the manager evidently wouldn’t have been as pleasant an experience as waking up a guest so he tried another tactic to keep me from sleep—he brought the cook by asking what time I wanted my free breakfast in the morning. I told him whatever I thought was going to get him out of there so I could go back to sleep but he brought the cook by and they insisted that I needed to tell him a time so he knew when the cook had to go to work. I then realized that I was the only one in the hostel and I told the cook that he could take tomorrow off as far as I’m concerned I would eat from the food I already had (I had purchased sheep yogurt, some fruit, and wheat bread in Aksaray) and GOOD NIGHT! I doubted that I had dealt with real hostel employees (the whole conversation was through the window as I refused to open the door) until the next morning.

The next day I read until Tekin and David showed up in the mid-afternoon. They had hiked the valley before arriving at the hostel so we decided to go to the nearby town of Guzilyurt where we walked around town in the evening and then visited some more cave churches the next day. By mid-morning we were on our way back to Aksaray and then off to Konya.

Two Days in the Land Between The Two Rivers

A short trip from Batman and we were at the Tigris River. The next two days would be spent in Turkey’s Mesopotamia (from the Greek meaning "The land between the two rivers"—the area located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers). The first day we visited Hasankayf, Midyat and Mardin.

Hasankayf overlooks the Tigris River. It was apparently avery ancient city and features cave dwellings. There are Ayubbid buildings including a mosque with a stork's nest on top of the minaret (the El Rizk Mosque). The nest has been there long enough to be mentioned in the travel guide book. There was also a mosque and castle atop the hill overlooking the river. The bridge over the Tigris looks to have been quite impressive but the spans between the pillars have collapsed.

We got off the bus in Midyat and walked straight through the small town to a Syriac or Syrian Orthodox Monestary not far out of town (this was not the famed monestary which would have required a 20 minute bus ride and which we didn't make it to). Then we climbed a few stairs of a building that provided a nice view over the city. From there I took various photos of the characteristic Syrian steeples. There are 9 Syrian Orthodox churches in the town.

Mardin has a castle on top of the hill and features a view over the Turkey Syria border. We visited a few monques and madrasas, mostly from the 14th century, from an Seljuk empire—one of the successors to the main Seljuk empire. I stopped at couple of soap shops and bought a bar each of olive oil, pistacio and almond soap. That’s all they had—it seemed Mediterranean. The trip out of town took us along the Syria border. Tekin pointed out the the two countries were clearing a mine field on the border and would allow some folks to grow an organic garden there.

After dark at the end of the first day between the two rivers, we arrived in Urfa. I could tell from the size of the street that we were in a bigger city than where we had been before. The city name is known in history and until very recently as Urfa. The theme for the tourist in Urfa is Abraham as apparently he spent some time in the city. We first went to the citadel overlooking the city and then went to a monument commemorating Abraham's birth (claiming to be his birthplace) and then place spent the remainder of the day visiting mosques and the Urfa museum.

Belichek is on the Euphrates River. We arrived on a bus and I walked over from the bus stop a few minutes before sunset to take some pictures of the river. I was soon on an overnight bus to Aksaray and then to Ihlara Valley where I spent some time reading a chapter about Turkeys dam building in the region. It gave the impression that Turkeys use of the two rivers water would transform the region with irrigation allowing agriculture in the region to flourish not to mention the hydroelectric power. Turkeys use of the water would also inhibit similar development in Syria and Iraq where agriculture is also needed. My time in Mesopotamia and the benefit of my meager Arabic language skills had come to an end.

First Oasis: Batman

FIRST OASIS: BATMAN

After the descent through the Bitlis Pass, we encountered flatlands that were to continue through the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and beyond. Our first stop was the city of Batman. Tekin’s mother and sister live in this modern town and our agenda was rest. I spent much of the time putting captions on photos as I expect my memory would fade and sights would lose meaning if I didn’t get to them quickly.

We arrived at what appears to be the most recent addition to the northern end of the city and spent a day and a half secluded there before my impression of Batman as po-dunk was corrected. It turns out that Batman is quite a large oil industry boom town. Turkey produces very little of its own oil but oil exported from Iraq through Turkey is refined in Batman.

Our time in Batman was also about spending time with a wonderful family and enjoying great food. Tekin’s brother in law is a true Turk. He talked of his hunting adventures and taught us to barbaque. The dinner was incredible—lamb kabab well balanced with eggplants and hot peppers cooked directly on the coals before being peeled.

Nobody in the family speaks a English aside from Tekin but they spoke Arabic so I was able to communicate—I realized in Palestine that a little Arabic goes a long way but I didn’t realize the extent to which this would be the case in certain sections of Turkey. I continued to benefit from this through the next three cities until we left the Mesopotamia region. Unfortunately the 80-some year old aunt didn’t seem to understand that I am a novice Arabic speaker so many times she lost me. When we were able to communicate we mostly talked about family history and I floated the idea of Tekin writing down a short biography of some of his aging relatives’ fascinating life stories. Tekin liked the idea so I’ll have to follow up with him later.

The Highland Country around Lake Van

Tekin and I had talked about the idea of flying to southeastern Turkey and visiting various sites on a long trek back to Istanbul over the past few years. He was born in Mardin and has family nearby in Diyarbakir and Batman, but it is more common for his family to visit Istanbul than for him to go east. He prefers the big city and logs travel to Europe and the United States for academic conferences. By February of this year when I stopped by Istanbul (having visited once before) it was clear that the scheme was going to become reality and my exposure to Turkey would finally extend beyond Istanbul.

David and I flew out of Tel Aviv in the afternoon and crashed at Tekin’s place overnight before getting on an early morning flight to Van—a city on the Lake with the same name. We quickly went from the airport to downtown and found a bus to the other side of the lake. Although the bus ride into the city and walking through the main drag for around 15 minutes provided some impressions, I immediately realized that there would be many places we would miss on what could have easily been a journey of four or more times as long. While still on the east side of the lake road signs and glances at a map helped us realize how close we were to Iran.

After a short bus ride we were on a boat to Akdamar Island. The boat trip to Akdamar Island was extremely short as far as boat trips go but the small island is far from land in terms of a place for a church. I wondered what was the purpose of constructing such a church on an island where few if any people could have ever lived? The church is noted for carvings of Biblical and Christian scenes on its exterior. Scenes depicting Adam and Eve and David and Goliath were easy to identify and conveyed their meaning most clearly to me. There are other Armenian Armenian churches in the area and after abandoning Van without so much as absorbing a site this was a mere token nod to eastern Turkey’s Armenian past. But the interest Tekin, who is a practicing Moslem, and I could find in common led us to focus our attention on the Seljuks and their sites are concentrated on the Lake’s western shore.

Our first stop was the small city of Adilcevaz. This was to be the base camp for a hike of Mt. Suphan. However practicalities, elevation and travel weary energy levels sapped interest among the less avid hikers in the group and we merely hiked up a small hill to the town’s Seljuk castle (the Kef Kalesi). From there we descended to the mosque that was next to our hotel but which we had paid no attention to. Lonely Planet only mentions it as the nice little Ulu Camii, built in the 13th century and still used for daily prayer. However the sign on the building indicated that it was designed by Sinan—the masterful architect for Suleiman the Magnificent whose collossal mosques in Istanbul should be near the top of the A list for those visiting that city.

A half day in the small city of Ahlat (population around 30000 near the south-west corner of Lake Van) was the highlight of our time in the area. Ahlat was a Seljuk city—it features impressive Seljuk tombs and a Seljuk cemetary bridge ruins of a bathhouse and a small scale Seljuk museum with finds from the city. Ahlat was the base of the Seljuk leader Alp Asplin when the Seljuks defeated the Byzantines in 1071 c.e. at the Battle of Manzegirt (unfortunately we missed out on the nearby but remote town of Malazgirt where that battle took place). The Seljuk victory in that battle opened Anatolia to Turkish settlement that eventually led to the destruction of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottomans in 1453. As interesting as the historical significance was the realization that Ahlat’s residents still identify themselves as Seljuks. The townsfolk’s friendliness and helpfulness left a lasting impression.

We spent the second night in Tatvan--a small city of Kurdish folk at the south-west corner of Lake Van. Our hotel was about 50 meters from the waterfront and the views over the water were peaceful. There are no antiquities in this modern city but a sunrise stroll yielded some interesting views of peasant houses and women out gardening.

While encountering the unexpected in Islamic architecture wasn’t so unexpected the area’s cuisine was really a surprise. The uniqueness is probably based on the fact that the small cities around Lake Van are inhabited by highland folk. Not only does Van have an elevation of elevation 1,640 meters / 5,381 feet with mountains around it reaching 4,058 meters / 13,314 feet but the inhabitants originate from various highland cultures including Kurds and Seljuks. Even the region’s former inhabitants the Armenians are highlanders. The agriculture and cuisine reflects the environment and cultural background of these traditionally pastoral peoples. There is a lot of lamb and yogurt but the selection of fruits and vegetables is sparce. I couldn’t even find an orange to maintain my citrus-first-thing-in-the-morning habit.

I decided not to insist on hiking Mt. Nemrut as I had hoped to do and we were off to the valley city of Bitlis. While we saw various types of Seljuk ruins in Ahlat we did not encounter a Seljuk mosque. We did so in Bitlis and it reminded me that my knowledge of Islamic architecture has large holes. The minaret is across a small courtyard from the mosque which I believe is exceptional as the minaret is usually attached to the mosque. Why was it built this way? On the inside of the mosque there was a domed ceiling but from the outside there was no dome but rather a cylinder. Is that the way things were in early Seljuk architecture?

The city of Bitlis is on the east end of the Bitlis Pass which leads from the area of Lake Van at higher than 5,000 foot elevation to around 2,000 or 3,000 at Batman. Historically, it was strategically significant not just for the topography but for its location between empires such as between the Byzantines on the one hand and the Persians then Seljuks on the other. The bus ride was scenic—sort of a long Provo Canyon. I reflected on a few days in an area that was foreign enough to reveal various surprises and raise many new questions. I felt that my two previous visits to Turkey, which were limited to Istanbul, had not shown me the real Turkey. Now, however, I felt that I had really encountered Turkey. Unfortunately, the area is so off the beaten track that I may never return to gain much of an understanding of the region’s fascinating people with simple lives.