Istanbul History

Augier Ghislain de Busbeck (Busbeke). who came to Istanbul an an ambassador and lived in the ambassador's residence opposite çemberlita~ (now the DarU~afaka block) between 1555 and 1562 states, in a description of Istanbul in a book of travels that he wrote in the form of a letter: "It is as if Nature has created this place to be the world's capital." "It is impossible to conceive a more beautiful. better laid out city," he goes on to say, but he complains about the narrowness of its streets and the densely-packed character of its houses, saying without hesitation that they are "an obstacle to a good view of any kind". A writer who stayed in Istanbul for three months in 1573 had this to say about the view of the city he saw from the high ground of Galata: "When I behold all this beauty, the extraordinary quality of the hills leaning against the gentle green slopes of the city, it cast such a spell on me that I felt an astonishment amounting to an assumption that I had arrived in a new paradise." This young French aristocrat goes on to say that theTurks regarded flowers "with the love accorded to a sacred object" and states that in Istanbul "there are so many gardens and cypress trees that when viewed from afar Istanbul appears to consist of a number of small buildings within a forest . No large palaces can be discerned and it is only the minarets that are outside the framework of each group of buildings. "The well-arranged and beautiful

shops of this prosperous city, which was adorned with more than 300 mosques of magnificent construction, more than 100 public baths, hospitals and caravansarays are also lavishly praised by the same traveller. In the summer of the same year the German priest Stephan Gerlach visited the city. He stated that he literally drank in' the view of the city that confronted him, adding that he considered no-one else capable of experiencing its beauty so strongly. Another German, Michael Heberer. who was a prisoner in Istanbul from 1585-87, remarked that apart from the public buildings and mansions of the pa~as, the houses were small and made of wood and the streets rather narrow.

It was not possible for these Christian travellers, who came from various countries in Europe, to be able to see absolutely everything in an environment which was foreign to them.. Some Muslim travellers who arrived in Istanbul in the same year provide more useful information in this repsect; they include El-Gazzi who arrived from Cairo in 1530, Kudbüddin Mekki (from Mecca), who saw Istanbul in 1536 and finally Ebul Hasan All bin Muhammed, who came as far as the Bosphorus leading an ambassador's delegation from Morocco in 1590. The latter states that the city occupied a magnificent site and was one of the biggest cities in the world, that the Golden Horn was literally swarming with ships and smaller craft, and that all parts of it were inhabited, so much so that there were even houses built on piles over the water along the coast. He then goes on to provide a breakdown of the damage inflicted by a catastrophic fire that broke out on 7 April 1588, stating that 28 mosques and mesjids, 22,000 houses, 15,000 shops and 9 public baths were completely destroyed. After describing this disaster, which was one of a number of famous fires in Istanbul, the Arab ambassador commends the paved streets of the city, emphasises that fruit of all kinds can be found even in winter and ends by saying "Be it in the public libraries or in the secondhand bookshops, there is an astonishing quantity of books to be found. Books from all over the world come here." This last statement points to the fact that the cit was a major cultural centre.

We gather from the book of travels of the Englishman John Sanderson, who arrived in Istanbul in 1594, that a great deal of building was taking place. this traveller, who was ingenuous enough to statethat there were 18,000 mosques and mesjids in the city, goes on to describe Suleyman's water supply system, the magnificent additions to the Topkapi Palace, the organisation of and the rich income derived by the Fatih Mosque, reflecting the powerful impression left by Istanbul on all foreigners in its golden age. In that period Istanbul was such an object of curiosity andinterest for Europeans that to see a picture of the citysufficed for those unable to visit it. In the middle of the I 6thcentury, which was the golden age of the Ottoman empire, a large volume entitled "Cosmographie" was published circa 1544 by a German named Sebastian Münster (he died in 1552).