The City of Countless Names- Gardens of the Dead

Even in death, religion divides the people of Constantinople. Great Cemeteries surround the city, as small graveyards surround Constantinople’s places of worship. Most provide eternal rest to the dead of a specific religion or ethnicity, Turkish cemeteries for the Turks, Armenian for the Armenians, and Greek for the Greek. In Pera-Galata and the surrounding suburbs, the diversity of a cemetery’s inhabitants increases due to the greater mix of peoples and the growing cityscape.

The Turks of Constantinople do not treat their cemeteries as places of mourning. Instead, they use their cemeteries as a place to escape the bustle of the city, eat a quiet picnic, and smoke a pipe in peace. Children run and play between the graves.  Cows graze near the mausoleums of Ottoman nobles. Pedestrians take short cuts along the winding footpaths. There is too much life, to think about death. For this reason, the cemeteries of Constantinople feel more like gardens or parks, than a place of grief, except during a funeral.

The gravestones in Turkish cemeteries often bear a unique scar. While leafs, pomegranates, and other floral designs decorate the gravestones of Turkish women, sculptures of fezzes or turbans top the men’s gravestones. Those knowledgeable of Turkish culture can read a man’s status and profession by the folds of the turbans and color of the paint on his grave.

Quite a few graves lack these turbans. After the Sultan Mahmud II stopped the mutinous Janissaries in 1826, his followers knocked the turbans off every Janissary gravestone. These broken turbans lie shamefully on the ground near their owner’s graves, unless a European souvenir hunter, or worse, picks them up. Only the gravestones of Janissaries buried in the most rural cemeteries survive intact. 

Although custodians repair and clean some tombs and monuments, most graves remain disheveled and crumbling. Packs of feral dogs sleep in the shade of cypress trees,  columns lean, and statues lay broken. Entire graveyards disappear as city streets grow, their occupants moved to cemeteries in the suburbs. Some graves are so badly disturbed the departed are exposed.

Traditionally, mourners plant a cypress tree at a Turkish grave. While not every funeral follows this custom, some of the cemeteries around Constantinople are practically forests of the tall conic trees. Many cultures associate cypresses with death and life. The Greeks and Romans planted cypress trees in their graveyards too, but it was also a sacred plant to Apollo (A god of healing). The staff of another healing god, Asclepius, is of cypress wood. Some Turks say the odor of a cypress tree cleans poisons vapors and disease out of the air. The cypress is also associated with Hecate (goddess of witchcraft and necromancy), which may be why some believe the trees keep away evil spirits.

Important Cemeteries of Constantinople

Scutari

The British Cemetery (European)

The Karacaahmet Cemetery (Turkish)

Stambul

The Eyub Cemetery (Turkish)

Executioners Cemetery (Turkish)

Edirne Kapu Martyr's Cemetery (Turkish)

Merkezefendi Cemetery (Turkish)

Pera-Galata

The Grand Champs Des Morts (Turkish, Armenian, and European)

The Petit Champ-des-Morts, (Turkish)
Haskeui Sepharad Cemetery (Jewish)

The Orta Kui Jewish Cemetery (Jewish)