Happy Anniversary and City of Countless Names- Findikli p1

Happy Anniversary Everyone! We’ve been examining Victorian history for its use in Role-playing Games for 4 whole years now! Thank you so much for reading this blog. Every view of Skullduggery in the Smoke means a great deal to me. I would not be able to do this without you reading every week.

It’s been a pretty momentous year full of more ambitious projects than ever before. We started off with a new scenario “Six Stolen Ferns”, then we experimented with turning World War II into a fantasy setting in “Their Finest Hour”, and finally we began the mega project “City of Countless Names” which I am still writing. This blog has become so much more than I thought possible. Thanks so much for your encouragement, and your support.

Findikli (Fundukli, FoondookLee, Fonduklee, Fundoukli, Fynykly, Argyroupolis)

The streets of Tophane run through the village of Findikli, causing many travelers to assume to the quarter a quiet continuation of the larger industrial center. Findikli slopes away from the shore up a hill to the edge of the great cosmopolitan cemetery known as the Grand Champs des Morts. Two and three story shops tightly stacked next to each other line the streets shaded by tall trees. On the ground floor, coffeehouses, tradesmen’s offices, and fruit shops sit open for business, while the floors above serve as middle-class households. Alleys and small docks for fishing ships allow glimpses of the Bosporus to shine into the busy street. Smells of Turkish food and drink such as roasting kebabs or barrels of boza, a beer made of fermented wheat, mingle in the air between street vendors.

Almost all of Findikli’s inhabitants are Nithamiyeen, making it the principal Turkish quarter in the Galata-Pera metropolis. Minarets tower up from mosques and dervishes perform their rites in their Tekkahs, but Findikli contains no Aluminat churches. Eastern Aluminat tradition teaches Xanthos, one of the ‘Eight Voices’ revered by the church, landed here back when it was a fishing village called Argyroupolis outside ancient Byzantium. During his ministry in the village, he founded the first Greek Aluminat church. When the conquering Ottomans arrived they evicted the Greeks from Fundikli’s pleasant shore.

Famous Locations:

The Grand Champs des Morts

Typical of Turkish graveyards, the Grand Champs des Morts seems more like a public park than a necropolis. It sits on 100 acres of lovely green hills overlooking the village of Findukli and the Bosporus to the south. Children run around the thick woods of cypress, acacia, and sycamore trees as their parents relax seated among of the tombstones. Unlike most of the Cemeteries of Constantinople, its deceased residents belong to both the Nithamiyeen and Aluminat faiths. Thousands of white tombstones belonging to every faith except Yehudism cover the cemetery, some crumbled and fallen with age and others freshly inscribed for the recently buried.

In the northwest side, closest to Pera, rest the Roman, Greek, and Armenian Aluminat dead. Engravings in Latin, French, English, and symbols denoting vocations mark the graves. Further south and east on the slope of the hill close to Findikli, stone turbans and bright blue paint identify Turkish graves. Turkish and European thaumaturgists and holy men theorize on the magical consequences caused by so many different burial practices performed on so many burials, for so many years, on such a large stretch of land. Most agree on one thing: as the urban landscape of Pera-Galata creeps closer to the Grand Champs des Morts the potential for necromantic disaster grows.

City of Countless Names- Beshiktash p2

Famous Locations of Beshiktash: 

Ciragan Palace

The simplest  Ottoman palaces to find are Dolmabagtche and Ciragan, both built right on the embankment of the Bosporus. During his short reign in the early 1600s, Sultan Murad IV built Ciragan on the stone foundation covering the bay, and for the next 100 years, sultans entertained guests by torchlight on its grounds. It’s from these flame-lit festivals the palace received its name. Ciragan means “light” in Persian, although some translate it as “a special light”. From 1834 to 1843, Sultan Mahmud rebuilt Ciragan to its current condition: a classically-styled stone palace adorned with 40 pillars around its edifice.  Despite its long history of festivals and the renovations of his father, Sultan Abdulmejid plans to demolish the palace complex next year to clear the foundation for a new building. Until then, the Sultan resides in the palace to keep an eye on the nearby construction of Dolmabagtche palace.

Yildiz Park

Behind Ciragan palace, lovely coniferous woodlands spread over about 25 acres of hills and valleys. The imperial family ownes the grounds since the reign of Sultan Ahmed. They use the forests for hunting, holidays, and to lose their memory of city life in the quiet landscape. In the late 1700s, Sultan Selim III built a beautiful villa on the western edge of the forest for his mother Mihrişah. He named the villa “Yildiz”, meaning “star”. Over time the name extended past the villa’s garden to cover all the wood.

Ihlamur Palace

On the slope of Yildiz hill about a mile north of the Bosporus is Sultan Abdulmejid’s summer home, the newly rebuilt Ihlamur palace. The Sultan and his most honored guests holiday in this tranquil retreat made of two ornate mansions. Although both were built in a lavishly baroque style, Merasim Kosk, where the sultan stays, is the larger and more luxurious mansion, while his guests and visiting family stay in Maiyet Kiosk the simpler and plainer of the two. Stone walls keep out undesirables from the well-maintained pleasure gardens and protect the roaming peacocks from predators. The sultan himself oversaw the replanting of the thick wood of sweet-smelling linden trees surrounding Ihlamur.

Dolmabagtche Palace

West of Ciragan on the shore of the Bosporus sits the nearly-finished Dolmabagtche palace. For the past eight years, the Sultan Abdulmejid visited almost every day to check on the progress of the construction. Unlike the surrounding summer palaces in Beshiktash, Abdulmejid intends Dolmabagtche to be his home, replacing the medieval Topkapi palace as his domicile. The terrific expense of finishing and furnishing the palace during wartime worries the Turkish, English, and French diplomats trying to keep Turkey’s economy running, not to mention the revolutionaries keen to bring economic change.

Sultan Abdulmejid intends his palace to impresses any visitor. With 285 rooms, Dolmabagtche is the largest palace in Constantinople. Its neoclassical marble exterior shows obvious European influence. The excessively lavish interior is opulent to the point of being gaudy. Many of the finished rooms have furnishings from England and France, and gas lamps hang on the interiors walls waiting to be connected. Despite the European styling, Dolmabagtche holds on to the fundamentals of Ottoman palace construction. The Southern Wing holds the quarters for men, the Northern Wing houses the harem, and the grand Ceremonial Hall in the center separates the two.

High walls surround the palace’s luxuriously foliaged grounds. The head gardener, a Bavarian named Chistian Sester, scoured the world for rare trees and statuary to decorate the garden. As the Sultans’ aviary-keeper, Mr. Sester also bought the elaborate cages housing the palace’s exotic birds.

Every day, crowds of blind and lame woman gather along the road to Dolmabagtche and wait for the Sultan to arrive. As he passes, one of his officials hands out silver (and occasionally gold) coins to the beggar women. Only women are allowed to beg here for the sake of the Sultan’s safety.

City of Countless Names- Beshiktash p1

Beshiktash (also called Beşiktaş Bestas, Diplokiyonion, Beshicktash, or Beshik-tash)

As the Bosporus’ northern shore winds eastward away from the urban industrial areas of Galata and Tophane, the land’s natural beauty grows, with green hills dotted with cypresses, thick woods, and the well-tended gardens of Beshiktash. Industrial docks, warehouses, and customs offices fade into private caique quays and waterside Ottoman palaces.  Since the 1600s, sultans of the Ottoman Empire build their fantastic summer homes along the northern shore far from the worries and noise of Stambul. Between the waterfront palaces of Dolmabagtche and Ciragan a village of middle class tradesmen performs all the daily labor necessary to maintain the luxury of palace life. 

After conquering Constantinople, the victorious Ottoman Navy protected the villages far from the city’s walls from raids by the Black Sea pirates by docking their navy in the now long-vanished bay of Beshiktash.  The legendary Ottoman admiral Barbarossa set up five sturdy columns from which he could moor his ships, giving the area around the bay its old name “Bestas” meaning “five pillars”. As Ottoman territory expanded, the threat of attacks to these villages lessened, and the navy moved from these docks to the many harbors of the Golden Horn. Their sailors and officers too moved on to new homes and barracks far from Bestas, depleting the population of the waterfront village.

The shore’s idyllic countryside and nearby woods full of wild game attracted the sporting blood of the Ottoman monarchy, and soon filled with hunting lodges, villas, and summer homes. In the 1600s Sultan Osman II ordered all of his ships to load up with stone and fill the bay, extending the shore to the Bosporus forming the 1, 200 foot patch of land called Dolmabagtche, meaning “filled in garden”. This unusual alteration the coast gives the region its current name “Beshiktash” meaning “cradle stone”.  Some ancient legends tell a different story explaining the quarter’s name. While it was still wilderness, a monk named Yashka built a convent in Beshiktash and placed within the stone upon which one of the Eight Voices of the Aluminat faith was washed after his birth, giving the convent and later the whole area the name “cradle stone”. The convent is long gone, but some say the stone is hidden in the Hagia Sofia mosque.

Traditionally, each Sultan builds a new pleasure palace for himself rather than inhabit an old one, making Beshiktash’s shore a wonder of opulent buildings from bygone days and a maze of lush gardens. Members of the Sultan’s extended family (such as siblings and offspring), along with viziers, and other high ranking pashas live in most of the older palaces, but a few very old villas sit unused. Although beggars line the streets outside the palatial estates hoping to find pity from a wealthy pasha, an outsider cannot pass their gates without an invitation, a firman, or the excuse of official business. Anyone may travel on the paths winding through the flowering and wooded hills and valleys of Beshiktash, but entrance to palace gardens is prohibited.

Carriages and caiques travel incessantly between Pera and Beshiktash, bearing diplomats and military commanders belonging to the allied countries. The tranquil landscape and the security of a well-guarded country estate provide the perfect setting for balls, state dinners, and other official functions of the highest level of government.  

Back in the ancient days of Byzantium, Jason stopped in Beshiktash after his quest for the Golden Fleece and unrolled the much sought fleece out on the ground. It may only be coincidence such a powerful symbol of wealth and kingship once touched the ground where now the Sultans build their lavish summer homes.

City of Countless Names- A Map of Pera-Galata

Christmas is over, and the New Year finds us right back in Constantinople. City of Countless Names is done (excluding the new bits I’ll discover in my continuing research) so now we’re building up from that base with a thorough exploration of the city’s quarters, neighborhoods, and districts. We’ll start with the European Quarter of Pera-Galata. 

Although Constantinople has many pseudonyms, the title “City of a Countless Names” really applies to the neighborhoods. All the maps, documents, and handbooks pepper the city’s sections with official names, ancient names, ethnic names, anglicized names, and misspelled anglicized names. The hardest part has been trying to understand what is different and what is the same thing.  To help you and me keep track, here is the map of Pera-Galata.