City of Countless Names- Galata p3

 Here are a couple more famous locations from the Galata quarter of Constantiople:

Isaac Camondo & Cie

The streets in the western end of Galata hold a variety of financial institutions, such as banks, counting houses, and loan offices. The Turks do not trouble with money matters, so the majority are run by the Armenian and Jewish families living in Haskeui, the village northwest of Galata.

In 1802, Isaac Comondo opened his bank Isaac Camondo & Cie (“Cie” meaning “company”, or rather the French “compagnie”). His bank prospered, but Isaac died childless in 1836, leaving his fortune and business to his brother, Abraham. The Camondo’s fortune grew under Abraham’s shrewd leadership through real estate deals, tenant housing, and his influence in the court of Sultan Abdulmejid. During the crisis in the Crimea, Abraham loaned fantastic amounts of money to the Ottoman government to fund their military. Many worry the Camondo family practically is the Ottoman treasury.

Although his family owns many warehouses, tenements, and banks through Pera-Galata, Abraham still runs the business from his departed brother’s Isaac Camondo & Cie. Inside, Clerks and accountants shuffle papers and perform the bookkeeping necessary to a growing financial empire. Locked drawers and safes protect deeds, firmans, and other paperwork invaluable to Camondo holdings, but local tongues wildly rumor of more secure rooms under the bank, and more interesting valuables entrusted to Abraham by the Sultan, his viziers, and the Austrian government. Magical Yehudite sigils mark certain locked drawers. Who knows what other wards guard the most important bank in Constantinople?

The Galata Mevlevihanesi

Just west of Tophane, a stone archway decorated with the Imperial seal leads away from the Grand Rue De Pera to the courtyard containing the Galata Mevlevihanesi. Built in 1491, the Mevlevihanesi is the oldest Mevlevi tekka in Constantinople. Their sheik, a well respected Dholefolk named Kudretullah Dede, has led his Dervishes in the tekka for 37 years and was a confidant of Sultan Mahmud II. Many high ranking officials of the Ottoman government patronize the tekka.  Sultan Abdulmejid funded the most recent renovations necessitated by a destructive fire in the past year. 

The tekka sits directly across from the archway entrance in the courtyard, a large rectangular wooden building with two stories. Reddish brown tiles cover the roof. A scattering of tombs, graves, and trees surrounded the tekka along with the dervishes’ library, laundry, kitchen, school, and a public fountain open to any thirsty soul.

A massive octagonal room in the tekka’s center extends into the upper floor. Here the dervishes perform their famous ritual whirling as a part of their religious ceremonies. The sheik and dervishes’ dormitories crowd into the building’s corners.  

Unusually, the tekka opens its doors to spectators desiring to gawk at the spinning dervishes and listen to their music. On Tuesday and Friday after midday prayer, attendees and sightseers watch the performance from the galleries surrounding the octagonal chamber in exchange for a 2 ½ piastre donation. The Sultan and Turkish women watch from a private room, obfuscated by latticed windows. Much like entering a mosque, visitors must leave their shoes at the door, but slippers are provided.

City of Countless Names- Galata p2

Galata’s many docks and its proximity to Tophane’s busy harbors ensures the quarter remains the hub of European commerce in Constantinople. Banks and counting houses transact intercontinental business deals and money changers swap the multitude of foreign currencies brought by travelers for paras and piastres. European firms maintain offices in Galata and their agents sell and buy on their behalf. The waterside warehouses of Galata hold precious imports such as timber, salt, lead, meal, and honey. To prevent burglaries and fires most are built of stone, with iron doors and shutters on the windows.

The worst dregs of Constantinople’s criminal class dwell in Galata hoping to make money off recuperating soldiers, sailors on shore leave, and new arrivals uncertain of the city’s ways. Because of the Nithamiyeen intolerance of vice, spirits and prostitution thrive in the European quarter of Galata. Numerous public houses and liquor shops openly sell their wares to the French, English and Italian military men looking for entertainment. Most shelter gambling dens in their backrooms and basements ready to take any money left unspent. If a particularly lucky soul manages to take home winnings from their crooked roulette tables, a gang of toughs employed by the house wait in a dark alley nearby. Because of the legal tangles present whenever foreigners are brought to trial under Ottoman Law, most Zabtiye wash their hands of Galata’s sins and let all but the most obvious crimes go unsolved. Fearing for the lives and property of French citizens in Pera and Galata, French authorities deployed their soldiers to patrol the area in the hope of discouraging the quarter’s criminal element.

Galata Tower

Rising 220 feet above the cramped streets below, Galata Tower is the most visible landmark in the Pera-Galata metropolis. The majority of the tower is a massive stone cylinder, with an interior 141 spiraling steps leading up to the living quarters of the tower’s watchmen. Above their quarters is an observatory used by tourists and honored guests, surrounded by 14 windows. Another staircase leads to another smaller observatory, also surrounded by 14 windows showing the greatest panorama of Constantinople possible to a land-bound observer. Finally, a great cone of copper caps the magnificent stone tower. Although the tower’s basement sits unoccupied beneath its foundation, in the 16^th century it held Aluminat prisoners of war forced to build ships in the harbors of Kassim Pasha.

The Genoese merchants of Galata built the tower on the ruin of a much older tower, as part of their fortifications. In 1204, pillaging Crusaders demolished the original tower, which once anchored the massive chain pulled across the Golden horn, barring their ships from entry. After its construction in 1348, Galata Tower was the tallest structure in Constantinople and remains the best-preserved example of Genoese architecture. It has been saved from neglect and ruin primarily because of its use as a fire tower.

Four watchmen and four deputies take turns patrolling the highest observatory, watching the surrounding city for fires. If the man on duty spots a fire, he hoists a signal flag by day or a lantern by night to alert his brother watchman in the Seraskier’s tower across the Golden Horn and to identify which district is ablaze. The young deputies are immediately dispatched to direct soldiers, firemen, and water carriers to the conflagration.

City of Countless Names- Galata p1

Galata (Ghalatah, Gaulata, Justinianopolis, Sykai)

North of the outlet where the waters of the Golden Horn flow into the Bosporus, and south of the steep hill topped with the cemetery known as the Petit Champ-des-Morts, lies the European quarter of Galata. Galata’s streets are narrow, steeply inclined, and the dirtiest in Constantinople. Rotten melons discarded by fruit sellers, the droppings of pack animals, and dead rats are common obstacles on the cracked paving stones. Numerous alleys lead to filthy back streets where cutthroats and conmen wait for unwary travelers. Almost every garden or courtyard, no matter how small, is overrun by poultry tended by locals. Buildings crowd together into an unpleasant squalor of wooden houses, butchers, shops, branch offices for European businesses, and stone warehouses sloping down the hill from the cleaner more elegant avenues of Pera. Walls, both ancient and new, surround Galata. At sunset, its gates close for the night, however as a courtesy to European businessmen the gate in the wall dividing Galata from Pera in the north can always be opened for a small fee. Two bridges cross the Golden Horn connect Galata to Stambul, one to Eumin Eunou and the other to Fatih. A fleet of caiques docks at Galata ready to ferry passengers across the water to Constantinople’s southern shores.

Since the days of the Byzantine Empire, Galata has belonged to foreigners. Its name comes from Gauls settled in the area, “Galatai”, although the Greeks claim it derives from their word for milk, “galaktos” after the herds of goats raised there. During Constantine’s reign, the land was called Sykai, meaning “fig tree”, and was the 13^th region of the Constantinople. The emperor maintained Sykai as military base defending the city from the northern shore. In 1267, Emperor Michael VIII gave Galata to Genoese merchants use as a colony under the stipulation they did not fortify their land. The Genoese rose in power and prominence quickly, and disregarded their agreement, constructing the walls encircling Galata and Galata Tower. The citizens of Galata committed further treachery 200 years later during the Ottoman siege of Constantinople. They helped Mehmed the Conqueror’s forces circumnavigate the Byzantines defenses by letting Ottoman ships portage over their lands into the Golden Horn.

Nothing remains of the Genoese colony’s architecture except Galata Tower and parts of the ancient walls. The devastation of Galata’s frequent city fires and earthquakes hasten its architecture’s modernity, giving the entire quarter the atmosphere of a dockyard belonging to a major European city, rather than the Ottoman Capital. Because of Galata’s heterogeneous population, many sects of the Aluminat Faith have a firm hold in the area. A Dominican convent, a Capuchin monastery, Greek and Armenian churches, and Yehudite synagogues dot the cramped streets. Although some Turks reside in Galata, the population is almost all Greek, Levantine, or European. Many live in poverty, struggling to make an honest wage. Beggars line the streets sloping uphill towards Pera and Kassim Pasha.  The majority are crippled Greeks, dervishes devoted to their vows, and conmen hoping to fool the charitable.

City of Countless Names- Findikli p2

Famous Locations:

Bezm-i Alem Valide Mosque

At the most northwesterly point of Findukli’s coast, where the shore road meets the grounds of Dolmabagtche Palace, pashas other high-ranking notables gather to worship at the recently built Bezm-i Alem Valide Mosque. Two years ago, the Sultan’s mother, Bezm-i Alem Valide Sultan, commissioned the magnificent mosque’s construction close to her son’s future palace. At its completion, the Sultan named it after her, although many call it Dolmabagtche Mosque.

The imperial design of Bezm-i Alem Valide Mosque shows the same European influences apparent in Dolmabagtche Palace. Unusual round peacock-tail windows splay over its four walls up to the dome, giving the mosque the look of a squared egg as well as lighting the interior. Inside, its rich baroque and empire décor befit its patroness’s pedigree, looking more like a royal residence than mosque. The Sultan often attends from the mosques’ balcony reserved for his household.

The local European community holds the mosques’ Muvakkitler (the keeper of the clocks), a dwarf named Bazarlu, in very high esteem. Because of his incredible technical skill, Soldiers recuperating in the nearby quarters of Tophane, Pera, and Galata depend on Bazarlu to maintain the delicate mechanisms in their watches and clockwork limbs.

Sali Bazaar

Despite the name, Findulki has no bazaar in the truest sense of the word. The Sali Bazaar is an open-air market, whereas in Constantinople, a bazaar is a market enclosed by a building. Merchants from across the city gather to sell their goods every Tuesday, which is why it is also known as the Tuesday market. The foreign shipments stored in the warehouses in Tophane fill the market with an interesting mix of local and European wares surrounded by fishmongers.

It’s proximity to the European quarter also makes the Sali bazaar the one of the safest place in Constantinople for a Turkish Petty Conjuror to openly sell their services. Conjurors flock to Findikli every Tuesday to sell their services to foreigners without fear of persecution.

Many cooks come to the Sali Bazaar to buy bread baked by Istani Celebi, a Turkish gnome. His family’s bread has a fine consistency and is light as air. If asked about his technique, Istani says a powerful dervish blessed his ancestor. 

Taksim Artillery Barracks

In the early 1800s, Sultan Selim tried to modernize his army, despite the Janissaries attempts to stop his reforms. Unable to use the facilities used by the Janissaries, he needed new barracks to house his new troops. For his garrison north of the Bosporus, Sultan Selim built the grand Artillery Barracks in 1806, west of the Grand Champs des Morts and northeast of Taksim Square.

The barracks’ design emphasizes Ottoman strength and grandeur. Small domes catch the light on the rooftop of the four corner towers, while sparely-decorated stone walls full of windows form the barrack’s façade. Its rectangular shape completely encloses its massive courtyard in the center. The barracks can comfortably house 500 soldiers with room for another 200 in the barracks’ hospital.

Because of its close proximity to Pera, the Sultan allowed the French Army to billet their soldiers posted to Pera-Galata in Taksim Barracks. These same soldiers act as a police force keeping peace in the European Quarter under the orders of their Ambassador, without the Sultan’s authority.