City of Countless Names- Piri Pasha p1

 We only have five neighborhoods left in our exploration the Constantinople's northern shore. Most are small and simple like today's subject, but we still have two very big and important quarters coming up soon. 

Piri Pasha (Peri Pasha, Piri Paşa, Kaliji Oghlu, Chalydsche Oghi, Halidji Oghlu) 

Upriver from Haskeui is the serene suburb of Piri Pasha, the most northern of Constantinople’s villages along the Golden Horn. None of the filthy garbage and detritus that accumulates in the water downstream dirties their shore. No crowds clog their streets, only the village’s inhabitants and sightseeing travelers seeking quiet in the country. 

This village’s distinguished name causes some confusion. It’s named after one of two important men in Ottoman history, either Piri Reis Pasha, an Ottoman Admiral and mapmaker who earned much honor from his victory at the siege of Rhodes, or Piri Mehmed Pasha, the Grand Vizier of Selim I, who built a mosque in the village.  

Much like Eyub, the Turkish quarter across the water, Piri Pasha serves as a respite from city life, and a departure point for excursions into the European countryside.  Unlike its opposing quarter, the population of Piri Pasha is incredibly diverse. Synagogues, tombs, mosques, and churches sit on every street corner, and a traveler hears a dozen languages while walking the streets. Turks, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, and Europeans all live in pleasant houses scattered in front of tree-covered hills and gardens.

Most of the population belongs to the middle class, running their business from small shops and stores.Boathouses along the waterfront and livery stables full of horses and rigs provide transport to those arriving in or leaving Constantinople.  A decade ago, French engineers cleared the woods off a broad hill just north of Piri Pasha and built the city’s first landing field for airships. The war in the Crimea brings a constant stream of diplomatic mail and influential passengers giving the landing field local prominence.

Occasionally, rough-looking hill men trek into the village to trade or buy supplies. While most are farmers, guides, or woodsmen, some are undoubtedly ruthless bandits planning to spend their illicit income.

Famous Locations:

The Jewish Cemetery

Northwest of Ok-Medan’s arrow-strewn heights, a massive Jewish cemetery crowns the steep hills east of Piri Pasha. Unlike most of Constantinople’s cemeteries, no cypress trees rise over the rows of flat marble tombstones, no cultivated flowers cheer the bare ground, and a dreary, mournful air pervades the hills.

It is the largest Jewish cemetery in Constantinople and the oldest in Pera-Galata, as old as Byzantium. Eroded and barely legible Hebrew inscriptions chiseled into the grave markers show dates in the 1400s, but much older graves than that have toppled or been lost to fresh interments. Over the centuries, the number of its occupants rose to over 20,000. Although the ground is full, burial continues.

The history of this cemetery is full of segregation and dehumanizing laws. During the rule of the Western Aluminat Empire, the religious authorities prohibited Jews from burying their dead in Aluminat Cemeteries.  The Jewish community had to bury all of their dead in these hills far outside ancient Constantinople’s walls. Later, anti-Semitic Ottoman officials ordered their executed criminals and enemies of the state to be buried here alongside the dearly departed as an insult both to the executed and the Jews.