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)
Haskeui Sepharad Cemetery (Jewish)
The Orta Kui Jewish Cemetery
(Jewish)
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