City of Countless Names- Haskeui p1

Moving on in our exploration of Constatniople during the Crimean War, we reach Haskeui.

Haskeui (Areovindou, Aravindou, Khasgiugh, Pikridion, Hasköy, Haskoy)

Further up the Golden Horn’s north shore from the military harbors of Tershane, is the village of Haskeui. The shore line looks much the same as Tershane, with shipyards, warehouses, docks, and barracks, but cultivated beauty flourishes further inland. Haskeui’s many well-tended orchards and vineyards supply Constantinople’s inhabitants with a bounty of fruits, such as lemons, oranges, grapes, peaches, and pomegranates. The villages’ wines too are drunk in taverns, consulates, and progressive Ottoman circles across the city. Its fruitful gardens and pleasant countryside made Haskeui a popular holiday spot for the Ottoman royal family in the 1600s.

As industry and modernization crept up the Golden Horn’s coast, its idyllic environ faded and the wild game moved on. Only a few buildings from the Empire’s golden days remain. Its name, meaning “elite or select village”, still reflects back on its past glories as an Imperial paradise.Most of Haskeui’s residents live in pleasant one-story houses built on the hill’s gentle slope. The wealthiest own large mansions on the slope of the hill overlooking the village.Haskeui is an insular community, with very few Turkish inhabitants.  Much like the neighborhood of Balata across the Golden Horn, Has Keui’s population is predominately Jewish.  Dissimilarly to the ghetto of Balata, Has Keui’s Jewish residents are mostly middle class and a few families live in considerable wealth.

Although they share the same Yehudite faith, the Jews of Haskeui come from very diverse origins. Some ancestors fled to Constantinople to escape persecution in Spain. Others were forced into Haskeui after the Sultan confiscated their land in Emin Eunou to make room for the construction of Yeni Cami. Still others descend from the Jews welcomed into Constantinople by Sultan Mehmet II to repopulate the newly conquered city.  

A small Armenian community lives in the western side of Haskeui, where they too live in more comfort than their kinsmen across the water in Stambul. England’s partnership with the Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War brought British engineers and ship-makers to Constantinople. They and their families settled in Haskeui near the ship-yards.

Famous Locations:

Mayor Synagogue

The largest synagogue in Haskeui is Mayor Synagogue. Its edifice juts out of a hill almost  a block from the shore of the Golden Horn northwest of Taskizak Shipyard. Rough, jagged masonry covers its squat walls giving the Synagogue a mystic and ancient appearance.

The majority of the synagogue’s congregants are Sephardic Jews, descendents of refugees from the Iberian Peninsula. Their ancestors built the synagogue 300-400 years ago, although some histories suggest the building dates back to the Byzantine Empire. Some postulate the Synagogue received its name for its impressive size, but most locals agree Mayor derives from Majorca, the island from which many of the Sephardic Jews emigrated.


As I write these descriptions of the neighborhoods north of the Golden Horn, I glean more accurate geographical information. This Post is a little shorter than usual, so to make up for that, here is the updated map of Pera-Galata: