Hilary Sumner-Boyd - Strolling Through Istanbul

The late Hilary Sumner-Boyd was professor of humanities at Robert College, Bosphorus University.

John Freely (19262017) was one of the most widely respected writers of travel books, histories and guides about Greece and Turkey. He is the author of The Grand Turk, Storm on Horseback, Children of Achilles, The Cyclades, The Ionian Islands, The Western Shores of Turkey, Strolling through Athens and Strolling through Venice.

Praise for John Freely

Strolling through Athens

A magnificent walking guide to the city ... His knowledge is encyclopaedic ... he brings the millenniums of history alive. If you want a cultural guide to the ancient city, this is the one for you. Anthony Sattin, Books of the Week, Sunday Times

The Western Shores of Turkey

. .. Enchanting guide ... a work of genuine scholarship, lightly worn and charmingly conveyed. I fell in love with the book and stayed enamoured until the final page.

Paul Bailey, Sunday Times

Inside the Seraglio

Freely provides a fascinating, easy-to-follow overview, beautifully researched and riveting in its detail.

Christopher Fowler, Independent on Sunday

The Colophon of Tauris Parke is a representation of the ancient Egyptian ibis, sacred to the god Thoth, who was himself often depicted in the form of this most elegant of birds. Thoth was credited in antiquity as the scribe of the ancient Egyptian gods and as the inventor of writing and was associated with many aspects of wisdom and learning.

Contents

Maps and Plans

MAPS

PLANS

Plates

Colour photographs by Anthony E. Baker

1.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Note on Turkish Words and Spellings

One feature of this book may at first puzzle and irritate the reader: we have consistently used the modern Turkish spelling of Turkish proper names and we have employed many Turkish words for specifically Turkish things. Turkish spelling, however, is rigorously logical and phonetic and the traveller here for any length of time will have to accustom himself to it; the few letters which differ in pronunciation from English are indicated below. As for Turkish terms, chiefly for buildings of various sorts, these are useful words for the traveller to know, their meaning is frequently indicated in the course of the text, and is explained in detail in the appendix on Ottoman Architectural Forms.

TURKISH SPELLING

All letters have one and only one sound. No letters are silent.

Vowels have their short Continental value as in French, German, or Italian, i.e.: a as in father, e as in get, i as in sit, o as in doll, u as in bull. (In modern Turkish pronunciation there is little distinction between long and short vowels.) Note: (undotted) is between i and u, as the final a in Anna; as in German or the u in further; as in German or French u in tu.

Consonants as in English, except:

c as j in jam: e.g. cami (mosque) = jahmy

as ch in church, e.g. eme (fountain) = cheshme

g is always hard as in give, never soft as in gem

is almost silent; it tends to lengthen the preceding vowel

s is always unvoiced as in sit, never like z

as s in sugar; e.g. eme = cheshme

Turkish is very lightly accented, most often on the last syllable, but all syllables should be clearly and almost evenly articulated.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to Seluk Altun, whose very generous support made the publication of this new edition of Strolling Through Istanbul possible. I am grateful to Emre Gener for all of the technical help he gave me in preparing the manuscript for publication. I would also like to thank Anthony E. Baker for the photographs I have used as illustrations.

Preface to the Revised Edition

This is the first thoroughly revised and updated edition of Strolling Through Istanbul since the book was first published in 1972. The senior author, Hilary Sumner-Boyd, passed away in the interim, and so I have taken the responsibility of revising our book and bringing it up to date, trying to live up to his standards of scholarship.

Istanbul has changed greatly since this book was first written. The population was then somewhat over 2 million and now, according to some estimates, it is more than 12 million, spread out over an area four times as great as it had been in 1972, with the addition of 25 new municipalities to the city to absorb the influx from the provinces of Turkey. New highways have been constructed in and around the city and two intercontinental bridges now span the Bosphorus, linking the European and Asian suburbs which have spread out along the coast of the Sea of Marmara and up both shores of the strait to within sight of the Black Sea, with sky-scraping office buildings creating a new skyline on the Thracian hills and satellite towns springing up in what were once virtually uninhabited woodlands and pastures.

But this explosive growth has in many respects spared the historic heart of the city, that is to say the seven-hilled peninsula bounded on the north by the Golden Horn, on the south by the Marmara, and on its landward side by the ancient Theodosian Walls, though in the areas frequented by most tourists its streets are now clogged with traffic and its sidewalks thronged with pedestrians, as I learned when I began revising this guide. But as I began strolling through the old city again I found that even in the busiest areas it was still the same enchanting place that I first came to know in the autumn of 1960. As I left the crowded avenues and stepped into the quiet courtyard of an old mosque or medrese, I found there the Istanbul of my first memories. Thus I have not changed the original itineraries, though I have updated the descriptions of the monuments and museums to reflect the changes that have taken place since the original edition was published. Along the way I have noted what has been lost forever, such as the little village that once flourished in the great Roman reservoir on the Fifth Hill, where the tree tops and chimneys and the minaret of the mosque came up only to the level of the surrounding streets, and where an old man raised peacocks for sale, perhaps to princes. Now I pass that scene on to those who might stroll that way with this guide in hand, along with other remembrances of things past that still linger on in the civic memory of Istanbul.

J.F.
Bosphorus University