Istanbul is a huge city. Visitors from abroad tend
to concentrate on the Sultanahmet (Blue Mosque) area of the old city, and the
shopping/entertainment neighbourhood of Taksim/Beyoğlu. The modern expansion of
the city began in the late 1960s when the population was around two million.
Now the official count is 13.5 million, but, as with other cities in the
megalopolis class, a lot depends on where you draw the boundaries.
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Piyale Pasha
16th century Ottoman admiral |
In the 16th century, at the peak of
Ottoman power, the imperial capital of Istanbul/Constantinople was still
enclosed within the 22 kilometres of defensive walls built by the Roman emperor
Theodosius II in the 5th century. Nevertheless there was, in
addition, much activity outside. The satellite settlement of Galata across the
Golden Horn continued its role as trading centre and residential suburb for
non-citizens of the empire: Venetians, Genoese and other Europeans drawn by the
magnetic attraction of this gateway to the East. The town of Scutari/Üsküdar on
the Asian shore served as launching pad for the pageantry and adventure of annual
pilgrimages to the Muslims' holy city of Mecca. The Ottoman navy, scourge of
the Mediterranean littoral, had its main base, shipyards, cannon foundries and
other associated industries on the northern shore of the Golden Horn and around
the corner as far as the Bosporus village of Beşiktaş.
Despite the exponential growth of Istanbul's
population and fears, or at least claims, that the present government of Turkey
has been trying to recreate a neo-Ottoman sphere of influence, those glory days
of empire are long gone. Passenger ferries and other small craft were still
being built in the Golden Horn shipyards in the 1980s, and repairs carried out
in the dry-dock until more recently - but the decision has at last been taken,
as in London and other world cities, to find new uses for the disused docklands
area: a hotel or two, modern shopping no doubt, recreational facilities such as
parks and cycleways. You can observe the pattern in Liverpool, Gloucester,
Melbourne, Australia, even my own home town of Auckland, New Zealand.
Of course those docklands areas contain much of
their cities' heritage, and sensitive redevelopment must include preservation
of buildings with historical significance, perhaps adapting them for modern
purposes such as up-market apartments, museums and art galleries. One advantage
of such urban renewal is that it brings new life and visitors to parts of a
city that may have been neglected no-go zones for many years.
One such area of Istanbul is the neighbourhood of
Kasımpaşa. The current Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, continues
to attract more than his fair share of criticism, and one sticking point for
some modern Turks seems to be that he was born and raised in this ‘mahalle’
which, if there were a railway track nearby, would definitely be on the
’wrong’ side. For his part, the PM seems quite proud of his humble origins –
and they may arguably contribute to his popularity among the less exalted
echelons of Turkish society.
On Sunday I ventured, in the company of a Turkish
friend, into the interior of the ‘hood in search of a mosque I had seen from a
distance, but never visited. Perhaps it’s a measure of the status of Kasımpaşa
that the taxi driver we hailed to drive us had no idea about the location or
even the existence of Piyale Pasha Mosque, and dropped us off within sight of another one nearer the waterfront –
or perhaps, on reflection, he was nervous about plunging too far into unknown
territory.
By dint of asking directions and walking a kilometre
or so, we did eventually arrive at the building we were seeking – a large 16th
century stone edifice set in an uncharacteristically (for Istanbul) green area
of fig trees, walnuts and market gardens. There is some mystery about the building
itself, in part because its design is also uncharacteristic of mosques of the
Ottoman Imperial period. The general rule, modelled on the great cathedral of
Hagia Sophia, is a large single dome covering the inner sanctuary – but Piyale
Pasha, or his architect perhaps, reverted to an earlier design with
six smaller domes supported by two granite columns in the prayer area. Most
sources credit the mosque to the architect Sinan, shining star of Ottoman
architecture – but the unusual design leaves some room for doubt.
Piyale Pasha himself seems to have been an interesting character, not least because
he chose to locate his memorial mosque far from the capital’s commercial and
residential hub. Sources say he was of Croatian origin, captured (in battle?)
and brought to Istanbul at the age of 11 where he was then educated in the palace itself. He went on to become a provincial governor and later an
admiral in the imperial navy, testimony to the eclectic and meritocratic nature
of Ottoman society at the time.
Surprisingly, Piyale Pasha is not well
known, even in Turkey, despite marrying the daughter of Sultan Selim II and
becoming his grand vizier. His fame is overshadowed by older colleagues,
Barbaros Hayrettin Pasha and Turgut Reis. Nevertheless, he seems to have
achieved considerable success in his own right, his raids on coastal towns of
Italy and Spain forcing Christian states into some semblance of unity to defend
their territories. Ottoman forces in the second half
of the 16th century came to control the Aegean and much of the
Mediterranean, including the North African coast and the strategic island of
Cyprus – which, incidentally, they seized from the Venetians, not the Greeks.
Perhaps Admiral Piyale suffers from his close association
with a sultan often considered to have begun his empire’s downward slide.
Certainly Selim II had a hard act to follow. His father, Suleiman, known in
English as the Magnificent, ruled for
45 years, and is generally regarded as having presided over the Ottoman Golden
Age. During his son’s 8-year reign, on the other hand, Ottoman forces suffered
major setbacks against Russia, and Christian Europe at the Battle of Lepanto.
Selim apparently had a reputation for enjoying a tipple, and one of his achievements
was reopening bars and meyhanes closed by his father in the later years of his
rule. The Wikipedia
entry asserts that the unlucky sultan died as a result of
a head injury sustained when he fell in his bathroom after a session of
over-indulgence.
Well, maybe that’s one reason why PM Erdoğan has
some reservations about the benefits of drinking alcohol. Certainly, when he
breaks a bottle of sparkling grape juice over the 3rd Bosporus
Bridge in the opening ceremony, he will want to make it clear that the
structure will be named for Sultan Selim I and not Selim II.
In a more serious vein, I noticed, when visiting
Admiral Piyale’s mosque, recently renovated, that the mihrab (sacred altar) is beautifully decorated with ceramic tiles, and high on the walls runs a lengthy
Koranic text in elegant Ottoman/Arabic calligraphy – while the rest of the
walls and interior of the domes are uncharacteristically plain. Several articles
I read stated that interior decoration had originally been more elaborate. They
also noted that the mosque had been extensively rebuilt in the 19th
century. Reading between the lines, it would seem that there was a time when
Piyale Pasha Mosque fell into disuse and disrepair, and perhaps prey to theft
and desecration.
Interestingly, Turkey’s Ministry of Culture has
begun taking steps to repatriate a display of tiles in the Paris Louvre Museum it claims were removed from the Kasımpaşa mosque and exported illegally.
Authorities at the Louvre, needless to say, deny the claim, and say the tiles
were acquired between 1871 and 1940 ‘in
conditions that were perfectly legal and in line with the rules of the time.’
In
fact, while roaming around the internet on this subject, I came across this
item up for auction at Bonhams: ‘An
Iznik pottery tile, Turkey, circa 1575, Provenance:
Greek private collection.
This elegant tile relates
directly to lunette panels in the Louvre, the Musee des Art Decoratifs and the
Gulbenkian Foundation. The first of these panels came from the Piyale Pasha
Mosque (1573) in Istanbul.’
Well, it’s none of my business. I’m happy that
Parisians and other visitors to the Louvre have the opportunity to see such
examples of high Ottoman art – and if it helps them to a better understanding
of their Muslim neighbours, perhaps the tiles should stay where they are.
