Yine İstanbul

Yine istanbul diyorum. Boşuna o kadar medeniyet buranın hayalini kurmamış.

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Küçük bir istanbul tanıtımı

İstanbul bir başka güzel.İstanbul resimlerinden birleştirilerek hazırlanmış bir video.

Kariye Müzesi

Kariye Müzesi İstanbul Edirnekapı’da bulunan müzedir. Bizans döneminde kilise, fetihden sonra ise cami olarak kullanılmış tarihi bir yapıdır.

Tarihçesi

Kariye (Chora) Kilisesi, 6. Y.Y.’a kadar giden bir geçmişe sahiptir. Günümüze ulaşmış hali Osmanlı döneminde ve 20. yy’in ikinci yarısında geçirdiği onarımların sonucudur. Kilise, manastır kompleksinden geriye kalan tek kalıntıdır. Kurtarıcı İsa Mesih’e adanmıştır. İlk önce manastır olarak 534 yılında Justinianus döneminde Aziz Theodius tarafından yapılmıstir. 11. Y.Y.’da 1. Aleksios’un kayınvalidesi Maria Doukaina tarafından yeniden inşa ettirilmiştir. 1204-1261 yıllarındaki Latin istilasinda harap olan manastır Theodoros Metokhites tarafından 14. Y.Y.’da onarılmıştır. Dış narteks ve parekklesion bu dönemde yapıya eklenmiştir. (Metokhites Parekklesion’u kendisi için inşa etmiştir ve mezarı da kilisenin girişinde mermer Bir taşla belirlenmiş olan yerdedir.)

Yapının önemi, İmparatorluğun, Haliç kıyısında, surlara yakın bir yerde konumlanmış olan “Blackhernai Sarayı”na taşınmasıyla artmıştır. 1296’daki büyük depreme dayanan bina, Fatih Sultan Mehmet’in İstanbul’u almasından çok sonra1511 yılında camiye dönüştürülmüştür. Mozaik ve freskler cami olduktan sonra bazen tahta kepenklerle, bazen de badana ile örtülmüştür. 1948′den 1958′e kadar Amerikan Bizans Enstitüsü’nün yaptığı çalışmalar sonunda tüm mozaik ve freskler ortaya çıkarılmıştır. Yapı 1948’den bu yana da “Kariye Müzesi” olarak hizmet vermektedir. Dış köşesindeki minare ve içerde güneydoğu köşesindeki mihrap dışında hiçbir İslam unsuru taşımamaktadır. Türkiye’deki eski kiliseler arasında, içinde en fazla mozayiğe sahip olanıdır. Daha fazla »

Turkey’s Finest: The Top 10 Smaller Museums

There’s hardly a small town in Turkey that doesn’t have its own museum, and most of them follow a standard plan, with one section devoted to archeology, another to ethnography and a collection of miscellaneous bits and pieces outside in the grounds.

Unfortunately, many of these museums are tucked away in places where few visitors are likely to find them, while very few have adequate labeling in Turkish let alone in any other language. Leading the way to a brighter future are a handful of privately owned and run museums in İstanbul and elsewhere, but there are also some state-run museums which, while not quite up to the standards of their five-star counterparts, are still worth going out of your way to find. Last year, the introduction of the Müze Kart (Museum Card) suggested new enthusiasm for getting visitors through the doors — for just TL 20 the card offers admission to many of Turkey’s museums for a year. The snag? For the time being it’s only available to Turkish citizens, and not to foreigners, even those who have paid through the nose for residence permits, but must continue to cough up inflated “tourist” prices. Daha fazla »

Osmanlı’da reçel yapamayan kadınlar ayıplanırmış

Yazar Sermet Muhtar Alus’a göre Osmanlı’da döneminde bir kadının reçeli çarşıdan alması onun namusunu lekeleyecek kadar ayıp bir durum. Bir Osmanlı hanımefendisi mutlaka reçelini evinde kendisi yapmalı ve Ramazan gelince ev halkına ve misafirlerine sunmalı. Reçel o dönemde en çok Ramazan’da tüketiliyor.

1952 yılında vefat eden Alus, bir eserinde bu durumu şöyle anlatıyor: “Reçeller, kadın kadıncık hanımefendiler tarafından bizzat veya nezaretleri altında yapılıp Ramazan’a saklanır, pasaklı ve terelelli hatuneli yerlerde de Ramazan kapıya çattığı sıralar Bahçekapısı’ndaki Hacı Bekir’e, Meydancık’taki Rifat’a, Şehzadebaşı’ndaki Udi Cemil’e, Fatih’teki şekerci güzeline başvurulurdu.”

Reçel, aslında halktan ziyade sarayda daha çok değer görüyor. İtibarı yüksek bir yiyecek. Çünkü 10 bölümden oluşan saray mutfağında pilavhane ya da çorbahane gibi bölümlere rastlanmıyor ama helvahane adı verilen yer sadece tatlılara ayrılmış. Helvahanenin içinde 49 metrekare genişliğinde ve 8,5 metre yüksekliğindeki reçelhanede ise neredeyse gece gündüz reçel kaynatılıyor. Reçeller sadece helvahanede değil, Gülhane bahçesi denilen, sarayın Marmara denizine bakan yamaçlarındaki ikinci bir yerde de yapılıyor. Ama burada yapılan reçellerin farklı bir özelliği var. Zamanında bahçeye bir köşk inşa edilmiş. III. Selim zamanında yenilenen köşkte sadece padişah için gül reçelleri yapılırmış.

Hünnap reçeli kavanozu ve kayısı reçeli kavanozu

Reçelhanede kaynatılan tatlılar ilk önceleri Çin ve Japonya’dan gelen porselen kavanozlara konularak sarayın iç kiler adı verilen bölümünde saklanmış. Daha sonra Selanik ve Trakya’da üretilen seramik kavanozlara konmuş. Daha fazla »

Of Yogurt and Yörüks

Top row: fresh goat’s-milk yogurt cheese, labne, kashk. Bottom row: cow’s-milk yogurt, çökelek, kaymak.

Written and photographed by Eric Hansen

ne bitterly cold morning in mid-November of 1972, I left the open-air bus terminal of Erzurum, in eastern Turkey, in search of warmth. In a nearby small restaurant, huge cauldrons of thick, steaming soup were bubbling away over smoky wood fires.

Breakfast was being served at rough wooden tables filled with neighborhood workers. As I soon discovered, the soup was an eastern Anatolian specialty called yoğurt çorbası (pronounced yo-oort chor-ba-sih). Çorba, derived from the Persian word shurba, is the Turkish word for soup.

Sulfer Kazık milking the family cow in preparation for making yogurt, straining the fresh milk and heating it in a tinned copper pot.

I had never before considered yogurt as a possible ingredient for hot soup: For me, yogurt had always been something to eat fresh on cereal, or blended with cracked ice into a cold drink with fresh fruit and honey. But at the first taste of that flavorful, warming soup, fragrant with the aromas of chicken stock and cilantro, I realized that yogurt was far more versatile than I had ever imagined. To this day, yoğurt çorbası remains one of my staple dishes for the cold winter months. Daha fazla »

Splendid Ruins of an “excellent republic” : PATARA

Written by Christopher Walker
Photographed by Thorne Anderson

Of all the confederacies of antiquity, which history has handed down to us, the Lycian and Achaean leagues, as far as there remain vestiges of them, … were … those which have best deserved, and have most liberally received, the applauding suffrages of political writers.

—Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 16

with their picturesque covering of pine and juniper forest, and overlooking Turkey’s “Turquoise Coast,” a long-silent bouleuterion, or council chamber, once held the proceedings of the Lycian League, considered to be history’s earliest example of the republican form of government. With its rows of stone seats set out in a semicircle around a raised dais, it looks uncannily like the chambers of modern legislatures and parliaments.

The historical significance of the Lycian League was its uniquely federal character. Whereas other “leagues” and alliances in the Hellenistic world were often simpler bands of city-states united against common foes, the Lycians of southwestern Anatolia shared a racial and cultural lineage that helped set them apart from other proto-nations of the Mediterranean world. Daha fazla »

The search of the real Troy

he road west to the mound called Hısarlık takes sweeping bends past fields of corn and purple-flowered cotton. It has two or three gradual hills, but the chief obstacles are the odd tour bus or tractor-load of tomatoes. It is, by and large, a smooth and untroubled approach to a world-famous archeological site. Not so the scholastic approach—a road of zigzag switchbacks through fields of criticism and intrigue, littered with sharp shards of controversy: The obstacles here are implications in journal articles, tendentious newspaper interviews and downright insults.

We arrive on a glorious August morning just as the orange ball of the sun lights the treetops and the replica of the larger-than-life wooden horse. The air is quiet except for the distant putt-putt of an irrigation pump. It is believed by many that this is the place the blind poet Homer called Troy, where he set his tale of the abduction of the beautiful Helen by Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy; of the arrival of a force of 1000 Greek ships under the command of King Agamemnon; and of the consequences that followed 3200 years ago. Daha fazla »

Çatalhöyük and the New Archeology

“Archeologists dig, certainly. But increasingly they write, draw, or record as they dig. The process of digging is surrounded by paper, drawings, clipboards, pens and pencils, graph paper, tapes, masking tape, cameras, total stations, etc…. The processes of writing and encoding determine the way we see what we excavate.”

—Ian Hodder

Written by Graham Chandler
Photographed by Mehmet Biber
Additional illustrations by John-Gordon Swogger
Additional photographs by Çatalhöyük Research Project

Three bull skulls are mounted one above the other on a mud-brick wall. Framing them, to left and right, are deep niches, in one of which is a ram’s head. Directly above is a relief of a splayed human figure, its back to the wall. Two more bull skulls stare from the right, the upper one resting its chin on the other’s forehead. There’s not a sound. Soft window light bathes the brown-plastered room.

I half expect to hear the drumbeat of some long-lost secret ritual, but in fact it’s the voice of a German tour guide that breaks the reverie. I’m at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Turkey’s capital, Ankara. The scene is a popular exhibit, a reconstruction based on finds at Çatalhöyük—pronounced cha-tal hoy-ook—380 kilometers (240 mi) to the south. Ever since the first archeological excavation there in the early 1960′s, this cult-like and slightly sinister presentation of the culture of Çatalhöyük has fired many an imagination, including mine. Daha fazla »

Uncovering Yenikapı

Inside one of the site’s temporary sheds, a splint helps a waterlogged plank keep its shape as archeologists and students dismantle one of Yenikapi’s 32 shipwrecks found to date.

Outside, the brilliant June sunshine beats down mercilessly on Turkey’s largest city. But the shed is kept cool by a fine mist sprayed from suspended hoses; the mist keeps the exposed wood moist and prevents it from shrinking. Ever so gently, the five women and four men slide a three-meter (10′), L-shaped frame beneath a waterlogged plank too fragile to be lifted directly. One of them gives the go-ahead and they raise the plank in unison, then place it into a wooden case, where it rests on a pine support specially designed to ensure that the plank keeps its shape. Later, the case containing the plank and the support will be lowered into a concrete-lined pool of slowly circulating fresh water. Eventually, after conservation and reassembly, the ancient ship, one of 32 uncovered so far in the run-down Istanbul neighborhood of Yenikapi, will likely go on display in a new museum dedicated to what many experts are calling the greatest nautical archeological site ever discovered: a vast excavation covering more than 58,000 square meters (nearly 625,000 sq ft), the equivalent of 10 city blocks, on what was once the edge of medieval Constantinople. Daha fazla »