ISTANBUL, TURKEY
These pictures are from a 2006 trip to the BU-NAES Conference. There are many pictures of Istanbul and Bogaziçi Üniversitesi linked from the conference Web site although many of the pictures are of people you will not know. There is music linked to some pages of the site, one traditional Turkish piece of music and one song that is not so traditional. There is information on Istanbul on the Wikipedia Web site but using Wikipedia for research for homework is not recommended because sometimes the bibliographies are not very good. The page of Istanbul, however, includes dozens and dozens of links to other Web sites with more pictures.
This is the most famous building in Istanbul, Hagia Sophia. It was first built as an Orthodox Christian church around 537 A.D. under the Roman Emperor Justinian. The city was already called Constantinople. It's first name was Byzantium under Greeks but the Emperor Constantine of Rome took it over and renamed it for himself! After Ottoman Turk Muslims entered the city in 1453, they changed the name to Istanbul. Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque and minarets were added. Minarets are thin towers used for the call to prayer. In the past, someone would climb the spiral stairs on the inside to the top and call out the call to prayer, letting Muslims know it was time to pray. Today, Turkey still uses live singers but their voices are amplified with speakers. In the 1930s, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the leader of Turkey, ordered Hagia Sophia turned into a museum.
Smaller building to the side of Hagia Sophia.
Items for sale for tourists.
This is the Mosque of Sultan Ahmet from the early 1600s. He wanted a mosque that was more impressive than Hagia Sophia. There was a misunderstanding and the architect thought that the sultan wanted six minarets. The mosque in Mecca also had six minarets so Sultan Ahmet sponsored a seventh minaret for the mosque in Mecca, otherwise he would face criticism for trying to build a more impressive mosque for himself. It is nicknamed the Blue Mosque because from the inside with the decorative tiles and stained glass, the inside looks blue.
This is one of the minarets.
Entrance to the Blue Mosque. It leads into a courtyard. This is the same mosque that Pope Benedict visited and prayed in during his controversial trip to Turkey just one week after I was in Turkey in November of 2006.
This is the exit of the mosque itself. All visitors to the mosque, including the tourists, must remove their shoes and tourists are provided with plastic bags to carry their shoes in while inside. Behind where the tourists are standings is an area for people to put their shoes back on their feet.
This is an Eyptian Obelisk that the Roman Emperor Constantine brought (stole) from Luxor in Egypt. The area used to be a Hippodrome where they would have chariot races. While Muslims left the Orthodox Church of Hagia Sophia in place although they modified it to turn it into a mosque, they destroyed the Roman Hippodrome because it was associated with gambling. The building materials were recycled for other building projects. The Muslims left the Egyptian Obelisk in place.
Entrance to Istanbul University.
This is the Musuem of Calligraphy in a former medrese building. Calligraphy is the art of decorative handwriting. A medrese is a religious school.
This is an elaborate gate of the Topkapi Palace first built in the late 1400s with additions in the 1500s and 1600s, especially following a fire. It was the residence of a sucession of sultans and the palace itself is a series of dozens of different buildings. Today it is a museum. The geometic shapes are decorative tiles. To the right of the bell in between the two doors is a golden turga, a decorative design in calligraphy with the name of the sultan.
The same gate from farther away.
Bogaziçi Üniversitesi was originally called Robert College and it was an American university founded in the 1800s. In the 1970s, it became transfered to the Turkish government. This building is called Albert Long Hall and most of the buildings have names in English.
Another building at Bogaziçi Üniversitesi, which means University of the Bosporus in Turkish.
A view of the Bosporus Strait from the campus of Bogaziçi Üniversitesi.
Another view of the Bosporus Strait from the university campus with several yalis right along the water. Yalis are houses of the wealthy built right along the Bosporus and in the distance there are three white ones and two or three brown yalis to the right of the white houses.
Ships on the Sea of Marmara on a foggy evening from the roof of my hotel room. The Bosporus Strait leads from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean Sea after it passes through the Sea of Marmara. There were hundreds of ships in this sea just a little south of this location. The number of oil tankers was unimaginable.
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© Kay Shelton, 1 January 2007. Images may not be used without permission.
