AFTER CONQUEST
Istanbul had virtually fallen into ruin when it passed into Turkish hands. Clavijo, who came to the city in 1403, wrote that the city was empty and the doors of St. Sophia were lying on the ground. But, to repair the ruins of the city, the walls were repaired after the conquest, it was the first architectural task. Fatih (Mehmet the Conqueror) ordered a palace to be built on the side of the Forum of Theodosius looking over the Golden Horn and an inner fortress inside the Castle of the Seven Towers. Before these buildings were completed, the capital was transferred from Edirne to Istanbul. The first mosques and tombs were built in Eyub.
Unlike Byzantien tradition, the city began to expand and develop in the Golden Horn, Galata, Uskudar and the Bosphorus.
It is not so easy to see in this the influence of the earlier Turkish traditions of settlement, of the influences of the love of nature on their nomadic character. A document of the time states that there exist 3951 houses appertaining to Turks, 3151 appertaining to Greeks, 1647 to Jews, and 1048 to other ethnic groups, together with 3,667 shops in the city. In Galata there were 535 Turkish owned houses, 572 Greek, 332 Frank, 62 Armenian houses, and 260 shops. The population during the period of Fatih was approximately 120,000. Fatih brought 60,000 people brought as settlers.
If we speak in general, it is striking to note that the main functions of the various important chief areas of the city in Turkish Islamic times were the same as they had been in ancient times and in Byzantine Constantinople: at the point of the peninsula whereon was the Acropolis, palaces were always built. The Agora stayed a public square in Byzantine times; it was alike with the Augusteon and the area in front of St. Sophia. The Neorion Harbor has yet been called by the identical name in the twelfth century arid was used also by the Ottomans. This can be regarded as a natural output of their topographical concordance of their functions. Some say it is by chance and some say by fate, but at all events the Ottomans set up their administration buildings on the hill where the "Strategion" had been situated (Babiali, the Sublime Porte).
Another element which had played an important role shaping the geograpy of the city was commerce that was kept on the banks of the Golden Horn too much. The Flour, wood, and fish markets carried on their functions in the same areas. In Mehmet’s times the Conqueror the Ic Bedesten, inner nucleus of the Grand Bazaar, was built. Taking architect Ekrem Hakki Ayverdi's great book into account, by the end of the 15th there were about three hundred schools-medresses (mosque-schools), baths, and other public and social service buildings. However, the first great monument of Turkish civilization in the city was the Mosque of Fatih and very big complex around it of hospital, public food kitchen for the poor, and cultural institutions like university, etc. The Mosque of Fatih was built on the site of the ancient church of the Apostles, that is Constantine's church.
With the finest of views and on the slopes securely separated from the center of the city, the Topkapi Sarayi was built on the Acropolis in 1462. Therefore to the silhouette of the city was added the oriental arched style of the Kiosk of Fatih. As a result, ships approaching the city started to see the outlines of an increasing oriental city: Istanbul was taking on its characteristic shape by Turks.
The first Turks began to settle within and around the castles of Rumeli Hisari (The Castle of Europe) and Anadolu Hisari (The Castle of Anatolia) on the Bosphorus. The public building complex (kulliye) of Beyazit II was constructed on and around the Forum Tauri in the beginning of 16th. Constructing the complexes of Selim I (1522), ªehzade (1544-1548) and Suleymaniye (1550), the Turks had a etendency to establish majestic buildings on the rails above the Golden Horn, in contrast to Byzantine practise. De novo in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent the area along the boulevard between Beyazit Square and the walls was being stuffed with great mosques, much as the one built in the name of Suleyman's daughter (Mihrimah) at the Edirnekapi entrance of the city, and with smaller institutions among them. As of old, the most intensely populated section of the city was the side facing the Golden Horn. Thirty percent of the religious buildings were built here. With the erection of the Blue Mosque in the early 17th century the Turkish character of the city and its landscape was completed, and this appearance has stayed same up to this day.
In the time of Beyazit II big and severe earthquakes damaged stone constructions and the nomadic tradition or preference for wooden construction caused the rise of a taste for wooden buildings. Evm though this general taste, which continued till quite recently, was the main reason of the production of many masterpieces of buildings, they have not been able to lean against the pressures of time.
The 17th century was a period during which the construction of monumental buildings came to a stop. The area outside the walls of Galata between the Tunnel and Galatasaray began to fill up. The French Embassy was constructed here in 1581. The permission for building the Church of St. Louis was issued in 1628. The streets between the Tunnel and Galatasaray had been laid out by the end of the 17th century. The summer houses of the aristocracy, known as yali's, were greatly increased in number during this century.
Communication around the city was mainly carried on by water. For this reason, places where landing stages could not be built, for example along the steep bluffs between Uskudar and Haydarpasa, did not become thickly settled. The Golden Horn, one of the finest natural harbors in the world, sheltered a good many commercial establishments. Many of the districts there today bear names of these establish merits, such as Unkapani (Hour Warehouse), Hasir Iskelesi (Wicker Landing), Yemis iskelesi (Fruit Landing), and Odun Kapisi (Firewood Gate). Galata became the entrepot for goods in transit from East to West. By the seventeenth century the city had completely acquired its eastern character. Because the Turkish population, possessors of a tradition of spacious mansions surrounded by gardens and places of worship with large courtyards, were strangers to the ancient aesthetic traditions of classical cities. with their boulevards and public squares, these Roman boulevards and squares were done away with and filled up with houses. The streets were of a width suitable for horseman and pedestrians. A style of colorful wooden house-construction dominated the city. All Western travelers agree in describing the city as unrivalled in the beauty of its setting of harbor and countryside but very dirty within.
The peaceful character of the eighteenth century Ottoman Empire ushered in the poetic and flower centered era known as the Lale Devri (Tulip Period), the public works of which added to the physiognomy of the city. The imposing architect’s styles of the Louis XIV and Louis XV periods of the West were introduced to Istanbul. At Kagithane was adorned with the Sadabad complex, begun in 1721 - 1722, of marble quays, water canals extending inland, bridges, pools, and magnificently colorful wooden mansions. The Golden Horn and the Bosphorus as far as Bebek were lined with rich waterside mansions. The Grand Vizier Nevsehirli Ibrahim Pasha introduced the painting in white or pastel colors of these basically wooden mansions, and for ten years the Bosphorus was turned into a veritable garden of magnolias. Of these architectural gems of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, not one example survives today, with the exception of the Amcazade Yalisi at Kanlica. Lady Mary Whortley Montagu depicts the Ayse Sultan palace at Uskudar as extremely beautiful. During the same period Istanbul was enriched by the monumental fountains behind St. Sophia, at the Square of Uskudar, and many other places.
Above Galata the Tunnel Street was extended to Taksim at the end of the eighteenth century, while the slopes of Cihangir were joined to the shores of Tophane. A photograph presumably taken during the Crimean War shows the Taksim Square region as completely empty and uncultivated.
The need for reform was first realized in the Ottoman Empire of the eighteenth century, and the first reforms were made in connection with the army. This development gained for Istanbul a new type of building: barracks built in the Western style. During this period there were added to the face of the city the huge edifices of Selim at Tophane and Uskudar, the three-storied Kalyoncu Barracks built by Cezayirli Hasan Pasha, Vizier under Abdulhamit I, the Topcu (Cannoneers) Barracks built at Taksim by Halil Pasha in 1780, and the great Humbarahane Barracks built by Selim III in Halicioglu beyond Eyup.
We can learn about the rest of the city, from the great album of the artist Melling, who lived in Istanbul under Selim III. At the edge of the city, the present day appearance of the heights of Topkapi Palace was complete. On the other hand the shore by the Seraglio was not empty as it is today. One after the other in a row, beautiful kiosks and palaces filled up the shoreline without a break. On the shore outside the Seraglio walls there were several kiosks, the space between the shore and the building complex above was occupied by gardens and woods. Yedikule ("The Seven Towers") was then a splendid chateau still crowned with conical roofs. Opposite Eminonu Harbor the pure white quarriea store of Yeni Cami rise up. In front of it ware small buildings sheds, hundreds of rowing and sailing boats, and trees.
The Golden Horn had become thickly settled. On the Galata shore beyond Haskoy only the waterside was inhabited. The hillsides were forested. From Kasimpasa to Galata the hills were one great cemetary. On the slopes of Galata looking down on the Bosphorus and the ridges of Findikli and Tophane, embassies had been built. Taksim and beyond were still rural and empty. The Bosphorus developed along the shore. Only a few villages such as Arnavutkoy and Anadoluhisari had spread upward the hilltops.
Both in the Bosphorus and in city, many of the houses wore built in quite a different manner from those of the following centuries. Following the architectural pattern of Anatolia, they had a massive and closed ground floor with blind walls, above which were one or two wooden stories. Only the Seraglio and the great houses had habitable, windowed, normally fitted-out ground floors.
The first bridge joining the two shores of the Golden Horn was built, only for pedestrians, by Mahmut II in 1836 the place where the Ataturk Bridge is today. Abdulmecit I moved to the Palace of Dolmabahce on the shore, a building finished in 1856 in the Empire style. Under the same Sultan the bridge of Galata was built first time in 1845. In the first years of the reign of his brother Abdulaziz Topkapi was damaged by a fire. But the first real destruction there was brought about by the construction in 1874 of the Edirne-Istanbul railway. The route of the railway was made to pass along there by the express wish of the Sultan, and all the buildings along the shore, each more beautiful than the next, were demolished. Thus Istanbul lost one of the most important components of its landscape and one of its corners passed like a dream into past history. The subway (Tunel) going up from Galata (still in existence) was begun in 1871 and opened in 1875. The Beyoglu side of the city was taking on somewhat the appearance of a European city of the time. In 1869 an exotic and picturesque addition came to the streets of Istanbul: the horse-drawn tramway! With a barefoot runner going ahead to clear the road, the horsedrawn cars began to speed along the narrow streets.
In 1874 the gasometer at Dolmabahce was set up and the chief streets of the city were lighted up with elegant lanterns on iron poles in the style of the Paris of the time. The finest examples of these lamps are to be seen in the courtyard of the Archaeological Museum and the garden of Dolmabahce Palace. As for the poles themselves, they have been installed in the squares of Sultanahmet and Sehzadepasa and electrified. Before this time the city streets were not lighted. Inside the buildings lamps with wicks and olive oil or beeswax were lit. In the middle of the nineteenth century these were supplemented by coloured candies from Europe. When going out into the streets it was necessary to carry a lantern. These lamps were made with a brass framework holding crystal glass, or in the place of the glass, thin leather or coloured and decorated wax paper used. The art of lantern-making was a highly developed and delicate profession in Istanbul.
In 1855 Municipality along Western lines was established. Around 1865 the first important city-planning operations were undertaken fan the widening of the Divanyolu Street. In connection with this, the Beyazit Square was laid out in 1870. A massive building near St, Sophia in neoclassic style, begun in the time of Abdulmecit by the Swiss architect Fossati (the restorer of St. Sophia) and which for years spoiled the skyline of the city, was burned at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Abdülmecit in 1853 had the Kucuksu summer-palace built, lying on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus like a bit of frozen pearl. In 1865 his brother added downstream from it the great palace Beylerbeyi. The Ciragan Palace, built by the same sultan between Besiktas and Ortakoy in 1874 was, until it burned up in 1911, the richest and most splendid palace in the city.
In Abdulhamit’s time, the most important additions to the physiognomy of the city were the railway buildings. As a product of the German 'drive to the East' policy, and stimulated by the visit of the Kaiser, in 1887 the Sirkeci Railway Station was built in a mixture of architectural styles. The German Neo-Renaissance Haydarpasa Station rose to adorn the silhouette of the Asian shore. In 1895 the Galata Harbor and quays were built; these are the buildings which shut off the shore between the new Yolcu Salonu and Tophane. The quay here is 750 meters long. A quay an anchorage half this size was built in 1300 at Sirkeci (on the site of the Byzantine harbor) so that the row of buildings stretching from the Eminonu end of the bridge to the skirts of Topkapi Palace could be torn down in 1967 to provide the attractive shore road and ferryboat landings that are there now.
Beginning in the nineteenth century, just as everywhere in the world technology was gaining in importance, so too in Istanbul we see that the great buildings were no longer religious but barracks, banks, embassies and palaces ail non-religious in function. However, one destructive development of the ninteenth century was the industrialization of the Golden Horn. In 1828 a rope factory arid a fez factory struck the first blow at the lovely mansions and flower gardens that lined the shore inward from Unkapani. Several Sultan's palaces had to be torn down to make room for these constructions. This was a period when the Turkish economy in order not to be crushed under the impact of the developing heavy industry of Europe, was striving to pass from handicrafts to industry. In this desire and effort aesthetic considerations were sacrificed to technology. But the growing success of European policies led to the imposition of its own industry: the Turkish purpose was not achieved and the landscape remained destroyed. From that time to this these shores have been abandoned to uncontrolled small industry, and the unpleasant and ugly prospect that we see today had taken hold.
In the city, which still shelters an Eastern atmosphere and a Turkish character, pseudo-European enterprises and buildings cropped up from time to time: In 1863 at the Sultanahmet square en industrial exhibition that had a European type iron construction, looking like an airplane hangar, was set up.In 1882 the Archaeological Museum was built in a Neo Greek style In Gulhane park, at that time the seraglio gardens, landing its own atmosphere to this area and making a strong contrast to the fifth century Cinili Kiosk across from it.
In Abdulhamit’s time Galata and Beyoglu, that is Bankalar and Istiklal streets (the letter then called Pera), were enriched with several handsome examples of nineteenth century European architecture. Along with those of the Palace architect Raimondo d'Aronca, works by such architects as Vallaury, Barborini and Perpignani are still extant. Barborini designed the branch office of the Municipality at the head of Sishane square. It was erected at the time of the first mayor of the city Blacque Bey. The handsome building next to it of quarried stone and with wooden shutters is the work of Vallaury, who was also the architect of the Union Française further up the street, the Ottoman bank behind Yeni Cami and the Duyunu Umumiye (Public Debt) building at Cagaloglu. In the time of Sultan Mehmet Resat that is on the eve of World War I the architects Vedat Bey and Kemaleddin Bey attempted to synthesize the classical Ottoman architecture in various ways with the latest requirements of the times. Among these not entirely successful examples of a new style are the Buyuk Vakif Han behind Eminonu square and the main Post Office building at Sirkeci.
