Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Five: Inside the Haga Sofia
While talking about Haga Sofia… Yusuf was numb… when you stand in the confines of the place… you are transported to a history of thousands of year… you could come to Turkey, just to see Haga Sofia… it is the history of Turkey… of religion.
Yusuf was not dramatic… I have always heard people speaking very fondly about Haga Sofia… when you start visiting the place, and see the foundations of a pagan temple… frescoes of Jesus and Mary… and then a mehrab of a mosque… and then read somewhere… that Kamaal Ataturk converted this mosque into a museum to showcase and underline Turkey’s secularism… you actually feel numb.
Haga Sofia has history, grandeur and poignancy… all rolled in one.
When I bid adieu to the Egyptian couple… and started walking towards Haga Sofia… I first came across a grand fountain… called the German fountain… and thereafter the Haga Sofia…
What pinched me at Haga Sofia, though, was the very steep entry fee… 20 Turkish Lira… almost 600 Rupees. I recalled my visit to the Tajmahal in Agra… and the entry fee being 5 Rupees for me… and for the foreigners, 500 Rupees… at that time I could not understand the gross injustice of such differential charges… but while paying for Haga Sofia… I felt that such high charges are unjust. But then… Haga Sofia was worth every penny, although some construction was going on inside and large parts of it were marred by scaffoldings.
Further ahead in Topkapi Palace… the retreat of Ottoman emperors… now a museum. Topkapi is an amazing place to visit… for it holds all the treasures of Ottomans. Remember that Ottomans were the last Caliphs and therefore most of the original relics related to Islam, Prophet and his very first followers- are lying among the treasures of Ottoman emperors…
Not only that Ottomans also represent the zenith of Islamic art… fusing the Seljuk, Ommayad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Persian and European art forms… they created something so extra-ordinary, which blinds you with its grandeur and beauty. And that treasure is housed in Topkapi… the cloak and bow-arrow of Prophet … the sword of Ali… so many beautiful things… that you are overwhelmed… every building inside the Palace is an architectural masterpiece… I remembered the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem… and how beautiful its external tile-work was … here every building had the same tile-work.
Topkapi is “Mecca” for anybody who is interested in the history of Islam… in a way… it represents the zenith of Islam, too… under the Ottomans, who ruled half the civilized world at one point of time… from Persia and Central Asia… to Morocco… and from Yemen to East Europe… Islam reached its pinnacle… in faith, in arts, in philosophy, in science… and after which it again started treading the path of dark ages… under the Wahabi ideology, which even the Prophet rejected.
In the confines of palace, somewhere… also lies the peacock throne… I was confused… I am led to believe that peacock throne is in England… but here it was displayed in the Topkapi… a curator explained… that peacock throne was not one of its kind… but a type of throne… which got its name from wonderful exposition of colour work… so one could be in England… and other could be in Teheran… and yet another in Istanbul.
Close to Topkapi is a wonderful archaeological museum… worth a quick visit… nearby there is a beautiful park… I saw a number of families hanging out there… I was reminded that Turkey is on a longish holiday season due to Eid.
I retraced my steps back towards the Hippodrome… which is the central spot in all of Sultanahmet… my next stop was the Basillica Cistern… it was used by the Greeks to collect potable water… Istanbul, at that point of time… didn’t have an independent water source… the water was brought from faraway places via aqueduct and collected in an underground cistern reservoir… moreover rainwater was also stored after being filtered by the land above… in fact there were a number of such underground cisterns all over the region… Basillica being the largest and the most important… due to its coordinates.
To see the cistern, one needs to go underground… where artificial wooden platforms and pathways have been created… for people to walk and look at different parts of the cistern… the lightening of the entire place is very dim, orange light… which provides an eerie ambience to the entire cistern… in the background a haunting music plays… giving the entire place a part-romantic, part-scary character.
At one corner of the Cistern are the statues of Medusa… a Greek mythological figure… it is said that Medusa was a very beautiful girl, with black eyes and long hairs… she loved the son of Zeus… but a Greek God Athene (on whom the name Athens come) also loved her… when Athene could not win Medusa’s heart… he cursed her and turned her into a witch with an evil eye… so evil that just by her glance on someone… she turned him into a stone. When the son Zeus heard that his beloved has become a witch… he killed her and used her head to win many wars… the enemy armies, who faced the head, were turned into stone… thereafter Medusa became the symbols of Byzantine swords.
A very tragic love story, indeed.
Istanbul is perhaps the only city in the world which extends in two different continents… I have seen Port Said and Port Suez, which are partly east and partly west of Suez Canal… it being the boundary between Asia and Africa… but Istanbul’s expanse is not artificial like them… it actually stretches between the two continents… history has imparted it this virtue…
It was time that I visit the other Istanbul… the Asian Istanbul… Sultanhahmet… is in Europe… I needed to walk towards a place called Eminonu and take a ferry to Uskudar… crossing the Bosphorus and go to Asia…
A boat from Asia to Europe.
Yusuf was not dramatic… I have always heard people speaking very fondly about Haga Sofia… when you start visiting the place, and see the foundations of a pagan temple… frescoes of Jesus and Mary… and then a mehrab of a mosque… and then read somewhere… that Kamaal Ataturk converted this mosque into a museum to showcase and underline Turkey’s secularism… you actually feel numb.
Haga Sofia has history, grandeur and poignancy… all rolled in one.
When I bid adieu to the Egyptian couple… and started walking towards Haga Sofia… I first came across a grand fountain… called the German fountain… and thereafter the Haga Sofia…
What pinched me at Haga Sofia, though, was the very steep entry fee… 20 Turkish Lira… almost 600 Rupees. I recalled my visit to the Tajmahal in Agra… and the entry fee being 5 Rupees for me… and for the foreigners, 500 Rupees… at that time I could not understand the gross injustice of such differential charges… but while paying for Haga Sofia… I felt that such high charges are unjust. But then… Haga Sofia was worth every penny, although some construction was going on inside and large parts of it were marred by scaffoldings.
Further ahead in Topkapi Palace… the retreat of Ottoman emperors… now a museum. Topkapi is an amazing place to visit… for it holds all the treasures of Ottomans. Remember that Ottomans were the last Caliphs and therefore most of the original relics related to Islam, Prophet and his very first followers- are lying among the treasures of Ottoman emperors…
Not only that Ottomans also represent the zenith of Islamic art… fusing the Seljuk, Ommayad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Persian and European art forms… they created something so extra-ordinary, which blinds you with its grandeur and beauty. And that treasure is housed in Topkapi… the cloak and bow-arrow of Prophet … the sword of Ali… so many beautiful things… that you are overwhelmed… every building inside the Palace is an architectural masterpiece… I remembered the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem… and how beautiful its external tile-work was … here every building had the same tile-work.
Topkapi is “Mecca” for anybody who is interested in the history of Islam… in a way… it represents the zenith of Islam, too… under the Ottomans, who ruled half the civilized world at one point of time… from Persia and Central Asia… to Morocco… and from Yemen to East Europe… Islam reached its pinnacle… in faith, in arts, in philosophy, in science… and after which it again started treading the path of dark ages… under the Wahabi ideology, which even the Prophet rejected.
In the confines of palace, somewhere… also lies the peacock throne… I was confused… I am led to believe that peacock throne is in England… but here it was displayed in the Topkapi… a curator explained… that peacock throne was not one of its kind… but a type of throne… which got its name from wonderful exposition of colour work… so one could be in England… and other could be in Teheran… and yet another in Istanbul.
Close to Topkapi is a wonderful archaeological museum… worth a quick visit… nearby there is a beautiful park… I saw a number of families hanging out there… I was reminded that Turkey is on a longish holiday season due to Eid.
I retraced my steps back towards the Hippodrome… which is the central spot in all of Sultanahmet… my next stop was the Basillica Cistern… it was used by the Greeks to collect potable water… Istanbul, at that point of time… didn’t have an independent water source… the water was brought from faraway places via aqueduct and collected in an underground cistern reservoir… moreover rainwater was also stored after being filtered by the land above… in fact there were a number of such underground cisterns all over the region… Basillica being the largest and the most important… due to its coordinates.
To see the cistern, one needs to go underground… where artificial wooden platforms and pathways have been created… for people to walk and look at different parts of the cistern… the lightening of the entire place is very dim, orange light… which provides an eerie ambience to the entire cistern… in the background a haunting music plays… giving the entire place a part-romantic, part-scary character.
At one corner of the Cistern are the statues of Medusa… a Greek mythological figure… it is said that Medusa was a very beautiful girl, with black eyes and long hairs… she loved the son of Zeus… but a Greek God Athene (on whom the name Athens come) also loved her… when Athene could not win Medusa’s heart… he cursed her and turned her into a witch with an evil eye… so evil that just by her glance on someone… she turned him into a stone. When the son Zeus heard that his beloved has become a witch… he killed her and used her head to win many wars… the enemy armies, who faced the head, were turned into stone… thereafter Medusa became the symbols of Byzantine swords.
A very tragic love story, indeed.
Istanbul is perhaps the only city in the world which extends in two different continents… I have seen Port Said and Port Suez, which are partly east and partly west of Suez Canal… it being the boundary between Asia and Africa… but Istanbul’s expanse is not artificial like them… it actually stretches between the two continents… history has imparted it this virtue…
It was time that I visit the other Istanbul… the Asian Istanbul… Sultanhahmet… is in Europe… I needed to walk towards a place called Eminonu and take a ferry to Uskudar… crossing the Bosphorus and go to Asia…
A boat from Asia to Europe.
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