Living Like a Queen

Continuing to soak up the rich history of Istanbul, I got up early to visit the Basilica Cistern. The best of the secret treasures of Istanbul lies beneath the paved roads in a large aqueduct. Lit only by dim lights, the Basilica Cistern is an ancient aqueduct that, if visited in the morning, haunts your senses. You can hear water dripping from unknown sources and see fish slithering around the columns in the water as you walk about a room that looks eerily similar to the Chamber of Secrets in Harry Potter. The column that drew my attention had teardrop eyes carved into the stone. Known as the Crying Column, it was wet to the touch from an unknown water source. The other interesting artifacts in the cistern were the large Medusa heads in the back of the chamber. One is upside down and another on it’s side, but no one knows why. The mystery of the Basilica Cistern was my favorite place we visited. It even ended with a fun where a few of my girlfriends and I dressed up in traditional Sultan clothing. We felt like queens the rest of the day.

Still strutting around like royalty, we headed to the Topkapi Palace. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Topkapi Palace used to be home to the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years. The palace was broken up into various sections housing all sorts treasures and stories. The back section was the first “sofa,” which I expected to have one giant, plush, couch for tourists to recline on, but it turns out “sofa” just means an area to relax, play games, and enjoy the day without the stress of work. However they did have a building that had very short sitting areas to recline back to smoke hookah on. The most crowded section of the palace was the palace treasury on display in three rooms. The collection was impressive, showing off jeweled headdresses, gold plated swords, goblets, anything one could add a overly embellished design to. Despite my attraction to the large jewel collection (the jewelry was frankly just too large and ostentatious for my taste), the Harem intrigued me the most.

The Harem, though in the palace walls, is a completely separate part of the royal grounds. Sultans back in the day enjoyed their women. The Harem was a small collection of private apartments where his concubines resided. Eunuchs, black males without their manhood, also stayed with his “concubine family,” but only because they were forbidden to mix with the women of the palace (with being sterile and all, I imagine many women were turned off by that). Instead, the women of the Harem were there to please the Sultan. Girls between 6-13 were brought in for their beauty and intellect to live within the palace walls with the Sultan. However, only five or six concubines, including the head “Queen Mother” were granted the honor to share the Sultan’s bed. We saw the bed in one of the rooms- it was massive! It could definitely fit more than five people comfortably.

My first thoughts of the Harem were that it was beautiful, with ornate turquoise tiles all over the walls, and a nice shaded area that made it a cooler space than the rest of Istanbul. I can’t say that I would want to be brought in to live there. Even though the Harem was better than the outside world, the concubines were effectively stolen girls with talent or beauty, forced to live submissively to the Sultan. Still, it was great to learn about the history of the Palace and see the sites and treasures we have been learning about in Global Studies.