The Sewer Shuffle
A click of a metal catch and the safety harness is attached to my back. Someone makes a joke about a bungee jump and I peer into a hole in the ground, a ladder leading into darkness. Hesitation. I am starting to entertain doubts about this, but there is no backing out now. Carefully inserting heavy boots on each rung, I leave the London above, each step down taking me further from the sky and deeper into the darkness of the London beneath.
“A few more steps left,” a reassuring voice tells me. “Keep coming, that’s it, one more rung below the water and then take a step backwards, that’s it, I’ve got you.” A hand on my arm and I am slowly turned to my left. The reassuring voice comes from the Head Flusher who points to where the other intrepid explorers are waiting, knee-deep in water, his head torch picking out excited, curious and one or two dubious faces, against the backdrop of the sewer walls.
It is dark, damp, but surprisingly not that smelly. The brickwork is fine, and relatively clean considering this is a sewer tunnel, and the effluent we are wading in looks more rainwater than raw sewage, though the occasional brown shape floats past and it isn’t so dark we can’t see what it is.
It’s not very often you get invited to visit a sewer. I’ve often walked along the Greenway in Stratford, particularly recently to view the development of the Olympic Park and I’ve always harboured a longing to visit Abbey Mills Pumping Station, built as part of Balzagette’s engineering solution to London’s waste problem. So when I heard about Sewer Week from a friend, I was in a state of anticipation. Could I secure a place on the invite list? Thankfully I could.
A mixture of absurdly excited people gathered at West Ham rail station, initiates into some strange sect. Counsellors, a student, Thames Water employees, a museum curator, wildlife lovers, all of us sewer geeks. We arrived outside Abbey Mills, its red tiles highlighted by the sunshine and its enormous doors looking like an entrance to a Tolkien dwarvish kingdom. Inside a huge old map showing the sewerage network was pinned to the wall, browned and mildewed at the corners.
The agenda was lunch, followed by a lecture and then the action: a trip down Wicks Lane sewer and a tour around Abbey Mills Pumping Station. Thames Water had laid on a rather impressive lunchtime spread, consisting of hor d’oeuvres, miniature fish and chips, samosas, perfectly sliced salad vegetables and quiche. After we’d gone back for seconds (and thirds, in my case) we filed into the main room to be taught the history of the sewerage system. Some people may have thought this a subject hard to sell, but I could have heard the engineer talk all night. Not only was he knowledgable and down-to-earth, he was also well-practised, having apparently given this talk for over 30 years. He casually imparted the fact that he was one of the people to envisage the ‘Thames Tunnel’ – the solution to the sewer’s current capacity crisis – ten years ago.
But I need to back-track. The first thing you really need to appreciate is the genius of Balzagette (pronounced ‘Basil-jet’) who constructed 1,100 miles of brick-built sewers and street sewers to tackle the issue of London’s monstrous waste. Waste was dumped into open streams flowing into cesspits. As rich Londoners began to favour flush toilets, cesspits overflowed and drains carried waste into the river, where many people sourced water. Over 400,000 tonnes of sewage were flushed into the River Thames each day; approximately 150 million tonnes a year. It’s not difficult to imagine the problems this caused, cholera being the main one. However it was the smell, that really galvanised parliament to take action (see ‘The Great Stink‘). Built between 1859 and 1865, Balzagette’s system enabled London’s waste to be diverted away from its centre, pumped out through the Southern and Northern Outfall pipes and into the river. Eventually sewage was treated at Crossness and Beckton before being recycled, but in Balzagette’s day it was just moved on to where it wouldn’t cause such offensive smells to wealthy MPs. Balzagette was rigorous and methodical, checking every sewer connection himself, and he had the foresight to build the sewers must larger than they needed to be at the time – fortunate given the population explosions to come. The thing that I find most remarkable is how he overcame the challenge of London being on different levels, interrupting the sewer flow. Not letting something as simple as gravity get in his way, Balzagette created pumping stations, such as Abbey Mills, which lifted the water and sewage to higher levels to enable the flow to continue.
The only flaw in the system, if you dare call such an engineering feat flawed, is the fact that it dealt with rainfall and waste in a combined system. This couldn’t be helped as London’s rivers and streams were already carrying both and it would have been impossible (and more than the £3million parliament had put up) to separate. It’s this that puts such an almighty strain on the system these days. More people means more waste, but it’s the rain that’s the problem – as little as 2mm of rainfall overwhelms the sewers, leading to an average of 39 million tonnes of sewage overflowing into the river Thames every year.Of course there are now also 8million Londoners compared to the 2.5million in Balzagette’s day. If nothing is done, the overflow into the Thames is predicted to rise to 70 million tonnes by 2022! You can immediately see why Thames Water needed to find a solution, and therefore the ‘Thames Tunnel‘ was born. It is essentially, a storage tank for when the sewer system overflows. It has caused controversy – particularly in the areas where construction will be heavy and lengthy, however it’s hard to make an argument against its necessity. RSPB is a supporter due to the increasing wildlife a cleaner Thames will promote.
Back down the Wicks Lane sewer, we were confronted with problems other than rainfall. The flusher crew had kindly blocked off the flow, which was high due to the spring deluge we have been experiencing, yet the water was still knee-deep. It’s an interesting experience shuffling along a sewer tunnel. You can see why some people get panicked; let your mind wander off for a just moment and you start visualising what is under your feet, what is floating past you and what might happen if the water flow ran free. Add to that the vulnerability of being in a small slippery space in the darkness underground, the urgent importance of not falling over and the dancing light from the flushers’ headtorches picking out brown lumps… well let’s just say I wasn’t letting my mind wander off course for a second. I concentrated on my shuffle – a technique designed to stop you falling over. Don’t lift your feet up off the floor (less chance of stumbling) and inch your way long, feeling with your feet. The thing I found quite challenging was letting my feet guide me, but not letting my brain dwell too much on what I was shuffling on – sometimes though it was impossible, especially when the surface changed from gritty to slippery to deep and squidgy. The female student ahead of me was busy squealing with delight, every time I felt myself tense at the thought of slipping over, I would hear her sigh with happiness. Even the Head Flusher was faintly disturbed. “Never known anyone to say ‘wow’ so much down a sewer” , he said wryly, but you detected a certain amount of pride in his voice. We all stopped along a line in a main chamber and we got to see some of the tunnel gates in operation – despite their rusty appearance which reveals their age (they are original Balzagette gates) they still work and woe betide anyone who thinks they don’t.
In the chamber we learnt about the two things guaranteed to give the flushers a bad day. Cooking fat and wet-wipes. Following a big publicity-drive, most people now know that cooking fat solidifies into blockages in the sewers, interrupting flow and causing back-up problems. It has to be dug out by hand – and it’s obvious this isn’t a pleasant or easy job. Wet-wipes however, are just as bad. They get into the machinery and also have to be removed by hand, and then treated (to remove sewerage) before being disposed of. Wet-wipes are big business these days – I don’t know any parents of babies who don’t use them – and many are marketed as flushable, which they are, technically, but it’s once they’ve been flushed that the problems start.
As we stood knee-deep in effluent (some of us thigh-deep) we heard a shout, “Storm’s on its way, lads” and we were hurried quick-sharp back down the tunnel and up the ladder, back to the other London, the one above. As we tried to quick shuffle, we heard the rain start to fall, and the flushers began to be less gentle and patient, and more focussed on getting us all up the ladder. The words had changed from, “Take your time, careful does it ” to “Quick you go, keep moving, no hanging around”. It was almost comical, except my mind was starting to imagine a tidal wave of effluent flooding our way…
Outside, the heavens had truly opened. We hurriedly splashed our boots in disinfectant and then were de-booted and suited, all of us remembering the order to remove our gloves last – in fact a helpful sewer worker took our gloves off for us. After we were all scrubbed clean and in our usual clobber, we were taken back to Abbey Mills to be shown around the station. Every bit of the exterior was explained to us, and in the pouring rain, I almost expected to see the decorative dragons fly off to find a drier spot than the top of the pumping station tower and the cabbages (or were they peonies?) close up their leaves for shelter. It’s such a beautiful building. And for some reason I just love all the old industrial bits of machinery – things used to work in a much more exciting noisy way than they do now. Just look at the huge gleaming pumps fondly known as ‘Daleks’ and see what I mean. As we wandered around, I could clearly see images from the past overlaid on our current experiences – the shadows of old lives and old ways.
As part of my sewer tour, I’m off to Crossness soon, the Southern Outfall treatment plant and another Bazalgette diamond. Anyone who thought sewerage was a dirty word, should think again…
Interesting facts, courtesy of Thames Water’s ‘Sewer Week’:
- London only had a 24-hour water supply after 1900s – before that it was turned off at night
- London embankments, such as Southbank, were originally built as sewer housing
- There used to be Moorish style chimneys standing at Abbey Mills but these were taken down during the war for fear they would be targeted by Nazi bombers and fall onto the pumping station
- The lovely chimney still standing at Chelsea (which can be seen from trains arriving at Victoria) was built as part of Chelsea Pumping Station
Related articles
- London: Fools for the Olympics (travellingmole.com)
- Abbey Mills and Crossness (flickr.com)
- Thames Water ‘not listening to supersewer fears’ (thisislondon.co.uk)
London: Fools for the Olympics
A walk with the Blackheath Ramblers, featured in Walk magazine’s blog
Despite predictions for a return to winter, the sun was shining and the birds were singing as I took the train towards Stratford on Sunday 1 April. I was feeling slightly nervous of the pranksters waiting to assail me, with a thumb of their noses, for April Fools’ Day. Yet nothing was going to prevent me from joining the Blackheath Ramblers for a walk around Three Mills and the Olympic Park, a walk I had been anticipating all week. We would be exploring the industrial archaeology of the Bow Back rivers, and I was particularly excited about checking out how much further the Olympic Park had developed since I last visited (6 months ago, when I led a walk around it myself).
A large group of walkers were already gathered around the Walk Leader, Des de Moor, who was distributing programmes for the Blackheath Ramblers and London Stollers shorter walks. The Ramblers is renowned for its wondrously long hikes, but it also organises a whole host of short walks, under 5 miles, for people new to walking, or those who want to take things at a slower pace. This walk, in particular, was one of the ‘Get Walking for the Games‘ walks – a series of short, easy and accessible walks with a link to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, organised as part of the London 2012 Active Travel Programme.
Des started the walk off with a booming welcome and some facts about Stratford, including the derivation of the name from “street ford”, referring to the ford of the Lee on the Roman road to Camulodunum (Colchester). The medieval market town grew up away from Lee to avoid flooding and later still, in 1839, came the railway which rapidly industrialised the market town. Stratford is evolving again, with the huge redevelopment going on in connection with 2012 and the frankly terrifying Westfield, the third largest retail space in the UK. Leaving Westfield behind, and perversely walking in the opposite direction of the Olympic Park (away from the milling crowds and the stewards attempting to assert some control) we cut down along a quiet green path flanked by blackthorn – or possibly hawthorn, I struggle to tell the difference – and flowering currant. Two sentinels in the shape of a metal ladybird and dog guard the path which runs along the old waterway Channelsea river, the circles of gas works on the other side of the bank, which we use to connect up to the Greenway.
One of the things I love most about walking in London is all the little secret bits of green you find, interspersed with industry, roads, business and residential buildings. You might think London is a dirty, smelly, built-up city,where people can’t move for being on top of one another – and sometimes you might be right. But that’s why walking is so wonderful. Walk a few minutes down the road and take a turning and it’s likely you will suddenly find yourself in a park or recreation ground, by a canal or walking down a quiet street strewn with ivy and rhododendron, wild cherry blossom and forsythia, and somehow it’s all the more magical when you aren’t expecting it.
Despite all the spring beauty, we are actually walking on a sewer – which you can smell when the wind is right (or wrong). The Greenway is part of the Northern Outflow Sewer, which was constructed by Joseph Bazalgette in the 1800s. Waste had become unmanageable in London at this time with cesspits overflowing into the Thames and the heatwave of summer 1858 made the smell overwhelming to such a degree (“The Great Stink”) that a House of Commons select committee was set up to resolve the problem. The original Abbey Mills Pumping Station, aka the “Cathedral of Sewerage”, can be peeked at through the fence from the Greenway. It’s an incredibly lavish building considering its purpose, speaking of a time when functionality and aesthetics could go hand in hand. We pause to admire the view from Prescott Channel and then continue onto Three Mills Lock, trying not to get caught up in the many other walking groups who are also out enjoying the spring sunshine.
Astonishingly, 76 keen walkers have turned up for this walk, lured by the warm weather and the prospect of a glimpse of the Olympic stadium. I suspect a large amount have also turned out for Des, famed for his walk leading style. It’s a mixed group, including some Ramblers lifelong members and some new to the Blackheath group. One tells me that he likes walking with the Ramblers groups because it means he can walk in secluded places he might not feel safe walking along on his own; another tells me she likes walking for the company and the introduction to new places.
Our large group stretches like a caterpillar around Three Mills Lock to Three Mills Island, which includes the largest tidal mill left standing in Britain. As Des explains, the House Mill, Grade I listed, finally ground to a halt during the Blitz, yet has been wonderfully restored by the River Lea Tidal Mill Trust. The Mills have been recorded here since the Domesday Book, but the current House Mill was built in 1776 by a Huguenot family and believed to be the largest tidal mill in the world. Much of the internal machinery, including vast waterwheels and six pairs of millstones, still survives and offers an insight into the history of this fascinating building, and local historical industries.
Walking past brightly coloured houseboats we snake our way towards the Olympic Park via the Greenway Diversion. At the Viewtube, which will be closing in May in preparation for the Olympics, we take in the awesome sight of the Olympic Stadium, with its 80,000 seats, 55,000 of which are removable. It is the third largest stadium in Britain after Wembley and Twickenham. The Olympic and Paralympic Games are coming to Britain in 2012 (for the third time, previously 1908 and 1948) on condition that they deliver regeneration of a massive 2.5 square kilometre expanse of formerly derelict and partly contaminated post-industrial land in one of the most deprived parts of east London, in the lower Lee valley between Stratford, Hackney and Leyton.
As Walk Leader Des informs us, this site – now renamed the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee – will be at the centre of the world’s gaze in August 2012. Several landmark venues such as the main Olympic Stadium and architecturally innovative Aquatics Centre and Velodrome are located here as well as the athletes’ village and media centre. Afterwards it will be transformed into a whole new district on a scale which, as Mayor Boris Johnson (‘BoJo’) has pointed out, hasn’t been seen in London since Georgian times, including 11,000 new homes, a university and a major new landscaped urban park. The river Lee splits into various natural and artificial channels through the site, known as the Bow Back Rivers, and the landscaping will make full use of these, turning dirty drains into attractive water features.
There are test events at the park this weekend and as we have a comfort break we can hear the tannoy commentary drift over to us. Next to the stadium stands Anish Kapoor’s Orbit, or as some like to call it, the ‘Helter Skelter’. It reminds me of DNA the way it spirals and loops upwards. Kapoor said he was influenced by the Tower of Babel, that “there is a kind of medieval sense to it of reaching up to the sky, building the impossible”. Many have derided it, and BoJo for commissioning it (especially at £22.7million) but I think it’s quite nice to have something a bit ludicrous in the midst of all this careful planning.
As we move on, back onto the Greenway, we catch a glimpse of the athletics track through the fence. Much excitement between me and a walking companion, who has luckily scored tickets to the athletics. I can’t help but feel a bit envious – I didn’t get any tickets and as a Londoner, I feel a bit aggrieved by this. Still whatever I think about the Olympic Games, it’s pretty incredible seeing the rejuvenation that’s gone on in East London, and it’s been a real treat being able to watch the site grow over the last few years. I am hoping the legacy will be just as interesting.
We finish the day at Hackney Wick around lunchtime. We have done about 4 miles and everyone is full of praise for Des and the walk he has led. Good day’s work for the Ramblers – and not an April fool among us.
The Top 5 Walk Leader facts, courtesy of Des de Moor:
- Abbey Mills Pumping Station was used as location for Arkham Asylum in film ‘Batman Begins’.
- During the construction of the Three Mills lock an unexploded World War II bomb was found, which was disposed of with a controlled explosion.
- The House Mill at Three Mills Island ground grain for gin distilling
- ‘Ashes to Ashes’ & ‘Made in Dagenham’ were shot at Three Mills lock
- The ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture, stands at 114.5 metres – the tallest sculpture in the United Kingdom and 22m taller than Statue of Liberty
You can see the original blog post here: http://www.walkmag.co.uk/blogs/sarah-gardner-fools-for-the-olympics/
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Istanbul Under
Istanbul‘s Basilica Cistern (Yerebatan Sarnıcı - Sunken Cistern) is a large underground cistern that used to provide the Constantinople and Ottoman palaces with filtered water. Previously it was a Basilica, built in the 3rd and 4th centuries. It’s an eerily atmospheric place to experience. Descending down slippery steps into a dark, cavernous space, dotted lights casting out a faint glow, you suddenly realise you are surrounded by a vast amount of deep, dark water. The only noise is the drips from the damp ceiling hitting the water beneath. A movement catches your eye and you discover, with a creeping revulsion, that there are things living down here. Large bloated fish glide through the water, while smaller ones dart into dimly lit spaces, their tiny eyes lit up momentarily into glistening beads. Columns line the water like sentinels, with small lamps by their feet, putting out a murky yellow-green light. The water is hypnotic, wavering and, frankly, dreadful. The thought of being suddenly plunged into that dark mass makes my skin crawl and I have to fight a sudden panic to get up and out to the fresh air.
Like most old places, there are a lot of mysterious stories about the cistern. One of the best ones, which fills me with a wonderful sense of horror, is that after the cistern fell out of use as a water filtration system, the Ottomans used it as a bit of a junkyard, including a place to dispose of dead bodies. Images of the carp nibbling on the corpses, growing mutantly monstrous, fill my mind. I can’t help but think of all those horror stories of beasts growing in dark, damp caves, preying on incautious travellers…
It was the fish that led to the rediscovery of the cistern, when a scholar in the 1500s found out about locals catching carp through their basement floors (eating the fish that had been eating… dead bodies?). Wonderful and sinister to think of this huge unknown underground world, hiding beneath the city for years without anyone above aware of it, and meanwhile the fish swimming, eating, breeding in the dark.
The columns are very beautiful too, apparently recycled from various other ancient buildings, but best of all are the Medusa heads. These can be found at the back of the cistern very close together. Both heads act as pedestals, resting at the bottom of each column; one upside down, one on its side. They are impossible to miss due to the promotional signs and I can’t help but wonder what it must have been like to just stumble across these huge heads, strange in their appearance and their positioning.
No one has a very convincing story about what on earth these Medusa heads are doing down here, some say they were brought to the cistern after being removed from another building, but there is no evidence to suggest they were used as column pedestals previously. Some also say that the position of the heads is to negate the gaze of the Medusa, however more down-to-earth commentators state that the position is to support the columns more effectively, as the tops of the head are not flat due to the curling of the hair (presumably meant to depict snakes). My down-to-earth companion suggests that a cowboy builder just made a mistake and then couldn’t be bothered to correct it.
Despite being an unashamed coward, there is a part of me that loves the hidden places, the mysterious and the other-worldly. And I’m not alone in finding the Basilica Cistern inspiring. It has been reinterpreted in films such as Bond’s From Russia With Love, video games (Assassin’s Creed) and art (at the Istanbul Modern art gallery). The mystery of the medusa will hopefully continue to confound generations to come…
Related articles
- A Cistern Story (yardtotablegardens.wordpress.com)
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Istanbul: Galata and the Golden Horn
Last night someone decided to dig up the road outside my hotel which may or may not have had something to do with the five-hour powercut. After giving up on sleep I lay in bed listening to the calls to prayer and trying not to think about the things I am not allowed to think about. I had minimal success in this – the middle of the night somehow breeds pointless analysis. So eventually I got out of bed and watched two dark-haired women on TV singing their Turkish folk laments, stretching their voices like strings of an instrument until they sounded almost inhuman. (Rant alert: it makes a change watching a music channel which features women over the age of 50 wearing normal clothes, as opposed to MTV which would give the indication that all women are prepubescent scantily clad erotic dancers. Never thought I would think of Turkey as leading the way on feminism).
Come the morning, the sun shining weakly through patches of cloud, I layered up in thick tights, dress, two jumpers, coat, scarf, hat, gloves and boots (over two pairs of socks). Leaving my hotel I followed the tram line from Sultanahmet to Eminonu and Galata bridge. It took me about 30minutes, well okay 40, with all the “Just one minute please!”; “Hello are you German?”; “Hello English”; “Excuse me beautiful lady can I talk to you?” etc. I was ruthless this morning and shot out my “merhaba”s like bullets. At the seafront hundreds of people hop on and off the trams and march through the smoke from the chestnut sellers to the waiting ferries. Peddlers and touts compete with one another, shouting repetitive incomprehensible chants which I am sure would still be essentially meaningless even if I understood Turkish. It doesn’t matter though as their meaning is clear as they wave earmuffs, umbrellas and gloves in my face. One man even has an ingenious bright yellow hat with a miniature umbrella attached to it; I wish he was selling them. A ferry blasts its horn and I leap out of my skin, much to my chagrin.
Fishermen line Galata bridge, their rods creating lines to the sea, little pilchards in buckets behind them, some still alive and desperately swimming round and round the edges, trying to find a way out, away from their dead companions. I’ve read quite a bit about how Istanbullus like to eat fish sandwiches from the bridge here, apparently the fisherman will catch you a fish (or you can catch it yourself) and then will fry it and slap it between bread for a cheap and tasty snack. It sounded nice, but seeing the maniacally swimming pilchards in their buckets doesn’t whet my appetite. A man stands behind a set of scales which I assume at first are to weigh fish, but I see another man stand on them and money changes hands, and it doesn’t appear to be a joke.
On the other side of the river is Karakoy, in Beyoglu. The Rough Guide says this once functioned as the capital’s ‘European’ quarter, home to Jewish, Greek and Armenian minorities. Then in the 1960s it became known for its brothels and porn shows. It’s evolved again and now hosts fashionable cafe bars, restaurants and clubs, though the red light district hasn’t gone anywhere. It felt less touristy here and more local, and I felt distinctly uncomfortable at first. A lot of women wore headscarves (a few burkas too) and I copped a lot of stares from men, none particularly friendly. However this all changed once I’d made my way up the Kamondo Stairs, avoiding the hurtling cars who are (as usual) oblivious to pedestrians, and reached İstiklal Avenue, the main shopping boulevard. Suddenly it all felt very European; lots of cosmopolitan women pound the streets, pop music blasts from the shops which display the current fashions, and for the first time since I’ve been in Istanbul I feel totally anonymous.
I eat lunch in a lokanta, a cafe style eatery where ‘hazir yemek’ (ready food) is kept warm and served by the portion. These places, like the simit sarayi, are fantastic for a solo female traveller as they are totally casual and the customers are all oblivious to one another, intent on feeding the hungry beast within and then departing for other more important things. The food is nice though and good value; I eat a slice of veggie pizza, a cheese and spinach pastry and some tea all for 8TL (£2.85).
The streets in Beyoglu are warren-like, and run uphill in a knot of alleyways. I loved the fact that whole streets are dedicated to one product, so for example a street which sells only lighting (a genuine Electric Avenue) and one that only sold musical instruments. In one shop on the music street, an Iron Maiden record cover, which takes me back to my childhood days when my brother would pin up Iron Maiden record sleeves on his basement bedroom wall, the corpse eyes from the covers following me round the room.
I find a wonderful shop called Denizler Kitabevi on İstiklal Avenue which is a treasure trove of antique books and maps. I spent ages browsing and eventually come out with a print of a map of Constantinople dating from 1520 for 20TL (£7) which is the oldest post-conquest map of Istanbul made at the start of the Ottoman rule. It was authored by a Venetian, Giovanni Andreas di Vavassore and the print I have is Braun and Hogenburg’s interpretation, published in 1558. It shows the Yeni Saray (the palace) and the then-new minarets of Hagia Sophia, the old city walls and the Pera shipyards. The only reason I have this information is because the lovely man in the shop let me copy it down from a book on maps and gave me a sweet smile when I said “tesekkur ederim” (“thank you very much”).
As I walk back to Sultanahmet it begins to snow, a white powder covering the bonnets of cars.
Related articles
- Galata and Its Cats (evelynrdz.wordpress.com)
- Mio Galata (chromasia.com)
- Istanbul: readers’ tips, recommendations and travel advice (telegraph.co.uk)
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Dalrymple on Istanbul
Since I arrived in Istanbul I have been thinking about how lacking in diversity the place is. At first, it was the lack of women I noticed – because as a woman, I felt conspicuous. Then I started to notice that there was hardly anyone in Istanbul who wasn’t Turkish. This struck me as bizarre for a city, especially as an inhabitant of a city which is rammed full of different types of people – walk down a street in London and it’s unlikely that you will see the same face twice. Walk down a street in Istanbul and you will see a similar type of face – male and Turkish – repeated again and again.
I have been reading William Dalrymple‘s From the Holy Mountain (which, funnily enough, opens the Istanbul section at the Pera Palas Hotel, which I walked past in Beyoglu). His book is about a journey he took in the footsteps of John Moschos, a monk who travelled across the Byzantine empire in AD 587. It is also an exploration of eastern Christianity and its similarities with Islam, challenging the modern-day conceptions that Christianity is a western religion and that it is set up as a polar opposite to Islam. The book is interesting in a wide range of different ways – as a travelogue, a historical text and a socio-political record – and I find it helps explain a few things.
When John Moshos was in Constantinople, around AD 587, apparently 72 different languages could be heard in its streets – from Coptic monks to Jewish glassblowers, Persian silk-traders to Gepid mercenaries from the Danu. After the Ottomans conquered the city it became even more diverse and more importantly, religiously and ethnically tolerant – in direct contrast to the 17th-century Europe, which was busy burning ‘heretics’. For example positions of power were not reserved exclusively for Turks – many officials were Christian or Jewish converts. However, as Dalrymple puts it, writing in 1994, the nationalism of the 19th-century has led to a “culturally barren and financially impoverished mono-ethnic megalopolis, 99% Turkish… for the first time in two millenia, Istanbul now feels almost provincial.” (From the Holy Mountain.)
Despite the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the expulsion of the Greeks in Anatolia in exchange for the Turks evicted from northern Greece, the population of Istanbul was still almost 50% Christian at the end of the 19th-century. The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 allowed the 40,000 Greeks to remain with their rights and property intact. However, Dalrymple states that in 1955, Istanbul played host to “the worst race riot in Europe since Kristallnacht” when 1000s of hired thugs descended on Hellenic ghettos, breaking windows in Greek shops, desecrating cemeteries, gutting churches, whilst the police looked the other way. The government blamed a few ignorants but according to Dalrymple the Greeks believed the riots were too well-organised, and the real objective was to scare the Greeks out of the city in order for the Turks to take control of the city commerce. If this was the intention it worked, because by 1965, the Greek population had fallen to approximately 75,000 and in 1994, only 5,000 remained. Some of the Greeks Dalrymple spoke to said they changed their names to more Turkish sounding ones, that life was impossible for their children otherwise. Some Greek students say that the Turks have re-written Greek history and made it their own, including St George, Hagia Sophia, Homer and the Hippodrome. In a typically funny description, one student tells Dalrymple that her sister was asked by a Turkish boy, “Why did you Greeks come here? All you ever do is make trouble.” She replied, “We didn’t come here, you did!”
Dalrymple talks about the rise of the of the Islamic right, in particular the ominous Refah party. Attaturk’s attempts to modernise – banning the fez, outlawing Arabic script and polygamy – may well have had the reverse intention by bringing about a resurgent Islamic movement with burkas for women and mullahs preaching that the earth is flat.
Dalrymple compares his 1994 visit to his previous one in 1984 and describes how “many of the old wooden houses with their intricately latticed balconies have been swept away and replaced by grey apartment blocks”, which could explain why there is such a lack of old architecture in the city, something which surprised me when I first arrived.
Of course, this was all written almost twenty years ago and so is history itself now. My more up-to-date Lonely Planet guide says that Refah polled more votes than any other party in 1996 but was expelled due to the ban of religion in politics (and its leader sent to jail for inciting religious/racial hatred via a poem recital). The 1999 elections brought in a coalition led by the left-wing Democratic Party – which encouraged European style social democracy – but the collapse of the economy led to the moderate AK party being elected in its place in 2002, led by the former leader of the Refah party, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who had finished his sentence in jail and successfully risen again in politics. Apparently he has turned the economic fortunes of the country around (although I am unconvinced re the infrastructure and its constant power-cuts) but the party has become less democratic and more authoritarian, imprisoning journalists and protesting students. In 2008, Erdogan said that to ensure that the Turkish population remains young, every family would need to have at least three children. Big Brother is watching – even in the bedroom, apparently.
Related articles
- Book Review: From the Holy Mountain (matadornetwork.com)
- Letter: Istanbul needs neighbourhood regeneration (guardian.co.uk)
- Political Tourist: Istanbul (nbsocialist.blogspot.com)
Istanbul: Topkapi Palace #2: tulips and mohammed’s beard
I’ve made it as far as the Third Courtyard and I am pausing in the sunshine to stare back at the scene in front of me. Tree lined avenues, geraniums and pansies, fountains, elegant arcitechture; all touched with gold sunshine. To my right is a huge hollowed out tree, it’s trunk a huge doorway, complete with a red gate across it. Apparently a lot of the trees at the palace got a fungus and had to be hollowed out, but I prefer to think of it as an entrance to a secret world. Behind me is the Audience Chamber, built in the 15th century in beautiful Ottoman style with a colonnade of 22 columns decorated with gold leaf, and the Library of Ahmed III, built in 1719. The library collection consisted of more than 3,500 manuscripts on theology and Islamic law in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian; some included examples of inlay work with nacre and ivory. To protect against moisture damage the building was set on a low basement and the books were stored in cupboards built into the walls. One of the most important items was the so-called Topkapi manuscript which, along with the other books, is now kept in the Mosque of the Ağas, located to the west of the library. The sultan had his own provate spot, of course, which is the niche opposite the entrance. I am violently jealous of this library.
Ahead of me is the Imperial Treasury which contains a huge collection of jewellery and heirlooms, in essence Ottoman bling. The guards are very strict about photography in here and we all shuffle round the many darkened rooms staring into cases and many shining and gleaming bits of treasure. Gold, silver, rubies, emeralds, jade, pearls, diamonds… it’s strange, but the more you see the less interested you become. I remain unmoved by most except the Kaşıkçı Elmas (the so-called ‘Spoonmaker’s Diamond‘). At 86 carats and with a status as the fourth largest diamond of its kind in the world, this rock is one bad boy. I’ve never really got the appeal of massive rocks and I always find it really tedious when people use the words “seductive” and “dangerous” to describe expensive jewellery. However for the first time ever I can see it. I find myself gawping at the case holding the teardrop diamond – at a safe remove, you aren’t allowed to get too close – and thinking up descriptions such as: it glitters dangerously in its case; or it shimmers its seductive siren spell. I also can’t help but think of Elizabeth Taylor.
I am most particularly interested by the legend that has grown up around it. There are a few stories, but the name supposedly comes from the fact that some poor bumpkin (cos aren’t they always?) found it in a dump and needing food, sold it to a peddlar for three spoons. Not sure what happened after that, but hopefully the spoonmaker got diddled in his turn by the vizier who ended up with it. Whatever the truth, it’s nice to think of this immense diamond just laying around in a rubbish heap waiting to be found.
As a bit of an antique furniture geek, I also enjoyed peering at the thrones of the sultan, especially the portable ones which the sultan took to battle. I find the impracticality of this quite hilarious. Surely you want your lord and overseer to be charging at the front on his steed, hopefully with a massive sword, to inspire his armies? Not worrying about whether he has packed his tiger-skin mother of pearl throne.
Credit to madamepickwickartblog.com
The Privy Chamber holds the Scared Relics, a real crowd-pleaser for pilgrims apparently. And indeed, once inside, I am shoved out of the way more than once by a sharp elbow and some very determined families keen to get a good look at hair from the Prophet Mohammed‘s beard,his footprint in clay, his tooth, his daughter’s carpet… etc. I always find it odd that visitors to religious relics (whatever religion) seemingly never act in the way their religion encourages them too, there is often more pushing going on than at a gig or a football match. My guidebook advises decorum and respectful behaviour, but frankly I seem to be the only one attempting it.
From here, I skip the Harem (too little time, too little money – it’s an additional entrance fee) and I move on into the Fourth Courtyard. I am quite enjoying the fact that had I been alive in Turkey at the time of the sultans, there is no way I would ever have got into the First Courtyard let alone the Fourth. It was the innermost sanctuary for the sultan and his court and you can tell – it’s even more beautiful than the rest of the palace. There are various kiosks which offer views of the Golden Horn and whilst there are rooms related to fasting and prayers, the overriding impression you get is of decadence and pleasure. A summer’s evening: balmy air, the scent of flowers, the glow from the tiny lights placed throughout the Tulip Garden and various pages, eunuchs and consorts catering to your every need.
Up some marble steps, to a terrace and more kiosks, including the Revan/Yerevan Kiosk, and the Baghdad Kiosk. It’s hard to find more ways of saying something is astonishing and beautiful; the amount of Iznik tiles, pearl and tortoiseshell inlay is breath-taking. Both kiosks were named for successful military campaigns (Revan is in modern-day Armenia). The Circumcision Room can also be found here and I suppose the pain of the ritual may have been tempered by the dazzling rare tiles, inspired by Far East ceramic craft.
The thing that strikes me most about the palace is its utter separation from most ordinary people’s lives. The delicacy, elegance and purity all would have been things which wouldn’t have been features in most people’s lives, certainly not the poor. Everything about it, from the stone used in the buildings to the landscape gardening to the position of the palace by the sea, speaks of luxury. You might think that living in such exquisite conditions would produce considered and temperate rulers – the Camelot ideal – but in reality the sultans were a spoilt, indulgent, carousing lot, whose consorts, viziers and eunuchs contrived to extend their power as much as possible. It’s a bit depressing to think that instead of using all that wealth and power to create a better state, the court spent all their time trying to consolidate their little kingdoms, or just making merry. Selim the Sot, for example, drowned in his bath after drinking too much champagne. Ibrahim the Crazy lost his reasoning after being locked up in the kafes (‘cage life’ – house arrest in the harem), as did Ahemt I’s brother Mustafa, both of whom had siblings who wanted to maintain their grip on the imperial throne. Roxelana, consort of Suleiman the Magnificent, was renowned for her machinations as much as her beauty (see Sex and Power) and Kosem Sultan maintained power through her husband and two sons before being strangled by another greedy valide sultan.
With these thoughts, I leave the palace through the Imperial Gate which leads out to the back of the Hagia Sophia. A man with a thick grey moustache and a large woollen hat is sat on a low wall strumming a baglama. He responds to my nod and smile with a heart-breakingly gentle grin, which lifts my step as I skip towards the Blue Mosque, its minarets glowing against the dusky sky.
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- Istanbul: Topkapi Palace (travellingmole.com)
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Like this:
Sex and power: women in the Ottoman court
From what I have read up on the Ottoman court, it seems that, rather than using power to better society, the basic driver behind courtier’s actions was a desire to consolidate wealth and power (no great surprise there). Despite the fact that the sultan had all the power which he flowed through his viziers and chief eunuchs, the consorts also had their own ways of getting in on the action. Women – or at leat women from powerful families – may have been segregated and those at court may have been caged in the harem, but they had their owns ways of influencing and shaping power.
Hürrem Sultan, aka Roxelana, the consort of Suleiman the Magnificent was a good example. Her beauty and skill was so impressive that Suleiman broke the usual convention and married her. He apparently penned her a poem, which included the lines: “My springtime, my merry faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf…/ My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this world…”. However he might have had time to think on that later, because Roxelana was an expert Machiavellian. Not only did she oust several consorts and valide sultans (mothers of heirs), she was also behind a conspiracy which resulted in the murder of Suleiman’s close childhood friend and brother-in-law, Ibrahim Pasha. Ibrahim was originally a childhood slave who rose to become chief falconer, chief of the royal bedchamber and ultimately Grand Vizier, as well as being married to Hadice, Suleiman’s sister. Roxelana, as part of her own intrigue to maintain power, convinced her husband that Ibrahim was guilty of treason and Suleiman had him strangled in 1536. It didn’t help that Ibrahim was already calling himself ‘sultan’ which was an affront to Suleiman, however it was later said that Ibrahim had remained resolutely loyal and that Suleiman had a long time to regret his execution.
Credit to milliyet.com
There was also a fascinating period called the ‘Rule of Women’, when the chief concubines and valide sultans ruled in the place of increasingly dissolute sultans such as Selim II “the Sot” whose power was diverted through Nurbanu, his chief consort. Kosem Sultan, favourite of Ahmet I (1603-17) not only influenced court through her husband but also through her sons Murat IV (1623-40) and Ibrahim “the Mad” (killed 1648) until she was eventually strangled in 1651 by Turhan Hatice, mother to the child sultan Mehmed IV, and therefore rightful valide sultan.
Undoubtedly the only way women could exercise power in a society which saw them as inferior, was to use the only tools they were given: their beauty and femininity. After all, everyone else at court was plotting how to better their power base, so why wouldn’t the consorts?
Related articles
- Istanbul: Topkapi Palace (travellingmole.com)
- Women in the Ottoman Empire (academia.edu)
- Fetih 1453: Blockbuster Turkish Epic Revels in Ottoman Past (globalspin.blogs.time.com)
- Drink Coffee? Off With Your Head! (npr.org)
