The Prospector

9/3/09

Today we had free time until noon. First, it was time to pack, as we were leaving our hotel for the day at noon. I went again to the grand bazaar, and just looked around. A rug dealer cornered me and would not let me leave his shop without naming a price for a rug I really did not want to buy! Finally I tried to insult him by naming a price too low, but he almost went for it. I had to simply walk away. After the grand bazaar, it was time to meet the group, and we rode the tram down to the waterfront. We ate lunch at a small cafe, but it was mostly bread and appetizers, lots of lamb. It was then off to the Bosphorus cruise. The Bosphorus was really nice, and we cruised up past and under the Bosphorus bridge, to the next bridge, where there was an Ottoman fort that was used to take the city. This was at a very narrow point in the Bosphorus. After we disembarked from the boat, we took a ferry across the Bosphorus which retraced some of our distance. We landed on the Asian side, and were taken to a mosque during prayer time. This was very interesting, as we had not seen the whole prayer cycle in its entirety. We entered the mosque, and the women in our group had to go up to the second floor balcony, where all the children and women were running around. The men first prayed individually, doing four cycles of prostrations, first starting with their hands behind their heads. Following, there are two prostrations. After this, the men all joined the imam in doing a series of prostrations and rising afterward. After they were all done, the imam joined us in the middle of the mosque to answer our questions about Islam and the history of the mosque. Apparently, the Sultan’s mother in the late 18th century commissioned the mosque to be built. As a result, a new breed of rose was made, and was planted in the garden. Being an imperial mosque, it was constructed with a sultan’s lounge on the second floor, with its own “alter,” or front, as I forgot the word in Arabic, and its own private entrance. It is also shielded in case of an attack from below. There were many calligraphy inscriptions along the walls, citing different verses from the Koran pertaining to mothers, as she was the one who commissioned the mosque. After, we boarded the ferry again to cross to the European side, and ate at a cafe, mostly sandwiches. Nikki, Ivan, and I hurried to Josh our friend’s shop to buy some last minute calligraphy, and then we met the rest of the group at the hotel. We loaded the bus, drove to the Asian side of Istanbul, and boarded a very nice train, so much better than anything we rode in Russia! It even has a power outlet and refreshments. This is living a little!

9/4/09
Today I awoke from a rough night on the train, a little sleepy. The ride was nice enough, I just kept waking up. Once we were off the train, the bus was there to meet us, and we were soon making our way across Turkish countryside. It reminded me a little of what I think middle America would be like, since I have never been there. There were mostly flatlands with crops being grown on them. It was all yellow as it is summer, although there were some trees here and there. It seemed almost like a desert. We arrived in Konya at around lunchtime, and had our meal at a little cafe, where I had some beef stew and rice, nothing too out of the ordinary. After, we walked to the tomb of the holy man Rumi, an ancient Sufi philosopher and poet. It was he who started the Sufi movement, and at his tomb there were also many sultans buried. This was an interesting site, being that it was a museum that used to be a mosque. Inside, I could see many covered women praying in front of the tombs of the holy men, even though this site is owned by the secular republic. There seems to be a question of “what do you do?” when you encounter a site like this. If you are a woman, do you put on a head scarf or not? If you are a visitor, do you view this in a secular or sacred light? Other things of interest at the site included many copies of the Koran, beautifully illuminated, many from the 13th century. There were also Korans present from as late as the 19th century. Some had writing that was extremely intricate and small. In the main mosque had an open floor like most mosques do, however it was in this particular mosque that the whirling of the dervishes took place. Adjacent to the mosque site were kitchens and rooms that were used by the Sufis during that time. After we left the mosque, we visited two madressi, or Islamic schools that had been converted to museums. They displayed artifacts mostly from the 13th century, during the Sejuk empire that ruled the area during those years. There were many intricate tiles on the walls, different from anything that we had seen in Istanbul. These were mostly one color, blue, and had intricate and different calligraphy, with more vertical lines, on them. There were a few holy men buried in these schools, and many more headstones from the era. Next, we had tea in a teahouse up on the hill in Konya, and then went to an early mosque that was also from the 13th century, older than any original mosque we had seen in Istanbul. It was almost forest-like inside, with many vertical pillars that were leaning, and a flat roof. During Ottoman times, this was done away with as the point was to build a mosque with as much unsupported floor space as possible (which may have possibly been a reason for the crashing to the floor of the Ayasofia’s dorm many times over). This mosque felt much more claustrophobic, and the center was in the middle of a long rectangle of a floorplan, much different than all of the mosques in Istanbul. After, we had free time, so I did some shopping, and then we had dinner at a buffet, with more westernized food. Following the buffet, we convened downstairs to have a discussion about Turkey and Bible, including some of the sites we have seen or will be seeing, and then we turned in for the night.