Istanbul’s museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts revisited

Knitted Column & Sultanahmet Cami from Turkish & Islamic Arts Museum

 

 

Great news! After two years of restoration the Turkish and Islamic arts museum in Istanbul's Hippodrome has finally reopened just in time for the festive season.
The museum is housed inside a stone building that is itself a historic monument as the only privately owned mansion to have survived from the 16th-century heyday of the Ottoman Empire. When it was built is a mystery, although it has to have been long enough before 1520 to have needed the running repairs of that year for which records survive. What is certainly known is that in 1521 Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent made a gift of the building to his friend and later son-in-law, İbrahim Paşa, who became one of his grand viziers. Subsequently, in 1530 the sultan observed the celebrations for the circumcisions of his three sons from the window that jutted out onto the Hippodrome.

Being an Ottoman sultan's favorite was just as precarious a business as being a favorite at the court of the Tudor kings of England, and in 1536 İbrahim fell foul of Şuleyman's powerful wife Roxelana in a dispute over the succession; at a feast to celebrate Ramadan he was duly strangled and his body tossed into the Bosporus.

After that the palace had a checkered history. The building you see today is a mere fragment of the original which is believed to have stretched right the way along the Hippodrome as far as the Firuz Ağa Cami (mosque) on Divan Yolu and as far back as the Binbirdirek Sarnıçı (1001 Pillars Cistern). Fortunately, the main ceremonial hall survived and had been restored to what was thought to be its original appearance by 1983 after which the museum was moved here from its previous home in one of the medreses attached to the Süleymaniye Cami.

The museum

Today the museum is home to a stunning collection of items not just from Turkey but also from other parts of the Islamic world. They are displayed in roughly chronological order, starting with capitals, floor tiles and other items acquired from the palace of the Abbasid ruler Caliph Mutasim (r. 833-42) in Samarra (modern-day Iraq), and a collection of early medieval glazed turquoise pottery redisplayed as if it had just been excavated from the ruins of Raqqa, a poignant sight now that the modern city has fallen to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

New to the museum is a room devoted to the Damascus documents collection, a treasure trove of pages taken from Qurans dating from the ninth to the 19th centuries that were brought here from the Ummayad Mosque in Damascus in 1917.

A highlight of the museum is the early 13th-century door taken from the Ulu Cami in distant Cizre. This magnificent door with two wings featured a wooden frame over which an elaborately worked metal superstructure was placed. It also featured a huge pair of griffin-shaped door knockers attached to it with knobs shaped like lions' heads. Sadly, one of these knockers was stolen in 1966 and is now in the David Collection in Copenhagen, a clear example, surely, of something that should be returned to its land of origin. Unusually, we know the name of the man who designed this wonderful door, a Cizre-born engineer named Al-Jazari (1136-1206) who worked at the court of the Artuqid Sultan Nureddin Muhammed Kara Aslan and wrote a book, nicknamed Automata, in which he described his many ingenious inventions.
The museum also displays beautiful items from Safavid and Qajar Iran including mirrors that show off the Qajar rulers with astonishingly thick black beards so that they look rather like negatives of Santa Claus. Then come the purely Turkish rooms, displaying choice pieces from the Seljuq, Beylik and Ottoman eras. Some of the most interesting are the Seljuq items that show how lightly the Islamic prohibition on figurative art was once held. Here you'll see bowls painted not just with birds but also with groups of Seljuq grandees as well as panels carved with griffins and tombstones featuring men on horseback.

Finally, there are the carpets, the pride of the museum and some of the finest relics of the art from its earliest days including pieces from Konya that date right back to the 13th century. Most are appropriately displayed in the grand ceremonial hall along with pieces of fine inlaid Ottoman woodwork.

The collections aside, from the terrace of the museum you get a spectacular view of Sultanahmet Cami (Blue Mosque) with one of its famous six minarets currently partially dismantled for restoration. The old ethnography section that used to display wonderful pieces of nomadic finery will not reopen for another six months, but before you leave the museum you should take a quick look at a fairly nondescript arch with a pair of painted rosettes on the ceiling in front of it in the lobby. These are the last traces of the Düğümlü Baba Tekke, a dervish lodge rediscovered during restoration work.

The tekke was a shrine to Şeyh Hafız Mustafa Efendi (d. 1886), a madman who used to knot pieces of rag to his clothes, hence his nickname, Düğümlu Baba (the holy man of the knots). A popular meeting place for those with mental health issues, the tekke was closed along with all the others in the city by order of Atatürk in 1925. Its ruins were completely demolished in 1965 when work on restoring the palace started.

Obelisk of Theodosius, Hippodrome

The Hippodrome

Not to be missed on the ground floor behind the ticket desk are unexpected pieces of the old Hippodrome, the Byzantine chariot-racing circuit over whose remains İbrahim's palace was built. Other than these rather enigmatic chunks of masonry with tunnels running through them the only other structural remnant of the Hippodrome is the Sphendone, the soaring brick outer wall that used to support the tiered seating at the rounded end of the stadium. Pictures and photos beside the newly uncovered section in the museum reveal what the stadium must have looked like in its heyday when huge crowds cheered on their favorite teams with all the fervor of Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe and Beşiktaş fans today.

Until the recent repaving of the Hippodrome it was easy to stand at the opposite end of it, near the circular Alman Çeşmesi (German Fountain), and get a sense of the shape of the stadium as the traffic followed roughly the same route as had been taken by the chariots. Now that the whole area has been pedestrianized the shape is a little harder although not impossible to discern especially if you remember that the monuments in the center - - the Obelisk, the Serpents' Column and the Braided Obelisk - - originally formed some of the decorations of the Spina (Spine) running down the middle of the stadium.

The most immediately impressive of these monuments is the Dikilitaş or Obelisk of Theodosius. In 390 the Byzantine emperor Theodosius had this hieroglyph-inscribed piece of granite transported here from Thebes in Egypt where it had originally served as a memorial to the triumphs of Pharaoh Tuthmosis III (r. 1479-1425 BC). It then apparently languished in a corner of the Hippodrome until eventually an administrator named Proclus worked out how to lever it into an upright position on a plinth decorated with carvings showing the emperor attending a chariot race and awarding a crown of laurels to the victor.

The obelisk was partially broken in transit from Egypt but is still in startlingly good condition considering its age, especially when you look at the shattered remains of the Serpents' Column nearby. Originally in the shape of three intertwined snakes whose heads formed a tripod to support a golden cauldron, this, too, was originally built to commemorate a military victory, in this case that of the Greeks over the Persians at Plataea in 478 B.C.; it was reputedly made from the shields of the defeated troops. Made to stand in front of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, it was brought here by Emperor Constantine the Great in c. 330. Of the snakes' heads only one still survives (although not on display) in the İstanbul Archeological Museum.

Either Constantine or Theodosius was probably also responsible for bringing the unadorned Örme Dikilitaş (Knitted Obelisk) to the Hippodrome. A pale imitation of the impressive Obelisk of Theodosius, this was once covered by bronze plates paid for in the 10th century by Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. They seem to have disappeared during the disastrous Fourth Crusade in 1204.

Qajar mirrors

Selçuk bowls

Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_istanbuls-museum-of-turkish-and-islamic-arts-revisited_368065.html
 

Seeking the Genoese in Turkey

Güvercin Adası, Kuşadası

August 02, 2014, Saturday/ 17:00:00/ PAT YALE / ISTANBUL

If you stand on the galata Bridge and look north towards the Beyoğlu skyline, far and away the most dominant feature is a solid cylindrical tower surmounted by a witch's hat roof. This is the Galata Tower, best known to visitors for a balcony from which they can take in a panoramic view of the old city.
The Galata Tower is also known for the curious story of Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi who, according to the 17th-century Ottoman travel writer Evliya Çelebi (no relation), strapped on a pair of home-made wings and flew from its balcony right across the Bosporus to land in Üsküdar. This event may or may not have happened (Evliya Çelebi was fond of rather tall stories), but attached to the tower is a plaque that records something else that certainly did. On May 29, 1453, it says, the genoese handed the keys of their colony to Sultan Mehmed II, and behind that bald statement lies an interesting story that goes largely untold.

For the Galata Tower had started life in 1349 as the Tower of Christ, built by the Genoese on the site of an older Byzantine tower at the apex of a set of walls surrounding what was effectively a separate city. This had been granted independence by the Emperor Michael VIII Paleologos in 1261 when he had recovered Constantinople from the occupying Crusaders with the help of the Genoese. Before that, Genoese traders had, like their counterparts from Venice, Amalfi and Pisa, hunkered down on the shores of the Golden Horn.

The walls dated back to the fourth century but had been extensively rebuilt in the sixth century by Emperor Justinian. Michael Paleologos ordered their demolition and only agreed that the Genoese should be able to surround their colony with trenches, but by dint of building tall houses alongside the trenches and then filling in the gaps in between them they had soon managed to recreate parts of the walls. New stretches were stealthily built over time; new towers were still being added in the early 15th century.

At their greatest extent the walls of the Genoese city ran down from the Galata Tower to the Golden Horn at what is now Azapkapı beside the Atatürk Bridge, and to the Bosporus at Tophane. Tucked up inside them the Genoese were governed by a podesta (governor) whose battered palace just about survives near the top of the Kamondo Steps where there is also another building said to have been built by the Genoese in 1314.

Mehmet the Conqueror insisted that the walls of Galata be lowered, but they were not torn down and survived in large part, with their gates and towers, right through until 1863 when orders were given to demolish them as part of efforts to modernize this part of the city.

Today the Galata Tower is the most significant surviving relic of the lost walls. One other round tower also lives on, albeit in a shockingly battered condition, in a parking lot off Şair Ziya Paşa Caddesi, which in turn runs south from Büyük Hendek Caddesi (Great Trench Street), whose name also commemorates the lost fortifications. At Azapkapı near a Sinan-built mosque, a small stretch of the wall survives while on the inland side of the main road more of it just about hangs along with the Yanıkkapı (Burnt Gate), which still bears several Genoese coats of arms (last time I visited it was blocked due to Metro building work).

Reminders of a time when the Genoese ruled the roost in Galata also came to light when excavations around the Arap Cami in Karaköy were carried out. The mosque started life as a vast church built for the Dominicans, but the many gravestones uncovered there suggested that its congregation was largely Genoese.

The Genoese presence in İstanbul certainly didn't come to an end in 1453 even if they were never to be so important again. That some of them remained extremely wealthy is evidenced by the Church of St. Mary Draperis on İstiklal Caddesi, named after Clara Bratola Draperis, the Genoese woman who donated the land for it. The Old American Consulate building on Meşrutiyet Caddesi, which is now being restored to house a Soho House hotel, also started life as the Palazzo Corpi, built for the wealthy Genoese shipbuilder, Ignazio Corpi. Its architects were Italian and all the materials used to decorate it were imported from Italy.

But the reach of the Genoese extended far beyond Galata. In 2013 a rather unexpected addition was made to Turkey's list of tentative world heritage sites. “The Trading Posts and Fortifications on Genoese Trade routes from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea” is rather an odd listing given that the properties identified are all along the Aegean and Black Seas. Still, Genoese traders certainly were active around all the Turkish coasts as evinced, for example, by Ceneviz Limanı, the name given to a bay near Adrasan.

Aside from Galata Tower, the tentative UNESCO listing specifically covers the castles at Anadolu Kavağı on the Bosporus, Eski Foça and Çandarlı on the Aegean, and Akçakoca, Amasra and Sinop on the Black Sea. Oddly, it omits the contemporary castle at Kuşadası.

Anadolu Kavağı

Anadolu Kavağı is the last stop made by the ferries offering long Bosporus cruises out of Eminönü. Many passengers just disembark to grab a quick fish lunch at one of the harbor side cafes before reboarding the boat. Hardier types strike uphill in search of the view that opens out onto the Black Sea at this point. There they discover that the summit is covered with the remains of what was once the most extensive castle along the Bosporus. Built either over or near the site of a temple to Zeus Ourios, the god of winds fit for sailing, Yoros Kalesi is actually a Byzantine fortress largely erected for Emperor Justinian. However, from 1352 it fell into the hands of the Genoese, who maintained control of it for almost 50 years. Accordingly, it is sometimes referred to as the Ceneviz Kalesi (the Genoese Castle).

Ongoing excavations at the site should eventually mean that a great deal more is known about the castle's history and development.

 The Foças

In the 13th century what is now Eski Foça was the Genoese settlement of Foglia Vecchia, while what is Yeni Foça was Foglia Nuova. In 1275 Emperor Michael Paleologos gave this entire peninsula to brothers Benedetto and Manuele Zaccaria so that they could develop a port for exporting the local alum that was popular for dyeing. The Zaccarias built a fortified port at Foglia Nuovo, which, according to John Freely, became one of the richest towns in the Levent; sadly, nothing now survives to tell the story. They also strengthened the wall surrounding the headland between Foglia Vecchia's two harbors, while neighboring Beşkapılar Kalesi (the Castle of Five Gates) was probably rebuilt at the same time, even if its latest incarnation mainly shows off repairs carried out by the Ottomans. The Foça peninsula remained in Genoese hands until 1455, when it was ceded to the Ottomans.

Çandarlı

The newly restored 13th-century castle at Çandarlı on the Aegean coast north of Foça was also extensively strengthened by the Genoese, who made use of the bay as another port. Despite reports that it was now open to the public, when I visited a few months ago you could still only admire its sturdy exterior.

Kuşadası

In the 14th century Kuşadası was Scala Nuova, another harbor used by the Genoese. Once again the history may be obscure, but the small offshore Güvercin Adası (Pigeon Castle) appears to have been built or rebuilt at that time.

 Akçakoca

Akçakoca is a popular Turkish beach resort east of İstanbul near Düzce. West of the town on a cliff top stand the remains of a castle that is widely believed to have been built or rebuilt on Byzantine foundations by the Genoese in the 14th century.

Amasra

The Genoese controlled Amasra from 1398 to 1461 and some of the clearest evidence of their presence in Turkey can be seen in the Genoese coats of arms inserted over the gates in what are largely Byzantine walls. One such coat of arms reflects the way in which events in the home city played out in the trading colonies since it belongs to Duke Visconti of Milan, who governed Genoa from 1421 to 1436.

Sinop

Although Sinop had been fortified since Roman times, the Genoese are believed to have rebuilt parts of the walls so that they could use Sinop as a base for trade, particularly with Kaffa (modern Feodosia) in the Crimea where they had another colony. Unlike in Amasra they don't ever seem to have controlled the city, which was seized from the Byzantines by the Selçuks in 1265.

Keywords: genoese , galata

 

source:http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_seeking-the-genoese-in-turkey_354250.html

 

Top 10 Turkey travel picks for 2015

Bor, Niğde (Photo: Pat Yale)

PAT YALE / GÖREME

Every spring the fields for kilometers around the small town of Bayındır, inland from Selçuk, burst out in a blaze of color, for this is the part of Turkey where market gardening is the number one local occupation. To celebrate the moment of greatest floral abundance, Bayındır stages an annual flower festival whose date tends to be something of a moving feast. Assume, however, that it'll be the last weekend of April or the first of May, and you should be lucky.
The flower festival aside, Bayındır is one of those places that tends to get passed over in holiday planning. Until recently that was at least in part due to the absence of a decent hotel, a failing rectified since the Eski Hükümet building was converted into the Suotel (tel: 0232-581 5966), a bijou place to stay just across the road from the town's finest mosque, the newly restored Ulu Cami, an early Ottoman work dating back to 1496.

Bayındır stands on the site of the old Roman Caystrus, bits of which crop up in the many smaller mosques. It flourished in the late Ottoman period when some fine houses were built, particularly for the priest of the lost Greek church. Local history is proudly detailed in the new Kent Müzesı (City Museum), housed in what was once a building belonging to Tekel, the government monopoly alcohol producer until as recently as 2008.

If you can't make it here for the flower festival, try to time your visit for a Friday when the streets fill up with a colorful market, notable particularly for the presence of a diminishing number of elderly women draped in the siyah çizgi, a black cotton shawl with a white pattern stamped around its border. In 10 years time the only place you'll see it will be the museum.

Bayındır was my favourite discovery of 2014, but in this, my last regular travel feature for the paper, I'd also like to put in a word for some other recent discoveries as well as for a couple of old favorites. For more details on all the places mentioned here, and, indeed, on almost anywhere I've written about in these pages, go to my website, turkeyfromtheinside.com.

Misiköy (Photo: Pat Yale)

Misiköy

On the outskirts of Bursa the pretty small village of Cumalıkızık, with its stock of Safranbolu-style Ottoman houses, has long been the venue of choice for Sunday-brunch-seeking Bursalıs. Less well known but almost as charming is Misiköy on the Çekirge side of town that has the added bonus of a plane-tree-shaded river running through it for brunchers who like the sound of running water as a backdrop to their dining.

Trilye (Zeytinbağı)

Readily accessible by ferry to Mudanya and then by dolmuş, Trilye is the old name for what is officially Zeytinbağı, another small town with much of its Ottoman housing stock still intact that was once home to a thriving olive-oil business. Recently this has been revived, albeit on a boutique scale, and many of the lovely buildings along the high street now sell oil in beautifully designed bottles.

Until 1924, Trilye was a largely Greek settlement and the town keeps three Byzantine churches up its sleeve, one of them, the Büyük Kilise, now converted into the Fatih Cami. More prominent is the ruined Taş Mektep that was once the local primary school.

You can easily visit Trilye on a day trip from İstanbul, although to do so is to miss out on the lively meyhane action overlooking the seafront. Should you wish to stay, the Trilyalı Hotel (tel: 0224-563 2223) offers splendid sea views as well as an outdoor restaurant.

Mudurnu

Another old favourite recently revisited with pleasure is Mudurnu, a small town south of Bolu, which, once again, retains many of its old Ottoman houses, several of them converted into hotels. My personal favourite is the Hacı Şakirler Konağı (tel: 0374-421 3856), which still has most of its original fittings. It's only open at weekends.

Mudurnu is a place for leisurely ambling, although it does boast a 14th-century hamam (Turkish bath) and a market where you can still watch ancient crafts being carried out. Visit on a Friday and you will also be able to observe an age-old tradition as the craftsmen down their tools and gather together in the street outside to perform the Esnaf Duası (the Tradesman's Prayer).

Şahinefendi, Cappadocia (Photo: Pat Yale)

Sahinefendi

First-time visitors to Cappadocia often don't realize what a large area it is. Those who return time and again soon find out that there are many out-of-the-way villages that attract far less attention than Göreme, Uçhisar and Ürgüp, although often you need a car to get to them easily.

One such village is Şahinefendi, visited mainly for the ruins of Roman Sobesos. Far less obvious is the rock-cut church so carefully hidden away inside one of a multitude of fairy chimneys that you won't find it without a guide. Inside it lurks a spectacular frescoed ceiling, newly restored so that its colors shine as brightly as on the day they were painted. It depicts an obscure story involving 40 Christian martyrs who were driven out to die on a frozen lake when they refused to renounce their faith.

Bor

Few visitors to Cappadocia ever venture as far south as Niğde and those who do tend only to visit the frescoed monastery at Eski Gümüş. But the area around Niğde harbors many other treasures including the small town of Bor, which spreads itself out over several hills. Hidden in its back streets are several fine Şelçuk and early Ottoman mosques. While you're unlikely to want to stay, the Hotel Tyana (tel: 0388-311 1971) offers a decent base for visiting the impressive ruins of a Roman aqueduct at nearby Kemerhisar.

Anazarbus (Photo: Pat Yale)

Anazarbus (Anavarsa)

Last year I spent a happy week exploring the Adana area. One of my favourite spots was the small village of Ayşehoca around which are scattered the extensive ruins of Roman Anazarbus, which went on to become an important population center during the years when this part of Anatolia was home to the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia.
Most of the more recent ruins are difficult to see since they perch on a plateau above the Roman ruins. These, however, are easy to explore, although ideally you'll have a car to get here since there's no bus to the village. Many of the ruins lie scattered across a field completely surrounded by what was once the city wall, but an imposing triumphal arch and many rock-cut tombs also await discovery outside it.

Harbiye, near Antakya

This week came news that the brand-new Hatay Museum in Antakya has now opened to show off one of the country's finest collections of Roman mosaics. If you're heading down to take a look at it, it's worth knowing about Harbiye, a village immediately to the south of Antakya where according to Greek myth the nymph Daphne prayed to be turned into a laurel bush in order to escape the attentions of the god Apollo.

Today Harbiye lives for a cluster of fish restaurants, some of them with tables set up right in the water, that are dotted around a pretty wooded valley with a river running through it. Best of them is the Mosaik Restaurant, one of those places designed by someone with an eye for the quirkily original. The hotels overlooking the valley mean that you can actually stay in Harbiye and come here for dinner. Failing that, a fish lunch is just as enjoyable.

Siverek

Visitors staying in Kahta with plans to visit the famous giant heads on Nemrut Dağı might like to know that for the time being they can also take a ferry across the nearby Atatürk Lake to visit Siverek, a colorful Kurdish town usually bypassed by those in a rush to reach journey's end at Diyarbakır.

On the surface there's not a lot to make you want to pause here. Duck into the market, though, and you'll find one of the most authentically Kurdish of small towns where recent years have seen an old hamam turned into a venue for sıra geceleri (Turkish nights with a Kurdish twist), a han converted to house a teahouse and even the old station refashioned into a restaurant.

A new bridge over the lake is nearing completion. It remains to be seen whether that will mean more or fewer visitors for Siverek.

Birecik (Photo: Pat Yale)

Birecik

In 1956 it was a bridge that effectively saw off Birecik's trade in visitors travelling between Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa. Once one of the most important ferry crossing points on the Fırat (Euphrates) river, Birecik boasted a magnificent castle and imposing city walls. Old photos show lovely old Ottoman houses jutting out over the river. Today the castle is undergoing impressive restoration, but little remains of the walls (one gate has been turned into a mosque) or the wooden houses.

Instead, people come here to visit the captive breeding program for the kelaynak (bald ibis), Turkey's most endangered bird and almost certainly extinct in the wild. The program seems to be doing well, although you'll only be able to observe the birds from a distance. Afterwards, it's worth taking a stroll along the nearly landscaped riverside promenade, which is now home to a string of inviting new restaurants.

Keywords: Turkey , travel , picks , 2015

 

Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_top-10-turkey-travel-picks-for-2015_369331.html 

Turkey of the regions 10: Dressing like a local

Old blockprinted yazma in Tokat

March 02, 2014, Sunday/ 00:00:00

Anatolia in the 19th-century was a land of few and poor quality roads, a situation that encouraged communities to grow up in virtual isolation from one another.

The great geographical diversity of the land also gave rise to a wide variety of local architectural styles that evolved to make use of the materials that lay at hand. At the same time, local communities developed their own mouth-watering culinary traditions.

But one of the most conspicuous ways in which Anatolian communities used to express allegiance to their locality was in the way that they -- and the women in particular -- dressed. Sadly, except in the far east of the country, that is the aspect of regionalism that is most under threat today, as younger women abandon the old ways of dressing in favor of what could be described as modern Muslim style. Just occasionally, in places such as Erzurum, it is still possible to see three generations of the same family walking together, the grandmother clad in what was once the truly local style of clothing, the mother wearing the drab overcoat and scarf tied under the chin that was the look of the Turkey of the 1970s and 80s and the daughter wearing the colorful, neatly tailored long mackintosh and türban headscarf that is the preferred look today all the way from İstanbul to Artvin.

Today, the only places you'll usually see local costumes are museum showcases (not surprising in some cases such as when, for example, you spot the knee-exposing shorts once worn by the men of the Aegean), although markets, such as those at Ayvacık and Tire, sometimes drop a hint as to what has been lost. If you'd like to visit parts of Turkey where you might actually see people wearing regional dress, here are some suggestions. Most are in the east of the country.



Reinventing the Laz Keşan


The Laz lands

Of all the regional costumes that once brightened up Anatolia, one of the most striking had to be that of the Laz lands, technically the five small coastal towns to the east of Rize that were inhabited by the Laz-speaking people, although people in Laz dress were always visible as far west as Trabzon as well.

Traditionally Laz women wore a cotton keşan -- a wonderful black, white and maroon-patterned shawl that covered their heads and shoulders and that came paired with a wraparound apron of bold stripes called a dolaylık. According to Sevan and Müjde Nişanyan's guide to the Black Sea, the different colored stripes at one time defined where a woman came from, with the females of Sürmene opting for black and red stripes, those of Akçaabat preferring maroon and cream and those of Tonya favoring black and brown.

Sadly, these days you'll rarely see a woman younger than 40 wearing a keşan, let alone a dolaylık. Instead the race is on around Rize to find new uses for the old shawl, which now crops up in the form of everything from oven gloves to the lining for a baby's cradle.


The Hemşin lands

In the mountains inland from the eastern Black Sea coast, another minority people, the Hemşin, also developed a dress code all of their own. Here, the women twisted a flimsy scarf called a poşi around the tops of their heads, covering a plainer black scarf trimmed with white embroidery that hung down to their shoulders. The poşis usually came in black, patterned in red, orange or gold. Strangely, they were not made locally but imported from Syria.

Perhaps because it is neater and more practical, the poşi has proved more durable than the keşan, and in Ayder, Çamlıhemşin and the surrounding villages in the foothills of the Kaçkar Mountains you will still see plenty of women wearing one. Many locals have migrated to other parts of the country in search of work, particularly as bakers. When they return to their villages in the summer, one of the first things many of the women do is put on the poşis they feel unable to wear in resorts such as Bodrum.

The Hemşin people lived in a part of Turkey with an exceptionally harsh climate, so the other important feature of local dress for both men and women was thick woolen socks. This is still one of the best places in Turkey to pick up beautifully designed hand-knitted socks, although most of what is on sale in the shops aimed at tourists has been made in factories.


Bayburt and Erzurum

Twenty years ago, the back streets of Erzurum were full of women scuttling along the pavements wrapped in the closest thing Turkey had to a chador: A brown, woolen garment flecked with patterns in navy blue called an ehram. Today, the ehram has fallen from favor even faster than the keşan. When I last visited, Erzurum was down to its last shop selling the garments, and to see women wearing them you really need to travel north to Bayburt where, in the shadow of a vast medieval castle, women continue to wrap themselves tight in this garment. At the same time, in preparation for the inevitable day when the last woman will hang up her ehram, an EU-funded project has been started to come up with new uses for the hand-woven material used to make them.


Şanlıurfa

In the lands of the Laz and the Hemşin, men long ago abandoned any attempt to dress with local flair. Further south, however, you will see men wearing the baggy pants called şalvar that usually come paired with waistcoats and worn with cummerbunds and flat caps. It's a look usually thought of as Kurdish, although you start to see it as soon as you reach Malatya (where they favor şalvar suits in a particularly fetching fern-green).

The men of Şanlıurfa (Urfa) wear their şalvar suits with a quirky local twist. Wander into the bazaar and you will be astonished to see these most manly of men topping off their outfits with headscarves that run the gamut of colors from the palest lilac to the deepest purple. Oddly enough, their women wear the exact same scarves, a unisex look unknown elsewhere.

Unlike most sartorial specialities of Anatolia, these scarves are a relatively recent innovation. As recently as 2003, most Urfalıs covered their heads with white scarves. Then someone introduced the lilac versions from Syria and the rest, as they say, was history.

In Urfa, too, you'll see women wearing unbelievably vibrant, colorful outfits that anywhere else would be saved for special occasions. These outfits consist of a dress called a fistan that is worn over a T-shirt and leggings in summer or trousers and a jumper in winter. Over the fistan goes an apron called a peştemal and then over that goes a long coat called a zibin, the ends of which get tied up in the peştemal to stop them trailing in the mud. Traditionally, all this was topped off with a kofi, a fez-like cap that was covered with a scarf, although these days most women wear normal scarves. In the bazaars of Urfa (and Van, Hakkari and Diyrabakır), the wonderful materials needed to create these outfits are enough to set a thousand cameras clicking.



Alanya cummerbund


Alanya

Hard though it might be to believe, the seaside resort of Alanya once boasted its own particular look for men, consisting of black şalvar with a waistband of deepest maroon. Still worn by a few elderly locals, these Alanya şalvarı were worn with brightly colored striped silk cummerbunds, examples of which are on display in the Kültur Evi (Cultural House) at Ehmedek on the hill leading up to the Selçuk castle.


Göynük

Visitors to the Monday morning market at Göynük, east of Adapazarı, will be thrilled to step into its undercover dairy section and find the local women wearing a delightful local style of şalvar in a variety of tartans. At one time the pattern would have made it possible to identify the village each woman came from, although today most of them wear machine-made tartans picked for a preferred pattern. The scarves are topped off with cotton shawls printed in a pattern similar to those worn by the women in Beypazarı, further east along the road to Ankara. Locals will point out the crucial minor details that distinguish their shawls from a Beypazarlı's.


Tokat

On the streets of modern Tokat most women dress much as their fellows in İstanbul. This, though, is a town that once played a particularly important role in Turkey's sartorial history as the only place permitted to make the yazmas, the gauzy square headscarves that were the standard head covering of Central Anatolia. It was a monopoly industry, the proceeds of which went to support the queen mothers back in İstanbul. Today, the old Yazmahane where the work used to be carried out stands forlorn in the back streets, despite supposed plans to restore it. Meanwhile, in the surrounding streets, yazmacıs compete to sell machine-made versions of the product to a declining market. Just a few men still blockprint the cloths. One or two even keep examples of old yazmas to show their customers. As ever, the difference between the original hand-made versions and the new machine-made ones is staggering.





 
Examples of local dresses at Söğüt Museum

 Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/news-340042-turkey-of-the-regions-9-the-taste-of-the-local.html

Turkey of the regions 9: The taste of the local

Uzun pide, Kayseri & Konya

February 23, 2014, Sunday

These days no matter where you go in Turkey you can be sure of being able to tuck into a tasty lunch of Bursa (İskender) kebab or a supper of spicy Adana kebab.

 There may be a particular thrill to be had in trying out İnegöl köfte in the town where it was introduced to Turkey, or in eating a plate of Akçaabat köfte in the town where it was created, but the truth is that these days you'll be able to find meatballs of the same names elsewhere in the country, too.

Turks may still swear by the baklava of Gaziantep, but you'll be able to find versions just as finger-licking and delicious wherever you go. Thick-enough-to-cut Kahramanmaraş (Maraş) dondurması (ice cream) is now available in branches of Mado, and the famous Van kahvaltısı (Van breakfast) is cropping up on every street corner. Even ciğ köfte, the uncooked kebab that was once known only to the natives of southeastern Turkey, is now a fixture on most city high streets as popular local taste sensations work their way around the country on the back of mass internal migration combined with chain-store expansion.

Luckily, there are also dishes that haven't traveled quite as well, usually because they require special ovens or other equipment and/or involve lengthy cooking procedures. This is great news for travelers since it means that they can sample a variety of local dishes along their way.
Afiyet olsun!

Tokat

Pressed to name my favorite of Turkey's many kebabs, I would have to plump for the Tokat kebab, a wonderful amalgam of thick chunks of lamb with equally thick chunks of potato, aubergine and juicy tomatoes basted in meat juices as they hang to cook in an oven especially designed for the purpose. Both the special oven and the preparation time have militated against the Tokat kebab venturing far from its northern Anatolian home base. Even there, town-center restaurants stop serving it by five o'clock in the afternoon.

Siirt

Hidden away in southeastern Turkey, Siirt is one of the best places in the country to try out büryan kebabı, one of several kebabs prepared in pit ovens that also remain largely local pleasures. At dawn, the ovens are fired up and entire lambs hung to bake beneath sealed lids with the juice collecting at the bottom of the pit. Once cooked, the lamb is removed and chopped up, individual portions being reheated to order and served on a bed of squidgy pide bread.

Büryan kebab is also prepared in Bitlis and Tatvan near Lake Van. It is more readily accessible in “Little Siirt,” the market area of Fatih in İstanbul, almost the only place where you should expect to be able to eat it after dark - - in the east they prefer to tuck into it for breakfast or lunch.

Midyat

“Little Siirt” is also a good place to try out perde pilav (“curtained rice”), another taste treat that comes to us courtesy of the southeast. Perde pilav is a risotto cooked with shreds of chicken, raisins and almonds inside a case of crispy pastry for which a copper pot shaped like an upside-down fez is used. You can eat it in Midyat provided you order it at lunchtime.

Beyran çorbası, Gaziantep

Gaziantep

Over recent years, Gaziantep in the east has turned itself into a veritable shrine to the culinary arts and people pour into the famous İmam Çagdaş restaurant to feast on its Adana kebabs and baklava. On the quiet, though, Antep has a few more tricks up its sleeve. One is the garlicky beyran çorbası, a rust-colored meal-in-a-bowl soup based on meat cut from the rump of a sheep. It's on sale at lunchtime in lokantas in the market where you may also bump into men in gaudy costumes with drinks containers strapped to their backs. They turn out to be dispensing meyankökü şerbeti, a cold licorice drink that is a distinctly acquired taste.

Malatya

Malatya is well known all over Turkey for its dried apricots, and a whole section of its sprawling market is devoted to selling them. But Malatya is also the best place in the country to try out kağıt kebabı (paper kebab), a lamb kebab cooked and served in packets of greaseproof paper that allow the meat to stew in its own juices with the vegetables. It's a favorite of the market traders, which means that there are many lunchtime-only lokantas serving it amid the stalls.

Mıhlama, Eastern Black Sea

East of Rize

While many of Turkey's more exotic local dishes are to be found in the towns of the Southeast, the northeastern corner of the country also has a food tradition all of its own. Mention Black Sea food, and people tend to think of hamsi, the Black Sea anchovy that is a particular winter treat, but there's much more to Black Sea cooking than fish, especially once you travel beyond Trabzon.

Up in Ayder, for example, you will be able to sample mıhlama, a thick and filling cheese fondue best eaten with a helping of cornbread. This is also a part of the world where cabbage (lahana) really comes into its own. You might not have thought you would enjoy a bowl of lahana çorbası (cabbage soup), but once you've tried the Black Sea version you may well change your mind.

Vakfıkabır

Trabzon ekmeği (bread) is sold in huge heavy roundels, so popular that local bus companies factor bakery visits into their itineraries. But the best Black Sea bread of all comes from the small town of Vakfıkabir, just west of Trabzon where baked loaves sometimes reach the size of small wheels.

Kars

In northeastern Turkey Kars is home not only to a distinctive style of “Baltic” architecture but also to several local culinary traditions. Visit in winter and you will be able to gorge yourself on roast goose (kaz), but at any time of year you won't be able to miss the many shops selling tangy local kaşar and holey gravyer cheese in roundels as big as those of Trabzon ekmeği. The same shops also sell locally made honey. A breakfast feast of Kars cheese and honey is not one to forget in a hurry.

Cappadocia

Is the testi kebabı (pottery kebab) that crops up on many Cappadocian menus a real local dish or not? The answer seems to be that it is and it isn't. Traditionally, locals certainly did prepare meat stews inside small clay pots, placing them to cook in the embers of fires set up to boil such things as pekmez (molasses) and salça (sauce). What tourism has done is to take that basic recipe and add a twist to it rather like the show put on by the sellers of Maraş dondurması with their clanging bells and colorful costumes. You can be sure that the locals didn't break their testis open at the table with a flourish although their flourish-free meals probably tasted much the same as today's tourist ones.

Kayseri

In Central Anatolia, Kayseri is home to mantı, miniature pockets of pasta filled with nuggets of meat. Mantı is sometimes available elsewhere in the country with many restaurants offering it as a featured dish on one specific day in the week. In Kayseri itself mantı is usually served with tomato sauce and/or garlic-flavored yoghurt as well as with chickpeas, a specifically local twist.
While in Kayseri, you might also spot some of the elongated local pides designed to be shared between several diners. Occasionally, you will see special long, thin raised benches to make the sharing of such an unwieldy dish a tad easier. Not surprisingly, the strung-out pide is not an idea that has traveled well (ditto the sugared pides that are a specialty of Eğirdir in the Lake District).

Islama köfte, Adapazarı

Adapazarı

You will need a particularly discerning palate to be able to tell the difference between some of the köftes (meatballs) that carry the names of towns such as Tekirdağ and Sivas. Much easier to distinguish is the ıslama köfte of Adapazarı which is served on a bed of toast temptingly marinaded in the meat juices.

Pastırmalı humus, Tarsus

Tarsus

At the far eastern end of the Mediterranean Antakya wins culinary accolades not least for its delicious künefe, a scrumptious cheese-filled pastry made on rotating metal plates. But Tarsus to the west offers just as many unexpected delights, among them pastırmalı hummus that is served with pieces of pastrami sprinkled on top, then heated up. Here, too, you can try out cezerye, a chewy sweet made from carrot and walnut paste, honey and 40 different spices. Wash it down with şalgam, the cold turnip drink that is now fairly widely available, with prickly-pear juice, or with yayla karsambaç, a flavored-ice drink that is a lifesaver in the summer humidity.

Merzifon keşkeği

Merzifon

Made from wheat and meat pounded together with onions and spices, keşkek is not so much a regional dish as one that is increasingly hard to find despite being UNESCO-listed as part of Turkey's intangible cultural heritage. Like mantı, it sometimes appears on menus as a once-weekly treat especially around the middle Aegean. Alternatively, you can eat it whenever you like in the restaurant of the restored bedesten in Merzifon, near Amasya.

Mardin and Urfa

Turkish coffee also features on the intangible cultural heritage list. The standard variety can be found all over the country, but in Mardin and Urfa you should certainly round off your meal with a demitasse of bitter, grainy mırra kahvesi sometimes flavored with cardamon. Be careful to hand your cup straight back to the server - - according to tradition if instead you put it down on the table, you will have to marry him or pay for his dowry.

Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/news-340042-turkey-of-the-regions-9-the-taste-of-the-local.html

Turkey of the regions 7: From İnebolu to Antakya

Levantine quarter of Antakya

February 16, 2014, Sunday

So far in this series on the old and varied architectural styles of Anatolia we've looked at the stereotypical Turkish house that still exists in large numbers in the heart of many old towns.

 We've looked at the cave dwellings that are dotted about the country, and we've looked at the specific styles to be found in the southeastern and northeastern corners of the country as well as along the Aegean coast.

But there are a few other areas of the country with distinctive styles of architecture that defy being slotted into easy categories. There are, for example, the pretty red and white houses of İnebolu on the Black Sea. There are the “button houses” to be found around Akseki, near Alanya. There are the adobe houses that live on near Malatya. There are the Levantine-style houses of Tarsus and Antakya. There are the houses with lovely stained glass windows in Fethiye. And there are the houses with delicate wooden balconies that do so much to beautify Kalkan.

İnebolu houses and model of one

 

İnebolu

The small town of İnebolu, midway between Amasra and Sinop on the western side of the Black Sea coast, is best known for its role in the Turkish War of Independence. So visitors may be surprised to arrive and find that it's also home to a distinctive and lovely style of architecture somewhat reminiscent of the wooden yalıs (waterside mansions) of İstanbul.
The İnebolu houses are mainly standalone mansions built on two or three stories in their own gardens. But all of them were once painted in the distinctive rusty red once known as Ottoman rose that was such a feature of the Bosporus in İstanbul. Here, though, the window frames are prettily picked out in white, giving the houses a truly distinctive look.
Most survive on the hills inland from the sea although one or two can be seen as you drive through on the coast road. The houses form so much a part of the town's identity that souvenir stands here sell as many models of İnebolu houses as those of Safranbolu do of their better known homes.

Düğmeli Evleri, Ormana

 

Ormana and around

If you take the road heading inland from Manavgat on the eastern Mediterranean coast to Beyşehir in the Lake District you will pass Akseki, a small town that makes a possible base for exploring villages that sport one of Turkey's most unlikely styles of architecture. West of Akseki near İbradi is the lovely small village of Ormana which is full of what are called “düğmeli evleri” (button houses), houses that come in a variety of sizes but that share one common feature, which is that the wooden beams used to provide their frames jut out from the walls. Looked at side on they resemble spears sticking out defensively; looked at from a distance they resemble studs, hence, presumably, the nickname.
Most of the adjoining villages boast examples of düğmeli evleri, although you might want to make a special point of heading for Ürünlü Köy, which is also home to the wonderful Altın Beşik Mağarası, a cavern with a small lake inside it.

 

Balaban, Darende and Battalgazi

Most local architecture developed according to the materials close to hand, which means that in the dry center of the country mud-brick (kerpiç) was once a popular building material. That adobe houses were once widespread is evidenced by the fact that even on the outskirts of troglodytic Cappadocia, in the town of Hacıbektaş, you can still see the odd crumbling example in the backstreets.

But this was a style of architecture with little staying power. Once residents found more durable materials from which to build their homes they speedily abandoned adobe whereupon most of the houses crumbled straight back into the dust.

West of Malatya, however, on the road leading to Kayseri there are two settlements that still retain enough adobe houses to give you a good idea of what was possible. Today Darende is a fast modernizing town best known for its shrine to Somuncu Baba (Loaf Father). The old houses that the authorities have chosen to restore recently fit into the mold of the traditional Turkish house as exemplified in towns such as Tokat and Divriği. However, if you poke about in the back streets you will quickly realize that they were always the exception in a town whose high-walled adobe houses might once have evoked the kasbahs of southern Morocco.

Most people whisk straight past Balaban on their way from Malatya to Darende. If, instead, you pause here and take a walk around the village you will get the best idea of what an entire village of adobe houses would have looked like. Narrow streets are lined with two and three-story houses, some of them whitewashed, some of them still the color of sand. But it's not just the building material that is striking. This is a part of Turkey with particularly harsh winters. Locals needed plenty of space to store not just wood for their fires but also food made in autumn to see families through the winter. So the roofs of many of these adobe houses also feature towering, open-fronted lofts, perfect for storage.
Even more striking examples of these lofts can be seen atop the older houses of Battalgazi (Eski Malatya). You need only take a turn down the newly restored Sanat Sokağı to admire the seemingly never-ending potential of a loft.

Levantine quarter of Tarsus

 

Tarsus and Antakya

The road that skirts the coast of Mediterranean Turkey is a relative newcomer. Even in the 1950s the mountains that rose up beyond the sea served as a powerful barrier to reaching the coast. Settlements were few and far between, which explains why, with the rare exception of Antalya, so few of its modern holiday resorts boast much in the way of interesting architecture.

At the far eastern end of the Mediterranean a rare exception is Tarsus, the town best known as the birthplace of Saul who went on to become the great Christina missionary, St. Paul. These days Tarsus is lost amid the sprawl of Greater Adana but at its heart it retains a fascinating little quarter full of sturdy quarried-stone houses with a distinctly Levantine feel typified by their shuttered windows and wrought-iron decorations. The lovely Konak Efsus (Tel: 0324-614 0807) sits right in the heart of this peaceful pedestrianized part of town and lets you fantasize that you're actually sleeping as far afield perhaps as Beirut.

The Levantine feel of Tarsus is multiplied many times in Antakya, the provincial capital of the Hatay, the little tongue of Turkey that hangs down towards Syria. Once you're past the deceptively modern outskirts and into the historic heart of the city around the bazaar you will find once again that coming together of quarried-stone houses with shutters and wrought-iron balconies that feels both Parisian and Middle Eastern and acts as a reminder of the French influence on this part of the world right into the 20th century.

Unfortunately, Antakya has come under enormous pressure as a result of the Syrian conflict. If you do want to visit there are two splendid hotels -- the Antik Beyazıt (Tel: 0326-216 2900) and the Liwan (Tel: 0326-215 7777) -- right in the Levantine part of town where you will also notice a distinctive local style of mosque design. Here, many minarets come topped off with witch's-hat roofs, a style that also feels very Levantine and which rolls out as far as Kahramanmaraş and Elbistan too.

 

Western Mediterranean

Towards the western end of the Mediterranean modern Fethiye has rid itself of most of its old houses over the years. However, there are still a few attractive examples of a local style of townhouse in which two-story homes were adorned with jutting cumbas (bay windows) rather like those to be seen in houses along the Aegean. Here, though, the windows were filled with panels of tinted glass, the better presumably to shade inhabitants from the blazing sun.

Today the popular resort of Kalkan, between Fethiye and Kaş, is spreading its tentacles in all directions, but at its heart it still retains the very picturesque waterside quarter that was once a fishing village. Here whitewashed cottages come with rickety wooden balconies, these days uniformly draped in bougainvillea. Few were big enough to survive as hotels although many now serve as chi-chi restaurants and cafes catering to the yachting fraternity.

Inland from Fethiye the village of Üzümlü is best known as a place in which to buy a type of woven fabric called dastar, but it's also home to pretty whitewashed houses with wooden cumbas. Even finer examples can be seen in Kaş where Uzun Çarşı is a hillside street lined with upscale shops. Its lattice-fronted, bougainvillea-draped cumbas make for as postcard pretty a vista as can be found in all of Turkey.

Source: 

Turkey of the regions (6): cave dwellings

Slated to become a cave museum - Uçhisar fairy chimney

February 09, 2014, Sunday

Turkey may once have been a land of extremely varied architecture, but some of the most extraordinary was to be found right in the heart of the country in the area now called Cappadocia. Here, the locals carved their homes straight out of the soft local rock thrown across the landscape by volcanic eruptions in prehistory. These cave dwellings became steadily more elaborate over the centuries. Nowadays, many have been turned into boutique hotels of great originality.

Of course, cave dwelling was a feature of life for early man all over the world and, in Turkey, the cave at Karain near Antalya showcases the sort of natural cavity that served as a shelter for prehistoric man. Where the cave dwellings of Cappadocia are different is that they are largely man-made rather than natural. This makes them all the more interesting, especially since the same techniques that were used to carve out the houses were also used to create entire living environments complete with churches, underground “cities” and even the occasional mosque.

Cappadocia hosts the best-known collection of cave dwellings. However, there were other cave settlements in Anatolia reaching from as far west as the Phrygian Valley near Afyon to as far east as Ahlat on Lake Van, with another little offshoot up north at Seben, near Bolu.

 

Cappadocia

Covering what is basically an inverted triangle stretching from Aksaray in the west to Kayseri in the east, and then down to Niğde in the south, Cappadocia is one of Turkey's biggest tourism draw cards.
For cultural tourists, the biggest attraction tends to be the Göreme Open Air Museum, a collection of fantastic frescoed rock-cut churches and chapels in the outskirts of Göreme village. Strangely, not so much attention is generally paid to the extraordinary troglodytic lifestyle that used to be characteristic of this area and that left its mark on the landscape in the form of thousands of half-cave, half-stone-built houses.

Although there is some evidence to suggest that people were already living inside the caves in the early Christian era, the “houses” they lived in then would almost certainly have been very basic -- little more than holes burrowed into the rocks and fairy chimneys that are such a feature of the region. Only later did people start to tack more conventional houses onto the front of these caves. Once they did that, the tendency was to move forward to live in the stone-built parts of the houses, leaving the caves at the back to serve as storage.

By the 19th century, the cave houses of Cappadocia had evolved into often beautiful structures with elaborately carved gateways and paired windows topped off with pretty stone patterns. The larger houses of the more prosperous came with separate selamlık rooms for visitors and haremlik rooms for the family, sometimes separated by graceful divanhanes, arched upstairs terraces where the family could take in air in the heat of summer. In the wealthier settlements of Avanos, Ürgüp and Mustafapaşa, the external decoration of the houses grew extraordinarily flamboyant, with layer upon layer of deep carvings.

As in southeastern Turkey, the houses were sometimes hidden from public gaze behind high walls. Behind the walls, however, they were perfectly designed to cope with a lifestyle that modernization has more or less killed off. Some features of the cave houses mimicked those of the more familiar Turkish houses of wood and stone with built-in sedirs (bench seats) running around the walls, with niches carved into them to store bedding and floor-level tables. Sometime, these niches came with carved wooden doors; often they were merely curtained from view. Simple bathrooms were also hidden in cupboards inside the walls.

But the soft natural rock that formed the basis of these houses was also carved out to serve a multitude of other uses. Tandır ovens were carved into the floor, for example, with air being pumped along channels from outside with bellows to fan flames that were then used for cooking. On winter evenings, families would erect frames around their tandırs, cover them with quilts, and sleep with their feet pointed towards them for warmth.

Huge niches were also carved out of the walls for treading the grapes that grew so well in the volcanic soil. Local Christians used the grapes for making wine, with the liquid draining into ceramic storage pots through a hole cut into the side of the niche. Even today, a few locals still tread grapes in these niches and use the liquid to make pekmez, the much-loved local sweetener.
Most of the cave houses were also designed with an open-fronted çardak (shelter) where in autumn local women would sit at low tables to make enough yufka (flat bread) to see them through the winter. The paper-thin products were then passed to a matron sitting beside another tandır oven to be baked.

Most cave houses lacked much in the way of internal decoration, although the built-on sections often featured either fine stone kemer (arch) ceilings or flat wooden ceilings supported by hezens (hewn tree trunks). In the finest houses of Ürgüp, Avanos and Mustafapaşa, however, secular frescoes were painted on the walls. In Christian homes, these often featured people, while in Muslim homes landscapes and still-lifes were preferred.

Many cave house features are also on display in the underground cities, a network of tunnels and rooms cut deep into the soil and probably dating back in part to Hittite times. Some of these “cities” feature the same sort of rock-cut tables and benches as can be seen in the many rock-cut monasteries, as well as rock-cut mangers for animals -- of the sort that can be seen in the cave houses too. Such claustrophobia-inducing settlements would only ever have been occupied for short periods at a time, mainly as refuges in the period when the Arabs came rampaging across Cappadocia in the early Middle Ages.

The troglodytic lifestyle is no longer attractive to locals, not least because of the cost of converting a cave house for modern living. The abandoned settlement of Zelve is now an open-air museum, but there are many other villages such as Akköy, Sulusaray and Sofular that are either ghost settlements or sit beside replacement modern villages.

Cappadocia now has so many rock-cut boutique hotels that it's hard to know which to recommend. However, two particularly interesting recent projects involve efforts to effectively rebuild entire troglodytic mahalles (neighborhoods), complete with communal fountains, etc. In Uçhisar, Argos in Cappadocia (tel: 0384-219 3130) is one such project. In Ürgüp, the brand-new Kapakapı Premium Caves (tel: 0384-341 8877) is another. None of the cave houses are formally open to the public at the moment, although a fairy chimney is slated to be turned into a museum as part of the Argos project.


Beautiful doorways of Mustafapaşa


Frescoed Mehmet Paşa Konağı in Göreme


Frescoes in Old Greek House, Musafapaşa

 

Ayazini

Anyone arriving in the small village of Ayazini, in the Phrygian Valley north of Afyon, could be forgiven for thinking that they had somehow strayed into Cappadocia. Here too, fairy chimneys and other rock formations have been adapted to serve as houses and storage areas, although here there are none of the fine, carved door and window frames. Instead, you will notice a distinctive style of wooden gate presumably carved by a single firm of local carpenters.

 

Hasankeyf

The lovely small town of Hasankeyf on the banks of the Tigris River east of Diyarbakır has become a cause célèbre as the Ilısu Dam threatens to drown not just a local beauty spot but also a collection of superb medieval monuments. But this too was once a place of cave-dwellers, with the plug of rock above the river hollowed out with caves and Göreme-style cave houses clustered together around the Ulu Cami on the summit. Today, only one man continues to live in the caves but, even after the water levels rise, most of the cave houses will probably survive.

 

Ahlat

On the northern shore of Lake Van, Ahlat is best known for a so-called Selçuk cemetery of lichen-spattered tombstones and for a fine local stone that is being used to build new houses in a development that deserves to be much better known. On the quiet, though, medieval Ahlat was also a settlement of cave-dwellers, and if you cross the cemetery and walk downhill behind it you will come to another wall of rock carved out with cave homes, none of them currently lived in.

 

Taşkale

In Karaman province and just beyond the boundaries of Cappadocia, the small settlement of Taşkale was also created with its back against a solid wall of rock into which even the mosque was cut (it's still in use today). Simple houses hover beneath the rock overhang, which is completely carved out with very picturesque rock-cut storage units, each with a neat wooden door.

 

Seben

Near Seben, south of Bolu, the Phrygians also carved cave houses out of steep-sided rock faces that are not at all easy to approach. Look out for signs to the Muslar Kaya Evleri and make sure you wear sturdy shoes when you visit.

Source:  http://www.todayszaman.com/news-338745-turkey-of-the-regions-6-cave-dwellings.html