Travels to Turkey: Why Did Constantinople Get the Works? That's Nobody's Business but the Turks!

So, the other night I finally reached trip overload: too much walking, too much people time, too little sleep. I miss people at night especially, when I crave hugs and quiet down time. But yesterday was better, so hopefully my minor meltdown has passed.

On Tuesday, we visited a Jewish synagogue. I found it really interesting how the Turkish government tried to save as many Turkish Jews during the Holocaust as possible. At one point, the S.S. wouldn't release a group of 75 Turkish Jews from the cattle cars on the their way to Auschwitz, so the Turkish ambassador boarded the train with them. Eventually, realizing the massive diplomatic nightmare they'd have if they killed a Turkish ambassador, the Nazis released all the Turkish Jews.

We also visited the Greek Orthadox Patriarch, the center of the Greek Orthodox Church. I have never seen so much gold in one place before. They also had the coffins of female saints strewn about the room. We also visited this beautiful little church in a small town outside of Istanbul. Its walls were covered with mosaics depicting different Christian events, including events that were only narrated in Gnostic Gospels, such as Mary's life before Christ.

Wednesday was amazing because we finally visited the Aya Sophia (also known as the Hagia Sophia; Aya indicates the fact that the Ottomans turned it into a mosque after conquering Constantinople). As soon as I walked into the giant atrium, I was in awe. The mosaics are gorgeous, light streams in from massive windows, and the whole place has this amazing calming effect.

Next up was the underground cistern, built during the Byzantine Empire. It used to provide fresh water from the forests north of Istanbul, but now it's just amazingly cool. We ate lunch outside the spice market, which smells amazing and is full of little vendors peddling big mounds of spices, each one a different color. Lastly, we visited the Rustem Pasha mosque, which is tied for my favorite mosque we've seen thus far, because it's really light and airy and covered in the quintessential Iznik tiles.

Yesterday was a slower day. We journeyed to a museum of Turkish and Islamic art, where I got to touch doors from the seventh century and see a key to the Kaa'ba. Then we visited another smaller mosque, whose Imam kicked us out eventually. The mosque had six little pieces of the stone from inside the Kaa'ba scattered around its walls.

Whew. We have a paper due tomorrow before we leave Istanbul for Bursa, a city about four hours away. It was the originial capital of the Ottoman Empire, before the conquest of Istanbul, so the first Ottoman emporers are buried there.

We're learning so much that I'm trying to just absorb all of it without opinion or judgment. I'm sure the questions will come in a big burst later on, but for now I'm simply trying to learn as much as I possibly can. We're examining the role of religion in a secular state, the idea of experiencing religion through material culture, the idea of the Ottoman Empire as a multi-religious and multi-ethnic society, and so much more. I'm taking it one day at a time.