We are going to talk about something different.
Namely, we are going to focus on festivities.
And really one of the major places where festivities took place
is only about 150 meters from here, namely
the place which is today called
Atmeydanı or horse square,
and which is the, you know, the Byzantine racecourse.
And I mean, in
the Ottoman period, especially in the 16th century,
that was the favored place for festivities.
And I mean, Sultan Suleyman
celebrated the circumcisions
of four of his sons in this place.
I mean, they were
there was a big age difference.
So one group was circumcised first and the other a couple of years
later.
He also I mean, normally Ottoman Sultans did not marry
and even if they married, they didn't publicly celebrate their weddings
but Suleyman did that.
He celebrated his wedding to
Hürrem Sultan again in this area.
And if you look, you can see the two little
lead covered domes in front of Hagia Sophia.
Well, they are the covering of the public baths
that were built by Hürrem, who, you know,
really was the Empress, to if you consider a Suleyman the emperor
and I think it makes sense to do so
well, then she was the Empress to this emperor.
And so she did something that other people would not normally do.
The male section of the baths and the women's section of the baths
are exactly the same. In many places
the women's section of the baths is less ornamental and smaller.
But not when Hürrem was the donor.
Well, but we are more concerned with
you know, Atmeydanı, which is, as I said,
about 150 meters from here.
And after the celebrations of Suleyman's time,
a monumental
celebration was held here in 1582.
And I mean, this was illustrated in a festival book.
A festival book is called in Turkish it's the Surname.
A Sure is a festival a public rejoicing.
And I mean,
the palace of Ibrahim Pasha,
who was the companion of Suleiman's youth,
and for a while, something like the sultan's alter ego,
well, he built himself a stone palace with five courtyards.
Well, one of them has disappeared, but the other four are still there.
And one of them is today
the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts,
which I hope you will visit before you go.
And this place was apparently the site
from which Murad III in 1582
watched the festivities.
Because, I mean, it's the practice is different
from the, let's say, French court festivities
when Louis XIV was young,
he prided himself on being a good dancer
and he danced and he made sure
that people saw his handsome legs.
But this was not the custom among the Ottomans,
the people who produced entertainments
produced them for the Sultan
and the Sultan sat, like in a theater box
in a open balcony
from which he could watch the festivities.
Now we know exactly where all this took place,
because in all the miniatures we see, the three
columns, monuments
of the spina are of late antique times.
I mean, there is one the snake column, which in the 16th century
still had all its snake heads.
They were later stolen in the 18th century.
And one of them was retrieved and is today in the archeological museum.
We don't know what happened to the others.
But in the 16th century, it still had
the snake column, still had all its three heads.
And then there is a obelisk, which is real.
It has Egyptian lettering on it
and it has a base one side
the base is from the time of the emperor
Theodosius I.
And we can see that on the Ottoman miniatures.
I mean, they didn't show us the details
of the inscription and of the relief,
but it's clear that they knew that there was something there.
And then there was the third obelisk, which is also still here.
Namely, it was really masonry
and covered with copper.
But the copper was already gone in the 16th century.
So people in the 16th century saw the masonry
that we still see today.
Well, and
what was and there were many events.
And as I said, both Ottoman
Surname writers described them in detail,
but also foreign visitors did the same.
Most of them were Venetians.
And, I mean, some of these
things have survived in Venice,
but some you know, in the late 16th century,
there was there were two fires in the palace of the Doge,
so some of this material disappeared,
but copies are in Modena
where recently a
Turkish woman, professor from the University of Ankara,
she discovered these things in Modena and published them.
So, I mean, we have a pretty good idea
of what happened at the festivities.
And the most important thing is
that they showed moving
something you might call tableaux, vivants
I mean, tableux vivants have completely passed out of fashion,
but they were quite common in the 18th and 19th centuries.
They were like a society game.
People would, you know, pose
as if they were some kind of picture.
And then the people who saw them had to guess
what kind of picture it was.
And these tableaux vivants are kind of a little bit
like that, namely on wagons,
sometimes pulled by people, sometimes pulled by donkeys
or by oxen, sometimes even carried by people.
They produced
kind of shows,
which shows the activity of various
artisans and merchants.