Turkey and Istanbul

  • Pilgrimages in Turkey in 2025

    Pilgrimages in Turkey in 2025

    Two fascinating intineraries, run by the Revd James Buxton, Chaplain in İzmir. Pilgrimage to the Seven Churches of Revelation » (May) These are the seven cities mentioned in the first three chapters of Revelation, in the Bible. They include Smyrna (İzmir) and six other six cities in the area. The…

  • Turkish tea (or coffee) with the Sultan

    Turkish tea (or coffee) with the Sultan

    Is it possible to take Turkish tea or coffee with the sultan? You might not think so. But look carefully at the glassware. recognising the sultan’s insignia When you next order a Turkish coffee or a tea, have look at the glass of water that comes with it. If you…

  • the shifting fortunes of ephesus: its rise and fall (and rise)

    the shifting fortunes of ephesus: its rise and fall (and rise)

    The shifting fortunes of Ephesus, one of the great ancient cities of Turkey. traces of vanished splendour Visitors touring Ephesus might end their visit at the Terraced Houses, with their beautiful frescoes and opulent marble floors. The degree of preservation is stunning. Left to the elements, frescoes do not survive…

  • Tour of the Seven Churches on Turkey’s Aegean coast

    Tour of the Seven Churches on Turkey’s Aegean coast

    The Book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament, is traditionally held to have been written by St John (variously the apostle, the divine, the evangelist) while exiled to the island of Patmos from Ephesus on the mainland. It is prefaced by letters to seven churches* on the…

  • Lying in state

    Lying in state

    Paola Pugsley explores the history of this now established custom When faced with a crisis like the death of a much beloved sovereign, human beings tend to seek comfort in ritual. One of these is the tradition of the lying in state, when the deceased is laid in his or…

  • Cem: The Twenty-day Sultan

    Cem: The Twenty-day Sultan

    To be a sultan, even for less than a month, is an achievement. Cem, the twenty-day sultan paid for it for the rest of his life. Here is his story. Cem’s birth and childhood Born the third son of Fatih Sultan Mehmet (the conqueror of Constantinople), Cem could style himself…

  • The Colour Purple

    The Colour Purple

    Empires that tend to be large, and try to unite peoples of disparate ethnicities under one ruler, certainly have a communication problem, more so in antiquity when getting ideas around was a much slower business. The power, the benevolence—indeed the very existence of a new emperor had to be drummed…

  • Invisible archaeology

    Invisible archaeology

    Archaeology used to be mainly about the material remains of the past. They stood as witnesses of events and civilisations long past and encouraged archaeologists in their main activity, namely digging to find out more. Normally, if no clues could be seen above ground, nothing very much happened. Seeing beneath…

  • Ottoman submarines

    Ottoman submarines

    The story of an Ottoman sultan’s quest for technological advancement: for which he turned to submarines. Abdülhamid identifies a problem Sultan Abdülhamid II (the last Turkish sultan with absolute powers), who reigned from 1876 until 1909 (when he was deposed), was very aware of the technological shortcomings of the Ottoman…

  • The legend of Şahmeran

    The legend of Şahmeran

    If you happen to be in Tarsus, driving east along the central Adana Blv, you will find to your left, at the large roundabout 100m north of the Ulu Cami and the so-called Church of St Paul, a fountain with an intriguing statue in the middle of a small basin.…

  • The Zeugma Mosaics Saga

    The Zeugma Mosaics Saga

    Visitors to southeast Turkey will be familiar with the ‘Gipsy Girl’, the portrait of a young lady (actually a maenad, one of the frenzied followers of Dionysus) exhibited amid tight security at the Gaziantep Museum. The image—featured on the cover of Blue Guide Southeastern Turkey—is now so ubiquitous (second only…

  • Re-interpreting the Trojan Horse

    Re-interpreting the Trojan Horse

    When is a horse not a horse? Nowhere in the Iliad is it mentioned that the Greeks brought the ten-year siege to a successful conclusion by tricking the Trojans into towing into their city a large wooden horse in which sufficient Greek warriors had been hidden to create havoc and…

  • Aegean Turkey: Troy to Bodrum

    Aegean Turkey: Troy to Bodrum

    When Freya Stark was in this area in the early autumn of 1952, she was on a quest (the very word she used in the title of the book detailing her adventures: Ionia: A Quest). Armed with her Classics, she was looking for the material reality underpinning the narratives of…

  • The Black Fields of Kula

    The Black Fields of Kula

    East of Sardis, the black fields of Kula extend for some 1800 square kilometres, roughly south of the Gediz Valley to the towns of Katakekaume (today’s Kula) to the east, and Alaşehir, the ancient Philadelphia, to the south. They were praised in antiquity for their fertility: the wine, the Katakekaumenites…

  • The many lives of Nasreddin Hoca

    The many lives of Nasreddin Hoca

    Nasreddin Hoca is the darling of the souvenir shops. More or less all over Turkey one can find the figure of the rotund sage with his outsize turban and huge prayer beads, on books, statues and statuettes and a variety of objects. His philosophy, with its touch of the absurd…

  • A tale of three museums

    A tale of three museums

    Turkey has a comparatively long history in the business of setting up museums. As early as 1869 the decision had been taken to create a purpose-built Imperial Museum in Istanbul, grand enough to rival the Louvre in Paris. The idea was that provincial governors would fill it up by forwarding…

  • Princesses from the Trabzon Empire

    Princesses from the Trabzon Empire

    For the Grand Comneni, the Christian rulers of the 14th–15th-century Trabzon Empire, diplomacy was probably the best way to survive in a hostile environment. Enemies were all around, and they were all Muslim. If you could not fight and crush them, it was probably more prudent to join them and…

  • Being Mithridates

    Being Mithridates

    The death of Mithridates VI Eupator, the last king of Pontus, in 63 BC marks both the culmination and the implosion of the dream of an independent Pontic state uniting the shores of the Black Sea under one ruler. Born c. 134 BC in Sinop, Mithridates spent his life pursuing…

  • So what is the Turkish Van?

    So what is the Turkish Van?

    The Turkish Van is not a mode of transport. It is a domestic feline animal, otherwise known as the Van Cat from its home in the Van region of eastern Turkey. It is said that the cats first came to Europe from the Middle East, in the wake of returning…

  • Tying the Knot in Urfa

    Tying the Knot in Urfa

    Yes, but which one? The Spanish, the Persian or the Turkish? When it comes to carpets there is plenty of choice and although I spent a week at it, I am not too sure which one it was. Carpet making has a long tradition in Turkey. It harks back to…

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