Photography in Istanbul became popular in 1850. However, in 1843 the French photographerJoseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey was the first person to photograph the city. Remarkably, his photographs were only discovered in the 1920s in a storeroom of his estate and then only became known eighty years later. Some of his work is seen below.
A panoramic view of Constantinople. One of the first pictures ever captured of the city. 1844.
A larger section of the above photo.
Beyazıt Camii (Beyazid II Mosque)
Sariyer Fisheries
Çengelköy
Haydarpaşa
Alay Köşkü (Procession Kiosk)
Various untitled photos
İstanbul is one of the most captivating cities in the world. I’ve spent many hours wandering its streets and bazaars and mosques and monuments; I’d love to be able to go back and spend a lot more time exploring it. Oh, the food, and the spices, and the lokum and the sahlep and the ayran and the…
A Muslim imam in Turkey has joined with a rock band to bring a message of peace and love to Muslims. Religious authorities are not sure if they like it.
KAS, Turkey — What do you get when you mix a medieval Sufi poet with one of the greatest ’70s rock acts of all time?
A Muslim rock band led by a Turkish imam whose music is an Islamic version of peace and love.
“If I hurt your heart, I believe that I hurt God’s heart,” says Ahmet Muhsin Tuzer, bedecked in the white robe he wears when leading the faithful to prayer in the tiny village of Pinarbasi near Turkey’s Mediterranean coastline. “If we love each other, we will be very happy this life and the next life.”
But Tuzer’s melding of influences from 13th century Sufi poet Rumi and 1970s rock band Pink Floyd is attracting attention from Turkey’s religious establishment, which has been expanding its authority over Turkish society under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The mufti in charge of the region’s mosque confirmed that the Rockin’ Imam is being investigated.
“In the (religious affairs directorate) we have certain common values,” mufti Ahmet Celik told USA TODAY from his office in the city of Antalya. “(Investigators) are looking into it to see if there’s anything against these values.”
Tuzer, 42, is an accomplished muezzin — the one who sings the call to prayer — and had earlier been posted in Istanbul’s historic Sultanahmet quarter that houses the ancient Ottoman capital with many of its most famous mosques.
Tuzer says he spent the last two years exploring Sufi mysticism and he’d long had an interest in singing, drawing inspiration from the late Freddie Mercury of the British band Queen.
Earlier this year, Tuzer met some veteran rock musicians in the nearby seaside town of Kas, a touristy fishing village where he was born and raised. He decided he’d like to fuse his love of rock music with the beauty contained in Islamic verse and he began to write songs with Dogan Sakin, a guitarist who’s played with some of the most well-known musicians in Turkey.
The collaboration begat FiRock, which combines Tuzer’s lilting vocals with Sakin’s metal guitar riffs. With his long, grey hair and tattooed arms and legs, Sakin looks the part of the veteran rocker. Sakin is not religious but says he believes in the group’s message.
“I felt this would be something beautiful directly from the heart,” Sakin said. “Without that feeling, I wouldn’t be here.”
“We could play ney and bende (traditional Turkish instruments) but that wouldn’t attract much attention,” Sakin said. “It would be too traditional and wouldn’t work. But with rock, it’s universal.”
In the band’s first concert in Kas in August, Tuzer took the stage in the long white robe usually reserved for an imam leading prayers. About a thousand people listened to songs that included the band’s first recorded single, Mevlaya Gel (“Come to the Creator”).
The image of an imam on stage with seasoned rockers created a sensation in Turkey. But not everyone grooved on their musical message. After the show Tuzer says insults and even threats poured in on Twitter and other social media.
“The radical Islamist public, they don’t like my music, my stuff because they cannot understand,” he said.
But the band could threaten Tuzer’s livelihood. In Turkey, imams are employed by the government’s religious affairs directorate, which supervises the country’s mosques. Soon after news of FiRock broke Tuzer found himself under investigation by his employer.
Under the law, there are rules about what kind of business imams can engage in outside of their profession as religious figures. Mosque officials are examining whether being in a rock band constitutes a commercial activity.
Meanwhile, the band released its first single and music video on YouTube — getting around 20,000 hits — and is recording its first album.
FiRock’s ambition is to show a side of Islam that’s often overshadowed by violent Islamist radicals to the detriment of all.
“Islam is peaceful. Islam is respect,” Tuzer said. “Islam is moral — and beautifully moral. We want to live like that.”
Turkey is a modern society but is polarized between a growing religiously conservative sector that for the past decade have been the power base for Turkey’s Islamic-rooted government under Erdogan.
Some Turks who look westward for their music and fashion feel threatened by recent restrictions on the sale of alcohol and dictates about family size — one of the roots of protests in cities across Turkey over the summer..
Sakin says the band wants to help heal the division in Turkish society.
“Why should we be so polarized? We embrace everybody,” he said. “What good is it to be polarized for the rest of our lives?”
Over the last 2,000 years there have been many religious-based wars. Numerous religions have been involved in these bloody wars. History reveals not one has ever been settled through negotiation. The only way these wars have been stopped is by one side beating the other into submission.
One side has either had to kill off opponents or subdue them. The brutal conflict between Christians (the word as used here is a noun and not an adjective) and Muslims has been ongoing throughout history. The Crusaders committed many shameful acts and were not without guilt. However, it was the Muslim hoard that swarmed out of the Arabian Horn and into Europe that started the prolonged horrible conflict. In their aggression against Eastern Europe, the conquest of what is now Istanbul was a crowning victory. They assaulted the city three times. The first two times they took captive many children and grandchildren. The third time they returned, these youths had been forcefully converted to Islam and came as warriors who killed their parents and grandparents to win the victory. They established Istanbul as the center of the Ottoman Empire.
Had not the Ottoman forces been defeated in the Kahlenberg Mountain battle near Vienna, all of Europe would today be Muslim. (An interesting aside. The chef of the Austrian king wanted to do something different to celebrate the victory over the Turks. He baked a new pastry shaped like the crescent symbol of the Ottoman Empire and called it the croissant.)
Today Turkish Muslims are in general among the more peace-loving of all Muslims.
The conflict goes on, however. Muslims recently stormed a mall in Kenya testing persons to determine if they were Muslim by requiring them to quote a certain well known passage from the Koran. If they could not they were assumed to be Christians and were shot.
Nearly 100 Christian churches have been burned in Egypt since the revolution.
A suicide bomber attack on a historical church in Pakistan killed 85 and wounded hundreds more. Reports are that Christians among the wounded were the last to receive medical treatment.
In Syria the bloody Assad regime has shown tolerance toward Christians. Rebel forces have slaughtered hundreds of Christians and burned many churches. Though there appear to be few good guys among the several groups fighting in Syria, our government in Washington is backing the rebel forces that are harshest on Christians.
In Africa, it is estimated that more than 500,000 Christians have been killed in this conflict. Yet, the Christian church is growing faster in Africa than on any other continent.
This is a horrible summary. Every day in more than 60 countries 100 million Christians are suffering persecution, according to the Open Door publication World Watch. Persons adhering to one particular religious faith are the perpetrators. Our president remains strangely silent on this subject.
Fortunately, there are peace-loving Muslims. A number of them live in our area. The majority of American Muslims appear to be ambivalent about the conflict with the West. It is challenging to distinguish these two segments from more aggressive ones. Knowing this, the more aggressive ones often conceal themselves among the more innocent ones, often without the more peaceful ones knowing their commitment to aggression.
Opponents of our nation no longer wear red coats and march across open fields in a straight line. The most red that is seen is the blood of the martyrs.
The Rev. Dr. Nelson Price is pastor emeritus at Roswell Street Baptist Church.
There are rumors that the grandson of the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II is about to enter politics in a bid to become the mayor of Istanbul.
World Bulletin / News Desk
The head of Turkey’s Great Union Party (BBP), Mustafa Destici, has made a very controversial announcement, indicating that Kayihan Osmanoglu, the grandson of the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II, is about to enter politics.
The announcement came during the BBP’s 6th Kocaeli Congress meeting. Although he admitted that this was not yet a reality, he claimed that there are many people who are calling on him to run for the position of mayor of Istanbul.
When asked about rumors of the Ottoman prince’s wish to be the first member of the Ottoman royal family to enter politics since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Destici said ‘Kayihan and myself share a very special friendship. In Istanbul there are people calling on him to step up. However, we have not discussed this issue yet.’
Destici went on to say that the party will soon reveal the candidates for the upcoming local elections, and many believe that Kayihan Osmanoglu will be among the names.
via Ottoman prince may enter politics | Politics | World Bulletin.
By Professor Edhem EldemBogazici University, Istanbul
Hagia Sophia was used as a church for 916 years but, following the conquest of Istanbul by Fatih Sultan Mehmed, it was converted into mosque. In 1935 under the order of Atatürk it became a museum
The Ottoman Empire lasted 600 years, spreading from what is now Turkey to span three continents. Under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) it stretched across most of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the Balkans, the Black Sea, and Eastern Europe, and came close to capturing the Austrian capital, Vienna.
The scale of the Ottoman empire’s achievements was made possible by reconciling secular politics with Islam – balancing the demands of the religious establishment with the ambitions of the sultans and the army. For the Ottomans this was the Kanun; a secular legal system that co-existed with religious law or Sharia.
Borrowed from the Arabic qānūn; the word originated from the ancient Greek kanôn (κανών), describing a measure, a norm, a standard, a rule, and by extension a law. In English, the same word is used to describe a high standard, as in a “canon of beauty”; it is also used to describe “canon law,” or the body of laws upheld by the Church.
Sharia is derived directly from the Koran and the Sunnah, or path, of the Prophet Muhammad. Originally designed to regulate a relatively small community of believers, as Islam spread and matured under increasingly complex state structures and ever growing diverse populations, it became difficult to address certain matters based on Sharia alone.
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The Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire was the one of the largest and longest lasting empires in history
It was an empire inspired and sustained by Islam and Islamic institutions
It reached its height under Suleiman the Magnificent (reigned 1520-66), when it expanded to cover the Balkans and Hungary, and reached the gates of Vienna
The Empire began to decline in the 16th Century and was effectively finished off by the WWI and the Balkan Wars
Why was the Ottoman Empire so successful?
The sultans of the Ottoman Empire realised this and used the Kanun to complement, supplement, and sometimes supplant religious law.
Sharia was simply not sufficient to deal with needs such as taxation, administration, financial matters, or penal law. The basic idea was to complement Sharia with a number of rules and decrees enforced by the secular authority.
Another disadvantage of Sharia was that its application depended greatly on the interpretation of sources by the ulema (scholars), making standardisation difficult. This was particularly true of the Sunnah, the path of the Prophet, best described as the way of life and deeds that he himself followed, advocated, or approved of, and which was recorded by his followers in a series of hadiths (traditions).
The value and meaning given to one tradition or another could vary according to context, and from one legal expert to another. What could satisfy the needs of a small community could easily fail to respond to the requirements of a state administration in terms of scope and predictability.
The Ottomans were not the first Islamic state to make use of secular Kanun; but they brought its use and implementation to an unprecedented level as their state rapidly developed from a frontier principality in the early 14th Century to a fully-fledged empire 200 years later.
This rapid growth had forced the Ottoman elite to develop an ideology of their own, focused on the pre-eminence of the sultan.
Having embraced Islam relatively late, and surrounded by a number of other Muslim states, stressing their own distinctive ideology acquired even greater importance. The initial Ottoman expansion had also taken place at the expense of Christian lands in western Anatolia and the Balkans, particularly the Byzantine Empire, which was reduced to a mere shadow of its past glory.
These contacts had exposed the conquering Ottomans to different legal practices, while at the same time forcing them to work out ways of integrating sizeable non-Muslim populations into the system.
The initial Ottoman expansion took place at the expense of Christian lands in western Anatolia and the Balkans, particularly the Byzantine Empire
The first concrete examples of the codification of Ottoman Kanun took form towards the end of the 15th Century. This was a period of consolidation of sultanic authority following the symbolically crucialconquest of Constantinople in 1453. By becoming a de facto heir to the Roman Empire, via the Byzantine, the Ottomans had progressed from a confederation of frontier warlords to the much more demanding role of an empire under a single and unchallenged rule.
The Kanun was one of the principal instruments of this transformation, by granting to the sultan the power he needed to exercise his authority to the full.
The first such codes, called Kanun-name, or literally “book of law”, had to do with financial and fiscal matters, which lay at the heart of state revenues. Based on custom (örf), these documents generally tried to reconcile previously existing practices with the priorities and needs of the Ottoman state.
The best examples are the numerous Kanun-names granted to individual provinces following their conquest. Typically, such a provincial book of law would maintain most of the taxes and dues existing under the previous rule, and simply adapt them to an Ottoman standard.
‘Fratricide’
One of the most decisive outcomes of the use of Kanun was the redefinition of Ottoman society in a two-tiered hierarchy. At the top, were the askeri, literally the “military,” a tax-exempt ruling class consisting of the “men of the sword,” the “men of the book,” and the “men of the pen.” At the bottom, the rest of the population, labeled as the reaya, the “flock,” whose duty was to produce and pay taxes.
One of the biggest challenges for the Ottomans was to impose secular law at the centre of the empire in order to consolidate the position of the sultan at the pinnacle of power. The most extreme example of this was the “law of fratricide” attributed to Sultan Mehmed II, known as the Conqueror after he took Constantinople in 1453.
The text of this law was brief but terrifying: “Whichever of my sons inherits the sultanate, it behooves (is necessary for) him to kill his brothers in the interest of the world order; most jurists have approved this; let action be taken accordingly.”
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“Start Quote
Whichever of my sons inherits the sultanate, it behoves him to kill his brothers in the interest of the world order…”
The law of fratricideUsed in the time of Sultan Mehmed II
This was a perfect example of secular law permitting an act that Sharia would have never condoned – the assassination by a newly enthroned sultan of all his brothers for fear of a repetition of the fratricidal conflicts that had plagued the Ottoman system of succession.
This law was maintained and followed for about a century and a half, until popular reaction and fear of dynastic extinction led to the unfortunate brothers being held in captivity instead of killing them.
The mention in the law that “most jurists have approved this” suggests there was an effort to prove that this law was compatible with Sharia; and also, that this opinion was not unanimous and that there must have been a good deal of arm-twisting to obtain the approval of “most jurists”, unless this was entirely a legal fiction.
This potential tension between Kanun and Sharia provides precious insight into the dynamics of Ottoman power politics and state building during the same period.
These transformations of the Ottoman system present striking similarities with what was happening in Western Europe at the same time. The efforts deployed by all these states to control taxation in order to promote the growth of a central army and bureaucracy are at the very centre of the emergence of the early modern state.
At its height the Ottoman lands stretched over more than one million square miles
Crown and Church were also pitted against each other in the struggle over resources and authority. By trying to exert increasing control over the religious hierarchy, the Ottomans hoped to force it into submission and turn it into yet another instrument of sultanic power.
The reign of Suleiman the Magnificent was a perfect example of this. Religion was gradually brought under state control by the setting up of a hierarchical structure centred in the capital, Istanbul. Any important member of the religious administration had to undergo a centralised process of formation and selection and would depend entirely on the state for any position and promotion.
A new office was also invented to top this structure: that of the sheikhulislam, literally the “leader of Islam”. This individual would oversee the whole system and answer to the sultan, much like the grand vizier would do for secular matters.
Ebussuud Efendi – Suleyman’s sheikhulislam saw to it that conformity between Kanun and Sharia was maintained, at least on paper. The flexibility of his jurisprudence was such that he managed to find ways of legalising interest-bearing loans, a most reprehensible practice by stricter standards of Sharia.
It is rather telling that Suleiman’s nickname in Turkish is not “Magnificent,” but Kanuni, the “Lawgiver,” for it was under his reign the use and formulation of secular law reached its institutional peak.
The initial Ottoman expansion took place at the expense of Christian lands in western Anatolia and the Balkans, particularly the Byzantine Empire
The Ottomans: Europe’s Muslim Emperors a three-part television series presented by Rageh Omaar can be seen on BBC Two on Sunday from 6 October.
How do you know whether a regime that frees women to wear Islamic headscarves at work is liberal and furthering democracy, or Islamist and restricting it?
The question concerns Turkey’s government, which in the space of a few days has ended a headscarf ban for civil servants (except in the judiciary and security services), but also caused a female TV music-show presenter to be fired for showing too much cleavage.
The headscarf ban was a piece of unabashed social engineering introduced in the 1920s to make Turkey, the rump of the former Ottoman Empire and Islamic Caliphate, secular. If you are liberal and not Islamophobic, ending the ban is a good thing: Women should not be excluded from the workplace just because they are devout and believe this requires covering their hair, period.
But what if the change — which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan introduced as part of a broad “democratization” package — is part of a wider plan of social re-engineering, this time designed to impinge on the liberties of non-religious conservatives? If so, the numerous cases in which women were discriminated against, fired or passed over for promotion for wearing a headscarf even outside of work would now be repeated in reverse: Women who don’t wear headscarves to work, and men whose wives don’t cover their hair, will be discriminated against, fired and passed over for promotion.
Turkey’s secularists say this is already happening to men whose wives show their locks. That’s hard to prove, but the real issue is trust — secularists believe the worst of Erdogan’s intentions. Are they right?
The firing of a TV presenter, Gozde Kansu, this week is indicative. Huseyin Celik, spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development Party attacked Kansu (without actually naming her) for wearing a dress with a plunging neckline while on the air. A few days later, she was fired. There are a few points to make.
First, Celik should watch more Italian TV — he would then understand that Kansu is a model of shy decorum. Second, Celik’s words were as follows: “We don’t intervene against anyone, but this is too much. It is unacceptable,” according to Hurriyet Daily News. He later complained that it wasn’t his fault that she was fired, and he had a right to express his opinions.
None of this is credible. Celik knows what “unacceptable” means; he knew that Kansu was on ATV television, which belongs to a company called Calik Holding; and he knew that Calik’s chief executive officer is Erdogan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak. There is no coincidence or unintended consequence here. Celik wants to re-engineer Turkish TV.
There are plenty of other pointers about the depth of the government’s commitment to “democratization,” such as the repeated tightening of restrictions on the sale of alcohol, frowned upon by devout Muslims; the routine prosecuting and jailing of journalists; and the crushing of dissent in the Gezi Park protests earlier this year.
One last piece of evidence: A Turkish appeals court today upheld the convictions 237 Turkish military officers convicted of plotting a coup against the government in 2003. The case, called Sledgehammer, has been thoroughly discredited. Forensic examination showed that the evidence on which the conviction rested was forged: The documents involved were on a CD-ROM date-stamped 2003, yet were written using a 2007 Microsoft program.
Again, a case first hailed abroad as good for democracy — an effort to hold the country’s generals accountable after decades of impunity — turns out to be something else. The Sledgehammer case shows only continuity in Turkish governments’ use of politicized courts against their enemies: In the old days the military and secularists abused the law to suppress Islamists; now the Islamists are returning the favor.
(Marc Champion is a Bloomberg View editorial board member. Follow him on Twitter.)
Hagia Sophia was used as a church for 916 years but, following the conquest of Istanbul by Fatih Sultan Mehmed, it was converted into mosque. In 1935 under the order of Atatürk it became a museum
The initial Ottoman expansion took place at the expense of Christian lands in western Anatolia and the Balkans, particularly the Byzantine Empire
At its height the Ottoman lands stretched over more than one million square miles
