Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [178]
IN THE golden age of Süleyman the Magnificent, the verdant city of Edirne, founded by the Roman Emperor Hadrian, was the second capital of the Ottoman Empire and three times its present size—its monumental architecture and gardens a brilliant setting for grandees and ambassadors on horseback, its stone pavements thronged with dervishes and merchants.
Today, the once-major city peters out amid a vision of trees and greenery—an appealing country town within sight of both the Greek and Bulgarian frontiers. But within its shrunken borders are exquisite mosques and public baths, and market halls still line its spacious avenues.
Approaching Edirne on the highway from Istanbul, a four-hour trip, I like to stop and look down on the center of the city, just beyond the immense sixteenth-century caravansary built by Rüstem Pasha. The grand vizier of Süleyman the Magnificent, he married Süleyman’s daughter Mihrimah, a woman of extraordinary ability and riches. The caravansary is one of the largest ever built, with endless domed chambers set around two courtyards. Above these on the skyline ride the great cupolas of five major mosques with their minarets ranging from delicately slim to fatter brick versions.
Well beyond the city center is the island palace of Sultan Süleyman, pillaged in the nineteenth century by Russian invaders who destroyed its romantic pavilions and gardens; all that is left are the ruins of the kitchens. The island itself, called Saray, has been deserted by the modern Edirne, which has receded behind the banks of the Tunca River.
Although the streets of the city are no longer thronged, as they were until the eighteenth century, they are still lively, the bazaars crowded with local inhabitants in search of necessities like pots and pans, cutlery and sensible clothes. The charm of Edirne today is in the pleasure of gentle walking—from the city’s center, with its cafés and shops, down Talat Pasha Avenue, to the Gazi Mihal bridge and the meadows beside the banks of the Tunca, where children swim and play.
I have visited Edirne at least forty times because of its rich architectural heritage, most recently last July, but I like to begin each visit with the same walk. Leaving the main road just before the modern bridge over the Tunca, I park the car in a small village, from which a broad dirt track reaches the fifteenth century double bridge on the left. From the bridge I can imagine the miles of orchards lining the river where, until a century ago, the townsfolk came on warm evenings to picnic, dance and sing.
The bridge leads to the high dike that protects the great hospital built by Beyazit II in the 1480s. The dike offers a superb view of the hospital—a grand complex that is a tribute to Ottoman charity. The halls where the patients were lodged are on one side of a paddock filled with wildflowers, the handsome storerooms and kitchens are on the other, and the mosque with its courtyard is set between. The mosque is no more and no less than one astonishing dome over a monumental square hall. On each side of it are the quarters for the dervishes, one of the mystic sects that were responsible for nursing the patients, who were fed fresh fruit and vegetables and soothed and cheered by musicians three times a week.
Getting back into the car, I cross back over the river and proceed down the long Talat Pasha Avenue to the great mosque of Selim II, one of the noblest of all Ottoman buildings, splendidly set on the site of the first Ottoman palace built in the 1360s. It was from here that Mehmet II set out to conquer Constantinople at the age of twenty-one. Designed by the greatest of Islamic architects, Sinan, the mosque is striking because of its four minarets—which at more than 230 feet are the tallest in Islam—and its great dome, about 103 feet in