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By Root 1050 0

tomatoes, cucumber, and seafood are favorite rakı accompaniments, all staples at a meyhane, a casual, family-style place historically owned and operated by Greeks. I’ve noticed that outside of a meyhane, even at the simplest places, rakı always comes with a small plate of sliced cucumbers, salted almonds, or—my favorite—roasted chickpeas, or leblebi, which my husband calls “pressed dust” (try them before you knock them!). Kinzer again notes that “the meyhane culture tells a great deal about Turkey. Like the country, it offers almost infinite possibilities because it blends the heritage of so many different peoples. At a meyhane, the world can either be invited in or shut out. Turks have not yet decided which is the wisest path.”

Ramazan

Ramazan is the Turkish word for the Arabic Ramadan, observed in the ninth month of the Muslim lunar Hijri calendar. I love the description of Ramazan in Irfan Orga’s Portrait of a Turkish Family: “In those days during Ramazan there were no lessons in the schools and we were allowed home on leave. Twenty-seven years ago the streets at Ramazan were crowded as they have not been since and perhaps never will be again. Not only the Muslims who were keeping the fast were in the streets but the British, French and American soldiers were there too to watch the ceremonies. And on the last night of Ramazan, in the year of which I write, Bayazit Square and its Mosque were places not to be forgotten by those who saw them.” Today in Istanbul, Ramazan may not be celebrated with quite the same fanfare, but it is still an exciting time to visit. Unlike in more observant Muslim countries, in Istanbul there are plenty of places to eat that remain open during Ramazan, so visitors shouldn’t shy away from planning a trip that overlaps with the holiday.

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Şadırvan

A şadırvan is a fountain in the vicinity of a mosque used for performing ritual ablutions before prayers. Two other interesting and related words are sebil, an Ottoman-era fountain from which water was distributed free to all passersby, and çeşme, simply a Turkish fountain. In Stamboul Sketches, John Freely notes that fountains and sebils are to be found by the hundreds in all parts of Istanbul, and Evliya Çelebi made reference to “scores of the most important street fountains and sebil of his day, and nearly all of them are still in existence.” Kenizé Mourad, in Living in Istanbul, notes that building fountains was considered an act of charity by the philanthropic rich: it was a way of helping the poor and simultaneously vaunting their wealth. None of the sebils in Istanbul are now functioning, but almost all of the fountains are still in use. In fact, the Çeşmes were for centuries the only water source for the common people of the city, and Freely estimates that they have probably been of more real service to the people of Istanbul than all the other pious foundations taken together. As readers who’ve been to Rome know, that city is famous for its fountains, too; but as Freely states, the fountains of Istanbul are totally different: “Here there are no dramatic sculptured figures, no allegorical river gods and spouting cherubs, no elaborate cascades and pools. The fountains of Istanbul are simple and utilitarian, but nonetheless they are often quite beautiful.”

Seated Scribe (1479-80)

I am completely infatuated with this little painting, attributed to the Venetian artist Gentile Bellini and in the permanent collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. “Such an adorable and exquisite thing.… It is joy and rapture,” is how Mrs. Gardner described it to Bernard Berenson in 1907. Susan Spinale tells us that the folds of the scribe’s turban hold in place a ribbed, red taj—headgear worn in the court of Sultan Mehmet II, who “nurtured a passionate interest in portraiture and particularly in Western traditions of the genre.” An added inscription in Persian records the image as “the work of Ibn Muezzin, who was a famous painter among the Franks.” Scholars have never doubted that the painting was produced by a European or “Frankish”