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of Istanbul. The large barracks on this spot today, Selimiye (named after Selim III, who tried to get rid of the Janissaries but was deposed and killed in the early 1800s) date from 1853, and they are among the most enormous barracks ever constructed. They were converted into a British military hospital in 1854 during the Crimean War, and it was here that Florence Nightingale, with thirty-eight nurses, introduced new standards of hygiene. John Freely, in the Blue Guide, informs us that during the first months of the war, “conditions there were so bad that the death toll reached the appalling rate of more than 20 percent of the patients admitted.… Before she left Istanbul, in the summer of 1856, shortly after the end of hostilities, the death rate at the two hospitals under her charge in the city [she also ministered to patients at the Kuleli military hospital] had dropped to two percent, an enormous saving in lives.” South of the Selimiye barracks is the Crimean War Cemetery, well tended and kept up by mostly British contributions. Though it is kept locked and isn’t signed, a caretaker usually emerges to unlock the gate. Again to quote Freely, the principal funerary monument here “is an obelisk of grey Aberdeen granite, with an inscription in several languages by Queen Victoria paying tribute to the brave men and women who lie here, so far from home.” There is also a plaque dedicated by Queen Elizabeth II, dedicated to Florence Nightingale and her staff.

V

Vakıf

Vakıf is the Turkish word referring to a religious foundation (waqf in Arabic) that finances the construction of a mosque or an entire külliye and its upkeep through the administration of shops or rented accommodation.

Vienna

Twice, in 1529 and 1683, the Turks marched into central Europe, where they were stopped at the gates of Vienna. According to Simon Millar, author of Vienna 1683 (Osprey, 2008), Vienna was seen as a major strategic aspiration for the Ottoman Empire, “desperate for the control that city exercised over the Danube and the overland trade routes between southern and northern Europe.” To Europeans, Vienna became the city where the line was drawn in the sand, so to speak—as symbolic as Poitiers, where the Moors were stopped in AD 732 by Charles Martel—so the Ottoman army set up camp outside Vienna. In A Fez of the Heart, Jeremy Seal notes that the encampment set down a

fabulous image that has at once haunted and enthralled Christendom ever since. The camp was pitched in front of the city in the form of a huge half-moon Islamic crescent, the thirty thousand tents visibly overshadowed by those of the sultan and his grand vizier, which were covered in hangings of richest tissue, colored green and striped with gold. Gold too, great knobs of solid gold, were the pinnacles above their tents, while carpets, cushions, and divans within were studded with jewels. Deep inside was a sanctuary housing the sacred standard of the Prophet as well as baths, fountains, flower gardens, and menageries. At the entrance, five hundred archers of the royal guard kept watch while thousands of turbaned infantrymen and black eunuchs passed among the field harems and their concubines, the Ottoman military kitchens filled with bejeweled silverware, the Turkish baths and bedrooms filled with priceless satins and velvets.

Needless to say, it was quite different on the other side of the walls. After the final, fifteen-hour battle, the Viennese were victorious. Philippa Scott, in Turkish Delights, tells us that the magnificent Ottoman tented city was captured and distributed after the siege ended.

Villages

Some cities around the world, such as New York, have been described as cities of individual neighborhoods. Istanbul, according to Anthony Weller in Gourmet (December 1988), was originally all villages. He explains that each village had a mosque, and some villages had baths, fountains, markets, and schools. Most were defined simply by families who shared common trade, origin, or religion. In 1871 in the old city, there were 321 such districts: 284 were Muslim, the rest