Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [82]
Living in Istanbul, with photographs by Jérôme Darblay and texts by Kenize Mourad, Lale Apa, Teresa Battesti, Caroline Champenois, John Freely, Nedim Gursel, Tim Hindle, Arzu Karamani, and Gérard-Georges Lemaire (Flammarion, 1994). This is one of those so-called coffee-table books that is so very much more than a book for a coffee table. I’ve been a fan of Flammarion’s Living in series since its inception, because the books are very well written, revealing, and interesting; the photographs are fantastic; and the visitor’s guide at the back of each book is very useful and often includes things to see and do that aren’t mentioned in guidebooks. John Freely’s chapter, “A Day in Istanbul,” is superb and filled with detail. He writes of a village on the Asian shore, Kuzguncuk, reminiscent of what Istanbul was like at the time of the Ottoman Empire. “The inhabitants of this village have always lived together in harmony, no matter what their race or religion, which is why, a few yards from Muzaffer Bey’s shop, stand a Turkish mosque, a Greek church, an Armenian church and a synagogue.”
Sinan Diaryz: A Walking Tour of Mimar Sinan’s Monuments, by Ann Pierpont (Çitlembik, 2007). Pierpont visited Istanbul several times before she realized there was no guide written exclusively about Sinan and his works, so she decided to write one herself. This unique book is written from Sinan’s perspective, and she planned the walking tours to illustrate Sinan’s architectural development chronologically. I saw this in several bookstores in Istanbul, though I ordered my copy from Nettleberry, the distributor of Turkish books in the United States (See Miscellany, page 566.)
Travel Guide to Europe 1492: Ten Itineraries in the Old World, by Lorenzo Camusso (Henry Holt, 1992). This is one of my favorite books, truly a one-of-a-kind volume. Camusso presents ten real (or probable) journeys in chronological order, one of which is “From Genoa to Istanbul.” The sea voyage “took at least thirty days, but it could easily become forty or sixty, depending on the number of stops made at ports and the weather conditions. One departed in May to arrive at the Golden Horn in early July (and make the return voyage in autumn). What kind of experience could it have been to cross a calm Mediterranean between late spring and early summer? The itinerary will be the route of prestigious cruises. At that time one traveled on the sea for a living, out of necessity, in the hope of gain. Whether or not there was also a portion of pleasure, no one can say. But the host of images—light, sea, promontories, islands, and bays—one can imagine seeing from the gently rocking vessel appears marvelous to us.” This unique book deserves more than short-lived appreciation.
The Wilder Shores of Love, by Lesley Blanch (Carroll & Graf, 1954, last reprinted edition 2002). This is actually a biographical quartet of brave nineteenth-century females who found their “wilder shores” in the Near and Far East. Only one ended up in Turkey (the others were Isabel Burton, Jane Digby, and Isabelle Eberhardt), and she actually didn’t arrive by choice: Aimée Dubucq de Rivery, a cousin to Empress Joséphine, was on her way home to Martinique from her convent school in Nantes when she was abducted by pirates and presented as a gift from the Dey of Algiers to the Sultan at Topkapı. She became the mother of Sultan Mahmoud II, known as the Reformer, whose sweeping (Western) changes laid the first foundations of the new Turkey. Interestingly, as Blanch notes, “there seems to have been something in the air of Martinique which bred a race of queens. Joséphine, who was to become Empress of the French, her daughter Hortense, who became Queen of Holland, Madame de Maintenon, morganatic wife of Louis XIV, and Aimée, the Sultan Valideh, or Queen Mother, of Turkey—all these seductive women were Creoles