Tulipomania - Mike Dash [10]
Beyond this second court, and through a third gateway known as the Gate of Felicity, lay the monarch’s private chambers and the imperial harem, guarded by black eunuchs brought to Istanbul from Africa. The third courtyard was a place so sacred that no Westerner, and practically no Ottomans, could claim to have actually set foot in it for almost one hundred years after it was built. Finally, a fourth locked double gateway led from the seraglio into the imperial gardens, which lay at the extreme end of the entire palace complex and commanded magnificent views across the glinting waters of the Bosporus. Their position, at the very heart of the principal symbol of Ottoman power, underlined the regard the Turks had for their plants and flowers.
The grounds of the Topkapi were not merely magnificent but extensive. The enormous palace complex contained every sort of garden, as well as flower beds and fountains, pools and orchards. The imposing Second Court, where the Turks’ elite troops assembled each month to be paid in cash from great sacks of money, even contained some quite extensive areas of woodland, where deer wandered between the cypress trees and across shaded walks; to the north of the palace, where the land sloped down to the famous harbor known as the Golden Horn, the gardens also extended beyond the walls all the way down to the water.
Flower beds were planted chiefly in the Fourth Court, where they were often enjoyed by the sultan alone. The only windows that overlooked them were those of the Treasury and a building called the Hall of the Pantry, which housed the royal larders; and these could be shuttered if the Grand Turk so decreed. The gardens of the Fourth Court were the sultan’s principal retreat from the cares of state, and successive monarchs vied with each other to make them ever more beautiful. The rose, the carnation, the hyacinth, the narcissus, and of course the tulip were all planted in great profusion in this part of the grounds, particularly on the slopes that led to the highest point of the whole Topkapi complex, a hillock at the northern end that commanded unrivaled views across the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara. Upon this promontory and elsewhere in the gardens, the Ottomans built wooden pavilions called kiosks. They could be used as meeting places or as the focal points of festivals, but they were also provided with solitary divans positioned to catch each passing breeze and offer breathtaking views when the gardens were in flower. Here, more than at any time in his crowded and often violent life, an Ottoman sultan might feel alone and at peace.
Everything about the Abode of Bliss was designed to impress visitors with the extent of Turkish power. The palace’s scale was tremendous, its architecture was magisterial, its apartments were decorated in the most opulent fashion. Even the most cosmopolitan European merchants would have been awed by the cosmopolitan stream of supplies required to feed the imperial court: cartloads of rice, sugar, peas, lentils, pepper, coffee, senna, and macaroons all trundled through the Topkapi’s gateways, as well as plums preserved in lemon juice, 199,000 hens, and 780 wagons of snow each year.
In Süleyman’s time no fewer than five thousand servants toiled among the four courtyards. They ranged from humble watchmen to exotic specialists such as the chief turban folder and the chief attendant of the napkin, whose staff in turn included a full-time pickle server. Among these servants of the sultan were a considerable body of gardeners, the bostancis, almost a thousand strong. Their duties in the palace were actually many and varied and extended far beyond weeding the sultan’s tulips—though certainly they performed that function too. Bostancis worked as guards, porters, and removers of refuse. The five thousand additional members of the corps who worked outside