Public spaces and the garden culture of Istanbul

Shirine Hamadeh

On Ottoman imagination as a creative process shaping and being shaped by a protest landscape and urban culture practiced among literary circles along with commoners, introducing a theory of in-between space following neo-platonic schools of thought in the early modern Ottoman Istanbul from early sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries: Literally and metaphorically moving in the real and imaginary (in-between) spaces of the Ottoman cities, landscape and imagination; the book discusses the formation of a protest culture whose claims to the early modern expressions of self in turn re-defined "fragments" of a variety of urban space as novel landscape(s) which stand outside the circle of imperial authority, until when the advocates of this covert protest culture came to hold high ranking positions in the Ottoman court. Keywords: Ottoman imagination, Islamic idea of creative imagination, imaginatrix, pool of imagination, levels of perception and cognition, imagination as a perceptive and cognitive faculty, Ibn-i Arabi, Ibn Arabi, Melamis, İsmail Maşuki, Ismail Masuki, Bayrami Melamis, Hamzavi Melamis, Melamis in Istanbul and Edirne, şehrengiz, sehrengiz, Taşlıcalı Yahya, Mesihi, Zati, Nedim, walking in the city, strolling in the Ottoman city, meeting beloved ones in the city, private meetings, garden rituals, landscape rituals.

This article examines the privacy, sociality and conviviality dynamics of urban khans in Ottoman Istanbul from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Firstly, it looks at the professional and ethno-religious patterns in their use as commercial and residential spaces, then discusses khans as a private residential space, through inheritance records of those who live and die in a khan room. Finally, it turns to issues regarding the public spaces of a khan, namely its common areas, and in particular performative and theatrical practices located in khan courtyards. The article highlights the particular role played by urban khans as convivial spaces of residence, artisanal production, commercial exchange, and sociability.

Vakifs, pious foundations that provided various religious and social services, were critical institutions of the Ottoman Empire. They were severely undermined during Turkey's transition from an empire into a nation-state because their autonomous character and religious premises were incompatible with the modernist, secular, and homogenizing principles of the new regime. Because vakifs were major landowners, the process of dismantling them had a strong spatial component. Focusing on the confiscation of a vakif cemetery during the construction of Turkey's new capital, Ankara, this essay demonstrates how structural changes within the state and its institutions triggered unprecedented contestations over space by opening it to new uses and users while displacing the old, thereby profoundly transforming the urban cultural landscape.

TH E EARLY MO DERN O TTO MANS Rem apping the Em pire ED ITED BY VI R G I N I A H . AKSAN AN D D AN I EL G O F F M AN CAMBRID GE U N I VE R S I T Y P RESS io q azici University 3 S 00 063 brar 7849 C A M BR I D G E U N I VE R SI T Y P RESS Cam bridge, New York, Melbourn e, Mad rid , Cape Town , Singapore, Sao Paulo Cam bridge University Press Th e Edin burgh Buildin g, Cam bridge CB2 8RU, U K Published in the Un ited States of Am erica by Cam bridge University Press, New York www.cam bridge.org In form ation on this title: www.cam bridge.0rg/ 9780521520850 © Cam bridge University Press 2007 Th is publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cam bridge University Press. First published 2007 Printed in the Un ited Kin gdom at the University Press, Cam bridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library ISBN 9 7 8 - 0 - 5 2 1- 8 17 5 4 - 6 h a r d b a c k ISBN 9 7 8 - 0 - 52 1- 52 0 8 5- 0 p a p e r b a c k Cam bridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Contents List of illustrations Notes on contributors Acknowledgm ents A note on transliteration and the use of foreign words pagezyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZY vii ix xi xii Introduction: Situating the early m odern O ttom an world Virginia H. Aksan and Daniel Gojfm an P ART 1 3 4 5 MAP P IN G TH E O TTO MAN W O RLD Im agining the early m odern Ottom an space, from world history to Piri Reis Palm ira Brum m ett P ART 2 I II LIM ITS TO EMPIRE I 13 15 59 Negotiatin g with the Renaissance state: the Ottom an Em pire and the new diplom acy Daniel Goffinan 61 In form ation , ideology, and limits of imperial policy: Ottom an grand strategy in the context of O t t om an Habsburg rivalry Gabor Agoston 75 Th e Ottom ans in the Mediterranean Molly Greene Military reform and its limits in a shrinking Ottom an world, 1800-1840 Virginia H. Aksan v 104 117 Contents VI P ART III 6 7 Gen re and myth in the Ottom an advice for kings literature Douglas A. Howard Th e politics of early m odern O ttom an historiography Bftki Tezcan P ART IV 8 9 10 11 BO U N D ARI ES OF BE LO N G I N G Inside the Ottom an courthouse: territorial law at the intersection of state and religion Najiva Al-Qauan 135 137 16J 19 9 201 Th e material world: ideologies and ordinary things Leslie Peirce 213 Urban voices from beyond: identity, status and social strategies in Ottom an Muslim fun erary epitaphs of Istanbul (1700-1850) Edhem Eldem 233 W h o is a true Muslim ? Exclusion and inclusion among polemicists of reform in nineteenth-century Baghdad Dina Rizk Khoury P ART V 12 EVO CAT I O N S OF SO VEREI GN T Y AESTH ETI CS 256 OF EM P IRE 275 Public spaces and the garden culture of Istanbul in the eighteenth century Shirine Ham adeh 277 Bibliography Index ZUIA 313 353 Illustrations MAP i Th e O ttom an Em pire, c. 1683-1800. Adapted from Halil Inalcik with Don ald Quataert (eds.), An Econom ic and Social History of the Ottom an Em pire,, 1300-1914 (Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1994), p. xxxvii. page 16 P LATES 1.1 Matthias Gerun g, "Die Turken verfolgen die Ch risten / ' c. 1548. Kunstsam m lungen der Veste Cobu rg no. 1.349.13. Courtesy of the Kunstsam m lungen der Veste Coburg 1.2 Giacom o Gastaldi, Egypt and Arabia, 1560. Newberry Library Novacco 4F406. Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago 1.3 Giacom o Gastaldi, Provinces of Egypt and Arabia (inset), 1560. Newberry Library Novacco 4F406. Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago 1.4 An on ym ous, Sea Battle in the Gu lf of Artha, no date. Newberry Library Novacco 2F22. Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago 1.5 Allain Man esson -Mallet, Natolie, c. 1683. Walker Maps M X 410a, 1511-17743 no. 54. Image courtesy of the University of Melbourn e Library Map Collection , reproduced with permission 1.6 Pierre Duval, "Em pire des Turcs en Europe, en Asie, et en Afriqu e," 1677. Walker Maps M X 410a, 1511-1774, no. 33. Image courtesy of the University of Melbourn e Library Map Collection, reproduced with permission 1.7 Pieter van der Aa, "Tu rqu ie en Europe,55 c. 1729. Walker Maps M X 410a, 1511-1774, no. 4. Image courtesy of the University of Melbou rn e Library Map Collect ion , reproduced wit h perm ission vi i 27 30 31 34 36 38 39 viii List of illustrations 1.8 Piri Reis, [Kitab-i Bahriye] Adriatic coast with Du brovn ik and Kotor, no date (possibly a later seventeenth- or eighteenthcentury version). Walters Art Mu seu m , no. W . 658, ff. 150 recto. Courtesy of the Walters Art Mu seu m , Baltim ore 1.9 Mat rakfi Nasuh , "Beyan -i Menazil-i Sefer-i 'Irakeyn-i Sultan Suleiman H an ." Istanbul Universitesi Kutiiphanesi, Rare Books Departm ent, MS T Y 5964, f.42 verso. Courtesy of T.C., Istanbul Universitesi Rektorliigu Kiitiiphane ve Dokiim an tasyon Daire Ba§kanligi 12.1 From Th om as Allom and Robert Walsh, Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor, vol. I (London, 1838) 12.2 From En derun lu Fazil, Hubannam e ve Zenannam e, MS T Y 5502, fol. 78. Courtesy of Istanbul Universitesi Kutiiphanesi, MS T Y 5502 12.3 From Ali §ir Neva'i, Divan, Topkapi Sarayi Miizesi MS H . 804. Courtesy of Topkapi Sarayi Miizesi Kutiiphanesi 12.4 From Allom and Walsh, Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia .Minor, view of the garden and fountain of Kiifiiksu (1809) 12.5 From Ju lia Pardoe, The Beauties of the Bosphorus (Lon don , 1838), pi. 60 12.6 Photograph by the author 12.7 From An toin e Ignace Mellin g, Voyagepittoresque de Constantinople et des rives du Bosphore (reprint of the 1819 edition, Istanbul, n.d.), pi. 22 12.8 From Mouradgea d'O h sson , Tableau general de Vem pire othom an (Paris, 1788-1814) 51 53 279 280 282 288 294 295 296 308 12 Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul in the eighteenth century* Shirine Hamadeh And if you wish, oh spirit of life That to you all manner of women be drawn God be praised, [that] the Lord gifted you With the attractive power of beauty In the season of roses go for a pleasure trip Especially around [the garden of] Kaglthane Rub the scented oil of its shrubs on your brows Cover your head with a Lahore shawl Wear a coral-red vest, a gold embroidered robe Let the dagger at your waist be choice Drink one or rwo cups of wine [So] that your eyes might look bloodshot Toward whatever assembly women gather Walk, oh! swaying cypress Don't go stumbling along like an old man Make your every stride like a lion's Reveal a lock of hair from under the fez Show them a build like Riistem's They are attracted to the most handsome They'd sacrifice their heart for his sake Here and there, tip that fez coyly Scatter ambergris from your locks, my lovely * Several colleagues have offered suggestions and comments on different versions of this piece. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all of them. Part of this research was done while I was a fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, in 1999-2000. I extend special thanks to the Director of Landscape Studies, Michel Conan, and to my colleague and friend, Linda Parshall, for their generosity in sharing their ideas and insights. I am also grateful to Walter Andrews' wonderful suggestions for my translations of the Ottoman poetty. A different version of this essay forms chapter 4 of my book, The City's Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007). 277 SHIRINE HAMADEH That one laughs from behind the veil That one looks at the ground, blushing modestly Those chuckles, that flirting, that glance When she looks at you out of the corner of her eye, oh my! One of them starts to sing a song So they might work their arts on you One hastens to entice you [Her] mantle falls from her back At times, a swing is set up in a cypress Two of them sit in it, casually clad One alluringly rocks the swing The other recites lovely songs As she swings her gown falls open Showing every bit of her to you To you she lets her trouser-tie be seen To you, perhaps, her secret treasure. I For painters and poets, chroniclers and travelers, the spectacle of urban life in eighteenth-century Istanbul was a source of perpetual fascination. Time and again, "Turks, Rayas, and Franks,,,2 "citizens of all ranks, of one and the other sex,"3 men and women clad in an "infinite variety of Levantine habiliment,"4 were sketched, painted, and described, as they strolled and sprawled, drank and smoked, sang and danced, feasted, flirted, and entertained in public squares and gardens around the city (figs. 12.1 and 12.2). The rites and rituals of recreation of ordinary people anchored Ottoman and foreign representations of the city. Public gardens, in particular, stood out as the most vibrant venue of social and leisure life. There, a wide range of social classes, ranks, and ages appeared to share the same spaces of sociability and forms of entertainment. Women and children, seldom visible in earlier depictions of the mostly male recreational universe of taverns and coffeehouses, became a noticeable presence. All in all, the city seemed a far cry from the sober imperial capital of earlier European panoramic views, in which an aloof T Opkapl Palace hid behind a veil of cypresses and stately domes and minarets punctuated the hilly I 2 3 4 Enderunlu FazI! Bey, "Zikr-i mukaddime-i manzume" ("Preface in Rhyme"), in Zenanname (Book of Women), istanbul Universitesi Kiitiiphanesi MS Ty 5502, fols. 79-80. I.e. Turks, non-Muslims and Europeans; Thomas Allom and Robert Walsh, Constantinople and the Scenery ofthe Seven Churches ofAsia Minor, 2 vols. (London: Fisher, Son and Co., r838), vol. II, p. 34. Ignatius Mouradgea D'Ohsson, Tableau general de l'empire othoman, 4 vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1788-1824), vol. N, p. 185. James Dallaway, Constantinople Ancient and Modern with Excursions to the Shores and Islands of the Archipelago (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1797), pp. II8-19. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul 279 Figure 12.1 From Thomas AHom and Robert Walsh, Constantinople and the Scenery ofthe Seven Churches ofAsia Minor, vol. I (London, 1838). Scene of outdoor recreation at the garden of Kaglthane by Thomas Allom. landscape. In eighteenth-century images and writings, public squares around monumental fountains, gardens with coffeehouse terraces, and promenades along the Bosphorus set against a magnificent backdrop of palaces and mansions emerged as the new landmarks of the growing Ottoman capital. Of course, gardens and promenades were not new to the landscape of Istanbul; nor was appreciation of them as spaces of recreation limited to this period. 5 Nevertheless, they penetrated cultural expression in ways unseen before, and evoked a new intensity in the Ottoman public sphere. As in contemporary urban centers in France and England, gardens became a topos of the visual culture. Like the fetes champetres of Watteau 5 In their accounts of rhe city in the latter half of the seventeenth centuty, Evliya <;:elebi and Eremya <;:elebi Komiirciyan mention several suburban gardens and describe the garden of Kaglthane as a popular holiday resort for the rich and the poor of the city. Eremya <;:elebi Komiirciyan, htanbul Tarihi: XVII As,rda htanbul, trans. from Armenian by Hrand D. Andreasyan, ed. Kevork Pamukciyan, 2nd edn (Istanbul: Eren, 1988), pp. 50-I, 54; Evliya <;:elebi, The Seyahatname of Evliya r;elebi. Book One: Istanbul (fascimile ofTopkapl Sara),! Bagdad 304), ed. ~inas Tekin and Goniil Tekin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), fols. I8b-I9a, I20a-I46b passim, IlIa,I88a. Figure I2.2 From Enderunlu Faz!l, Hubanname ve Zenanname, istanbul Universitesi Kiitiiphanesi MS TY 5502, fol. 78 Garden Scene at Sa'dabad. Courtesy of istanbul Universitesi Kiitiiphanesi. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul 281 and the English garden walks of Hogarth and Gainsborough, paintings and engravings of the gardens ofIstanbul focused on the collective leisure of men, women, and children, capturing snapshots of their pleasures, activities, and experiences. They portrayed a wide sartorial spectrum that bespoke the social diversity of outdoor public life. In the stock of pictorial representations of Istanbul that were produced in the course of the eighteenth century, a remarkable portion depicted women leisurely lounging on the grass, smoking, eating, dancing, or engaged in musical gatherings; men walking, chatting, sipping their coffee, or napping in the shade of a tree; young boys and girls on swings and climbing trees (figs. 12.1 and 12.2). Strikingly full of movement, these images differed markedly from the composed garden scenes of the sixteenth century, which focused instead on courtly pleasures and conveyed a sense of staged and nearly codified entertainment ceremonial (fig. 12.3). In poetry too, the garden as a social experience and public hangout predominated. Unlike the classical poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that centered on the enclosed and exclusive garden and on the cultivation of private enjoyments through elite culture and sociability the new poetic discourse on gardens accommodated a broad social, professional, and cultural spectrum and a new range of sensibilities and expectations. 6 The nameless garden of classical poetry, with its standard euphemisms (the rose and the nightingale) and complex metaphors (sublimated love, power, and sovereignty) gave way to a panoply of genuine gardens that poets identified by name (Kandilli, <;=ubuklu), by location (mostly on the banks of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn), and by the kinds of attractions they offered, or sometimes lacked: Goksu's weather is unpleasant now, <;:ubuklu is very crowded What if we had him row just us two as far as Sa'dabad, my love?7 From the songs ofNedim in the 1710S and the 1720S to the narrative poems of Enderunlu FaZlI at the turn of the nineteenth century, the gardens of Istanbul, the pastimes they afforded, and the sensory pleasures they 6 7 For recent studies that examine the notion of garden in classical poetry, see especially Walter Andrews, Poetry's Voice, Society's Song: Ottoman Lyric Poetry (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985), pp. 143-74; Julie Meissami, "The Body as Garden: Nature and Sexuality in Persian Poetry," Edebiyat 612 (1995): 245-68; Julie Meissami, "The World's Pleasance; Hafiz's Allegorical Gardens," in E. S. Shaffer (ed.), Comparative Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 153-85; Shirine Hamadeh, "The City's Pleasures: Architectural Sensibility in EighteenthCentury Istanbul," PhD dissertation, MIT, 1999, pp. 163-212. Ahmet Nedim, Divan, Halil Nihat Boztepe (Istanbul: ikdam Matbaasl, I92O-22), p. 154; Ahmet Nedim, Nedim Divanz, ed. Abdiilbaki Golpmarh (Istanbul: inkilap ve Aka Kitabevleri, I972), p. 286. SHIRINE HAMADEH Figure 12.3 From Ali ~ir Neva'i, Divan MS, Topkapl SaraYI Miizesi Kiitiiphanesi H. 804. Scene of a princely garden entertainment from the first half of the sixteenth century. Courtesy ofTopkapl SarayJ Miizesi Kiitiiphanesi. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul provoked continued to infiltrate Ottoman poetic imagination. Like the contemporary poems of Hoogvielt and Huygens in Holland, Pope in England, and du Peyrat in France,s the poems of Nedim, Fazll, Fenni, Nevres, or Siiruri revealed a changing urban landscape in which gardens were becoming more numerous, more and more visible, more thriving, and more enmeshed in the life and the joys of the city. The growing consciousness of public spaces in general, and of gardens in particular, reflected an urban fabric in the process of transformation. From the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the court returned to the capital after a long absence, Istanbul became the site of active and constant construction and renovation, infrastructure development, and extraordinary urban growth. Its center of gravity quickly moved away from the walled city toward the suburban waterfronts of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. There, the court and its entourage had dozens of palaces erected, often amid older, most modest residences; members of the ruling class as well as men and women across social classes endowed mosques, theological colleges, baths, shops, and fountains, many of which provided nuclei around which new towns emerged and older ones grew. 9 It was along these rapidly urbanizing shores on the outskirts of the old city that most of the gardens and squares mentioned, praised, sung about, and drawn in this period were located. These urban oases constituted a vital dimension of an elaborate and manifold process of urban development, and it was in this process that they became securely etched on the map of the city and in the minds of its inhabitants. The new public gardens (and promenades and squares) were also a response to the new needs and desires of urban society. Their prominence in the new landscape of the capital and in the eyes of artists and poets was in itself an indication that noticeable changes had occurred in the way men and women went about their daily lives and conceived of their social and public life. These were not sudden changes, however. Gradual mobility among professional groups, emerging social and financial aspirations, increasing material wealth, and changing habits of consumption lay at the heart of these developments. They were the outward manifestations of more than a century of economic and social transformation as well as an 8 9 See, for example, Erik de Jong, "Zijdebalen: A Late Seventeenth/Early Eighteenth-Century Dutch Estate and its Garden Poem," Journal ofGarden History 51r (1985): 32-71; and Marcel Poete, Au jardin des Tuileries: f'art du jardin -fa promenade pubfique (Paris: A. Picard, 1924), pp. 164-71; 268-353. These developments are examined in detail in Tillay Artan, "Architecture as a Theatre of Life: Profile of the Eighteenth-Century Bosphorus," PhD dissertation, MIT, 1988, chs. I and 2; and in ch. I of Hamadeh, "The Ciry's Pleasures." SHIRINE HAMADEH eroding system of hierarchies that, for many, also meant the breakdown of order and stability.1O These developments were more palpable, and visible, in eighteenth-century Istanbul than at other times and places, because of a particular juncture in the histories of the city and the empire during which the image of state sovereignty was being actively and thoroughly refashioned. This quest for a fresh image was not only an immediate response to the heavy military blow the empire had recently suffered at the hands of European powers; it also answered to the pressure of internal transformations. In Istanbul, much energy was directed towards affirming the renewed presence of the court. Shows of power and authority and displays of imperial magnificence went hand in hand. This context helps explain the construction and restoration frenzy that the court of Ahmed Ill's return from Edirne in 1703 precipitated, as well as the new and flamboyant visual vocabulary that continued, until late in the century, to stamp every corner of the citywith reminders of imperial glory. II This context also clarifies the unusual scrutiny with which the authorities monitored changing social habits and practices and frequently enforced the sumptuary regulations W n For sixteenth- to eighteenth-century social transformations and revisionist interpretations of the paradigm of decline in Ottoman history, see. Halil inalClk, "Centralization and Decentralization in Ottoman Administration," in Thomas Naff and Roger Owen (eds.), Studies in Eighteenth-Century Islamic History (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Universiry Press, 1977), pp. 27-52; Halil inalcIk, "Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600--1700," Archivum Ottomanicum 6 (1980): 283~7; Cemal Kafadar, "The Myth of the Golden Age: Ottoman Historical Consciousness in the Post-Sweymaruc Era," in Halil inalclk and Cemal Kafadar (eds.), Siileyman the Second and his Time (Istanbul: Isis, 1993), PP' 37-48; Cemal Kafudar, "The Ottomans and Europe," in T. Brady Jr., H.A. Oberman, and J. D. Tracy (eds.), Handbook ofEuropean History I40o-I600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 613-15; Rifaat Abou EI-Haj, The Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991); Norman Itzkowitz, "Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Realities," Studia Islamica 16 (1962): 73-9{; Norman Itzkowitz, "Men and Ideas in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire," in Naff and Owen, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Islamic History, pp. 15-26; Norman Itzkowitz, "Mehmed Raghib Pasha: The Making of an Ottoman Grand Vizier," PhD dissettation, Princeton Universiry, 1959; Virginia Aksan, An Ottoman Statesman in War and Peace: Ahmed Resmi Efendi I70o-I783 (Leiden: Brill, 1995); VirginiaAksan, "Ottoman Political Writing, 1768-1808," International JournalofMiddle East Studies 25 (1993): 53-69; Madeline Zilfi, The Politics ofPiety: The Ottoman U!ema in the Postclassical Age (I60o-I80o) (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1988); Suraiya Faroqhi, "Crisis and Change, 1590--1699," in H. inalClk and D. Quataett (eds.), An Economic and Social History ofthe Ottoman Empire, 1300--1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge Universiry Press, 1994), pp. 413-636; Ariel Salzmann, Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Ariel Salzmann, "An Ancien Regime Revisited: 'Privatization' and Political Economy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire," Politics and Society 21/4 (1993): 393-424; Donald Quataett, The Ottoman Empire, I7oo-I922 (Cambridge: Cambridge Universiry Press, 2000), pp. 37-53; Donald Quataett (ed.), Consumption Studies and the History ofthe Ottoman Empire, I55O-I922 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000). I have addressed this subject in the context of the patronage of fountains in particular in "Splash and Spectacle: The Obsession with Fountains in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul," Muqarnas 19 (2002): 123-48. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul that set and reset, doggedly and tirelessly, the parameters of acceptable behavior and demeanor in public spaces throughout the century. "Public gardens," this social, cultural, and topographical phenomenon that has become in the context of western European cities so implicated in the rise of a middle class and in the march towards modernity,I2 represented an important dimension of change in eighteenth-century Istanbul, because there too they disturbed an established social and cultural order. They provided a major arena in which new and blossoming daily, social, and recreational practices were enacted; and these practices in turn partook of the process of reshaping the city's social and physical map. This chapter sets out to examine how these public gardens emerged as a distinctive feature of Istanbul's social and physical landscape. Pictorial images of gardens like Emirgan and Kaglthane (fig. 12.1), incessantly reproduced in books and postcards, and the carefree songs ofNedim, still remembered by many, leave us a sustained impression that these gardens really did exist; how they actually happened is a question that has rarely been discussed. 13 How these gardens became new foci of urban life and everyday venues in which new forms of distinction were tested, and how they upset our modern understanding of private and public, elite and popular, are other issues that I will address. At some level, one might argue that public gardens (and outdoor public spaces generally) were the "natural" extension of a burgeoning urban culture of coffeehouses, taverns, shadow theater, and story-telling street performances that had been in place since the latter half n These relationships have been explored across the disciplines of cultural, landscape, art, and consumption history in and ourside the context of Europe (though with a particular emphasis on early modern England), often by reexamining the Habermassian notion of public sphere and Veblen's theories of leisure and class. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Modern Library, ZOOl [1899]). See, in addition to the works cited below on public and royal gardens, David Solkin, Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven, CT: Yale Universiry Press, 1993), especially pp. II5-90; Tom Williamson, Polite Landscapes: Gardens and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Universiry Press, 1995); Edward Harwood, "Personal Identiry and rlre Eighteenth-Century English Landscape Garden," Journal of Garden History 131r-z (1993): 36-48; Craig Clunas, FruitfUl Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (London: Reaktion Books, 1996). '3 Maurizio Cerasi's La citta del Levante: civilta urbana e architettura sotto gli Ottomani nei secoli XVIII-XIX (Milan: J aca Book, 1986); Maurizio Cerasi, "II giardino ottomano attraverso l'immagine del Bosforo," in Attilio Petruccioli (ed.), II giardino islamico: architettura, natura, paesaggio (Milan: Electa, 1994), pp. Z17-36; and Maurizio Cerasi, "Open Space, Water and Trees in Ottoman Urban Culture in theXVIII-XIXth Centuries," EnvironmentalDesign Z (1985): 36-49, are to my knowledge the only attempts at examining the development of public spaces in eighteenrlr-century Istanbul. These works, however, rely almost exclusively on western sources. 286 SHIRINE HAMADEH of the sixteenth century.'4 The difference, however, is that urban life was now resisted and propelled forward at one and the same time. In the eighteenth century, public gardens managed to negotiate new territory (physical, cultural, and mental) and become part of mainstream urban culture, in part because the state elite encouraged them to expand and proliferate. Their evolution, I contend, intersected with the building patronage of a ruling class searching for a fresh image, changing rituals of sociability and recreation among the middle classes, and concerns about public order. In other words, while the state elite sought to keep garden culture in check through constant law enforcement, this same elite, paradoxically, continuously nurtured the creation of new spaces in which it could prosper. So many attractive gardens and so many imperial promenades So many flourishing places left to us by our ancestors Sprung up during his noble age If! were to recount them the [other] poets would be shamed. I) The imperial court's long periods of absence from Istanbul in the late seventeenth century left their mark on the physical fabric of the city, and the task of rebuilding and restoration in the Ottoman capital must have been particularly daunting at the beginning of the following century. The state nonetheless addressed it shortly after the return of Ahmed III in the summer of 1703. Roads, bridges, and landing docks were repaired; in most imperial ,pardens (hass bah~elri) damage was surveyed and buildings restored. I Large restoration projects were launched. Between 1718 and '4 '5 ,6 See Andreas Tietze, The Turkish Shadow Theater and the Puppet Collection of the L. A. Mayer Memorial Foundation (Berlin: Mann, I977) , pp. I7-19; Cemal Kafadar, "Janissaries and Other Riffraff" (unpublished paper, 1991), pp. 10-13. Seyyid Vehbi, Divcm-z Seyyid Vehbi, Topkapl Sarayl Miizesi Kiiriiphanesi, MS E.H. 1640, fo120. These included the gardens of T ersane, Karg~, Davudpa§a, Be§ikta§ and the imperial palace of Topkapl. Repair and restoration activity in the years immediately following the return of Ahmed III to the capital is documented, for example, in BOA, Cevdet Saray nos. 6068 (1703-4), 5985 (1709), 5963 (17IO), 3978 (17II), ibniilemin Saray Mesalihi nos. 3243 and 3245 (1705), Maliyeden Miidevver register no. 1655 (1708); ibniilemin Saray Mesalihi nos. 2886 and 2967 (17IO). Repairs at the Topkapl are recorded in Cevdet Saray nos. 2184, 5486, for the years 1707, 17I2, 1713, 1735 and '740. Hundreds of other documents pertain to such activities in subsequent years and until the end of the century. See also Sililidar Fmdlkhh Mehmed Agha, Nusretname, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Milli Egitim Baslmevi, 1962-9), vol. I, p. 732; San Mehmed Pasha, Ziibde-i Veka'i; ed. A. bzcan, 3 vols. (Istanbt4: Terciiman Gazetesi, 1977), vol. I, p. 159; Ra§id Efendi, Tarih-i RIqid, 5 vols. (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1865), vol. I, pp. 354-5; and Muzaffer Erdogan, "Osmanh Devrinde istanbul Bah~elri," Vakiflar Dergisi 4 (1958): '49-82. The earliest documentation on the repair of bridges, roads, and landing docks in this period dates back to '707, Cevdet Belediye no. 4224 (1707); see also, for instance, nos. 4315 and 4583 (1774), no. 6609 (1783) and no. 5578 (I784) for later repairs. In this chapter, the term hass bah,e refers stricrly to imperial palace gardens. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul 1720, the grand vizier Damad Ibrahim ordered the revamping of the imperial gardens of Be§ikta§, Dolmabah<;:e, Kandilli, Tekfur SaraYI, T ersane, Karaaga<;:, and Davudpa§a, all of which had deteriorated "as a result of uninterrupted warfare and the usual negligence of state officials."'7 At different times throughout the century, these gardens and many others were repaired, renovated, and refurbished. Nevertheless, as newer and more lavish palatial gardens were erected along the suburban banks of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, older ones gradually lost their appeal as foci of court life. While efforts at renovation continued, some gardens were abandoned and others aged irretrievably. Many also turned into gardens for the wider public. Such a turning point in the life of imperial palatial gardens was not unique. In early modern Europe too, royal gardens became more public once the court lost interest in them and stopped resorting to them. The state opened the Jardin du Luxembourg when Louis XIV began residing at Versailles and Marly. In England, the garden of St. James lost its exclusiveness when the court moved to Kensington Palace and Hampton Court. These gardens, in turn, became increasingly public when George III moved elsewhere in the 1760s. Even the celebrated Hyde Park, whose history as "a focus of fashionable life" had begun with Charles I in the early 1630s, was in fact left to the people only in 1737, after the death of Queen Caroline. 18 As in Paris and in England, in the case of Istanbul the exact details of this development remain relatively obscure. The fragments of evidence at our disposal do not always reveal the exact time and circumstances in which such conversions took place. Contemporary accounts suggest, for example, that the state sometimes sought the opening or partial opening of an imperial garden to the public as a solution to repeated instances of public disorder. This was the case of the ill-fated garden of Kalender in Yenik6y, which, although fairly new (it was built by Damad Ibrahim in 1720) and well used through the 1720S (both as a court Aretreat and as a reception hall for foreign diplomats), '7 'S lU.ijid Efendi, Tarih-i Ra{id, vol. V, p. 160. See also Silahdiir, Nusretname, vol. II, p. 246; Ismail Aslm Efendi, Tarih-i Email Aszm Eftndi (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1865), pp. 253, 269-72; Erdogan, "Osmanh Devrinde Istanbul Babs:e1eri," p. 177. Franck Debie,fardins des capitales: Une geographie des parcs etjardins publics de Paris, Londres, Vienne et Berlin (Paris: CNRS, 1992), pp. 57-134; Susan Lasdun, The English Park: Royal, Private and Public (London: Andre Deutsch, 1991), pp. 41, 124, 128-9; Franco Panzini, Per il piacere del popolo: l'evoluzione del giardino pubblico in Europa (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1993), especially pp. 92-102; Poete, Au jardin des Tuileries, pp. 100-266; David Coffin, "The 'Lex Hortorum' and Access to Gardens of Latium during the Renaissance," Journal o/Garden History 2/3 (1982): 209-10. Figure 12.4 From Allom and Walsh, Constantinople and the Scenery ofthe Seven Churches ofAsia Minor. View of the garden and fountain of Kii<;:iiksu (1809). Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul subsequently deteriorated rapidly. By the middle of the century, it had become a favored hangout for the city's riffraff. Eventually, in the 1760s (possibly in an effort to preempt further social disorder or to prevent more severe physical deterioration), Mustafa III ordered his chief gardener, Moldovall Ali Agha (later grand vizier), to construct in the garden barracks for the gardener corps. By that time, the corps of gardeners, headed by the chief gardener (bostanctbajz), had effectively become a police corps responsible for the upkeep of order in all public spaces located along the subutban shores of Istanbul. Soon after the barracks were built, a section of the imperial garden, adorned with a fountain, was turned into a promenade (meslre) and opened to the general public. 19 A French comtesse traveling in the city around that time reports that "on Satutday it was at [the fountain of] Kalinder" that the people ofIstanbul gathered, following an established ritual of sociability that took them to a different fountain on different days of the week, "as in France at the Tuileries and the Boulevard de Gand. no A similar course of events occurred at the gardens of Kii<;:iiksu, on the Anatolian shore of the Bosphorus, shortly after Mahmud I had the gardens renovated and enlarged in 1749. There the monarch had a large wooden pavilion built and the landscape embellished with a pool, a fountain, and a stream brought down from the mountain. 2I The monarch also ordered new barracks erected and a battalion of gardeners stationed on the premises. The same year, the historian ~emdaniz described the place as a large and pleasurable promenade;22 and two years later, Rasih glorified the promenade in this verse: Since its restoration by the august monarch Mahmud Khan Ki~ksu became a vast pleasure ground, a mine of delight! 2 3 The pictorial images (fig. 12-4) of European artists were to confirm, some fifty years later, these two early testimonies. The decision to refurbish an imperial garden often entailed its conversion into an imperial endowment (waqf). Typically, the monarch or a member of the ruling elite built a new mosque along with a complex of 19 20 21 22 23 P. G. inciciyan, XVIII. Aszrda istanbul, ed. and trans. from Armenian Hrand D. Andreasyan (Istanbul: Baha Matbaasl, 1976), p. II9; see also Goniil A. Evyapan, Eski Turk Bahfeleri ve Ozellikle Eski istanbul Bahfeleri (Ankara: Orra Dogu Teknik Universitesi, 1972), p. 35. Comtesse de la Ferre-Meun, Lettres sur Ie Bosphore (Paris: Domere, 18?;.1), pp. lOO-I. Hiiseyin Ayvansarayi, Hadikat ul-Cevami, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1864), voL I, p. 163. ~em'daniz Fllldlkhh Siileyman Efendi, Fznd,klzl, Suleyman Efindi Tarihi: Mur'i't- Tevarih, ed. Miinir Aktepe, 2 vols. (Istanbul: istanbul U niversitesi Edebiyat Fakiiltesi, 1976-81), voL I,p. 162. Rasih, "Tarlh" (AH II65!r751-2), quoted in Ayvansarayi, Hadikat, p. 165; translation based on Howard Crane, The Garden of the Mosques, Hafiz Huseyin al-Ayvansarayi's Guide to the Muslim Monuments of Ottoman Istanbul (Supplement to Muqarnas) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), p. 474- SHIRINE HAMADEH commercial and recreational facilities that served as the mosque's endowment. The patron parceled and leased out part of the land, which eventually grew into a "village."24 He or she also renovated extant palaces and pavilions, and in certain cases opened the surrounding gardens to public access. The imperial garden of Kandilli to the north of Kiis:iiksu, which dated back to the late sixteenth century, followed exactly this trajectory.2 5 Renovated in 1718, but neglected thereafter, it survived as a ruin until 1749. In that year, Mahmud I annexed the land to the royal endowments, added a mosque, a bath, a few shops, and leased out as much of the land as was requested. 26 He restored the ruined pavilion of Ferahabad to its former glory, turning the place, as the poet Nevres intimates, into a public showcase of royal magnificence, a new sightseeing attraction for the leisured and the curious among the people of Istanbul: The treacherous heavens had made such a ruin of it That even an architect could not imagine it restored Now [Ferahabad] is a spectacle that the people go to see Well, take a look! Where is [this place] and where, [by comparison], is Sa'dabad. 27 Not far from Kandilli, downstream on the Asian shore, the town of incirlikoyii had developed, sometime in the latter part of the seventeenth century, on plots of land located inland from the older imperial pavilion and garden of incirli Bahs:esi and leased by the state to high-ranking officials. As a courtier of Mustafa III, named Tahir Aga, refurbished the town in the 1760s, he also expanded it to the shore, reaching down to the cape. The old garden, which had long disappeared from the imperial garden registers,28 was in all likelihood absorbed in this process, and part 24 25 26 27 28 See, for instance, $em'danizade, Mur'i't-Tevarih, vol. I, pp. 161-2; izzi, Tarih, Istanbul, Daruttibaat u1-Mamure, 1784, fol. 273; ismail Aslm, Tarih, p. 377, for the cases ofKandilli and Bebek. For the early history of these suburban imperial gardens, see Giilru Necipoglu, "The Suburban Landscape of Sixteenth-Century Istanbul as a Mirror of Classical Ottoman Garden Culture," in Attilio Petruccioli (ed.), Gardens in the Time o/the GreatMuslim E,!,pires (Supplements to Muqarnas) pp. 149-82; (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 32-71; Erdogan, "Osmanli Devrinde Istanbul Balr~ei," Evyapan, Eski Turk Bah,eleri; Orhan $aik Gokyay, "Bag~elr, Topkapz Sarayz Muzesi Yzllzgz 4 (1990): 7-20; and Muzaffer T. G5kbilgin, "Bogazi~, in islam Ansiklopedisi, vol. II, pp. 666-92. $em'diinizade, Mur'i't-Tevarih, vol. 1, p. 162; see also P. Luca Ingigi (P. G. inciciyan), Villeggiature de' Bizantini,sul Bosforo Tracio, trans. from Armenian to Italian by P. C. Aznavour (Venice: Lazzaro, 1831), pp. 257-8; inciciyan, XVIII. Aszrda istanbul, pp. 129-300; izzi, Tarih, fols. 272-3; Ra§id, Tarih, vol. V, p. 160. Nevres, Divan-z Nevres, istanbul Universitesi Kiitiiphanesi, MS Ty 3414, fol. 38b. According to Erdogan, the la~t royal garden register in which the garden appears is dated 1679; Erdogan, "Osmanli Devrinde Istanbul Balr~ei," p. 178. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul of it opened to public access. Indeed, the town now boasted a public promenade whose name, Burun Bahs:esi, or Cape Garden, suggests that it wrapped around the little cape on the waterfront, running along a segment of the former hass bahre. Considered a fashionable spot among the city's residents for some twenty years, it later became increasingly subjected to the chief gardener's harsh security measures, on account of repeated mischief and improper behavior among the garden's visitors. By the time incicyan wrote his chronicle of the city at the end of the century, Burun Bahs:esi had been abandoned and "its old joy was forgotten."2 9 In another account of Istanbul, incicyan described the imperial gardens of Sultaniye at P3.§abah<;:e, south and uphill from incirlikoyU, as a "place of public recreation" ("luogo di pubblico divertimento").30 By the late sixteenth century, this old suburban retreat, attributed to Bayezid II and celebrated as one of Siileyman's favorite spots, had been abandoned. In 1763-4, in an effort to revitalize the suburban town of P3.§abahs:e, Mustafa III endowed it with a mosque, a bath, a boys' school, an outdoor prayer place or namazgah, and a meydan fountain (a large, ornate cubical fountain of a type distinctive of the eighteenth century).31 Contemporary accounts are not specific about the exact location of the new imperial complex. But archeological evidence indicates that the project extended into the garden of Sultaniye. Indeed, Sedad Haklu EIdem recorded traces of the lost imperial garden around the meydan fountain and the namazgah,32 the area which, one can surmise from numerous precedents in eighteenth-century Istanbul,33·had become the very locus of public recreation described by incicyan. It is a commonplace of eighteenth-century writings and visual images that old imperial gardens are reincarnated as public gardens and squares. Such transformations must have occurred so routinely that they are usually reported in a very matter of fact way. We are often left without clues as to the time and circumstances in which the development from imperial to public occurred and uninformed about the fate of the imperial garden. What became, for instance, of the sixteenth-century garden of Karabali at Kabata§ - a rare example in Istanbul of the Persianate 29 inciciyan, XVIII. Aszrda istanbul, p. 127; P. G. inciciyan, Bogaziri Sayfiyeleri, trans. from Armenian by the priest of the Armenian Church of Kandilli and ed. Orhan Dum (Istanbul: Eren, 2000), 30 Inciciyan, Villegiatura, p. 269. 3' Ayvansarayl, Hadikat, vol. II, p. 155. Sedad Hakl{j EIdem, Tiirk Bahreleri (Istanbul: Devlet Kitaplan Miidiirliigii, 1976), pp. 14-19; Gokbilgin, "Boga2i~, p. 685; Giikyay, "Bag~elr, p. 8. See Hamadeh, "Splash and Spectacle," pp. 135-44. PP·171)2 33 2. SHIRINE HAMADEH Chaharbagh garden type - when in 1732 Hekimoglu Ali Pasha (Mahmud 1's grand vizier) erected a monumental meydan fountain by the Kabata§ waterfront? All that is certain is that sometime in the early part of the eighteenth century, the imperial garden disappeared from the records of imperial estates and from accounts of contemporary observers; and by the 1730S a large public square had unfolded around the new fountain, reaching down to the landing docks ofKabata§ and KarabaIi, covering that very area in which the garden of KarabaIi was supposed to have been 10cated. 34 Despite the limitations imposed by our sources on the complex history and tenure of these gardens, however, a clear pattern emerges. 35 Considering the rapidity with which one dilapidated imperial garden after another was abandoned, and the zeal with which they were refurbished, it is likely that many gardens followed the same path as did Kalender, incirli, Kandilli, and Sultaniye and were eventually opened to the public. 36 Without a doubt, the history of public gardens in Istanbul long predated the construction of the first "modern" (western) municipal parks of Taksim and Bliyiik <;:amhca, during the reign of Abdlilaziz. 37 As in Paris, London, Berlin, and Vienna (although for different reasons and in different circumstances) this history unfolded slowly, and not always in a progressive, linear fashion. In Europe, the first truly public parks emerged long after Hirschfeld proposed, in the last quarter of the eighteenth cenrury, 34 35 6 3 37 The garden was last mentione4 in a firman from 1704, G6lbilgin, "Bogazi<,:i," pp. 673, 675; see also Erdogan, "Osmanit Devrinde Istanbul Bab<,:eleri," p. 170; Necipoglu, "The Suburban Landscape," pp. 32-6. We also know, for example, that the sixteenth-century gardens of Siieleyman at Fenerbab<,:e had continued to be used by the court of Ahmed III until '730, when they suffered considerable damage at the hands of the Patrona Halil rebels. The gardens were renovated in the '740S and then again abandoned by the court, and by the second half of the eighteenth century they reemerge in ac<;ounts of the ciry as a public promenade; Tarih-i Sami v.e sakir,ve Subhi (Istanbul: Dariittibaat il-Amire 1783), vol. I, p. I06; Ra§id, Tarih, vol. III, p. I05; Ismail AsIm, Tarih, p. '7'; ~em' diinizade, Mur'i't- Tevarih, vol. II, p. 31; see also Re§at Ekrem Ko<,:u, "Fenerbag<,:e, Fenerbag<,:esiKasn ve Mescidi," in istanbul Ansiklopedesi, pp. 5621-5; Miinir Akrepe, "istanbul Fenerbab<,:esi Hakkmda BiizI Bilgiler," istanbul Universitesi Edebiyat Fakultesi Tarih Dergisi 32 (1979): 361-8 passim. A thorough exploration of hass bahre registers, imperial account documents of construction and renovation expenses, and endowment deeds should shed more light on this subject. This will be the subject of a separate project. One example that comes to mind is the fifteenth-century garden of Bebek which had deteriorated into a hideout for brigands until it was converted into an imperial waqfin 1725-6; inciciyan, XVIII Aszrda istanbul, p. n6. The Taksim public park, completed in 1869, was designed in collaboration with German and French urban planners, architects, and engineers and conceived along Beaux-arts guidelines; Zeynep <;:elik, The Remaking ofIstanbul: Portrait ofan Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle: Universiry ofWashingron Press, 1987), pp. 46, 64> 69-70; Evyapan, Eski Turk Bahreleri, p. 72. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul 293 his idea of "people's gardens" (Volksgiirten), in which "were embedded ideas of democracy and equality."3 8 In the meantime, royal gardens were opened and shut to different publics at different times. St. James's Park and Hyde Park, in England, and the Tuileries and the Jardin du Luxembourg in France first opened their gates to a select public in the seventeenth century. Other gardens followed. By the 1760s and 177os, Kensington Gardens in England, the Prater and Tiergarten in Berlin, Auergarten in Vienna, the Champs-Elysees, the Bois de Boulogne, and the Bois de Vincennes in France had all been renovated and opened, at least in part, to a restricted public. 39 Just as in the Ottoman capital, legal imperatives that determined some royal lands to be open or preserved for public use did not rule these developments. 4o In Istanbul, the "handover" of imperial estates to the public domain illustrated a broader phenomenon, an important stage in the lifecycle not only of hass property, but also of or state land. The most celebrated, if little understood, example of state land being converted to the public domain was the formerly restricted forest of Belgrad, an extensive tract of state-owned land located in the southern outskirts of the capital and ~ade famous by Lady Montagu in her letters to Alexander Pope in June 1717. Like several pictorial representations of the forest, her descriptions confirm that by the beginning of the eighteenth century Belgrad was a truly public forest and one of the most fashionable recreational spots in Istanbul: mzrz, The heats of Constantinople have driven me to this place, which perfectly answers the description of the Elysian fields. I am in the middle of a wood, consisting chiefly of fruit trees, watered by a vast number of fountains famous for the excellency of their water, and divided into many shady walks upon short grass, that seems to me artificial but I am assured is the pure work of nature, within view 8 3 Linda Parshall, "c. C. L. Hirschfeld's Concept of the Garden in the German Enlightenment," Journal of Garden History 13/3 (1993): 127-55 especially. On Hirschfeld's garden theories, see C. C. L. Hirschfeld, Theory of Garden Art, ed. and trans. Linda Parshall (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 20m). After Le Notre's renovation of the Tuileries, for example, Louis XIV threatened to shut its gate to an already select entoutage, but the garden was left open thanks to the intervention of Claude Perrault. Later in the seventeenth century, it became a favored spot among fashionable Parisians; Poete, Au Jardin des Tuileries, p. 266. For the somewhat tortuous history of public access in the royal gardens of Europe, see Lasdun, The English Park, pp. 41-62 passim, 124-9; Parshall, "c. C. L. Hirschfeld's Concept of the Garden," pp. 155-9 passim; Coffin, "The 'Lex Hoftorum,'" pp. 209-14; Debie, Jardins des capitales, pp. 57-134; Panzini, Per il piacere del popolo, pp. 101-2. 40 The notable exceptions were England's Land Acts of 1649 (the first year of the Commonwealth) and the Civil List Act and Revolution Settlement of 1689; E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin ofthe Black Act (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), p. 241; Lasdun, The English Park, p. 46. 39 294 SHIRINE HAMADEH Figure 12.5 From Julia Pardoe, The Beauties ofthe Bosphorus (London, 1838), pI. 60. The Garden ofEmirgan, by W. H. Bardett after an engraving by J. Cousen. of the Black Sea, from whence we perpetually enjoy the refreshment of cool breezes that makes us insensible of the heat of the summer. 41 In the last quarter of the century, another hugely popular garden, located at Emirgan (Mirgun) on the European side of the Bosphorus and immortalized in a nineteenth-century engraving by William Bartlett (fig. 12.5), developed on a plot of mirl (public property) land that Abdiilhamid I had reclaimed from a chief mufti, Mehmed Esad Efendi. Members of the ruling class had long received leases of mtrt property. In this period, though, the reclaiming of such property once their leaseholders fell from imperial grace was severely enforced. 42 According to Ayvansarayl', author of The Garden of the Mosques, the imperial endowments had absorbed the property of Mehmed Esad Efendi in 1781, two years following the chief 4' Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Turkish Embassy Letters, ed. Malcolm Jack (London: W. Pickering, 1993), pp. I02-6. Montagu was often quoted on this subject by later visitors; see Baron de Tott, Memoires du Baron de Tott sur les turcs et les tartares, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: n.p., 1785), vol. I, p. 25; 4 2 Charles Pertusier, Promenades pittoresques dans Constantinople et sur les rives du Bosphore, 2 vols. (Paris: H. Nicolle, 1815), vol. I, pp. 148-55; Julia Pardoe, The Beauties of the Bosphorus (London: G. Virtue, 1838), pp. 96-7; Dallaway, Constantinople, p. 147. This routine also included the confiscation of the properry of deceased wealthy individuals; Mehmet Gens:, "L'economie ottomane et la guerre au XVIIIe siecle," Turcica 27 (1995): 187; Yavuz Cezar, Osmanlz Maliyesinde Bunaltm ve Degiiim Diinemi (Istanbul: Alan Yaymclhk, 1986), p. 135. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul 295 Figure 12.6 Photograph by the author. The meydan fountain of Abdiilhamid I at Emirgan (1782). mufti's forced exile. On the same site and in the same year, the sultan commissioned the construction of a mosque, a bath, and several shops; a few months later he had a meydan fountain of white marble built across from the mosque's courtyard (fig. 12.6).43 Like the fountain of Mustafa III at Pa§abahs;e and all the free-standing meydan fountains built in this period in such suburban towns as T ophane, Kabata§-KarabaIi, and Beykoz, the fountain of Abdiilhamid must have provided, from the moment it was built, a communal focal point. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, a vast public garden had spread around the fountain of Emirgan. Julia Pardoe, who journeyed to the city during the reign of Mahmud II, described the place: A long street, terminating at the water's edge, stretches far into the distance, its center being occupied by a Moorish fountain of white marble, overshadowed by limes and acacias, beneath which are coffee terraces; constantly thronged with Turks, sitting gravely in groups upon low stools not more than half a foot from the ground, and occupied with their chibouks and mocha. 44 43 44 Ayvansarayi, Hadikat, vol. II, pp. 137-8; see also Gokbilgin, "Bogazi~, p. 679; Demirsar, "Emirgan Camii," in Diinden Bugiine, istanbul Ansiklopedisi, vol. III, pp. 169-70. Pardoe, The Beauties of the Bosphorus, p. III; Julia Pardoe, The City of the Sultan and Domestic Manners ofthe Turks in I836, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1837), vol. II, p. 167. Figure 12.7 From Antoine Ignace Melling, Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople et des rives du Bosphore (reprint of the 1819 edition, Istanbul, n.d.), pI. 22. The fountain of Mahmud I and the square ofTophane (1732). Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul 297 Illustrating Pardoe's text, Bartlett's engraving portrays the fountain in the midst of a spacious garden that stretches to the shore. The garden is populated with groups of people walking, and others lounging on wooden platforms· under the trees, sipping their coffee and smoking their water pipes (fig. 12.5). Although The Garden ofthe Mosques (which Ayvansarayi was completing the year construction of the imperial complex began) does not mention the coffeehouses of Emirgan, they were probably intended from the very start as part of the income-generating shops to which Ayvansarayi refers. Coffeehouses were becoming an integral feature of public spaces in the eighteenth century, and a commonplace of new waqf establishments, especially under Abdiilhamid. In the first years of his reign, for example, the ruler had coffeehouses and" other shops" built across from the sixteenth-century Defterdar Mosque, located in the town of Eyiip, by the Defterdar landing dock on the Golden Horn, as income generators for the upkeep of the mosque. The new facilities were lined up on either side of the landing dock, neighboring the mosque, creating thus a new sense of enclosure out of which a public square emerged. The quarter soon took on the character of a marketplaceY It is likely that the coffeehouse terraces that still flourish on the Beylerbeyi, Bebek, and Ortakoy waterfronts, side by side with mosques, had also begun to take shape at that time. 46 Like the new type of meydan fountains that proliferated allover the suburban shores ofIstanbul, the integration of coffeehouses in gardens and squares in the eighteenth century testifies to the growing recreational demands of urban society. Much of the popularity of the Square of Tophane (Tophane Meydanz) no doubt derived from its amusements and services. Its large marble fountain (built in 1732 by Mahmud I) "singing welcoming greetings"47 and its row of coffeehouses shaded by dense plane trees brought to the world of outdoor sociability the comfort and pleasures 8 of shade, fresh water, coffee, and water pipes (fig. I2.7).4 Coffeehouse terraces, attendants serving water, ambulant "persons who vend refreshments," "bands of musicians," "sugar-candy and pastry vendors, itinerant coffee sellers and fruit juice vendors,"49 became the sort of frills one expected to find at T ophane, Emirgan, and Kagtthane, and they 45 6 4 47 48 49 Ayvansarayi, Hadikat, pp. 286-7; Crane, The Garden a/the Mosques, p. 305, n. 2354. The roles of eighteenth-century imperial endowments in the making of public spaces at Bebek, Beylerbeyi, Emirgan, Uskiidar, and Ortakoy will be the subject of a separate study. Naif;, Tarih-i C;:efme-yi Tophane (dated 1732-3); cited in Ayvansaray;, Mecmua-i Tevarih, ed. F. Derin and V. <;:abuk (Istanbul: istanbul Universitesi Edebiyat Fakiitesi, 1985), p. 382. For descriptions ofTophane Square see, for instance, inciciyan, XVIII. Astrda htanbul, pp. 95, 112; Allom and Walsh, Constantinople, vol. I, pp. 8, 17, 21. Pertusier, Promenades pittoresques, vol. II, pp. 7, 328-31. SHIRINE HAMADEH enhanced and enlivened an increasingly rich leisure ritual. The anticipation of fun and pleasure extended even to places like the namazgah, which were intended for the performance of more sober and sacred rituals. It had now become necessary to appeal to a sensual rather than a spiritual cause, in order to lure the congregation into performing its religious duties. Rather than inviting his audience to turn towards the open-air mihrab (prayer niche), this anonymous poet invoked instead the mihrab's delightful setting: Turn your face toward this beautiful recreation spot Come visitor, don't miss the time of prayer. 50 Like fountains, coffeehouses, and namazgahs, waterfront mosques like that endowed by Abdiilhamid at Emirgan provided their own loci of sociability within the larger public space. As contemporary observers often noted, the courtyard of a mosque was a natural forum for men to linger after prayer, meet with friends, and exchange news. 51 It is possible that as the trend of building mosques right by the banks of the Bosphorus developed among sultans and grand viziers, they may have developed new mechanisms for financing public spaces through pious endowments. In any case, such mosques as those at Emirgan, or at Beylerbeyi, Bebek, and Ortakoy, must have contributed tremendously to the establishment of new public spaces. The location of these mosques and (in some cases as in Beylerbeyi) the relative transparency of their court enclosure must have fostered the same kind of fluid relationship that could exist between the sacred and the recreational in the space of a namazgah (or of a cemetery), and encouraged an outward flow of male sociability to the less severely gendered public arena along the water. Whether or not the development of confiscated miri land and the refurbishment of imperial gardens were merely steps toward the revitalization of the city's suburbs, they were undeniably essential to the emergence of new public spaces. Urban interventions from above initiated the passage from courtly to urban and "private" to "public"; what happened later around a new fountain, along the waterfront, or under the watchful eye of the gardeners, was the result of how these interventions intersected with social demands and public rituals. 50 Anonymous (AH II901r776), quoted in Ayvansarayi, Mecmua-i Tevarih, p. 377. 5' See, for example, Pertusier, Promenades pittoresques, vol. I, p. r89, vol. II, p. 107; Jean-Claude Flachat, Observations sur Ie commerce et sur les arts, 2 vols. (Lyon: Jacquenod Pere et Rusand, 1766), vol. I, p. 401; Ayvansarayi, Hadikat, vol. II, pp. 17r-81. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul 299 One question that emerges from contemporary accounts concerns the nature of the role of the state elite in the evolution of public spaces. Should we understand the active engagement of the court in the making of public spaces (whether directly or unwittingly) as a sign of its "endorsement" of a flourishing public sphere, at a time when fears of the breakdown of order seemed to have receded? I argue that we should not. Rather, the proliferation of public space constituted a precaution against the possible implications of changing social practices and it signaled, somewhat paradoxically, an attempt by the state to contain public life. The opening of mM and hass property to the public provided new "official" and controllable venues of recreation that defined and delineated the physical sphere in which urban life could be lived. The construction of barracks for gardeners prior to the opening to the public of gardens like Kalender and Kii<;:iiksu testifies to intricate connections between public life and public order. The creation of new recreational venues encouraged the development of structured forms of public behavior and ritualized forms of leisure (to borrow a concept from Bourdieu), and these, in turn, helped preempt, subvert, counteract, or prevent other unmediated and unruly forms of recreation. 52 I am not suggesting that public life was, at any point, a site of confrontation between state and society. What I am saying is that in the eighteenth century issues of public life and concern for public order never ceased to overlap. The two most telling aspects of this relationship were the transformation and administrative redefinition of the role of chief gardener (bostanczbaJz) and the unusually high frequency of enforcement of the sumptuary laws that dictated the scope, nature, and forms of public life. Already, by the second half of the seventeenth century, possibly as a response to a general climate of instability, the jurisdiction of the bostanczbflfz had spread beyond the boundaries of imperial gardens and into the public domain. 53 The role 52 53 A similar pattern of" containment" of urban life is suggested in the development, from the beginning of the eighteenth century onward, of elaborate popular rituals to accompany the increasingly more numerous and extravagant imperial pageants; see Hamadeh, "City's Pleasures," pp. 197-200. It is likely that these changes were instituted during the periods of absence of the court from Istanbul in the seventeenth century, but it is difficult to determine, at this point, whether they occurred at one particular point in time or as the result of.a series of gradual developments. Litt\e has been written "BOstancl," in Islam Ansiklopedisi, about gardeners and chief gardeners; see 1. Hakkr Uzun~ardl, vo!' II, pp. 736-8 and "BostanClba§I," vo!' II, pp. 338-9; Uzun~ar§lI, "Bostandji," in E12,. vo!' I, "BostanClba§1 Defterleri," in Istanbul pp. 1277-8; and "Bostandji-Bashi," vo!' I, p. 1279; Ko~u, Ansiklopedisi, pp. 39-90; and Necdet Sakaoglu, in "BostanCi Ocagl," vo!' II, pp. 305-7; Robert Mantran, Istanbul dans fa seconde moitie du XVIIe siecle (Paris: A. Maisonneuve, 1962), pp. 129, 149; Erdogan, "Osmanli Devrinde istanbul Bab~elri," pp. 149-82 passim; Evyapan, Eski Turk Bah,eleri, pp. 14-52, passim. The changing role of gardeners is reflected in the chronicles and travelogues of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century; see Henry Grenville, Observations sur l'hat actuel de f'Empire 300 SHIRINE HAMADEH of the chief gardener, which was until then confined to the upkeep of the gardens of the TOpkaPl Palace and of the imperial suburban retreats, now extended to the maintenance of order in all the public gardens, promenades, meadows, and forests located along the shores of the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, the Sea of Marmara, the Black Sea, and the Princes' Islands. Enforcement of building, hunting, and fishing regulations was also part of the bostanczbaf/ s new responsibilities. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, gardeners acted both as a police force and to enforce morality. A gardener could, on his own authority, restrict access in a particular garden, or grant it in another, depending sometimes on a suitable tip. He could inflict immediate punishment on those who, in his judgment, infringed the limits of normative public behavior, such as when "God forbid - [he] should chance upon a [mixed] party of men and women singing on a boat. He would sink the boat without further ado."54 While these new prerogatives revealed a growing preoccupation with the enforcement of public order, they also countered questionable changes in the praxis of public life. As the sultan's representative in matters of public surveillance, it was to the bostanczbaF, among other police officials and legislative authorities (notably, the Janissary Agha and the judge of the district concerned) that imperial edicts that enforced sumptuary laws on matters of public outings and behavior in the extra-muros city were usually addressed. Sumptuary regulations encompassed broad domains of behavior and consumption, and public recreation was chief among them. At the most basic level, these laws were meant to ensure the upkeep of order and discipline in the city. As was the case in early modern France, England, China, Italy, and Japan, they were intended to maintain preexisting social (and, in the Ottoman Empire, religious) structures and, perhaps even more importantly, to preserve "stable status displays,"55 or what Daniel Roche has termed "la 54 55 Ottoman, ed. Andrew Ehrenkreutz (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965), pp. 21-2; Guillaume-Joseph Grelot, Relation nouvelle d'un voyage de Constantinople (Paris: Chez la veuve de D. Foucault, 1630), pp. 84-5; Evliya, Seyahatname, fols. 33a-74a passim, 135a-140a passim, I71a-I74b passim; Mustafa Naima, Tarih, vol. IV, p. 386; lli§id, Tarih, vol. III, pp. 85, 89, 144; Sil:ilidar, Nusretname, vol. I, p. 223, vol. II, p. 347; Dallaway, Constantinople, p. 33; Tort, Memoires, pp. =iij-=iv, 26, 32-4, 61-2, 65; Joseph P. Tournefort, Relation d'un voyage du Levant, 3 vols. (Paris: Freres Bruysat, 1727), vol. II, pp. 285-6; and Moutadgea d'Ohsson, who explains that the city and its environs were policed, respectively, by the Janissary Agha and the chief gardener, Tableau, vol. IV, pp. 349-50. Kiimiirciyan, istanbul Tarihi, p. 51; see also ismail Aslm, Tarih, p. 61. Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Urbana,IL: University of Illinois Press, 1991), p. 147. Aside from this very insightful book see, on the subject of sumptuary laws in the early modern world, James McClain and John M. Merriman, "Edo and Paris: Cities and Power," in James McClain, John M. Merriman and Kaoru Ugawa (eds.), Edo and Paris: Urban Lift and the State in the Early Modern Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul 301 6 hierarchie des apparences."5 Insofar as these regulations controlled order in the city, they also defined the parameters of urban life, the normative sphere that is, within which public life was to be carried out. Sumptuary laws dated from at least the second half of the sixteenth century, and were rooted in shari' a law and ancient rules governing the public behavior of zimmi (non-Muslims). Promulgated in the form of imperial or grand vizierial edicts, they had often pertained to matters of public life and public places like baths, taverns, and coffeehouses. 57 Coffeehouses, in particular, became a major target from the moment they were introduced in the capital in 1551. In sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Istanbul, as much as in the London of Charles II, state authorities perceived coffeehouses as focal points of social unrest, rumors, indecent discourses, political gossip, and critique. 58 In Istanbul, the attack was often couched in a puritanical discourse that reacted both against coffee, as a nefarious innovation (bid'a) , and against its public consumption. In the seventeenth century the state prohibited or shut down coffeehouses repeatedly, especially in periods of brewing discontent and mutiny.59 Press, 1994), pp. 3-38; Daniel Roche, La culture des apparences: une histoire du vetement (XVIIe-XVIlIe siMe) (Paris: Fayard, 1989); Arjun Appadurai (ed.), "Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value," in The Social Lifo of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 3-63; Peter Burke, "Conspicuous Consumption in Seventeenth-Century Italy," Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej (1982): 43-56. ,6 Roche, La culture des apparences, pp. 87-rr8. For examples of these edicts, see Ahmet Refik, Hicri On Birinci Aszrda jstanbul Hayatz IOOo-IIOO (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaasl, 1931), pp. 38-41, 141-2. ,8 This widespread perception was most explicidy articulated by Katib <;:elebi, The Balance of Truth, trans. and annotated Geoffrey Lewis (London: Allen and Unwin, 1957), pp. 60-1; and Naima, Tarih, vol. III, pp. 170-2. On English coffeehouses as places of potential sedition see, for example, Graham John Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 52; and John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1997), Pp·34-7· '9 This was particularly the case in the latter half of the seventeenth centuty under Murad IV, during the rise of the puritanical Kadlzadelis. On coffeehouses and their controversial role in the social and political landscape of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Istanbul see the articles by Helene Desmetin Helene Desmet-Gregoire and Fran~ois Georgeon (eds.), Cafes Gregoire and Ay§e Sar~gil d'Orient revisitis (Paris: CNRS, 1997), pp. 13-38; Mantran, Istanbul dans fa seconde moitie du XVIIe siede, p. 106; Ralph S. Hattox, Coffie and Coffiehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985), pp. 91, 102; Zilfi, The Politics of Piety, pp. 135-44; Madeline Zilfi, "The Kadlzadelis: Discordant Revivalism in SeventeenthCentury Istanbul," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 45/4 (1986): 257; Derin Terzioglu, "Sufi and Dissident in the Ottoman Empire: NiyazI-i Mlsrl (1618-94)," PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1998, pp. 190-208; Kafadar, "'Janissaries and Other Riffraff," pp. 6, 12-13; and Cengiz KIrh, "The Struggle over Space: Coffeehouses of Ottoman Istanbul, 1780-1845," PhD dissertation, Binghamton University, 2001. The significance of coffeehouses is revealed in several sources of the period, notably 1. Pe~vi, Pe,evi Tarihi, ed. M. Uraz, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Ne§riyat Ylirdu, 1968-9), vol. I, pp. 23, 258, 364; Katib <;:elebi, The Balance of Truth, pp. 60-1; Evliya, Seyahatname, fol. 63b; Na'ima, Tarih, vol. I, p. 127, vol. III, pp. 170-2. '7 302 SHIRINE HAMADEH As the sphere of sociability expanded, its regulation intensified. In the eighteenth century, the state stepped up its enforcement of sumptuary rules to unprecedented levels. Strikingly, the locus of controversy expanded beyond the coffeehouse into the garden; that is to say beyond those places deemed to foster social and political unrest and into rival spaces of sociability where age, gender, social, and professional groups mixed relatively too freely and consequently could threaten established hierarchies. This is not to say that social heterogeneity was not often inherent to coffeehouse entertainment, but rather, that the state's discourse against them and the different methods adopted to punish, control, or monitor them centered chiefly on the perception of coffeehouses as dangerous sites of political rumor and critique, not on their social fluidity. 6o The nature of the controversy had thus changed. Sumptuary laws pointedly targeted public attire and garden recreation, displays in which signs of change and fluidity in the social structure were being publicly exhibited. Repeatedly, throughout the century, authorities dictated and enforced the terms by which garden recreation could take place. Bans were occasionally imposed on specific types of activities like carriage rides and boat excursions. Other regulations barred certain groups from visiting specific gardens. A 1751 edict prohibited women's visits to a number of gardens in Uskiidar and Beykoz. During the festivities held in 1758 to celebrate the birth of Hibetullah Sultan, daughter of Mustafa III, women were again subjected to bans on visits to gardens, promenades, and marketplaces. of gender segregation in gardens Specific stipulations addressed the isu~ and mandated the allocation of specific areas, times of the day, or days of the week exclusively to women. 6I According to the French traveler Pertusier, "[Fridays], as well as Tuesdays, are allocated to women for their [social] visits, promenades, or visits to the bath, depending on their wishes.,,62 Travelers continued to observe that "when parties proceed to 60 6, 62 Kuh, "Struggle over Space," pp. 18-66. Ahmet Refik, Hicrt On ikinci Astrda istanbul Hayatt IIOO-I200 (Istanbul: Enderun Kitabevi, 1988), pp. 131-2, 170, 174-5; see also ~em'd:1.niz, Miir'i't-Tevarih, vol. I, p. 21; Ra§id Efendi, Miinfeat, TOpkapI SaraYI, MS H. ra37, fols. 40-1; Seyyid Mehmed Hakim, Vekayi'-niime, TOpkapI SaraYI Miizesi Kiitiiphanesi, MS B 231, B 233, fols. 423, 482; Re§id <;:e§miz:1.de, r;;efmi-zade Tarihi, ed. B. Kiitiikoglu (Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakiiltesi BasImevi, 1993), p. 25; Mouradgea d'Ohsson, Tableau, vol. Tiirk Giyim KUfam ve Siislenme Sozliigii (Istanbul: Siimerbank, IV, pp. 79-81; Re§at Eiaem Ko~u, 1969), p. 9; Filiz <;:agman, "Family Life," in Giinsel Renda (ed.), Woman in Anatolia: 9000 Years o/the Anatolian Woman, exhibition catalogue, TopkapI Palace Museum, 29 November 1993 - 28 February 1994 (Istanbul: Ministry of Culture, 1993), pp. 203-4; Suha Dmur, "Osmanh Belgeleri Arasmda: Kadmlara Buyrukiar," Tarih ve Toplum ra/58 (Sept. 1988): 205-7. Pertusier, Promenades pittoresques, vol. II, p. 7. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul those pic-nics, even the members of a family never mix together ... The women assemble on one side round the fountain, and the men on the other, under the trees.,,63 Ottoman authorities actively worked to ensute that such segregation remained in place. In the closing lines of a wonderful gazel in which the garden of Kaglthane is equated to a lover's heart so big it could contain all the young lads of Istanbul, Siiruri may have been applauding, or perhaps deferentially protesting against, those legal measures that prescribed the terms by which, and the time and space in which different forms of sociability could take place in a public garden: I fell in love with a handsome ink-seller; if he answers my prayers I'll write him a missive, an invitation to Kaglthane If all the boys of Istanbul gathered there, they would fit [For] Kaglthane is as spacious as a lover's heart Oh! Siiruri, so what if it's forbidden to women? We will hold converse with young boys at Kaglthane. 64 As the regulation of public recreation continued, matters of clothing in the specific context of fashionable gardens became a serious source of concern. The state began enforcing previously existing sartorial laws and repeatedly decreed new clothing regulations. Commenting on an edict issued in 1725, the court historian KiiS;iik \=elebizade expressed his outrage at the level of impudence that women exhibited in both their outfits and demeanors, specifically at the gardens of Sa' dabad. 65 Sartorial impudence could lead to devastating consequences, as it did to the unfortunate daughter of one wicked Emine in 1730. She was drowned in the sea in broad daylight - a punishment that gave ample satisfaction to the confor "not only did it reform servative and virulent critic, ~em'daniz, women's dress, but it also mended their souls.,,66 From 1702 until 1748, and time and again under Osman III, Mustafa III, and Selim III, imperial edicts asserted the necessity and obligation of certain groups - notably women, and Jewish and Christian communities to abide by the Ottoman dresscode. Such edicts as well as those who commented on the changing sartorial landscape in the capital appealed not only to moral and financial considerations, but also invoked the need A1lom and Walsh, Constantinople, vol. I, pp. 33-4. SUruri, Divan-z Siiruri, (n.d.), part 3: Cazliyyat, p. 45. 6, ismail ASlm, Tarih, pp. 375-6; see also ReFt Ekrem Koc;:u, Tarihimizde Carip Vakalar (Istanbul: Varhk Yaymevi, 1958), pp. 35-6. 66 $em'danizade, Miir'i't- Tevarih, vol. I, p. 26. 63 64 SHIRINE HAMADEH to maintain visible marks of distinctions, whether vis-a.-vis other social or religious groups, or with respect to the residents of foreign countries. In 1758 a new sartorial law sought to check the growing inclination of nonMuslims to adopt the "Frankish style" of dressing and to wear yellow shoes, which were customarily reserved for Muslims. Two years earlier, an imperial edict condemned those "shameless [Muslim] women" who paraded about luxuriously adorned in innovative dresses that emulated the fashion of Christian women and those clad in provocative outfits that "stirred the nerve of desire.,,67 Innovative fashion, be it in the color of a shoe, the style, cut, or design of a dress, or the length and width of a collar (all of which were sometimes mentioned and described with great precision in the edicts) blurred established boundaries between social, professional, ethnic, and religious groups. Such preoccupations with clothing regulations certainly predated the eighteenth century.68 In this period, though, the issue of innovative dress acquired a new significance. After two centuries of almost unaltered dress, noticeable changes were suddenly occurring in both women's and men's outdoor clothing. The writings of foreign merchants and travelers attest to a rising fashion consciousness among Istanbul's middle classes and describe 67 68 Ahmet Refik, 1stanbul Hayatz, IIOD-I200, pp. 86-8, 182-3; $em'diinizade, Mur'i't-Tevarih, vo!' I, p. 26, vol. II, p. 36; "Ba~bknh Ar~ivnde yeni bulnm~ olan ve Sadreddin Ziide T eIhisl Mustafa Efendi tarafmdan tutuldugu anl~i H. II23 (17U) - U84 (1735) yillanna ait bir Ceride GumaI) ve Eklentisi," excerpts edited by F. I~lkozhi, in VII Turk Tarih Kongresi (Ankara: Tiirk Tarih Kurumu, Garip Vakalar, 1973), vol. II, .Pp. 521, 523; Pertusier, Promenades pittoresques, vo!' II, p. 89; Ko~u, p. 63; Yiicel Ozkaya, XVIII Yuzyzlda Osmanlz Kurumlarz ve Osmanlz Toplum YaJanttst (Ankara: Kiiltiir ve Turizm Bakanhgl, 1985), pp. 145-57 passim; Umur, "Kadmlara BuyrukIar," pp. 206-7; <;:agman, "Women's Clothing," p. 258. Surprisingly, the literature on Ottoman sartorial laws is relatively poor; see Binswanger's chapter on discriminative measures against minorities in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century: Karl Binswanger, Untersuchungen zum Status der Nichtmuslime im Osmanischen Reich des I6. Jahrhunderts (Munich: R. Trofenik, 1977), pp. 160-93; Donald Quataert, "Clothing Laws, State, and Sociery in the Ottoman Empire, 1720-1829," InternationalJournal ofMiddle East Studies 29/3 (1997): 403-25, which focuses primarily on clothing laws as state disciplinary tools; see also his introduction to Consumption Studies, pp. 1-13; and Zilfi, "Goods in the Mahalle: Distributional Encounters in Eighteenth-Century Istanblli," pp. 289-3II in the same volume. Dress regulations were a central concern of sumptuary laws in early modern Europe, China, Japan and India as well. For examples of an immense literature on this subject see Hamadeh, "The Ciry's Pleasures," ch. 3, note 98. See, for example, Ahmet Refik, jstanbul Hayatz, IOOO-IIOO, pp. 51-2. See also Andreas Tietze, "Mustafa Ali on Luxury and the Status Symbols of Ottoman Gendemen," in Studia Turcologica Memoriae Alexii Bombaci Dicata (Naples: n. p., 1982), pp. 580-1. Mustafa Ali's concern with the issue of dresscode within the ruling class indicates that it was not always maintained during his own time, at least not within this group. His and K09 Bey's commentaries on the lack of enforcement of clothing regulations in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are viewed by Rifaat Abou El-Haj as indications ofincreasing social mobiliry; Abou el-Haj, The Formation ofthe Modern State, p. 37. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul new tastes in fabrics and colors.69 Contemporary portraits by Levni and Buhari featured remarkable innovations in women's fashion such as their increasing decolletage, broad collars, transparent and loosely worn veils, extravagant head-dresses, and hair worn loose. Such innovations never failed to attract attention: "No woman covers her breast," wrote Mouradgea d'Ohsson, "especially in the summer, except with a blouse that is usually [made] of thin gauze."70 If the state became more diligent about enforcing sartorial regulations, it was partly because changing consumption patterns had brought about new tastes, and partly because these tastes were being paraded in public more conspicuously than ever before. Such displays took the form of new styles, colors, hats, and hairdos that deviated considerably from traditional dresscodes. The persistent reiteration of these regulations suggests that dissolving social, professional, ethnic, and religious distinctions may have had far-reaching ramifications. Of course, sumptuary regulations could not contain every dimension of urban life. Nor could they efficiently cover every fountain, namazgah, or cemetery, those "legitimate" points of convergence (for water supply, prayer, or visitation) that transformed spontaneously into unguarded and un-segregated forums for social encounters and, as the Baron de T ott put it, for many of women's "intrigues gallantes."71 Eye-witness accounts of episodes of legal infractions and of illicit encounters between men and women in gardens and on river banks, contemporary critics' repeated concerns about the maintenance of law and order,72 and the reiteration of regulations throughout the century all indicate that state measures could not prevent emerging social practices and new currents of public behavior. The reality revealed in Enderunlu Faztl's "Preface" to his Zenanname (Book 69 7 0 7' 7 2 Flachat, Observations sur Ie commerce et sur les arts, vol. I, pp. 434-44; Mouradgea d'Ohsson, Tableau, vol. II, pp. 147-50, vol. IV, p. 152; Perrusier, Promenades pittoresques, vol. II, pp. 192-3. On women's changing fashion and tastes, see <;:agman, "Women's Clothing," pp. 256-8 and pp. 260--87; Jennifer Scarce, "The Development of Women's Fashion in Ottoman Turkish Costume during the 18th and 19th Centuries," i~ IVe Congres International d'Art Turc, Aix-enProvence, 10-15 Sept. 1971 (Aix-en-Provence: Editions de I'Universite de Provence, 1976), pp. 199-219; Charlotte Jirousek, "The Transition to Mass Fashion System Dress in the Later Ottoman Empire," in Quataert Consumption Studies, pp. 201-4I. Mouradgea d'Ohsson, Tableau, vol. IV, p. 152. Tott, Memoires, vol. I, pp. xxxij-xxxiij; see also Flachat, Observations sur Ie commerce et sur les arts, vol. I, pp. 431-2; Pertusier, Promenades pittoresques, vol. I, pp. 370--3, 392; vol. II, pp. 434-5; Allam and Walsh, Constantinople, vol. I, pp. 23-5; Pardoe, The City of the Sultan, vol. I, p. 138; and Vas!f's Muhammes, published in E. J. W. Gibb, A History ofOttoman Poetry, 6 vols. (London: Luzac, 1967), vol. VI, pp. 323-3I. See, for example, "Sadreddinzade Telhisi Mustafa Efendi," p. 523; ~em'daniz., Miir'i't-Tevarih, vol. I, p. 26; vol. II, pp. 36-8; Mehmed Hakim, Vekayi'name, B 231, fols. 234b, 270a-b, 290a-291a; B.233, fols. rob, 48a, 18¥. SHIRINE HAMADEH of Women), quoted in part in this chapter's epigraph, contradicts the implications of contemporaneous imperial edicts, or the reflections of some of his contemporaries. Although the poem does not claim to be more than an imagined scenario, it is significant that Faztl chooses a public space for an encounter between young men and women, when a more clandestine setting (in which such intercourse could be construed within the realm of the private - a private garden, a concealed river bank, a house of prostitution, all of which are integral to his poetic repertoire) would have served his purpose equally well. But Faztl's "Preface" is, in large part, a counseling guide on the principles of seduction, as they pertain specifically to public gardens. It reads like a manual of public garden behavior in which every detail of clothing, demeanor, social and courtship skill, and faux pas is carefully outlined. It reveals a keen consciousness of clothing fashion as a form of public expression through which new aspirations and identities could be performed and displayed. It also captures the simplicity with which a frivolous gaze or the location of a swing could trigger a complete collapse of gender boundaries. I have suggested that the rise of a garden culture and the development of public spaces were linked to changing habits and practices among what I called the "urban middle classes." I have deliberately used these terms loosely in an attempt to bring together the wide and amorphous crowd of grandees and commoners, merchants and artisans, rich and poor women, children, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, Turks, "Rayas" and Franks, people of "all classes," "every rank" and profession, the halk (populace) and the ulema, the anonymous young men and women of the Zenanname, Siiruri's handsome ink-seller, and "all the young boys of Istanbul" that populated the paintings and writings of artists, poets, travelers, and chroniclers?3 "Urban middle classes" as used in this chapter is therefore a reference to the broad social constellation of eighteenth-century gardens and to the blurred contours of the various groups it contained. It also indicates the increasing difficulty in distinguishing between elite and "popular" spheres of recreation. In all evidence, the gardens we are talking about were venues in which a non-courtly culture of sociability flourished. But this does not necessarily mean that it flourished on the margins of a hermetically enclosed space of elite recreation. On the contrary, the growth and vitality of both elite and 73 Such references abound in the contemporary sources; see, for instance, Siirurl, Divan, part 3, p. 45; Nevres, Divan, fols. 38b-39a; A1lom and Walsh, Constantinople, vol. II, p. 34; Mouradgea d'Ohsson, Tableau, vol. N, p. 185; Dallaway, Constantinople, pp. rr8-19. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul 30 7 popular recreation depended upon their physical and visual proximity to each other. The popularity of the old public promenade ofKaglthane grew dramatically after 1721, when Ahmed Ill's grand vizier constructed the imperial garden of Sa'dab ad right in the heart of it. Anyone strolling in the adjacent promenade was afforded the view of the magnificent palace, its landscape, and the glittering domes of the small garden pavilions that Mahmud I added some twenty years later. "It is one of the most pleasant promenades," d'OhssoIi explained. "Little hills, plains, small pavilions with gilded domes, in sum, everything unites to offer [the viewer] the most picturesque and impressive sight."74 The detailed engraving produced by l'Espinasse for d'Ohsson's Tableau intimates that people wandered in and out of the imperial garden enclosure as they pleased (fig. 12.8). Ferte-Meun also makes this point clear in her confident recommendation that in order to enjoy a "veritable pleasure, one must come and sit, on the first days of spring, in the pavilion [built by Mahmud I] that is situated right in the middle of the river," that is, at one end of the pool in the imperial garden. There, she continues, "the sound of this cascade at your feet, these groups of Turkish, Greek, Armenian and Jewish women whose mores, customs and outfits are so varied and who delight, undaunted, in all sorts of divertissements the countryside [campagne] [has to] offer, make of this promenade a ravishing spectacle."75 There are no indications that measures were imposed to limit access to Sa'dabad, as was the case in the royal gardens of Europe where entry was sometimes restricted to those with a letter of invitation, ticket-holders, or, more commonly, key-holders, and where strict rules of dress or small admission fees often deterred many (usually servants, workers, schoolboys, or soldiers) from entering the gardens?6 In the nineteenth century, possibly after the palace was restored by Mahmud II, "the Valley of the Sweet Waters," as the Europeans called it, was "shut up with guards, and no stranger permitted to intrude" while the monarch or members of his 74 75 6 7 Mouradgea d'Ohsson, Tableau, vol. IV, p. 185. Ferte-Meun, Lettres sur Ie Bosphore, p. 63. Laure Amar, L 'espace public en herbe (Paris, 1986), p. 32; Lasdun, The English Park, pp. 41-2, 128-9; Debie, Jardins des capitales, pp. 65, 134-5, 199; Coffin, "The 'Lex Hortorum"', pp. 201, 209-II; Parshall, "c. C. L. Hirschfeld's Concept of the Garden," pp. 155-6. It is important to note here that although the term "public park" was used for the first time in 1661 (Lasdun, The English Park, p. 75), as Parshall remarks, "open to the public" was a very relative notion. In eighteenth-century France, the words public and public spaces were mainly used in police vocabulary and referred to people and places that required policing: Lisa Jane Graham, "Crimes of Opinion: Policing the Public in Eighteenth-Century France," in Christine Adams, Jack Ciuser, and Lisa Jane Graham (eds.), Visions and Revisions of Eighteenth-Century France (Universiry Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Universiry Press, 1997), pp. 84-5. Figure 12.8 From Mouradgea d'Ohsson, Tableau general de l'empire othoman (Paris, 1788-1814). View of the imperial palace of Sa'dabad and the garden ofKaglthane, by l'Espinasse. Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul 30 9 household were visiting; "at other times, it is open to all classes, who come here to rusticate, particularly Greeks, on Sundays and festivals."77 Sadabad may have been, since the years of Ahmed III, open to the broad public at particular times of the day or days of the week and otherwise restricted to the court household. Privacy and exclusivity at the imperial garden, however, must have been relative. Come quick, look this once! There is no ban on the eye Sa'dabad has now become garden upon hill, my love!7 8 So exclaimed the poet Nedim, capturing beautifully the way in which people's desires and actual realities were negotiated. In eighteenth-century consciousness, Sadabad and many imperial gardens such as those at <;:ubuklu, Bebek, and Feyzabad had become associated with the lives and diversions of ordinary people. Some hailed them as symbols of courtly splendor and architectural magnificence; others glorified them as icons of public pleasures. In these places, customarily regarded as imperial and exclusive, Nedim and his contemporaries saw wonderful arenas of urban life, leaving us uncertain about how eighteenth-century Istanbul conceptualized private and public and defined public space. These questions are implicated in large legal, social, and even linguistic issues. In this context, one can only speculate?9 Did the word hass (as used in "hass bahre") already carry the meaning of private in the eighteenth century or did it refer only to matters pertaining to the court or the elite (as usedin "hass u amm,,)?80 Were there any legal, or extra-legal, mechanisms that defined and negotiated the boundaries between private and public space? Did a binary opposition exist, in eighteenth-century minds, between 77 7 8 79 Allam and Walsh, Constantinople, vol. I, p. 58. The Valley could be referring not only to the royal compound but to the whole area of Sa'dabad and Kaglthane. If this is the case, then Walsh's observation is all the more indication that no strict separation existed that divided the two gardens. Nedim, Divan, p. I93. A study of fatwa registers and tribunal records of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century might help elucidate how concepts of private and public were defined, and perhaps redefined, at different times. 80 In Meninski's seventeenth-century multilingual thesaurus hass is translated as (in Latin) proprius, privates, peculiaris; (in Italian) proprio, privato, particolare; and (in French) propre, prive, particulier: Franciscus it Mesgnien Meninski, Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalium Turcicae-Arabicae-Persicae, 6 vols., facsimile reprint, with an introduction by Mehmet Olmez (Istanbul: Simurg, 2000). By the latter half of the nineteenth century "hass" meant "special, particular"; "special to the state or sovereign," as well as "private, individual"; see ]. W. Redhouse, An English and Turkish Lexicon (Constantinople, I890); see also Cengiz Orhonlu's entry, "Khass," in Eh, vol. IV, pp. I094-IIOO; Pakalm, Osmanlt Tarih Deyimleri ve Terimleri Siizliigu, 3 vols. (Istanbul: Milli Egitim Baslmevi, I946), vol. I, pp. 750--2. 310 SHIRINE HAMADEH private and public space outside the legal shari' a sphere of harem and . space.~81 domestlc The court historian Ra§id's account of the building and restoration activities that took place in 1718-19 at the waterfront palace garden of Be§ikta§ provides insights into these questions, for it points to a keen awareness of the concepts of privacy and public trespassing into the context of imperial gardens. Damad Ibrahim's restoration of the garden of Be§ikta§, Ra§id tells us, had entailed its joining (zamm u ilhdk) to the neighboring, early seventeenth-century garden of Dolmabahs:e. A public landing dock (Arab iskelesi), which until then the residents of the district of Fmdlkh had reached by walking between the two gardens, was now incorporated into the joint Be§ikta§-Dolmabahs:e garden. From that moment onward, the authorities required residents of F mdlkh to hold a permit in order to gain access to the landing dock, through what came, in all evidence, to be perceived as the "private" imperial domain of Be§ikta§-Dolmabahs:e.82 Despite this awareness of and concern for privacy, the preference of the eighteenth-century court to build palatial gardens, such as Be§ikta§, both in the midst of already populated neighborhoods and along the most public gateway of the city (the Bosphorus), in itself suggests how relative concepts of privacy and exclusiveness in these gardens remained. Their setting and architecture indicate that the court must have created these gardens in part for visual consumption by a broad public. The unusual openness, transparency, and lavishness of their palatial fas:ades reflect an unusual tendency for exhibitionism, and constituted a remarkable change in Ottoman palatine tradition. 83 Moreover, contemporaries frequently mentioned the widespread routine of sightseeing, especially upon the completion or the restoration of an imperial garden, confirmation that these places were indeed intended for show. Court historians like Ra§id emphasized "the restless desire of all the people of Istanbul to go out and marvel at" 8, 82 83 Countless neighbors' disputes recorded in the tribunal documents of the period over issues of physical proximity andlor visual intrusion into each other's living quarters reveal a keen sense of domestic privacy. This is further suggested by the legal definition of the concept of hawala (lit. vicinity, neighborhood) that comes across in the mtwas of 1674 to 1730, by which a householder was protected from" direct, intentional intrusion, either visual or actual, into the inner spheres and living quarters of his own household from vantage points in his neighbor's house." Rhoads Murphey, "Communal Living in Istanbul: Searching for the Foundations of an Urban Tradition," Journal of Urban History 16 (1990): 126. But what is vety interesting here is that hawala legal protection did not extend to "portions of a property considered external," like gardens and courtyards. Ra§id, Tarih, vol. V, pp. 165-6. On these topics and their relation to changing court ceremonial, see Harnadeh, "City's Pleasures," pp. 55-93, I09-13· Public spaces and the garden culture ofIstanbul 3II monuments of imperial magnificence like Hiisrevabad, Sadabad, or Ferahabad. 84 ~emdaniz's long and acerbic diatribes on the feasts and banquets that Damad Ibrahim frequently held in the imperial gardens of Sa'dabad, \=ubuklu, Bebek, Dolmabahs;e, G6ksu, Beykoz, and Uskiidar show that these events were not limited to the court entourage and included the high and the low. 85 This participation of the plebeians in imperial festivities was unprecedented in the history of Ottoman court danizade was probably right in remarking life. 86 While the embittered ~em' that the state meant these events as uplifting distractions from the deteriorating affairs of the empire, surely it also intended such avuncular displays for the benefit of the court's public image as spectacles that confirmed to the people of Istanbul the empire's unwavering power and opulence. None of this should imply, of course, the sudden disappearance of distinctions between court and city, or that the new imperial gardens of Sa'dabad, \=ubuklu, Bebek, Dolmabahs;e, and others were forums in which to cultivate ideals of social equality. There is no doubt, however, that in the minds of contemporaries at least, an intimate relationship existed between elite and urban cultural spaces that took on various forms at such gardens as Sadabad. This relationship, and contemporary written and pictorial depictions of gardens, call into question the limits imposed (mostly implicitly) by modern historiography on the idea of pleasure in the eighteenth century: both historically, as confined to the somewhat arbitrary "Tulip Period" (17I8-30), and socially and culturally, as a prerogative of the ruling elite handed down, or emulated, from top to bottom. 87 The ruling elite (particularly in the "Tulip Period" historiography) appears to be immersed in a world of recreational pleasures that gradually reached down and across all segments of society. Accordingly, the urban middle classes' culture of Bosphorus promenades and festive excursions in public gardens is but 84 85 86 87 Ra§id, Tarih, vol. V, pp. 305-6; see also, for example, i. Eriinsal (ed.), "Bir Osmanh Efendisi'nin Giinliigu: Sadreddinzilde Telhisl Mustafa Efendi ve Ceridesi," Kaynaklar 2 (Winter 1984): 242. ~em'daniz, Miir'i't-Tevarih, vol. I, pp. 3-4. Madeline Zilfi, "Women and Society in the Tulip Er,!," inA. Sonbol (ed.), Women, the Family and Divorce Laws in Family History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 297-8. This understanding of pleasure in the Ottoman context is strongly related to the silent acceptance, among scholars, of the very appealing but highly problematic modern notion of "Tulip Period" as a distinctive and self-contained historical period characterized by an atmosphere of peace and worldliness; see, for example, Ahmet Evin, "The Tulip Age and Definitions of 'Westernization,'" in H. InalClk and O. Okyar (eds.), Social and Economic History of Turkey (IOP-I920) / Tiirkiye'nin Sosyal ve Ekonomik Tarihi (Ankara: Meteksan, 1980), pp. 131-45; Artan, "Architecture as a Theatre of Life," pp. 4-5, 34, no-I. 312 SHIRINE HAMADEH the ultimate consequence of this process. Contemporary sources show us, however, that we cannot really construe the development of public spaces as the expression of the trickling down of an elite culture of pleasures. If gardens had once been inextricably linked to the cultivation of elite pleasures· in a relatively exclusive and enclosed sphere, in the eighteenth century they emerged as central venues of urban culture with a wholly different set of meanings and concerns. It is useful to recall here what Chartier described as "the processes of differentiated distribution, uses, and appropriation of ideas and material objects circulating within a given society" which are, in the end, "what distinguished cultural worlds."gg In Istanbul in the eighteenth century ideas and forms traveled in every direction, and they were used, appropriated, and interpreted differently at every turn. In literature, Nedim canonized the oral, popular tradition of {arkt in the mainstream of court poetry. In architecture, the imperial court appropriated the urban tradition of wood construction, opening a new chapter in the history of Ottoman palatine architecture. Nevertheless, N edim' s {arkt was vastly different from the {arkt of the oral tradition, and the symbolism embodied in the new wooden imperial palaces owed little to their modest precedents. Similarly, the garden pleasures of urban society did far more than imitate an old courtly culture. As the prime avenue of a blossoming Ottoman public sphere, public gardens were forums that nurtured new forms and channels of sociability that, in turn, diminished social and cultural distances between different groups and between elite and popular spheres. They were also, as Nedim, Enderunlu Fazd, and their contemporaries remind us, arenas in which people constantly negotiated the limits of the normative sphere of urban life and tested and reined new social habits, aspirations, and forms of distinction. 88 Roger Chartier, "Culture as Appropriation: Popular Cultural Uses in Early Modern France," in Steven Kaplan, Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (New York: Mouton, 1984), pp. 229-53. Carlo Ginzburg's notions of circularity and "iconic circuits" reveal a comparable understanding of how cultural forms and knowledge were circulated, appropriated, and reinterpreted; see his second preface to The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos ola Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. J. and A. C. Tedeschi (New York: Dorset, 1989); and, especially, his article, "Titian, Ovid, and Sixteenth-Centuty Codes for Erotic Illustration," in Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, trans. J. and A. C. Tedeschi (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 77-95·

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Public spaces and the garden culture of Istanbul

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