Everyday Life İn Istanbul
| ISBN | 9789750800087 |
| Yayınevi | Yapı Kredi Yayınları |
| Yazarlar | Ekrem Işın (author) | Virginia Taylor Saçlıoğlu (translator) |
| Kitap Tanıtımı | On the map of human existence. Istanbul throughout the age of empire represented the administrative power center. Rome, Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire each took its place in history as a ring of civilization that formed around this center. To view history from this perspective means to read the story of humanity in its pages and, in a sense, to rediscover each time this dazzling star that shone in the skies of Anatolia, the Balkans and the Mediterranean. As mankind discovered Istanbul, it also discovered itself as a passionate traveler on the road leading back to its own past. Istanbul today is a treasurehouse where all our lost values are carefully preserved. A compass for our social identity that has lost its way, a touchstone for our decaying aesthetic taste, a trustworthy scale for our degenerating sense of justice - Istanbul can assume all these roles while at the same time generously offering us a human experience and store of knowledge capable of answering every question put to it. Everyday life in istanbul is a collection of striking images along a journey back to the roots of the turk's social identity. A work embracing the history of an imperial city in a plane where man, culture and space relate to eachother, it is a noteworthy example of the new historiography, which sets up a balance among the social sciences. With its unique style and its theoretical framework set against a multidimensional background extending from politics to culture, from architecture to literature, it is at the same time a contemporary historian's gift to our city. Tadımlık FOREWORD Throughout history the pendulum of Istanbuls everyday life has swung between the two opposite poles of the Ottoman world: mythos and utopia. This social oscillation, now heralding the end of the once golden ages that had come to a standstill, now accelerating the pace and opening up new horizons in human life, defined the citys identity along the cultural fault line that divides Eastern mythos from Western utopia. Nourished by the empires rich geography, which was paired by fate with so many different cultures, this identity engraved Istanbuls mark on the log of world civilization. For Istanbul the mythos is an historical depth and a human experience with roots reaching far back into the past. As in empires all over the earth, in Istanbul as well this creative experience has taken shape within a fabric of cosmopolitan culture in which religion and race were interwoven. It remained the fundamental dynamic of everyday life for as long as the mythos was a protective law governing city life, a scale of values with their spiritual content in the public conscience, a touchstone for determining the ethical and aesthetic criteria of good and evil, the beautiful and the ugly. The citys mythos rose from the ashes of Rome. When this archaic worldview, based on military superiority and a sense of social security, was united with Constantines political utopia, the citys star shone brightly throughout the medieval period. Byzantine Istanbul, which negotiated times labyrinth in a single millennium, reached the historical limits of self-sufficiency with its dazzling palace ceremonial, its interminable theological debates and its uprisings fomented by squalor and splendor. At the inevitable parting of ways, where enlightenment faded into twilight, the citys legacy to the Ottomans was nothing more than the historical ruins of the destroyed mythos come crashing down now upon everyday life. Reviving Istanbuls everyday life, the citys new residents embraced the myth of empire, gleaming still beneath the ruins that they cleared away, and made it their own. And Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror went down in history not only as conqueror of a city called Constantinople but as conqueror of the Istanbul mythos as well. Ottoman Istanbul is a scintillating jewel in the treasure chest of the Turks social identity, an identity we are on the verge of losing today. As much as the pirates who over the ages looted this treasurea treasure we have buried now under a thick layer of neglectthe nameless heroes who measured its value in human life also permeated the atmosphere of this city. The Egyptian merchant who brought coffee from Alexandria to Tahtakale; the Uzbek dervish who stopped off on his pilgrimage to Mecca to first pay a visit to the mosque of Eyüb Sultan; the Armenian craftsman who transformed the Jewelry Bazaar into a radiant gleam of diamond, agate and emerald; the Jewish banker who discovered the magical power of money; the fire fighter who passed his youth on coffeehouse benches and cobbled pavements; the medrese scholar who mounted the staircase of knowledge rising to the rank of kadı; the Janissary colonel who left his head on the executioners block as a warning to others; and the Bektashi cloaked in the shadow of the şeriat swordall of them together created the cultural climate that nourished and grew the Istanbul mythos until, in the end, mankind learned to co-exist in this environment. Istanbuls age of mythos experienced its first great upheaval in the 18th century. A welter of thoughts and emotions, harbingers of a utopia on the horizon of the future, affixed their own lifestyle to Istanbuls identity in this century. From this time forward, a social specter with a split-personality would haunt the cultural atmosphere of everyday life, representing two diametrically opposed worlds. For those who had taken refuge in the secure world of the mythos, this specter was terrifying indeed. The utopia, strengthened under the aegis of political authority, was interfering in the life sphere of the mythos in such a way as to reinforce the collective fear, with the result that the home truths of everyday life were always weighed incorrectly in the balance of past values. Istanbul paid a high price for this miscalculation in 1730. As they destroyed the magnificent symbols of utopia at Sadabad, those who were eager now to salve the injured sense of justice in the public conscience undoubtedly fantasized about how they might recover the mythos lost paradise. But the paradisiac |
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