Tuesday 7 May 2013

And now a little sight-seeing....

Took the tram to Sultanahmet today, along with thousands of others on this beautiful day, to the Blue Mosque. From the outside all the volumetric architectural masses stacked up one against each other.
The inner courtyard
in which is found this kiosk
with exquisitely delicate bas relief flower and foliate carving
enhanced by the sharply raking sunlight
and capitals with carved planar lozenges.
The directed exit led one to face Hagia Sophia/Ayasofya, closed today,
so I decided to have a wander in the Grand Bazaar. On the way I noticed a street person crossing the Hippodrome with his highly unusual and compact cart of belongings.
In the Grand Bazaar the multitude of shops selling the same items was overwhelming. My main sense was that within this place exists a vast repository of other people's labour. And also that trade and goods and selling has been going on here in Istanbul for over 1500 years.

A very smiley slipper seller
and his happy purple and silver polyurethane-sole'd slippers!
I also discovered the bookseller's part of the çarşı, in a rather European-scaled tree shaded courtyard.
Who do I find?
and
opposite ends of the British publishing world. And some remarkable lithography stones
of the Ottoman period (in Arabic script).

As opposed to Modern Turkish, brought in by Ataturk in the 1920's, when the Latin alphabet was imposed upon the Turkish language, except for those words borrowed from other European languages, such as duş (Fr. douche), kuaför (Fr. coiffeur), büfe (Fr. buffet) and finally kestane,
which I just realized is based on the French for chestnut (châtaigne). Finally, one of those undercover police at work!

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