Turkey | Istanbul | Suleimaniye Mosque

During 2009 I wandered by the Suleimaniye Mosque in Istanbul. As you no doubt know the Suleimaniye Mosque was built by Sulieman The Magnificent (r. 1520-66), arguably the greatest of the Ottoman Sultans.

View of Suleimaniye Mosque (upper left) from near the Galata Bridge

View from the Golden Horn

Suleiman the Magnificent

Take a Take a Walking Tour of the Mosque

The Mosque was designed by Sinan (Ottoman Turkish: قوجو معمار سنان آغا), the greatest architect of Ottoman Turkey.

I have added this book to my Scriptorium and can recommend it most highly. By all means travel to Turkey yourself to see Sinan’s works, but if for some reason you cannot the breath-takingly luscious photos in this book are enough to make most people swoon.

Tomb of Suleiman, next door to the mosque

Suleiman the Magnificent

Tomb of Suleiman

Coffin of Suleiman. Although no longer in power, the Ottoman Family exists to this day.

Graves surrounding the tomb of Sulieiman

The grave sites host heart-stoppingly gorgeous roses

More graves

Graves and Roses

More Graves and Roses

Still more Graves and Roses

Turkey | Silk Road | Chintamani | Carpets

Earlier I speculated on how the Shambhala Mythologem may have Arrived in Istanbul Via the Silk Road. Now the carpet cognoscente at the scintillatingly entertaining and informative Tea and Carpets Blog are pointing out what may be Buddhist influences in Ottoman Court Carpets:

Some of the most striking carpets of the Ottoman era are as white as a painter’s canvas and covered with finely drawn, mysterious icons. The never-changing symbols repeat in array after array, like waves building strength, creating a powerful, mesmerizing effect The mysterious icons are the “chintamani,” three balls hovering over a pair of cloud-like wavy lines. And for much of the 16th and 17th centuries, they held a special fascination for Ottoman court artists.

In carpet literature, the design is often said to derive from a Buddhist emblem. The word chintamani itself comes from Sanskrit and in Buddhist philosophy signifies a treasure ball or wish-granting jewel. A Buddhist background for the design is an appealing argument because it also recalls the distant past of the Turkic tribes who migrated to Anatolia from Central Asia and created the succession of dynasties that culminated in the Ottoman Empire.

A Chintamani Carpet from the Ottoman Era

According to one definition of Chintamani:

Cintamani, also spelled as Chintamani (or the Chintamani Stone), is a wish-fulfilling jewel within both Hindu and Buddhist traditions. In Buddhism it is held by the bodhisattvas Avalokiteshvara and Ksitigarbha. It is also seen carried upon the back of the Lung ta (wind horse). Within Hinduism it is connected with the gods, Vishnu and Ganesha.

The Chintamani Symbol is of course also connected with notorious Shambhalist Nicholas Roerich.

Three circle motif in Roerich’s painting “Oriflamma”

Chintamani motif in Roerich’s painting “Sign of Chintamani”

The connection between the Sufis of Istanbul and Shambhala is still under investigation. In the meantime, since The Ottomans are Back might we soon see a resurgence of Chintamani Carpets?

Turkey | Istanbul | Beyoglu

Not having found any trace of a Portal to Shambhala in the Sultanahmed Area, the old historical core of Istanbul, I decided to check out of my hotel and move over to the Beyoglu District on the other side of the Golden Horn. As I mentioned earlier, the old tekke of the Mevlevi Whirling Dervishes is in this area. Gunj, my host in Istanbul, was kind enough to take time off from her incessant labors on the behalf of Central Asian Artists and accompany me. Any journey with Gunj when she has free time entails a lot of stops along the way to smell the roses, or in this case, taste a fish sandwich at the famous water-side outdoor restaurants near the Galata Bridge where the fish are actually cooked on boats tied up alongside the dock.

View from near Galata Bridge

Fish restaurants near the Galata Bridge. Fish are cooked on the boats and served shore side.

Gunj at the Galata Bridge

The Golden Horn with the Süleymaniye Mosque at the upper left

The fish sandwich was just an appetizer. Having crossed the Galata Bridge to Beyoglu we stopped at another one of Gunj’s favorite restaurants, the historic Tarihi Karaköy Balik Loksantasi, for the next course—Fish Soup.

Then we climbed up the steep cobblestone streets of Beyoglu to the Galata Tower . . .

. . . where we had tea and dessert at this charming outdoor cafe.

Finally we arrived the Hotel Londres, Gunj’s favorite hostelry in all of Istanbul. This place is dripping with history. It was founded in 1892, one of the first European-style hotels to service travelers arriving on the Orient Express, the first non-stop version of which reached Istanbul from Paris in June of 1889. Although the hotel has been remodeled several times it still retains a lot of its nineteenth-century features. The doors to the rooms and the locks may well be the originals. Over the years many famous people have frequented the hotel, including Ernest Hemingday and more recently Gunj, who celebrated one of her birthdays here. I half-expect to see Peter Lorre simpering in some dark corner.

Peter Lorre. If he didn’t stay at the Hotel Londres he should have.

Just down the street from the Hotel Londres is the equally famous Pera Palace Hotel, also founded in 1892. According to legend, Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express in Room 411 of the hotel. The room is still available, if you desperately need an Agatha Christie fix.

Lobby of the Hotel Londres

Gunj lighting up the Hotel Londres Lobby with her luminious presence.

Gunj deciding the fate of some hitherto unknown Central Asian artist.

Hemingway no doubt bellied up to this very bar. The bartender may still be contemplating his order.

Staircase in the Hotel leading to the Rooftop Cafe

Gunj relaxing from her otherwise relentless labors at her favorite table in the Rooftop Cafe of the Hotel Londres.

Sunset over the Golden Horn from the rooftop cafe of the Hotel Londres. Along with the Pyramids of Egypt and Zaisan Tolgoi in Ulaan Baatar surely one of the world’s most stunning vistas.

Turkey | Istanbul | Jahongir Ashurov | Miniatures

Finally managed to track down the peripatetic Gunj, who has been busier than a bee in a clover patch organizing an Istanbul show for Bukhara-based Uzbek miniaturist Jahongir Ashurov.

Gunj (right) and Friend

We eventually retired to the Gulluoglu Baklava Shop near the shores of the Bosphorus Strait, which according to Gunj has the best Baklava in Istanbul if not the world. The exhibition, I am informed, will open on November 16, with a reception at 5:00 PM and run through Nov. 26, which means that if you book airplane tickets now you will just be able to make the opening scene, which should be a real lalapalooza. Expect rivers of raki to flow. The show will be at the Yildiz Sarayi, which is an old Ottoman palace at Barbaros Bulvari, Besiktas, in Istanbul. I suggest you stay at the Grand Hotel Londres in Beyoglu, that is if you can get reservations, since the place is usually booked up tighter than a tick in a hound dog’s ear.

Here is a sampling of the miniatures which will be on display, and for sale:

Miniature of famous philosopher and doctor Ibn-i Sina, alias Avicenna (980–1037).

Tears running down Ibn-i Sina’s face. They are both tears of joy because he has just discovered a new medicinal plant and tears of sadness, since he discovered the plant too late to cure the illness from which his son died.

For a good introduction to Ibn-i Sina’s thought see:

For a good biography see:

I have both of these items in my Scriptorium and can recommend them highly if you want to get up to speed on Ibn-i Sina.

Fellow Bibliophile reading a bookDetail of Fellow Bibliophile
Lovely Bibliophile. I don’t doubt that she has a fantastic Scriptorium.
Amir Timur, a.k.a. Tamerlane leading his horse by the Tomb of the saint Turk-i Candi (a.k.a Turki Jandi) in Bukhara. He dismounted to show respect to the saint. By the way, the Saint’s Tomb still exists and can be seen in Bukhara. Don’t miss it the next time you’re in Uzbekistan.

Out of respect for Turk-i Candi Tamerlane also wrapped up the hooves of his horse so they would not make so much noise while he was passing by the tomb.

Lady with Hanky
Detail of Lady with Hanky
Bathing Girl
Detail of Bathing Girl
Peeping Tom watching Bathing Girl
A Naughty Demon trying on the Bathing Beauty’s boots
Faces in Rocks

This is just a brief sampling of the many miniatures which will be on display. Pop over to Istanbul to see more . . .

Turkey | Istanbul | Caravanserais | Shambhala

Update: If you are unfortunate enough to be in New York City you can swing by the American Museum of Natural History for their new Silk Road Exhibition, which features several of the places listed below, including Xian and Turpan.

From the Sultanahmed Koftesi I walked up Divan Yolu and turned right at Constantine’s Column onto Vezirhani Street. This neighborhood, which includes the Grand Bazaar, is the repository of many old hans, or caravanerserais, which offered lodging and warehousing to foreign merchants and traders, some of whom plied the Silk Road. Istanbul was of course the western terminus of at least two of the overland branches of the Silk Road. Burak Sansal summarizes these:

The caravan routes transporting silk, china, paper, spices and precious stones from one continent to the other followed several itineraries in Asia before arriving in Anatolia, which served as a bridge linking it to Europe via the Thrace region. These caravan routes later acquired the name of silk roads and Anatolia constituted the crossroad of these routes. The major cities lying on the Silk Road Anatolia were, in the north: Trabzon, Gümüshane, Erzurum, Sivas, Tokat, Amasya, Kastamonu, Adapazari, Izmit, Istanbul and Edirne; and in the south: Mardin, Diyarbakir, Adiyaman, Malatya, Kahramanmaras, Kayseri, Nevsehir, Konya, Isparta, Antalya and Denizli. Another frequently used itinerary is known to be the one between Erzurum, Malatya, Kayseri, Kirsehir, Ankara, Bilecik, Bursa, Iznik, Izmit and Istanbul.

The Vezir Han, one of the more venerable of the caravanserais in the Grand Bazaar area, is located not far from the corner of Vezirhani Street and Divan Yolu. The entrance does not seem to be marked, but this might well be the portal leading to the inner courtyard. The han itself was built sometime in the fourteenth century, and thus may have caught the tail end of the trading boom that accompanying the Pax Mongolica established by Chingis Khan and his successors, most of whom favored free trade. In his Guidebook to the Silk Road, written just before the Black Plague of 1348–50, Balducci Pegolotti wrote that you could travel from Khanbalik (Beijing) to the Black Sea in 300 days. “The road you travel . . . to Cathay (China) is perfectly safe, whether by day or by night, according to what the merchants say who have used it,” he wrote.

Just down the street, a gateway on the left leads to the Nuruosmaniye Mosque and the Grand Bazaar. The mosque is now undergoing renovation and was not open on the day I was there.

Nuruosmaniye Mosque, started in 1748 by Mahmut I and completed in 1755 by Osman III: the first large mosque to incorporate the Baroque style then popular in Europe.

The passageway past the Nuruosmaniye Mosque leads to the famous and indeed notorious Grand Bazaar, one of the world’s oldest and largest markets, founded in 1461, with more than 58 covered streets and over 1,200 shops. I will be returning here before I leave Istanbul, but for the moment I am hot on the trail of caravanserais.

One of the main entrances to the Grand Bazaar

Alongside the Grand Bazaar are ancient shopping arcades which may well date back to Silk Road times.

Old stone building near the Grand Bazaar

Just down the street is the Mahmud Pasha Mosque, one of the oldest private mosques in Istanbul. It was built in 1463 by Mahmud Pasha, the Grand Vizier of Sultan Mehmed II, who had conquered Constantinople in 1453, turning it into Istanbul. He eventually fell out with Mehmed and was executed in 1474. His tomb, directly behind the mosque, is said to be decorated with some of the oldest existing Iznik Tiles in Istanbul, which must offer him some consolation. Unfortunately, on the day I was there the tomb was locked.

Mahmut Pasha Mosque

From the Mosque Mahmut Pasha Yokusu (Hill) the street drops down to the Spice Market and the shore of the Golden Horn.

Street dropping down from Mahmut Pasha Yokusu

This street is lined with various hans, including the Kurkchu Han, said to be the oldest caravanserai in Istanbul. This han specialized in people involved in the fur trade. It is now fronted by nondescript sheds, but the gateway, although covered with thick paint and topped by a new sign, is said to be the original. Behind the gateway can be seen the ancient stone walls of the old caravanserai.

Kurkchu Han

Another khan on Mahmut Pasha Yokshu

Wandering about down this street lined with hans I could not help but wonder about the people who washed up here over the centuries and what they may have brought with them besides the material goods in which they were trading. In additional to being a trade route the Silk Road was of course also a conduit for ideas, philosophies, and religious beliefs. We have already seen how Nestorian Christianity moved eastward into China, establishing a Beachhead in Xian, the eastern terminus of the Silk Road (notwithstanding the contention of our Beloved Peony that in fact the eastern terminus was in Japan), in the eighth century if not earlier, and how a Mosque in Xian had been built in 742, a mere 120 years after the Hegira (we are of course speaking here of the 622 AD Hegira and not the twentieth-century Hippy Hegira).

The Eastward Advance of Buddhism from India into China is well-known; the dispersion of Buddhism westward less so. Did the traders and travelers who arrived here at these hans from the East bring with them the teachings of Buddha, either in written form, formal oral transmissions, or traveler’s tales? More specifically, did the Shambhala Mythologem, as first expounded in the Kalachakra Tantra and later elaborated on by many commentators, ever reach these ancient cobblestone streets?

As you know, according to legend the Kalachakra Tantra was first taught by the Buddha to Sucandra, the First King of Shambhala. Also according to legend, pilgrims to Shambhala brought an abbreviated version of the Kalachakra Tantra back to India in the tenth century or so, and from there it was disseminated into Tibet and later into Mongolia. More literal minded, beady-eyed scholars have bypassed the legendary origins of the Kalachakra Tantra altogether and contend that it was written in the tenth or eleventh century. Exactly where remains a matter of great dispute. Some scholars in the past have suggested that it was written in the Turpan Basin, on the north side of the Tarim Depression, still other in Khotan, on the south side of the Tarim Depression. Both of these cities were of course famous stops on the Silk Road. Could the Kalachakra Tantra and attendant Shambhala Mythologem have been carried the whole way westward to the terminus of the Silk Road in Istanbul?

The Tarim Basin as Shambhala. Branches of the Silk Road ran along both the north and south sides of the basin. See Enlargement of Map

Also, we know that the Kalachakra Tantra reached the court of Khubilai Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire, in what is now Beijing in the late thirteen century. Khubilai Khan may have himself taken the Kalachakra Initiation (this is a matter of contention). We know for sure a copy of the Kalachakra Tantra was made to commemorate his death in 1294. This copy still exists and I myself had digitized copies of it distributed in Mongolia. Thus the Kalachakra Tantra and attendant Shambhala Mythologem could also have move westward on the Silk Road from Beijing.

Just how far did Buddhism itself extend its influence westward? In the 1250s Khülegü Khan (1217–1265), grandson of Chingis Khan and brother of Khubilai Khan, invaded what is now Iran and in 1256 destroyed the stronghold of the Ismaili Sect at Alamut. In 1258 He Sacked Baghdad, overthrowing the 500 year-old Islamic Abbasid Dynasty, and in the process reopening the Silk Road. Khülegü was a Buddhist, at least in his later life, but his wife Doquz Khatun and his mother, the legendary Sorghaghtani Beki, were Christians.

One of Khülegü’s successors, the Il-Khan Arghun, eventually made the city of Tabriz, in the northwest corner of what is now Iran, just west of the Caspian Sea, his capital, and here Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam were all said to flourish, at least at first. From here Buddhism might well have moved further westward. As is turned out, Tabriz may mark the the limits of Buddhist expansion to the west, at least until the late twentieth century and the Tibetan Diaspora. The Mongol Il-Khans soon converted to Islam, and what is now Iran eventually became a predominately Islamic country. Buddhism virtually disappeared from Persia, thus cutting off the lands further to the west from the wellsprings of Buddhism in the East.

But while Buddhism as an organized religion may not have traveled the whole way west on the Silk Road traders and travelers may well have brought texts and tales with them, including accounts of the legendary realm of Shambhala. There is, as we shall soon see, a persistent connection between Sufis, practitioners of a mystical brand of Islam, and Shambhala. Indeed, just before I came to Istanbul, a pandita in Ulaan Baatar informed me that a considerable percentage of the current population of Shambhala are in fact Sufis. Could Sufis have learned about Shambhala from Silk Road travelers, or had Sufis themselves plied the old trade routes and brought back to Istanbul knowledge of the legendary Kingdom? Could they then have used their knowledge to locate a Portal here in Istanbul? Of course Istanbul was in the past a hotbed of Sufism. My next stop is the old Mevlevi Tekke in Galatea, on the other side of the Golden Horn, once home to the Whirling Dervishes, one of the most famous Sufi sects.