x0x Flowers and gardens Turkish style

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x0x Flowers and gardens Turkish style

A couple of thousand years ago, the hanging gardens of
Babylon were built and were counted as one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world, and before then there was
the Garden of Eden, long thought to have been in the
Harran area of present-day Turkey We see at
Topkapi Palace and also at Yildiz Palace
the use of smaller kiosks or mansions set in gardens
Topkapi actually has large open spaces but they
were not devoted to gardens; they were for ceremonial
occasions

NIKI GAMM

ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News

Westerners tend to think of gardens as the
well-planted, beautifully tended and orderly areas that
we know from trips to France's Versailles Palace,
Britain's Royal Botanical Gardens and the much smaller
ones those of us who have free-standing homes try to
keep in immaculate order from one year to the next.
This seems to be such a totally Western concept that
has yet to be adopted in Turkey.

With this in mind, perhaps you won't be terribly
impressed with the helter-skelter gardens you may see
in Turkey, including the fairly new phenomenon of
windowsill plants. In the 1960s, Turks weren't into
plants and interest in them came later, for instance in
the early 1980s when the then Mayor of Istanbul
Bedrettin Dalan decided to give Istanbul some green
spaces and planted tulips in parks and playing fields.

This tradition continued not just with new green areas
being planted with trees, shrubs and flowers, but older
park areas were reclaimed and replanted, too. Nor was
just the municipality involved; the Istanbul Touring
Club leaped in and restored the Yildiz Palace
gardens, the Emirgan kiosks, Khedive Kasri on the
Asian shore and so on as part of the late Çelik
Gülersoy's efforts to restore old buildings and turn
them into places that the public could use as
restaurants, tea gardens, catered parties and so forth.

Gardens in the past:

But all this rather gets us ahead of ourselves. What
were Turkish gardens like in previous centuries and
what do we know of them now? The Ottoman Turks are
thought to have got their ideas from the gardens of
Persia, either from miniatures or because in their
migrations west into Anatolia some of the Turkish
tribes passed through the Persian area. You may
remember that a couple of thousand years ago, the
hanging gardens of Babylon were built and were counted
as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and,
of course, before that was the Garden of Eden, long
thought to have been in the Harran area of present-day
Turkey.

Persian manuscripts depict buildings around which we
see enclosures consisting of carefully sculpted
flowering trees and flowers with birds sitting or
flying around, while outside the enclosure plants and
grasses seem to be decoratively scattered around with
trees located just outside.

A 15th century banqueting scene in a Shiraz garden
could have portrayed what we know of Istanbul's
Sa'dabad banquets in the early 18th century. And in
another Persian manuscript from Shiraz we see a pool
with streams running through the miniature. According
to Professor Nurhan Atasoy, in her book on imperial
gardens, the Persian idea was based on what people
thought paradise would be like when they got there,
with streams running through it and flowering trees.

Ottoman manuscripts display similar characteristics,
giving some credence to the idea that Persian ones
influenced gardens in Ottoman times, or at least that
is what one can understand from the miniatures. A
garden could hardly have been something the nomads
would have had a chance to plant. Nor is it likely that
a rich Byzantine garden culture still existed given the
territorial advances made by the Ottoman Turks with the
subsequent destruction and refugees trying desperately
to get out alive. Istanbul, in any case, had long been
left to those who were too poor to escape and soldiers
who decided to stay and defend the Byzantine capital to
the death.

On the other hand, with the conquest of Tabriz in 1514
Sultan Selim brought any number of craftsmen who were
experts in their art to Istanbul. Laboring in the
palace workshops, these artists used their obvious
talents to incorporate flowers into their tile and
embroidery designs.

We know, of course, that the Ottomans had a singular
love of flowers and enjoyed having them on their
garments, in their tents, as embroideries, on porcelain
and depicted in poetry, and wherever else they thought
appropriate.  Flowers had a particular significance in
poetry because the words used were, in essence, code
words for the way in which the lover and beloved were
described and in mystic poetry the lover and beloved
were the worshipper and the worshipped, that is to say,
God.



Imperial involvement:

Think of Fatih Sultan Mehmet. He conquered Istanbul and
when he wasn't out warring, he spent what free time he
had tending his gardens, and he especially loved
vegetables. The Greek author Christobolous described
Topkapi as having very large, lovely gardens that
contained plants and fruit-bearing trees.  There was
plenty of water from the nearby Yerebatan cistern for
the groves and meadows. One has to remember, of course,
that what was actually called the "New Palace" was far
smaller and simpler than the current Topkapi
Palace with its high walls, gates and small
pavilion-like buildings that take up space.

We know that Sultan Ahmet III had a tulip garden in the
fourth courtyard at Topkapi Palace. The sultan,
along with his grand vizier, was the initiator; or
perhaps it would be better to describe him as the
promoter of the Tulip Period, or Lale Devri, that
captured so much attention in Turkey and Europe.

The years between 1718 and 1730 were a special time in
Istanbul. The arts flourished and tulips were
unbelievably popular. It rubbed off in Holland where
there was speculative trading in tulip bulbs for a time
before the bubble burst.  It's hard to think that at
one time the price of one bulb reached the equivalent
of $5,000. Because the prices went so high, people even
bought shares in bulbs.  After the market plummeted,
you practically had to give them away free. But of
course as we now know, the Dutch never lost their
interest in tulips.

In Istanbul, a special pleasure palace called Sa'dabad
(the Place of Happiness) was built between today's
Kasimpasa and the Koç Museum along the northern shore
of the Golden Horn. Actually, it wasn't a palace at all
but a series of kiosks and pavilions, gardens, streams
and wonderful parties. At night the illumination was
supposed to have been provided by turtles wandering
around the grounds with candles on their backs.

Actually, the area was already a favorite picnicking
ground as 17th-century travel writer Evliya Çelebi
notes in his "Book of Travels" (Seyahatname). He and
friends used to go there during Ramadan to break their
fast, recite poetry and drink and carouse until the
early morning, when they had again to resume their fast
for the day.

We see at Topkapi Palace and also at
Yildiz Palace the use of smaller kiosks or
mansions set in gardens, although we might not
particularly understand how the gardens were originally
set out. Topkapi actually has large open spaces
but they were not devoted to gardens; they were for
ceremonial occasions. That much we can understand from
paintings by foreign artists, especially in the 18th
century works of Jean-Baptiste Van Mour. This past year
there was an exhibition displaying some of these
paintings at the Topkapi Palace Museum from the
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam alongside paintings by the
contemporary Ottoman artist Levni.

But by the 18th century, foreign influence was having
an effect on what was happening in Istanbul. Turkish
ambassadors had been going to Paris, where they were
influenced by, for example, the Court of Versailles'
gardens. In the meantime travelers and ambassadors were
coming from the West and brought with them ideas about
what gardens should, in their opinion, look like. The
cross fertilization, at least to the extent that is
known today, rarely seeped down to the general populace
from the level of imperial government officials.

We do know that in the 19th century the yalis, or
waterfront mansions, had gardens. The palaces did, too,
but most likely no one among the lower classes could
afford to think of such things. Space was at a premium
in lower-class areas, and there weren't any markets
where flowering plants were sold as there are today.

One example from a century ago is Yildiz
Park, which has areas being looked after but seems a
bit wild, perhaps it was intentional as part of the
plan for the area under Sultan Abdulhamid II. He had
waterfalls, small lakes, trees, shrubs and flowers put
in to what had originally been a wooded area where
members of the previous Ciragan Palace
household, occasionally women too, had been used to
walking in. But most likely the rather unkempt look
about the place has more to do with lack of funding and
governmental interest than anything else since things
only began to get better after municipal governments
and ministries realized the value of attracting
visitors.

Istanbul today is in much better shape. We now can buy
plants almost everywhere. Sometimes a street seller
will come right to your door. People are taking pride
in putting plants outside their windowsills, and a
reasonable variety is available at the many florist
shops that have sprung up. The municipalities are
interested in planting trees along the streets to
encourage a better ambience for the neighborhood,
although it is up to individuals to get, plant, water
and maintain the tree forever after.

Istanbul really is looking better and better.

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