It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog, so I thought I’d do solely a life-updates post! I got back to the UK on January 10, and between then and January 13, I was mostly just working on finals. On January 13, I left for Istanbul, Turkey.
Jan. 13–16: Istanbul
We got in late January 13, such that we got to the area of our AirBnB around 11pm. We wanted to find food, and after a lot of searching, we ended up at a lovely restaurant that served very basic but really delicious food (I went back there on the evening before we left; two others went back a third time!).
January 14 was our first full day in Istanbul. We walked from our place to Taksim Square (Taksim Meydanı), where we saw our first (but certainly not our last) absolutely gorgeous mosque (predictably, the Taksim Mosque, Taksim Camii). We walked down Istiklal Street (İstiklal Cd) and also went to Çiçek Pasajı, both of which were recommended to us by my roommate. Istiklal Street is known as a commercial high street, a sort of Times Square or Oxford Street equivalent. It wasn’t as crowded as I think it’s supposed to be; you could tell the level of economic desperation. There many sparsely-walked streets and empty seats outside restaurants, with waiters eagerly beckoning tourists to sit down and try their food. It was a sad sight, if expected given the currency issues. But despite those circumstances, you could still tell how vibrant and beautiful the area was, and I loved wandering in it.
We happened by a beautiful Catholic church (Sent Antuan Kilisesi), where a very nice man gave me a postcard for free (I couldn’t find small enough denominations of cash to pay him, but I did donate some money to the church). Our destination for that morning was Galata Tower (Galata Kulesi), which gave us a 360-degree view of Istanbul. It was a glorious, if cold and windy, January day.
From there, we walked to Galata Bridge (Galata Köprüsü), which took us across the Golden Horn to the old city, where Constantinople was based (the section of the town is known as the Fatih district). (My roommate told me to look for people fishing on the bridge; as he suggested, there were lots of people fishing. Interestingly, it was highly gender-skewed, with few women fishing.) I’ve long wanted to see the Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya), and so I was super excited to get to the old city. What I didn’t expect, and what’s so hard to process if you’ve never been, is that Hagia Sophia actually blends in with the rest of the city. When you first get off Galata Bridge, you’re confronted with a huge mosque (I didn’t know its name until I googled it to write this post): the New Mosque (Yeni Camii). And there are mosques, cute and tiny but also massive and grand, all over the place. It was a bit of a surreal experience to be in a Muslim-majority country, because you hear the calls to prayer from all directions at the set times of day, and you see rows of people laying out carpets, often in the middle of the street, to do their prayers. I found it quite touching to see such devotion and faith. We walked through the Spice Bazaar (Mısır Çarşısı) and then the Grand Bazaar (Kapalıçarşı) in search for lunch (it turns out neither has much food), and we finally found a shop right outside the Grand Bazaar. The shop was loveably chaotic: there was so much happening — men and women darting in and out of the building, orders being shouted and plates shoved in people’s faces, massive platters of food precariously walked around to be delivered to who-knows-where — and you kind of just had to yell your order with the restaurant worker, who was extremely kind to us. I’ve heard people say that Turkish people are extremely warm people; I couldn’t tell how much of that was their desire to get our tourist money, but certainly my experience throughout the trip accorded with that sentiment.
After lunch, we were ready for the main event: the Hagia Sophia. It did not disappoint. On the outside, it is truly grand — its dull red exterior and towering minarets, its iconic domes supporting the main dome. Hagia Sophia was originally built as the seat of the Eastern Orthodox church. After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, it was converted to a mosque and, indeed, was the primary mosque for Istanbul until the creation of the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmed Mosque, Sultan Ahmet Camii, right across the street). Then, with the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, Hagia Sophia was made into a museum — a sign of a secularizing and liberalizing country devoted to religious freedom and toleration, as my roommate put it. In 2020, it was turned into a mosque again (to much controversy).
Hagia Sophia’s history has led to some really fascinating attributes:
Paintings: there were many paintings Christian paintings in the original Hagia Sophia, which were subsequently plastered over or destroyed under Ottoman rule due to Islamic opposition to pictorial representations of people (“Islamic aniconism” is the term I learned through Wikipedia). Under Atatürk, when the building was turned into a museum, many of those Christian depictions were restored and displayed alongside the Ottoman additions. Today, the ones in the main prayer room are covered (there is a not-so-inconspicuous white curtain covering an image of the Virgin and baby Jesus), although surprising to me, there were figures that I found uncovered. I had a chat with one of the security guards, and with a bit of Google Translate, learned that the figural mosaics outside of the prayer room were okay; as he put it, Islam’s opposition to figural depictions is only in the context of prayer, since such representations are said to distract a person during their praying. I’m not sure how universally Muslims would agree with that sentiment, but it seemed a reasonable enough explanation for how authorities were dealing with Hagia Sophia.
Ottoman Medallions: there are eight large medallions in added in the late 1840s that depict the names of Allah, Muhammad, the Rashidun (the “Rightly Guided Caliphs” — the four political and religious leaders of Islam after the Prophet’s death: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali), Hassan, and Husayn. The origin of the divide between Shia and Sunni Muslims is in the legitimacy of the successors to the Prophet: the Sunnis like the four Rightly Guided Caliphs, whereas the Shia claim that the Prophet designated Ali to be his successor (and so they view Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman as illegitimate). So for Shia Muslims, Ali, Hassan, and Husayn are revered as the first three Imams; the most common sect of Shia Islam, the Twelvers, believe in twelve infallible Imams — successors to the Prophet, all part of his family (Ahl al-Bayt), who clarified the teachings of Islam and were all martyred. So what’s interesting is that the Ottomans in the nineteenth century decided to place figures revered by both Sunnis and Shias in this central mosque, which sheds some light into how they thought about the divide.
Prayer Lines: Muslims all pray in a certain direction (specifically, they face the Kaaba, in Mecca), and so usually mosques are built to facilitate that orientation. But because Hagia Sophia was originally a Christian church, it wasn’t built so; the new carpets added in 2020, which have prayer lines helping the faithful orient themselves, essentially run diagonally across the building.
Gender Segregation: all of the mosques I’d been in, until I went to Istanbul, were structurally gender-segregated. That is, they would have separate entrances and rooms for men and women, such that I wouldn’t even know where my female friends were in the mosque. Hagia Sophia wasn’t like that, and I didn’t even sense much of an informal gender divide, as I expected. There were requirements of modest dress for both men and women (for men, that meant wearing certain kinds of shirts and long pants; for women it included a headscarf as well as long pants). It felt like a rather secular experience, but for the occasional Muslim praying.
I could have spent hours wandering in Hagia Sophia and talking to folks there; it was really a soul-enriching experience. One aspect of being in a massive space like that, though, is that it got really cold! And so eventually we left to get some warm beverages. We caught a perfect time, though, because we heard the call to afternoon prayers. It was exciting in part because it was only the third or fourth call (adhan) that we’d heard since being in Turkey, but especially because it was special around Hagia Sophia. Right next to Hagia Sophia is the Blue Mosque, which really does rival the Hagia Sophia in magnificence and grandeur. And because they’re so close geographically, they actually alternate in delivering the call to prayer. It reminded me of the dialogue of a pianist tossing a melody between hands. I caught a video depicting part of the exchange; the beginning of the video is the call to prayer from the Blue Mosque, then after is the reply from Hagia Sophia.
We went to the Blue Mosque, caught a glimpse inside (but unfortunately there wasn’t too much to see because it was under renovation, as was much of the city), but then very luckily ran into some locals whom we had chatted with in Hagia Sophia.
It turned out they were students who volunteer as informal guides, and they invited us in for a cup of tea and to chat to us about Islam. It was such a heart-warming experience: we got a presentation about Islam and had the opportunity to chat with locals, which was really fun. The presenter, throughout his talk, kept mentioning that we should go visit the Süleymaniye Mosque (Süleymaniye Camii). So after we left the presentation, we decided to take his advice, and it turned out two of the women volunteering were on their way to the Süleymaniye Mosque anyway, so they walked us over there and chatted with us. (The woman I walked with, it turns out, was studying physics at a local university; it gave me immense pleasure to know that people struggle with physics everywhere.) At the Süleymaniye Mosque, we met with a few other volunteers, who sat down with us and continued telling us about their faith. In total, we spent around five hours in the three mosques. Funnily enough, when we were at a cultural center/reception office near Süleymaniye Mosque, we ran into the presenter from the Blue Mosque; his first reaction to seeing us at night: “I told you guys to visit the Suleymaniye Mosque, not to spend three hours there!” I couldn’t have been happier with how we spent our time. They even gave us tote bags and mugs depicting the Suleymaniye Mosque. (If you ever find your way to Istanbul, reach out to the organization; ask for Betul and Abdullatif, who are wonderful people. They even made time the week after to call me and chat about Islamic law.)
The next morning, January 15, the plan was to go see the Topkapı Palace (Topkapı Sarayı), which is right next to the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque. I went a bit early with two others because I wanted to explore more, so we walked around the waterside to see the Byzantine Walls and to explore the park. Topkapı Palace was where the Sultans used to live, and it’s a huge complex. I felt like I didn’t get to see enough of it; everything, to the smallest detail, was intricate. It reminded me a bit of the Palace of Westminster, where the grandeur actually disguises how ornate, upon close inspection, the building is. I enjoyed seeing the kitchens and an exhibit on coffee at the Palace. There’s also a mosque at the Palace for servants that I was very curious to see, but unfortunately it was closed. (We went to Istanbul at the trough of tourism season, which meant none of the stuff we saw was super crowded but also that a lot was under renovation.)
Lunch that day was really amazing (and incredibly cheap given the quality of food — we each paid on the order of 15 pounds for a five-star meal).
From there, we had some downtime to explore before trying to catch a ferry to go to the Asian side, because folks wanted to catch a sunset ferry. I had hoped to have enough time to go see the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, a kind of Pope-like figure (although not with the same kind of hierarchy as in the Roman Catholic Church) for the Eastern Orthodox Church. As mentioned earlier, the seat used to be at Hagia Sophia, but after the Ottomans turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque, it was moved — eventually to St. George’s Cathedral (Aya Yorgi Kilisesi), which was around a 20 minute taxi ride away from where we were. Alas, we didn’t have time to do both, though, so we just wandered the area (we passed by a nice mausoleum for some Ottoman big-wigs), and then we took the ferry to Kadıköy, a lively neighborhood on the Asian side of Istanbul. (Finding the ferry ended up being extremely stressful because there were five docks, and it was hard to find the correct one given that everything was in Turkish, but it eventually worked itself out. I had a bit of a sketchy encounter with a man selling tickets, but, again, everything worked out.) I was a bit saddened, though, that we didn’t really get to do much in Kadıköy; our dinner location was around a forty-minute walk away from the interesting parts of Kadıköy, so effectively all we did was take a ferry and then walk to a roof-top restaurant at a fancy hotel on the Asian side. We then taxied home, and a few of us went back to the first late-night restaurant that we went to to get food and chat with our new friends.
I flew out early the next morning on January 16.
Some takeaways from Istanbul:
I really want to go back — I just loved the city and the people we met. And the city is just so fascinating: it felt like the crossroads of the Old World, both literally straddling the barrier between Europe and Asia but also reflecting an amalgamation of empires, from its conscious mimicry of Rome (Constantinople, like Rome, was built on seven hills) to its Greek influences and then to its Muslim and eastern attributes. Like London, everything is just built on top of older stuff, and so one feels history in a way that is difficult to imagine in comparison to America.
I think doing a religious-themed tour of the city would be fascinating: to see more of the mosques (and a greater variety of them than just the huge Ottoman ones), but also the Eastern Orthodox churches, the Catholic churches, the synagogues, and everything else.
The city’s animals really are notable: there are ownerless dogs and cats everywhere, just hanging out (including in mosques!). It was really cute.
January 16–22
After getting back from Istanbul, I had to scramble to finish my finals, and then I had a week of catching up with friends and getting back into the swing of things with the start of the new semester. I’ve ended up doing very little work for school this new term. I’m only doing two classes: a quantitative text analysis class (which is kind of boring but will hopefully be useful for my dissertation) and an ethnography class (which has kept me very engaged, although it does pose a lot of ethical questions in my head). One of my friends also pulled me into volunteering with her through an organization called the Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team (AMURT). As I can tell, AMURT is the outgrowth of a spiritual movement with yogic roots, but the specific facet of our volunteering is to help with AMURT’s food distribution program: AMURT creates dozens of vegan meals and gives them to housing-insecure people each Thursday. They distribute right next to LSE campus, so it’s a logical way to help, and our specific role is in monitoring and evaluation, which means I get to use the skills I’m learning from my degree for something useful! It’s been a good time.
January 23–29
On Sunday (Jan. 23), I went to the Tate Modern with a Marshall friend, and then I went to a celebration for Fatima, one of the Prophet’s daughters and the wife of the Shia’s first Imam, Ali. Fatima, in other words, is a big deal for the Shia, and there was a lecture by a guy I’ve really enjoyed previously. The lecture ended up being rather strange, although it was a good opportunity to talk to my Shia friend about her understanding of gender roles. The next day (Jan. 24) was the first meeting of a night class that I’m taking — a Moral Philosophy and Islamic Ethics class, also with my Shia friend. I should have expected it, but the entire class so far has just been about Aristotle. It’s also a bit unfortunate in that the lecturer hasn’t given us any readings, and so I don’t feel like I’m learning very much. Tuesday was the first Carlyle Lecture: each year, Oxford invites an academic to spend a semester at the University delivering a weekly themed lecture. This year’s lectures are delivered by Sam Moyn, a Yale Law historian whose work I’ve always thought to be interesting (if a bit … unreadable). But more importantly, his first lecture was on Judith Shklar (who herself delivered the Carlyle Lectures in the 1980s — I believe hers were about Montesquieu, but I haven’t figured out a way to track down the recordings). I was originally intending to go to Oxford to see the lecture, but because of Covid restrictions, I could only watch the recording and read the book he was basing the lecture on (Shklar’s first book: After Utopia). I convinced a few friends to watch the lecture with me, and we met up on Friday (Jan. 28) to chat about it. I’ve now convinced them, and a few others, to do a semi-weekly reading group around Shklar: if anyone’s interested, here’s the materials. We’ve only had one meeting so far, but our next one is this Wednesday (Feb. 16). I’ve also been reading other stuff with others — Augustine’s Confessions with one friend (a few books at a time, Jan. 20, Jan. 28, Feb. 8); C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce and then Jane Austen’s Persuasion with a different friend (Feb. 2, Feb. 9) — and for my own interest, Maxime Rodinson’s biography of the Prophet Muhammad. I’ve had a lot more time to read this semester, but by virtue of reading with other people, I’ve forced myself to read more, which has been good.
January 30–February 5
Due to the Lunar New Year, I got to see a bunch of friends this week (Jan. 30, Feb. 5), which was nice! I also heard good news about law school, so one of my friends took me out to celebrate — we went to see Hamilton (Feb. 5); it was good stuff, although Lin-Manuel Miranda did James Madison dirty. My old flatmate was in town, so we got fish and chips together and caught up, which was wonderful (Feb. 3). I went to a Shabbat service for the first time; they had an angelic choir, and the synagogue was gorgeous (Feb. 5). Also, I went to Stonehenge (Feb. 1) finally! It was surprisingly cool — I totally thought it would be underwhelming, but the stones really are massive, and its construction is a testament to early engineering (and human will). One fact they kind of conceal, though: a lot of the stones have actually fallen due to weather, and so some of the stones have been put back upright with modern technology, which kind of makes the structure seem less impressive. But basically, the upright stones are all variable length, and the way they got them to be the same height was to dig differentially deep holes; as one would expect, the rocks placed in shallower holes were more liable to tipping. Near Stonehenge is Salisbury, so my friend and I went to go see the Cathedral there (beautiful building, with very nice volunteer tour guides — perhaps a theme of this post) and the copy of the 1215 Magna Carta, one of only four extant copies at this point.
February 6–12
Last week wasn’t super interesting beyond doing reading with friends! On Saturday (Feb. 12), I met up with a Marshall friend to do a walk around the Rotherhithe area, which is Southeast London but less far east as where I live. We ended up at the Mayflower Pub: yeah — that Mayflower. Because the pilgrims originally set out from Rotherhithe, the nearby pub was renamed the Mayflower. Also, we got some really good Chinese food (the best I’ve had in London) in Rotherhithe. So it was a good time.
Buds: I’m going to Barcelona on Saturday (Feb. 19), and I am really excited to keep going with this reading group. I hope it will stay afloat, although I suspect I’m trying to give too much reading.
Thorns: I’ve begun doing financial aid applications for law school, which is not so fun! Taxes are too complicated for me.
Gratitude: I am grateful for all the people who welcomed me to their spaces throughout this last month, whether in Salisbury, the synagogue, or Hagia Sophia. It was truly a privilege.