Some Fragile Stitching 7 Aug 2013 | 03:18 am

I. Mekanı cennet olsun. May his place be Paradise. I watched a burial today. It was a man from one of Eyüp's old families, a family who once owned the lovely pink köşk behind the mosque before it was...

An Ageless Present: Malik Aksel on Restoration 1 Aug 2013 | 03:15 am

Eyüp Sultan Camii, April 2012 From a Malik Aksel essay originally published in 1956, a wonderful quote about restoration –– particularly as I think it was practiced in the 1950s: However when old wor...

Faith Through a Fidelity to the World 30 Jul 2013 | 02:40 am

I. And somehow, we're nearing the final week of Ramadan. I don't watch the moon as intently as I did last year [nor do I write as much as I did, see here and here and here], but when it was full I wa...

Gravestones, Eyüp :: July 19-21 2013 22 Jul 2013 | 04:07 pm

Cemeteries and Gravestones Which Strike a Person's Eye 21 Jul 2013 | 04:09 am

T.C./BCA 490.01/1722.1002_1 Finally beginning to read in more detail a stack of documents I picked up from the Republican Archives in Ankara. A passage which jumped out: "In the investigation that I...

Siyavuş Paşa Türbesi 19 Jul 2013 | 02:03 am

Eyüp, 17 July 2013

Eyüp, Welcome the Month of Ramadan 14 Jul 2013 | 03:55 pm

Eyüp, 13 July 2013 Past midnight on the first weekend of Ramadan here. This street –– once the road upon which sultans would approach the mosque –– has been turned into a free iftar sponsored by the ...

Under Normal Conditions... 5 Jul 2013 | 02:07 am

Via Uykusuz Facebook Page There's a brilliant column which runs in the satirical paper Uykusuz called "Normal Şartlar Altında," or "Under Normal Conditions." The past few weeks have been brilliant, a...

Mezarlar, Eyüp 3 July 2013 4 Jul 2013 | 01:34 am

I had a conversation with a man the other day who insisted that the türbe is still one of the least-understood items in Ottoman history. "Why," he asked me, "do people build them? What do they mean?" ...

New Commentary at Society and Space 27 Jun 2013 | 11:46 pm

The editors at Society and Space were kind enough to publish a brief commentary on the ongoing events here. From the Introduction: In what follows, however, I would like to chart a slightly different...