Religious practices in the Turco-Iranian world: continuity and change

Abstract

A stroll along the southern bank of Istanbul’s Golden Horn takes us in brief succession to major centres of the three religions of the old capital. First we reach the district of Fener, once peopled by prosperous Greeks and still the site of the Greek Orthodox patriarchate. The next place of interest is the old Jewish quarter of Balat. Then, where the Golden Horn bends to the north, we arrive in the Muslim neighbourhood of Eyüp, with its famous Ottoman cemeteries on wooded hills overlooking the entire city. Eyüp owes its name, and these old cemeteries their location, to the city’s most sacred Muslim grave here, the illustrious türbe (shrine) of the saint Eyüp Sultan, believed to have been a companion of the Prophet and a leading participant in the first Arab siege of Constantinople. This shrine has, ever since the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul, been the city’s most important place of pilgrimage (ziyaret). It was at this shrine that each new sultan was formally invested with his regalia. Succession to the throne was not valid until formalised by girding the sword of the Prophet in the spiritual presence of Eyüp and, through him, the Prophet himself.