Today, I’ll be taking a look at medieval Ottoman cuisine - specifically the food seen in ottoman courts! The recipe in question is cılbır, or poached eggs with herbal yoghurt. This is a simple yet tasty recipe that is still eaten today in Turkey!
In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above! Consider checking out my Patreon if you like these recipes!
Method 1 - Make the Yoghurt To begin with, we need to make a simple yoghurt for the eggs to sit on. Start this by finely chopping some fresh parsley - dill or cilantro would have also been used! Toss this into your yoghurt, along with a clove or two of crushed garlic. Mix all of this together, until it’s very well combined. Leave it to sit aside while you poach your eggs.
2 - Poach the eggs Place a pot of hot water over a high heat until it boils. At a rolling boil, turn the heat down to low and let it simmer gently.
There’s a couple of methods of poaching eggs. I cracked an egg into a ramekin, and then dropped this into a ladle, before lowering into the water. Some of the whites of the egg became spidery and flyaway, but don’t worry! This will look amazing and silky when it’s out of the water.
Let the egg cook for a couple of minutes, before draining it and dunking it in cool water - to stop the yolk from becoming overcooked.
3 - Assemble the dish Place a nice dollop of the herby yoghurt onto a plate, and place one of your poached eggs atop this. Sprinkle with a bit of freshly-ground coriander, and dig in with some fresh bread!
The finished dish is deliciously light yet filling. The herbs really pairs well with the texture of the egg. Although rather plain looking, it’s an easy yet luxurious way of presenting an otherwise simple dish in antiquity.
Çılbır is still eaten in turkey today, proving it’s role as a cheap yet filling meal for many throughout the centuries.
Ottoman cuisine formed as a fusion of Mediterranean, Near Eastern, and Central Turkic motifs in the early Medieval Period, which is exemplified here - using an array of culinary styles that are seen elsewhere in the region (such as Greek tzatziki being prepared in much the same way as this recipe, with the addition of mint and cucumber)
Αγία Σοφία, Hagia Sophia, Ayasofya, from the greek for Holy Wisdom.
On this day, the bully of East Med has decided to prove to the rest of the world that monuments of this magnitude can be used as tools to push personal, hidden or other political agendas.
Whatever the reason, monuments like Hagia Sophia #deserve better
May is National Photography Month! The Fine Arts Library holds more than 150,000 photographs and slides documenting Islamic art and architecture, as well as ethnographic views that provide cultural context.
Middle East and Islamic Photographs Collections are strong in albumen silver prints produced by commercial studios in the second half of the 19th century. These images are complemented by the photographic output of the first generation of scholars of Islamic art history, such as K.A.C. Creswell and Ernst Herzfeld, taken with documentary intent.
Most prominent is the Harvard Semitic Museum Photographic Archives. Developed at the Semitic Museum between 1891 and 1992 and transferred to the Fine Arts Library in 1995, the archive includes more than 38,000 images in a variety of formats.
Turkey, Contantinople. Mosque of Santa Sophia. Robertson, James, 1813-1888, English [photographer] Albumenized salt print: Istanbul, Hagia Sophia (Aya Sofia Camii) 10” x 12”, 25.5 x 30.6 cm salted paper prints photographs Repository: Harvard Fine Arts Library, Special Collections 1851-1853 HOLLIS number: olvwork365432
Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Patricia of Constantinople. Ink illustration by Matthew Alderman, December 2014; original in private collection, Singapore. For more illustrations and art, visit matthewalderman.com.
Reclaiming Istanbul’s Lost and Neglected Urban Memory Through Art…
Istanbul born artist, Handan Borüteçene, who claims: “I am from both everywhere, and nowhere” gave voice to a heartbroken Istanbul at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums last year. In the foundation story, Dreams Are More Real Than Reality, for her exhibit I Remain Buried Within Myself, the artist questions the scattered memories of Istanbul and the neglect of these memories by the current residents of the city…
DREAMS ARE MORE REAL THAN REALITY
HANDAN BÖRÜTEÇENE
On that moonless, starless, night there was a knock at my door,
I answered.
I found nothing other than the voice of a woman:
“I,” said the voice buried in the dark of night,” am the flesh-specre of Istanbul”.
“I have come to you.
My soul is lost!
Not being known, not being seen, I shiver inside!
Remember how you said that ‘One cannot question the miracles of Gods and Poets’…
That is why I talk to you through the voice of the earliest known poet of our city, with the voice of Moero, the Byzantine poetess.
Call me Moero until my lost soul is found,
My heart is broken… It is shattered inside out, I am in places, every single piece of me is scattered elsewhere.
I am exhausted of constantly being scattered around.”
I said “Come in,” Moero.
“Come in.”
The voice entered inside… like the night… with the night…
“Throughout thousands of years,” she said, “so many questions regarding the
happenings in my city piled up inside of me.
This city is an endless breath in which the human heart has been incessantly beating for four hundred thousand years…
It is beyond me why my compatriots flee from the memory of this endless breath.
Whereas, the memory is like a rose which enriches us with its multi-foil petals.
If you forget the memory of the city you will turn into a single-leaved rose, into a rose that is alike anything but a rose, a rose that doesn’t even know that it is a rose…
Just as my current compatriots who don’t know who they are,
Only the thorns of that rose become fastened to your clothes, the thorns that hinder the journeys you wish to take!
This single-leaved rose detains you!
You become withheld!
When this city where we are born, live, and die is a multi-foil, fragrant and variegated rose; why do we insist on this single-petal, single-leaved blindness?
I remain buried within myself because of this insistence…
You know how in a poem our compatriot Agathias said:
‘There is a grave here, but no corpse inside.
There is a corpse here, but no grave outside.
This corpse is buried within itself.’
Well, it is as if he was born in our future and that’s how he came to write those lines,
We remain buried within ourselves with all our life experiences.
Our life experience with my twin sister Venice remains buried within herself too..
She is forgotten.
Whereas, the waters had tied me to my twin sister Venice the way a mother’s umbilical cord ties her to her baby.
We loved each other deeply; we came to be so alike…
We lived so many battles, we buried the hatchet plenty. Ours was a real relationship.
My twin sister Venice broke my heart in tow in 1204… She took away all my beauty; she took it with the waters that tied us together.
She took away the horse monument in my hippodrome, my pillars, icons, and the horse sculptures atop my pillars…
Ours turned out to be a relationship tied and untied by waters. What a shame!
O, every piece of my remains in another place.
I am disheveled.
The answers are concealed in you, I suspect.
Help me… in memory of that poem I wrote to thank Cleonymus for the beautiful sculptures he bestowed to the pinewood gardens of Istanbul.
I want to go everywhere, I want to see everything.
I want to be seen everywhere I see.
I want to unite my scattered pieces.
I want to see my horse sculptures in my hippodrome once again…
I want to tie that which the waters untied with the waters once more,
Render me visible.”
“Don’t fret” I replied to Moero… “Don’t fret any longer, I will sew a dress that will make you visible. Which color should your dress be, Moero?”
“Let it be a color that bears the green of the land, the blue of both the waters and the sky, and the purple of our city.
Like the feathers of a peacock.
A dress made of silk.
Let it look like the dress of Saint Eudokia.
Hers is embroidered with emeralds, pearls and rubies.
My heart is broken; I want neither the emeralds nor the pearls.
Embroider my body with broken pieces of terra cotta.
A piece of terra cotta from every period of my city… Up until the pieces of terra cotta date to your time…”
We sat together, five women, and sewed Moero’s dress by hand.
With golden thread we sewed together Moero’s broken heart,
Sitting around the table, we embroidered the dress ceremoniously,
As Moero waited for that moment in which she would become visible she quietly watched us with patience.
Her dress was complete.
The moment she had been waiting for had arrived.
We could now set out on our journey.
She first wanted to go to our twin sister, Venice.
We went there.
She saw everything and each place she had missed.
She paused and viewed it all in quiet elation.
She caressed them gently and silently.
At times she lay down on the mosaic-fitted floors,
She had a souvenir photograph taken with all of them.
Then, together we returned to our city, Istanbul,
Our journey was like a feast, a peculiar ceremony,
Moero smilingly viewed the hubbub of the city and the surprise of those who saw her.
“I can see and be seen,” she said, “How wonderful!”
As she walked on the mosaic floors of her palace she suddenly stopped.
She looked down at the floor, at the deer grazing under the tree, at the surrounding vineyards and the images of vine leaves that still looked very fresh.
She recalled her poem:
“Full of the juice of Dionysus, thou restest
under the roof of Aphrodite’s golden chamber;
no longer share the vine, thy mother, cast her lovely
branch around thee, and put forth above thy head her sweet leaves.”
Then she said, “I am no longer like the vine in my poem. I was able to cast my branch around and put the city above my head, my mother.”
You came and found me Moero.
I was born and I found you.
Now we have one last wish! May all that was untied by the waters be tied by the waters once more.
J.A. MacGahan & F.D. Millet / photograph of an engraving by P. Aitken of a photograph by J. Pascal Sébah (1823-1886), Constantinople 1892 /
–Januarius Aloysius MacGahan (1844-1878) & Francis Davis Millet (1846-1912) were News Correspondents of the ‘Daily News’ in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. “Mr. MacGahan had previously served as a correspondent in the Franco-Prussian and Carlist wars and had investigated the 'Bulgarian Atrocities’. ”
Alexandrine parakeets, Psittacula eupatria, are long-time residents in Istanbul; yet stupid urban myths persist; suggesting that they are escaped pets, or “are spreading due to climate change”.
A (possible) Alexandrine parakeet even appears on this magnificent Byzantine plate from the fifth century, depicting a horned goddess of some sort.
Source:İstanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri Seçme Bizans Eserleri Rehberi [Select Byzantine Artifacts from the Istanbul Archaeology Museums] by Nezih Fıratlı. (1955)
Until the 1950s, Istanbul’s Bosporus strait was frequently visited by massive great white sharks, Charcharodon carcharias.
A massive specimen caught in the early 1920s, from Büyükada, a resort island just off Istanbul. Back in those years, Turkey still used the Arabic alphabet. A rough translation of the caption reads: “This shark was caught last week in Büyükada by Greek fishermen. To this day it is the biggest shark to be caught over there, its weight could surpass 1500 kg.”
This big guy was caught in Tuzla, on the Asian part of Istanbul province.
The great white sharks visited Istanbul to catch massive tuna fish, Thunnus sp. - which were also prized by local fishermen. Sometimes, sharks simply camped by seaside factories that processed the tuna to feed on their refuse.
This massive specimen was exhibited at the Taksim Artillery Barracks - currently the site of Gezi Park, popularised recently as the flashpoint of massive and controversial riots.
Harpooned sharks were occasionally left to die on nearby beaches. This picture is from the Kabataş shore; currently a hub of construction sites and inter-city boat ports.
An enormous specimen hung for display near the Galata bridge. It is a sobering thought that these sharks, the tuna fish, and the fishermen who caught them have all disappeared as the city turned into a crowded, polluted metropolis of 16 million people.
Sources:Büyük Beyaz Bilmece [The Great White Riddle] by Hakan Kabasakal. (2015) and National Geographic Turkey.
Constantinople’s Ottoman inhabitants, like their Byzantine precursors, took magic very seriously. They employed strange spells for a variety of mundane, sometimes downright cruel purposes. The spells reveal a mental landscape of insecurity, fear, arrogance and superstition. Below are five examples:
To get a woman pregnant from her rightful husband: Write this spell and place it in her bed.
Note the stylised image of a woman, represented as a triangle.
To tie tongues: Write this spell on a piece of paper. Bury it under a tombstone. Say out loud: “Tie their tongue, as if they lie dead in the tomb.” Whoever you name, will be as mute as a corpse.
Write this if your servant or maid runs away: Bury this where your servants stay when calm. Their roads will be tied and they will return, unable to escape.
If you desire to separate two people: Write these on two pieces of bread, on a Sunday, on the afternoon and before midday. Feed one to the dog, and the other, to the cat.
For increased companionship: Carve this spell on a copper plate. Throw the plate into a hot fire. Remove from fire when your loved one arrives. As the spell cools, she will warm up to you. This is the spell.
Source:Dünden Bugüne İstanbul Ansiklopedisi [The Encyclopedia of Istanbul, from the Past to the Present] by the Republic of Turkey Culture Ministry and the Turkish History Foundation. (1994)
Bulgarian St. Stephen Church, also known as the Bulgarian Iron Church, famous for being made of cast iron. An iron frame was preferred to concrete reinforcement due to the weak ground conditions. Designed in a combination of different styles by Hovsep Aznavur, an Armenian of Constantinople origin and it was manufactured in Vienna and then shipped to Constantinople, where it was inaugurated in 1898. In terms of architecture, the church combines Neo-Gothic and Neo-Baroque influences. Now St Stephen is one of the world’s few surviving prefabricated cast iron churches.
This was the largest hippodrome of the ancient world (and the largest stadium of all times) with a design that was conceptually based on the Circus Maximus in Rome which had a capacity of 250,000 spectators.
Baker standing in front of the ‘American Bakery’ which displays signs in Armenian, Ladino (in Hebrew characters), English, Ottoman Turkish, Greek and Russian with samples of bread attached for the needy, Ortaköy, Istanbul, Turkey in 1922, part of the international aid for the occupied city.
ALT
