In early January 1929, one of the worst winters in Istanbul’s history took the city in its grip. A fierce…
In Ottoman times law students studied from manuscript books of laws, canonical decrees, and jurisprudence written by eminent jurists in…
On the one hand, the fertile soil of Anatolia, and on the other, the sapphire beauty of the Aegean. Seferihisar’s…
‘Berlin, a skeleton which aches in the cold…’. That was how Christopher Isherwood described the city in his book Goodbye…
One of the most popular forms of entertainment in Ottoman Turkey was the meddah or story-teller, with a scarf around…
We awoke early with a thrill of expectancy on the morning that our magical journey was to begin. When we…
When the railway came to Turkey in 1870 it brought with it French train travel terminology: train, gare, perron, chef,…
One reason why historic monuments hold such magic for us is surely the thought that centuries before people stood on…
Ephemera is a term for documents relating to ordinary daily life that are regarded as expendable at the time, but…
In his celebrated novel The Clock Adjustment Institute, the 20th-century Turkish writer Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar writes, ‘The watch which is…