Day #168 Turkiye

Morning walking tour to see the main places in Istanbul.

We stopped at:
- The Egyptian obelisk, which is the original from ancient Egypt. It was cut in half when brought over, so only 18m made it (it started out at 36m high).
- The Blue mosque. It was built in 1609 and took 7 years to complete, opening in 1616. The Sultan built it for his mother when she died.
- Hagia Sophia was built as a church by Emperor Justianus in the 6th century (537 AD), which was before the Prophet Mohammed was born. It was the biggest cathedral in the world at the time and only took 5 years 10 months to complete. It was converted to a mosque in 1453 by Sultan Mehmet in 3 days.
- The Grand Bazaar has 4000 shops on 60 streets. 300,000 people visit per day.

We also learned that:
- The colour 'turquoise' comes from the colour of tiles the Turkish use in their buildings.
- There were 36 sultans in Turkish history.
- Turkiye changed its name pronunciation and spelling of the country to avoid being associated with the bird.
- There are 400 underground cisterns in Istanbul to store fresh water.
- There are cats everywhere. Prophet Mohammed had cats so people look after them and feed them. If you kill a cat in Islam, you have to build 7 mosques. They even have vending machines on the street that dispense cat food.
- When arranged marriages were a thing, the woman wasn't able to say no to a man, so she used to make the prospective husband a salty coffee to indicate she wasn't interested. The is still used as a tradition now for fun when couples get engaged.
- In the 1580s Suliman the Magnificent banned drinking coffee and closed 600 shops, so men started drinking coffee and smoking shisha in cemeteries in secret.Weiterlesen