What does my garden grow?

One aspect of life in a medieval and early modern city that is generally lost in the modern experience is the private green spaces, especially within the walls of wealthy and middle class residences. Private gardens were not uncommon in Byzantine Constantinople, nor did they disappear with the repopulating of Ottoman Istanbul. I decided to focus on this outside, private space inhabited by the fictitous Fotini Joanides circa 1550 as part of my "Pentathon in Persona Project" for the Atlantian Kingdom Arts & Sciences Festival in A.S. XXXVI. To do so required thinking about both persona details and historic realities, such as Fotini's economic and marital status, the geographic distribution of neighborhoods in the city, and the building programs undertaken by the first Ottoman emperors. Researching the types of plants and trees that could have appeared in Istanbul was only one part of answering the question "What does my garden grow?"

Persona Details As is true for most SCA personas, Fotini Joanides is meant to represent a member of the wealthy classes. She is the wife of a merchant involved importing luxury goods, particularly glass from Venice. Islamic glass making as a whole underwent a major depression in the 15th and 16th C, as artistic and material advances in Venice led to its domination of the European and Islamic markets. (For more on this, see Glass of the Sultans.) To enhance her social status within the Greek community of Constantinople, I imagine her to be the daughter of an Orthodox priest, and sister to a priest assigned to work for the Patriarch. As the patriarchal church (Theotokos Pammachristos) is located in the Fener (a northern section of the city, facing the waters of the Golden Horn), and as this was in 1550 a predominantly Greek neighborhood, I am locating her home there. An average "middle class" home in mid 16th C Constantinople had two stories, while the very wealthy built three story houses. I've decided to make Fontini's family wealthy enough to live in a large two story house with a comfortable walled garden, but not wealthy enough to have added a third floor.

The Fener is labelled "Phanariot Quarter" on this 1923 map of 15th century Constantinople.

City Neighborhoods At the time of the Ottoman conquest, Constantinople was far from being the great city it once had been. At its height Constantinople was home to approximately 400,000 people; the city that fell to the Ottomans claimed a comparatively meager population of 50,000. Philip Mansel describes Constantinople in 1400 as "a collection of small towns, separated by farms and orchards." (Mansell, 3) There was a great deal of derelict land as well, neighborhoods standing empty because of fire, plague, and the overall diminishing population. In the end the scattered nature of the city's neighborhoods worked to the Greek populace's advantage, as some neighborhoods were able to surrender independently to the Turks and avoid the destruction meted out to areas taken by conquest. The neighborhood of Psamatya, for example, maintained a stable Greek population throughout the period of the conquest. (Mansell, 9)

Even so, approximately 4,000 Constantinopolitans were killed immediately after the siege, and tens of thousands more were enslaved and deported. To repopulate the city Mehmed the Conqueror forced thousands of Turks to relocate to his new capital (now called Istanbul by its rulers). He resettled Greeks, Armenians and Jews in the city, and allowed the Italian dominated trading center of Pera to continue to flourish. Throughout the next century, the neighborhoods of Istanbul realigned themselves around trading centers and new places of worship, but they were never formally segregated in law or even fully segregated in practice. The neighborhood surrounding the Fatih mosque, built by the Conqueror on the site of the Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles in the heart of the city, became a majority Turkish district. Even this neighborhood had Greek and other non-Turks as residents, however, just as the Fener (Phanar) region, new home of the Greek Ecumenical Patriarchate and thus the new center of Greek political and religious life was largely but not exclusively Greek. (see Goffman, 2002)

Private gardens were apparently a normal part of the Constantinople/Istanbul landscape, no matter what the neighborhood. The lack of archeological studies in Istanbul means that Byzantinists must rely primarily (although not exclusively) on literary evidence in their works. (Constantinides 2002; Littlewood 2002; Maguire 2000) Students of the early Ottoman city are similarly constrained, although not to the same extent.(Evyapan 1999) It is interesting to note that based on what evidence remains, the basic characteristics of a garden in Constantinople/Istanbul remained basically unchanged. The exception to this occurred during the last century or so of Byzantine rule, when (as previously mentioned) political and economic circumstances caused pleasure gardens to be converted to working (i.e. food producing) gardens. Gonsul Evyapan's description of the 'typical' Ottoman garden closely mirrors earlier Byzantine gardens. Gardens were to be lived in space; sitting areas and small buildings (kiosks) were normal features. A wide variety of trees, flowers and other decorative plantings existed, and undoubtedly there were changes over the centuries in planting aesthetics. Working gardens, even orchards or vineyards, could be attached to the Ottoman garden just as they were to the Byzantine. Evyapan reports a lack of axiality in Ottoman gardens, in stark contrast to what was favored in contemporary western Europe (Evyapan, 6).

(Image taken from an early 17th C Turkish costume book)

Fotini's Garden (to be continued...)

(Pomegranate tree in a Lebanese garden)

Bibliography

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