Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 Ancestry
- 2 Family
- 3 From Birth to Breadwinner
- 4 Impressions and Identity
- 5 In Sickness and in Health
- 6 Old Age
- 7 Second Spring
- Epilogue
- Appendix: Endowment Deed of the Atik Valide Vakfı (VGM, D. 1766)
- Notes
- References
- Index
5 - In Sickness and in Health
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 Ancestry
- 2 Family
- 3 From Birth to Breadwinner
- 4 Impressions and Identity
- 5 In Sickness and in Health
- 6 Old Age
- 7 Second Spring
- Epilogue
- Appendix: Endowment Deed of the Atik Valide Vakfı (VGM, D. 1766)
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
It describes how this pleasurable hamam has suffered over the course of time and what the marks of these sufferings are; how it has been injured by the earthquakes and fires that ravaged Istanbul; as how the atmosphere inside, pleasant to the bather, is harmful to the noble building; and how the imperial orders penned by the servants of the Sublime Porte allow this poor one to understand how the architects of the imperial chamber went about to restore health to this lofty hamam.
Symptoms: Evidence for Renovations
By the late eighteenth century, the continual use and the fires and earthquakes that so frequently afflict Istanbul had begun to take a toll on Çemberlitaş Hamamı, as the inscription inside as well as the accumulation of archival documents about repairs and renovations suggest. Certainly, improvements to the structure and particularly to the waterways supplying the hamam had been made earlier (and continued to be made later); however, the late eighteenth century constitutes a distinct station in Çemberlitaş Hamamı's life cycle, marked by the first signs of ageing and more extensive and frequent renovations. Taking better care of the existing bathhouses of Istanbul, rather than building new ones, also became an imperative after 1768. In July 1768, an imperial decree prohibited the construction of any new hamams in the city, because of the serious strain on the urban water and fuel supply:
I order the head of the court architects that[:]
Although the existing hamams built in Istanbul and Üsküdar and Galata and in the connected provinces and in Eyüp on the Golden Horn and in the villages on [the shores of the] Bosphorus are sufficient for the people of the present neighbourhoods, for some time some people have built several single baths and several double baths, which are unnecessary, in the previously mentioned neighbourhoods in Istanbul and Üsküdar and Galata and the connected provinces, with the intention of generating income for themselves[.]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cemberlitas Hamami in IstanbulThe Biographical Memoir of a Turkish Bath, pp. 153 - 172Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018