Elon Honors in Turkey January 2024: Day 4: Turkish and Islamic Art Museum, Turkish Archeological Museum, and Travel to Pamukkale

Day 4: Turkish and Islamic Art Museum, Turkish Archeological Museum, and Travel to Pamukkale

Our last day in Istanbul was a cold rainy one full of museums. Throughout both museums we visited today, we often connected to themes of anti-materialist Muslim culture, and the Turkish desire to collect material symbols of their power. The first stop today was the Turkish and Islamic Art Museum located in the Hippodrome area in the palace of Pargali Ibrahim Pasha, a close advisor of Suleiman the Magnificent. The museum had many different exhibits displaying art and describing the historical period surrounding it, however the holy relics were the most emphasized.

The holy relics were a very important exhibit in the museum. For 400 years, the holy site of Kaaba was under Ottoman rule, so when parts of it like doors and locks stopped working, the Turks would make new ones, and store the old ones as holy relics. The other half of the exhibit contained artifacts related to the prophet Mohammed. The exhibit displayed things like Arabic descriptions of Mohammed, and the prophet’s beard hair. I was surprised to find that the hair was barely visible, so you had to have some level of faith that it was there. It was interesting how much importance was put on these artifacts considering the aversion of Muslims to material objects and idolatry.

We then made our way to the Turkish Archeological Museum. The museum was founded in 1891 by Osman Hamdi Bey after he studied archeology in Europe. One of his greatest finds was a tomb (pictured below) with the only likeness of Alexander the Great created by people who may have known him. He helped discover some other tombs, like one depicting ancient women paid to cry at funerals, and one Egyptian sarcophagus that had been repurposed and used to bury someone in Lebanon.

The museum included a large section full of different Greek and Roman statues. This section offered a lot of insight into how Turkey's Greek and Roman past interacts with its current Muslim culture. The Greek art was largely detailed depictions of human bodies in motion, and the Greeks believed the healthier your body is, the better your soul is. However, Muslims have little attachment to the body, and ban depictions of humans in their art. Greeks also believed that women should be covered up both because they were expected to be matronly, and because it was believed that they were more susceptible to harm and possession. There is a similar standard of modesty and desire to “protect” women in modern day Turkey.