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Kapalıçarşı stands the test of time -- with modifications
As Özbey put it, the Grand Bazaar has seen countless sultans and heads of state. “I clothed Anatolia and I fed Europe. I became the world’s first bank. I was a rented safe; people hid their riches in me. … Many valuable antiquities were found in me,” Özbey says, narrating in the first person as the Grand Bazaar. “I lived through countless disasters. I fell to the ground in earthquakes, fires even melted away my stones. … I became a symbol to the entire country. Those who wanted to harm my country always attacked me first. I learned what bullets were and what bombs were. And I also know more than anyone else about humanity. I’ve housed people of many religions, races and colors. I was joy for some and subsistence for others.”
In 1954 the Grand Bazaar was afflicted with a massive fire that raged through its corridors. Even shops that the flames did not reach were entirely destroyed along with all their goods by the sheer heat of the blaze; a total 1,660 shops were burned entirely. The bazaar has a long history of fires, though, stretching back to 1694. Earthquakes have also taken their toll, with some major ones occurring in 1509, 1765, 1894 and 1999; in the 1894 quake, 135 artisans and workers died. The bazaar also suffered immense structural damage during a massive earthquake in 1999. History has taken its toll on the structure, inevitably. But no matter what the disaster, be it fire or terrorism or an earthquake, the Kapalıçarşı has always persevered.
The bazaar also escaped some disasters, perhaps narrowly. Modernization of the structure was often done haphazardly, at one point resulting in bundles of electrical wires and telephone lines impossibly entangled running all along the ceiling through the building. The danger represented by this was addressed during Turgut Özal’s administration, with all the electrical cables moved underground. In 2002, though, it was discovered amidst flooring work that the electrical wiring was located in the same place as the water canals running underneath the bazaar. “We were living atop a bomb,” Özbey says in his book. “It was corrected to the extent possible, but certainly insufficient.”
The Grand Bazaar then and now
Beyond being in itself a historical structure, the Kapalıçarşı is, much like a museum, home to many artifacts of historical value. At the Halıcılar Sokağı-Acı Çeşme juncture in the bazaar (for a map, logon to www.kapalicarsi.org.tr) stands a 200-year-old kiosk that used to house a small muhallebi-maker’s shop. It is said that Mahmud II used to visit it from time to time. Today, it no longer serves desserts but is still a feast to the eyes of history lovers, standing firm in the middle of an otherwise busy thoroughfare in the bazaar.
Photos in the book from the Kapalıçarşı’s Cebeci Han, the bazaar’s oldest, tell a long story. In Ottoman times the han was the site where metal armor was manufactured. The original hearth and chimney of each shop in the han remain. In the 1960s the han was a virtual waste yard, chock-full of earthquake rubble. Due to the sheer mass of the material there, the ground floor of the han was raised 1.5-2 meters higher than the floor in the rest of the bazaar.
In more recent history, a two-kilometer-long table was set up along the main street running between the Grand Bazaar’s Beyazıt and Nuruosmaniye gates toward the Mahmutpaşa exit on June 20, 2000, in an attempt to break a Guinness record.
The Grand Bazaar by the numbers
The sprawling 45,000-square-meter covered bazaar is home to 64 streets and avenues and 16 hans. The Grand Bazaar has 22 doors and 3,600 shops in addition to branches of every major Turkish bank, a health clinic, a police station and a post office. In addition to police, the Grand Bazaar has its own team of private security guards. Its daily customer traffic ranges between 250,000 and 400,000. The Grand Bazaar proudly holds the title of the world’s oldest bank and the world’s oldest covered bazaar and is open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and closed on Sundays and the two Eids, according to the bazaar’s Web site (www.kapalicarsi.org.tr).
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