Script

This is the My Dark Path Podcast

 The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is one of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world, with 61 streets and over 4,000 shops covering 330,000 square feet or about the area of 6 football fields.  Between 250,000 and 400,000 people visit it daily.  This may make it first among the world's most-visited tourist attractions, with about 91 million annual visitors.  And for many of us, we are likely to know the Grand Bazaar from the outside than the interior.  In the 2012 movie Skyfall, you’ll recall that James Bond rode a motorcycle across its massive roof that highlighted the architecture and bustling market of the Brand Bazaar.

While my trip didn’t resemble any of the hallmarks of a James Bond adventure, I did get to visit this massive, historic marketplace.  As I approached the northern gates, I found myself walking alongside a distinguished older gentleman who appeared to be headed in the same direction.  We started talking, and he introduced himself as Mehmet and described his shop that he had owned for over 25 years in the bazaar.   As we walked to his stall, we first discussed a city we both love, Zurich, Switzerland. He traveled there regularly to visit family who had immigrated there from Turkey.  After entering the bazaar, we navigated through several halls lined with shops and finally arrived at his store, where he graciously offered me a small cup of mint herbal tea, and I purchased a roll of pistachio pastries. 

Our conversation turned to the reasons why I was in the country and my interest in the dark paths of the world’s history, science, and paranormal.  Finally, I asked if he knew of anything paranormal about the Grand Bazaar.  He paused, his kind, weathered face tightening while he spoke the words: “there are some things we aren’t meant to know.”  It was clear he didn’t want to say more.  We returned to other topics, and eventually, I took my leave of him and his shop.

As I spent the better part of 2 hours strolling under the covered bazaar, I wondered, how could a place with 91 million annual visitors be haunted?  There were too many people to make the building a reasonably haunted one.

Perhaps that is true.  While there is much to know about the history of the bazaar, there are things that are hidden by the centuries the history of this massive facility, events that perhaps we don’t want to know, but as seekers of truth, we are compelled to walk under the ancient ceilings and look behind the antique walls of this extraordinary space.  There are things we want to know, even if we aren’t meant to.

Hi!  I'm MF Thomas, and as I sit here tonight writing this introduction, I’m looking out over the city of Istanbul that straddles the eastern tip of the European continent and the western tip of the Asian continent.  Istanbul, a city more than two millennia old, unfolds before me, glittering with modern towners and ageless mosques, all lit in the night.

While my trip here involves research for an upcoming novel, I’ve outlined seven episodes about Istanbul – and in My Dark Path style, stories from the city’s history, scientific discoveries, serial killers, crime, UFOs, hauntings and espionage.  While these seven episodes won’t drop all in sequence, I’ll release them all by the end of 2023.  If you like a deep dive on a particular geographic focus, you’ll definitely like our mini-series, Secrets of the Soviets, which is only available only on Patreon.  There, you'll get stories about Soviet UFOs, paranormal research, serial killers, and more based on a trip I was able to make to Moscow in 2021.

You can find the link to My Dark Path Plus on Patreon in the show notes or on MyDarkPath.com.  We’re putting out new videos regularly on Youtube and experimenting with shorts as well.  And just in case you think I only share the positive comments here, well, here's a rather stern rebuke I got from one youtube short, "Soi Boy Without Werner Von Braun we'd all be speaking Russian now.  I'm sure there's an Ivory Tower somewhere with a dunce seat for you.”  Well, Jim, I appreciate your comments – and I think we agree that we are very blessed to live in a country that everyone wants to come to and allows everyone the opportunity to reach their potential – no matter where they came from. 

But whether or not we agree on everything, Thank you for walking the dark paths of the world with me.  I’m so grateful for your support.  Thanks for your patience as I'm not publishing episodes as often as I'd like right now – my work responsibilities have been unusually heavy the last 6 months, and I've been dedicating some of my time to learning how to produce youtube videos.  But as I reclaim a bit of my time, I’ll get back to the regular release schedule here on the podcast and on YouTube.  With that, let’s get started with Episode 54, Gold, Ghosts & Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar

Part 1

In preparing for my trip, I read the comprehensive book Istanbul: City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World by historian Thomas F. Madden.  It’s an excellent history but also humbling.  It’s true in every part of life - the moment we acquire some knowledge, we’re shown that there is even more knowledge to gain.  And so, it will be impossible to adequately convert 2,400 years of history into a few paragraphs…but we can’t talk about the Grand Bazaar without some context.

The area that would become Istanbul started as a Greek colony named Byzantium.  It quickly flourished due to its strategic location along the Bosporus Strait, which connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. In 330 AD, Byzantium was chosen by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great as the new capital of the Roman Empire and was renamed Constantinople. This marked the beginning of a new era for the city.

Under the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople became a grand metropolis renowned for its opulence and architectural marvels. The city reached its zenith during the reign of Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century, with the construction of the iconic Hagia Sophia, a masterpiece of Byzantine architecture that still stands today. Constantinople remained the center of the Eastern Roman Empire until its fall to the Fourth Crusade in 1204.

The Byzantines managed to recapture Constantinople in 1261, but their rule was short-lived. In 1453, the city faced its most transformative event when it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire under the leadership of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror. Constantinople was renamed Istanbul, and it became the new capital of the Ottoman Empire, marking a significant shift in the city's cultural and political landscape.

Under Ottoman rule, Istanbul experienced a period of remarkable growth and development. The Ottoman sultans expanded the city with grand mosques, palaces, and public buildings. The most famous of these structures is the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, popularly known as the Blue Mosque, constructed in the early 17th century.

The population of Istanbul also grew quickly after the conquest, increasing from 30,000 and 40,000 in 1453 to at least 600,000 by the year 1600.  At the same time, London only had a population of 200,000 people.  Only Beijing, China, and Vi-jay-ana-gara, India had more people. And along with that population growth came trade and economic growth in the city of Istanbul.

The construction of the future Grand Bazaars started during the winter of 1455, soon after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople.  Its construction was and was part of a broader initiative to stimulate economic prosperity in Istanbul.

The man who is credited with the bazaar’s creation was Sultan Mehmed II.  He was born on March 30, 1432, in Edirne, a town about 150 miles northwest of Istanbul.  Mehmed was the fourth son of the Ottoman sultan, Murad II, and Hümâ Hâtûn, an enslaved girl in his Murad’s harem.  H

is father’s reign was initially challenged by internal insurrection, but the Sultan Murad II prevailed and played a crucial role in expanding the Ottoman Empire’s trade and building infrastructure in its cities. 

Sultan Murad II sent his son Mehmed to the town of Amasya at the tender age of two.  Amasya is an area in northern Turkey close to the Black Sea and about 450 miles east of Istanbul. The city was administered by Murad II's brother Alaeddin Ali, the governor of the province.  

Educating Mehmed II was not simple. He was as combative as he was intelligent. He grew up to be a fierce military leader as well as an intellectual with interests in philosophy, art, and science.  He was well educated in the Quran and Islam as well as in Western ideas.  He also spoke several languages — Persian, Arabic, ancient Greek and Italian.

In 1444, Sultan Murad II abdicated the throne following his oldest son's death and more political turmoil. Murad made Mehmed the leader of the Ottoman Empire at the age of 12.

Two years later, prominent political and military leaders convinced Murad II to take the throne back to deal with crises on several fronts.  There were increasing tensions in the European region, turmoil in parts of the conquered territories, and a threat of Crusaders.

So at age 14, Sultan Mehmed II left his throne voluntarily, but he felt completely humiliated.  He moved to Manisa, a city near the Aegean Sea, where he married.  His move away from political responsibilities gave him an additional opportunity to gain knowledge in a wide range of subjects. 

His library was filled with books about religion, geometry, engineering, astronomy, arithmetic, archaeology, geography, and philosophy.

Two years later, in 1448, Mehmed II and his father fought together at the Battle of Kosovo, where he gained practical military experience.  Then, 3 years later, on his father’s death, Mehmed gained the throne for the second time on February 18, 1451.  His experiences filled his mind with the idea that he should capture Constantinople. His external foes and internal rivals were not concerned about his plans.  Europe an nations and the Byzantium empire, remembering his brief and weak former reign, didn’t see him as a threat.  And within the empire, his authority was still not firmly established.  Yet the idea of taking Istanbul never was far from the young sultan’s mind.

The city of Istanbul was thought to be unconquerable.  Many had tried to take it from the Byzantine Empire and failed.  According to historians, Mehmed II built an army of between 100,000 and 200,000 soldiers. His strategy was to surround the Byzantine capital from both sea and land.  Then, Mehmed II ordered an unprecedented maneuver, requiring his soldiers to carry warships over the countryside by rolling them on logs.  Doing this, he moved many ships overland on modern Istanbul's European side and thus surprised his enemy.

They then attacked the city walls with a barrage of cannonballs. And in the final step of the 50-day military campaign, his army dug an underground tunnel and planted heavy explosives under the wall. Their detonation, coupled with cannonball strikes, broke a portion of the wall, creating an opening for the Ottoman troops.

On May 29, 1453, the city fell, ending the Byzantine Empire's centuries-old rule.  Mehmed was just 21 years old.

What came next was also unusual.  Perhaps it was his broad education that caused him to reconsider the traditional treatment of a city lost to an enemy.  Originally, Mehmed had planned to let his army sack the city for 3 days.  Sacking a city was to unleash havoc upon the inhabitants, pillaging homes, businesses, and churches and seizing valuable goods such as gold, silver, artwork, and other treasures. A sacking was marked by indiscriminate violence, including murder, rape, and enslavement.

But on the day of victory, Mehmed countermanded his order and minimized the destruction of the city.  This act, whether generated by mercy or wisdom, started his effort to actively rebuilt the city of Istanbul – fifty years later it was the largest city in Europe.

Part 2

The Grand Bazaar finally reached its current scope by the beginning of the 17th century.

As the Ottoman Empire reached across three continents and controlled virtually all the roads and communications between Asia and Europe, the Bazaar became the hub of the Mediterranean trade.

According to several European travelers, the market was even unrivaled in Europe.  Its goods were unparalleled in their abundance, variety, and quality.  We know from these European visitors that the Grand Bazaar had a square layout, with two main perpendicular main roads crossing in the middle and a third road running along the outer perimeter.

Around the year 1638, the Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi provided an important historical description of the Bazaar and its customs. Within the Bazaar, there were 67 roads.  Each road was named for the sellers of a specific type of product.  The Bazaar also included several squares that were used for daily prayers.  Additionally, there were 5 mosques, 7 fountains.  Eighteen gates controlled access to the market.  They were opened each day in the morning and closed in the evening.  Visitors had access to 3,000 shops within the bazaar, plus 300 shops surrounded the bazaar outside the gates.

But its growth didn’t come without problems. Fires hit the Grand Bazaar regularly. The first occurred in 1515.  A second major fire occurred in 1548.  Other fires burned the complex in 1588, 1618 and then continued almost every 20 to 30 years until the particularly destructive fire of 1701 forced several parts of the complex to be completely rebuilt in 1730–1731.

The last major catastrophe happened in 1894 when a strong earthquake that rocked Istanbul.  The last restoration was completed in 1980, and it included the elimination of advertising posters across the market.

The structure of every hall essentially provides a series of bays created by stone columns. 

The sunlight in the bazaar comes from rectangular windows placed right under the roof. Due to the scarce illumination, the building was only open during daylight hours.

While the risk of fires and limited trading hours might have been a serious downside, there was a benefit to concentrating trade into a single building.  The Bazaar provided the highest security against theft and uprising. Gates were always closed at night, and it was patrolled by guards who were hired by the merchants' guilds.  Apparently, to access the complex during night hours, an imperial edict was required. The only official time it officially opened at night was in 1867 to host a feast to market the return of Sultan Abdülaziz from Egypt.  Reportedly, he crossed the illuminated market riding a horse to the accolades of the locals. 

The historian Leik Gulersoy summarized the Bazaar in the following way:  “[it] had an uneventful life, being opened with prayers in the morning, daily prayer at certain times were performed, and the traders smoked their long pipes and held their beads; craftsmen worked their hammers, pens, needles, closed their stalls before sundown and set on their way home each in a different direction.  Foreign witnesses…recorded with amazement that a lot of shops have remained open for long hours without the owners, or an apprentice or anyone responsible in it.” 

Despite the Bazaar’s immense wealth and its seemly casual security, over the centuries, theft was extremely rare.  Gulersoy described the security of the Bazaar as something like "a gold case in an iron case."  But human nature is human nature.  Willie Sutton, the famous American bank robber, reportedly said that he robbed banks because that’s where the money is.  And, the Grand Bazaar, with its incredible stock of goods and gold, would not be free of a major theft forever.

Part 3

The Gold Theft of 1591 is one of the great crimes of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar.  I found a few references to it but couldn’t get any meaningful details until I found the book The History of the Grand Bazaar.  Converting the book into English using Google Translate was slow until I found a used translated copy published in 1980.

It was in the winter of 1591.  The Bazaar started its morning routine, its old bones creaking through the same morning exercises that it had performed for a millennium and would continue to perform through the present day.  As the gates were opened and the shopkeepers started laying out their goods, a cry when up from store owners across the bazaar.  Many discovered the unthinkable.  Some of the safe deposit chests, where coins were kept overnight, had their seals broken and their contents stolen.  And it wasn’t just a few coins, but 30,000 were missing.

Now, to comprehend the magnitude of this loss, I should share a little about the gold coins that were in circulation in Istanbul in 1591.  The records don’t describe the coins that were stolen, but they were most likely the Altin gold coin.  The Altin was the main currency of the Ottoman Empire and came in three different denominations – the Sultani, the poet, and the zero Mahbub.  The Sultani was a high-value gold coin used for larger transactions.  The polat was a mid-value gold coin, worth half of the Sultani, and zero mahbub was an even smaller denomination gold coin, worth half of the polat or a quarter of the Sultani.  It’s hard to compare the value of a Sultani to modern currencies, but I found a few references stating that a single coin could rent a modest home for several months, buy a year's supply of food or hire the services of a skilled craftsman.

Back-of-the-envelope math would put the value of this theft at an astounding 180 million in today's dollars.  So this was not just a small crime.  Not that any theft is excusable.  We see the cumulative effect of lawlessness today as a tsunami of theft destroy cities in real-time today.  But this was a robbery of epic proportions.

This number of coins also couldn't be taken out of the bazaar unnoticed, but the coins were missing.  The average weight of a sultani coin was about 7.2 grams or a quarter of an ounce.  Thirty thousand coins would have weighed about 670 pounds – or the equivalent of 3 grown men.  But it’s the volume of coins that seems unusually burdensome to have stolen from the Bazaar.  Think of a stack of 30,000 nickels for a rough idea…perhaps something you could fit in a modern refrigerator.

The unprecedented nature of the crime ripped through the city and the government.  The sultan created a commission consisting of Istanbul's Islamic judge, the Commander-in-chief of the Janissaries or military, and the Police Superintendent.  This group spearheaded the investigation.

Their first action shut down the inner bazaar for fifteen days.  Soldiers went stall by stall, searching every trader’s inventory and space….all three thousand of them.  All the trader's belongings were counted, and their books were looked at. But nothing was found.  It did not appear that the thief was a shopowner.

With every passing day without a culprit, anxiety increased across the city.  For every citizen of Istanbul, the robbery of the bazaar was akin to Doomsday.  And the crisis extended beyond the breakdown of law and order.  The extraordinary loss of money started a credit crisis where everyone who was owed money wanted to collect on it for fear that they wouldn’t have access to funds.  For example, a water carrier started to collect all the money he was owed for the water he sold on credit.  This behavior was unprecedented in a world where the security of the bazaar was unquestioned.  But the robbery, still unpunished, broke the confidence of the people.  The whole city was in sorrow.

But weeks into the fruitless search, the commission decided to change their methods and started to rachet up the intensity of their interrogations.  And that meant torture.  Torture and capital punishment were so common in the ottoman empire that there was even a fountain of execution in Istanbul where the chief executioner plus his assistant would wash their hands after every beheading.

The Ottoman Empire's executioners were never considered to be merciful.  For example, in May 1622, the teenage Sultan Osman II suffered an excruciating death by "compression of the testicles" at the hands of the executioner known as Pehlivan the Oil Wrestler.  Even as I reread that sentence for the 10th time…there’s clearly a lot going on in the 1500s and 1600s in Istanbul.

Despite a lot of other examples of torture and execution, I can’t find the specific techniques that the commission used to interrogate suspects in the Grand Bazaar theft.  But there were several common techniques used at the time. 

A common and simple technique was called the Bastinado, where the suspect was restrained but with their feet exposed.  In other cases, the suspect’s feet would be secured in the form of foot stocks.  Then the torturer would use a rod or whip to strike the soles of the suspect's feet repeatedly.  This form of punishment is particularly painful due to the high concentration of nerve endings in the soles of the feet. Moreover, the skin on this part of the body is less protected and conditioned for impact compared to other parts of the body, and damage can lead to significant pain and impairment.  Simple and effective.

Cage confinement was also common in the Ottoman Empire at this time.  And it wasn’t just for use with the common people.  When a new sultan ascended to the throne, it was often used to consolidate power and prevent others from trying to take the throne.  At the Topkapi place in Istanbul, there was a suite of rooms where Ottoman rulers were kept imprisoned for years.  For common criminals, the cage would have been too small to stand up or lie down and would have been kept outside to expose the suspect to public view.

It's likely that both of these were used to torture suspects.  But whatever techniques were used, the commission found no clues about who the thieves might be.

Perhaps frustrated with the fruitless torture investigations, the seasoned Police Superintendent began to observe various merchants and store owners. During this surveillance, he identified peculiar behavior from a young man who was renting a room from a Persian shopkeeper. The Persian merchant sold musk and ambergris outside the gateway leading to the jewelry section of the bazaar.

Something compelled the Police Superintendent to inspect the Persian's shop. In the basement, they found several bags, which were presumably used to store gold, but were now empty. Then an even more thorough search revealed the missing gold beneath the floorboards. The young man had ingeniously hidden the loot by arranging the coins in flat layers and then covering them with matting under the floor, ensuring the mass of coins stayed concealed.  The young man admitted his crime and reportedly said: "Don't blame anyone. This musk-seller Persian is not guilty. I'll have to suffer the punishment of my crime.”

Of course, everyone was angry with the boy as his crime had revealed that the bazaar was not as secure as everyone had come to believe.  The police superintendent reportedly planned to have the young man killed by torture.  As this torture only had to result in death, the police superintendent had more options available.  Impaling was a very common method for execution at the time, especially for thieves.  In this case, a long, sharp stake would be introduced into the anus, then the condemned would be stood up, allowing gravity to slowly allow the stake to completely run through the body, exiting at the shoulder or neck.  If major organs were avoided, a person could survive this for several days.

Perhaps because the thief knew that impalement or similarly horrific death was expected, he  asked a favor, requesting an easy death from the ruler.   Because of the difficulty in sourcing this story, it’s not clear who the leader was who the young man appealed to. But it's likely that it was the Sultan, Murad III.  No doubt, the sultan had wondered what the thief was like, as talk of the crime was the most discussed single act of criminality in the city in years. 

I can’t imagine that the thief had any reason for optimism that his request would be honored.  The Sultans Ottoman Empire at this time were bloodthirsty.  Suleiman I, who reigned from 1520 to 1566, murdered two of his sons and, during a campaign in Hungary, massacred up to 200,000 people.  When he besieged Vienna in 1529, he lit a huge bonfire in front of the city and burned local peasants alive by the hundreds.  Before returning to Istanbul, he enslaved scores of young women to bring to his harem.

So, it was in this environment of punishment that the young thief asked for mercy.

And the sultan responded with unusual mercy.  Why?  Had he’d seen other officials stealing much more wealth from the state?  Was he impressed by the audacity of the young man?  The reasons for his incredible mercy are undocumented.  We only know that he ordered death by ordinary hanging.

The thief was hung until dead.  The money was given back to its owners. The bazaar reopened.  Daily life in the city turned back to normal.

Part 4

Of course, this is an interesting story in and of itself.  But I've been wrestling with 3 elements of the bazaar, searching for something that could explain.  First, how did the young man manage to steal a huge volume of coins and hide them for so long?  Second, how did the police finally find the young man?  Third, what explains the Sultan's mercy?

And then, I’m going to share about the supernatural reputation of the Grand Bazaar.  Reportedly, the bazaar has secret portals that allow people to be immediately transported anywhere.

I’ve not shared this last element with you yet.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of this claim when I first met the kind shopkeeper who told me that some things are better left unknown.  The rumor that the bazaar has portals to other places was quite broadly known.

I will leave this episode here, with the Grand Bazaar still the most visited place on earth and it’s gold recovered but with the reasons still murky, still dark and unclear.  I have hypotheses that I'm exploring that I'll share in another episode that will include another haunted location in Istanbul, the Basilica Cistern.

The cistern is near the Hagia Sophia, with its origins tracing back to the 6th century. During this era, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian found the necessity to establish a reservoir for storing fresh water, essential for his palace's needs. Historical records document that a staggering 7,000 slaves built this immense cistern. Spanning an expansive area of nearly 100,000 square feet (approximately equivalent to the size of two football fields), the cistern boasts a water-holding capacity of 2,800,000 cubic feet. Inside, a multitude of columns can be found, a significant portion of which appear to have been repurposed from various edifices across the empire. Many of these columns exhibit intricate carvings and designs.

I have a hypothesis that I'm researching about the connection between these two spaces, and I'll share more in an upcoming episode.  In the meantime, thank you for listening to My Dark Path.  I'm MF Thomas, creator and host, and I produce the show with our engineer and creative director, Dom Purdie.

If you can, please subscribe to My Dark Path Plus on Patreon.  Your $5 monthly subscription gives you access to exclusive episodes and supports the expansion of the show.  I’m grateful to each of our Plus subscribers!  If you can’t subscribe, please take a moment and give My Dark Path a 5-star rating wherever you're listening.  It really helps the show, and we love to hear from you.

Again, thanks for walking the dark paths of history, science, and the paranormal with me.  Until next time, good night.