- 2 days ago
Explores how Istanbul, the Bosphorus Strait, and nearby Edirne and Bursa served as vital geopolitical and trading crossroads bridging Europe and Asia.
博斯普鲁斯海峡本身不是古代丝绸之路的陆上路径，但作为伊斯坦布尔（古君士坦丁堡/拜占庭）的关键水道，它是丝绸之路西端终点区域的核心枢纽，连接黑海与地中海，是古代及现代“新丝绸之路”欧亚物流的必经咽喉.
博斯普鲁斯海峡本身不是古代丝绸之路的陆上路径，但作为伊斯坦布尔（古君士坦丁堡/拜占庭）的关键水道，它是丝绸之路西端终点区域的核心枢纽，连接黑海与地中海，是古代及现代“新丝绸之路”欧亚物流的必经咽喉.
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TravelTranscript
00:02As a reporter, I've travelled the Middle East for many years.
00:06It's an area that has always fascinated me.
00:08But in my work, I've mainly covered its war zones, its crises and its tragedies.
00:13This journey, which takes me down the Silk Road in the footsteps of Marco Polo,
00:17gives me the opportunity of exploring the great historical and cultural significance of this part of the world,
00:23its ancient melting pot of peoples and civilizations that have contributed so much to our own.
00:52We sometimes forget that Turkey actually begins in Europe, in the ancient province of Thrace,
00:57a piece of the old Ottoman Empire that has been pushed back to the southeastern corner of the Balkan Peninsula.
01:10The Turks and Islam have been at home here in Ediyan since the 14th century,
01:15when the Silk Road's days of glory were starting to decline.
01:30What could be more fascinating but also more uncertain than the border between East and West?
01:34Where should it be drawn? In Venice or, for example, here in Ediyan?
01:40Founded by the Roman Emperor Hadrian as Adrianople, it was conquered in 1361 by the Ottoman Turks,
01:46who made it the new capital of their empire, as well as a base for sending their armies off to
01:50conquer southern Europe.
01:55Situated just a few kilometers away from the borders of Bulgaria and Greece,
01:59Ediyan is truly a Balkan city.
02:01From a bustling Ottoman metropolis during the era of the Silk Road,
02:05it shrank to a sleepy little town after the communist countries of Eastern Europe closed off their borders,
02:10and the iron curtain came down.
02:16This is the legendary founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,
02:20the father of Turkish secularism, who gave women the right to vote
02:24and adopted the Latin alphabet for writing the Turkish language.
02:28Today is an ordinary day, there's no special celebration,
02:30but we can see that dozens of people have come to lay carnations at his feet.
02:35In an interesting juxtaposition of symbols, the father of modern, secular Turkey
02:39stands at the foot of the Grand Mosque of Ediyan.
02:43The Selimiye Mosque was commissioned by the great Sultan Selim II.
02:48Built in just six years and completed in 1574,
02:51it would go on to become a historic stronghold of Islam on the European continent.
02:58Around the mosque itself is a complex known as Kuliyye,
03:01containing a school, a hospital, a library and a Turkish bath.
03:06This architectural masterpiece would serve as the model for all religious structures,
03:10built by the Ottomans with its four tapered minarets,
03:13and above all, its monumental dome, measuring 31 meters in diameter.
03:31It really is very spectacular.
03:33We've just entered the land of Islam,
03:34and this is our first mosque on the Silk Road.
03:37We couldn't have picked a better place to start,
03:38because this is the magnum opus of one of the greatest architects in history,
03:42Mima Sinan, and this is the largest dome to be found in Ottoman architecture.
03:51Sinan was an architectural genius.
03:53For this mosque, he designed a system of eight supporting pillars
03:56that hold up its enormous dome and create a vertiginous sense of perspective.
04:03The great mosque testifies to the grandeur of the Ottoman Empire,
04:06which at the time ruled over almost one third of Europe.
04:19Today, the Thracian Turks are confined to a small region around Ediem,
04:23but they're still fiercely attached to the traditions inherited from their past.
04:27For example, traditional Turkish wrestling.
04:29Every year, the big annual tournament is held in Kirkpenaar Stadium,
04:33just outside the city.
04:36The Turkish word, Yagli Guresh, means fighting with oil.
04:40And as we can see, the wrestlers really are coating themselves with cooking oil.
04:46The oil is supposed to make the wrestling more difficult and more technical.
05:01OK, everyone's got enough?
05:04OK.
05:05Good luck, guys.
05:08The Kirkpenaar tournament is the most famous tournament in Turkey.
05:11It's held on the spot where the janissary camp once stood.
05:15The janissaries were the Ottoman Emperor's special shock troops.
05:18In fact, the gypsy drums and fifes reproduced the marching music
05:22of the elite corps mounting an attack.
05:25Legend has it that in the 14th century,
05:27two brothers fought each other in the janissary camp.
05:30Neither was able to get the upper hand,
05:32and they ended up dying of exhaustion.
05:34The wrestlers wear extremely sturdy leather pants,
05:37which, since the oily bodies are hard to grip,
05:39their opponents try to grab in any way they can.
05:43These wrestlers are called pelivan,
05:46from the Persian word meaning hero.
05:49And we can see where the French expression,
05:51strong as a Turk, comes from when we watch them.
05:54What's the connection between Turkish wrestling
05:56and the kind of wrestling that was practiced here back in ancient times?
05:59The Greeks oiled their bodies and wrestled on marble tables.
06:02And they were naked, while you're clothed. Why is that?
06:08Yes, that's absolutely right, wrestling is found in Greek mythology.
06:12But there we're talking about mythological times.
06:15Religions are born, the Islamic religion emerged, the world began to develop.
06:20Things aren't the same as they were.
06:23According to our religious beliefs, human health is extremely important.
06:27In other words, wrestling on marble is harmful to our health.
06:31And according to our beliefs, to Islamic principles,
06:35the lower part of the male body must be covered.
06:37So we wear leather pants, the kispit.
06:41All of the movements in oil wrestling are done so as not to harm the body.
06:49Why do you cover yourselves in olive oil or sunflower oil?
06:55We use oil because it's an essential part of the sport.
06:59It makes it much more difficult to seize your opponent when he's moving.
07:04In other styles of wrestling, you usually start off by grabbing the limbs.
07:08But in oil wrestling, we wrestle with the kispit, the leather pants, and not with the body.
07:14In other words, we have to grab the pants, focus on the kispit rather than on the opponent.
07:19Oil makes things more complicated and it's been used since the very beginning.
07:23Of course, wrestling without oil exists too, but our wrestling tradition is with oil.
07:34When you wrestle, do you feel like you're practicing a sport
07:37or do you feel like you're preserving a very old cultural tradition?
07:43Both.
07:44We practice a sport, we do wrestling, we train all the time.
07:51Just like sumo wrestlers in Japan, oil wrestlers are highly respected in Turkey.
07:57It's a very difficult sport to do.
07:59And because it's so difficult, everybody respects them.
08:03In ordinary daily life, when people see them in town, at the market, anywhere,
08:07they give them respect.
08:09Everyone loves them.
08:11They have a special place in our lives.
08:15How do you win in a wrestling match?
08:21Well, let me explain it first by using one of our expressions.
08:24We say that if your belly sees the sun, you're the loser.
08:28Go ahead, show them a hold.
08:29Let's take a kundegöt.
08:31Let's take a kundegöt.
08:32Let's take a kundegöt.
08:33Let's take a kundegöt.
08:34It's a normal kundegöt.
08:35Yes.
08:39Right, that's a win.
08:42Okay, I can see it's over.
08:57On the outskirts of Ediyan, the Bayezid II complex was built in the 15th century by the great sultan Bayezid
09:03II.
09:06This is one of the most remarkable examples of a kuliyyeh, that is, of a charitable foundation erected around a
09:12mosque.
09:19The complex is especially famous for its Dar el-Shifa, or House of Health.
09:23It was a state-of-the-art medical facility at the time, with a free hospital and a mental asylum
09:28that continued to operate until the Turco-Russian War of 1878.
09:33The historian Akan Akeneci oversees the conservation of the site.
09:39But why did the Ottoman Empire decide to conquer Ediyan and to make this city its capital?
09:44And why did it build such a lavish complex, with a mosque and especially a hospital?
09:51Ediyan was a point of transit between the Silk Road and all the roads leading to the west.
09:57The Ottomans became aware of its importance and they came here because it led to the Balkans and to Europe.
10:05Right away they set about building this complex, based on the idea of the welfare state.
10:10It was to do with giving importance to the human being.
10:14Sheikh Ebed Ali said, where human beings flourish, the state will flourish too.
10:20First the imarets were built, kitchens that gave free meals to the poor.
10:24In the area just behind us, for example, free meals were served for 150 people.
10:30Next to it there was a hospital, which was also free.
10:34Throughout the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, patients came from all over Anatolia and the entire world.
10:55We know that Arabic, Islamic and by extension Turkish medicine was far ahead of Western medicine at the end of
11:00the Middle Ages.
11:01In what way? What was innovative here?
11:05We know that all of the sciences and the arts in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries were moving from
11:11east to west, with people like Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni and Avicenna.
11:17We also know that the trade routes, the Silk Road, the spice route, contributed to that.
11:23So if we take this place, the Bayezid II complex in the 15th century, treatments for the mentally ill included
11:30music, the sound of water, aromatherapy and different activities.
11:35You spoke about medical knowledge that came from Bukhara, about Avicenna, Ibn Sina, but this road was also known as
11:43the spice route.
11:45Were there spices or plants that were brought to the Balkans to be used as remedies in the hospital?
11:52We know that the rose is a plant that came to us via the spice route and many other kinds
11:57of products followed the same route west.
12:02An example of one of those products is rose syrup, which was used in the Bayezid II complex.
12:08Edirne was a major rose center during the Ottoman era.
12:13The roses cultivated in this region were sent to the west and Anatolia.
12:17Later they were used in making various syrups, sherbets.
12:22At the Bayezid II complex, patients were fed rose syrup to calm them down.
12:28Here, roses were not only used in syrups but also for their fragrance in treatments for the mentally ill and
12:34other patients.
12:41The Ottoman Turks, who originally came from Asia to subsequently rule in Europe, as far as the gates of Vienna,
12:46deserve our recognition.
12:48They were the intermediaries between two worlds who greatly contributed to the interchange of ideas and techniques that occurred along
12:54the Silk Road.
13:09There is one city, the most legendary of all, that epitomizes this coming together of Europe and the East.
13:15The intersection of Christianity and Ummah, the world of Islam.
13:19It is, of course, Istanbul.
13:24Once called the New Rome, it is now Turkey's largest city with over 14 million inhabitants, as well as its
13:31economic and cultural nerve center.
13:33Dozens of remnants of the Silk Road can still be found here today.
13:36For example, the famous Hagia Sophia Basilica, where a young Marco Polo went to pray before starting off in his
13:42journey to China with his father and his uncle.
13:45It is now a mosque, which overlooks the esplanade of the old Byzantine hippodrome.
13:50It faces the famed Blue Mosque, which was built to be its counterpart in the 17th century.
13:57Bridging Europe and Asia, the Greco-Roman world and the Arab-Islamic world, Istanbul is still one of the world's
14:04most fascinating cities even today.
14:05It was founded as Byzantium. It then became Constantinople in 324, when the Emperor Constantine made it the eastern capital
14:13of the Roman Empire and was finally conquered by the Turks in 1453.
14:18When the Turkish soldiers came through its gigantic walls, they found an almost deserted city.
14:22They even wondered where they were. The few remaining inhabitants told them in Greek,
14:27Eistenpolin, you are in the city. That's the most probable etymology, Eistenpolin, Istanbul.
14:47The famous chestnuts of Anatolia. The Turks are nuts about them.
14:57On the Golden Horn, the estuary where Byzantium once built its boats, I'm intrigued by the sight of dozens of
15:02men who spend their days fishing off the bridge.
15:05They aren't doing this for fun. They're refugees from the Syrian civil war, which has forced millions of civilians into
15:11exile since 2011.
15:15Over the centuries, the Silk Road's routes constantly changed in relation to the wars that were being waged.
15:20To get to Bukhara, for example, the Byzantines avoided the Turkish Empire by travelling to the north of the Black
15:26Sea.
15:26In our case, we're going east, and in order to avoid the war in Syria, we'll be going through northern
15:30Turkey. History repeats itself.
15:34On the other side of the Golden Horn, the fortified Galata Tower overlooks the old Christian quarter.
15:40The current medieval structure is also called the Genoese Tower because merchants from the Italian city of Genoa established a
15:46colony in Constantinople.
15:50Genoa and Venice were commercial rivals, which meant the Venetians were no longer welcome on the banks of the Bosphorus.
15:56That's perhaps one reason why Niccolo and Mafiopolo, Marco Polo's father and uncle, who were living in the city, decided
16:02to go further east in 1261 and try their luck in China.
16:11The Genoese Tower and the city's formidable ramparts were supposed to make Constantinople impregnable, as was the spectacular Basilica Cistern,
16:19which was built in the 6th century to collect rainwater.
16:23The underground cistern is more than 100 metres long and supported by 336 Corinthian-style columns.
16:30Few places are able to give us a sense of the bygone splendour of Byzantium as this ancient reservoir.
17:02The Gospers Tower and the Greatest Gospers Tower
17:02Istanbul lies on the Bosphorus, which in fact divides the old Greek city into two parts of Egypt.
17:06Separating Europe from Asia. Connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Mamara and then to the Mediterranean, this strait
17:13is one of the busiest sea routes in the world.
17:18Produced silk fabrics and enjoyed a monopoly in trading with the Europeans.
17:23For centuries, in order to maximise their profits, the Turks also tried to prevent raw silk.
17:31However, another tradition is still going strong in Bursa, a tradition that has had a deep influence on the Turkish
17:37imagination, called Karagöz, or shadow puppet theatre.
17:41In his modest tourist shop in the bazaar, Sinazi Şelikol brings these humorous and impertinent puppets to life.
17:50Karagöz and his friend Hacivat are supposed to have been bricklayers in Bursa in the 16th century who were executed
17:55by the Sultan
17:56because they told so many funny stories that it slowed down the construction of a mosque.
18:20Oh my god! I've prepared the screen, turned on the light, my luck has changed in Bursa. As I was
18:26on my way to the Orhan Mosk, I met a strange man. His name was Karagöz.
18:30He's a gypsy. When we speak, everyone watches us.
18:34This is shadow theatre we're talking about, so why are the puppets so colourful?
18:40It's true that in Egyptian's shadow theatre, everything is dark, there's no colour at all.
18:45But they use colour, for example, in India, in Indonesia, in Thailand and China.
18:53Color is used because it attracts people's attention. So that's why Karagöz puppets are colourful.
19:01In the old days, they were coloured with alizarin. Traditionally, alizarin was made from plants or insects.
19:08That's how natural colours were obtained, but not anymore. Today we use watercolour inks.
19:18Sinasi, why do you think Karagöz and Hashivat became so popular in Turkey?
19:24Everyone liked them because they represented the people.
19:29They spoke about things that people were interested in, and they talked about things like corruption.
19:41Karagöz, Karagöz, where is the dancer?
19:44She left a long time ago.
19:47Oh, my Karagöz, what is this?
19:49May the clergy break your head!
19:51You've taken down the screen, now it's in pieces. I'm going to tell the host.
19:56Well, best of luck. Please forgive us for any slip of the tongue.
20:00Is Karagöz just as irreverent today as it was in the past?
20:06Karagöz is not in fact a show for children.
20:08It's for everyone from 3 to 4 years old up to 80 or 90 years old.
20:13Before the play begins, the Karagöz puppeteer goes out in front of the screen and looks to see who's in
20:18the audience.
20:19Then he improvises.
20:21For example, he says,
20:23Mrs. Sinelle is here, she speaks French very well.
20:26And he'll throw out a couple of French expressions.
20:28Or you might say,
20:30Ah, there's Alfred!
20:31And say a few words to him.
20:34Karagöz's performances are very flexible.
20:37Politics is also part of it.
20:40Karagöz's play has four parts to it.
20:42The prologue, the dialogue, which is the longest part, the main play, and the epilogue.
20:46The last part is always humorous.
20:48But in the second part, the dialogue, the Karagöz artist also talks about politics and current events.
20:54For example, he might say,
20:56Well, my Karagöz, what's the matter?
20:57Oh, the situation is very bad in Syria, in Iraq.
21:01Or he might talk about Erdogan.
21:04Nowadays, politicians pretend to like Karagöz, but in reality they don't because the puppets make fun of him.
21:09That's why politicians don't really like Karagöz very much.
21:17The Karagöz puppets are both light-hearted and serious at the same time, which can be a little bit perplexing.
21:22Their ambiguity is in fact much like the ambiguity of modern Turkey.
21:26A republic that is both secular and Islamist, turned towards Europe as well as towards the East.
21:46Located on the northwestern edge of Anatolia, Bursa was the last stop on the Silk Road's overland route.
21:52It was also from here that the Ottomans set out on their quest to expand their dynasty.
21:56And for several centuries, the Ottoman princes came back here to be buried in the Muradiyye.
22:02The exteriors of the twelve main tombs, or tuber, were designed in the Byzantine style of architecture.
22:09The Ottomans thus remained faithful to the nomadic origins and continued the tradition of returning to be buried together with
22:15their families, all in the same place.
22:18Even if they'd gone off to distant lands or conquered half a continent in their lifetime, their final resting place
22:23would be at home, in Bursa, in the complex of Sultan Murad II.
22:28In the mausoleums, the tombs of the Sultans, and other important persons, can be identified by the fact that their
22:33turbans were placed on top of the sarcophagus.
22:37All around them, the stuccoes and frescoes in the Oriental Rococo style, have been considerably restored over the centuries.
22:44It was Sultan Murad's son, Mehmed II, known as the Conqueror, who finally captured Constantinople in 1453 and made it
22:51the new Turkish capital.
23:15A good way to catch a glimpse of the past and to see how the Turks once lived back in
23:18the times of the Sultans and the final glory days of the Silk Road,
23:21is to take the side roads and head towards the mountains that tower over the city of Bursa.
23:29At the foot of Mount Uludag, the village of Kumalikizik seems to have been frozen in time.
23:36For centuries, passing through places such as these in Asia Minor were a must for travellers, painters, orientalist scholars or
23:43romantic poets in search of the misty lands of their fantasies of the East.
23:49Ever since then, the number of tourists wandering through the crafts and souvenir stores has steadily grown.
23:55But they still come with the same desire to explore the architectural mazes of these Balkan style villages.
24:01And to take in the atmosphere of an era in history when the Ottoman Empire was one of the most
24:06powerful in the world.
24:07An empire that was a bridge between Europe and the East along the Silk Road.
24:44Imagine the
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