A Meeting of the Winds
We'd been talking about Byzantine ruins in and from Eyüp when Deniz asked me, Do you know why the storks always used to come to Eyüp? Storks were one of the many non-human actors who wove their way through my research in Eyüp - along with things like the trees, the deer, the flowers, the fish. But the photographs of the storks inside the mosque, where they would often nest under the spreading branches of the çınar trees, were ones that I'd seen frequently. I'd always assumed that their presence in the mosque was a sort of happy accident.
I didn't, I said.
She explained that she'd learned of this story at a recent conference - it had been the only paper that stuck in her mind - where it had been delivered by someone who worked for the Directorate of Cemeteries. He explained, she said, that there's a particular feature of Eyüp's topography that once channeled the wind in a very particular way. Breezes come down from Kağıthane, up the Golden Horn, and down along the valley of Bulubul Deresi along İslambey, these three air flows would meet - and where they met they would swirl together, providing a way for storks - who had been visiting Istanbul as they passed between their summer habitat in northern Europe and their winter habitat in and around Sudan (see here for more on worldwide migration patterns) - to easily ascend to an elevation at which they could continue on their way. Some of the birds, she continued, were too weak to ride the gyre of wind high enough, and they would settle at exactly the place where the three breezes met - the mosque of Eyüp Sultan. There the müezzin of the mosque would care for them until they were strong enough to make it on their way. They explain that, she said, in some of the records that the Ottomans once kept about the mosque's administration.
A history of winds - or maybe an elemental history of Istanbul: To tell the city's history through stories of its winds, waters, fires, and earth.
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| Ara Güler, photograph of stork in the courtyard of the Eyüp Sultan Mosque, n.d.. Via his archive. |
She explained that she'd learned of this story at a recent conference - it had been the only paper that stuck in her mind - where it had been delivered by someone who worked for the Directorate of Cemeteries. He explained, she said, that there's a particular feature of Eyüp's topography that once channeled the wind in a very particular way. Breezes come down from Kağıthane, up the Golden Horn, and down along the valley of Bulubul Deresi along İslambey, these three air flows would meet - and where they met they would swirl together, providing a way for storks - who had been visiting Istanbul as they passed between their summer habitat in northern Europe and their winter habitat in and around Sudan (see here for more on worldwide migration patterns) - to easily ascend to an elevation at which they could continue on their way. Some of the birds, she continued, were too weak to ride the gyre of wind high enough, and they would settle at exactly the place where the three breezes met - the mosque of Eyüp Sultan. There the müezzin of the mosque would care for them until they were strong enough to make it on their way. They explain that, she said, in some of the records that the Ottomans once kept about the mosque's administration.
A history of winds - or maybe an elemental history of Istanbul: To tell the city's history through stories of its winds, waters, fires, and earth.
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