Aynalıkavak Pavilion and the music of Selim III

On the Golden Horn at Hasköy, surrounded by what was once the Ottoman naval arsenal, stands a low pavilion with a garden running up the slope behind it. Aynalıkavak is small, and easy to miss. It is also the only building left of the Tersane Palace — by the National Palaces’ count the fourth great Ottoman palace in Istanbul — and the place most closely tied to the most musical of all the sultans, Selim III.

A palace by the shipyard

Sources describe this shore as a Byzantine imperial promenade. After the conquest the Ottomans built their arsenal nearby, and the great wooded garden behind it became the Tersane Hasbahçesi, the sultan’s own “shipyard garden”. The first building here that can be dated is a pavilion Grand Admiral Halil Pasha put up for Ahmed I at the end of 1613. Later sultans added kiosks, a harem and a bath until it was a full palace.

It had its great moments. In 1720 the court stayed here during the celebrated circumcision festival of Ahmed III’s sons, and in 1779 Ottoman and Russian envoys met here to settle points left open by the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, producing the agreement known as the Aynalıkavak Convention.

The name — roughly “mirrored poplar” — has several explanations. The TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam records stories of Venetian mirrors, of a poplar whose leaves shone like glass and of archery targets on the nearby Okmeydanı, and notes that the name is older than the mirrors that supposedly inspired it.

The one building that survived

As the arsenal grew, it swallowed the palace. Selim III, set on modernising the navy, had most of it pulled down; by 1802–1803 only this pavilion remained, reworked inside to the taste of his day. The inscriptions inside carry the date 1206 of the Hijri calendar, that is 1791–1792. Abdülmecid had it renovated again in the nineteenth century.

What had been a spring residence became a place for short visits: from here the sultan could watch new ships launched from the yard. Plan-wise it keeps the eighteenth-century palace tradition — a double reception hall with sofas around it, one storey on the land side and two on the water side, set into the slope.

Selim III, composer

No other Ottoman sultan came close to Selim III as a musician. He learned from Kırımlı Ahmed Kâmil Efendi and took tanbur lessons from the great Tanbûrî İzak, played the tanbur and the ney, and wrote more than a hundred works in the forms of Ottoman court and Mevlevi music. He wrote poetry under the pen name İlhâmî, yet reportedly valued his music above his verse.

He is credited with creating several makams, the melodic modes of Ottoman music; the best known is sûzidilârâ, in which he wrote a Mevlevi ceremony and a full suite still counted among the classics. He protected musicians, among them the young Hamâmîzâde İsmâil Dede Efendi, and it was under his encouragement that Hamparsum Limonciyan devised the notation system used through the nineteenth century. In 1797 an opera was staged before him — Western music had reached the court too.

Most of his finest pieces date from before his accession, and the TDV Encyclopaedia says he spent only one spring at Aynalıkavak. Still, the National Palaces describe the Hasoda, the privy room, as the room where he is thought to have composed — and the pavilion’s decoration is a tribute to him.

Poems above the windows

Look up. In the Audience Room, under a segmented dome, Selim III’s gilded tughra runs along the base of the ceiling, and above the windows is a 54-couplet poem by Enderunlu Fâzıl in praise of the pavilion.

In the Hasoda the windows carry a 36-couplet poem by Şeyh Galib praising Selim III himself. Galib, sheikh of the Galata Mevlevi lodge, was one of the great poets of his age and the sultan’s friend; the two met for talk about poetry and music. When the lodge was repaired and reopened at Galib’s request, Selim III’s sûzidilârâ ceremony was performed there. Both poems were written out in ta’lik script by the calligrapher Yesârîzâde.

The music museum

Aynalıkavak became a museum in 1984. After a long restoration it reopened in 2010 with Turkey’s first music museum on its lower floor. The display brings together Turkish instruments, scores, 78 rpm records and books; a large part comes from Gevheri Osmanoğlu, a musician of the Ottoman dynasty, whose instruments, scores and books were donated in 1984.

Seeing a tanbur a few rooms away from where a sultan-composer may have played one is the whole point of the place.

Visiting

Aynalıkavak is in Hasköy, in the Beyoğlu district on the northern shore of the Golden Horn. It closes on Mondays, and the ticket office is open from 09:00 to 17:00. The ticket is listed as “Aynalıkavak Music Museum” on the location page and as “Aynalıkavak Pavilion” on the National Palaces e-ticket system. There is a separate garden ticket, the Müzekart is accepted, and the National Palaces list a café here. An hour is enough for the pavilion and museum; add time for the garden.