“Little Bridge”
Old name: Rhegium (Roman), Rhagion
Festival: Ashura (changing date)
With time on your hands you might want to take the Marmaray west from Sirkeci to Küçükçeşme, an İstanbul suburb on the edge of the beaiutiful Küçükçeşme Lagoon that is a world apart from the town-centre tourist areas. In 2024 it appeared that the lost Sokullu Mehmed Paşa Kervansarayı (caravanserai) beside the bridge was to be rebuilt as hotel.
Kücükçekmece is on the proposed route of the president’s “crazy project” that is mooted to take some of the traffic off the Bosphorus by routing it through an artificially-dug canal although this appears to be on hold currently.
Backstory
Ongoing excavations at Yarımburgaz on the lagoon have uncovered evidence of the old port, lighthouse and grid-plan street layout of a settlement once called Bathonea, while Küçükçeşme itself was the site of ancient Rhegium where archaeologists have found traces of a Byzantine summer palace.
Since ancient times a major trade route from Europe – the Via Egnatia – passed through this area and in Ottoman times it was here by the bridge that travellers were asked to present their travel documents as they also had to do at Bostancı on the Asian side of the city.
Here, too, stood the Abdüsselam Çelebi Medresesi, a dervish lodge designed by Sinan which was visited by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the famous letter-writing wife of a British diplomat, who passed through on her way to İstanbul in 1717 and reported that the local schoolteacher and his family were living in a treehouse. Sadly, few visitors would recognise her description in The Turkish Embassy Letters of the surrounding area today: “The prospect from this place and the gardens around it are the most agreeable I have seen.” That, however, is how it also appears in a late 18th-century engraving by the Italian artist, Luigi Mayer, of the main square with its plane-tree-shaded fountain dating back to 1642.
Around Küçükçekmece
For most of the year the only place of passing touristic interest here is the old stone bridge, a 227m-long Sinan construction dating back to 1560. It stands on the site of earlier Byzantine bridges built by the emperors Justinian in the 6th century and Basil II in the 9th. Today half the bridge has been lost and most of the arches of the other half are submerged.
However, there is one day in the year when attention suddenly moves inland into the solidly concrete streets at the heart of modern Küçükçekmece. The suburb has a large and usually pretty low-key Shiite population and every year on Ashura they assemble in the Ashura Meydanı to commemorate the death in battle of Imam Hüseyin and his infant son. It’s an extraordinary thing to witness, one of the rare times when Turkey really does seem a little like Iran, as women assemble in chadors and men gather to ritually whip themselves (actually doing so is forbidden) and donate blood. The iconography you’ll see on display here is unlike anything else you’ll see in İstanbul.
The timing of Ashura is dictated by the lunar calendar and so moves every year – you have to look out for banners around town for the exact date. There is usually a heavy police presence at the event and roads leading to the square will be closed.
The huge new Zeynebiye Cami with its gold-plated dome has been under construction near the Ashura Meydanı for many years as the funds to pay for it are slowly collected.
Eating
A row of fish restaurants stand close to the station on the sea side and there’s a cafe-restaurant on Mavran Adası, overlooking the bridge. Around Küçükçekmece Meydanı there are plenty of small lokantas catering to local wallets.
Transport info
If you take the suburban train from Sirkeci to Küçükçekmece, the old bridge will be just a short walk ahead of you on the sea side of the station.
Reaching the Ashura Meydanı, however, is less easy. The Marmaray stations at Halkalı and Küçükçekmece are in the vicinity, as are the M9 Metro stations at 15 Temmuz and Halkalı Caddesi, but none of them is really close. There are buses but it’s a long journey. Minibuses from near to Halkalı station run to the square but I’ve usually taken a taxi. Ask for the Yahya Kemal Beyaltı Gösteri Merkezi if the driver doesn’t know the way.
“…asking him to show me his apartment I was surprised to see him point to a tall cypress tree in the garden, on the top of which was a place for a bed for himself and a little lower one for his wife and two children who slept there every night. I was so much diverted with the fancy I resolved to examine his nest nearer but after going up fifty steps I found I had still fifty to go and then I must climb from branch to branch with some hazard of my neck. I thought it the best way to come down again.” (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu on Küçükçekmece in 1717 in the Turkish Embassy Letters)
Nearby areas
Read more: Ashura Without Whips
(Since this blog was written, the Ashura celebrations have moved to a different location and been toned down substantially – the photos here are of the 2023 event.)
