Han

1 August 2014

One dimension of my Istanbul Eats tour was food, of course. But the equally interesting and important piece of the tour was the culture of the hans of the bazaar.

When caravans arrived to trade in the bazaar, they needed a safe and convenient place to stay. The han is like a inn, clubhouse and work center all in one. Each specialized trade area has it's own han: one for silver, year, for drapers, and so on. For the first three nights, traders could stay in the han for free. They would have a fountain for water, a place to pray, and security since the large doors were shut at night and patrolled. The architecture is formed around a courtyard with at least three levels plus the roof for use.

han courtyards

We went upstairs in several to drink tea. The second floor of one han had draper goods-- the windows were filled with wedding gowns. Another han had lots and lots of yarn-- mostly to be sold wholesale.

cotton and wool battening

Because tea is drunk so constantly, each han has at least one tea purveyor. They might use a pulley through the roof to move tea from an upstairs tea maker to those downstairs, and the tea shop would have a runner downstairs to deliver the tea and collect the glasses and send them back up.

This tea maker, who is located in the main bazaar, had direct phone lines installed from workshops to his shop so customers could call for tea. You can see them on the wall behind the server's head.

Tea is delivered on the silver trays with high handles and in tulip shaped glasses. Near the end of the day, these glasses are can be seen sitting around, if they somehow escaped being collected.

We were a lucky and curious group so we were able to wander into a couple of metal workshops. It was a quiet day, since the tour fell on one of the vacations days after Eid.

This workshop had a craftsman who was making a hammered copper frame for a mirror:

The section being worked on is over a tray of warm, firm resin to absorb the blows from the hammer.

We also visited a silver workshop:

Some of what we saw were custom orders, and some are sold in the Grand Bazaar, on the ground floor:

It has been an efficient and socially connected system for a long time, and it doesn't seem to have changed very much. To do much change to these old buildings would be impossible. The workshops did have security systems, and when we exited the goldsmiths han, there was an armed guard with a metal detector wand, so that was contemporary.

The concept of OSHA must not exist in Turkey, or if it does. it must not apply to the hans.