Istanbul, Turkey

Moving right along...

Today I visited the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, which has a spectacular collection of woven carpets, some of them measuring perhaps 20' x 40', and a surprisingly large number of them coming from Transylvania. I also visited the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. Istanbul has changed considerably since I was here in 1994. There are a lot more tourists, and a lot more people trying to take advantage of the tourists. The city is incredibly beautiful, but all the hassle certainly detracts from the experience.

There is also an Islamic revival evident in Istanbul these days, with a significant percentage of young women wearing headscarves and a smaller but highly visible group of women covered in black from head to toe. Such was not the case in 1994, when the only women wearing hijab were Gulf Arabs on vacation. The mosque was also a lot more packed today than it had been in 1994, and even the pre-recorded call-to-prayer has been replaced in many cases by real live muezzins.

(Photo by Eric: The Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey)