Hans: Hidden Corners

Yesterday I made the very good decision to join an “Edda tour.” Edda is an elderly woman who runs walking tours around the Sultanhamet area of Istanbul. The great thing about these tours is that you’re not going to the normal sights. All of the big places that you have to hit when you’re here for the first time are easily done on your own. Accessible and obvious you don’t need a guide to find them. However there is a whole other world in the area which you can’t even begin to dream about without experiencing it. This was the real benefit of Edda.

Over the course of the day we were lead up stairs, through tiny doors which led to a large open courtyard enclosed by two or three stories of rooms…exactly what is meant by the word han. A han is basically a workshop/lodging area dating back to the Ottoman Empire. I had read about hans in several books about turkey but finally seeing several in person has made the concept much clearer to me. The general idea is that a han provides a way to keep all of the specialty workers in a close space so that a complete product can be produced by with each artisan doing his small specialty. Let me explain what we saw in one of the hans which dealt with jewelry. Up a small stairwell and through two doors we came out into a small room where a wave of heat hit us. Metal grates lined the floor (to collect any accidental loss of gold) and machines which looked more then a little confusing formed a line on either side. Here people would bring a small amount of gold to have it reformed – into a flat piece, lengthened into a long rope of gold…basic processing happened here. Next door we slipped up another set of stairs to find men working on setting stones for jewelry. As far as I can tell they were solely responsible for creating the brackets that hold a jewel in and affixing that stone. In yet another we were shown polishing methods…Each separate room we crowded into made me realize just how many different skills and different people work on completing just one piece of jewelry. It truly is a system of creating crafts by specialty work. Never again will I go through the bazaar without appreciating the level of craftsmanship in each hand made item.

The tour ended with an exceptional view out over the section of Sultanhamet which we had covered, from high up on the roof of the largest han in town. I could have sat there for hours just soaking in the bird’s eye view of the city. But it was time to go back down and wonder out into the world of Sultanhamet that is my more normal experience.