On Saturday July 24, 1660, a fire that started in a timber shop near Ayakapısı, on the southern shores of the Golden Horn, quickly spread throughout Istanbul and could not be put out for more than forty-eight hours, wreaking havoc in the city. When the cataclysmal fire finally stopped on the third day, hundreds of mosques, churches, markets, palaces, and thousands of houses and shops had been reduced to ashes. Thousands had perished. Tens of thousands had been left homeless and many disastered families had to be resettled after the fire in the towns of Çorlu, Silivri and Çatalca, all of them a few miles from Istanbul. Among the hardest-hit Istanbul districts were those along the Marmara: Kumkapı, Niœanca, Langa, Davudpaœa, and so forth.69
After the fire, popular rhymed pieces (destans) were composed to lament and to commemorate the dreadful event. One of them, signed “Kâtipzade” is important in that it relates how the disaster had reached Kasap ƒlyas. Here is part of that rhymed piece:
Vardı andan Yenikapı semtin âteœ kapladı / Gelmeden kaldırdılar esbabı Cellâtçeœmeli / Langa bostanı içine döktüler esbabların / Geldi yaktı nâr-ı ibret kaldı yerinde külü / Geldi andan Davudpaœa iskelesine geçip / Etyemezde dökündü üçünçü kolu hâsılı / Yandı bazı kalekapısı kanatları dahi / Kaldı mıhlarla demirleri eœikte dökülü.
(From there the flames engulfed the district of Yenikapı / The Cellâtçeœme people took their belongings away / They put their belongings in the vegetable gardens of Langa / The exemplary fire
came and left but ashes / From there it moved to the Davudpaœa wharf / The third branch finally reached Etyemez / Even some of the city gates were burned / Their nails and irons were strewn on
the doorstep).70
More than the effective destruction it caused, it is the itinerary followed by the fire that is strikingly related in this piece of popular rhyme. It appears that the fire moved south from around Aksaray toward the sea and then progressed westward, probably along “Butchers’ Road.” The large Langa vegetable gardens were burned to ashes too, and with them the belongings that were carried there
by their owners who thought that they would be secure. Unaffected by the bostans, by the ramparts, and by the sparse population and houses, the fire’s progress was not slowed down, and ran across our neighborhood from east to west, ending up at Etyemez, Kasap ƒlyas’ western neighbor.
There is every reason to think that the Kasap ƒlyas mahalle suffered greatly, though one cannot document the destruction in any detail. One of the houses that was completely burned down left, however, a few traces in the records.
According to a document dated May 11, 1663,71 this house, belonging to a pious foundation whose trustee was Mustafa Efendi, then the imam of the Kasap ƒlyas mosque, is being rented out to Mehmet Çelebi and to his wife Amine Hatun. What is being rented, however, is not a house but in reality just
an empty plot of land with, in the middle, the charred remains of a house. The document openly specifies that the house that belongs to the foundation was completely burned in the big fire (…vakıf menzil harik-i âlide bilkülliye muhterik olup….) and that what was being now rented was only a plot of land with the remains of a house (…arsa-yı merkume enkaz-ı mevcudesiyle….). Obviously, Mehmet Çelebi and Amine Hatun were renting this plot of land from the pious foundation in order to build themselves a new house. Moreover, particular modes of expression used in the text suggest that it was written ex post facto.
It’s likely that the couple first got oral permission from the imam in order to begin building the house and then, once the building was in progress—or perhaps completed—had the imam put down the agreement in writing. Whatever the case may be, less than three years after the devastating fire, houses were being rebuilt and the mahalle was being repopulated, an example of resilience that also applies to many of the traditional neighborhood communities of Istanbul that went through such a cataclysmal event.