Who built the Topkapi palace?
23931#87
After the conquest of Istanbul by Mehmed the Conqueror at 1453, construction of the Topkapı Palace was started in the year 1460 and completed in 1478. The palace was built upon a 700,000 square meter area on an Eastern Roman Acropolis located on the Istanbul Peninsula between the Sea of Marmara, Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. Topkapı Palace was the administrative, educational, and art center of the Empire for nearly four hundred years from Mehmed the Conqueror until Sultan Abdulmecid who was the thirty-first Sultan. Although Topkapi Palace was abandoned by the Ottoman Dynasty by moving to the Dolmabahçe Palace in the middle of the 19th century, Topkapı Palace retained its importance.
Palace
252534#3
Following the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, Topkapı was transformed into a museum by a government decree dated April 3, 1924. The Topkapı Palace Museum is administered by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The palace complex has hundreds of rooms and chambers, but only the most important are accessible to the public today, including the Ottoman imperial harem and the treasury, called "hazine" where the Spoonmaker's Diamond and Topkapi Dagger are on display. The museum collection also includes Ottoman clothing, weapons, armor, miniatures, religious relics, and illuminated manuscripts like the Topkapi manuscript. The complex is guarded by officials of the ministry as well as armed guards of the Turkish military. Topkapı Palace is part the Historic Areas of Istanbul, a group of sites in Istanbul that were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985.
Topkapı Palace
28726336#13
According to an identifying document at the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Moses's staff would supposedly be on display today at the Topkapı Palace, Istanbul, Turkey. The Topkapi Palace holds other reputedly holy relics, most notably those attributed to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. (Such as his bow, his sword, his footprint, and even a tooth.) Topkapı Palace was officially designated a museum in 1924, and the holy relics were placed on public view on 31 August 1962. It is said that Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) brought the holy relics to Topkapi Palace after conquering Egypt in 1517.
Staff of Moses
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Elizabeth Lipp (Melina Mercouri) visits Istanbul, where she sees a traveling fair featuring replicas of treasures from the Topkapı Palace. Next she cases the Topkapi, fascinated by the emerald-encrusted dagger of Sultan Mahmud I. Leaving Turkey, she recruits her ex-lover, Swiss master-criminal Walter Harper (Maximilian Schell), to plan a theft of the dagger. They engage Cedric Page (Robert Morley), master of all things mechanical; Giulio, "The Human Fly" (Gilles Ségal), a mute acrobat; and the burly Hans (Jess Hahn), who will provide the muscle needed for the job.
Topkapi (film)
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In the 18th century, a new great Italian-styled office building was built just west of Topkapi Palace area, on the other side of Alemdar Caddesi street. This became the location of the Grand Vizier and many ministries. Thereafter, this building, and the monumental gate leading to its courtyards, became known as the Sublime Porte ("Bab-ı Ali"); colloquially it was also known as the Gate of the Page ("paşa kapusu"). The building was badly damaged by fire in 1911. Today, the buildings house the provincial Governor of Istanbul.
Sublime Porte
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The second room houses the Topkapı Dagger. The golden hilt is ornamented with three large emeralds, topped by a golden watch with an emerald lid. The golden scabbard is covered with diamonds and enamel. In 1747, the Sultan Mahmud I had this dagger made for Nader Shah of Persia, but the Shah was assassinated in connection with a revolt before the emissary had left the Ottoman Empire's boundaries. This dagger gained more fame as the object of the heist depicted of the film "Topkapi". In the middle of the second room stands the walnut throne of Ahmed I, inlaid with nacre and tortoise shell, built by Sedekhar Mehmed Agha. Below the baldachin hangs a golden pendant with a large emerald. The next displays show the ostentatious aigrettes of the sultans and their horses, studded with diamonds, emeralds and rubies. A jade bowl, shaped like a vessel, was a present of Czar Nicholas II of Russia.
Topkapı Palace
42785891#1
The post of the Kizlar Agha was created in the reign of Murad III (ruled 1574–1595) in 1574, with the Ethiopian Mehmed Agha as its first occupant. Until then, the Ottoman palace had been dominated by the white eunuchs, chiefly drawn from the Christian populations of the Balkans or the Caucasus. The 16th century, however, saw a rapid rise of the population of the Topkapi Palace, including among eunuchs, whose numbers rose from 40 under Selim (r. 1512–1520) to over a thousand under Murad III. While black eunuchs had served alongside white eunuchs in the palace, by 1592, for reasons that are unclear, both a separation of roles as well as the ascendancy of the black eunuchs over the white ones had become established: white eunuchs were restricted to the supervision of the male pages ("içoğlan"), while black eunuchs took over the far more prestigious supervision of the private apartments of the Sultan and the palace women ("harem"). Consequently, the Chief Black Eunuch quickly eclipsed the "Chief White Eunuch" or Kapi Agha ("kapı ağası", "Agha of the Gate"), who had hitherto been the head of the palace personnel, and rose to become, in the words of the Orientalist C. E. Bosworth, "in practice the principal officer of the whole palace". At the height of the post's power in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Kizlar Agha was a vizier of the first rank ("with three horsetails") and came third in the state hierarchy, next only to the Empire's chief minister, the Grand Vizier, and the chief religious authority, the Sheikh ul-Islam.
Kizlar Agha
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The cross on top of the dome has been replaced by the conquering Ottomans with the symbol of Islam, the crescent moon.
After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II, the church was enclosed inside the walls of the Topkapi palace. The Janissaries used the church as an arsenal until 1826. It was also used as a warehouse for military equipment and repository for trophies of arms and military regalia taken by the Turks. During the reign of Sultan Ahmet III (1703–1730) it was converted into the National Military Museum in 1726.
Hagia Irene
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The Topkapi manuscript is an early manuscript of the Quran dated to the early 8th century. This manuscript is kept in the Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, Turkey. It was wrongly attributed to Uthman Ibn Affan (d. 656), but judging from its illumination, the Topkapi manuscript does not date from the period (mid 7th century) when the copies of the Caliph Uthman were written.
Early Quranic manuscripts
34255387#2
The enzyme belongs to the group of oxidoreductases according to the EC classification and is dependent on FAD as cofactor, thus it was classified as an external flavoprotein monooxygenase (designated as type E). It forms a two-component system with a reductase (StyB, StyA2B). The reductase utilizes solely NADH to reduce the FAD, which is then transferred to the styrene monooxygenase (StyA, StyA1). Two types of that enzyme are described so far: StyA/StyB (designated E1), first described from "Pseudomonas" species, and StyA1/StyA2B (designated E2), first described from Actinobacteria. The E1-type is more abundant in nature and comprises a single monooxygenase (StyA) supported by a single reductase (StyB), whereas the E2-type has a major monooxygenase (StyA1) which is supported by fusion protein of a monooxygenase and reductase (StyA2B). The latter one is the source of reduced FAD for the monooxygenase subunits and has some side activity as a monooxygenase. So far all styrene monooxygenases perform enantioselective epoxidations of styrene and chemically analogous compounds, which makes them interesting for biotechnological applications.
Styrene monooxygenase