Istanbul in the 1890s

From the mid-19th century onwards, Istanbul was a place that many Western intellectuals felt almost compelled to visit. Those visitors who held a pen in their hand would invariably write a travelogue, mostly describing the vanished Eastern Roman Empire and the harem, which they could never actually enter. However, the American man of letters Francis Marion-Crawford, who had embraced this city, described a completely different Istanbul, with all its nooks and crannies and its people on the streets. From people's home and street lives to their eating and drinking habits, from shopping customs in the Grand Bazaar to disappointments in the Horse Market, he covered many things... Crawford, a celebrated author in his time, presents the Istanbul we heard about from past generations, embellished with the meticulousness of his own observational power, alongside the little-known drawings of his friend Edwin Lord Weeks. Francis Marion-Crawford (1854-1909) was born in Italy to a wealthy Bostonian family. After his education in the USA, he returned to Rome in 1869. He had a great interest in foreign languages and cultures. He could fluently speak and write nearly 20 languages, including Turkish. His life changed in India, where he went to advance his Sanskrit studies. He had to work as a newspaper editor to make a living. However, a novel he wrote based on the people he met and the stories he heard during this period became a turning point in his career. He quickly became known and widely read in the USA. In 1884, he married in Istanbul. He lived in Istanbul for a year and visited it many times until the mid-1890s. He was the first to bring Sicilian families and the mafia into literature with his four novels. In addition to nearly 40 novels, he lived by earning a small fortune from his history and travel books.