FOUR SPIRITUAL PROTECTORS OF THE BOSPHOURUS protectors of the Bosphorus

Turkey’s largest city is dotted with the tombs of religious figures, where pilgrims seek divine intervention. On this full-day tour of Islamic Istanbul learn how Islam spread throughout the city with the rise of the Ottoman Empire.

Besiktasli Yahya Efendi, a 16th-century Sufi scholar and poet who now rests in a shrine on the southwestern bank of the Bosporus. Yahya Efendi’s tomb sits under a pistachio-colored dome in an airy room surrounded by the graves of 10 others, including his mother, wife and son. The complex has separate prayer facilities for men and women, both with commanding views of the Bosporus. Outside, stone paths wind through a graveyard shaded by towering trees to a terrace where visitors take photos.

Aziz Mahmut Hudayi Mosque was built in 1594 by Ayse Hanim Sultan, the daughter of Mihrimah Sultan and the Grand Vizier Rustem Pasa, for Aziz Mahmud Hudayi who served as Qadi in Edirne, Egypt, Sham(Syria) and Bursa. He was a murid and khalifah and wrote about thirty works, seven of which are in Turkish. The mosque is part of a complex (Turkish: kulliye) that consists of a soup kitchen, a tomb, a library, a chamber for Sultans, a fountain, dervish rooms, a house for the sheikh and a bakery spread out over a total area of 10,000 square meters. The shrine of Aziz Mahmud Hudayi sits on the waterway’s opposite bank.

Near the northern end of the Bosporus’s western bank sits the shrine of Telli Baba, or the Father of the Threads, a figure whose story is imbued with so much lore that even the retired sailor who oversees the shrine doesn’t claim to know his exact history, or even his full identity. He might have served in the sultan’s army during the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman army in 1453. He might have carried in his turban a length of silvery thread that brides traditionally braided into their hair as a sign of his devotion to the Almighty (probably the source of his nickname).

In addition, you will also have the chance to visit the pilgrimage point claimed to be the burial site of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari also known as Khaled Bin Zayed. Notably, he was the first to host Prophet Muhammad (SAV) upon his migration from Mecca to Medina.

The city fell from sheer force of Ottoman forces on 29 May 1453 after a 6-week siege. Mosque and Shrine complex of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari is perhaps the most sacred place of pilgrimage in the Islamic world; indeed after Mecca and Jerusalem. One of the leaders of the first Arab siege of Constantinople from 674 to 678