The "traveler to Türkiye" featured here is Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, who passed away due to illness. Though the exact date is unknown, it has been suggested that he could have died in the years 669, 670, 672 or 675. In terms of this series, he is a figure of firsts. He is the first in it to come from the East, the first Muslim, and the first to die in Türkiye, which, as will be seen, is of great consequence. In terms of his selection, he is also a first. I have chosen this piece to come out in the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, and I have also, for the first time, selected the figure with a specific rather than a general audience in mind.
There is probably little below that the average Muslim would not know. I have aimed this piece instead at any readers who, like myself many years ago, have come to visit Istanbul and have fallen in love with this incomparable city, and who have wished to explore it for themselves. Those who do so may start to wonder why, for its Muslim population, the holiest site is that of the relatively small Eyüp Sultan Mosque complex outside of the city’s towering medieval walls admired by Lord Byron. Istanbul is a city of magnificent mosques. Hagia Sophia, which was once a cathedral, is a singular architectural treasure, which in 2006 made the shortlist of 20 to be one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. It is my firm opinion that it should have been selected the following year as one of the seven – I voted for it. Despite their conversion of this building to their faith, the Ottomans also built stunning mosques for the purpose. One of the most famous names in Ottoman history is Mimar Sinan – or Sinan the Architect – and his Süleymaniye Mosque, in the way it gracefully adorns the third hill of the city, provides an outstanding sight in a city that is in no way short on ocular feasts. And if it is the size that counts, then there is the new Çamlıca Mosque on the Asian side of the Bosporus that can hold 63,000 worshippers.
Next to these, the Eyüp Sultan Mosque seems superficially unremarkable as it does not rival them in terms of splendor or size. What makes Eyüp Sultan Mosque so holy is the tomb of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari attached to it. He is known in Islamic terminology as a “sahabi,” which means a companion of the Prophet Muhammad. Whilst drawing parallels between faiths is always somewhat problematic there is some degree of similarity between the sahabi and the disciples of Christ. He, therefore, provides a direct link between Istanbul, which was once the capital of the Muslim world, and the prophet from whom this faith derives. This explains the sanctity of the site.
I intend to provide a brief sketch of Abu Ayyub’s connection with the prophet as well as his being at Constantinople, and his death followed by the site dedicated to him. The story of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari will be related according to Muslim sources. Then, his connection to Türkiye and the significance of the mosque complex named after him will be covered. As such, this is a religious piece for a religious month. Writings on religious matters can be produced with the assumption that the fundamentals of that religion are already known. That is fine if they are, but if they are not then such a piece may be difficult to follow. This piece has been written in such a way that a visitor to Türkiye today who knows nothing of Islam should, by the end of it, have some idea of why the Eyüp Sultan Mosque site in the city is so significant.
The holiest city of Islam is Mecca, sometimes now written as Makkah. It was in the environs of Mecca in the month of Ramadan in 610 that the prophet received his first divine revelation, which along with subsequent revelations makes up the Quran, the holy book of Islam, and it was in Mecca that the first community of Muslims was formed. In the center of Mecca is the Kaaba, which is the focal point of Islam. All Muslims when they pray, however far from it they may be in geographic terms, face the Kaaba.
The core belief and practices of Islam are the five pillars of Islam. The first of these is the declaration of faith – a strict monotheistic declaration that also recognizes Muhammad as the prophet. The second is the five daily prayers, or perhaps this is better thought of as specific acts of worship, assigned to five particular periods within the day. The third is fasting, or the abstention from food or drink from dawn to dusk for every day of the month of Ramadan, which is the month we are in now. The fourth is giving alms to the poor. The last pillar brings us back to Mecca, as it is the hajj, or the pilgrimage to that city, which all Muslims who are able to are obliged to do at least once in their lives.
The second holiest city is Medina, 340 kilometers to the north of Mecca. It is sometimes called al-Madina, a shortening of its full name which is al-Madinat al-Nabi, which literally means “the city of the Prophet.” Prior to its renaming, it was called Yathrib. Abu Ayyub himself was a native of Yathrib and his connection with the prophet is tied up in his native city’s becoming the “city of the Prophet” as will be seen next.
The aforementioned revelations divided the people of Mecca. The growing number who regarded them as divine became Muslims, the first of these being the Prophet Muhammad’s wife Khadija. Nevertheless, the Prophet Muhammad had a powerful protector in his uncle Abu Talib, who, though not a Muslim himself, would not allow any harm to befall his nephew.
The year that roughly approximates 619 is known in Islamic history as “The Year of Sorrow” as it was in this year that both Khadija and Abu Talib died. This was not just an emotional loss for the prophet, but it also meant that without his protector, his life was at risk in Mecca. The next year, Muhammad was just outside the city at Aqabah. There, he encountered six men from Yathrib. In the course of their interactions, they accepted him as the prophet and told Muhammad of their troubled tribally divided city, averring that “there is no people so torn asunder by enmity and evil as they.” These men of Yathrib now made clear their intention to return home and attempt to bring others of their city into the new faith. They did so, winning many converts in the process. Then, the following year, five of those from the year before returned to Aqabah with seven other men of Yathrib. One of them was Abu Ayyub and he was the first of the new seven to declare for the prophet.
This connection to Yathrib was to open a new chapter for the new religion of Islam. The city promised to protect the prophet if he would come and live among them. For their own safety, Muslims from Mecca were sent northwards to find refuge in Yathrib. Then, in 622, the Prophet Muhammad left Mecca. As the Muslim biographer Martin Lings puts it, “this occasion was a solemn one” because it meant “the cutting off of all ties of home and homeland for the sake of God.” This act of emigration also marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar.
The problem the prophet was to encounter upon entering the city was not a lack of welcome, but the reverse. It was the potential that his favoring one section of it over another could cause conflict in this deeply divided city. This issue was especially acute over the place where the prophet would call his home. However, neither the prophet nor the people of Yathrib decided where he was to reside. Rather, as Lings notes, the prophet proclaimed that the camel he was riding, named Qaswa, was “under the command of God” and that he would make his home at the place where it came to rest.
It came to a stop at a site that was owned by two orphan boys. They wanted to give their place as a gift to the prophet, but he refused to allow their inheritance to be lost in this way and insisted that they accept his payment for it. On this site was to be erected what would become the Prophet’s Mosque and next to it his home. Yet, that was a short time off in the future. At the time of the Prophet Muhammad’s arrival, Abu Ayyub, who was a neighbor, had removed his baggage and brought it into his own house. Others begged him to live with them, but the prophet told them that “a man must be with his baggage” and took up temporary residence in Abu Ayyub’s home until his own should be completed. Abu Ayyub had prepared the top floor of his home for him, but the prophet wished to remain on the ground floor, and Abu Ayyub and his wife then retired to the upper floor. This, however, was to cause the pair unease. Abu Ayyub said to his wife: "Woe to us! What have we done? The Messenger of Allah is below and we are higher than he! Can we walk on top of the Messenger of Allah? Do we come between him and the Revelation? If so, we are doomed."
They partially solved their worries by relocating to a part of the floor not directly over the prophet and keeping near to the wall while they moved around. Although Abu Ayyub was reassured by the prophet, at a later time water was spilled on his floor and Abu Ayyub worried it would pass through the ceiling onto the prophet below. After this, he told the prophet that “I do not like to be above you” and they exchanged floors.
The Prophet Muhammad lived with Abu Ayyub for the seven months it took to build the mosque and his permanent home. This demonstrates the closeness of the relationship between the prophet and Abu Ayyub. It is also to be noted that this relationship suffered no diminishment once the prophet moved into his own dwelling.
After the prophet left his home, Abu Ayyub was caught up in the greater events of the period. It is to be noted here that the Muslim community in Medina was made up of two groups. They were the Muhajirun, meaning the immigrants – that is those who had left Mecca, and the Ansar, meaning the helpers, who were the natives of Medina. Abu Ayyub as such was one of the Ansar, and thus the epithet al-Ansari by which he is known.
Abu Ayyub showed special zeal for his faith. It has been said of him that “he did not stay away from any battle the Muslims fought from the time of the prophet to the time of Muawiyah unless he was engaged at the same time in another.” Muawiyah is the fifth of the Muslim caliphs. The caliph is the successor to the prophet, who died in 632. The caliph heads the Muslim community. The first four caliphs are known in the Sunni branch of Islam, by far the largest branch and that to which most Turks belong, as the “Rashidun” meaning the “rightly-guided ones.” They were all close companions of the prophet to whom he was additionally tied by bonds of marriage, he to their daughters or they to his. In the time of these four caliphs, lasting from 632 to 661, the conquests of Islam reached as far as what are now the borders of Tunisia in the west and the borders of what is now Pakistan in the east. Even more significant than the incredible speed of these conquests has been their permanence. Save for some minor adjustments, these areas remain Muslim to this day.
Muawiyah (661-80), wished to continue this momentum and conquer all of Asia Minor as well as Constantinople. In 669 a siege of the city was initiated with forces under his son Yazid with Abu Ayyub as the standard bearer. Nevertheless, toward the beginning of this siege, the elderly Abu Ayyub fell ill. Yazid came to Abu Ayyub and asked him if he needed anything. Abu Ayyub gave the following reply: "Convey my salaams (salutations) to the Muslim armies and say to them: ‘Abu Ayyub urges you to penetrate deeply into the territory of the enemy as far as you can go, that you should carry him with you and that you should bury him under your feet at the walls of Constantinople.’"
After saying this, he died. Nevertheless, despite a siege that lasted four years, it was not fated that Constantinople should be captured by this Arab Muslim force at this time. Rather, it would be a little less than eight centuries later when a force made up of another Muslim people, the Turks, finally brought this great city into the orbit of Islam, where it too, as Istanbul, has remained ever since. It is in the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the Turkish Ottomans, under the leadership of Mehmed II, that the next part of the story of Abu Ayyub belongs.
During the 1453 siege of Constantinople, Mehmed II, as the historian, Jason Goodwin puts it, “miraculously rediscovered” the grave of Abu Ayyub, which helped inspire his forces to the final conquest of the city. Five years later, Mehmed II had a mosque complex including a shrine built on the site of Abu Ayyub’s grave. This is known as the Eyüp Sultan Mosque, Eyüp being the Turkish form of Ayyub. Linda Kay Davidson and David Martin Gitilitz state that “the shrine immediately became an important focus of Islamic devotion." It was also thought to be “important to be buried near” this site in the extensive cemetery that lies just outside of it.
In addition to its spiritual role, in Ottoman times, when Islam was the state religion, it also played a concomitant political one. For it came to be regarded as the holiest site in the city – indeed, until the conquest of the Near East and Mecca and Medina by Mehmed II’s grandson Selim I, it was the holiest site anywhere in the Ottoman domains. This aura of holiness was not confined to the tomb itself but pervaded the whole of the new Ottoman capital. Moreover, this aura of holiness played a role in legitimizing the ruler of the dynasty. In 1481, Mehmed II died and was succeeded by his son Bayazid II. To symbolize his acquisition of sovereignty, Bayazid II was girded with the sword of Osman Gazi, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty, at this tomb. The same ceremony would take place for the successors of Bayazid II until the dynasty itself came to an end in the 1920s. This girding of the sword at the tomb was, as the historian John Freely notes, “a ceremony equivalent to a coronation.” Since the end of the Ottoman era, the spiritual function of the site has continued, and it remains an unrivaled devotional site in Istanbul, this status is never more evident than during Ramadan, as can be seen, today.
