Tiryaki Çarşısı (Addicts' Bazaar Ruins)

Tiryaki Çarşısı, or the Addicts' Bazaar, is a row of 35 stone shops built into Istanbul's Süleymaniye complex in 1557 that transformed from an Ottoman opium marketplace into a hub of famous baked bean restaurants. Designed by architect Mimar Sinan, the arcade originally sold theriac, an opium paste with up to 80 ingredients. Despite Sultan Murad IV banning opium, coffee, and tobacco under penalty of death in 1633, the market survived.

Istanbul · from the walk “Sultans, Spices & Hidden Streets” · audio ~3 min · Generated

Tiryaki Çarşısı, Süleymaniye Cd., Fatih, İstanbul

Why was Tiryaki Çarşısı in Istanbul originally called the Addicts' Bazaar?

Stop here for a moment and breathe in. Can you smell it? Roasted beans... charcoal... maybe a hint of something sweeter, drifting from those little restaurants along the old stone wall? You are standing on what was once one of the most Notorious streets in all of Istanbul... Tiryaki Charshisi, the Addicts' Bazaar.......... This row of thirty-five small shops was built right into the walls of the Süleymaniye complex, designed by the great architect Mimar Sinan and completed in fifteen fifty-seven for Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. But while students studied scripture in the seminaries above... down here, at street level, something far more intoxicating was brewing.......... The word "Tiryaki" comes from "Tiryak," the Turkish name for theriac... an ancient opium-laced paste originally invented as a universal antidote by Greek and Roman physicians. It contained up to eighty ingredients — herbs, minerals, honey, and yes, Opium as its key active substance. For centuries it was praised as a cure for everything from plague to snakebite. But in Ottoman Istanbul, people discovered it also made you feel... wonderful. And so they came here, to these very shops, to buy their Tiryak paste and linger in the coffeehouses late into the night.......... According to the Ottoman writer Abdülaziz Efendi, the regulars were mostly elderly men, opium devotees who would sit in these coffeehouses until the deepest hours of the night. Meanwhile, just steps away, Istanbul's coffee revolution was exploding. The first coffeehouse in the city had opened in fifteen fifty-five in Tahtakale, founded by two Syrian merchants named Hakem and Shams, and by the end of the sixteenth century, there were over Six Hundred coffeehouses across the city!......... But not everyone was pleased. In sixteen thirty-three, Sultan Murad the Fourth... a man so paranoid about dissent that he allegedly prowled the streets of Istanbul in Disguise with a massive broadsword... banned coffee, tobacco, And opium, all under penalty of Death. He saw coffeehouses as hotbeds of rebellion where janissaries plotted coups. And yet... the people simply could not stop drinking coffee. The ban crumbled. Coffee won.......... As for the Addicts' Bazaar, when opium was finally prohibited in the nineteenth century, the old clientele quietly vanished. And what replaced them? Bean restaurants! Today the same stone shops that once dealt in ancient narcotics now serve steaming bowls of kuru Fasulye... humble baked beans. From opium to legumes... only in Istanbul.

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