Karacaahmet Cemetery

Historic · ÜsküdarIstanbul,Türkiye

Seventy-five hectares of cypress forest on Istanbul's Üsküdar hills, receiving the dead since the fourteenth century and still burying them today.

Karacaahmet is a vast cemetery on the hills of Üsküdar that feels less like a graveyard than a dim forest. Tall cypress close overhead, the light drops, and the traffic fades to a hush. Thousands of pale stones lean at every angle, their gilded verses softened by weather and moss, and cats move between them as if they own the place. The oldest men's stones are crowned with carved headgear; the women's carry flowers instead. The ground began receiving the dead in the fourteenth century, a full hundred years before Constantinople fell, because the Asian shore turned Turkish long before the city across the water did. It covers seventy-five hectares in five named quarters, and the oldest stone standing in it was cut in 1520. It is named for Karaca Ahmet, whose tomb near its heart still draws quiet visitors. It is still a working cemetery, so fresh graves sit beside Ottoman ones.

Worth knowing

Good to know

It is still a place of grief — Ottoman stones sit beside week-old graves, so keep your voice low and never aim a camera at people in mourning.
Aim for one quarter, don't cross it — the ground is enormous and unsigned; the oldest stone of all, cut in 1520 for the calligrapher Şeyh Hamdullah, lies in the Hattatlar plot.
Come late in the afternoon — low sunlight strikes the leaning stones from the side, and the shallow carved lettering is far easier to read then than under the flat light of midday.

Things to do

1
Learn to read a stone in five minutes
Start with the men's stones and the shape carved on top: a wound turban for the old order, a smooth tapered fez for anyone who died after 1829. Then look at the women's stones, which carry flowers, necklaces and brooches instead. In this vocabulary a rosebud snapped off its stem means she died young, and a small cypress carved inside a larger one means she died giving birth, with the daughter she bore in the carving beside her.
2
Start at the mosque by the gate
Şakirin Mosque stands at the cemetery entrance, finished in 2009 by a family who had just buried their mother here and found the old mosque too small for the crowds. Hüsrev Tayla designed the building; Zeynep Fadıllıoğlu designed everything inside it, which is why it is often called the first mosque designed by a woman — a claim that is half right. Step out of its gate and you are among stones five centuries older.
3
Sit at the saint's tomb
Make your way toward the tomb of Karaca Ahmet near the cemetery's core. Stand back from those who have come to pray, watch a candle lit or a quiet word said, and take in a devotion that has outlasted every empire buried in the ground around it.