Chris Gratien, Georgetown University
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| Cemetary in Constantinople, c. 1880 (Maison Berggren) |
For historians that like to venture outside of the archives, a graveyard can be a veritable archive about past individuals of in any given place. Istanbul is full of cemeteries that date back to the Ottoman era and reveal a great deal about local history.
The gravestones that survive today are not nearly so easy to read today as in this poignant image of a woman mourning in a cemetery taken by Maison Berggren around 1880. If the woman in the picture is indeed related to the deceased, the story becomes a bit sadder, as the engraving on the tombstone reveals that she was a 19 year old woman named Fatma, the daughter of Hüseyin Efendi. She died on February 14, 1875 following childbirth.
Click here for a full-sized image
The inscription includes a four line poem about dying young:
Ah min al-furâq!
Bu cihan bağına geldim bir mürüvvet görmedim
Derdime derman aradım bir ilacın bulmadım
Ah ile zar kılarak tazeliğime doymadım
Çün ecel peymâne dolmuş muradım almadım
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