A ferry ride west up the Golden Horn, past the crumbling walls of ancient Constantinople, Eyüp’s Pierre Loti hill appeared dusted in snow—many hundreds of tombs. As we got a bit closer, I could see that they were crammed from the forested hilltop down to a pair of pencil minarets, a cemetery high in demand for its nearness to Istanbul’s holiest shrine: the final resting place of one Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, a distinguished companion of the Prophet.
Having served in Egypt during its Arab conquest, Abu Ayyub met his end in the earliest Muslim siege of this city, only a decade into the Umayyads’ reign. According to the story, his body was buried—in line with his dying wish—just outside the city walls.
Some 800 years later, in 1493, when a Muslim (Ottoman) army at last broke through, among the conquering sultan’s first acts was to build a fitting tomb over the gravesite of Abu Ayyub, miraculously pinpointed with the help of a dream and marked with the planting of a sycamore.
Up close to the shrine, pilgrims whispered in several languages, getting as near as they could to the old man, crowding the courtyard’s ablution fountains in the shadows of the now enormous tree. The whole area bears the Companion’s name (Eyüp in Turkish), Istanbul’s holiest quarter—holier even than the plot of land housing the Blue Mosque and the glorious Hagia Sophia.
