"Tip the world over on its side, and everything loose will land in Los Angeles." - Frank Lloyd Wright (Entry 10, Day 5)

Thursday, 15 August, 2013; 11:29 PM; Orient Hostel

We have to wake up early tomorrow, so I'll have to keep this as short as I can.  I might go halfway through and finish in the morning.

Anyway, we started off today with walking.  We went to the Topkapi Palace, which is now a museum exhibiting.... itself, really, because it's AMAZING.

Ways To Tell Your Empire Is Rich:
1. there are hand-painted tiles in everyone's room.
2. You have four thousand cooks in the palace.
3. The palace is not one but multiple buildings.
4. You inscribe the BLADES of swords, because the handles are encrusted with palm-sized emeralds.
5. The maces (the weapons, not the spice) are gold-plated and the spiky bits are semiprecious stones.

WHO CAN AFFORD THAT?  The Ottomans.

Oh, yeah:
6. "What 20-something karat emerald? Oh, you mean my cigarette case?"
7. "What 87-karat diamond? Oh, you mean my headpiece's little embellishment?" (WHO HAS FREAKING 87-KARAT DIAMONDS?  The Ottomans, apparently.)

For real, though, the Palace was really cool.  It's MASSIVE, with a bunch of courtyards and different areas and buildings and stuff.  We saw the treasury, where basically every gem under ten karats is called a trinket and stuck on as an accessory to something.

After the treasury, we went to the Harem.  It's where all the wives, the concubines, and the royal family lived.  The Sultan could have up to four wives, and whichever one bore him a son got some sort of special status.  If they all bore him sons, they all got it, I guess.  Or it could be the one that bore him the first son.

Anyway, the Ottomans didn't do primogeniture (A/N: for those who don't know, primogeniture is where the firstborn gets the throne), so if there were multiple sons, they did a lot of battling of politics and blood, and whoever came out on top was the Sultan. The Sultan Mother was actually very influential.

Later on, the custom changed from killing brothers to submitting them to cage life for life, so even if they outlived their sibling they'd be unfit to rule (because they wouldn't know squat about the goings-on of the world. Personally, I think this is worse than being conspiracied to death).  It's brutal, but I feel like it might have worked a bit better.  I could be wrong on that point, though.

Anyway, I'm going to bed.  I'll finish up tomorrow on the bus, hopefully.