The neighborhoods of Balıklı and Belgradkapı were concentrated at two ends of a single street, known in modern Istanbul as the Belgradkapı Avenue. Though they had distinct parish churches, the two communities were in such close proximity that it is difficult to think there was no overlap between them. Today, little survives in Belgradkapı from the Greek Orthodox community other than the parish church, and Balıklı is largely discussed in relation to the Greek Orthodox (Rum) Hospital. Due to the geographical layout of the neighborhoods and the volume of surviving materials, we have decided to combine the profiles of the two neighborhoods.
Balıklı (Μπαλουκλί):
The history of Balıklı is one that can be understood through the lens of health and sanitation with its two major institutions in both the Byzantine and modern eras relating to healing. The Balıklı Hagiasma, or Holy Spring, was one of the most prominent springs of the city drawing in flocks of pilgrims seeking the healing properties of its waters. In the 18th century, the establishment of one of the first minority hospitals in the city, the Balıklı Rum Hospital, reaffirmed the neighborhood's status as a site for healing.
The early history of the neighborhood begins with the establishment of the Monastery of the Mother of God at the Spring (Μονὴ τῆς Θεοτόκου τῆς Πηγῆς) also referred to as the Monastery of Zōodochos Pēgē (Ζωοδόχος Πηγή) under the reign of Emperor Leo I (r. 457 - 474) after the miraculous healing of a blind mind in the waters of the holy spring. According to scholar Byzantine historian Prokopios writing in the 5th century, the monastery was located near the gate of Selymbria (also known as the Golden Gate) in a “dense grove of cypresses and a meadow covered in flowers, a park abounding in beautiful plants, and a spring bubbling silently forth, with a gentle stream of sweet water — all this, in a manner most befitting a Sanctuary.” Nineteenth-century scholar, Skarlatos Byzantios, confirms that very little of the scenery of the church has changed in the thousand or so years since its description was first written by Procopius. The Church was expanded by Justinian I (r. 527 - 565) in the 560 after the healing of his kidney stone with materials left over from the building of the Hagia Sophia.
During the final years of the Byzantine Empire, Doukas (one of the commonly cited sources for the fall of the city) writes that Murad II set up his tent in the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Spring in what would become Balıklı in anticipation of his siege in 1424. In the Ottoman period, the spring was still frequently visited with patients and pilgrims drinking the spring water, bathing in it, and in some extreme cases they would lie in the spring overnight. Even when the church was nearly in ruins from damage sustained in the siege and the stripping of materials by Bayezid II (r. 1481 - 1512) for the building of his mosque, the spring still drew large crowds of pilgrims. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the spring (and subsequently the neighborhood) began to be referred to as the Small Balıklı Holy Spring (Küçük Balıklı Ayazması) after the many fish found in the Spring.
In 1727, the Metropole of Derkoi received permission and raised funds to revive the spring and build a new church. A major conflict over the church arose in this period when the Armenian community attempted to make claims over the spring. In 1732, the Armenian architect Şirin Kalfa dug a well to connect to the spring. The ensuing rage from the Greek Orthodox community led to the passing of an imperial decree that stopped the seizure and officially claimed the church and spring for the Rum
community. Following the same fate of many Greek Orthodox churches following the onset of the Greek War of Independence in 1821, the church was almost entirely demolished by the Janissaries. Twelve years later in 1833, permission was obtained to rebuild the church according to the plans from 1727 but the discovery of a much older Byzantine structure during construction allowed the expansion of the building to this original church. In December 1834, construction was completed and in February of the following year, Patriarch Constantius II (1834–1835) and the twelve metropolitans held an opening ceremony for the church. Though the church underwent various repairs since its rebuilding there are two major renovations it underwent. The first occurred due to damages sustained in the 1894 earthquake. The second took place in the modern period following the 1955 Pogroms.
Beyond the church, another central institution of the neighborhood and the surrounding Rum community was the Balıklı Rum Hospital built in 1753. It's said to have been established by the grocers' guild to treat the Greek community during outbreaks of epidemics. In 1794 it came under the same management as the other two Greek Hospitals in the city, the Gemicilerin Hospital in Galata and the Veba Hospital in Beyoğlu. As with many structures in the city, it nearly completely burned down in 1790 and has since undergone many successive renovations. In the 1920s, The American Near East Relief (Şark-ı Karib Cemiyeti) opened a children’s sanatorium in the hospital with more than 60 beds for children especially those suffering from tuberculosis.
Belgradkapı (Βελιγραδίου):
Belgradkapı, which translates into “Belgrade gate,” shares its name with the city gate on the bordering land walls that leads into the neighborhood. Before the gate was renamed after the then-Hungarian population resettled in the area when Belgrade became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1521, it was called “Ksilokerkos” and “Deutera.” Long before the notion and name of a formal “Belgradkapı” neighborhood emerged, the area was defined by its resettled community. Late-eighteenth century Armenian scholar Sarkis Sarraf Hovhannisyan refers to the neighborhood as “Belgrad Mahallesi” (Belgrad Neighborhood), while Greek scholar Skarlatos Byzantios simply calls it “Belgrade” and highlights the Greek Orthodox church as the gathering point of the non-muslim community in his writings from the nineteenth century. Perhaps the current “Belgradkapı” title of the neighborhood is based on the street that passes through the city gate and continues on both sides, traversing Balıklı on the west and the Belgrade neighborhood on the east. Belgradkapı was listed under the jurisdiction of the Metropolis of Derkoi until 1924, and has since remained as a single street with the Greek Orthodox church and an increasingly smaller non-muslim population.
Belgradkapı Panagia Greek Orthodox Church (Παναγία του Βελιγραδίου)
Built by Serbian Orthodox settlers in 1523, the church was originally dedicated to St. Paraskevi, whose relics were once housed there before being moved to other significant churches affiliated with the Greek Orthodox patriarchate. The icons inside the church were initially brought from Belgrade—“original homeland of the settlers”—for Sultan Suileiman, but seeing no value in them, he gifted them to the Patriarch according to sixteenth-century traveler and writer André Thévet’s Cosmographic from 1565.
Between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, the church was recorded under various names: the Tryphon list from 1583 calls in the “Hagia Paraskevi” church in the “Belli-mahalle” while Antonios Paterakis’ list on 1604 names the church as Panagia Peligradiou. Though the exact dates are unknown, the church must have succumbed to the fires that destroyed much of the area in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that it was rebuilt in 1837 according to the inscriptions in the church. That structure stands today with an added bell tower and holy spring. Even though it was damaged severely in the 1955 pogroms, the icons were painted by Simalaridu in 1966 and exterior was repaired in 1999, early on in the tenure of the current Patriarch Bartholomew. Though there is no longer a large Greek Orthodox community in the area, the church is regularly maintained and occasionally holds service.
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