Located on the west bank of the Golden Horn, the neighborhood of Cibali sits on the Land Walls with its name deriving from the Cibali gate which serves as the main entrance into the neighborhood. The Gate, though previously referred to as Porta eis Pegas or Porta del Pozzo, was renamed for the dervish commander Cebe Ali Bey from Bursa who entered the gate during the conquest of Istanbul on May 29, 1453. A plaque on the gate wall commemorates this event. In the Byzantine period, the area of Cibali was also referred to as the Agia quarter. It was included in parts of modern-day Ayakapı, a bordering neighborhood that was founded at least from the late 9th century.
Directly following the Ottoman Conquest of the area, Cibali was home to a large Christian Orthodox and Jewish population. According to registers from vakifs (or religious endowments), before 1481 there lived 10 families from Lesvos, 55 from Trebizons, and 50 Greek Orthodox families of fisherman with unspecified origins all of whom were moved to the city due to repopulation policies. Throughout the early modern period, Cibali was home to a large Jewish population, which is in part attributed to its proximity to Balat, one of the centers of Jewish life in the city. This large Jewish population - predominantly comprised of Sephardic Jews - established centers of Jewish life throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most prominently the Unkapanı Synagogue. However, by the eighteenth century, the neighborhood’s Jewish population declined primarily due to fires that destroyed many Jewish quarters during the seventeenth century and caused Istanbul’s Jewish population
to migrate to other neighborhoods. These fires most prominently include the fire of 1633, which broke out in Cibali before spreading to Ayakapı and Fener, and the fire of 1660, which destroyed a large portion of the city. As with most of the neighborhoods of the city, Cibali was fire-prone, experiencing more than 20 major fires from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. By the nineteenth century, Cibali became the home of many Greek Orthodox immigrants from the Balkans and Anatolia. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many workshops were established in the area, especially those that manufactured glass (which some attribute to the frequent fires afflicting the area).
“around the Cibali gate there are houses on both sides of the road, whereas on its docks a plethora of merchandises are sold for the needs of the people. […] On the coasts of Cibali the craft guilds of the grocers, the fishermen, the butchers, the candle-makers and many other people come for rest and amusement.”
- Armenian visitor in the seventeenth century, Eremya Çelebi Kömürciyan
With the relocation of the Patriarchate to the nearby neighborhood of Fener, many Greek elite families, known as Phanariots, moved into the area and built two and three-story stone mansions across the coastal road facing the ocean during the eighteenth century. In addition to the Phanariots furriers and silk traders also built their homes in the neighborhood.
A major turning point for the neighborhood arrived in 1884 with the inauguration of the Cibali Tobacco Factory designed by Alexandre Vallaury under commission from Sultan Abdülhamid II. The factory was operated by a foreign company that had taken over the tobacco monopoly from two Greek bankers and entrepreneurs, George Zarifi and Christaki Zografos, who obtained the tobacco monopoly in 1872. Across the empire, cigarette production was usually associated with prominent Greek families, and by the 1880s, 5 Greek firms controlled 80% of the cigarette trade in the empire. These factories often employed Greek workers. Though the Cibali factory was not operated by a Greek firm many of its workers were Orthodox Greek and Jewish, representing the religious make-up of the local neighbors of Balat, Hasköy, and Fener that supplied the factory laborers. Many of its employees
were also recent migrants with records of Greek and Italian-born workers making a living at the factory. The Factory employed more than 2000 men and women, swelling into the largest factory in Istanbul with some even describing it as a small city with workshops, a healthcare unit, a fire brigade, a daycare, and refectories. It employed the largest number of women than any other firm in the Ottoman production sector comprising two-thirds of its workforce. The factory was a center of substantial labor unrest and strikes throughout the early twentieth century, with major strikes occurring in 1893, 1904, and 1911 - the final of which is considered the longest strike of the late Ottoman period with 2,000 strikers. In 1908, Greek and Jewish workers created the Cigarette Makers’ Association which attempted to protect the rights of cigarette makers and packers.
In 1925, the Turkish Republic nationalized operations and the Factory ran until 1994 when it was left in disrepair. The building was acquired by Kadir Has University in 2001 which operates as the site of its main campus as well as houses the Rezan Has Museum. Efforts have been made to restore the facade of the building. Today, the neighborhood of Cibali is a largely Muslim lower-to-middle class neighborhood comprised of workers and traders.
Church
Church of Hagios Nikolaos (Αγίου Νικολάου)
Though the church was not known in the Byzantine times, due to Ottoman policies that forbade the building of new churches, scholars such as Manouil Gedeon, claim that there must have been a church on the plot of the Agios Nikolaos prior to Ottoman conquest. The church is mentioned by travelers Stephan Gerlach and Paterakis in 1576 and 1604 respectively. As with most buildings of the city, the Agios Nikolaos church underwent several renovations: in 1716, it was destroyed by a large fire and renovated in 1720 with the addition of a nearby agiasma of St. Charalambos. It was repaired again in the 1790s with more additions to the structure including a narthex (an enclosed porch just inside the entrance to a church). It is possible the church was destroyed as a part of retaliatory policies following the Greek War of Independence in 1821 but with a more favorable
climate allowing for the reconstruction of churches in the late 1830s, the Agios Nikolaos church was rebuilt in 1838. The parish of the church was particularly wealthy and important and according the Patriarchal typıkon, it was the “first in order” amongst the 37 parishes of the Archbishopric of Constantinople”. Since 1770, the parish had a Greek language school house near the church and a communal school on the street opposite the church. Around 1837, the schools were merged and a few years later a girls school and a kindergarten were created.
References:
Ayrancı, Mehmet, Günşıl Öncü, and Melis Ş. Çalışlar. “Cibali Tobacco Factory: The Space
of Labor.” Google Arts & Culture.
Balsoy, Gülhan. 2009. “Gendering Ottoman Labor History: The Cibali Régie Factory in the
Early Twentieth Century.” International Review of Social History 54 (Dec): 45-68.
“Cibali Tobacco Factory | Rezan Has Museum.” 2017. Rezan Has Müzesi.
Hendrix, David. “The Monastery of Christ Pantepoptes.” The Byzantine Legacy.
Işık, A. B., and Yusuf Akyazıcı. 2018. “Cibali District; Investigation of External Facing Material
Selection In Architectural Structures.” Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and
Technologies 3:174-190.
Nacar, Can. 2014. “The Régie Monopoly and Tobacco Workers in Late Ottoman Istanbul.”
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34 (1): 206-219.
Nacar, Can. 2019. Labor and Power in the Late Ottoman Empire: Tobacco Workers,
Managers, and the State, 1872–1912: Springer International Publishing.
Andrianopoulou Konstantina , "Cibali", Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World,
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