Museum Secrets (2011–…): Season 2, Episode 8 - Inside the American Museum of Natural History - full transcript
(contemplative orchestral music)
- [Narrator] Istanbul, a
city of masks and bazaars,
and at its heart, a museum
with secrets, dark and strange.
Engines of destruction,
(cannon booms)
(stone crashing)
ancient high technology, a deadly dinner,
and a madman in the harem, secrets hidden
in plain sight inside the
Topkapi Palace Museum.
(contemplative orchestral music)
(static crackling)
(contemplative orchestral music)
At the nexus of Europe and Asia,
Istanbul is the gateway
to the Middle East.
(man chanting in foreign language)
On a hill overlooking the city
stands a magnificent museum
visited by two million people every year.
They come to marvel at opulent treasures
in what was once a sultan's
palace named Topkapi.
In Arabic, Topkapi means cannon door.
How and why Topkapi Palace came to be here
is our first museum secret.
The story begins with a
Muslim sultan named Mehmed II.
His weapons can be seen
in the gallery of armor.
- This object is one of
the most beautiful examples
of the classical Turkish sword design.
If you see, it has a little curve.
This sword tells us that
he was a warrior king.
(reflective orchestral music)
- [Narrator] In 1453, at the age of 23,
Mehmed commanded a vast
Islamic Ottoman Empire,
but at its center, where
Istanbul stands today,
was the Christian city of Constantinople,
the last remnant of the Byzantine Empire.
Its location on the
Bosphorus Strait gave it
control of trade between
Europe and the East.
And over a thousand years,
its surrounding walls
had thwarted 23 would-be invaders.
- The walls of Constantinople
were absolutely extraordinary.
There was nothing like
them in the medieval world.
Here we are standing on
the great city walls,
land-walls, of Constantinople,
on one of the towers.
And we're looking down the line
of walls that run to the sea
on one side and into a
small bay on the other.
(dramatic orchestral music)
- [Narrator] The bay is
called the Golden Horn,
and in times of war, a
great chain was stretched
across it to keep out enemy ships.
- The Byzantines were used to sieges,
and they were expert at
defending their city.
- [Narrator] Constantine XI was
the 101st Byzantine emperor.
He warned his Christian subjects
that should the Muslims
ever conquer the city,
they would brutalize survivors
and force them to convert to Islam,
assuring them of eternal damnation.
Constantine was determined
not to let that happen.
Mehmed arrived on April 6th, 1453,
with an army of more than
80,000 men and 320 ships.
He was confident he could conquer the city
that had withstood so
many previous attacks,
but his men discovered that there was
more to Constantinople's
walls than met the eye.
(soldiers shouting)
Attackers had to ford a moat and cross
a 20-meter terrace to reach the wall.
As they battered or tried to climb it,
they would be showered with arrows.
Those who made it over would
discover a second inner wall,
higher and more formidable than the first.
- They would be met with a hale of fire,
javelins, Greek fire, bolts, rocks.
It was an absolute killing field for them.
- [Narrator] The traditional
tactic of climbing
and breaching walls was proving futile,
but Mehmed had come prepared
with new and powerful weapons.
- So what he brought in terms
of military technology here
is obviously the cannons.
The largest cannon he had is called Shahi,
the grand or the royal cannon.
It was throwing cannonballs
of 600 kilograms.
- [Narrator] This monster
cannon's barrel was
20 centimeters thick and
close to 10 meters long,
made of solid bronze.
(explosions booming)
Its cannonballs could travel
over a kilometer to reach their targets.
(fuse hissing)
(cannons booming)
Its blast was deafening.
Even Constantinople's thick walls
could not withstand a direct hit.
- Although initially the wall was ruined,
the Byzantines quickly developed
a very successful defense,
which was to replace the
stone with earth rampart.
The effect of this was to absorb
the impact of the cannonballs.
It was rather like
throwing a stone into mud.
And this made it perhaps
a little bit dispiriting
to the Ottoman troops who,
as quickly as they demolished
a section of wall, saw it being replaced
with something which still
worked reasonably well.
- [Narrator] Thousands of
Mehmed's troops continued to die
as they advanced on the
walls, hoping the cannons
would finally give them
the advantage they needed.
(soldiers shouting)
(explosions booming)
Day after day, the assaults
became stronger and louder.
- When the Turks attacked,
one of their psychological
weapons was noise,
a wall of noise moving towards the city.
(soldiers shouting)
(explosions booming)
- [Narrator] The cannon blasts
shook ships and rattled bones.
They were joined by the strange sounds
of Ottoman battle cries
and the high-pitched
whine of Ottoman horns.
(upbeat horn and percussion music)
- This would have come
from their Janissary band,
drums, trumpets, cymbals.
It would have been an
awe-inspiring sound you encounter,
and certainly drained the
blood out the defenders.
(dramatic orchestral music)
- [Narrator] Though the
Byzantines were tiring,
their great walls stood
firm, but the defenders
would soon discover that Mehmed
had another card to play.
- On the morning of the
21st of April, 1453,
it was a Sunday, they
were going to church.
They look casually over the
seawalls into the Golden Horn,
and they saw, to their horror,
the ships rolling one by one
into the water behind the chain.
- [Narrator] To outflank
the naval defenses
of Constantinople, Mehmed slid his ships
down the hill on greased planks and logs.
(wood creaking)
- And it was a moment of panic
and sheer amazement at
what Mehmed had done.
(bells tolling)
- [Narrator] Mehmed knew his bold maneuver
would strike a psychological blow.
- He was very well informed
about the way that they thought,
and he realized that the morale
of the people was probably
a crucial factor in the way
that this was going to play out.
- [Narrator] Weeks passed.
(insects chirping)
(reflective synth music)
On the 53rd night of the
siege, as the moon was waning,
a partial eclipse turned it blood-red.
Inside the city, Constantine's
subjects panicked.
- And this struck them with absolute fear.
It seemed to be possibly a symbol.
A crescent moon seemed to be possibly
a symbol of the Ottoman Empire.
(mysterious synth music)
- [Narrator] Suspecting the
eclipse might demoralize
the defenders, Mehmed
ordered an all-out attack.
(soldiers shouting)
- He marched his men forward in waves
in a kamikaze attack to take the city.
(metal banging)
- [Narrator] Constantine and his best men
were there to meet them.
(soldiers shouting)
- And he locked the gate behind him
and hung the key around his neck,
so they would do or die
with their back to the wall.
- [Narrator] Constantine's
courageous maneuver
would prove futile.
- One man, known to history as Hassan,
managed to plant the flag
of Islam on the battlement,
and it put heart into the Ottoman troops.
(doors bang)
They swam forward and
they just simply overwhelm
the exhausted Byzantine defense.
- [Narrator] The walls that
had protected Constantinople
for a thousand years had
finally been breached
by the superior forces and tactics
of the young sultan named Mehmed.
- And it's at the moment that he passes
through this gateway that
he takes on the title
by which he's known to the
Turks as the Conqueror.
- [Narrator] Mehmed converted
the city's largest cathedral
into a mosque.
It seemed that Constantine's
worst fear was coming true,
but if he'd lived to see
what Mehmed did next,
he would have been surprised.
The conqueror put away his sword
and met with leaders of
all the city's religions.
- He is the one who made the meeting
with all the other churches and asked them
to tell their faith to him
and promoted their faith.
- [Narrator] Christians were allowed
to worship their god in peace.
- That's absolutely a legacy of Mehmed II,
of a man who had an imperial
vision and who managed
to keep all these people
of different worlds,
different languages, and
religions under one power.
- [Narrator] And in a city that has grown
far beyond its protective walls,
many Christians live here still.
The cosmopolitan character
of Istanbul began
with Mehmed's multicultural vision.
And as for the secret of
why Topkapi Palace was built
in this location, Mehmed needed a place
where he could spot would-be invaders,
and we suspect he just enjoyed the view.
(dramatic orchestral music)
Up next, the secret of the
oldest map of the New World.
(dramatic choral symphony music)
Topkapi Palace was the center
of the sprawling Ottoman
Empire for almost 500 years.
In the 20th century, when
it became a museum, an army
of curators began to catalog
the treasures of the sultans.
In a bundle of papers, one scholar
noticed this faded document.
It is clearly a map, but the coastlines
are not immediately familiar.
But to geologist Steve
Dutch, the map is a marvel.
- It shows Europe and Africa.
The coast of Brazil is
reasonably recognizable.
And it's unusual in several respects.
It's one of the fist maps that shows
the Americas in much detail.
- [Narrator] Initially, it was hailed
as the long-lost map of
Christopher Columbus,
the chart of his voyage of 1492,
but it can't be because
the writing is in Turkish.
The date translates as 1513, and that's
very strange because as of 1513,
no Arab explorer had
sailed west of Africa.
And at the same time,
Columbus's maps were secured
in a castle in Spain
for Spanish eyes only.
So how does this map exist?
And what is it doing in Topkapi Palace?
Those are our museum secrets.
(cannon booms)
The story begins in 1453, as
Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror
takes control of Constantinople
and the sea lane just
beyond his palace door.
(contemplative orchestral music)
Control of the Bosphorus
Strait gave his Ottoman Empire
a monopoly on trade with India and China,
including unique imports
still for sale today
in Istanbul's famous spice market.
(people chattering)
- The spice trade was a
one-directional trade actually.
(speaks in foreign language)
It was a one-directional trade
from the east towards the west.
- [Narrator] Yusuf Civelekoglu
is the grandson of one
of the first Topkapi historians
to see the New World map.
- They would come on ships or
on caravans, and in Istanbul,
they would change into vessels to Europe.
The kind of spices which
were traded were like pepper,
saffron, dried ginger, turmeric.
It was a necessity for the
cold winters of Europe,
where you had to conserve your
food for survival purposes.
(contemplative orchestral music)
- [Narrator] The spice trade monopoly
made the Ottoman Empire rich,
but Europeans grew tired
of paying the Ottoman's
sky-high prices, so some,
like Columbus, sought a new
route to Asia by sailing west.
- The Ottomans were interested
in what the Europeans
were doing in the West
because they felt that
this was competition.
They knew that their monopoly
was put into question.
- [Narrator] To discover
what Columbus had found,
the reigning sultan assigned
his admiral, Piri Reis.
- His full name was Hadji
Piri Ahmed Muhiddin Reis.
The Hadji means he made
the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Piri means he was an elder.
Ahmed Muhiddin was his given name,
and then Reis means a
captain or a chieftain.
- [Narrator] But Piri
Reis wasn't an explorer.
He had a different skill.
(both speaking in foreign language)
Yusuf relies on this skill when navigating
the difficult waters of the Bosphorus.
He consults a copy of a map drawn
by Admiral Piri Reis 500 years ago.
- Here is a tower which
is still to be seen,
and you have here the
Bosphorus going further north.
A modern map of Istanbul would be
not very different from this.
(contemplative orchestral music)
Today, the sea lane is crowded
with ships from many lands,
just as it was in the time of Piri Reis.
As an Ottoman admiral, he could order
the seizure of any ship in the harbor
to search for charts and
interrogate the crew.
- This could be one of the
Venetian traders in Istanbul,
who brought with him a chart.
When any ship was seized,
one of the main objectives
was to go immediately to the bridge
before the charts are destroyed.
(quill scratching)
- [Narrator] From these sources,
Piri Reis pieced together
New World coastlines,
and he drew some of the
creatures and monsters
that sailors claimed they saw.
(creatures growling)
But there were large regions missing.
Piri Reis couldn't complete the map
without learning what
Columbus had discovered.
- One of his sources is a Spanish slave
who has been with Columbus several times
on the voyages to the Americas
and who has described these
coastlines for Piri Reis.
(water lapping)
- [Narrator] This inside information
was just what Piri Reis needed,
and it makes his map our closest link
to the long lost map of
Christopher Columbus.
- It manages to achieve a
really remarkable degree
of internal consistency,
and I describe this
as a first-class piece
of naval intelligence.
- [Narrator] When Piri Reis
presented his map to the sultan,
the Ottoman ruler was surprised
by the existence of
new lands and delighted
that the western edge
stopped short of revealing
a new trade route to the
spice-rich lands of Asia.
- This map was considered
extremely valuable also
by the strategists of the
empire, by the sultan himself.
He must have been excited.
- [Narrator] It meant
that for a while at least,
the sultan could keep
his Asian spice monopoly,
and thanks to an able admiral,
the Ottomans had learned
the outlines of the New
World without leaving home.
Next on Museum Secrets,
a Turkish delight
becomes a deadly dessert.
(dramatic choral symphony music)
Topkapi Palace Museum
is peaceful at night,
but when the sultans lived here,
it's likely they had trouble sleeping.
- Being a very elevated
person in that period
would have been a struggle
and quite frightening.
There would always be people
who were out to get you.
- [Narrator] A traitorous
vizier, a jealous wife,
or an ambitious son, many had
a motive to murder a sultan.
And during the Ottoman Empire,
10 murderers succeeded.
Jason Goodwin thinks about
palace murderers quite a lot
because he sets his novels
right here in Topkapi
in a continuing series featuring
a Turkish detective named Yashim.
Today, he's here to find a museum secret,
the best way to kill a sultan,
for research purposes only
of course, and he thinks
the sultan's bathroom might
be a good place to start.
- Perhaps there, he's
at his most vulnerable.
So even the heart of his
own palace, he can never be
quite, quite free of his
kind of night terrors.
- [Narrator] But his guide,
curator Ganan Gimeli,
thinks Jason is on the wrong track.
- Sultans always used
to live in these places
because for security, he
always lock by himself.
- I see, so he went...
When he was bathing, he bathed by himself.
- Mm-hmm.
- And this screen like this,
so he goes inside and he shuts.
- Yes.
- Does like he lock himself in?
- Uh-huh.
(mysterious flute and synth music)
- [Narrator] Inside his gilded cage,
a sultan would be hard to kill,
so Jason will need to think
up a new murder scheme.
He decides to think on
a full stomach by having
a meal at this well-known
Istanbul restaurant.
Here the food is prepared just
as it was in Ottoman times.
Owner Batur Durmay is determined
that every dish should
be fit for a sultan.
- Did you find these recipes or,
I mean, were the search for this?
- Actually first, we started
off with just the dish names.
From 20 to 40 different dishes
were placed on the table,
and a sultan would pick
up three, four, five
that he fancied, and he would taste them.
The rest would go back to
the kitchens, untouched.
(upbeat orchestral music)
- [Narrator] As Jason enjoys the meal,
his author's mind is hard at work.
He's wondering if it might be possible
to tamper with the sultan's food.
To find out, he heads to
the sultan's real kitchen.
The sultan's meals were cooked
in these rooms in Topkapi Palace,
along with the meals for
the sultan's entire court.
- There were about 5,000 people
who needed to be fed
everyday in Topkapi Palace,
so the kitchens were correspondingly huge.
- [Narrator] After an
incident in the 15th century,
when Mehmed the Conqueror
dropped dead in his chair,
the kitchen was reorganized
to enhance security.
- There was one kitchen
reserved entirely for production
of food for the sultan
and only for the sultan.
The moment it leaves the kitchen,
it's covered in a cloth and
this cloth is tied with a ribbon
so that no one can tamper
with it between the kitchen
and wherever he happens to be,
which could be quite a long way.
- [Narrator] The only chance
for tampering would be
at the moment the food is prepared,
and the would-be assassin
would need to choose
poison that wouldn't change the taste
or color of the sultan's food.
Jason thinks he might discover
a possible poison in
Istanbul's spice market.
He doesn't really expect to
find it on display, but he hopes
one of the vendors might
have some useful information.
- When I'm writing my detective stories,
I'm always looking for some sort of poison
I can use for the murder and--
- Poison?
- Yeah.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah.
Can you think of anything good?
- I have poison like this.
Do you wanna try?
Turkish poison, very spicy.
(Jason laughs)
Or the burn.
- You just want me kinda gasping, huh?
- Yeah.
- You know, we were interested
in the ancient times in the harem.
- Yes.
- When the women tried to kill each other
and maybe poison each other, yeah, yeah.
- Melissa tea we have, Melissa.
- What is that?
- (mumbles) Melissa.
- Okay.
- Melissa here.
- So this is good, if
someone is trying to get you,
then you drink the Melissa
tea and you feel calm.
- Absolutely.
- [Jason] Is there
anything that in old times
that the people would use as a poison?
- Killing's too dangerous.
(Jason laughs)
I know because I don't
like this is killing.
- [Jason] No, no, no.
- [Narrator] Understandably,
some of the shopkeepers are
a little shocked at Jason's questions
or suggest options that didn't exist
in the sultan's time,
like this roach poison.
- Okay.
So you just sprinkle
that around you, okay.
Yeah, you might dust the sugar
onto somebody's baklava maybe, yeah.
- [Narrator] Clearly that won't work,
but Jason isn't out of
nefarious ideas yet.
- The women in the harem,
they had creams and powders
things for their hair, things
to make their skin lighter
or to make their skin softer.
(ominous orchestral music)
- [Narrator] In their
skin whitening powder,
the active ingredient was white arsenic.
The arsenic would be invisible
on top of this traditional
Ottoman dessert,
and the sultan wouldn't taste
it because arsenic is sweet.
But unfortunately for Jason,
the sultan's kitchen
had one more safeguard.
- There was the head taster guy.
One of his duties was to guard
that no one interferes with those dishes.
- [Narrator] So if the sultan's dessert
was laced with arsenic, the only person
who would die would be his food-taster.
Poison may not be the best way
to murder a sultan after all.
- There were lots of other opportunities
for kinda skullduggery.
- [Narrator] In a palace
full of potential murderers,
for even the most careful sultan,
there was no guarantee
of getting to dessert.
(sultan gasps)
(contemplative orchestral music)
Next on Museum Secrets,
rebuilding the world's
first robots from the 13th century.
(dramatic choral symphony music)
Inside the Topkapi Palace, only a fraction
of the museum's vast
collection is on display.
Many of the most important artifacts
are preserved in the archives,
and one is so fragile
that it is rarely brought into the light.
It dates to 1206 A.D.
These fanciful, colorful
drawings suggest it might be
an illustrated children's
book, but it isn't.
(birds chirping)
Historian Bert Hall has been studying
the Topkapi book for decades.
- The Book of Ingenious
Devices was written
by Ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari
early in the 13th century.
It is a kind of encyclopedia or treatise
that covers a number of different devices.
(mysterious flute and drum music)
- [Narrator] In the book's preface,
al-Jazari claims that every
drawing is of a device he made
to bring delight to the sultan's court.
But many have a level of complexity
that seems impossible in the 13th century.
Are they pipe dreams
or did the ingenious devices really work?
That is our museum secret.
Our investigation begins
in Europe in the Dark Ages.
There weren't many devices
here, ingenious or otherwise.
Most of the ancient science of the Greeks
and Romans had been forgotten.
But in the Islamic world, Arab scholars
preserved and studied ancient science.
- At a time when Westerners
had all but forgotten about it,
the Muslims were working
towards new generations
of evermore ingenious devices.
(contemplative orchestral music)
- [Narrator] Nearly all
of al-Jazari's devices
involve the flow of water.
This may be because mechanized irrigation
is a necessity in a dry land,
but there may also be
a spiritual dimension.
- From the Islamic prospective,
the Koran speaks very highly about water,
and in particular there's a
verse that really stands out
and God Almighty says,
water is the source of life.
(fountain hissing)
- [Narrator] In al-Jazari's
devices, water is a source
of power, but are they just
designs or do they really work?
To find out, Bert Hall has decided
to try to make one of his own.
(door knocks)
In Toronto, he enlists the
help of Chris Warrilow,
a film and stage props-maker.
- [Bert] I'm amazed at all
the stuff you've got here.
- [Chris] Why, thank you very much.
- Well, this is a medieval drawing
from the work of al-Jazari.
This is for handwashing, and the idea is
it's designed as a model of a servant
that pours water over the user's hands.
Then the water drains out,
and the servant offers the user a towel.
- This the only thing
that we have to go by?
- This is the best that we have to go by.
There's other versions of
this, but they don't give you
any more information than this one does.
- Okay, okay, oh.
- So where do you think we go from here?
- (chuckles) I would say a hardware store.
(both laughing)
(contemplative orchestral music)
- [Narrator] Chris is not the first to try
to reconstruct al-Jazari's devices.
A few can be found in the Museum
of the History of Science
and Technology near Topkapi.
Like the mechanical servant girl,
many of these devices
feature human figures.
- Remember, at an age before television,
to see something that
looked like a human being
going through motions that
looked like human motions,
banging a drum, ringing
a bell, playing a flute,
that sort of thing, was
quite the spectacle.
- [Narrator] But none
of these models move.
Chris hopes to have more
luck with his servant girl.
But why was so much ingenuity
devoted to simply offering a towel?
The answer can be found in a mosque.
(man chanting in foreign language)
For the ritual that
every Muslim must perform
before answering the call to prayer.
(water splashing)
- We have to make ablution
and the specific method
of washing through the water that brings
the purification before we commence
our prayers and our acts of worship.
(contemplative orchestral music)
- [Narrator] In the 13th century,
when a sultan purified himself,
a servant would be standing
by to give him a clean towel.
The mechanical girl was designed to do
this work without human assistance,
and that makes her a kind of robot.
If Chris can make her work, it will mean
that al-Jazari designed
the first robot in history.
- I'm interested to see
if something can be made
with modern materials that would imitate
the actions of a design that's
almost a thousand years old.
- [Chris] Oh, hi, Bert.
- Hi, Chris, what do you got for me?
- I really hope this
meets with your approval.
- [Bert] Oh, wow!
I'd love to see it working.
- Okay, alrighty, so we start with dumping
our water in our first tank on top.
This is our main reservoir.
(water splashing)
- Can I pull the plug?
- Pull that little plug.
- Can I do it?
- Straight up and there we go.
(contemplative synth music)
(water splashing)
You may wanna step back. (laughs)
So it will fill up our
basin almost to the brim
before it starts siphoning out.
So you now have a few
moments to wash your hands.
- Yes.
- Almost overflows.
- There it goes.
Almost overflowing and starting to float.
It's starting to float.
- [Chris] We should see our attendant
offer us the towel, and there we go.
- [Bert] Oh, I see.
It works slowly then, very impressive.
- [Chris] Wanna do it again?
- Yeah.
(water splashing)
- There it goes.
It was a bit of a concern
that it wasn't going to work.
I really couldn't test
the individual pieces
as I was putting it together,
but it works. (laughs)
- [Narrator] This means
that using only water
as a power source, al-Jazari created
the first working robot in history,
and the robot is far from
his most complex invention.
Some transmit water power
through an elaborate
interplay of levers and gears.
- Would there have been anything
of this nature in Europe or elsewhere?
- Not really, we know that
things like this were given
by Muslim rulers as gifts
to Christian rulers.
They served the same function
of public admiration,
a kind of mechanical marvel to look at.
(dramatic orchestral music)
(machine whirring)
- [Narrator] In their own marvels,
Europeans adapted some of
al-Jazari's mechanical technology,
including his most farsighted innovation,
now known as the crankshaft.
(engine rumbling)
Today, the crankshaft is an essential part
of every truck and automobile,
technology that a Muslim
visionary shared with the world
in his book of ingenious
mechanical devices.
(dramatic orchestral music)
Up next, secrets of the harem.
(dramatic choral symphony music)
The Topkapi Palace Museum was once
the hub of the Ottoman Empire.
Three centuries ago, the palace grounds
were as crowded as they are today,
with courtiers, generals,
scientists, and slaves.
But down a long pathway
lay a part of the palace
that only the sultan and
a select few could enter.
The name of this place might be
the only Arabic word you know, harem.
- Nobody knew what went
on inside the harem.
That was absolutely secret.
The word, harem, means forbidden.
It's a forbidden area.
- [Narrator] Harem, the word conjures
Hollywood fantasies of
sex slaves and orgies,
all to please the all-powerful sultan.
(women laughing)
And in the real harem, the sultan
had many women to do his bidding.
(Ganan speaking in foreign language)
Today, Ganan Gimeli is
the harem's curator.
(contemplative orchestral music)
- [Narrator] The room seemed designed
to encourage sexual passion.
(Ganan speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] But in one wing of the harem,
bars on the widows hint
at a different story.
The rooms beyond are locked,
each one, a prison cell.
This museum secret will
reveal who is imprisoned here
and what happened when they got out.
(bars clanking)
Women were brought to the harem
when they were very young,
snatched from their homes
in outlying Christian regions
of the Ottoman Empire.
- Be brought in, they
would convert to Islam,
and they would go through a
whole process of education.
It's a very beautiful place, but it's
actually quite a severe environment,
and I often compare it, it's like
a kind of really tough
girls boarding school.
- [Narrator] Just how tough can
be seen in this spartan room
where women of the harem
wrote messages 300 years ago.
- [Narrator] The inscription reads,
"When someone lost a mirror,
I was accused of stealing it."
- [Narrator] After
receiving her education,
a young woman would be
presented to the sultan.
She would soon discover that the sultan
didn't just have sex on his mind.
- The idea really behind
the harem for the sultan
was that he should have heirs,
and that's why it's not as
sexy as we like to think
because really it was
just about procreation.
And it wasn't about having
great time while you did it.
It was just about getting boys out.
- [Narrator] Any son of a sultan
was in line for the throne,
so when a new sultan was
declared, all his brothers
and half-brothers were
potential sultans, too.
Every new sultan began his reign
by eliminating the competition.
- The guy who took power immediately had
all his brothers rounded up and killed
so that there would be no
dissension in the state
so that he would rule unchallenged.
- [Narrator] Even the
sultan's youngest brothers
would be put to death.
(boy grunts)
- The killing just got sort of too gross,
and people were offended.
19 boys, perfectly healthy, good boys,
and they're kind of taken
out to the burial grounds
and they go through
the streets of Istanbul
and everybody starts wailing,
and this is a terrible event.
- [Narrator] Revulsion led to
a ban on such brutal killings,
but the sultans still
needed a way to contain
their brothers' designs on power.
And that brings us back here
to these barred windows.
- Behind us here is what is referred to
as the notorious kafes or the cage.
The new idea was that the brothers
would drag out their existence here.
(reflective orchestral music)
- [Narrator] One of the first boys
to grow up in this prison was Ibrahim I.
(child crying)
Locked up with his siblings
when he was just two years old,
Ibrahim was given food and
shelter but little else.
(woman crying)
(door banging)
He was deprived of love
and even human contact.
After 22 years, when he was
told the sultan had died
and he was next in line for the throne,
Ibrahim believed it was a cruel joke.
(body thuds)
(man groans)
He refused to budge until someone proved
that the old sultan was really dead.
When Ibrahim walked out into the sunlight,
he struggled to adjust.
(birds chirping)
- He just went on a major spree.
- [Narrator] Like a sultan
in a Hollywood movie,
he tried to make up for lost time.
He had sex with a new partner every night,
ignoring his official duties.
And as for the prison where he suffered
for so long, he expanded it.
- And actually not just
in this kinda handsome-looking building
but in a whole ward, a
rather kind of dingy,
little hovels up above the corridors.
So you had nephews and uncles
and brothers and all these guys
who were living in
various states of neglect.
(insects chirping)
(fire crackling)
- [Narrator] So many years in the cage
had unhinged Ibrahim's mind.
He began to suspect his
harem was unfaithful.
What he did next was insane.
- So they were all taken to the edge
of the Bosphorus out on a boat.
Weights were put round their feet,
and they were thrown into the
water where they all drowned.
(water splashing)
A fishermen, later on that day,
he dived down and found
himself, to his horror,
amongst this sort of
grove of beautiful women,
all bowing gracefully
with the passing tide.
(haunting synth music)
- [Narrator] When the
news reached the palace,
Ibrahim's courtiers took drastic action.
They marched him back to
his gilded cage in the harem
where he was discreetly strangled.
(contemplative orchestral music)
To give a man nothing and
then to give him everything is
a recipe for disaster, and perhaps that's
why the sultan's harem
really should be forbidden.
Up next, the secret of
winning an unwinnable war.
(dramatic choral symphony music)
Topkapi Palace did not become a museum
because the Ottoman
rulers wanted it that way.
In fact, the sultans
might still be here today
except for one miscalculation.
In World War I, the reigning
sultan backed the Germans.
Even after his army was
crushed by the Allies,
he made no attempt to make peace.
After the war, a popular uprising replaced
the Ottoman Empire with the
Democratic Nation of Turkey.
The sultan fled not just from his palace
but from the country.
The Turks were proud of achieving freedom,
but it came with the loss of identity.
If they were no longer
Ottomans, who were they?
Turkish archeologists sought the answer
in the distant past, looking for evidence
of a Turkish culture
before the Ottoman Empire.
And today, their
discoveries are on view here
in the archeological museum
just outside Topkapi's walls.
The finds are over 2,500 years old.
Historians believe they were all made
by a people called the Hittites.
But their works exhibit so much variety
that they do not reveal a
single cultural identity.
Were they warriors, scholars,
hunters, or something else?
That is our final museum secret.
We begin our investigation
in the dessert valley
of Tell Tayinat, where
archeologists have spent decades
digging methodically layer
by layer into the past.
- So what we're looking
at here is actually
the remains of a temple
from the Neo-Hittite period,
from the ninth to late eighth century.
The actual temple itself
was rather modest,
comprised of two small rooms.
(tractor rumbling)
- [Narrator] The temple was
the center of a Hittite town.
- And we know it was destroyed in 738 B.C.
by the Assyrian Empire-builder,
Tiglath-Pileser III.
- [Narrator] This Assyrian
stone carving shows Assyrians
cutting off the heads of
the vanquished Hittites.
- It's essentially meant to intimidate,
to signal to the local
vanquished community
that if you did not toe the line,
that's what you could
expect to happen to you.
- [Narrator] It appears
the Turkish identity
may be linked to a defeated people.
But what about the
Hittites' earlier history,
say 300 years before?
- Well, okay, so we've
been working on exposing
the rest of this room and
the rest of the architecture.
- So we have actually a room
here that we've excavated
down to the floor and
then a second room here
of some large building that
we've just begun to uncover
that's part of, could be
an administrative building.
It could be a palace maybe.
- [Narrator] These earlier Hittites
lived on a grander scale.
- So they produced beautiful works of art,
large sculptures of lions and reliefs
of various mythological scenes.
It looks like their religious traditions.
- [Narrator] They
protected their treasures
behind high walls.
- They produced these monumental citadels
with massive fortifications,
large beautifully-carved
sculptural reliefs.
So they were into monumentality
in a remarkable way.
- [Narrator] And these
pottery vessels suggest
they paid for it all with
agriculture and trade.
- I actually think that there
were probably quite sedentary.
They built large cities,
they were good farmers.
- [Narrator] So perhaps
the Turkish identity is
routed in trade and monumentalism.
But when we dig even deeper
into Hittite history,
the picture changes once again.
Hittite tablets from the 13th century B.C.
tell of army of chariots, the
fighter jets of their day.
Like the Ottomans, the earliest
Hittites used their might
to expand their empire
across the Middle East.
They even threatened mighty Egypt.
In 1275 B.C., the legions of
Pharaoh Ramses II attacked.
(horses clomping)
Both sides put everything they had
into the battle, 5,000 chariots in all.
(metal clanging)
Casualties mounted.
Neither side could gain advantage.
It seemed they were fated to battle
each other into oblivion.
(soldiers shouting)
And at this moment, the
Hittites did something
no Ottoman would ever have done.
It was the defining moment
for the first Turkish people
and for their enemy as well.
What happened is written
in the Hittite language
on this stone tablet in
the archeological museum.
And in Cairo's Egyptian museum,
the same text is inscribed
in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
- Both sides retreated,
and I think they realized
they probably couldn't
control or dominate the other,
and so instead they reached
a diplomatic agreement,
a detente, if you will,
to leave each other alone.
- [Narrator] The agreement is commemorated
at UN headquarters in New York as proof
that peace is possible
even in the Middle East.
(explosions booming)
And if the Turkish
people are still looking
for something to define
them, they can take heart.
Along with all the Turkish people
have given to civilization,
their ancestors wrote
the world's first peace treaty.
In this palace filled with
treasures of the past,
for every mystery we reveal,
far more must remain unspoken,
secrets of the brightest minds
and of the darkest souls,
hidden in plain site inside
the Topkapi Palace Museum.
(dramatic orchestral music)
(contemplative synth music)
- [Narrator] Istanbul, a
city of masks and bazaars,
and at its heart, a museum
with secrets, dark and strange.
Engines of destruction,
(cannon booms)
(stone crashing)
ancient high technology, a deadly dinner,
and a madman in the harem, secrets hidden
in plain sight inside the
Topkapi Palace Museum.
(contemplative orchestral music)
(static crackling)
(contemplative orchestral music)
At the nexus of Europe and Asia,
Istanbul is the gateway
to the Middle East.
(man chanting in foreign language)
On a hill overlooking the city
stands a magnificent museum
visited by two million people every year.
They come to marvel at opulent treasures
in what was once a sultan's
palace named Topkapi.
In Arabic, Topkapi means cannon door.
How and why Topkapi Palace came to be here
is our first museum secret.
The story begins with a
Muslim sultan named Mehmed II.
His weapons can be seen
in the gallery of armor.
- This object is one of
the most beautiful examples
of the classical Turkish sword design.
If you see, it has a little curve.
This sword tells us that
he was a warrior king.
(reflective orchestral music)
- [Narrator] In 1453, at the age of 23,
Mehmed commanded a vast
Islamic Ottoman Empire,
but at its center, where
Istanbul stands today,
was the Christian city of Constantinople,
the last remnant of the Byzantine Empire.
Its location on the
Bosphorus Strait gave it
control of trade between
Europe and the East.
And over a thousand years,
its surrounding walls
had thwarted 23 would-be invaders.
- The walls of Constantinople
were absolutely extraordinary.
There was nothing like
them in the medieval world.
Here we are standing on
the great city walls,
land-walls, of Constantinople,
on one of the towers.
And we're looking down the line
of walls that run to the sea
on one side and into a
small bay on the other.
(dramatic orchestral music)
- [Narrator] The bay is
called the Golden Horn,
and in times of war, a
great chain was stretched
across it to keep out enemy ships.
- The Byzantines were used to sieges,
and they were expert at
defending their city.
- [Narrator] Constantine XI was
the 101st Byzantine emperor.
He warned his Christian subjects
that should the Muslims
ever conquer the city,
they would brutalize survivors
and force them to convert to Islam,
assuring them of eternal damnation.
Constantine was determined
not to let that happen.
Mehmed arrived on April 6th, 1453,
with an army of more than
80,000 men and 320 ships.
He was confident he could conquer the city
that had withstood so
many previous attacks,
but his men discovered that there was
more to Constantinople's
walls than met the eye.
(soldiers shouting)
Attackers had to ford a moat and cross
a 20-meter terrace to reach the wall.
As they battered or tried to climb it,
they would be showered with arrows.
Those who made it over would
discover a second inner wall,
higher and more formidable than the first.
- They would be met with a hale of fire,
javelins, Greek fire, bolts, rocks.
It was an absolute killing field for them.
- [Narrator] The traditional
tactic of climbing
and breaching walls was proving futile,
but Mehmed had come prepared
with new and powerful weapons.
- So what he brought in terms
of military technology here
is obviously the cannons.
The largest cannon he had is called Shahi,
the grand or the royal cannon.
It was throwing cannonballs
of 600 kilograms.
- [Narrator] This monster
cannon's barrel was
20 centimeters thick and
close to 10 meters long,
made of solid bronze.
(explosions booming)
Its cannonballs could travel
over a kilometer to reach their targets.
(fuse hissing)
(cannons booming)
Its blast was deafening.
Even Constantinople's thick walls
could not withstand a direct hit.
- Although initially the wall was ruined,
the Byzantines quickly developed
a very successful defense,
which was to replace the
stone with earth rampart.
The effect of this was to absorb
the impact of the cannonballs.
It was rather like
throwing a stone into mud.
And this made it perhaps
a little bit dispiriting
to the Ottoman troops who,
as quickly as they demolished
a section of wall, saw it being replaced
with something which still
worked reasonably well.
- [Narrator] Thousands of
Mehmed's troops continued to die
as they advanced on the
walls, hoping the cannons
would finally give them
the advantage they needed.
(soldiers shouting)
(explosions booming)
Day after day, the assaults
became stronger and louder.
- When the Turks attacked,
one of their psychological
weapons was noise,
a wall of noise moving towards the city.
(soldiers shouting)
(explosions booming)
- [Narrator] The cannon blasts
shook ships and rattled bones.
They were joined by the strange sounds
of Ottoman battle cries
and the high-pitched
whine of Ottoman horns.
(upbeat horn and percussion music)
- This would have come
from their Janissary band,
drums, trumpets, cymbals.
It would have been an
awe-inspiring sound you encounter,
and certainly drained the
blood out the defenders.
(dramatic orchestral music)
- [Narrator] Though the
Byzantines were tiring,
their great walls stood
firm, but the defenders
would soon discover that Mehmed
had another card to play.
- On the morning of the
21st of April, 1453,
it was a Sunday, they
were going to church.
They look casually over the
seawalls into the Golden Horn,
and they saw, to their horror,
the ships rolling one by one
into the water behind the chain.
- [Narrator] To outflank
the naval defenses
of Constantinople, Mehmed slid his ships
down the hill on greased planks and logs.
(wood creaking)
- And it was a moment of panic
and sheer amazement at
what Mehmed had done.
(bells tolling)
- [Narrator] Mehmed knew his bold maneuver
would strike a psychological blow.
- He was very well informed
about the way that they thought,
and he realized that the morale
of the people was probably
a crucial factor in the way
that this was going to play out.
- [Narrator] Weeks passed.
(insects chirping)
(reflective synth music)
On the 53rd night of the
siege, as the moon was waning,
a partial eclipse turned it blood-red.
Inside the city, Constantine's
subjects panicked.
- And this struck them with absolute fear.
It seemed to be possibly a symbol.
A crescent moon seemed to be possibly
a symbol of the Ottoman Empire.
(mysterious synth music)
- [Narrator] Suspecting the
eclipse might demoralize
the defenders, Mehmed
ordered an all-out attack.
(soldiers shouting)
- He marched his men forward in waves
in a kamikaze attack to take the city.
(metal banging)
- [Narrator] Constantine and his best men
were there to meet them.
(soldiers shouting)
- And he locked the gate behind him
and hung the key around his neck,
so they would do or die
with their back to the wall.
- [Narrator] Constantine's
courageous maneuver
would prove futile.
- One man, known to history as Hassan,
managed to plant the flag
of Islam on the battlement,
and it put heart into the Ottoman troops.
(doors bang)
They swam forward and
they just simply overwhelm
the exhausted Byzantine defense.
- [Narrator] The walls that
had protected Constantinople
for a thousand years had
finally been breached
by the superior forces and tactics
of the young sultan named Mehmed.
- And it's at the moment that he passes
through this gateway that
he takes on the title
by which he's known to the
Turks as the Conqueror.
- [Narrator] Mehmed converted
the city's largest cathedral
into a mosque.
It seemed that Constantine's
worst fear was coming true,
but if he'd lived to see
what Mehmed did next,
he would have been surprised.
The conqueror put away his sword
and met with leaders of
all the city's religions.
- He is the one who made the meeting
with all the other churches and asked them
to tell their faith to him
and promoted their faith.
- [Narrator] Christians were allowed
to worship their god in peace.
- That's absolutely a legacy of Mehmed II,
of a man who had an imperial
vision and who managed
to keep all these people
of different worlds,
different languages, and
religions under one power.
- [Narrator] And in a city that has grown
far beyond its protective walls,
many Christians live here still.
The cosmopolitan character
of Istanbul began
with Mehmed's multicultural vision.
And as for the secret of
why Topkapi Palace was built
in this location, Mehmed needed a place
where he could spot would-be invaders,
and we suspect he just enjoyed the view.
(dramatic orchestral music)
Up next, the secret of the
oldest map of the New World.
(dramatic choral symphony music)
Topkapi Palace was the center
of the sprawling Ottoman
Empire for almost 500 years.
In the 20th century, when
it became a museum, an army
of curators began to catalog
the treasures of the sultans.
In a bundle of papers, one scholar
noticed this faded document.
It is clearly a map, but the coastlines
are not immediately familiar.
But to geologist Steve
Dutch, the map is a marvel.
- It shows Europe and Africa.
The coast of Brazil is
reasonably recognizable.
And it's unusual in several respects.
It's one of the fist maps that shows
the Americas in much detail.
- [Narrator] Initially, it was hailed
as the long-lost map of
Christopher Columbus,
the chart of his voyage of 1492,
but it can't be because
the writing is in Turkish.
The date translates as 1513, and that's
very strange because as of 1513,
no Arab explorer had
sailed west of Africa.
And at the same time,
Columbus's maps were secured
in a castle in Spain
for Spanish eyes only.
So how does this map exist?
And what is it doing in Topkapi Palace?
Those are our museum secrets.
(cannon booms)
The story begins in 1453, as
Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror
takes control of Constantinople
and the sea lane just
beyond his palace door.
(contemplative orchestral music)
Control of the Bosphorus
Strait gave his Ottoman Empire
a monopoly on trade with India and China,
including unique imports
still for sale today
in Istanbul's famous spice market.
(people chattering)
- The spice trade was a
one-directional trade actually.
(speaks in foreign language)
It was a one-directional trade
from the east towards the west.
- [Narrator] Yusuf Civelekoglu
is the grandson of one
of the first Topkapi historians
to see the New World map.
- They would come on ships or
on caravans, and in Istanbul,
they would change into vessels to Europe.
The kind of spices which
were traded were like pepper,
saffron, dried ginger, turmeric.
It was a necessity for the
cold winters of Europe,
where you had to conserve your
food for survival purposes.
(contemplative orchestral music)
- [Narrator] The spice trade monopoly
made the Ottoman Empire rich,
but Europeans grew tired
of paying the Ottoman's
sky-high prices, so some,
like Columbus, sought a new
route to Asia by sailing west.
- The Ottomans were interested
in what the Europeans
were doing in the West
because they felt that
this was competition.
They knew that their monopoly
was put into question.
- [Narrator] To discover
what Columbus had found,
the reigning sultan assigned
his admiral, Piri Reis.
- His full name was Hadji
Piri Ahmed Muhiddin Reis.
The Hadji means he made
the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Piri means he was an elder.
Ahmed Muhiddin was his given name,
and then Reis means a
captain or a chieftain.
- [Narrator] But Piri
Reis wasn't an explorer.
He had a different skill.
(both speaking in foreign language)
Yusuf relies on this skill when navigating
the difficult waters of the Bosphorus.
He consults a copy of a map drawn
by Admiral Piri Reis 500 years ago.
- Here is a tower which
is still to be seen,
and you have here the
Bosphorus going further north.
A modern map of Istanbul would be
not very different from this.
(contemplative orchestral music)
Today, the sea lane is crowded
with ships from many lands,
just as it was in the time of Piri Reis.
As an Ottoman admiral, he could order
the seizure of any ship in the harbor
to search for charts and
interrogate the crew.
- This could be one of the
Venetian traders in Istanbul,
who brought with him a chart.
When any ship was seized,
one of the main objectives
was to go immediately to the bridge
before the charts are destroyed.
(quill scratching)
- [Narrator] From these sources,
Piri Reis pieced together
New World coastlines,
and he drew some of the
creatures and monsters
that sailors claimed they saw.
(creatures growling)
But there were large regions missing.
Piri Reis couldn't complete the map
without learning what
Columbus had discovered.
- One of his sources is a Spanish slave
who has been with Columbus several times
on the voyages to the Americas
and who has described these
coastlines for Piri Reis.
(water lapping)
- [Narrator] This inside information
was just what Piri Reis needed,
and it makes his map our closest link
to the long lost map of
Christopher Columbus.
- It manages to achieve a
really remarkable degree
of internal consistency,
and I describe this
as a first-class piece
of naval intelligence.
- [Narrator] When Piri Reis
presented his map to the sultan,
the Ottoman ruler was surprised
by the existence of
new lands and delighted
that the western edge
stopped short of revealing
a new trade route to the
spice-rich lands of Asia.
- This map was considered
extremely valuable also
by the strategists of the
empire, by the sultan himself.
He must have been excited.
- [Narrator] It meant
that for a while at least,
the sultan could keep
his Asian spice monopoly,
and thanks to an able admiral,
the Ottomans had learned
the outlines of the New
World without leaving home.
Next on Museum Secrets,
a Turkish delight
becomes a deadly dessert.
(dramatic choral symphony music)
Topkapi Palace Museum
is peaceful at night,
but when the sultans lived here,
it's likely they had trouble sleeping.
- Being a very elevated
person in that period
would have been a struggle
and quite frightening.
There would always be people
who were out to get you.
- [Narrator] A traitorous
vizier, a jealous wife,
or an ambitious son, many had
a motive to murder a sultan.
And during the Ottoman Empire,
10 murderers succeeded.
Jason Goodwin thinks about
palace murderers quite a lot
because he sets his novels
right here in Topkapi
in a continuing series featuring
a Turkish detective named Yashim.
Today, he's here to find a museum secret,
the best way to kill a sultan,
for research purposes only
of course, and he thinks
the sultan's bathroom might
be a good place to start.
- Perhaps there, he's
at his most vulnerable.
So even the heart of his
own palace, he can never be
quite, quite free of his
kind of night terrors.
- [Narrator] But his guide,
curator Ganan Gimeli,
thinks Jason is on the wrong track.
- Sultans always used
to live in these places
because for security, he
always lock by himself.
- I see, so he went...
When he was bathing, he bathed by himself.
- Mm-hmm.
- And this screen like this,
so he goes inside and he shuts.
- Yes.
- Does like he lock himself in?
- Uh-huh.
(mysterious flute and synth music)
- [Narrator] Inside his gilded cage,
a sultan would be hard to kill,
so Jason will need to think
up a new murder scheme.
He decides to think on
a full stomach by having
a meal at this well-known
Istanbul restaurant.
Here the food is prepared just
as it was in Ottoman times.
Owner Batur Durmay is determined
that every dish should
be fit for a sultan.
- Did you find these recipes or,
I mean, were the search for this?
- Actually first, we started
off with just the dish names.
From 20 to 40 different dishes
were placed on the table,
and a sultan would pick
up three, four, five
that he fancied, and he would taste them.
The rest would go back to
the kitchens, untouched.
(upbeat orchestral music)
- [Narrator] As Jason enjoys the meal,
his author's mind is hard at work.
He's wondering if it might be possible
to tamper with the sultan's food.
To find out, he heads to
the sultan's real kitchen.
The sultan's meals were cooked
in these rooms in Topkapi Palace,
along with the meals for
the sultan's entire court.
- There were about 5,000 people
who needed to be fed
everyday in Topkapi Palace,
so the kitchens were correspondingly huge.
- [Narrator] After an
incident in the 15th century,
when Mehmed the Conqueror
dropped dead in his chair,
the kitchen was reorganized
to enhance security.
- There was one kitchen
reserved entirely for production
of food for the sultan
and only for the sultan.
The moment it leaves the kitchen,
it's covered in a cloth and
this cloth is tied with a ribbon
so that no one can tamper
with it between the kitchen
and wherever he happens to be,
which could be quite a long way.
- [Narrator] The only chance
for tampering would be
at the moment the food is prepared,
and the would-be assassin
would need to choose
poison that wouldn't change the taste
or color of the sultan's food.
Jason thinks he might discover
a possible poison in
Istanbul's spice market.
He doesn't really expect to
find it on display, but he hopes
one of the vendors might
have some useful information.
- When I'm writing my detective stories,
I'm always looking for some sort of poison
I can use for the murder and--
- Poison?
- Yeah.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah.
Can you think of anything good?
- I have poison like this.
Do you wanna try?
Turkish poison, very spicy.
(Jason laughs)
Or the burn.
- You just want me kinda gasping, huh?
- Yeah.
- You know, we were interested
in the ancient times in the harem.
- Yes.
- When the women tried to kill each other
and maybe poison each other, yeah, yeah.
- Melissa tea we have, Melissa.
- What is that?
- (mumbles) Melissa.
- Okay.
- Melissa here.
- So this is good, if
someone is trying to get you,
then you drink the Melissa
tea and you feel calm.
- Absolutely.
- [Jason] Is there
anything that in old times
that the people would use as a poison?
- Killing's too dangerous.
(Jason laughs)
I know because I don't
like this is killing.
- [Jason] No, no, no.
- [Narrator] Understandably,
some of the shopkeepers are
a little shocked at Jason's questions
or suggest options that didn't exist
in the sultan's time,
like this roach poison.
- Okay.
So you just sprinkle
that around you, okay.
Yeah, you might dust the sugar
onto somebody's baklava maybe, yeah.
- [Narrator] Clearly that won't work,
but Jason isn't out of
nefarious ideas yet.
- The women in the harem,
they had creams and powders
things for their hair, things
to make their skin lighter
or to make their skin softer.
(ominous orchestral music)
- [Narrator] In their
skin whitening powder,
the active ingredient was white arsenic.
The arsenic would be invisible
on top of this traditional
Ottoman dessert,
and the sultan wouldn't taste
it because arsenic is sweet.
But unfortunately for Jason,
the sultan's kitchen
had one more safeguard.
- There was the head taster guy.
One of his duties was to guard
that no one interferes with those dishes.
- [Narrator] So if the sultan's dessert
was laced with arsenic, the only person
who would die would be his food-taster.
Poison may not be the best way
to murder a sultan after all.
- There were lots of other opportunities
for kinda skullduggery.
- [Narrator] In a palace
full of potential murderers,
for even the most careful sultan,
there was no guarantee
of getting to dessert.
(sultan gasps)
(contemplative orchestral music)
Next on Museum Secrets,
rebuilding the world's
first robots from the 13th century.
(dramatic choral symphony music)
Inside the Topkapi Palace, only a fraction
of the museum's vast
collection is on display.
Many of the most important artifacts
are preserved in the archives,
and one is so fragile
that it is rarely brought into the light.
It dates to 1206 A.D.
These fanciful, colorful
drawings suggest it might be
an illustrated children's
book, but it isn't.
(birds chirping)
Historian Bert Hall has been studying
the Topkapi book for decades.
- The Book of Ingenious
Devices was written
by Ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari
early in the 13th century.
It is a kind of encyclopedia or treatise
that covers a number of different devices.
(mysterious flute and drum music)
- [Narrator] In the book's preface,
al-Jazari claims that every
drawing is of a device he made
to bring delight to the sultan's court.
But many have a level of complexity
that seems impossible in the 13th century.
Are they pipe dreams
or did the ingenious devices really work?
That is our museum secret.
Our investigation begins
in Europe in the Dark Ages.
There weren't many devices
here, ingenious or otherwise.
Most of the ancient science of the Greeks
and Romans had been forgotten.
But in the Islamic world, Arab scholars
preserved and studied ancient science.
- At a time when Westerners
had all but forgotten about it,
the Muslims were working
towards new generations
of evermore ingenious devices.
(contemplative orchestral music)
- [Narrator] Nearly all
of al-Jazari's devices
involve the flow of water.
This may be because mechanized irrigation
is a necessity in a dry land,
but there may also be
a spiritual dimension.
- From the Islamic prospective,
the Koran speaks very highly about water,
and in particular there's a
verse that really stands out
and God Almighty says,
water is the source of life.
(fountain hissing)
- [Narrator] In al-Jazari's
devices, water is a source
of power, but are they just
designs or do they really work?
To find out, Bert Hall has decided
to try to make one of his own.
(door knocks)
In Toronto, he enlists the
help of Chris Warrilow,
a film and stage props-maker.
- [Bert] I'm amazed at all
the stuff you've got here.
- [Chris] Why, thank you very much.
- Well, this is a medieval drawing
from the work of al-Jazari.
This is for handwashing, and the idea is
it's designed as a model of a servant
that pours water over the user's hands.
Then the water drains out,
and the servant offers the user a towel.
- This the only thing
that we have to go by?
- This is the best that we have to go by.
There's other versions of
this, but they don't give you
any more information than this one does.
- Okay, okay, oh.
- So where do you think we go from here?
- (chuckles) I would say a hardware store.
(both laughing)
(contemplative orchestral music)
- [Narrator] Chris is not the first to try
to reconstruct al-Jazari's devices.
A few can be found in the Museum
of the History of Science
and Technology near Topkapi.
Like the mechanical servant girl,
many of these devices
feature human figures.
- Remember, at an age before television,
to see something that
looked like a human being
going through motions that
looked like human motions,
banging a drum, ringing
a bell, playing a flute,
that sort of thing, was
quite the spectacle.
- [Narrator] But none
of these models move.
Chris hopes to have more
luck with his servant girl.
But why was so much ingenuity
devoted to simply offering a towel?
The answer can be found in a mosque.
(man chanting in foreign language)
For the ritual that
every Muslim must perform
before answering the call to prayer.
(water splashing)
- We have to make ablution
and the specific method
of washing through the water that brings
the purification before we commence
our prayers and our acts of worship.
(contemplative orchestral music)
- [Narrator] In the 13th century,
when a sultan purified himself,
a servant would be standing
by to give him a clean towel.
The mechanical girl was designed to do
this work without human assistance,
and that makes her a kind of robot.
If Chris can make her work, it will mean
that al-Jazari designed
the first robot in history.
- I'm interested to see
if something can be made
with modern materials that would imitate
the actions of a design that's
almost a thousand years old.
- [Chris] Oh, hi, Bert.
- Hi, Chris, what do you got for me?
- I really hope this
meets with your approval.
- [Bert] Oh, wow!
I'd love to see it working.
- Okay, alrighty, so we start with dumping
our water in our first tank on top.
This is our main reservoir.
(water splashing)
- Can I pull the plug?
- Pull that little plug.
- Can I do it?
- Straight up and there we go.
(contemplative synth music)
(water splashing)
You may wanna step back. (laughs)
So it will fill up our
basin almost to the brim
before it starts siphoning out.
So you now have a few
moments to wash your hands.
- Yes.
- Almost overflows.
- There it goes.
Almost overflowing and starting to float.
It's starting to float.
- [Chris] We should see our attendant
offer us the towel, and there we go.
- [Bert] Oh, I see.
It works slowly then, very impressive.
- [Chris] Wanna do it again?
- Yeah.
(water splashing)
- There it goes.
It was a bit of a concern
that it wasn't going to work.
I really couldn't test
the individual pieces
as I was putting it together,
but it works. (laughs)
- [Narrator] This means
that using only water
as a power source, al-Jazari created
the first working robot in history,
and the robot is far from
his most complex invention.
Some transmit water power
through an elaborate
interplay of levers and gears.
- Would there have been anything
of this nature in Europe or elsewhere?
- Not really, we know that
things like this were given
by Muslim rulers as gifts
to Christian rulers.
They served the same function
of public admiration,
a kind of mechanical marvel to look at.
(dramatic orchestral music)
(machine whirring)
- [Narrator] In their own marvels,
Europeans adapted some of
al-Jazari's mechanical technology,
including his most farsighted innovation,
now known as the crankshaft.
(engine rumbling)
Today, the crankshaft is an essential part
of every truck and automobile,
technology that a Muslim
visionary shared with the world
in his book of ingenious
mechanical devices.
(dramatic orchestral music)
Up next, secrets of the harem.
(dramatic choral symphony music)
The Topkapi Palace Museum was once
the hub of the Ottoman Empire.
Three centuries ago, the palace grounds
were as crowded as they are today,
with courtiers, generals,
scientists, and slaves.
But down a long pathway
lay a part of the palace
that only the sultan and
a select few could enter.
The name of this place might be
the only Arabic word you know, harem.
- Nobody knew what went
on inside the harem.
That was absolutely secret.
The word, harem, means forbidden.
It's a forbidden area.
- [Narrator] Harem, the word conjures
Hollywood fantasies of
sex slaves and orgies,
all to please the all-powerful sultan.
(women laughing)
And in the real harem, the sultan
had many women to do his bidding.
(Ganan speaking in foreign language)
Today, Ganan Gimeli is
the harem's curator.
(contemplative orchestral music)
- [Narrator] The room seemed designed
to encourage sexual passion.
(Ganan speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] But in one wing of the harem,
bars on the widows hint
at a different story.
The rooms beyond are locked,
each one, a prison cell.
This museum secret will
reveal who is imprisoned here
and what happened when they got out.
(bars clanking)
Women were brought to the harem
when they were very young,
snatched from their homes
in outlying Christian regions
of the Ottoman Empire.
- Be brought in, they
would convert to Islam,
and they would go through a
whole process of education.
It's a very beautiful place, but it's
actually quite a severe environment,
and I often compare it, it's like
a kind of really tough
girls boarding school.
- [Narrator] Just how tough can
be seen in this spartan room
where women of the harem
wrote messages 300 years ago.
- [Narrator] The inscription reads,
"When someone lost a mirror,
I was accused of stealing it."
- [Narrator] After
receiving her education,
a young woman would be
presented to the sultan.
She would soon discover that the sultan
didn't just have sex on his mind.
- The idea really behind
the harem for the sultan
was that he should have heirs,
and that's why it's not as
sexy as we like to think
because really it was
just about procreation.
And it wasn't about having
great time while you did it.
It was just about getting boys out.
- [Narrator] Any son of a sultan
was in line for the throne,
so when a new sultan was
declared, all his brothers
and half-brothers were
potential sultans, too.
Every new sultan began his reign
by eliminating the competition.
- The guy who took power immediately had
all his brothers rounded up and killed
so that there would be no
dissension in the state
so that he would rule unchallenged.
- [Narrator] Even the
sultan's youngest brothers
would be put to death.
(boy grunts)
- The killing just got sort of too gross,
and people were offended.
19 boys, perfectly healthy, good boys,
and they're kind of taken
out to the burial grounds
and they go through
the streets of Istanbul
and everybody starts wailing,
and this is a terrible event.
- [Narrator] Revulsion led to
a ban on such brutal killings,
but the sultans still
needed a way to contain
their brothers' designs on power.
And that brings us back here
to these barred windows.
- Behind us here is what is referred to
as the notorious kafes or the cage.
The new idea was that the brothers
would drag out their existence here.
(reflective orchestral music)
- [Narrator] One of the first boys
to grow up in this prison was Ibrahim I.
(child crying)
Locked up with his siblings
when he was just two years old,
Ibrahim was given food and
shelter but little else.
(woman crying)
(door banging)
He was deprived of love
and even human contact.
After 22 years, when he was
told the sultan had died
and he was next in line for the throne,
Ibrahim believed it was a cruel joke.
(body thuds)
(man groans)
He refused to budge until someone proved
that the old sultan was really dead.
When Ibrahim walked out into the sunlight,
he struggled to adjust.
(birds chirping)
- He just went on a major spree.
- [Narrator] Like a sultan
in a Hollywood movie,
he tried to make up for lost time.
He had sex with a new partner every night,
ignoring his official duties.
And as for the prison where he suffered
for so long, he expanded it.
- And actually not just
in this kinda handsome-looking building
but in a whole ward, a
rather kind of dingy,
little hovels up above the corridors.
So you had nephews and uncles
and brothers and all these guys
who were living in
various states of neglect.
(insects chirping)
(fire crackling)
- [Narrator] So many years in the cage
had unhinged Ibrahim's mind.
He began to suspect his
harem was unfaithful.
What he did next was insane.
- So they were all taken to the edge
of the Bosphorus out on a boat.
Weights were put round their feet,
and they were thrown into the
water where they all drowned.
(water splashing)
A fishermen, later on that day,
he dived down and found
himself, to his horror,
amongst this sort of
grove of beautiful women,
all bowing gracefully
with the passing tide.
(haunting synth music)
- [Narrator] When the
news reached the palace,
Ibrahim's courtiers took drastic action.
They marched him back to
his gilded cage in the harem
where he was discreetly strangled.
(contemplative orchestral music)
To give a man nothing and
then to give him everything is
a recipe for disaster, and perhaps that's
why the sultan's harem
really should be forbidden.
Up next, the secret of
winning an unwinnable war.
(dramatic choral symphony music)
Topkapi Palace did not become a museum
because the Ottoman
rulers wanted it that way.
In fact, the sultans
might still be here today
except for one miscalculation.
In World War I, the reigning
sultan backed the Germans.
Even after his army was
crushed by the Allies,
he made no attempt to make peace.
After the war, a popular uprising replaced
the Ottoman Empire with the
Democratic Nation of Turkey.
The sultan fled not just from his palace
but from the country.
The Turks were proud of achieving freedom,
but it came with the loss of identity.
If they were no longer
Ottomans, who were they?
Turkish archeologists sought the answer
in the distant past, looking for evidence
of a Turkish culture
before the Ottoman Empire.
And today, their
discoveries are on view here
in the archeological museum
just outside Topkapi's walls.
The finds are over 2,500 years old.
Historians believe they were all made
by a people called the Hittites.
But their works exhibit so much variety
that they do not reveal a
single cultural identity.
Were they warriors, scholars,
hunters, or something else?
That is our final museum secret.
We begin our investigation
in the dessert valley
of Tell Tayinat, where
archeologists have spent decades
digging methodically layer
by layer into the past.
- So what we're looking
at here is actually
the remains of a temple
from the Neo-Hittite period,
from the ninth to late eighth century.
The actual temple itself
was rather modest,
comprised of two small rooms.
(tractor rumbling)
- [Narrator] The temple was
the center of a Hittite town.
- And we know it was destroyed in 738 B.C.
by the Assyrian Empire-builder,
Tiglath-Pileser III.
- [Narrator] This Assyrian
stone carving shows Assyrians
cutting off the heads of
the vanquished Hittites.
- It's essentially meant to intimidate,
to signal to the local
vanquished community
that if you did not toe the line,
that's what you could
expect to happen to you.
- [Narrator] It appears
the Turkish identity
may be linked to a defeated people.
But what about the
Hittites' earlier history,
say 300 years before?
- Well, okay, so we've
been working on exposing
the rest of this room and
the rest of the architecture.
- So we have actually a room
here that we've excavated
down to the floor and
then a second room here
of some large building that
we've just begun to uncover
that's part of, could be
an administrative building.
It could be a palace maybe.
- [Narrator] These earlier Hittites
lived on a grander scale.
- So they produced beautiful works of art,
large sculptures of lions and reliefs
of various mythological scenes.
It looks like their religious traditions.
- [Narrator] They
protected their treasures
behind high walls.
- They produced these monumental citadels
with massive fortifications,
large beautifully-carved
sculptural reliefs.
So they were into monumentality
in a remarkable way.
- [Narrator] And these
pottery vessels suggest
they paid for it all with
agriculture and trade.
- I actually think that there
were probably quite sedentary.
They built large cities,
they were good farmers.
- [Narrator] So perhaps
the Turkish identity is
routed in trade and monumentalism.
But when we dig even deeper
into Hittite history,
the picture changes once again.
Hittite tablets from the 13th century B.C.
tell of army of chariots, the
fighter jets of their day.
Like the Ottomans, the earliest
Hittites used their might
to expand their empire
across the Middle East.
They even threatened mighty Egypt.
In 1275 B.C., the legions of
Pharaoh Ramses II attacked.
(horses clomping)
Both sides put everything they had
into the battle, 5,000 chariots in all.
(metal clanging)
Casualties mounted.
Neither side could gain advantage.
It seemed they were fated to battle
each other into oblivion.
(soldiers shouting)
And at this moment, the
Hittites did something
no Ottoman would ever have done.
It was the defining moment
for the first Turkish people
and for their enemy as well.
What happened is written
in the Hittite language
on this stone tablet in
the archeological museum.
And in Cairo's Egyptian museum,
the same text is inscribed
in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
- Both sides retreated,
and I think they realized
they probably couldn't
control or dominate the other,
and so instead they reached
a diplomatic agreement,
a detente, if you will,
to leave each other alone.
- [Narrator] The agreement is commemorated
at UN headquarters in New York as proof
that peace is possible
even in the Middle East.
(explosions booming)
And if the Turkish
people are still looking
for something to define
them, they can take heart.
Along with all the Turkish people
have given to civilization,
their ancestors wrote
the world's first peace treaty.
In this palace filled with
treasures of the past,
for every mystery we reveal,
far more must remain unspoken,
secrets of the brightest minds
and of the darkest souls,
hidden in plain site inside
the Topkapi Palace Museum.
(dramatic orchestral music)
(contemplative synth music)