Bab-i Humayun (Imperial Gate, Topkapi)

Bab-i Humayun, the 'Imperial Gate', is the principal entrance in the outer wall of the Sultan's New Serail, the Topkapi Sarayi, at Istanbul. Situated behind the Aya Sofya mosque, the massive rectangular building gives access to the first court of the Serail through a high, double-arched portal; on either side of the passage between the outer and inner doors are the rooms of the Kapujis who guarded the gate. In or near the deep niches of the facade, the heads of political delinquents used to be exposed. ¹

Over the doorway is a Qur'anic inscription and, below it, an Arabic inscription recording the erection of the Serail wall by Sultan Mehmed II in Ramadan 883/November-December 1478. The tughras of Mahmud II and 'Abd al-'Aziz on the gate commemorate later restorations. An upper storey originally surmounted the gateway but was destroyed in the nineteenth century; at different times the gate held the effects of those who died without known heirs, and served as archives of the Treasury or for other purposes. ¹

Many European writers, especially in the nineteenth century and ignoring Hammer and d'Ohsson, asserted that Bab-i Humayun was the 'Sublime Porte' — the Western name for the Ottoman government — whereas that term in fact denoted the Grand Vizier's residence, Bab-i 'Ali. There is no reason to suppose that the name 'Porte', which until the eighteenth century signified the Sultan's court, originated from this gate, as some travellers believed. ¹