Emirgan Park

Emirgan Park (Turkish: Emirgan Korusu or rarely Emirgan Parkı) is a historical urban park located in the Emirgan neighbourhood in the Sarıyer district of Istanbul, Turkey, on the European coast of the Bosphorus. It is one of the largest public parks in Istanbul.

History

In the Byzantine era, the entire area where today the park stretches was covered with cypress trees and known as Kyparades or "Cypress Forest". In the Ottoman period, it became known as the "Feridun Bey Park", when the uninhabited land was granted in the mid-16th century to Nişancı Feridun Bey, a Lord Chancellor in rank in the Ottoman Empire.

In the 17th century, Ottoman Sultan Murad IV (reigned 1623–1640) presented the estate to Emir Gûne Han, a Safavid Persian commander, who surrendered his besieged castle without any resistance, and followed him back to Constantinople (now Istanbul). The name "Feridun Bey Park" was changed to "Emirgûne", which in time became corrupted to "Emirgan".

During the centuries, the estate's owner changed several times. By the end of the 1860s, Emirgan Park was owned by Isma'il Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt and Sudan (reigned 1863–1879). Although Egypt had been virtually independent since 1805, it legally remained a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, and the Egyptian khedival family had married into the Ottoman sultanic family. After he was deposed as Khedive, with the throne of Egypt and Sudan passing to his son Tewfik Pasha, Isma'il initially took up residence in exile in Naples, before relocating permanently to Emirgan Park, where he lived in exile until his death.