Tourists say Spice Bazaar. Locals say Mısır Çarşısı, the Egyptian Bazaar. Ask why and you'll get two answers, neither with proof.
Start with the mosque next door. In 1597–98 Safiye Sultan, mother of Mehmed III, founded it in Eminönü; building began on 9 April 1598. In 1603 her son died, she was sent to the Old Palace, and work stopped.
The unfinished mosque waited for nearly sixty years.
Then the great fire of 1660. Another valide sultan, Hatice Turhan Sultan, mother of Mehmed IV, picked it up, and the Yeni Cami, the New Mosque, opened for Friday prayer on 30 October 1665.
A mosque needs money to run. So the complex got an arasta, a row of shops whose rents paid for upkeep and charity. That row is the bazaar: it exists to pay the mosque's bills.
Nobody called it Egyptian then. It was the Valide Çarşısı, named for the sultan's mother, or the New Market. "Mısır Çarşısı" appears only from the mid-18th century, a century on.
So why Egypt? One explanation: built with revenue from the Ottoman province of Egypt. The other: spices from India and the East came through Egypt and were sold on from here. Neither is documented. The encyclopedia that dates the name gives no reason.
One more trap: in Turkish, mısır also means maize, so "Corn Bazaar" shows up in bad translations. It's Egypt. Whatever the reason.
Go as the shops open and look up: the vaulted stonework and the windows are what the crowd misses. The shops are a business, so browse like a buyer. Hours weren't confirmed when we checked. Close by, in the Tahtakale streets, is the tiled Rüstem Pasha Mosque; that's our Mimar Sinan story.
