Cistern of Aspar

The Cistern of Aspar (Greek: ἡ τοῦ Ἂσπαρος κινστέρνη) or Great Cistern (Greek: μεγίστη κινστέρνη), known in Turkish as Sultan Selim Çukurbostanı ("sunken garden of Sultan Selim"), was a Byzantine open-air water reservoir in the city of Constantinople.

The cistern is located in Istanbul, in the district of Fatih (the walled city), in the most elevated part of the quarter of Fener, in the neighborhood named after the building Çukurbostan, near the Yavuz Selim Mosque, between Sultan Selim Caddesi and Yavuz Selim Caddesi. It lies on the eastern slope of the fifth hill of Istanbul, overlooking the Golden Horn.

The construction of this cistern, which lay in the fourteenth region of Constantinople, in the area called by the Byzantines Petrion, was started in 459, under Emperor Marcian (r. 450-57), by Aspar, an Alan-Gothic general serving the empire, and by his sons Ardabur and Patricius, during the consulship of Ricimer and Patricius. According to the 7th-century Chronicon Paschale, the structure lay "near the ancient wall of the city", that is near the Wall of Constantine. Older authors for a long time were unable to confirm its identity, which was ascribed to several of the city's cisterns, namely those of Bonus, of Arcadius or of the Petrion: only in recent times did its identification become certain. After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the French traveler Pierre Gilles observed that around 1540 the reservoir was empty, but its usage as a reservoir could have ceased already in the late Byzantine era, since then it was known under the name of Xerokepion (Ξηροκήπιον, "Dry Garden" in Greek). According to a tradition, the cistern was directly connected to the Hagia Sophia, which lies about three kilometers southeast, through a passage situated towards the mid of the southeastern side and closed around the middle of the 19th century. During the reign of Sultan Suleyman I (r. 1520-66), a small mosque was built inside the reservoir. During the Ottoman period, as its Turkish name Çukurbostan ("hollow garden") betrays, the structure was used as a vegetable garden; afterwards it hosted a small village, surrounded by orchards and gardens. As of 2004, the village, except for its mosque, had been demolished to allow the construction of a car park. The site is now used for a park and sport fields. It was used for a while as an "Education Park" (Turkish: Eğitim parkı) of Fatih, but this has ceased.

...
Wikipedia