Emirgan Park

The Emirgan Park (Turkish: Emirgan Korusu or rarely Emirgan Parkı) is a historical urban park located at 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.

In the Byzantine era, the entire area, where today the park stretches, was covered with cypress trees and known as "Kyparades" or "Cypress Forest". It became known as "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 sieged castle without any resistance, and followed him back to 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, and by the end of the 1860s, it was owned by Khedive Ismail Pasha (reigned 1863-1879), Ottoman governor of Egypt and Sudan. The area was used as the backyard of a large wooden yalı that he built on the shore of the Bosphorus. Further, he built within the park area three wooden pavilions, which still exist.

The heirs of the Khedive's family sold the estate in the 1930s to Satvet Lütfi Tozan, a wealthy Turkish arms dealer, who granted the park grounds, the three pavilions included, later in the 1940s to the City of Istanbul during office of Governor and Mayor Lütfi Kırdar (1938-1949).

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Wikipedia