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Archery had an important place in Turkish life quite apart from its use in hunting and war. As a sport it was widely practised by the Ottomans. Archery was favoured by many of those elected as adminstrators of dervish lodges or pious foundations and there were many members from among these people registered as members of individual archery clubs. These take their place among the first of their kind in the world of sport. It was not enough for the archer to be a sufficiently good shot; he also had to have the right sporting temperament and appearance. There were two main types of archery as an Ottoman sport: target shooting and range shooting. Target shooting began as a training in the skills needed to hit a target, either an animal or an enemy. The use of a bag stuffed with sawdust or cotton seed attached to the target frame honed the skills necessary to shoot with strength. In range shooting the aim was to shoot the arrow as far as possible. Within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire archery ranges were set up as pious foundations for this purpose only. Of these the oldest known date from the 16th/17th century and were set up in Bursa and Edirne. After the establishment of similar archery ground in Istanbul, interest in this branch of the sport grew and ranges were set up in cities such as Gallipoli, Baghdad, Cairo, Skopje, Amasya, Manisa, and Aleppo. The number of these reached 38. The archery ground in Istanbul established by order of Sultan Mehmed II (Fatih) was begun as an independent foundation and enlarged in the reign of Bayezid II; However, this range suffered from depredations, particularly in the time of Sultan Abdulaziz and lost its original dimensions. During the Balkan Wars, refugees from Manastir (Bitola) were lodged in the range area and this was followed by other waves of refugees. Squatters began to build shacks here from 1950 onwards and, as this trend became irreversible after 1980, the area entirely lost its old identity. Today the area known as Okmeydani (The Archery Ground) embraces seven large, unplanned, crowded neighbourhoods illegally built. The archery stones, as well as the area, were damaged as a result of the aforementioned construction. Today only twenty of target stones are still in existence. Sinasi Acar carried out work to document the present state of the target stones in the Okmeydani area. Dense building construction concealed those not immediately visible but when found they were photographed and their inscriptions read. As Acar’s photographs document, the last Ottoman archery stones still continue the struggle for existence hidden under balconies, buried under pavements or squeezed between buildings. As well as constituting individual historical witnesses to life in Ottoman times, they also reflect the understanding of decorative art at that time; moreover, each of them is an architectural feature in itself. We would like to take the opportunity provided by this publication to emphasize once more to the authorities the importance of taking every precaution to preserve the target stones. A detailed account of Sinasi Acar’s research is published in the magazine YAPI, issue 279/February 2005, under the title, The Archery Stones of Okmeydani. We would like to thank Sinasi Acar for his contribution to the Museum of Architecture.
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