Prank of Bardakçı Baba

The Prank of Bardakçı Baba ("master glass maker" in Turkish) consisted of the creation of a fake tomb of a Sufi mystic who never existed, in Istanbul's Fulya quarter. The tomb, erected in the early 1970s as part of a prank and subsequently moved, rebuilt in lavish form and finally dismantled in the early 2020s, had become an object of popular piety in the district.

In the early 1970s, a group of young students at the Faculty of Dentistry of the Marmara University in Istanbul, located in the Fulya quarter of Beşiktaş district, had turned a grove next to the school into a meeting place, where they would gather in the evenings to study and drink wine among the trees. After a while, students brought a wooden table, a few chairs, and some glasses. Over time the members of the group increased, and with them the number of glasses. One day, the students jokingly wrote the name "Bardakçı Baba" on the table. Later, they built a tomb-like mound and hid the skull they used for practice in it. Thus was born the "Tomb of Bardakçı Baba" ("Master Glass maker" in Turkish) a mystic Sufi where Baba is the honorary title given to Muslim mystics. One evening...