Page 62 - MUGLA_SEYAHATI-ENG1.indd

Karabağlar Highland

All highlands are for climbing
but ours is for descending.

In fact, Karabağlar Highland is not a highland but lowland. That
is why Tülay Kayar describes this situation saying: “All highlands
for climbing but our highland is for descending.”
When Evliya Çelebi visited Muğla in 1671, he wrote in his famous
Travel Book (Seyahatname): “Forty types of grapes are famous.
Vineries climb to the plane, poplar, oak and redbud trees. Each
tree gives ten to twenty loads of grape. A foreigner may easily
lose his way when he enters to Karabağlar. There is no sun here.
There is a vineyard among all vineyards that is special to the
pashas and it looks like Garden of Eden.”

Today, in Karabağlar Highland, there are more than twenty dis-
tricts, of which names are derived from the coffee houses. The
squares of the coffee houses, under the shadow of the plane
trees of 150-200 years old, have been used as important social,
cultural and commercial spaces of highland life. Saddlers, tin-
smiths, carders arriving to these centres served people of Muğ-
la migrating to the highlands for their needs. Today, Keyfoturağı
and Süpüroğlu coffee houses were restored and turned into the
restaurants where you can enjoy delicious büryan kebab, bris-
ket, simmered lamb, etc.

Karabağlar Highland

60 A Journey to Muğla