In 2020 the Representation Office of the Turkic Council in Budapest organized a competition in the history of culture for high school students in Hungary and abroad with the title ”Honeycomb Toffee and Pomegranate – adventures in the past and present of the Turkic World.” By organizing the quiz, the goal of the Representation Office was to acquaint the participants with the history, traditions and people of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. Altogether 36 teams entered for the competition – the rounds of which were held on-line because of the pandemic – and four of them made it to the finals.
In 2021 the Representation Office was fortunate enough to be able to hold the finals with the actual off-line presence of the teams. The result of the finals was this: 1) Tündük, 2) PA-SA, 3) Adventurers, 4) Csakavajda. The special award for the Most Creative Team – provided by the Supplier of Libraries Nonprofit Ltd in the form of valuable packages of books – was won by the teams of Tündük and PA-SA. The participants in the finals gained automatic enrolment in the Program of Mathias Corvinus Collegium for high school students.
However, the real motivation for the participating students was the opportunity for the four finalists to go camping to Szigetvár for a week. By taking a look at the days of camping, an important conclusion can be drawn: it was worth going to Szigetvár! The love with which the town just opening after the pandemic and its inhabitants were receiving the students and their teachers was tangible. The remarks by Zoltán Varga delivered in the Ali Pasha mosque rebuilt into Saint Roch baroque church during the stormy centuries of history, was a great experience for everyone. The deputy mayor of Szigetvár shared the story of the town, as well as that of the building which still shows some mementos of the Ottoman period. The next step was the visit to the castle itself. Here Máté Kitanics spoke about the famous siege of 1566, the battle that ended with the death of both Miklós Zrínyi, the captain-in chief of Transdanubia and that of Sultan Suleiman I (the Magnificent). On September 7, 1566 Zrínyi chose to die a hero’s death in a conscious way when he and the officers and soldiers left broke out of the fortress. The Sultan, one of the most significant strategists of his time, had died a natural death early in the morning a few hours before.
To sum it up, it was not only the students but their teachers as well who were amazed how many new pieces of information they had just learned. Before lunch a first-hand, credible message was also delivered about the exploration of the former turbe of Sultan Suleiman.
However, the afternoon was already dedicated to the hands and their skills. The members of the camp were learning the skill of preparing felt. (Felt is a thick soft material made of wool, hair or fur.) It turned out that it is more relevant to call a yurt as a „house of felt”.
Early in the evening, in one of the famous lecture halls in the town – the Suleiman mosque within the castle – performer András Gy. Szabó, as well as musicians István Szabó and István Tóth offered the young people an introduction into the world of the 16th–17th centuries. Poems by Bálint Balassi and János Rimay were chanted, accompanied by contemporary Hungarian and Ottoman tunes. Mayor Péter Vass warmly greeted the participants of the camp. He reminded them of the significance of the traditions of Szigetvár that have to be preserved for the future.
The following day, after a visit was paid to the Zrínyi–Suleiman memorial, Máté Kitanics showed the participants the presumed and the real venue of the turbe. He related to them the story of the long efforts to locate the turbe, explaining at the same time why they had all led astray. On returning to the castle, the students were entertained by the display of weapons by the traditionalists of the castle. The trip to Pécs and the closing of the camp also went off superbly.
In connection with the exploration of the turbe of Suleiman the Magnificent, it was revealed that the more than one ton of earth that had been removed was analyzed in Szeged. The objective was to find out what sort of plants were grown by the dervishes in the mosque at the end of 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries. It has been ascertained that among them were sour cherries, roses, gillyflowers, pine trees and celery. Should someone ask the question about pomegranates, no traces of them were found! Do not forget that at that time the Little Ice Age was just taking place. However, pomegranates, provided the trees are well-kept, will already grow in Hungary too.
