Karabağlar

This guide to Karabağlar, the highland plateau above Muğla, starts with Evliya Celebi's count of eleven thousand vineyard plots here in 1670 and the paradox of a yayla you walk down into rather than up to. It follows what the traveler never described: more than twenty coffeehouses that once ran here as miniature villages, each with its own bakery, blacksmith, and barber, staging shadow-puppet shows of Karagöz and Hacivat alongside wrestling matches and traveling cobblers' stalls. Nine of the coffeehouses even kept a small prayer room beside the kitchen, and three, called Tozlu, Keyfoturağı, and Süpüroğlu, still stand under state protection today.