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Title: Constantinople old and new
Author: Harrison Griswold Dwight
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND
NEW ***
CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW
[Illustration: Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror
From the portrait by Gentile Bellini in the Layard Collection
Photograph by Alinari Brothers, Florence]
CONSTANTINOPLE
OLD AND NEW
BY
H. G. DWIGHT
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published September, 1915
[Illustration]
OF HIS BOOK
A number of years ago it happened to the writer of this book to live in
Venice. He accordingly read, as every good English-speaking Venetian
does, Mr. Howells’s “Venetian Life.” And after the first heat of his
admiration he ingenuously said to himself: “I know Constantinople
quite as well as Mr. Howells knew Venice. Why shouldn’t I write a
‘Constantinople Life’?” He neglected to consider the fact that dozens
of other people knew Venice even better than Mr. Howells, perhaps, but
could never have written “Venetian Life.” Nevertheless, he took himself
and his project seriously. He went back, in the course of time, to
Constantinople, with no other intent than to produce his imitation of
Mr. Howells. And the reader will doubtless smile at the remoteness of
resemblance between that perfect little book and this big one.
Aside, however, from the primary difference between two pens,
circumstances further intervened to deflect this book from its original
aspiration. As the writer made acquaintance with his predecessors in
the field, he was struck by the fact that Constantinople, in comparison
with Venice and I know not how many other cities, and particularly that
Turkish Constantinople, has been wonderfully little “exploited”—at least
in our generation and by users of our language. He therefore turned much
of his attention to its commoner aspects—which Mr. Howells in Venice
felt, very happily, under no obligation to do. Then the present writer
found himself more and more irritated by the patronising or contemptuous
tone of the West toward the East, and he made it rather a point—since
in art one may choose a point of view—to dwell on the picturesque and
admirable side of Constantinople. And soon after his return there took
place the revolution of 1908, whose various consequences have attracted
so much of international notice during the last five years. It was but
natural that events so moving should find some reflection in the pages
of an avowed impressionist. Incidentally, however, it has come about
that the Constantinople of this book is a Constantinople in transition.
The first chapter to be written was the one called “A Turkish Village.”
Since it was originally put on paper, a few weeks before the revolution,
the village it describes has been so ravaged by a well-meaning but
unilluminated desire of “progress” that I now find it impossible to
bring the chapter up to date without rewriting it in a very different
key. I therefore leave it practically untouched, as a record of the
old Constantinople of which I happened to see the last. And as years
go by much of the rest of the book can only have a similar documentary
reference.
At the same time I have tried to catch an atmosphere of Constantinople
that change does not affect and to point out certain things of permanent
interest—as in the chapters on mosque yards, gardens, and fountains, as
well as in numerous references to the old Turkish house. Being neither
a Byzantinist nor an Orientalist, and, withal, no expert in questions
of art, I realise that the true expert will find much to take exception
to. While in matters of fact I have tried to be as accurate as possible,
I have mainly followed the not infallible Von Hammer, and most of my
Turkish translations are borrowed from him or otherwise acquired at
second hand. Moreover, I have unexpectedly been obliged to correct my
proofs in another country, far from books and from the friends who
might have helped to save my face before the critic. I shall welcome
his attacks, however, if a little more interest be thereby awakened in
a place and a people of which the outside world entertains the vaguest
ideas. In this book, as in the list of books at its end, I have attempted
to do no more than to suggest. Of the list in question I am the first
to acknowledge that it is in no proper sense a bibliography. I hardly
need say that it does not begin to be complete. If it did it would fill
more pages than the volume it belongs to. It contains almost no original
sources and it gives none of the detailed and classified information
which a bibliography should. It is merely what I call it, a list of
books, of more popular interest, in the languages more commonly read
by Anglo-Saxons, relating to the two great periods of Constantinople
and various phases of the history and art of each, together with a few
better-known works of general literature.
I must add a word with regard to the spelling of the Turkish names and
words which occur in these pages. The great difficulty of rendering in
English the sound of foreign words is that English, like Turkish, does
not spell itself. For that reason, and because whatever interest this
book may have will be of a general rather than of a specialised kind, I
have ventured to deviate a little from the logical system of the Royal
Geographical Society. I have not done so with regard to consonants,
which have the same value as in English, with the exception that _g_ is
always hard and _s_ is never pronounced like _z_. The gutturals _gh_
and _kh_ have been so softened by the Constantinople dialect that I
generally avoid them, merely suggesting them by an _h_. _Y_, as I use
it, is half a consonant, as in _yes_. As for the other vowels, they are
to be pronounced in general as in the Continental languages. But many
newspaper readers might be surprised to learn that the town where the
Bulgarians gained their initial success during the Balkan war was not
Kîrk Kiliss, and that the second syllable of the first name of the late
Mahmud Shefket Pasha did not rhyme with bud. I therefore weakly pander
to the Anglo-Saxon eye by tagging a final _e_ with an admonitory _h_,
and I illogically fall back on the French _ou_—or that of our own word
_through_. There is another vowel sound in Turkish which the general
reader will probably give up in despair. This is uttered with the teeth
close together and the tongue near the roof of the mouth, and is very
much like the pronunciation we give to the last syllable of words ending
in _tion_ or to the _n’t_ in _needn’t_. It is generally rendered in
foreign languages by _i_ and sometimes in English by the _u_ of _sun_.
Neither really expresses it, however, nor does any other letter in the
Roman alphabet. I have therefore chosen to indicate it by _î_, chiefly
because the circumflex suggests a difference. For the reader’s further
guidance in pronunciation I will give him the rough-and-ready rule that
all Turkish words are accented on the last syllable. But this does not
invariably hold, particularly with double vowels—as in the name Hüsséïn,
or the word _seráï_, palace. Our common _a_ and _i_, as in _lake_ and
_like_, are really similar double vowel sounds, similarly accented on the
first. The same rules of pronunciation, though not of accent, apply to
the few Greek words I have had occasion to use. I have made no attempt to
transliterate them. Neither have I attempted to subject well-known words
or names of either language to my somewhat arbitrary rules. Stamboul
I continue so to call, though to the Turks it is something more like
Îstambol; and words like _bey_, _caïque_, and _sultan_ have long since
been naturalised in the West. I have made an exception, however, with
regard to Turkish personal names, and in mentioning the reigning Sultan
or his great ancestor, the Conqueror, I have followed not the European
but the Turkish usage, which reserves the form Mohammed for the Prophet
alone.
This is not a book of learning, but I have required a great deal of
help in putting it together, and I cannot close this prefatory note
without acknowledging my indebtedness to more kind friends than I
have space to name. Most of all I owe to Mr. E. L. Burlingame, of
_Scribner’s Magazine_, and to my father, Dr. H. O. Dwight, without whose
encouragement, moral and material, during many months, I could never have
afforded the luxury of writing a book. I am also under obligation to
their Excellencies, J. G. A. Leishman, O. S. Straus, and W. W. Rockhill,
American ambassadors to the Porte, and especially to the last, for
cards of admission, letters of introduction, and other facilities for
collecting material. Among many others who have taken the trouble to give
me assistance of one kind or another I particularly wish to express my
acknowledgments to Arthur Baker, Esq.; to Mgr. Christophoros, Bishop of
Pera; to F. Mortimer Clapp, Esq.; to Feridoun Bey, Professor of Turkish
in Robert College; to H. E. Halil Edhem Bey, Director of the Imperial
Museum; to Hüsseïn Danish Bey, of the Ottoman Public Debt; to H. E.
Ismaïl Jenani Bey, Grand Master of Ceremonies of the Imperial Court; to
H. E. Ismet Bey, _Préfet adjoint_ of Constantinople; to Kemaleddin Bey,
Architect in Chief of the Ministry of Pious Foundations; to Mahmoud
Bey, Sheikh of the Bektash Dervishes of Roumeli Hissar; to Professor
Alexander van Millingen; to Frederick Moore, Esq.; to Mr. Panayotti
D. Nicolopoulos, Secretary of the Mixed Council of the Œcumenical
Patriarchate; to Haji Orhan Selaheddin Dedeh, of the Mevlevi Dervishes
of Pera; to A. L. Otterson, Esq.; to Sir Edwin Pears; to Refik Bey,
Curator of the Palace and Treasury of Top Kapou; to E. D. Roth, Esq.;
to Mr. Arshag Schmavonian, Legal Adviser of the American Embassy; to
William Thompson, Esq.; to Ernest Weakley, Esq.; and to Zia Bey, of the
Ministry of Pious Foundations. My thanks are also due to the editors of
the _Atlantic Monthly_, of _Scribner’s Magazine_, and of the _Spectator_,
for allowing me to republish those chapters which originally came out
in their periodicals. And I am not least grateful to the publishers for
permitting me to change the scheme of my book while in preparation, and
to substitute new illustrations for a large number that had already been
made.
HAMADAN, 6th Sefer, 1332.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
STAMBOUL 1
CHAPTER II
MOSQUE YARDS 33
CHAPTER III
OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 74
CHAPTER IV
THE GOLDEN HORN 113
CHAPTER V
THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 148
CHAPTER VI
THE CITY OF GOLD 189
CHAPTER VII
THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 227
CHAPTER VIII
THE MOON OF RAMAZAN 265
CHAPTER IX
MOHAMMEDAN HOLIDAYS 284
CHAPTER X
TWO PROCESSIONS 301
CHAPTER XI
GREEK FEASTS 318
CHAPTER XII
FOUNTAINS 352
CHAPTER XIII
A TURKISH VILLAGE 382
CHAPTER XIV
REVOLUTION, 1908 402
CHAPTER XV
THE CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE, 1909 425
CHAPTER XVI
WAR TIME, 1912-1913 459
MASTERS OF CONSTANTINOPLE 545
A CONSTANTINOPLE BOOK-SHELF 549
INDEX 555
ILLUSTRATIONS
Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror _Frontispiece_
From the portrait by Gentile Bellini in the
Layard Collection
PAGE
A Stamboul street 5
From an etching by Ernest D. Roth
Divan Yolou 9
A house in Eyoub 11
A house at Aya Kapou 12
The house of the pipe 13
That grape-vine is one of the most decorative elements of
Stamboul streets 21
A waterside coffee-house 23
“Drinking” a _nargileh_ 26
Fez-presser in a coffee-house 27
Playing _tavli_ 29
The plane-tree of Chengel-kyöi 31
The yard of Hekim-zadeh Ali Pasha 35
“The Little Mosque” 37
From an etching by Ernest D. Roth
Entrance to the forecourt of Sultan Baïezid II 40
Detail of the Süleïmanieh 41
Yeni Jami 43
Tile panel in Rüstem Pasha 50
The _mihrab_ of Rüstem Pasha 51
In Rüstem Pasha 52
Tiles in the gallery of Sultan Ahmed 53
The tomb of Sultan Ahmed I 57
In Roxelana’s tomb 59
The _türbeh_ of Ibrahim Pasha 63
The court of the Conqueror 64
The main entrance to the court of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha 65
The interior of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha 67
The court of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha 69
Doorway in the _medresseh_ of Feïzoullah Effendi 70
Entrance to the _medresseh_ of Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha 71
The _medresseh_ of Hassan Pasha 72
St. Sophia 77
From an etching by Frank Brangwyn
The Myrelaion 83
The House of Justinian 86
The Palace of the Porphyrogenitus 90
Interior of the Studion 93
Kahrieh Jami 97
Mosaic from Kahrieh Jami: Theodore Metochites offering his
church to Christ 98
Mosaic from Kahrieh Jami: the Massacre of the Innocents 101
Giotto’s fresco of the Massacre of the Innocents, in the Arena
chapel, Padua 101
Mosaic from Kahrieh Jami: the Marriage at Cana 104
The Golden Gate 109
Outside the land walls 111
A last marble tower stands superbly out of the blue 112
The Golden Horn 115
From the _Specchio Marittimo_ of Bartolommeo Prato
Lighters 118
Sandals 119
Caïques 121
Sailing caïques 122
Galleons that might have sailed out of the Middle Ages anchor
there now 123
The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus 125
From a Persian miniature in the _Bibliothèque Nationale_
The _mihrab_ of Pialeh Pasha 131
Old houses of Phanar 133
The outer court of Eyoub 135
Eyoub 137
The cemetery of Eyoub 141
Kiat Haneh 145
Lion fountain in the old Venetian quarter 153
Genoese archway at Azap Kapou 155
The mosque of Don Quixote and the fountain of Sultan Mahmoud I 165
Interior of the mosque of Don Quixote 167
The admiral’s flag of Haïreddin Barbarossa 169
Drawn by Kenan Bey
Grande Rue de Pera 180
The Little Field of the Dead 181
The fountain of Azap Kapou 183
Fountain near Galata Tower 185
The Kabatash breakwater 187
Fresco in an old house in Scutari 191
The Street of the Falconers 199
Fountain in the mosque yard of Mihrîmah 201
Tiles in the mosque of the Valideh Atik 203
Chinili Jami 204
The fountains of the Valideh Jedid 205
Interior of the Valideh Jedid 207
The Ahmedieh 209
Shemsi Pasha 211
The bassma haneh 213
Hand wood-block printing 215
The Bosphorus from the heights of Scutari 217
Gravestones 221
Scutari Cemetery 223
In a Turkish garden 230
A Byzantine well-head 232
A garden wall fountain 233
A jetting fountain in the garden of Halil Edhem Bey 235
A _selsebil_ at Kandilli 236
A _selsebil_ of Halil Edhem Bey 237
In the garden of Ressam Halil Pasha 239
The garden of the Russian embassy at Büyük Dereh 241
The upper terrace of the French embassy garden at Therapia 243
The Villa of the Sun, Kandilli 249
An eighteenth-century villa at Arnaout-kyöi 252
The golden room of Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha 253
In the harem of the Seraglio 261
The “Cage” of the Seraglio 263
A Kara-gyöz poster 271
Wrestlers 275
The imperial cortège poured from the palace gate 281
From a drawing by E. M. Ashe
Baïram sweets 289
The open spaces of the Mohammedan quarters are utilised for fairs 295
Sheep-market at Yeni Jami 299
Church fathers in the Sacred Caravan 305
Housings in the Sacred Caravan 306
The sacred camel 307
The palanquin 308
Tied with very new rope to the backs of some thirty mules
... were the quaint little hair trunks 309
A Persian miniature representing the death of Ali 311
Valideh Han 313
Blessing the Bosphorus 321
The dancing Epirotes 325
Bulgarians dancing 336
Greeks dancing to the strains of a _lanterna_ 337
The mosque and the Greek altar of Kourou Cheshmeh 348
Wall fountain in the Seraglio 354
_Selsebil_ in Bebek 355
The goose fountain at Kazlî 356
The wall fountain of Chinili-Kyöshk 357
_Shadrîvan_ of Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha 359
_Shadrîvan_ of Ramazan Effendi 360
_Shadrîvan_ of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha 361
The Byzantine fountain of Kîrk Cheshmeh 365
The two fountains of Ak Bîyîk 368
Street fountain at Et Yemez 371
Fountain of Ahmed III in the park at Kiat Haneh 373
Detail of the fountain of Mahmoud I at Top Haneh 374
Fountain of Abd ül Hamid II 375
_Sebil_ behind the tomb of Sultan Mehmed III 377
_Sebil_ of Sultan Ahmed III 379
Cut-Throat Castle from the water 384
The castle of Baïezid the Thunderbolt 385
The north tower of the castle 387
The village boatmen and their skiffs 397
In the market-place 399
Badge of the revolution: “Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Equality” 405
Cartoon representing the exodus of the Palace camarilla 412
Soldiers at Chatalja, April 20 428
Macedonian volunteers 437
A Macedonian Blue 439
Taxim artillery barracks, shelled April 24 441
They were, in fact, reserves posted for the afternoon attack
on Tash Kîshla 443
Burial of volunteers, April 26 446
Deputies leaving Parliament after deposing Abd ül Hamid, April 27 447
Mehmed V driving through Stamboul on his accession day, April 27 451
Mehmed V on the day of sword-girding, May 10 453
Arriving from Asia 460
Reserves 461
Recruits 462
Hand in hand 463
Demonstration in the Hippodrome 465
Convalescents 480
Stuck in the mud 482
The aqueduct of Andronicus I 484
Fleeing from the enemy 485
Cholera 498
Joachim III, Patriarch of Constantinople 501
The south pulpit of the Pantocrator 503
Portrait of John VII Palæologus as one of the Three Wise Men,
by Benozzo Gozzoli. Riccardi Chapel, Florence 505
Church of the All-Blessed Virgin (Fetieh Jami) 515
The lantern-bearers 517
The dead Patriarch 519
Exiles 523
Lady Lowther’s refugees 526
Peasant embroidery 532
Young Thrace 533
CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW
I, a Persian and an Ispahani, had ever been accustomed to hold my native
city as the first in the world: never had it crossed my mind that any
other could, in the smallest degree, enter into competition with it, and
when the capital of Roum was described to me as finer, I always laughed
the describer to scorn. But what was my astonishment, and I may add
mortification, on beholding, for the first time, this magnificent city! I
had always looked upon the royal mosque, in the great square at Ispahan,
as the most superb building in the world; but here were a hundred finer,
each surpassing the other in beauty and in splendour. Nothing did I ever
conceive could equal the extent of my native place; but here my eyes
became tired with wandering over the numerous hills and creeks thickly
covered with buildings, which seemed to bid defiance to calculation. If
Ispahan was half the world, this indeed was the whole. And then this
gem of cities possesses this great advantage over Ispahan, that it is
situated on the borders of a beautiful succession of waters, instead of
being surrounded by arid and craggy mountains; and, in addition to its
own extent and beauty, enjoys the advantage of being reflected in one
never-failing mirror, ever at hand to multiply them.... “Oh! this is a
paradise,” said I to those around me; “and may I never leave it!”
—J. J. MORIER, “_The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan_.”
CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW
I
STAMBOUL
If literature could be governed by law—which, very happily, to the
despair of grammarians, it can not—there should be an act prohibiting
any one, on pain of death, ever to quote again or adapt to private use
Charles Lamb and his two races of men. No one is better aware of the
necessity of such a law than the present scribe, as he struggles with the
temptation to declare anew that there are two races of men. Where, for
instance, do they betray themselves more perfectly than in Stamboul? You
like Stamboul or you dislike Stamboul, and there seems to be no half-way
ground between the two opinions. I notice, however, that conversion
from the latter rank to the former is not impossible. I cannot say that
I ever really belonged, myself, to the enemies of Stamboul. Stamboul
entered too early into my consciousness and I was too early separated
from her to ask myself questions; and it later happened to me to fall
under a potent spell. But there came a day when I returned to Stamboul
from Italy. I felt a scarcely definable change in the atmosphere as
soon as we crossed the Danube. Strange letters decorated the sides of
cars, a fez or two—shall I be pedantic enough to say that the word is
really _fess_?—appeared at car windows, peasants on station platforms had
something about them that recalled youthful associations. The change grew
more and more marked as we neared the Turkish frontier. And I realised
to what it had been trending when at last we entered a breach of the old
Byzantine wall and whistled through a long seaside quarter of wooden
houses more tumble-down and unpainted than I remembered wooden houses
could be, and dusty little gardens, and glimpses of a wide blue water
through ruinous masonry, and people as out-at-elbow and down-at-the-heel
as their houses, who even at that shining hour of a summer morning found
time to smoke hubble-bubbles in tipsy little coffee-houses above the
Marmora or to squat motionless on their heels beside the track and watch
the fire-carriage of the unbeliever roll in from the West.
I have never forgotten—nor do successive experiences seem to dull the
sharpness of the impression—that abysmal drop from the general European
level of spruceness and solidity. Yet Stamboul, if you belong to the
same race of men as I, has a way of rehabilitating herself in your eyes,
perhaps even of making you adopt her point of view. Not that I shall try
to gloss over her case. Stamboul is not for the race of men that must
have trimness, smoothness, regularity, and modern conveniences, and the
latest amusements. She has ambitions in that direction. I may live to see
her attain them. I have already lived to see half of the Stamboul I once
knew burn to the ground and the other half experiment in Haussmannising.
But there is still enough of the old Stamboul left to leaven the new. It
is very bumpy to drive over. It is ill-painted and out of repair. It is
somewhat intermittently served by the scavenger. Its geography is almost
past finding out, for no true map of it, in this year of grace 1914,
as yet exists, and no man knows his street or number. What he knows is
the fountain or the coffee-house near which he lives, and the quarter in
which both are situated, named perhaps Coral, or Thick Beard, or Eats No
Meat, or Sees Not Day; and it remains for you to find that quarter and
that fountain. Nevertheless, if you belong to the race of men that is
amused by such things, that is curious about the ways and thoughts of
other men and feels under no responsibility to change them, that can see
happy arrangements of light and shade, of form and colour, without having
them pointed out and in very common materials, that is not repelled by
things which look old and out of order, that is even attracted by things
which do look so and therefore have a mellowness of tone and a richness
of association—if you belong to this race of men you will like Stamboul,
and the chances are that you will like it very much.
You must not make the other mistake, however, of expecting too much in
the way of colour. Constantinople lies, it is true, in the same latitude
as Naples; but the steppes of Russia are separated from it only by the
not too boundless steppes of the Black Sea. The colour of Constantinople
is a compromise, therefore, and not always a successful one, between
north and south. While the sun shines for half the year, and summer rain
is an exception, there is something hard and unsuffused about the light.
Only on certain days of south wind are you reminded of the Mediterranean,
and more rarely still of the autumn Adriatic. As for the town itself, it
is no white southern city, being in tone one of the soberest. I could
never bring myself, as some writers do, to speak of silvery domes. They
are always covered with lead, which goes excellently with the stone of
the mosques they crown. It is only the lesser minarets that are white;
and here and there on some lifted pinnacle a small half-moon makes a
flash of gold. While the high lights of Stamboul, then, are grey, this
stone Stamboul is small in proportion to the darker Stamboul that fills
the wide interstices between the mosques—a Stamboul of weathered wood
that is just the colour of an etching. It has always seemed to me,
indeed, that Stamboul, above all other cities I know, waits to be etched.
Those fine lines of dome and minaret are for copper rather than canvas,
while those crowded houses need the acid to bring out the richness of
their shadows.
Stamboul has waited a long time. Besides Frank Brangwyn and E. D. Roth,
I know of no etcher who has tried his needle there. And neither of those
two has done what I could imagine Whistler doing—a Long Stamboul as
seen from the opposite shore of the Golden Horn. When the archæologists
tell you that Constantinople, like Rome, is built on seven hills, don’t
believe them. They are merely riding a hobby-horse so ancient that I, for
one, am ashamed to mount it. Constantinople, or that part of it which is
now Stamboul, lies on two hills, of which the more important is a long
ridge dominating the Golden Horn. Its crest is not always at the same
level, to be sure, and its slopes are naturally broken by ravines. If
Rome, however, had been built on fourteen hills it would have been just
as easy to find the same number in Constantinople. That steep promontory
advancing between sea and sea toward a steeper Asia must always have been
something to look at. But I find it hard to believe that the city of
Constantine and Justinian can have marked so noble an outline against the
sky as the city of the sultans. For the mosques of the sultans, placed
exactly where their pyramids of domes and lance-like minarets tell most
against the light, are what make the silhouette of Stamboul one of the
most notable things in the world.
[Illustration: A Stamboul street
From an etching by Ernest D. Roth]
Of the many voyagers who have celebrated the panorama of Constantinople,
not a few have recorded their disappointment on coming to closer
acquaintance. _De gustibus_ ... I have small respect, however, for the
taste of those who find that the mosques will not bear inspection. I
shall presently have something more particular to say in that matter.
But since I am now speaking of the general aspects of Stamboul I can
hardly pass over the part played by the mosques and their dependencies.
A grey dome, a white minaret, a black cypress—that is the group which,
recurring in every possible composition, makes up so much of the colour
of the streets. On the monumental scale of the imperial mosques it ranks
among the supreme architectural effects. On a smaller scale it never
lacks charm. One element of this charm is so simple that I wonder it has
not been more widely imitated. Almost every mosque is enclosed by a wall,
sometimes of smooth ashler with a pointed coping, sometimes of plastered
cobblestones tiled at the top, often tufted with snapdragon and camomile
daisies. And this wall is pierced by a succession of windows which are
filled with metal grille work as simple or as elaborate as the builder
pleased. For he knew, the crafty man, that a grille or a lattice is
always pleasant to look through, and that it somehow lends interest to
the barest prospect.
There is hardly a street of Stamboul in which some such window does not
give a glimpse into the peace and gravity of the East. The windows do
not all look into mosque yards. Many of them open into the cloister of
a _medresseh_, a theological school, or some other pious foundation.
Many more look into a patch of ground where tall turbaned and lichened
stones lean among cypresses or where a more or less stately mausoleum,
a _türbeh_, lifts its dome. Life and death seem never very far apart in
Constantinople. In other cities the fact that life has an end is put out
of sight as much as possible. Here it is not only acknowledged but taken
advantage of for decorative purposes. Even Divan Yolou, the Street of
the Council, which is the principal avenue of Stamboul, owes much of its
character to the tombs and patches of cemetery that border it. Several
sultans and grand viziers and any number of more obscure persons lie
there neighbourly to the street, from which he who strolls, if not he who
runs, may read—if Arabic letters be familiar to him—half the history of
the empire.
Of the houses of the living I have already hinted that they are less
permanent in appearance. Until very recently they were all built of wood,
and they all burned down ever so often. Consequently Stamboul has begun
to rebuild herself in brick and concrete. I shall not complain of it,
for I admit that it is not well for Stamboul to continue burning down.
I also admit that Stamboul must modernise some of her habits. It is a
matter of the greatest urgency if Stamboul wishes to continue to exist.
Yet I am sorry to have the old wooden house of Stamboul disappear. It
is not merely that I am a fanatic in things of other times. That house
is, at its best, so expressive a piece of architecture, it is so simple
and so dignified in its lines, it contains so much wisdom for the modern
decorator, that I am sorry for it to disappear and leave no report of
itself. If I could do what I like, there is nothing I should like to
do more than to build, and to set a fashion of building, from less
perishable materials, and fitted out with a little more convenience,
a _konak_ of Stamboul. They are descended, I suppose, from the old
Byzantine houses. There is almost nothing Arabic about them, at all
events, and their interior arrangement resembles that of any _palazzo_ of
the Renaissance.
[Illustration: Divan Yolou]
The old wooden house of Stamboul is never very tall. It sits roomily
on the ground, seldom rising above two storeys. Its effect resides in
its symmetry and proportion, for there is almost no ornament about it.
The doorway is the most decorative part of the façade. Its two leaves
open very broad and square, with knockers in the form of lyres, or
big rings attached to round plates of intricately perforated copper.
Above it there will often be an oval light filled with a fan or star of
swallow-tailed wooden radii. The windows in general make up a great
part of the character of the house, so big and so numerous are they.
They are all latticed, unless Christians happen to live in the house;
but above the lattices is sometimes a second tier of windows, for
light, whose small round or oval panes are decoratively set in broad
white mullions of plaster. For the most original part of its effect,
however, the house counts on its upper storey, which juts out over the
street on stout timbers curved like the bow of a ship. Sometimes these
corbels balance each other right and left of the centre of the house,
which may be rounded on the principle of a New York “swell front,” only
more gracefully, and occasionally a third storey leans out beyond the
second. This arrangement gives more space to the upper floors than the
ground itself affords and also assures a better view. If it incidentally
narrows and darkens the street, I think the passer-by can only be
grateful for the fine line of the curving brackets and for the summer
shade. He is further protected from the sun by the broad eaves of the
house, supported, perhaps, by little brackets of their own. Under them
was stencilled of old an Arabic invocation, which more rarely decorated a
blue-and-white tile and which nowadays is generally printed on paper and
framed like a picture—“O Protector,” “O Conqueror,” “O Proprietor of all
Property.” And over all is a low-pitched roof, hardly ever gabled, of the
red tiles you see in Italy.
[Illustration: A house in Eyoub]
[Illustration: A house at Aya Kapou]
The inside of the house is almost as simple as the outside—or it used to
be before Europe infected it. A great entrance hall, paved with marble,
runs through the house from street to garden, for almost no house in
Stamboul lacks its patch of green; and branching or double stairways
lead to the upper regions. Other big halls are there, with niches
and fountains set in the wall. The rooms opening out on either hand
contain almost no furniture. The so-called Turkish corner which I fear
is still the pride of some Western interiors never originated anywhere
but in the diseased imagination of an upholsterer. The beauty of an old
Turkish room does not depend on what may have been brought into it by
chance, but on its own proportion and colour. On one side, covering the
entire wall, should be a series of cupboards and niches, which may be
charmingly decorated with painted flowers and gilt or coloured moulding.
The ceiling is treated in the same way, the strips of moulding being
applied in some simple design. Of real wood-carving there is practically
none, though the doors are panelled in great variety and the principle
of the lattice is much used. There may also be a fireplace, not set off
by a mantel, but by a tall pointed hood. And if there is a second tier
of windows they may contain stained glass or some interesting scheme of
mullioning. But do not look for chairs, tables, draperies, pictures, or
any of the thousand gimcracks of the West that only fill a room without
beautifying it. A long low divan runs under the windows, the whole length
of the wall, or perhaps of two, furnished with rugs and embroidered
cushions. Other rugs, as fine as you please, cover the floor. Of wall
space there is mercifully very little, for the windows crowd so closely
together that there is no room to put anything between them, and the
view is consciously made the chief ornament of the room. Still, on the
inner walls may hang a text or two, written by or copied from some great
calligraphist. The art of forming beautiful letters has been carried to
great perfection by the Turks, who do not admit—or who until recently did
not admit—any representation of living forms. Inscriptions, therefore,
take with them the place of pictures, and they collect the work of
famous calligraphs as Westerners collect other works of art. While a
real appreciation of this art requires a knowledge which few foreigners
possess, any foreigner should be able to take in the decorative value
of the Arabic letters. There are various systems of forming them, and
there is no limit to the number of ways in which they may be grouped.
By adding to an inscription its reverse, it is possible to make a
symmetrical figure which sometimes resembles a mosque, or the letters
may be fancifully made to suggest a bird or a ship. Texts from the
Koran, invocations of the Almighty, the names of the caliphs and of the
companions of the Prophet, and verses of Persian poetry are all favourite
subjects for the calligrapher. I have also seen what might very literally
be called a word-picture of the Prophet. To paint a portrait of him would
contravene all the traditions of the cult; but there exists a famous
description of him which is sometimes written in a circle, as it were the
outline of a head, on an illuminated panel.
[Illustration: The house of the pipe]
However, I did not start out to describe the interior of Stamboul, of
which I know as little as any man. That, indeed, is one element of
the charm of Stamboul—the sense of reserve, of impenetrability, that
pervades its Turkish quarters. The lattices of the windows, the veils of
the women, the high garden walls, the gravity and perfect quiet of the
streets at night, all contribute to that sense. From the noisy European
quarter on the opposite bank of the Golden Horn, where life is a thing
of shreds and patches, without coherent associations and without roots,
one looks over to Stamboul and gets the sense of another, an unknown
life, reaching out secret filaments to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Strange faces, strange costumes, strange dialects come and go, on errands
not necessarily too mysterious, yet mysterious enough for one who knows
nothing of the literature of the East, its habits, its real thought and
hope and belief. We speak glibly of knowing Turkey and the Turks—we
who have lived five or ten or fifty years among them; but very few of
us, I notice, have ever known them well enough to learn their language
or read their books. And so into Stamboul we all go as outsiders. Yet
there are aspects of Stamboul which are not so inaccessible. Stamboul
at work, Stamboul as a market-place, is a Stamboul which welcomes the
intruder—albeit with her customary gravity: if a man buttonholes you in
the street and insists that you look at his wares you may be sure that
he is no Turk. This is also a Stamboul which has never been, which never
can be, sufficiently celebrated. The Bazaars, to be sure, figure in all
the books of travel, and are visited by every one; but they are rather
sighed over nowadays, as having lost a former glory. I do not sigh over
them, myself. I consider that by its very arrangement the Grand Bazaar
possesses an interest which can never disappear. It is a sort of vast
department store, on one floor though not on one level, whose cobbled
aisles wander up hill and down dale, and are vaulted solidly over with
stone. And in old times, before the shops or costumes of Pera were, and
when the _beau monde_ came here to buy, a wonderful department store
it must have been. In our economic days there may be less splendour,
but there can hardly be less life; and if Manchester prints now largely
take the place of Broussa silk and Scutari velvet, they have just as
much colour for the modern impressionist. They also contribute to
the essential colour of Constantinople, which is neither Asiatic nor
European, but a mingling of both.
A last fragment of old Stamboul is walled in the heart of this maze,
a square enclosure of deeper twilight which is called the _Bezesten_.
Tradition has it that the shopkeepers of the _Bezesten_ originally served
God as well as mammon, and were required to give a certain amount of
time to their mosques. Be that as it may, they still dress in robe and
turban, and they keep shorter hours than their brethren of the outer
bazaar. They sit at the receipt of custom, not in shops but on continuous
platforms, grave old men to whom it is apparently one whether you come or
go, each before his own shelf and cupboard inlaid with mother-of-pearl;
and they deal only in old things. I do not call them antiques, though
such things may still be picked up—for their price—in the _Bezesten_ and
out of it, and though the word is often on the lips of the old men. I
will say for them, however, that on their lips it merely means something
exceptional of its kind. They could recommend you an egg or a spring lamb
no more highly than by calling it _antika_. At any rate, the _Bezesten_
is almost a little too good to be true. It might have been arranged
by some Gérôme who studied the exact effect of dusty shafts of light
striking down from high windows on the most picturesque confusion of old
things—stuffs, arms, rugs, brasses, porcelain, jewelry, silver, odds and
ends of bric-à-brac. In that romantic twilight an antique made in Germany
becomes precious, and the most abominable modern rug takes on the tone of
time.
The real rug market of Constantinople is not in the Bazaars nor yet in
the _hans_ of Mahmoud Pasha, but in the Stamboul custom-house. There
the bales that come down from Persia and the Caucasus, as well as from
Asia Minor and even from India and China, are opened and stored in great
piles of colour, and there the wholesale dealers of Europe and America
do most of their buying. The rugs are sold by the square metre in the
bale, so that you may buy a hundred pieces in order to get one or two
you particularly want. Burly Turkish porters or black-capped Persians
are there to turn over the rugs for you, shaking out the dust of Asia
into the European air. Bargaining is no less long and fierce than in
the smaller affairs of the Bazaars, though both sides know better what
they are up to. Perhaps it is for this reason that the sale is often
made by a third party. The referee, having first obtained the consent
of the principals to abide by his decision—“Have you content?” is what
he asks them—makes each sign his name in a note-book, in which he then
writes the compromise price, saying, “Sh-sh!” if they protest. Or else
he takes a hand of each between both of his own and names the price as
he shakes the hands up and down, the others crying out: “_Aman_! Do not
scorch me!” Then coffees are served all around and everybody departs
happy. As communications become easier the buyers go more and more to
the headquarters of rug-making, so that Constantinople will not remain
indefinitely what it is now, the greatest rug market in the world. But it
will long be the chief assembling and distributing point for this ancient
trade.
There are two other covered markets, both in the vicinity of the Bridge,
which I recommend to all hunters after local colour. The more important,
from an architectural point of view, is called Mîssîr Charshî, Corn
or Egyptian Market, though Europeans know it as the Spice Bazaar. It
consists of two vaulted stone streets that cross each other at right
angles. It was so badly damaged in the earthquake of 1894 that many
of its original tenants moved away, giving place to stuffy quilt and
upholstery men. Enough of the former are left, however, to make a museum
of strange powders and electuaries, and to fill the air with the aroma of
the East. And the quaint woodwork of the shops, the dusty little ships
and mosques that hang as signs above them, the decorative black frescoing
of the walls, are quite as good in their way as the _Bezesten_. The Dried
Fruit Bazaar, I am afraid, is a less permanent piece of old Stamboul. It
is sure to burn up or to be torn down one of these days, because it is
a section of the long street—almost the only level one in the city—that
skirts the Golden Horn. I hope it will not disappear, however, before
some etcher has caught the duskiness of its branching curve, with squares
of sky irregularly spaced among the wooden rafters, and corresponding
squares of light on the cobblestones below, and a dark side corridor or
two running down to a bright perspective of water and ships. All sorts of
nuts and dried fruits are sold there, in odd company with candles and the
white ribbons and artificial flowers without which no Greek or Armenian
can be properly married.
This whole quarter is one of markets, and some of them were old in
Byzantine times. The fish market, one of the richest in the world, is
here. The vegetable market is here, too, at the head of the outer bridge,
where it can be fed by the boats of the Marmora. And all night long
horse bells jingle through the city, bringing produce which is sold in
the public square in the small hours of the morning. Provisions of other
kinds, some of them strange to behold and stranger to smell, are to be
had in the same region. In the purlieus of Yeni Jami, too, may be admired
at its season a kind of market which is a specialty of Constantinople.
The better part of it is installed in the mosque yard, where cloth and
girdles and shoes and other commodities meet for the raiment of man and
woman are sold under awnings or big canvas umbrellas. But other sections
of it, as the copper market and the flower market, overflow beyond the
Spice Bazaar. The particularity of this Monday market is that it is gone
on Tuesday, being held in a different place on every day of the week.
Then this is a district of _hans_, which harbour a commerce of their own.
Some of these are hotels, where comers from afar camp out in tiers of
stone galleries about an open court. Others are places of business or of
storage and, as the latter, are more properly known by the name _kapan_.
The old _Fontego_ or _Fondaco dei Turchi_ in Venice, and the _Fondaco
dei Tedeschi_, are built on the same plan and originally served the same
purpose. The Italian word _fondaco_ comes from the Arabic _fîndîk_,
which in turn was derived from the πανδοχεῖον of Constantinople. But
whether any of these old stone buildings might trace a Byzantine or
Venetian ancestry I cannot say. The habit of Stamboul to burn up once
in so often made them very necessary, and in spite of the changes that
have taken place in business methods they are still largely used. And all
about them are the headquarters of crafts—wood-turning, basket-making,
amber-cutting, brass-beating—in alleys which are highly profitable to
explore.
One of the things that make those alleys not least profitable is the
grape-vine that somehow manages to grow in them. It is no rarity, I am
happy to report. That grape-vine is one of the most decorative elements
of Stamboul streets; and to me, at least, it has a whole philosophy to
tell. It was never planted for the profit of its fruit. Vines allowed
to grow as those vines grow cannot bear very heavily, and they are too
accessible for their grapes to be guarded. They were planted, like the
_traghetto_ vines in Venice, because they give shade and because they are
good to look upon. Some of them are trained on wires across the street,
making of the public way an arbour that seduces the passer-by to stop
and taste the taste of life.
Fortunately there are special conveniences for this, in places where
there are vines and places where there are not. Such are the places
that the arriving traveller sees from his train, where meditative
citizens sit cross-legged of a morning over coffee and tobacco. The
traveller continues to see them wherever he goes, and never without a
meditative citizen or two. The coffee-houses indeed are an essential
part of Stamboul, and in them the outsider comes nearest, perhaps, to
intimacy with that reticent city. The number of these institutions
in Constantinople is quite fabulous. They have the happiest tact for
locality, seeking movement, strategic corners, open prospects, the
company of water and trees. No quarter is so miserable or so remote as to
be without one. Certain thoroughfares carry on almost no other form of
business. A sketch of a coffee-shop may often be seen in the street, in
a scrap of sun or shade, according to the season, where a stool or two
invite the passer-by to a moment of contemplation. And no _han_ or public
building is without its facilities for dispensing the indispensable.
[Illustration: That grape-vine is one of the most decorative elements of
Stamboul streets]
I know not whether the fact may contribute anything to the psychology
of prohibition, but it is surprising to learn how recent an invention
coffee-houses are, as time goes in this part of the world, and what
opposition they first encountered. The first coffee-shop was opened in
Stamboul in 1554, by one Shemsi, a native of Aleppo. A man of his race it
was, an Arab dervish of the thirteenth century, who is supposed to have
discovered the properties of the coffee berry. Shemsi returned to Syria
in three years, taking with him some five thousand ducats and little
imagination of what uproar his successful enterprise was to cause.
The beverage so quickly appreciated was as quickly looked upon by the
orthodox as insidious to the public morals—partly because it seemed to
merit the prohibition of the Koran against intoxicants, partly because it
brought the faithful together in places other than mosques. “The black
enemy of sleep and of love,” as a poet styled the Arabian berry, was
variously denounced as one of the Four Elements of the World of Pleasure,
one of the Four Pillars of the Tent of Lubricity, one of the Four
Cushions of the Couch of Voluptuousness, and one of the Four Ministers
of the Devil—the other three being tobacco, opium, and wine. The name of
the drug may have had something to do with the hostility it encountered.
_Kahveh_, whence _café_ and coffee, is a slight modification of an
Arabic word—literally meaning that which takes away the appetite—which is
one of the names of wine.
[Illustration: A waterside coffee-house]
Süleïman the Magnificent, during whose reign the _kahveji_ Shemsi made
his little fortune, took no notice of the agitation against the new
drink. But some of his successors pursued those who indulged in it with
unheard-of severity. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
coffee-drinkers were persecuted more rigorously in Constantinople than
wine-bibbers have ever been in England or America. Their most unrelenting
enemy was the bloody Mourad IV—himself a drunkard—who forbade the use
of coffee or tobacco under pain of death. He and his nephew Mehmed IV
after him used to patrol the city in disguise, _à la_ Haroun al Rashid,
in order to detect and punish for themselves any violation of the law.
But the Greek taverns only became the more popular. And the latter sultan
was the means of extending the habit to Europe—which, for the rest, he no
doubt considered its proper habitat. To be sure, it was merely during his
reign that the English made their first acquaintance of our after-dinner
friend. It was brought back from Smyrna in 1652 by a Mr. Edwards, member
of the Levant Company, whose house was so besieged by those curious to
taste the strange concoction that he set up his Greek servant in the
first coffee-house in London. There, too, coffee was soon looked upon
askance in high places. A personage no more strait-laced than Charles
II caused a court to hand down the following decision: “The Retayling
of Coffee may be an innocente Trayde; but as it is used to nourysshe
Sedition, spredde Lyes, and scandalyse Greate Menne, it may also be a
common Nuisaunce.” In the meantime an envoy of Mehmed IV introduced
coffee in 1669 to the court of Louis XIV. And Vienna acquired the
habit fourteen years later, when that capital was besieged by the same
sultan. After the rout of the Turks by John Sobiesky, a vast quantity
of the fragrant brown drug was found among the besiegers’ stores. Its
use was made known to the Viennese by a Pole who had been interpreter to
a company of Austrian merchants in Constantinople. For his bravery in
carrying messages through the Turkish lines he was given the right to
establish the first coffee-house in Vienna.
The history of tobacco in Turkey was very much the same. It first
appeared from the West in 1605, during the reign of Ahmed I. Under Mourad
IV a famous pamphlet was written against it by an unconscious forerunner
of modernity, who also advocated a mediæval Postum made of bean pods.
Snuff became known in 1642 as an attempt to elude the repressive laws
of Sultan Ibrahim. But the habit of smoking, like the taste for coffee,
gained such headway that no one could stop it. Mahmoud I was the last
sultan who attempted to do so, when he closed the coffee-houses for
political reasons in 1730.
There is, it is true, a coffee habit, whose abuse is no less demoralising
than that of any other drug. But it is so rare, and Stamboul
coffee-houses are so different from American or even most European cafés,
that it is hard to imagine their causing so much commotion. Nothing
stronger than coffee is dispensed in them—unless I except the _nargileh_,
the water-pipe, whose effect is wonderfully soothing and innocent at
first, though wonderfully deadly in the end to the novice. The tobacco
used is not the ordinary weed but a much coarser and stronger one, called
_toumbeki_. Smoking is the more germane to coffee-shops, because in the
Turkish idiom you drink tobacco. You may also drink tea, in little
glasses, as the Persians do. And to desecrate it, or coffee either, with
the admixture of milk is an unheard-of sacrilege. But you may content
yourself with so mild a refreshment as a bit of _rahat locoum_, more
familiar to you, perhaps, as Turkish Delight, and a glass of water.
[Illustration: “Drinking” a _nargileh_]
[Illustration: Fez-presser in a coffee-house]
The etiquette of the coffee-house, of those coffee-houses which have not
been too much infected by Europe, is one of their most characteristic
features. I have seen a newcomer salute one after another each person in
a crowded coffee-room, once on entering the door, and again on taking
his seat, and be so saluted in return—either by putting the right hand
on the heart and uttering the greeting _merhaba_, or by making the
_temenna_, that triple sweep of the hand which is the most graceful of
salutes. I have also seen the entire company rise on the entrance of
an old man, and yield him the corner of honour. As for the essential
function of the coffee-house, it has its own traditions. A glass of water
comes with the coffee, and a foreigner can usually be detected by the
order in which he takes them. A Turk sips his water first. He lifts his
coffee-cup, whether it possess a handle or no, by the saucer, managing
the two in a dexterous way of his own. And custom favours a rather noisy
enjoyment of the cup that cheers, as expressing appreciation and general
well-being. The current price for a coffee, in the heart of Stamboul, is
ten _para_—something like a penny—for which the waiter will say: “May God
give you blessing.” Mark, too, that you do not tip him. I have often
been surprised to be charged no more than the tariff, although I gave a
larger piece to be changed, and it was perfectly evident that I was a
foreigner. That is an experience which rarely befalls a traveller even in
his own land. It has further happened to me to be charged nothing at all,
nay, to be steadfastly refused when I persisted in attempting to pay,
simply because I was a traveller, and therefore a “guest.”
Altogether the habit of the coffee-house is one that requires a certain
leisure. Being a passion less violent and less shameful than others, I
suppose, it is indulged in with more of the humanities. You do not bolt
coffee as you bolt the fire-waters of the West, without ceremony, in
retreats withdrawn from the public eye. Neither, having taken coffee,
do you leave the coffee-house. On the contrary, there are reasons why
you should stay—and not only to take another coffee. There are benches
to curl up on, if you would do as the Romans do, having first neatly
put off your shoes from off your feet. There are texts and patriotic
pictures to look at, to say nothing of the wonderful brass arrangements
wherein the _kahveji_ concocts his mysteries. There is, of course, the
view. To enjoy it you sit on a low rush-bottomed stool in front of the
coffee-shop, under a grape-vine, perhaps, or a scented wistaria, or
a bough of a neighbourly plane-tree; and if you like you may have an
aromatic pot of basil beside you to keep away the flies. Then there are
more active distractions. For coffee-houses are also barber shops, where
men cause to be shaved not only their chins but different parts of their
crowns, according to their countries; and a festoon of teeth on a string
or a suggestive jar of leeches reminds you how catholic was once the art
of the barber in other parts of the world. There is also the resource
of games—such as backgammon, which is called _tavli_ and played in
Persian, and draughts, and cards. They say, indeed, that bridge came from
Constantinople. There is a club in Pera which claims the honour of having
communicated that passion to the Western world. But I must confess that
I have yet to see an open hand of the long narrow cards you find in a
coffee-house.
[Illustration: Playing _tavli_]
The great resource of coffee-houses, however, is the company you meet
there. The company is better at certain hours than at others. Early in
the day the majority of the habitués may be at work, while late in the
evening they will have disappeared altogether. For Stamboul has not quite
forgotten the habits of the tent. At night it is a deserted city. But
just before and just after dark the coffee-houses are full of a colour
which an outsider is often content to watch through lighted windows.
They are the clubs of the poorer classes. Men of a street, a trade, or
a province meet regularly at coffee-houses kept often by one of their
own people. So much are the humbler coffee-houses frequented by a fixed
clientèle that the most vagrant impressionist can realise how truly
the old Turkish writers called them Schools of Knowledge. Schools of
knowledge they must be, indeed, for those capable of taking part in their
councils. Even for one who is not, they are full of information about the
people who live in Stamboul, the variety of clothes they wear, the number
of dialects they speak, the infinity of places they come from. I am at
the end of my chapter and I cannot stop to descant on these things—much
less on the historic guilds which still subsist in the coffee-house
world. The guilds are nearly at the end of their chapter, too.
Constitutions and changes more radical are turning them into something
more like modern trade-unions. Their tradition is still vivid enough,
though, for it to be written, as in the laws of Medes and Persians, that
no man but one of Iran shall drive a house-builder’s donkey; that only
a Mohammedan Albanian of the south shall lay a pavement or a southern
Albanian who is a Christian and wears an orange girdle shall lay railroad
ties; that none save a landlubber from the hinterland of the Black Sea
may row a caïque or, they of Konia peddle _yo’ourt_, or——
[Illustration: The plane-tree of Chengel-kyöi]
It is no use for me to go on. I would fill pages and I probably would
not make it any clearer how clannish these men are. Other things about
them are just as interesting—to the race of men that likes Stamboul. That
first question, for instance, that comes to one on the arriving train,
at the sight of so many leisurely and meditative persons, returns again
and again to the mind. How is it that these who burst once out of the
East with so much noise and terror, who battered their way through the
walls of this city and carried the green standard of the Prophet to the
gates of Vienna, sit here now rolling cigarettes and sipping little cups
of coffee? Some conclude that their course is run, while others upbraid
them for wasting so their time. For my part, I like to think that such
extremes may argue a complexity of character for whose unfolding it would
be wise to wait. I also like to think that there may be some people in
the world for whom time is more than money. At any rate, it pleases me
that all the people in the world are not the same. It pleases me that
some are content to sit in coffee-houses, to enjoy simple pleasures,
to watch common spectacles, to find that in life which every one may
possess—light, growing things, the movement of water, and an outlook on
the ways of men.
II
MOSQUE YARDS
I often wonder what a Turk, a Turk of the people, would make of a Western
church. In an old cathedral close, perhaps, he might feel to a degree
at home. The architecture of the building would set it apart from those
about it, the canons’ houses and other subsidiary structures would not
seem unnatural to him, and, though the arrangement of the interior would
be foreign, he would probably understand in what manner of place he
was—and his religion would permit him to worship there in his own way.
But a modern city church, and particularly an American city church,
would offer almost nothing familiar to him. It would, very likely, be
less monumental in appearance than neighbouring buildings. There would
be little or no open space about it. And strangest of all would be the
entire absence of life about the place for six days out of seven. The
most active institutional church can never give the sense a mosque does
of being a living organism, an acknowledged focus of life. The larger
mosques are open every day and all day, from sunrise to sunset, while
even the smallest is accessible for the five daily hours of prayer. And,
what is more, people go to them. Nor do they go to them as New Yorkers
sometimes step into a down-town church at noontime, feeling either
exceptionally pious or a little uneasy lest some one catch them in the
act. It is as much a matter of course as any other habit of life, and as
little one to be self-conscious about. By which I do not mean to imply
that there are neither dissenters nor sceptics in Islam. I merely mean
that Islam seems to be a far more vital and central force with the mass
of those who profess it than Protestant Christianity.
However, I did not set out to compare religions. All I wish is to
point out the importance of mosques and their precincts in the picture
of Constantinople. The yards of the imperial mosques take the place,
in Stamboul, of squares and parks. Even many a smaller mosque enjoys
an amplitude of perspective that might be envied by cathedrals like
Chartres, or Cologne, or Milan. These roomy enclosures are surrounded by
the windowed walls which I have already celebrated. Within them cypresses
are wont to cluster, and plane-trees willingly cast their giant shadow.
Gravestones also congregate there. And there a centre of life is which
can never lack interest for the race of men that likes Stamboul. Scribes
sit under the trees ready to write letters for soldiers, women, and
others of the less literate sort. Seal cutters ply their cognate trade,
and cut your name on a bit of brass almost as quickly as you can write
it. Barbers, distinguishable by a brass plate with a nick in it for
your chin, are ready to exercise another art upon your person. Pedlers
come and go, selling beads, perfumes, fezzes, and sweets which they
carry on their heads in big wooden trays, and drinks which may tempt you
less than their brass receptacles. A more stable commerce is visible in
some mosque yards, or on the day of the week when a peripatetic market
elects to pitch its tents there; and coffee-houses, of course, abound.
Not that there are coffee-houses in every mosque yard. I know one small
mosque yard, that of Mahmoud Pasha—off the busy street of that name
leading to the Bazaars—which is entirely given up to coffee-houses. And
a perfect mosque yard it is, grove-like with trees and looked upon by a
great portico of the time of the Conqueror. There is something both grave
and human about mosque yards and coffee-houses both that excellently
suits them to each other. The combination is one that I, at any rate, am
incapable of resisting. I dare not guess how many days of my life I have
I cannot say wasted in the coffee-houses of Mahmoud Pasha, and Yeni Jami,
and Baïezid, and Shah-zadeh, and Fatih. The company has an ecclesiastical
tinge. Turbans bob much together and the neighbouring fountains of
ablution play a part in the scene. And if the company does not disperse
altogether it thins very much when the voice of the _müezin_, the
chanter, sounds from his high white tower. “God is most great!” he
chants to the four quarters of the earth. “I bear witness that there is
not a god save God! I bear witness that Mohammed is the Prophet of God!
Hasten to the worship of God! Hasten to permanent blessedness! God is
most great!”
[Illustration: The yard of Hekim-zadeh Ali Pasha]
In the mosque the atmosphere is very much that of the mosque yard.
There may be more reverence, perhaps, but people evidently feel very
much at home. Men meet there out of prayer time, and women too, for
what looks like, though it may not always be, a _sacra conversazione_
of the painters. Students con over their Koran, rocking to and fro on a
cushion in front of a little inlaid table. Solitary devotees prostrate
themselves in a corner, untroubled by children playing among the pillars
or a turbaned professor lecturing, cross-legged, to a cross-legged class
in theology. The galleries of some mosques are safety-deposit vaults
for their parishioners, and when the parish burns down the parishioners
deposit themselves there too. After the greater conflagration of the
Balkan War thousands of homeless refugees from Thrace and Macedonia
camped out for months in the mosques of Stamboul. Even the pigeons that
haunt so many mosque yards know that the doors are always open, and are
scarcely to be persuaded from taking up their permanent abode on tiled
cornices or among the marble stalactites of capitals.
[Illustration: “The Little Mosque”
From an etching by Ernest D. Roth]
One thing that makes a mosque look more hospitable than a church is its
arrangement. There are no seats or aisles to cut up the floor. Matting is
spread there, over which are laid in winter the carpets of the country;
and before you step on to this clean covering you put off your shoes from
off your feet—unless you shuffle about in the big slippers that are kept
in some mosques for foreign visitors. The general impression is that of
a private interior magnified and dignified. The central object of this
open space is the _mihrab_, a niche pointing toward Mecca. It is usually
set in an apse which is raised a step above the level of the nave. In it
is a prayer-rug for the _imam_, and on each side, in a brass or silver
standard, an immense candle, which is lighted only on the seven holy
nights of the year and during Ramazan. At the right of the _mihrab_,
as you face it, stands the _mimber_, a sort of pulpit, at the top of a
stairway and covered by a pointed canopy, which is used only for the noon
prayer of Friday or on other special occasions. To the left, and nearer
the door, is a smaller pulpit called the _kürsi_. This is a big cushioned
armchair or throne, reached by a short ladder, where the _imam_ sits to
speak on ordinary occasions. There will also be one or more galleries
for singers, and in larger mosques, usually at the _mihrab_ end of the
left-hand gallery, an imperial tribune enclosed by grille work and
containing its own sacred niche. The chandeliers are a noticeable feature
of every mosque, hanging very low and containing not candles but glass
cups of oil with a floating wick. I am afraid, however, that this soft
light will be presently turned into electricity. From the chandeliers
often hang ostrich eggs—emblems of eternity—and other homely ornaments.
[Illustration: Entrance to the forecourt of Sultan Baïezid II]
[Illustration: Detail of the Süleïmanieh]
The place of the mosque in the Turkish community is symbolised, like
that of the mediæval cathedral, by its architectural pre-eminence.
Mark, however, that Stamboul has half a dozen cathedrals instead of
one. It would be hard to overestimate how much of the character of
Stamboul depends on the domes and minarets that so inimitably accident
the heights between the Golden Horn and the Marmora. And on closer
acquaintance the mosques are found to contain almost all that Stamboul
has of architectural pretension. They form an achievement, to my mind,
much greater than the world at large seems to realise. The easy current
dictum that they are merely more or less successful imitations of St.
Sophia takes no account of the evolution—particularly of the central
dome—which may be traced through the mosques of Konia, Broussa, and
Adrianople, and which reaches its legitimate climax in Stamboul. The
likelier fact is that the mosque of Stamboul, inspired by the same remote
Asiatic impulse as the Byzantine church, absorbed what was proper to it
in Byzantine art, refining away the heaviness or overfloridness of the
East, until in the hands of a master like Sinan it attained a supreme
elegance without losing any of its dignity. Yet it would be a mistake to
look for all Turkish architecture in Sinan. The mosques of Atik Ali Pasha
and of Sultan Baïezid II are there to prove of what mingled simplicity
and nobility was capable an obscure architect of an earlier century. His
name is supposed to have been Haïreddin, and he, first among the Turks,
used the monolithic shaft and the stalactite capital. How perfect they
are, though, in the arcades of Baïezid! Nothing could be better in its
way than the forecourt of that mosque, and its inlaid minarets are unique
of their kind. Nor did architecture die with Sinan. Yeni Jami, looking
at Galata along the outer bridge, is witness thereof. The pile of the
Süleïmanieh, whose four minarets catch your eye from so many points of
the compass, is perhaps more masculine. But the silhouette of Yeni Jami,
that mosque of princesses, has an inimitable grace. The way in which each
structural necessity adds to the general effect, the climactic building
up of buttress and cupola, the curve of the dome, the proportion of
the minarets, could hardly be more perfect. Although brought up in the
vociferous tradition of Ruskin, I am so far unfaithful to the creed of
my youth as to find pleasure, too, in rococo mosques like Zeïneb Sultan,
Nouri Osmanieh, and Laleli Jami. And the present generation, under men
like Vedad Bey and the architects of the _Evkaf_, are reviving their art
in a new and interesting direction.
To give any comprehensive account of the mosques of Stamboul would be to
write a history of Ottoman architecture, and for that I lack both space
and competence. I may, however, as an irresponsible lounger in mosque
yards, touch on one or two characteristic aspects of mosques and their
decoration which strike a foreigner’s eye. The frescoing or stencilling
of domes and other curved interior surfaces, for instance, is an art that
has very little been noticed—even by the Turks, judging from the sad
estate to which the art has fallen. Some people might object to calling
it an art at all. Let such a one be given a series of domes and vaults to
ornament by this simple means, however, and he will find how difficult it
is to produce an effect both decorative and dignified. The restorers of
the nineteenth century spoiled many a fine interior by their atrocious
baroque draperies or colour-blind colour schemes. If I were a true
believer I could never pray in mosques like Ahmed I or Yeni Jami, because
the decorator evidently noticed that the prevailing tone of the tiles was
blue and dipped his brush accordingly—into a blue of a different key.
Yet there are domes which prove how fine an art the Turks once made of
this half-mechanical decoration. One of the best in Stamboul is in the
tomb of the princes, behind the Shah-zadeh mosque. The stencilling is
a charming arabesque design in black, dark red, pale blue, and orange,
perhaps happily toned by time, which a recent restoration was wise enough
to spare. The tomb of Roxelana and the great tomb beside Yeni Jami also
contain a little interesting stencilling. But the most complete example
of good work of this kind is outside Stamboul, in the Yeni Valideh
mosque of Scutari. The means used are of the simplest, the colours being
merely black and dull red, with a little dull yellow; but the lines are
so fine and so sapiently spaced on their broad background of white that
the effect is very much that of a Persian shawl. A study of that ceiling
should be made compulsory for every decorator of a mosque—and might yield
suggestions not a few to his Western cousin.
[Illustration: Yeni Jami]
The windows of mosques are another detail that always interests me. They
are rarely very large, but there are a great many of them and they give
no dim religious light, making up a great part as they do of the human
sunniness of the interior. A first tier of square windows stand almost at
the level of the floor, and are provided with folding shutters which are
carved with many little panels or with a Moorish pattern of interlaced
stars. Higher up the windows are arched and are made more interesting
by the broad plaster mullions of which I have already spoken. These
make against the light a grille of round, oval, or drop-shaped openings
which are wonderfully decorative in themselves. The same principle is
refined and complicated into a result more decorative still when the
plaster setting forms a complete design of arabesques, flowers, or
writing, sometimes framing symmetrically spaced circles or quadrangles,
sometimes composing an all-over pattern, and filled in with minute
panes of coloured glass. Huysmans compared the windows of Chartres to
Persian rugs, because the smallness of the figures and their height
above the floor make them merely conventional arrangements of colour.
Here, however, we have the real principle of the Oriental rug. Turkish
windows contain no figures at all, nor any of that unhappy attempt at
realism that mars so much modern glass. The secret of the effect lies in
the smallness of the panes used and the visibility of the plaster design
in which they are set. And what an effect of jewelry may be produced in
this way is to be seen in the Süleïmanieh, and Yeni Jami—where two slim
cypresses make delicious panels of green light above the _mihrab_—besides
other mosques and tombs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Mosques are even more notable than private houses for the inscriptions
on their walls. Every visitor to St. Sophia remembers the great green
medallions bearing the names of the chief personages of Islam in letters
of gold. In purely Turkish mosques similar medallions may be seen, or
large inscriptions stencilled like panels on the white walls, or small
texts hanging near the floor. But there is a more architectural use
of writing, above doors and windows or in the form of a frieze. When
designed by a master like Hassan Chelibi of Kara Hissar, the great
calligrapher of Süleïman’s time, and executed in simple dark blue and
white in one of the imperial tile factories, this art became a means of
decoration which we can only envy the Turks. Such inscriptions are always
from the Koran, of course, and they are often happily chosen for the
place they occupy. Around the great dome of the Süleïmanieh, and lighted
by its circle of windows, runs this verse: “God is the light of the
heavens and of the earth. His light is like a window in the wall, wherein
a lamp burns, covered with glass. The glass shines like a star. The lamp
is kindled from the oil of a blessed tree: not of the east, not of the
west, it lights whom he wills.”
It is not only for inscriptions, however, that tiles are used in mosques.
Stamboul, indeed, is a museum of tiles that has never been adequately
explored. Nor, in general, is very much known about Turkish ceramics.
I suppose nothing definite will be known till the Turks themselves, or
some one who can read their language, takes the trouble to look up the
records of mosques and other public buildings. The splendid tiles of
Süleïman’s period have sometimes been attributed a Persian and sometimes
a Rhodian origin—for they have many similarities with the famous Rhodian
plates. The Turks themselves generally suppose that their tiles came
from Kütahya, where a factory still produces work of an inferior kind.
The truth lies between these various theories. That any number of the
tiles of Constantinople came from Persia is impossible. So many of
them could not have been safely brought so far overland, and it is
inconceivable that they would have fitted into their places as they do,
or that any number of buildings would have been erected to fit their
tiles. The Rhodian theory is equally improbable, partly for similar
reasons though chiefly because the legend of Rhodes is all but exploded.
The Musée de Cluny is almost the last believer in the idea that its
unrivalled collection of Rhodian plates ever came from Rhodes. Many of
them probably came from different parts of Asia Minor. That tiles were
produced in Asia Minor long before the capture of Constantinople we know
from the monuments of Broussa, Konia, and other places. They were quite
a different kind of tile, to be sure, of only one colour or containing
a simple arabesque design, which was varied by a sort of tile mosaic.
Many of them, too, were six-sided. The only examples of these older
tiles in Constantinople are to be seen at the _Chinili Kyöshk_ of the
imperial museum—the Tile Pavilion—and the tomb of Mahmoud Pasha. It is a
notorious fact, however, that the sultans who fought against the Persians
brought back craftsmen of all kinds from that country and settled
them in different parts of the empire. Selim I, for instance, when he
captured Tabriz, imported the best tile makers of that city, as well as
from Ardebil and Kashan—whence one of the words for tiles, _kyashi_—and
settled them in Isnik. This is the city which under an older name had
already produced the historian Dion Cassius and the Nicene Creed. Other
factories are known to have existed in Kastambol, Konia, Nicomedia, and
Constantinople itself. One is supposed to have been in Eyoub, though
no trace of it remains to-day unless in the potteries of Chömlekjiler.
Another, I have been told, flourished at Balat. I know not whether it
may have been the same which Sultan Ahmed III transferred in 1724 from
Nicæa to the ruined Byzantine palace of Tekfour Seraï. A colony of
glass-blowers there are the last remnant to-day of the tile makers of two
hundred years ago.
[Illustration: Tile panel in Rüstem Pasha]
The art itself declined and gradually died out as the sultans stopped
making conquests and building mosques. For the imperial mosques are
monuments of victory, built and endowed out of the spoils of war. After
the martial period of the empire came to an end with Süleïman I only one
mosque of importance, that of Ahmed I, was built by a reigning sultan
in his own name. But the tiles of the imperial factories, after many
fires and much thieving, still make up what is most brilliant and most
durable in the colour of Stamboul. The best tiles are Nicene of the
sixteenth century, that extraordinary _cinque-cento_, when so many of the
best things of the world were produced. They are distinguished by the
transparent white glaze of their background, on which are drawn tulips,
carnations, wild hyacinths, and a certain long bent serrated leaf common
to the Rhodian plate. The chief colours are a dark and a turquoise blue
and a tomato red, green and yellow occurring more rarely. And they are
never quite smooth, the red in particular usually being in slight relief.
This gives them a variety which is absent from many modern tiles.
The feeling for variety, in fact, was one great secret of Turkish tile
making and tile setting. Sinan, for instance, used tiles very sparingly
in his larger buildings. He was great enough to depend very little on
ornament for his effect, and he knew that tiles would look like paper
or linoleum—if such things existed in his day!—on a monumental surface.
But he had a perfect tact of using this tapestry wherever he wanted a
touch of colour or distinction—over a window, along a cornice, around
a _mihrab_. His masterpiece in this decoration is the mosque of Rüstem
Pasha, son-in-law and Grand Vizier to Süleïman the Magnificent. This
mosque, lifted on retaining walls above the noise of its busy quarter,
has a portico which must have been magnificently tiled—judging from the
panel at the left of the main door—and the whole interior is tiled to
the spring of the dome. The mosque is small enough for the effect of the
tiles to tell—and to be almost ruined by the fearful modern frescoes of
the vaulting. The guides of Pera have a favourite legend to the effect
that Rüstem Pasha brought back these tiles from his wars in Persia and
built a mosque for them to save giving them up to his imperial master.
But no one need be an expert to see the impossibility of any such story.
The tiles must have been designed for the walls which they incrust,
and by a supreme master of decoration. I should not be surprised to
learn that Sinan himself drew them all. There is a tall narrow panel on
either side of the mosque, between two windows, which seems to me one
of the most perfect ways imaginable of filling such a space. So are the
spandrels of the arches supporting the gallery, and the niche of the
_mihrab_, and the back of the _mimber_. All through the mosque, however,
the way in which the artist has varied his designs and colours, while
never losing his unity of effect, is a piece of genius. Narrow spaces and
points of special interest are treated each in its own way; but unbroken
surfaces of wall are never allowed to become monotonous by covering them
with only one form of tile. They are broken up by narrower border tiles
into panels, each of which is treated differently though harmonising with
its neighbour and balancing the corresponding space on the opposite side
of the mosque. Even within one of these spaces monotony is avoided by the
fact that the tiles are almost never of a repeating pattern. Two or four
tiles are required to make up the scheme. And then the pattern does not
always fit the tiles, so that the interstices come in different places
in different parts of the design, and you feel that the tiles could
only have been made for that one space. In the case of special panels,
of course, many tiles are required to make up the pattern. The splendid
flowered panel in the portico contains forty-five tiles, exclusive of the
border, and every one of them different. Such work was not commercial
tile making. It was an art.
[Illustration: The _mihrab_ of Rüstem Pasha]
[Illustration: In Rüstem Pasha]
Two mosques of a later period in Stamboul are completely tiled, that
of Sultan Ahmed I and the one begun by his wife—Yeni Jami. They prove
the wisdom of Sinan in not attempting to tile a large interior. Still,
the gallery of Sultan Ahmed also proves that the architect was not
altogether ignorant of what he was about. He put his best tiles there,
where they can only be seen at close range. And his best is very good. I
have counted twenty-nine varieties of tiles there, or rather of designs,
divided, like those of Rüstem Pasha, into framed panels. The tiles facing
the _mihrab_, where the gallery widens over the main doorway, are so
good that I sometimes ask myself if the architect did not borrow from an
earlier building. Two series of eleven panels, one above the other, make
a tall wainscot whose only fault is that too much richness is crowded
into too narrow a space. The lower series is the finer. Five panels to
the right balance five panels to the left of a spindle-shaped Persian
design. Its two neighbours are conventionalised cypress trees, than which
nothing more decorative was ever invented. Then come two magnificent
panels of larger spindles against a thicket of peach-blossoms or Judas
blossoms, red with small blue centres, followed by two more cypresses.
Five panels of the upper series, one of them forming the axis, are
latticed again with blossoming sprays. In this case there is no spindle
to hide the greater part of the flowers, which are blue with small red
centres. The tiles are very nearly if not quite as good as those of the
preceding century, and they make a wall more splendid than exists outside
the old Seraglio.
[Illustration: Tiles in the gallery of Sultan Ahmed]
Yeni Jami is better suited for tiling, being comparatively a smaller
mosque. Its proportions are also much better and the frescoing is
not so bad as that of Sultan Ahmed. The tiles themselves are not so
interesting. But attached to the mosque, and giving entrance to the
imperial tribune, is a suite of rooms which are also tiled. This imperial
apartment is carried across the street on a great pointed arch, and is
reached from outside by a covered inclined way which enabled the Sultan
to ride directly up to the level of his gallery. At the same level is
also a little garden, held up by a massive retaining wall, and a balcony
with a rail of perforated marble once gave a magnificent view over the
harbour. The view has since been cut off by shops, and the apartment
itself has fallen into a sad state of neglect or has been subjected to
unfortunate restorations. A later and more intelligent restoration has
brought to light, under a vandal coat of brown paint, the old gilding of
the woodwork. But the tiles of the walls remain—except where they have
been replaced by horrible panels of some composition imitating Florentine
mosaic. Among them are charming cypresses and peach-trees. There are also
remains of lovely old windows, to say nothing of tall hooded fireplaces
and doors incrusted with tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl. The tiles
are palpably of a poorer period than those I have described. But there is
a great attractiveness about this quaint apartment, that only adds to the
general distinction of Yeni Jami.
The original founder of the mosque, as I have said, was the favourite
wife of Ahmed I. This princess is one of the most famous women in Turkish
chronicles. Whether she was a Greek or a Turk, history does not confirm,
though the custom of the sultans to marry none but slaves would point to
the former origin. Her name in the Seraglio was Mahpeïker—Moon Face. She
is oftenest remembered, however, by the name Kyössem, Leader of a Flock,
from the fact that she was the first of a troop of slaves presented to
the young sultan. During his reign she gained an increasing voice in the
affairs of the empire, and during those of her sons Mourad IV and Ibrahim
her word was law. The position of empress mother is an exceptional one
in Turkey, as in China, the occupant of it being the first lady in the
palace and the land. She is known as the _valideh soultan_, or princess
mother—for the word sultan properly has no sex. Our word sultana does not
exist in Turkish, being a Greek or Italian invention. The reigning sultan
prefixes the title to his own name, while other persons of his blood put
it after theirs. When the grandson of Kyössem, the boy Mehmed IV, came
to the throne, the great _valideh_ continued, against all precedent, to
inhabit the Seraglio and to exercise her old influence. But at last the
jealousy of Mehmed’s mother, defrauded of her natural rank, kindled a
palace intrigue that caused the older _valideh_, at the age of eighty,
to be strangled one night in the Seraglio. Her mosque, still unfinished,
suffered by a fire which ravaged the quarter; and it was finally
completed by her young rival, a Russian named Tar’han, or Hadijeh. After
the latter the mosque is called to-day the yeni _valideh soultan jamisi_,
the mosque of the new empress mother. In common parlance, however, it
goes by the name of _yeni jami_, the new mosque—though it has had time
to become fairly venerable. And she who became the new _valideh_ in 1649
now occupies the place of honour under the dome of the tomb beside the
mosque, while the murdered Kyössem rests near her husband in their little
marble house on the Hippodrome.
The tombs that accompany mosques are only less interesting than the
mosques themselves, both for their architectural character and for
their historical associations. When space permits they lie in an inner
enclosure of the mosque yard, technically called the garden, behind the
mosque. Long before Constantinople became their capital the sultans had
perfected a type of mausoleum, or _türbeh_. This is a domed structure,
usually octagonal in shape, cheerfully lighted by two or three tiers
of windows. Every tomb has its own guardian, called the _türbedar_,
and some are attached to a school or other philanthropic institution.
These mausoleums are often extremely elaborate in decoration, but they
all retain a certain primitive simplicity with regard to their central
feature. There is no sarcophagus of marble or porphyry. The occupant of
the _türbeh_ is buried in the floor, and over his grave stands a plain
wooden catafalque covered with green cloth. Like a Turkish coffin, it
is ridged and inclined from the head, where a wooden standard supports
the turban of the deceased. A woman’s catafalque has no standard, a
scarf being thrown across the head. Embroideries, of gold on velvet, or
of quotations from the Koran in a zigzag pattern, may cover the green
cloth. Such embroideries are often a piece of a last year’s hanging from
the Kaaba at Mecca or from the Prophet’s tomb at Medina. But nothing
is imposing about the catafalque unless its size, which indicates the
importance of the person commemorated. The largest one I remember is that
of Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror. And the rail around the catafalque
is all that suggests permanence, and that is generally of wood inlaid
with mother-of-pearl. The simple epitaph is written on a placard which
hangs casually from the rail, or perhaps from an immense candle to be
lighted on holy nights. Near by may be an inlaid folding stand with an
illuminated Koran. The floor is matted and covered with rugs like a
mosque or a house.
[Illustration: The tomb of Sultan Ahmed I]
The tombs attached to the imperial mosques are naturally the most
important. Not every sultan built his own, however. In the _türbeh_ of
Ahmed I two other sultans are buried, his sons Osman II—who was the first
sultan to be murdered by his own people—and the bloody Mourad IV. Among
the innumerable people whom the latter put to death was his brother
Prince Baïezid, the hero of Racine’s “Bajazet,” who lies beside him. In
the tomb of Hadijeh at Yeni Jami five sultans rest: her son Mehmed IV,
her grandsons Moustafa II and Ahmed III, and her great-grandsons Mahmoud
I and Osman III. These and others of the larger tombs are noticeable
for the number of little catafalques they contain, marking the graves
of little princes who were strangled on the accession of their eldest
brother.
The most interesting tombs, from an artistic point of view, are those of
the period of Süleïman the Magnificent. How this later Solomon came by
his European nickname I can not tell, for the Turks know him as Solomon
the Lawgiver. But magnificent without doubt he was, and Stamboul would
be another city if all trace of his magnificence were to disappear. His
_türbeh_, behind the mosque he built in his own name, is perhaps the
most imposing in Constantinople, though neither the largest nor the most
splendidly decorated. A covered ambulatory surrounds it, and within are
handsome tiles and stained-glass windows. I prefer, however, the tomb
of his famous consort. The legend of this lady has enjoyed outside of
her own country a success that proves again the capriciousness of fame.
For the great Kyössem was a more celebrated princess whose name has
been forgotten in Europe. It is perfectly true that Süleïman did put
to death his eldest son Moustafa, a prince of the greatest promise, and
that Roxelana’s son, Selim II, did inherit the throne accordingly—and
so cut off the line of great sultans. But it has yet to be proved that
Roxelana really was the “fatal woman” of popular history, who instigated
her stepson’s murder. I suspect the truth of the matter was largely
that she had a good press, as they say in French. She happened to fall
into the orbit of one of the greatest men of her time, she furnished
copy for the despatches of one or two famous ambassadors, and—they gave
her a pronounceable name! I have been told that it is a corruption of a
Persian name meaning red-cheeked; but I have privately wondered if it
had anything to do with the Slavic tribe of Roxolani. Be that as it may,
this princess was a Russian slave of so great wit and charm that the
Lord of the Two Earths and the Sovereign of All the Seas paid her the
unprecedented compliment of making her his legal wife. He even built for
her, unlike any other sultan I remember, a tomb to herself. And Sinan
subtly put into it a feminine grace that is set off by the neighbouring
mausoleum of her husband. In the little vestibule are two panels of
rose-red flowers that must have been lovely in their day. In consequence
of some accident the tiles have been stupidly patched and mixed up. The
interior is sixteen-sided, with alternate windows and pointed marble
niches. The spaces between are delicately tiled, and most so in the
spandrels of the niches, where are sprays of rose-coloured flowers like
those in the vestibule.
[Illustration: In Roxelana’s tomb]
There is another tomb behind another mosque of Süleïman, which is,
perhaps, the most perfect monument of its kind in Stamboul. I did not
always think so. But the more I look at its fluted dome and at the scheme
of its interior tiling, the more I seem to see that here again Sinan,
or the great decorator who worked with him, exquisitely found means to
express an idea of individuality. This tomb was built, like the mosque
to which it belongs, in memory of Süleïman’s second and best-beloved
son, the young Prince Mehmed. The mosque—so-called of the Shah-zadeh,
the Prince—has lost its original decoration, but its graceful lines and
its incrusted minarets combine with the smaller buildings and the trees
about it to make one of the happiest architectural groups in Stamboul.
As for the _türbeh_, it fortunately remains very much as Sinan left
it. The design of the tiles is more abstract and masculine than those
in Roxelana’s _türbeh_, being mainly an intricate weaving of lines and
arabesques. But there is about them a refinement, a distinction, which,
it is hardly too fantastic to say, insensibly suggest the youth and the
royal station of the boy whose burial chamber they beautify. For the
colour—rarest of all in Turkish tiles—is a spring green and a golden
yellow, set off by a little dark blue. The tomb is also remarkable,
as I have already said, for the stencilling of its dome, as well as
for the lovely fragments of old stained glass in the upper windows and
for a sort of wooden canopy, perforated in the wheel pattern common
to the balustrades of the period, covering the prince’s catafalque.
It is supposed to symbolise the throne which Süleïman hoped his son
might inherit. Beside the prince, but not under the canopy, rests his
humpbacked younger brother Jihangir. As for the unhappy Prince Moustafa,
he was buried in Broussa, in the beautiful garden of the Mouradieh.
The _türbeh_ of Prince Mehmed has, in my mind, another pre-eminence
which perhaps it does not deserve. As in most other public buildings of
Stamboul, an inscription is carved over the door. These inscriptions are
generally in poetry and sometimes very long. The uninitiated reader would
never guess that the last verse of many of them is also a date, for the
Arabic letters, like certain Roman letters, have a numerical value. And
the date of many a Turkish monument is hidden in a chronogram, always
the last line of the inscription, in which the arithmetical sum of the
letters is equivalent to the numeral of the year in which the monument
was erected. I am not learned enough to say when this recondite fashion
started, but the chronogram of this tomb is the earliest I happen to know
about in Stamboul. It reads: “Grant, Lord, to him who rests here to win
the grove of Eden.” The arithmetical value of the line is 950, which year
of the Hegira is equivalent to 1543 of our era.
There are several other interesting tombs in this enclosure, of which
the most important are those of Rüstem Pasha, builder of the tile mosque
we have already noticed, and of a certain Ibrahim Pasha, Grand Vizier to
Sultan Mourad III. I have a particular fancy for the latter _türbeh_,
which seems to me in its neglected way a little masterpiece. Consider me
now its door—how admirably drawn it is, provided with what green bronze
knockers in the shape of lyres! The tiles of the interior, or the more
important of them, are simplified from those of Prince Mehmed, transposed
into another key—dark red and less dark blue on white—and set between
two encircling inscriptions. There are also certain panels of flowers
between high windows. But I think I am most undone by a little dado, one
tile high, where two outward curving sprays of wild hyacinth that just
do not fit into the breadth of a tile enclose a small cluster of tulips
and carnations—inimitably conventionalised and symmetrical. Nothing more
simple or more decorative was ever imagined.
Selim II, the unworthy supplanter of him who might have been Mehmed III,
lies in a tomb handsomer than he deserves, in the court of a mosque
built by a greater than he—St. Sophia. His large _türbeh_ lacks the
elegant proportion of his brother’s, but the tile panels of its porch
are very effective. So is the tile tapestry of its inner walls, though a
little monotonous—mainly white in effect, dotted with little tulips and
other flowers enclosed in small Persian spindles. Four other sultans
are buried in the precincts of St. Sophia, the mad Moustafa I and the
dethroned Ibrahim lying in dishonourable neglect in the bare, whitewashed
chamber that was once the baptistery of the cathedral. And it was through
having been the slave of Ibrahim that the _valideh soultan_ Hadijeh was
able to complete Yeni Jami in her own name and build beside it the great
mausoleum in which she lies!
[Illustration: The _türbeh_ of Ibrahim Pasha]
[Illustration: The court of the Conqueror]
These _türbehs_, with the fountains of the outer courtyard and the trees
that shade them and the minarets that tower above the trees, give an
oddly Turkish air to the precincts of St. Sophia. It is to a real mosque,
however, that one must go for a typical mosque yard. A part of it that
is lacking to St. Sophia, and, indeed, to many mosques, is another inner
enclosure called the _haram_, or sanctuary. This forecourt of the mosque
is always more architectural than the “garden,” being a paved quadrangle
surrounded by an arcade. In the centre of the cloister a covered fountain
should bubble, sometimes under trees. I have already mentioned one
of the best examples of such a court. It belongs to the old mosque of
Sultan Baïezid II, more popularly known as the Pigeon Mosque. This is
less of a sanctuary than any other forecourt in Stamboul. But the reason
is that the mosque lacks an outer yard other than the square of the War
Department. And I would be the last to find fault with the scribes who
sit in the arcades, or to call them Pharisees who sell beads and perfumes
there. During the month of Ramazan a busy fair is held there, open only
during the afternoon, where the complicated sweetmeats of the season
are sold together with other things worthy to be given as presents at
_Baïram_. I must say, however, that I have a weakness for the court of
another old mosque, that of Sultan Selim I, in a less accessible part of
Stamboul. Part of its charm is perhaps due to the fact that it is more
remote and therefore more subject to silence. Above the barred windows
that look into the outer sunlight are lunettes of tiles, while around the
fountain cypresses and grape-vines make an inimitable shade. Nor can I
pass by the court of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha, the last and greatest vizier
of Süleïman I. This is supposed to be a lesser work of Sinan, but I like
it almost better than any other. Within the mosque are treasures of
tiles, of stained glass, of painted wood, of perforated marble. Without
is one of the noblest porticoes in Stamboul, looking down upon a cloister
that is a real cloister. For into its colonnade open cells where live the
students of a _medresseh_.
[Illustration: The main entrance to the court of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha]
A _medresseh_ is a theological school and law school combined, since in
Islam the teachings of the Prophet, as embodied in the Koran and the
traditions, form not only the rule of life but the law of the land.
It is only recently that a difference has been recognised between the
_Sheriat_ or sacred law and the civil law, but their boundaries are still
indistinct, and for many men the same door leads to legal or to spiritual
preferment. I have said so much about tombs and tiles and other matters
that I have left myself no room to speak of _medressehs_—or schools of
other kinds, or libraries, or caravansaries, or baths, or hospitals, or
soup-kitchens, or any other of the charitable institutions that cluster
around a mosque yard. We are wont to imagine that philanthropy was
invented in the West, and that the institutional church is a peculiarly
modern development. But before America was discovered institutional
mosques flourished in Stamboul and all over Asia Minor, and continue to
do so to this day. Almost no mosque, indeed, has not some philanthropy
connected with it. They are administered, mosques and dependencies and
all, by a separate and very important department of government called the
Ministry of the _Erkaf_—of Pious Foundations.
[Illustration: The court of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha]
[Illustration: Doorway in the _medresseh_ of Feïzoullah Effendi]
[Illustration: The interior of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha]
The necessities of space do not always allow these dependencies to gather
around their central mosque yard. Or sometimes they are independent
foundations and may have a yard of their own of which a small mosque
is merely one feature. Two very interesting examples are _medressehs_
in the vicinity of the mosque of the Conqueror. They both belong to the
same period and their founders were both ministers of Sultan Moustafa
II, who was dethroned in 1703. The smaller and more ruinous was built
by Feïzoullah Effendi, _Sheï’h ül Islam_, a mighty man of God who did
and undid viziers in his day and perished miserably at Adrianople in the
upheaval that drove his imperial master from the throne. His _medresseh_
nearly perished too, in 1912, to make way for a new boulevard. But it
was happily saved by the society of the Friends of Stamboul, and in time
its little cloister may become less of a jungle. Its chief ornament
is the structure to the left of the gateway, where a flight of steps
mounts under a wonderful arch or crocket of perforated marble to a
pillared porch with a mosque on one side and a library on the other.
The mosque is the more dilapidated, but it contains fragments of good
tiling and a charming little door. The library has the same little door,
shallow-arched and ornamented with fine stalactites of marble. The
interior of the library is almost filled by a square cage, which has a
corresponding door of its own and a dark inner compartment. On the wired
shelves of this structure big books are piled on their sides, and their
titles and numbers are written on the edges of the leaves. They are all
manuscripts, and some of them are illuminated or beautifully bound. I
also saw a finely bound catalogue to which nothing has been added for
two hundred years. For that matter the library does not look as if any
one had consulted it for two hundred years, though the librarian is
supposed to be there every day except Tuesday and Friday. He accordingly
spends most of his time in his book-shop in the mosque yard of the
Conqueror.
[Illustration: Entrance to the _medresseh_ of Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha]
The other _medresseh_, separated from this one by a straight easterly
stretch of the new boulevard, is that of the Grand Vizier Amouja-zadeh
Hüsseïn Pasha—the Son of the Uncle. I need hardly point out that Hüsseïn
Pasha was not the son of his own uncle, but of that of a famous cousin of
his. For he belonged to the great family of the Kyöprülü, who gave Turkey
five of her best grand viziers. The head of the house, that iron old
man who stopped for a time the decadence of the empire—and put to death
thirty-six thousand people in five years—lies in the skeleton _türbeh_
of marble and bronze on Divan Yolou, near the Burnt Column. Hüsseïn
Pasha’s tomb is also open to the street and to the rains of heaven. Its
tall stones and taller trees stand behind a cobweb grille to the left
of his _sebil_, where an attendant gives cups of cold water to thirsty
passers-by. Between the _sebil_ and the gate are two grilles of bronze,
set in two great windows of delicately chiselled marble, that do much to
make this _medresseh_ one of the most notable corners of Stamboul. There
is a big L-shaped courtyard within, pleasant with trees and a central
pagoda of a fountain, looked upon by white cloisters for students, by
a library containing no books, by a ruined primary school, and by an
octagonal mosque charmingly set in a square ambulatory of pillars.
[Illustration: The _medresseh_ of Hassan Pasha
Note the bird-house with minarets]
I should be afraid to guess how many such institutions are in Stamboul or
how many thousand students attend them at the expense of their founders.
They are a wonderful tribute to the philanthropy of another day—the day
of the great schools of Bagdad and Cairo and Cordova, the day of the
mediæval cloisters. Stamboul has needed bitter lessons to learn that that
day is past. Indeed, a good part of old Stamboul has taken refuge in
these courtyards, and would still be true to the old order which made the
mosque the centre of the community and supposed all knowledge to be in
the Koran. For the race of men that likes Stamboul there is a great charm
in these places, with their picturesqueness and their air, part gravity,
part melancholy, familiar to the East and particular to all places that
have known change and ruin. There is tragedy in them, too, and menace.
For they teach too many men too little. But there is also a germ in them
of something that might conceivably save Stamboul in spite of herself.
“Seek knowledge, even though it be in China,” is one of the most famous
sayings of the Prophet, and he taught his followers that the greater holy
war was against ignorance. Halil Bey and Van Berchem, in their monumental
_Corps d’Inscriptions Arabes_, quote an epigraph to the same effect from
a thirteenth-century _medresseh_ in Sîvas: “The pursuit of knowledge is
an obligation imposed on every Moslem. The merit of science is greater
than that of devotion.” And the _medresseh_ of Ali Pasha in Stamboul has
this written above the gate: “Whoever taught me a single word, I was his
slave.” If the spirit that made such utterances could once touch Islam
again, would it not be enough?
III
OLD CONSTANTINOPLE
_Now you may know that those who had never before seen
Constantinople looked upon it very earnestly, for they never
thought there could be in all the world so rich a city; and
they marked the high walls and strong towers that enclosed
it round about, and the rich palaces, and mighty churches—of
which there were so many that no one would have believed it
who had not seen it with his eyes—and the height and length
of that city which above all others was sovereign. And be it
known to you, that no man there was of such hardihood but his
flesh trembled; and it was no wonder, for never was so great
an enterprise undertaken by any people since the creation of
the world._—Marzials’ G. DE VILLEHARDOUIN: “De la Conqueste de
Constantinople.”
To many people the colour of Stamboul looks purely Turkish—at first
sight. The simplest peasant of Asia Minor could not look at it often,
however, without noticing things of an order strange to him—a sculptured
capital lying in the street, bits of flowered marble set into a wall,
a column as high as a minaret standing by itself, a dome of unfamiliar
shape, and mosque walls mysterious with unreadable letters and the
sacrilegious picturing of human forms, and ruined masonry or dark
subterranean vaultings leading off into myth. For other newcomers it may
become a game of the most engrossing kind to track out these old things,
and mark how Stamboul has fitted into the ruts of Byzantium, and hunt for
some lost piece of antiquity that no one else has found. And there are
men for whom Stamboul does not exist. Through it they walk as in some
inner city of the mind, seeing only the vanished capital of the Cæsars.
Divan Yolou is for them the _Mese_ of old. In the Hippodrome they still
hear the thunder of Roman chariots. And many a Turkish monument has
interest for them only because its marbles are anagrams that spell anew
the glory of the ancient world.
Need I say that I am no such man? The essential colour of Constantinople
is for me, who am neither Byzantinist nor Orientalist, a composite one,
and the richer for being so. I confess I do not like the minarets of St.
Sophia, but it is only because they are ugly. I am sorry that the palace
of Constantine has so completely disappeared, but I am Philistine enough
to suspect that the mosque built on its site may lift quite as imposing
a mass against the sky. I like to remember that the most important
street of Stamboul was the Triumphal Way of the Byzantine emperors—and
earlier still the home-stretch of a famous Roman road, the _Via Egnatia_,
which continued from Dyrrhachium on the Adriatic, the Durazzo of Balkan
squabbles, the line of the Appian Way; but it seems to me that the
sultans added interest to that historic thoroughfare. Nevertheless, I am
inconsistent enough to be sorry that Byzantinists are so rare, and to be
a little jealous of
_the glory that was Greece,_
_And the grandeur that was Rome._
I do not pretend to set up Constantinople against Rome or Athens. Without
them, of course, she would not have been—what she was. But I do maintain
that her history was as long, that she played a rôle no less important
in her later day, and that without her our modern world could never have
been quite what it is. We are unjustly inclined to forget that link in
the chain. Different from Rome and Athens, as they differed from each
other, Constantinople fused in her own crucible, with others of Oriental
origin, the elements of civilisation which they furnished. Out of these
elements she formulated a new religion, created the architecture to
embody it, codified a system of law. Having thus collected and enriched
the learning of antiquity, she bequeathed it to the adolescent Europe
of the Renaissance. We are accustomed to speak of the dark ages that
followed the fall of Rome. There was, properly speaking, no darker age
than had been. The centre of light had merely moved eastward, and such
miserable frontier villages as London, Paris, and Vienna were merely,
for the time being, the darker. To them Constantinople was what Paris
is to us, the _ville lumière_, and far more. She was the centre of a
civilisation whose splendour and refinement were the legend of the West.
She contained such treasures of ancient art as are now scattered in a
thousand museums. Under her shadow Athens became a sort of present-day
Oxford or Venice and Rome not much more than a vociferous Berlin.
Entirely new races—Slavs, Huns, Turks—began to be drawn into her orbit,
as the Gauls, the Britons, and the Teutons had been drawn by Rome. If
the far-away cities of Bagdad and Cordova felt her influence, how much
more was it so in countries with which she had more immediate relations?
Italy in particular, and Venice above all other Italian towns, owe more
to Constantinople than has ever been appraised. Venice would always have
been Venice, but a Venice without the St. Mark’s we know, without the
stolen horses of bronze, without the pillars of the _Piazzetta_, without
many of the palaces of the Grand Canal, without the lion, even, which is
as Byzantine as Byzantine can be. Several other Italian cities contain
notable examples of Byzantine architecture or decoration, while in half
the collections of Europe are ivories, reliquaries, bits of painting and
mosaic and goldsmiths’ work that came out of Byzantium. That jewel of
Paris, the _Sainte-Chapelle_, is not Byzantine, but it was built to house
the church treasures from Constantinople which were a part of the loot of
the fourth crusade, and some of them may still be seen in _Notre Dame_.
In indirect ways the account is harder to reckon. Some authorities find
a Byzantine origin for so remote an architectural language as Romanesque
building, while few now deny that the Italian school of painting was
derived directly from the mosaics of Constantinople. All admit, at any
rate, that the prodigious movement of the Renaissance was fed by the
humanists who took refuge in Italy from the invading Turk.
[Illustration: St. Sophia
From an etching by Frank Brangwyn
Reproduced by permission of C. W. Kraushaar, N. Y.]
Yet Constantinople has remained, comparatively to her two great rivals,
an undiscovered country. The Russians are alone to maintain there such
a centre of research as the schools of Rome and Athens, and excavaters
take it for granted that Stamboul hides nothing worth their trouble.
They would have more reason if the emperors had not collected so many of
the masterpieces of antiquity. For about Athens will always linger some
glamour of the Periclean age, and its sculpture, like its literature,
remains the high-water mark of a certain artistic achievement. The case
of Rome, however, is more complicated. Rome never created an art so
original as Byzantine architecture or Byzantine mosaic; and Justinian it
was, not Cæsar or Augustus, who carried Roman law to such a point that no
principle has been added to it since. I think the old _odium theologicum_
must have something to do with the fact that the age of Justinian and one
or two great periods that followed it enjoy so little general renown.
The split between the churches originally destroyed the tradition of
renown; and because we are of the West, because we are descended from
the crusaders, because we derive our religious traditions from Rome, we
still entertain some vague ancestral prejudice against Orthodoxy and
its capital. The present masters of Constantinople have, of course,
greatly encouraged this prejudice by taking no interest themselves in
the history of the city or allowing others to do so. Then other details
of accessibility enter into the matter, and of language, and a thousand
subtleties of association. Rome, for instance, has long been a province
of European literature. Keats and Shelley and Browning, to mention only
later English poets, and I know not how many others, besides generations
of novelists and playwrights and historians and travellers and painters
and sculptors, have made a whole public that knows or cares very little
about the Cæsars feel at home in Rome; whereas Gibbon and Byron and Lady
Mary Montagu are the sole greater English names that attach themselves
to the Bosphorus. It waters, to be sure, a much larger corner of French
literature. And the immense learning of Gibbon has perhaps done more
than any amount of ignorance and prejudice to weight the scale against
Constantinople.
The Rome of literature is not an Augustan Rome. It is the Rome of the
popes, the Rome of the Renaissance, the Rome of galleries and haunted
palaces and enchanted villas that had no being till Constantinople was
at an end. Or it is a simpler Rome still, of the liquid light, of shops
and theatres and hotels and a friendly court. Against these Romes I am
the last to set up a cry. I merely point out that for most eyes they fill
up the picture of the Eternal City; whereas Constantinople can be looked
at through no such magnifying-glass. Sacked of her wealth, home of the
arts no more, guarded by jealous keepers, and lacking most that is dear
to the modern wanderer’s heart, how should she compete with Rome? Only
in one respect can she hold her own unchallenged against that potent
rival, for by no stretch of the imagination can Rome, crouching on her
seven ant-hills beside her muddy river, be given the palm of place over
Constantinople. And the _campagna_ of Rome, that stretches so vast and
melancholy on many an eloquent page, is but a dooryard to the _campagna_
of Constantinople, which also has imperial aqueducts, and which regards
older than Alban hills and the shining spaces of the Marmora dotted by
high islands, and far away behind them, like Alps seen across a Venetian
lagoon, the blue range, capped three parts of the year with snow, of the
Bithynian Olympus.
I follow, however, but an unprofitable trail. Rome is Rome and
Constantinople is Constantinople. And a day will no doubt come for the
latter when some other impressionist will sigh for the unexploited days
of yore. One of the charms of Constantinople, indeed, is that mystery
still has room there and one may always hope for treasure-trove. The
sacks of 1204 and 1453 undoubtedly made away with the better part of
the statuary and other precious things of which Constantinople was so
unparalleled a museum, but some buried Greek marble may yet come to
light. The soil of Stamboul is virgin so far as excavation is concerned,
and you have no more than to scratch it to pick up something—if only
a coin or a bit of broken pottery. Until very recently, digging for
foundations was the sole thing of the sort permitted. Some most
interesting discoveries have been made in this casual way. Quite a
museum, for example, could have been formed of the different objects
found in the grounds where the American missionaries have their
headquarters. While digging, in 1872, for the foundations of the main
building, an ancient burial-ground was unearthed. The bones, with lamps
and other small objects, were protected by great tiles set triangularly
together, and inside each skull was a Roman coin of early imperial
times, which once paid, I suppose, a passage over Styx. Near by were
ruins of masonry which indicated by their shape a church. Under a
later building coins and tiles of the period of Constans were found. A
beautiful Corinthian column also came to light, and a life-sized marble
statue. When ground was broken for the third building, on the site of
a Turkish _konak_, an old man came to the American in charge and asked
for a private interview. He then introduced himself as an Armenian whose
ancestors had been courtiers of the last emperor Constantine. From them,
he said, a tradition had been handed down in his family about the ground
where the Turkish house had stood. “When you dig into the ground,”
he said, “you will come to an iron door. When you open the door you
will see stone steps. When you go down the steps you will come into a
sort of room. Then you will find a passage leading underground in the
direction of St. Sophia—and in it gold, jewels, statues, all manner of
things that the emperor and his friends put there for safety during the
last siege. I only ask you to give me half!” The missionary thought the
Armenian mad and treated him accordingly. But the old man spent all his
time watching the work. And one day the diggers uncovered a metal door
lying horizontally in the earth. With some difficulty they succeeded
in jacking the door off the masonry in which the hinges were embedded,
and underneath steps appeared, going down into a black void. At that
the missionary began to be interested. When the workmen were out of the
way he went down with the Armenian to explore. They descended into the
subterranean vault they expected. It was held up by marble pillars with
crosses on the capitals. But when they came to look for the passage they
discovered that one end of the vault, the end toward St. Sophia, had
been cut off by a wall of more recent date. That wall, as it happens,
belongs to the great building known as the Valideh Han, erected by the
famous _valideh soultan_ Kyössem. After her death were found, among
other property of hers stored there, twenty chests of ducats. And when I
read about them I could not help wondering whether any of those ducats
came from the passage which the sultana’s workmen must accidentally have
struck into in the seventeenth century.
Constantinople is full of stories and legends of the same sort, in most
of which figures a secret passage leading underground to St. Sophia.
I have poked my own nose into two or three such tunnels, which no
Turk ever constructed, and can vouch for their existence. In reality,
however, there is nothing very mysterious about them. The soil of
Stamboul is honeycombed with cisterns of all sizes, from the enormous
ones picturesquely called by the Turks the Sunken Palace and the Thousand
and One Columns to the small one of the Bible House and Valideh Han.
Others, like the cistern beside the mosque of Sultan Selim I, were
always uncovered. These are usually called _choukour bostan_, hollow
garden, from the fact that vegetable gardens are wont to flourish in
the accumulated silt of their centuries. Brick conduits connect many
of the reservoirs with a water-system which Hadrian is known to have
installed or enlarged while Rome was still the capital of the empire.
And it was only natural for such conduits to lead toward St. Sophia, the
civic centre of the town. We also know that Constantine constructed deep
sewers, on the lines of the _cloaca_ of Rome. But as no one has ever been
able to study these systems thoroughly, there remains something half
mythic about them.
[Illustration: The Myrelaion]
Another casual but more dramatic way in which old Constantinople proves
her temper of eternity is by means of the fires that periodically ravage
Stamboul. There is no more striking suggestion of Stambouls within
Stamboul than to look at the ashes of some familiar, of some regretted
quarter, and discover there a solid piece of antiquity about which houses
have been built and burned who knows how many times. In my own day the
Column of Marcian has reappeared on its hilltop overlooking the Marmora,
having long been lost in the yard of a Turkish house. And I have seen
the obscure mosque of Boudroun Jami gallantly reassert itself above the
ruin of its quarter as the charming little tenth-century church of the
Myrelaion—the convent of Myrrh and Oil. The fires which an archæologist
might best have been suspected of setting were those of 1912 and 1913,
which swept the slope between the Hippodrome and the Marmora. This was
the site of the Sacred Palace of the later Roman emperors. No complete
account of it remains, but from the reports of ambassadors and other
visitors of note, from references of historians, and from the Book of
Ceremonies of the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, scholars have
been able to reconstitute that city of palaces, churches, terraces, and
gardens that overlapped on one side a corner of the present Seraglio
grounds and reached on the other nearly to the church of SS. Sergius
and Bacchus. Constantine the Great was the founder of this imperial
residence. His Palace of Daphne, so called from a statue of the nymph he
brought from Rome, stood on the site of the mosque of Sultan Ahmed I,
and other structures bordered the Hippodrome, opening by a monumental
gateway into the Augustæum, now the square of St. Sophia. To Constantine
also was attributed the magnificent hall of the Magnaura, which Ebersolt
places a little south and west of the present Ministry of Justice. Here
was the throne of Solomon, imitated from the one described in the Book of
Kings, whose fame has come down in the memoirs of more than one amazed
ambassador. It was guarded by golden lions which, during audiences of
state, rose to their feet, beat their tails on the floor, and roared,
while golden birds in a tree behind the throne began to chirp and
flutter among the golden boughs. Still another construction attributed
to Constantine was the Porphyra, the little porphyry palace near the sea
where the imperial children were born.
I cannot attempt even to catalogue the other splendours of this
unparalleled enclosure or the names of those who continued, during six
hundred years, to add palace to palace, one richer than another in
jewelled furniture, in the new jewelry of mosaic, in the spoils of
ancient art. Nicephorus Phocas was the last emperor to do so, when he
enlarged and fortified the waterside Palace of Bucoleon. By the eleventh
century the emperors had begun to prefer the Palace of Blacherne. But
Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, found the great ladies of the court
assembled in the Bucoleon when the crusaders occupied the city in 1204,
and after the restoration of 1261 Michael Palæologus lived there until
Blacherne could be put in order. From that time on the Great Palace
fell rapidly into decay. When the Florentine Buondelmonte visited it
early in the fifteenth century it was already a ruin. Its condition in
1453 suggested to the Turkish conqueror the Persian distich which has
been so often requoted: “The spider has woven his web in the palace of
kings, and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab.”
By the sixteenth century little was left of it but a few columns and the
ruins of the Bucoleon. The colossal group of a lion and a bull, which
gave the smaller palace its name, still stood on the old quay of the
imperial galleys in 1532, when it was turned around by an earthquake. Is
it impossible that that marble might yet be recovered from the sand of
the shore? The westernmost of the palaces composing the Bucoleon, the one
associated with the name of the Persian prince Hormisdas, who came as
an exile to the court of Constantine the Great, was pulled down as late
as 1871, when the Roumelian railway was built. Two lions from a balcony
of its sea façade now flank the east staircase of the Imperial Museum.
The ruins of the eastern palace, the so-called House of Justinian,
where the great emperor may very well have lived before he came to the
throne, were barely saved by the Friends of Stamboul when the railway was
double-tracked in 1912. To-day this pile of ancient brickwork, rising
from the edge of the Marmora, is almost the last vestige of the palace
whose legendary splendour filled so many mediæval pages. On the slope
behind it the fires to which I have referred laid bare several Byzantine
terraces, the entrances to a number of vaulted substructures, and a
tower which had been incorporated into the surrounding houses. Might it
be, perhaps, the tower of the Great Admiral Apocaucus, which he built
as a prison for John Cantacuzene but in which he himself was murdered
in 1345? I am not the one to say. But that Palatine Hill, so long the
centre of the world, where so much has been enacted that is most coloured
and passionate of life, and which now looks so quietly at its quiet
sea—and there is a blue keeps no trace of all the keels that have scarred
it from the time of the Argonauts!—that Palatine Hill has an immense
attraction for me. And I marvel that no one has yet taken advantage of
its present accessibility to learn precisely what, after so many fires
and earthquakes and other spoilers, may be left of its old arrangement.
[Illustration: The House of Justinian]
A Palatine Hill which might reveal more dominates the opposite end of
the city. This ridge above the Golden Horn is the site of the palace
whose name of Blacherne—or Vlaherni as I should be tempted to write it
if I were not afraid of my friends the Byzantinists—seems to have been
derived from that of some barbarian settler. Was he haply a Wallachian?
He settled, at all events, on this hilltop in pre-Constantinian days, and
outside the line of the Constantinian, or even of the Theodosian, walls.
It was only in the seventh century that the emperor Heraclius threw a
wall outside the quarter. Which emperor first built a palace there is
not known, but Anastasius I enlarged one as early as the fifth century.
In 457 the pious Pulcheria, the virgin empress of Marcian, founded the
celebrated shrine of the Madonna of Blacherne. Restored and enlarged in
different reigns, it was the object of several of those annual imperial
pilgrimages which played so large a part in the life of the ancient city.
There was even a day in the year when the emperors bathed in the Holy
Well of the church. This _áyazma_ may still be seen in the waterside
quarter of Balat. The name Balat is a Turkish corruption of the Greek
word for palace, and Aïvan Seraï, as the adjoining quarter is called,
means the Palace of the Balcony. These names are another reminder of
the palace that figures so often in the chronicles of the crusades.
Of the palace itself more remains than of the Great Palace, though it
still waits for a Labarte or an Ebersolt. Bits of masonry crop out of
the ground or stand visibly among the houses all the way up the hill.
Indeed, I suspect that a good deal of the hill itself is artificial.
Such, at least, is the case of the high terrace bordering the city wall
where the mosque of Aïvas Effendi faces two ivy-mantled towers. An
innocent-looking hole in the courtyard of the mosque winds down into
a black subterranean maze of passages, stairways, cells, and tiers of
arches climbing above bottomless pits. So much earth and rubbish have
sifted into this extraordinary labyrinth that its true extent can only
be guessed at until it is systematically excavated. In the meantime,
archæology has been very busy discussing which of the two contiguous
towers that form a part of it was the tower of Anemas, and whether
either of them was the tower of the emperor Isaac Angelus. The Anemas in
question was a Byzantinised Arab, descendant of the Emir who surrendered
Crete to Nicephorus Phocas, and he had the honour of being the first of
many prisoners of state to be shut up in his tower. Whichever it may have
been, however, the most unarchæological visitor is capable of enjoying
a dip into that romantic darkness and the view, from the terrace, of a
cypressed country beside the Golden Horn.
[Illustration: The Palace of the Porphyrogenitus]
On top of the hill stands the well-preserved ruin known in Turkish as
Tekfour Seraï, the Palace of the Crown-Wearer. As to its real name,
there has been the most fanciful variety of opinions. The palace is now
generally supposed, however, to have been built in the tenth century by
Constantine Porphyrogenitus. It seems to have been separate from the
Palace of Blacherne, though on the analogy of the Great Palace it may
have belonged to the same group. Architects as well as archæologists take
a particular interest in Tekfour Seraï, because it is the only authentic
piece of domestic building left of Byzantine Constantinople. The main
façade is divided into three tiers of arched windows and ornamented by
a mosaic of dark and light stone that recalls the brickwork of later
Byzantine churches. What the general effect does not recall is the
Venetian version of Byzantine civil architecture. We should not take that
version too literally, of course, any more than the Venetian Gothic;
but St. Mark’s is so true a transcription of a Byzantine church—without
the crockets—that one has the more faith in the palaces. The difference
may be chiefly one of periods. It is noticeable that the spacing of the
arches of Tekfour Seraï is not like that of the _Fondaco dei Turchi_,
to whose designed irregularity Ruskin drew attention. Neither has the
checker-work of the façade anything in common with the plaques of
porphyry and serpentine reflected in the Grand Canal. It suggests,
rather, the checker-work of the Ducal Palace. The first tier of arches,
too, looks like the same kind of ground arcade. Is it possible that any
influence interacted between the two palaces? If so the presumption
would be that it worked in Venice, under a Gothic cloak; for the Ducal
Palace, or the lagoon front of it, belongs to the century after the Latin
occupation of Constantinople. In the light of my question this latter
detail is interesting, since the features I have noted decorate only the
sea façade of Tekfour Seraï. The question lies so near the fantastic,
however, and so far from any track of sober archæology where I have
happened to browse, that I merely ask it and hurry on, leaving for some
happy expert, with means to excavate and knowledge to compare, to state
the true affiliations of the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus.
* * * * *
The richest remains of old Constantinople are its churches. Little as
they are generally known, almost every one knows something about the
greatest of them. There seems to me a peculiar fitness in the name of
Justinian’s cathedral, which is not exactly rendered by its current
vocable. It was not dedicated to any saint, but to the Divine Wisdom;
and the Turks still call it _Aya Sofya_. The cross no longer surmounts
that old cathedral, it is true, nor are Christian forms of worship
permitted within its walls. In the divine wisdom, however, there is
room for more than one form of worship. And St. Sophia, whose marbles,
borrowed from half the temples of antiquity, have beautified the rites
not only of Mohammed and of Christ, but of Apollo, of Pallas, of Asiatic
Cybele, of Egyptian Isis and Osiris and how many older divinities of the
pagan world, seems to me more than any other temple to express what is
universal in religion, stripped of all pettinesses of creed. I shall
make no attempt to analyse the elements of so supreme an expression. One
is silenced, too, in the face of so many human associations. A thousand
years before St. Peter’s that great dome swung in the Byzantine air, and
under it one is bewildered by a cloud of ghosts. Yet impressions detach
themselves—of space, of light, of an immense distinction. All the little
Turkish rearrangements are swallowed up in it, as must have been the
glitter of the Greek ritual. Decoration has no part in the nobility of
that effect. There is nothing to hide. Each of those leaping arches and
soaring domes does something—and in a way! But there is also a perfection
of detail, rich, coloured, as if suffused by a glamour of dusky gold that
is between the white morning clarity of paganism and the Gothic twilight.
The churches of Constantinople neither begin nor end with St. Sophia,
however. The oldest of them is St. John the Baptist of the Studion, so
called from the Roman senator Studius who about 463 founded a monastery
near the Golden Gate. The monks by whom this monastery was first peopled
belonged to the order known as the Sleepless Ones, because by a system
of relays they kept up an unending series of offices. Nevertheless, they
found time to gain renown as copyists and illuminators of manuscripts,
and some of the hymns they wrote are still sung. The monks took the
unpopular side against the iconoclastic emperors, but after the triumph
of the iconodules, in the ninth century, the Studion became the most
important monastery in the city. Its abbot took precedence of all other
abbots. The emperors visited it annually in state. Two of them even
exchanged their crowns for its habit. In 1054 several meetings took
place there between Constantine X and the legates who had come from Rome
to settle the differences between the Pope and the Patriarch. Cardinal
Humbert finally settled those differences by laying on the altar of St.
Sophia a bull of excommunication against the Patriarch Cerularius and all
his followers. That was the first definite schism between the churches.
When Michael Palæologus drove the Latin emperors from Constantinople
in 1261, he made the first part of his triumphal entry on foot from
the Golden Gate to the Studion. In front of him went in a chariot the
famous icon of the ὀδηγητρία, the Shower of the Way, which he left in
the church. This sacred painting, ascribed to the prolific brush of St.
Luke, was acquired with other relics in Jerusalem by Eudoxia, empress
of Theodosius II. She gave it to her sister-in-law Pulcheria, who built
a special church for it on Seraglio Point. The relic gradually took the
place of the Palladium which Constantine brought from Rome. It was prayed
to in battles, shown from the walls in sieges, carried in triumphs, and
annually borne in procession to the Great Palace for the ceremonies of
Easter. The Studion possessed other precious relics of its own, such as
the head of John the Baptist and the Sacred Lance. Several persons of
importance were buried in the precincts of the monastery. Among them
was a Turkish prince, son of Baïezid the Thunderbolt, who died there
of the plague in 1417. Brought up as a hostage at the court of Manuel
Palæologus, he became a Christian, but for fear of incurring his father’s
displeasure the monks would not baptise him till his last illness. It
was under Baïezid II that the monastery passed into Turkish hands. By
way of compensation the Sultan sent to the Pope of the day, who happened
to be Alexander Borgia, the Sacred Lance and other relics. An order of
dervishes followed the monks of the Studion, and the church of St. John
is now called Emir Ahor or Imrahor Jamisi, the mosque of the Chief of the
Stables.
[Illustration: Interior of the Studion]
Of the monastery very little remains save a fine cistern and a few
fragments of wall. Little more will soon be left of the church unless
something be done to save it. A heavy fall of snow crushed in the roof
a few years ago, and the powers that be have not yet found means or
inclination to preserve that monument of a past in which they had no
part. The church is interesting not only because it is the oldest in
Constantinople and associated with so much history, but because it is
the one pure basilica extant in the city. The best-preserved parts of
it are the walls of the narthex, where are still visible the remnants
of colonnades with a fine entablature of an early transition period
from Corinthian to Byzantine. After the disuse of the basilica as a
mosque, the Russian Archæological Institute obtained permission to
investigate it and made some interesting discoveries. The north wall
of the mosque yard was scraped of its plaster and was found to contain
ancient bricks disposed in the form of a cross, proving that the Turkish
court takes the place of an early Christian atrium. In the south aisle
of the interior three graves were found corresponding perfectly to the
description of the last resting-place of the great abbot Theodore of the
ninth century. An underground passage was also opened, leading from the
bema to the adjoining cistern, and the foundations contained evidence
of a more ancient sub-structure. But the most interesting discovery
was that of a beautiful marble pavement beneath the Turkish floor, in
which figures of men and animals were framed in marble between squares,
disks, and geometrical curves of porphyry and serpentine. Unfortunately,
some disagreement arose between the Russians and the Ministry of Pious
Foundations, and the work was stopped. Nothing was done, however, to
protect the ruined basilica, and the last time I saw it the pavement was
lost in weeds.
There are some twenty-five other buildings in Stamboul that were
originally Byzantine churches. That is, of course, but a small proportion
of the multitude that astonished Villehardouin and his men. Covering
as they do a period of ten centuries, however, they exhibit most
interestingly the gradual development of ecclesiastical architecture from
the Roman basilica to the high-domed trefoil church of the fourteenth
century. This development is not always easy to follow, as in some
cases the churches have been much altered to suit Turkish needs. The
orientation of a mosque, for instance, differs from that of a church,
since the _mihrab_ must face Mecca, and actual changes of structure
have occasionally resulted. Then, of course, all interior decoration
too visibly representing Christian symbols or the human form has been
destroyed or covered up. And a good deal of exterior brickwork has
disappeared under plaster and whitewash. Consequently the prowler in
Stamboul is on the look-out, if he have the least tinge of archæology in
him, for anything that may hint at a pre-Turkish origin. Not that very
much can remain above ground to discover. After so much careful searching
it will only be a small built-in structure or fragment that will come
to light. But several of the attributions of churches are disputed.
Their true names were lost with their original worshippers, and it is a
comparatively short time since Christians have been free to circulate at
will in the Turkish quarters of Stamboul. And there is reason to hope
that under many a piece of baroque stencilling an old mosaic waits to be
laid bare.
The art of mosaic existed, of course, long before Constantine. But glass
mosaics containing a film of gold were the invention of the later empire,
and the Byzantine architects made vast use of them. What a museum of
this splendid art Constantinople must once have been we can only guess.
Ravenna, however, early became important for the study of mosaics, for in
the capital of Justinian many of his masterpieces were destroyed during
the iconoclastic controversy. And to-day Salonica, Venice, Sicily, and a
few widely scattered monasteries contain the chief remaining specimens.
In Constantinople, where palaces, churches, public monuments and private
houses without number were tapestried with mosaic, there are in 1914 only
four buildings where anything is visible of this lost art. The attendants
of St. Sophia used to make quite an income by selling mosaics which they
picked out of the walls of the galleries. This infamous commerce has
now been checked, but there is no telling what ravages were committed
while it flourished. The earthquake of 1894 was also disastrous for
the decoration of the mosque, correspondingly enlarging the area of
plaster in the nave. The vaulting of the aisles and galleries, however,
the soffits of the arcades, and the inner narthex still contain a
greater extent of mosaic, and presumably older, than exists elsewhere
in the city. The church of St. Irene, long a Turkish armoury and now a
military museum, also contains, in the narthex, a little mosaic which
may be of Justinian’s time. That of the apse belongs to the restoration
of the church during the iconoclastic period. And in a chapel of the
eighth-century church of the All-blessed Virgin, now Fetieh Jami, where
the figures of Christ and twelve prophets still look down from a golden
dome, we have work of a much later period—probably the fourteenth
century. But a far finer example of the work of that period is to be seen
in Kahrieh Jami, once Our Saviour in the Fields.
[Illustration: Kahrieh Jami]
Kahrieh Jami, popularly known as the mosaic mosque, is in every way
one of the most interesting monuments of Constantinople. Like Imrahor
Jamisi it was originally the church of a monastery, and its history goes
back as far. Like the Studion, also, it suffered from the quarrels of
iconoclasm, it gave hospitality at a historic moment—namely during the
last siege—to the miraculous icon of the Shower of the Way, and it fell
into Turkish hands during the reign of Baïezid II. Kahrieh Jami means the
Mosque of Woe, from the scenes that were enacted there when the Turks
stormed the walls. The church seems always to have had a particular
connection with Syria. The abbot Theodore, an uncle of Justinian’s
empress, came to it from Antioch in 530. Again in the ninth century, when
the iconoclasts were finally beaten, the celebrated Syrian monk Michael
was made abbot, while pilgrims from Syria always made the monastery
their headquarters. The church we know was not the church built outside
the walls of Constantine as early, it may be, as the fourth century.
The original church was successively rebuilt in the sixth century—by
Justinian—in the seventh, in the ninth, and in the eleventh or at the
beginning of the twelfth. To this latter restoration by Mary Ducas, a
princess with Bulgarian blood in her veins, the church owes its present
lines and perhaps a part of its interior decoration.
[Illustration: Mosaic from Kahrieh Jami: Theodore Metochites offering his
church to Christ
Photograph by Sébah and Joaillier, Constantinople]
The last of the Byzantine restorers was a personage who recalls, as he
anticipated, the humanists of the Renaissance. His name was Theodore
Metochites, and you may see him in a great striped turban kneeling over
the royal door of the inner narthex, offering a model of his church to
the seated Christ. He was what we call nowadays, though his history
has been repeated in every time and country, a self-made man; and like
more than one of those who have risen from nothing to the height of
power, he outlived his fortune. Born of poor parents in Nicæa, the
city of the creed, and early left an orphan, he went as a young man to
Constantinople, where he succeeded by his handsome presence and his
talent as an orator in attracting the attention of the emperor Andronicus
II. He was, however, more than an orator. He aspired to be a poet as
well, and some of his not too intelligible verses have been translated
into German. In history he took a particular interest. He became the
chief astronomer of his time. His favourite pupil in the latter science
was Nicephorus Gregoras, a monk of Our Saviour in the Fields, who,
three hundred years before Gregory XIII, proposed to rectify the Julian
calendar. If Greek priests realised this fact, and how nearly alike were
the names of the two churchmen, they might be more willing to adopt a
system which was christened after a Pope. It was characteristic of the
time that Metochites took as much interest in astrology as he did in
astronomy. Philology was another subject that engrossed him. He made
six hundred years ago an attempt which is being made in Athens to-day
to restore the Romaic Greek language to its Attic purity, for he was a
devoted student of Aristotle and particularly of Plato. With all these
scholarly tastes, however, he was a man of affairs. By his success as an
ambassador and in other public posts, he rose from one responsibility
to another till he became Grand Logothetes—or as we might say, prime
minister. He was far-sighted enough to see, a hundred and fifty years
before the final catastrophe, the imminence of the Turkish peril. Among
his writings, too, are some curiously modern reflections on absolute
monarchy. Nevertheless he became involved, through his fidelity to his
imperial master, in the long quarrel between Andronicus II and his
grandson Andronicus III. When the latter usurped the throne in 1328
Metochites was stripped of his honours and his wealth, his palace—near
that of Blacherne—was razed to the ground, and he was sent into exile.
Allowed to return after two years, he retired to his own monastery, where
he lived only two years more.
If this great man was unhappy in his death, he was happier than perhaps
he knew in the monument that has kept alive the memory of his humanism
and of his loyalty. The grace of its proportions, the beauty of its
marbles, the delicacy of its sculpture, everything about it sets the
church apart as a little masterpiece. Kahrieh Jami is also notable for
the faded frescoes in its side chapel, where a portrait of Andronicus II
looks ghostlike out of a niche, for in no other Constantinople church
does there remain any visible trace of painting—or any such tomb as the
one, in the same chapel, of the Grand Constable Michael Tornikes, with
a long Greek epitaph. What completes, however, this picture of the last
days of Byzantium, what gives Kahrieh Jami its unique interest, are its
mosaics. In the nave they are still hidden, waiting as if for the day
of release from a strange enchantment. But in the narthexes Mohammedan
sensibilities have for once spared two long series of scenes from the
life of Christ and the legend of Mary. And they make one ask oneself
again why so noble an art is practically lost. For richness of effect no
other form of surface ornament can equal it. The modern art of painting
is, of course, far more expressive; for that very reason it is less
suited to mural decoration. Mosaic can carry farther, and for great
spaces or distances it is equally expressive—witness the tragic Christ
of Cefalù. Moreover, it has decorative effects of its own which painting
never can rival, while its greater brilliancy is better suited to most
architectural settings. And it is infinitely more durable. Of the great
frescoes of the Renaissance some are already gone, while others crack and
darken year by year. The art of Michelangelo and Leonardo will one day
be as mythic as that of Zeuxis and Apelles, except for the shadow of it
saved by our modern processes of reproduction. But the mosaics of Venice,
Ravenna, and Sicily, of Salonica and Constantinople, will last as long as
the buildings that contain them.
[Illustration: Mosaic from Kahrieh Jami: the Massacre of the Innocents
Photograph by Sébah and Joaillier, Constantinople]
[Illustration: Giotto’s fresco of the Massacre of the Innocents, in the
Arena chapel, Padua
Photograph by Alinari Brothers, Florence. Reproduced by permission]
In this very matter of the relation between fresco and mosaic, Kahrieh
Jami happens to play a particular part. The mosaics are disposed with
such a mastery of composition, there is so wide a range of colour in
them, in life and naturalness and sometimes in choice of subject they
differ so greatly from better-known mosaics of an earlier period, that
some critics have seen in them a fine Italian hand—and one no less
fine than that of Giotto, who painted the Arena chapel in Padua about
the time Metochites restored this church. Not that any one has gone
so far as to ascribe the Byzantine series to Giotto himself, but that
the qualities I have mentioned, together with certain similarities of
detail, have been ascribed to the revolutionary influence of the Italian
series. It is not yet unanimously decided whether the mosaics all belong
to the same period. Perhaps we must wait for the evidence of those
still hidden in the nave to know whether any of them belong to the time
of Mary Ducas. The Russian archæologist Schmitt, who has written the
completest monograph on the subject—and who picked enough plaster away
in the nave to assure himself that mosaics were still there—assigns the
work to the period of Metochites, but surmises it to have been inspired
by some Syrian original of the ninth century. Diehl, the eminent French
Byzantinist, sees rather in Kahrieh Jami a last revival of Byzantine
art, contemporaneous with but not derived from the early Tuscan school of
painting. When these savants expressed their opinions neither of them was
aware of an odd little fact quite lately established not by a Byzantinist
but by a layman who was looking at some photographs of the mosaics. In
the photograph of the central bay of the outer narthex he discovered,
above a two-handled jar which a servant carries on his shoulder to the
marriage at Cana, a date in Arabic numerals—but real Arabic numerals,
not the ones we have made out of them. This date is 6811, which in the
Byzantine system of chronography is equivalent to 1303. The find was
interesting in itself as being the earliest use yet recorded—if I am
not mistaken—of Arabic numerals on a public monument. It has a further
interest in pointing to the Syrian affiliations of the monastery and in
lending colour, however slight, to Schmitt’s theory with regard to the
Syrian origin of certain of the mosaics. But it tends more definitely to
prove that the mosaics were executed before Giotto’s frescoes in Padua,
which could hardly have been begun and much less completed by 1303.
[Illustration: Mosaic from Kahrieh Jami: the Marriage at Cana
Photograph by Sébah and Joaillier, Constantinople]
I do not know whether any one, in discussing this matter, has drawn
attention to so small a detail as a certain checkered border of
disconcerting similarity in the two series. Therefore I, who am nothing
of an expert in these questions, will pass it by. But I cannot pass
Kahrieh Jami by without pointing out, from the depth of my inexpertness,
how unlikely it was that Theodore Metochites, the lover of all things
Greek, should send, at the end of the thirteenth century, for one of
those hated Latins who had just been driven out of Constantinople, to
decorate the church they had left a ruin. Even if it should be proved
that the designer of these mosaics was an Italian, however, or that he
had watched Giotto in the house of the Scrovegni, it would not alter the
fact that the trend of influence was all the other way. Constantinople
had for the young Italian cities, down to 1453, an immense artistic
prestige. Indeed, the church of the Salute, recalling as it does the
lines of a mosque, seems to suggest that in Venice, at least, this
influence did not cease with the coming of the Turks. Greek masters of
mosaic were invited time and again to decorate Italian interiors. The
primitive Italian painters drew Byzantine madonnas on gold backgrounds
exactly like mosaicists working in a new—and possibly a cheaper—medium.
Giotto himself, like his master Cimabue, made pictures with little cubes
of coloured glass. I will not say that the Italians, in turn, never
influenced the Greeks; the very name of Constantinople is proof to the
contrary. Least of all will I say that Italy had only one source of
inspiration. But I will say that there is room to revise our ideas of
the Renaissance. Most that has been written about the Renaissance has
been written without any first-hand knowledge of Byzantine art, and in
the romantic view that the Renaissance was a miraculous reflowering of
the classic spirit after a sleep of centuries. Need it dim the glamour
of the Renaissance to look upon it as something less of an immaculate
conception? If the Renaissance was a reflowering, it was of a plant that
had silently grown in another soil. And Kahrieh Jami is the last flower
of that plant in its own Byzantine ground.
* * * * *
From Kahrieh Jami to the walls is but a step—in more ways than one. They
are the part of old Constantinople that is most visible. They still form
an almost complete circuit, of some thirteen miles, around Stamboul.
Where the circuit is most broken is along the Golden Horn, though even
there large sections of the wall remain. On the land side only one breach
has been made, for the railway that leads to Bulgaria and the west.
Whether other breaches will follow remains to be seen. For the walls
lie under sentence of death. In 1909 a bill passed Parliament and was
signed by the Sultan, providing that the walls be pulled down and their
materials sold for the public profit. In spite of the disdain under
which Constantinople generally lies, I am happy to say that so loud a
protest immediately rose to heaven as to dissuade the astonished Young
Turks from carrying out their law. I can quite understand that that old
rampart of Christendom represents to them merely so much brick and stone
in a very bad state of preservation, which they began to demolish five
hundred years ago and since have left to encumber the earth. Moreover,
they have been to Vienna, they have been to Paris, they have been to all
sorts of places. They have seen fine boulevards laid out on the site of
ancient fortifications, and they ask themselves: If the Europeans do it,
why do they make such a fuss when we propose to? I would rather like
to tell them, for Turkey is not the only place where Young Turks grow.
However, as none of them will ever read this obscure page I will content
myself with saying that I shall never object to the sea-walls being
pulled down—provided the railway be made to subside into a tunnel, and
the gateways along the Golden Horn be preserved like those of Florence
to ornament the city. As for the land walls, they are too great an asset
ever to be disposed of except under direst stress of over-population,
which now seems remote enough. Only in that case, dear Young Turks, you
will also have to cut down your cemetery cypresses outside the walls. And
then will double stars be scratched out of many travellers’ handbooks!
Constantinople has long been famous for her walls. About the rocky
headland of Seraglio Point, which was the acropolis of the first settlers
from Megara, may still lie some blocks of the fortifications built by
Pausanias after the battle of Platæa, when he drove the Persians out
of Byzantium and made it one of the strongest cities of the ancient
world. This wall lasted until it was destroyed in 196 by the emperor
Septimius Severus, in revenge upon the Byzantines for having taken the
part of his rival Pescennius Niger. He also changed the name of the
city to Antonina and made it subject to Perinthos, now a sleepy hamlet
of the Marmora called Eregli. But he later refortified the town, on the
advice of his son Caracalla. The Byzantium thus enlarged extended into
the Golden Horn not quite so far as Yeni Jami, and into the Marmora no
farther than the lighthouse of Seraglio Point. When in 328 Constantine
the Great decided to turn Byzantium into New Rome, he carried the walls
to the vicinity of the Oun Kapan-Azap Kapou bridge on one side, and on
the other to the gate of Daoud Pasha, in the Psamatia quarter. He set
the forum bearing his name, marked to-day by the so-called Burnt Column,
at the place where the city gate of Septimius Severus opened on to the
_Via Egnatia_. His own city gate opened on to that road at the point now
called Issa Kapoussou—the Gate of Jesus. The charming little mosque of
Ramazan Effendi stands on the street which follows the line of the wall
for a short distance to the north. Of the wall itself nothing that can
be identified as such remains visible. It was the emperor Theodosius
II, he who first brought to Constantinople those much-travelled bronze
horses long since naturalised in Venice, who gave the walls their present
extension. The inner of the two lines of land walls he built in 413, the
outer wall and the moat being added while Attila was ravaging the Balkan
peninsula in 447. Two inscriptions, one in Latin and one in Greek, still
record this achievement over the gate now called after the _Yeni Mevlevi
Haneh_. Later emperors did no more than repair the work of Theodosius,
except at that northwestern corner of the city where the growing
importance of the Blacherne quarter necessitated fresh enlargements or
defences. Since the Turkish conquest more or less extensive repairs have
been carried out by Mehmed II, Mourad IV (1635), and Ahmed III (1721).
[Illustration: The Golden Gate]
An infinite variety of interest attaches to these walls—from the gates
that pierce them, the towers that flank them at intervals of some sixty
feet, the devices, monograms, and inscriptions of every period they
contain, the associations they have had so much time to accumulate. Two
points, however, have a special interest for expert and layman alike. I
have already spoken of Tekfour Seraï, where the Theodosian wall merges
into later additions, and of the imperial quarter of Blacherne. I have
yet to speak, even more cursorily, of the Golden Gate. This great triple
portal and the marble towers flanking it existed before the walls
themselves, having been built as a triumphal arch over the Egnatian
Way by Theodosius the Great, after his defeat of Maximus in 388. The
statue of the emperor and the other sculptures that adorned it once are
gone, but you can still see over the central arch the rivet holes of the
original inscription:
HAEC LOCA THEVDOSIVS DECORAT POST FATA TYRANNI
AVREA SÆCLO GERIT QVI PORTAM CONSTRVIT AVRO
When the younger Theodosius extended the walls he made the Golden
Gate a part of them, but kept it as the state entrance to the city.
Distinguished guests were met there—ambassadors, visiting princes, at
least one Pope. Holy processions burned their incense under that archway.
Through it passed emperors in splendour when they came to the purple,
or when they returned victorious from war. No gateway in Europe can
have seen so much of the pomp and glory of the world. Now the arches are
blind, save for one small postern in the centre, and that was nearly
choked by an earthquake in 1912. One Roman eagle still looks down from
a high marble cornice upon the moat, empty of all but garden green, and
upon a colony of Turkish gravestones that stand among cypresses where the
_Via Egnatia_ started away for the Adriatic.
On the other side lies a silent enclosure whose own day has come and
gone since the last emperor passed through the Golden Gate. This is the
fortress of the Seven Towers—three of which were built by the Turkish
conqueror and connected by curtains with the city wall. In the towers are
passages and cells as black as the subterranean maze of Blacherne, and
they were used for the same purpose. Many are the stories of captivity
in this high-walled place that have been told and remain to be told.
One of them is briefly legible, in Latin, in a stone of the southeast
tower, where it was cut by a Venetian in the seventeenth century. It used
even to be the fashion to clap an ambassador into prison there when war
broke out between his country and the Porte. Turkish state prisoners, of
course, perished there without number. And one sultan, Osman II, when he
was no more than eighteen, was barbarously put to death there in 1622.
And all that blood and bitterness, which was so desperately the whole
of reality for so many breathing men, is now but a pleasant quickening
of romance for the visitor who follows a lantern through the darkness
of the towers or who explores the battlements of the wall, grassy and
anemone-grown in the spring, from which a magnificent view stretches of
the sea and the city and the long line of ruined turrets marching up the
hill.
[Illustration: Outside the land walls]
If every ended drama of human greatness must come at last to a view,
the road around the land walls of Constantinople can do more for the
man who walks it than any such road I know. Other cities have walls,
it is true. Other walls have moats. Some of their moats contain water,
too, while this moat contains only water-wheels and vegetable-gardens.
And how much more greenly do the vegetables grow, I wonder, because of
all the dead men that have fallen under the ramparts? Other ramparts
wear as picturesque a verdure, and blossoming fruit-trees have the same
trick of setting them off in the spring. And cypresses are no monopoly
of Constantinople. But no such army of cypresses faces other walls, from
such a camp of strange grey stones. Nor in any Eternal City does water
play so magical a part of background. The landscape is most dramatically
accidented where you look past the high terraces of Blacherne toward
the landlocked brightness of the Golden Horn. A view is also to be
admired down the valley of the Lycus, of the whole city stretching to
the sea. But the noblest perspective is the simpler one where the road,
avenue-like between the moat and the cypresses, dips and rises and dips
again toward the Golden Gate and the Marmora, till a last marble tower
stands superbly out of the blue. The contrast of sea and cypresses and
tawny stones, always perfect, here takes an insensible colour, I suppose,
from the thought of the sentinels who called from tower to tower in old
Byzantine nights; and of all the horsemen and banners that have ridden
against those walls; and of what they did for the other end of Europe—the
walls—till civilisation was safely planted there; and of something yet
more intangible, that is deepest and strangest in human fate.
[Illustration: A last marble tower stands superbly out of the blue]
IV
THE GOLDEN HORN
Why the Golden Horn should be called the Golden Horn is a question that
has agitated many serious pens. A less serious pen is therefore free
to declare itself for an explanation that does not explain. The Greeks
always seem to have been fond of the word gold. In their language as
in ours it has a pleasant sound, and it has pleasant implications—the
philosophers to the contrary. At any rate, the Greeks of Constantinople
made much use of it. The state entrance to the city was through the
Golden Gate. One of the most famous parts of the Great Palace was the
Golden Hall. The suburb of Scutari was anciently known as the City of
Gold. There were in different parts of the town a Golden Milestone, a
Golden Arch, a Golden Roof, and a Golden Stream, while the Greek church
abounds in golden springs and golden caves. I have even known a Greek
serving-maid to address her mistress in moments of expansion as “my
golden one”! The Golden Horn, then, was probably named so for even less
reason than the orange valley behind Palermo—because some one a long time
ago liked the sound of the words.
I always wish I might have seen the Golden Horn before it was bridged. It
must have made, opening out of the lake-like basin where the Bosphorus
and the Marmora come together, one of the most satisfactory pieces of
geography in nature. However, if the bridges cut up that long curving
perspective they add something of their own to it, and whoever stands
upon them must acknowledge that the Golden Horn is still a satisfactory
piece of geography. Consider, for instance, its colour, which may not
be quite so blue as Naples but which is far from the muddiness of New
York. Consider also the shores that overlook it—how excellently their
height is proportioned to its breadth, how superlatively the southern
one, in particular, is set off by the pinnacles of Seraglio Point and
the mosques that ride the higher crests. Yet do not fail to consider
that more intimate element of its character, its busy water life. I say
so with rather a pointed air, as if, having already found something
to write about one bank of the Golden Horn, I intended to go on and
give a compendious account of the Golden Horn itself, to the last fish
that swims in it. Alas, no! I have admired the Golden Horn from every
conceivable point of view, I have navigated it in every conceivable
sense, I have idled much about its banks and bridges, I have even
ventured to swim in its somewhat doubtful waters—only to learn how
lamentable is my ignorance in their regard. My one consolation is that
I never encountered any other man who knew very much about the Golden
Horn—save casual watermen and sea-captains who have much better things to
do than to write books, or read them.
[Illustration: The Golden Horn
From the _Specchio Marittimo_ of Bartolommeo Prato]
All harbours bring the ends of the earth together, and the part of the
Golden Horn outside the bridges looks a little like them all. Flags of
every country fly there, beside stone quays or moored to red buoys in
the open. Trim liners and workaday tramps bring in a little atmosphere
from the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the far-off Atlantic. Tugs puff
busily about. Cranes take up the white man’s burden as naturally as in
any other port. Every harbour brings the ends of the earth together in
its own way, however, and so does this. If you happen to tie up at a buoy
instead of alongside, you will soon make the acquaintance of a gentleman
in a row-boat very much like other row-boats, fringed with bumpers.
This gentleman will probably be a Greek, though he may be anything, and
he will demand all the gold of Ophir to set you ashore, getting not a
little of it in the end. If you prefer to stay on board you will very
likely make the acquaintance of another gentleman in a trimmer boat,
painted blue and green, pointed at both ends and provided at each with
an upstanding post which is convenient for tow-lines. This is a bumboat,
and the Maltese in command will furnish you almost anything in the way
of supplies—for a consideration. Should you have a cargo to land, you
must deal with a yet more redoubtable race of beings. These men are
Laz, a race of dare-devils from the region of Trebizond, which was the
ancient Colchis. You may know them by their tight black clothes, by the
sharpness of their shoes, ending in a leather thong, and by the pointed
hood of two long flaps which they wear knotted about their heads like a
turban. Some of them are Mohammedans and some of them are Christians, but
all of them speak a mysterious language of their own. Two sorts of boats
are peculiar to these brothers of Medea: the _mahona_, a single-masted
scow with a raking stem, and a smaller snub-nosed _salapouri_. I do not
include the mad little open _taka_, broad of beam, high of board, and
gay with painted stars, in which they are not afraid to run down the
coast from their own country. Woe be you if you happen to displease a
_mahonaji_, for he belongs to a guild that holds the commerce of the port
in no gentle hand. He will neither discharge your goods nor let any one
else, if so it seem good to him, and not even the government can make him
change his mind.
[Illustration: Lighters]
The lightermen are by no means the only guild in the Golden Horn, though
I suppose they are doomed to follow the way of the others. These old
organisations still persist among the different kinds of watermen.
Each guild has its own station, like the _traghetti_ of Venice, each
has a headquarters, or _lonja_—which is a corruption of the Italian
_loggia_—and each a series of officers headed by a _kehaya_. This
dignitary takes no actual part, as a usual thing, in the work of the
guild, but earns the lion’s share of the profits, and in return therefor
protects the guild in high quarters. Under the old régime the _kehayas_
of the principal guilds were members of the palace camarilla. In older
times still the guilds were required to contribute heavily to the
expenses of war in recognition of their privileges, and even now the
lightermen and the custom-house porters are obliged to give the War
Department so many men on so many days a week.
[Illustration: Sandals]
The outer bridge draws a sharp boundary-line between the cosmopolitan
part of the harbour and the part where local colour is the rule. For any
one who takes an interest in boats and those who have to do with them,
the bit of water between Yeni Jami and the Arsenal is one of the happiest
hunting-grounds in the world. This is the true home of the water guilds.
The lightermen’s headquarters are here, and their four anchored flotillas
are a distinct note of the scene. Here also are the headquarters of
many lesser watermen such as row you across the Horn for a piastre—or
even less if you do not insist on a boat to yourself. The smartest ones
have their station just inside the bridge. Most of their boats are trim
skiffs, gay with carving and gilding, and fitted out with velvet cushions
and summer awnings. This skiff, called a _sandal_, has almost ousted
the true boat of the Golden Horn, which is the legendary caïque. I am
sorry to say it, because I do not like to see the Turks change their own
customs for European ones, but truth compels me to add that I have lolled
too much in gondolas to be an unbridled admirer of the caïque. A gondola
is infinitely more roomy and comfortable, and it has the great advantage
of not forcing you to sit nose to nose with a perspiring boatman. The
caïque is swifter and easier in its gait, however, and, when long enough
for two or three pairs of oars, not even a gondola is more graceful.
Caïques still remain at the ferries higher up the Golden Horn—and grubby
enough most of them are, for they have fallen greatly in the world since
bridges were built and steamers began to ply.
[Illustration: Caïques]
If I were really to open the chapter of caïques I would never come to the
end. The word is a generic one, and applies to an infinity of boats, from
the stubby little single-oared _piadeh kaïk_ of the Golden Horn ferries
to the big _pazar kaïk_. You may admire this boat, and the carving that
decorates it, and its magnificent incurving beak, and the tassel that
should dangle therefrom, at the wharves of Yemish, off the Dried Fruit
Bazaar. They all come, early in the morning, from different villages on
the Bosphorus, rowed by men who stand to the heavy-handled oars and drop
with them to their backs. There are also caïques with sails, undecked
boats built on the lines of a fishing caïque, that bring fruit and
vegetables from the villages of the Marmora. They are prettier to look at
than to navigate, for they have no keel and their mainsail is a balloon,
to be pulled from one side to the other of a fearsome stick, boom and
gaff in one, that spears the heavens. The human part of the caïque has
its picturesque points as well. The sail caïques are navigated more often
than not by Greeks. As with fishing caïques, it depends on the village
they come from. The men of the bazaar caïques are all Turks, and none
of them ever saw a boat till he took ship for Constantinople. What is
odder yet, the same is true of most of the ordinary boatmen of the inner
Horn. Many of them are Laz; many others are Turkish peasants from the
hinterland of the Black Sea. Those from one village or district enter one
guild, serving a long apprenticeship before they can be masters of their
own craft.
[Illustration: Sailing caïques]
Another boundless chapter is that of the larger vessels that frequent
the inner Horn. You get an inkling of how boundless it is when you
stand on the bridge in front of Yeni Jami and look at the shipping that
crowds along the shores. A perfect museum of navigation is there. Modern
steamers lie beside the caravels of Columbus—as a matter of fact, the
Greeks still call them _karavia_—and motor-boats make way for vessels
whose build and rig can have changed very little since the days of the
Argo. One notable armada is anchored off Odoun Kapan, the wood market,
under the mosque of Süleïman, and the most notable part of it, for
me, is always made up of certain ships called _gagalî_ because their
bows have the curve of a parrot’s beak. They have two eyes, like the
_bragozzi_ of the Adriatic, and their tremendously tilted bowsprit starts
from a little one side of the bow. But what is most decorative about them
is the stern, a high triangle adorned with much painting and carving and
an open balustrade along the top, from either end of which a beam juts
out horizontally over the sea in the line of the hull.
[Illustration: Galleons that might have sailed out of the Middle Ages
anchor there now]
One or two minor fleets, made up of small Greek _alamánas_ or Turkish
_chektîrmehs_, are usually tied up off other Stamboul markets. But
the most imposing one of all hides the Galata shore. It begins,
distinguishably enough, just beyond the landing-stage of the skiffs I
have mentioned, with a squadron of lighters and the raft that makes a
bobbing street between certain tubby-looking sailing vessels. _Bombarda_
is the name of their class, or _vouvartha_, if you prefer, and they bring
oil and wine from as far away as the Greek islands. Beyond them rises
so intricate a maze of rigging as would have baffled even an old German
engraver. I wonder a man can ever find his own ship there, so closely
does one elbow another, nor in any single row, all the way to Azap Kapou.
This is where the Genoese had shipyards of old, and galleons that might
have sailed out of the Middle Ages anchor there now for repairs, with
craft that look a little more like Western seas. I despair of ever really
knowing anything about them—of ever being able to tell at first shot a
_maouna_ of the Black Sea from a _maouna_ of the White Sea, or a _saïka_
from either, or to discover that Flying Dutchman of a craft of whose
existence I have been credibly informed, namely, the Ship of the Prophet
Noah.
[Illustration: The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus
From a Persian miniature
By courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris]
The Black and the White Sea play a great part in these matters, the White
Sea meaning the Marmora and the Mediterranean. In the days when guilds
were more important than they are now the Captains of the White Sea were
the navy, while the Captains of the Black Sea were the merchant marine,
and that must have something to do with the fact that the watermen of
the Golden Horn still come from the littoral of the Black Sea. The
Prophet Noah also, whom I have just mentioned, is likewise involved in
matters maritime, as being the father of ship-builders. The archangel
Gabriel, according to Mohammedan tradition, taught him how to model the
keel of the ark from the breast-bone of a goose, and wrote talismanic
invocations on different parts of the ship—as “O Steadfast One” on the
planks, and “O Allotter of the True Path” upon the rudder. The patrons
of Turkish seamen are, if you please, the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus!
Mohammed seems to have entertained a sympathy for these mythic beings,
whose adventures are told in the eighteenth chapter of the Koran. The
name of their dog, somewhat variously known as Kitmir or Al Rakim,
used to be written on the outside of letters in order to ensure their
safe passage across the sea, and this happy animal is one of the few
to whom paradise is specifically promised. Von Hammer accounts for the
association of so curious a company with seamen on the ground that a
verse of the Koran mentions their entering a ship. But astrologically, I
believe, they are related to the constellation of the Great Bear; whence
it is clear enough why they should be concerned with navigation. It is
further to be noted of the seamen of the Golden Horn that whether they
belong to the Black Sea or the White, and whether they sacrifice to the
Seven Sleepers or to St. Nicholas, the jargon of their trade is almost
purely Italian. Even the boatmen in the harbour shout _sía_ when they
want each other to back water, not suspecting that the gondoliers in
Venice do exactly the same—though the gondoliers may not spell it quite
as I do. The names of a few kinds of ships and of a few parts of them
have been slightly Turkified or Grecicised, as the case may be, but an
Italian sailor would be lost only on a steamer. There a Turkish captain
uses English words as glibly as you or I. On a motor-boat, however, he
would pass to French.
It is rather surprising that the Greeks, who were always a seafaring
people, should have taken over so much of the ship language of their
Latin conquerors. The case of the Turks is less surprising, for they are
tent men born. Nor have their coreligionaries in general ever been great
adventurers upon the deep. The Caliph Omar even went so far as to forbid
them sea voyages. Nevertheless, the science of navigation owes much to
the Arabs, and we get from them our words arsenal and admiral—meaning
“house of construction” and “prince of the sea”—while some of the
greatest exploits of the Turks were connected with the sea. The deep
valley of Kassîm Pasha, inside the Azap Kapou bridge, is supposed to have
been the final scene of one of the most celebrated of those exploits, the
one successfully carried out by Sultan Mehmed II during his siege of the
city, when he hauled a squadron of eighty galleys out of the Bosphorus,
dragged them over the hills in a night, and relaunched them inside
the chain that locked the Golden Horn. That chain may be seen to-day
in the military museum of St. Irene. Kassîm Pasha does not seem to me
altogether to fit the contemporary descriptions, although it would offer
the easiest route. There is no doubt, however, about the famous arsenal
that sits solidly at the mouth of the valley to this day. How many days
it will continue to sit there is another matter, for its long water-front
may become more valuable for commercial purposes than for those of a
modern shipyard. It was founded by Sultan Selim I in 1515, was enlarged
by his son Süleïman the Magnificent, and reached the climax of its
importance under his grandson Selim II. Those were the great days when
the Captains of the White Sea were the terror of the Mediterranean, and
when a disaster like the battle of Lepanto, in which the Turks lost two
hundred and twenty-four ships and thirty thousand men, could not shake
the empire. The Grand Vizier Sokollî Mehmed Pasha said to the Venetian
Balio, apropos of that battle and of the conquest of Cyprus by the Turks
which preceded it: “There is a great difference between your loss and
ours. In taking a kingdom from you it is an arm of yours that we have
cut off, while you, in beating our fleet, have merely shaved our beard.”
Nor was this a piece of rodomontade. The winter after Lepanto, 1571-2,
one hundred and fifty-eight galleys of different sizes were laid down
in the Arsenal. And when that famous Prince of the Sea Kîlîj Ali Pasha
expressed a doubt as to whether he could find the rigging and anchors he
needed, the Grand Vizier said to him: “Lord Admiral, the wealth and power
of the empire are such that if it were necessary we would make anchors of
silver, cables of silk, and sails of satin.”
A few relics of this fallen greatness are to be seen in the museum
of the Arsenal, some distance up the Horn from the Admiralty proper.
Some wonderful figureheads of galleys are there, flags and pennants
of different sorts, a chart of the time of the Conqueror painted on
parchment, a few interesting models, and one or two of the big ship
lanterns that were the sign of the dignity of an admiral, corresponding
to the horsetails of the _vezirs_. A pasha of three lanterns, however,
was a much more important personage than a pasha of three tails. Most
picturesque of all are a number of great gilded caïques, with swooping
bows and high sterns, in which the sultans used to go abroad. The largest
of them is said to have been a Venetian galley. It has twenty-two
rowlocks on either side, and each oar was rowed by three or four men.
As a matter of fact, the long horizontal overhang of the bow does look
rather like some of the models in the Arsenal at Venice, while two
lions guard the stern. But the lions have no wings, they were always a
favourite ornament of Turkish as of Byzantine galleys, and the lines of
the hull are precisely those of any caïque. As to the imperial cabin at
the stern there is no doubt. It is a triple cupola rather, supported by
columns, and all inlaid with tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl and lumps
of garnet glass. Reclining under this wonderful canopy Sultan Mehmed IV
used to go about the Bosphorus, while over a hundred men in front of him
rose and fell with their oars. What a splash they must have made!
The Arsenal has given a certain colour to the whole suburb of Kassîm
Pasha. It is chiefly inhabited by naval officers, who under Abd ül Hamid
II outnumbered their men! There is a quarter of it called _Kalliounjou
Koullouk_, which means the Guard-house of the Galleon Men. There are also
a number of fountains in Kassîm Pasha carved with three ship lanterns
to show who built them. And not the least famous of the Princes of the
Sea lies there himself beside the mosque he raised out of the spoils of
his piracies. This Pialeh Pasha was by birth a Croat and the son of a
shoemaker. Captured as a boy by the Janissaries, he grew up to command
the fleets of his captors, to conquer Chio and sixty-six other islands,
and to marry the daughter of Sultan Selim II. But he failed to take Malta
from the Knights of St. John, and it was the bitterness of his life. His
mosque is almost unknown, so far does it lie in the back of Kassîm Pasha.
They say that Pialeh dug a canal to its doors. They also say that he
wanted to make it like a ship. The mosque, at all events, is different
from all other mosques I know. The nave is shallower than it is wide,
its six equal domes being held up by two central pillars like masts,
while the single minaret rises out of the wall opposite the _mihrab_.
The _mihrab_ itself, contained in no apse, is perhaps the finest tiled
_mihrab_ I know. Some of the tiles have been stolen, however, and the
mosque in general has a pillaged appearance. I thought from the bareness
of the entrance wall that a large part of the magnificent frieze of blue
and white tiles, an inscription by the famous Hassan Chelibi, must have
been stolen too, until the _imam_ told me that the frieze originally
stopped there, as no true believer may turn his back on any part of the
Koran. The outside of the mosque is also unusual, with its deep porch,
two-storied at either end. It is the largest mosque on the left bank
of the Golden Horn, and even without its historical and architectural
interest it would be worth a visit for the charm of its plane-shaded
yard and the cypress grove behind the mosque where Pialeh lies in a
neglected _türbeh_.
[Illustration: The _mihrab_ of Pialeh Pasha]
I perceive that I am now embarked on a chapter more boundless than any.
Yet how can one speak of the Golden Horn and be silent with regard to
its shores? I have already written three chapters about one of them, to
be sure, and I propose to write a fourth about the other. But the quiet
inner reaches of the Golden Horn contain much less in the way of water
life, and depend much more upon the colour of their banks. This colour
must have been vivider before steam lengthened the radius of the dweller
in Stamboul and when the Golden Horn was still a favourite resort of the
court. Nevertheless there is a great deal of character in the quiet, in
the not too prosperous and evidently superseded settlements that follow
the outer bustle of the harbour. One of the most characteristic of them
is the Greek quarter of Phanar—or Fener, as the Turks call it. In both
languages the name means lantern or lighthouse. It originally pertained
to a gate of the city wall, being derived from a beacon anciently marking
a spit of land in front of the gate. There stood more anciently an inner
fortified enclosure in this vicinity called the Petrion. A convent of
that name once existed, I know not whether founded by a certain Petrus,
a noble of the time of Justinian, who lived or owned property in this
neighbourhood. It was here that the Venetians were able to effect their
entrance into the city in 1203 and 1204, by throwing bridges from their
galleys to the battlements of the wall. No galley would be able to come
so close to the wall to-day. But the wall is still there, or large parts
of it. And behind it, occupying perhaps the site of the old Petrion, the
Greek Patriarchs of Constantinople have had their headquarters for the
past three hundred years.
[Illustration: Old houses of Phanar]
You would never guess, to look at the rambling wooden _konak_ or the
simple church beside it, that you were looking at the Vatican of the
Greek world. Neither would you suspect that the long alley skirting
the water, hemmed in between dark old stone houses with heavily barred
windows and upper stories jutting out toward each other on massive
stone brackets, was once the Corso of Constantinople. That was when the
great Greek families that furnished princes to Moldavia and Wallachia
and dragomans to the European embassies and to the Porte maintained
the splendour of a court around the Patriarchate. The ambassadors of
the tributary principalities lived there, too, and a house is still
pointed out as the Venetian embassy. A very different air blows in the
Phanar to-day. Many of the Phanariotes emigrated to Greece or otherwise
disappeared at the time of the Greek revolution, while those of their
descendants who still remain in Constantinople prefer the heights of
Pera. None but the poorest, together with Armenians and Jews not a
few, now live in those old stone houses. They are worth looking at,
however—and I hope prefectures bursting with modernity and the zeal of
street-widening will remember it. None of them, I believe, dates from
before the fifteenth century, but after the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus
they are all that is left to give an idea what a Byzantine house may have
looked like. They also suggest how the old wooden house of Stamboul may
have come by its curving bracket. If none of them are very decorative
on the outside, we must remember that the house of a mediæval Greek in
Stamboul was very literally his castle. Some of the houses originally
contained no stairs at all, unless secret ones. Beside the stone house
stood a wooden one which contained the stairs, and each floor of the
two houses communicated by a narrow passage and two or three heavy iron
doors. In case of fire or massacre the inmates betook themselves to the
top floor of their stone house and barricaded their iron doors until the
coast was clear. Occasionally it was so clear that no wooden house and
no stairs were left them. But you would never suspect from outside what
pillars and arches, what monumental fireplaces, what plaster mouldings,
what marquetry of mother-of-pearl, what details of painting and gilding
and carving those top floors hide. And under many of them gardens still
run green to the water’s edge.
[Illustration: The outer court of Eyoub]
Of a very different character is the hollow of converging valleys outside
the city wall where lies, at the end of the Golden Horn proper, the
suburb of Eyoub Soultan. Eyoub Soultan, _anglice_ Prince Job, takes its
name from a friend and standard-bearer of the Prophet who took part
in the third Arab siege of Constantinople in 668 and fell outside the
walls. Of this good man and his last resting-place so many legendary
things are related that I don’t know where my chapter would end if I
repeated only the few of them I have heard. I can only say that when
Sultan Mehmed II was making his own siege, eight hundred years later,
he opportunely discovered the burial-place of the saintly warrior.
This discovery having stimulated the flagging ardour of the besiegers,
with what results we know, the Conqueror built a splendid mausoleum
above the grave of the Prophet’s friend and beside it the first of the
imperial mosques. To this, the holiest shrine of Islam in Constantinople,
the sultans come for that ceremony which takes for them the place of a
coronation—to be girded with the sword of Osman. So holy a shrine is it
that until the re-establishment of the constitution in 1908 no Christian
had ever entered that mosque except in disguise, or so much as its outer
court. Even now it is not easy for a Christian to see the inside of the
_türbeh_. I have not, at all events. But I count myself happy to have
seen its outer wall of blue and green tiles, shaded by broad eaves and
pierced in the centre by an intricate grille of brass which shines where
the fingers of the faithful pass over the letters of the creed. And I
must confess that I lay up no grudge against the _imams_ for keeping me
out. I cannot say it is for the same reason that another man of God,
with whom I sometimes sit in front of another tomb in Stamboul, once
gave me for never having been himself in the tomb of Eyoub: that he did
not feel himself worthy. It is, rather, an inconsistent feeling that I
am not sorry if some things and some places still be held sacred in the
world. On one side of the tomb, opening out of the same tiled wall, is
a _sebil_ where an attendant waits to give cups of cold water to the
thirsty. On the other side a window opens through a grille of small green
bronze hexagons into a patch of garden where a few rose-bushes stand
among graves. And in the centre of the quadrangle stand two enormous
plane-trees, or what is left of them, planted there by the Conqueror five
hundred years ago. The mosque itself is not very interesting, having been
restored too many times. It contains one much-prized relic, however,
consisting of a print of the Prophet’s foot in stone. Beside the mosque
and the forecourt is a second court, larger and irregular in shape, also
shaded by plane-trees, where, furthermore, are a fountain of ablution and
painted gravestones in railings and a colony of pigeons that are pampered
like those of St. Mark’s.
[Illustration: Eyoub]
The quarter that has grown up around this mosque is one of the most
picturesque in Constantinople. No very notable houses are there, but
they all have the grave dignity which the Turks contrive to put into
everything they do, and the streets take a tone from the great number of
pious institutions that line them, interspersed with cypresses and tombs.
The quarter is indeed, more than any other, the Pantheon of Stamboul, so
many important personages have chosen to be buried near the friend of the
Prophet. The pious Mehmed V, however, is the first sultan who has chosen
to lie to the last day in the company of all those good and famous men.
Several of the most notable mausoleums, though the most neglected, are of
the period of Süleïman I, and built by Sinan. In one of them, separated
from a little library by a porch of precious tiles, lies the Bosnian
slave, nicknamed from his birthplace Sokollî Mehmed, whose destiny it was
to become the Treasurer of Süleïman, successor to the terrible admiral
Barbarossa, and Grand Vizier of the empire. When his imperial master
died on the battle-field of Szigeth, in Hungary, Mehmed Pasha succeeded
in hiding the fact until Selim II could reach Constantinople. The young
sultan was the worst who had yet ascended the throne, but he stood in
such awe of his father’s great minister that Sokollî ruled the empire
throughout Selim’s reign and part of that of Mourad III. Three hundred
years before De Lesseps he conceived the idea of the Suez Canal, and
might have carried it out had he lived. He was murdered in 1579—at the
instigation, it was whispered, of the jealous and cruel Lala Moustafa
Pasha. The latter also has a place in this Turkish Pantheon. He was the
barbarian who flayed alive Marcantonio Bragadin, the heroic defender of
Famagusta, and stuffed his skin with straw. Having been paraded before
the troops in Cyprus and hung up in the Arsenal at Kassîm Pasha for
the edification of the galley-slaves, this bloody trophy was at last
presented to the Venetians, who gave it honourable burial in their own
Pantheon of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. Lala Moustafa was himself of Christian
origin, being of the same Serb race as Sokollî Mehmed Pasha, the admiral
Pialeh Pasha, and still another son-in-law of the imperial house who lies
in Eyoub, Ferhad Pasha, a vizier of Mourad III and Mehmed IV. Although
not born in the faith, Ferhad Pasha was renowned for the beauty of his
calligraphy. Among this group of mausoleums is that of one real Turk,
the celebrated Sheï’h ül Islam Ebou Sououd Effendi, who drew up and
interpreted the laws of Süleïman.
The _türbehs_ cluster so thickly between the mosque and the water that
one avenue is lined by nothing else, and from it little paved alleys
wander away between crowded gravestones and arching trees. Few of the
trees are cypresses here. The cypresses inhabit a hill beyond this silent
quarter, and through them climbs the most picturesque street in Eyoub.
Toward the top it forks. Whichever way you take, you will do well,
particularly in the spring, when the left-hand lane brings you into sight
of a blossoming valley of fruit-trees. But you will do better after all
to take the right-hand turn and climb a little farther, the cypresses
and gravestones thinning as you climb, till you come to a coffee-house
that did not need Pierre Loti to make it famous. Any man who gazes from
a height upon leagues of space and many habitations of his fellow men
is forced into philosophy. Here, however, you sip in with your coffee
strange things indeed as you look down from your high cemetery edge, past
cypresses and turbaned stones and the minarets of the mosque and the
procession of siege-battered towers scaling the slope beyond, upon the
whole picture of the Golden Horn framed between its two beetling cities.
The outer bridge, to be sure, is cut off by the curve of Galata; but the
heights of Scutari, or sometimes those of the Bithynian Olympus, are
visible to remind you what a meeting-place of nations is here.
[Illustration: The cemetery of Eyoub]
On this hilltop stood in old times the castle of Cosmidion, where Godfrey
of Bouillon and Bohemund stopped with their men on the way to the first
crusade. The castle took its name from the adjoining church of SS. Cosmas
and Damian, built by Theodosius the Younger and rebuilt with magnificence
by Justinian. In times still older this was the hill called Semistra—or
so I shall choose to believe until some one proves me wrong. Walking
along its bare crest, where you sometimes meet camels marching strangely
in from the villages of Thrace, you overlook that last reach of the
Golden Horn which used to be called Argyrolimnai, the Silver Pools. Two
small streams come together here, the Cydaris and the Barbyses as they
once were called, and they played a particular part in the mythology
of Byzantium. Io, fleeing from the jealousy of Hera, gave birth to her
daughter Keroessa at the foot of the hill where the two streams meet. The
child was nursed by Semistra, who gave her name to the hill in question,
and in whose honour an altar anciently stood at the meeting-place of
the rivers. Keroessa became in turn the mother of Byzas, founder of
Byzantium. The father of Byzas was no less a personage than Poseidon, god
of the sea, and the son married Phidalia, daughter of the river Barbyses.
How it happened that Byzas also came from so far away as Megara I do not
pretend to know; but in the name Keroessa, which seems to be connected
with the metamorphosis of Io, we have the mythic origin of the name of
the Golden Horn.
The two rivers are now called Ali Bey Souyou and Kiat Haneh Souyou, and
a power-house has taken the place of the altar of Semistra. The upper
branches of both valleys are bridged by a number of aqueducts, of all
periods from Justinian to Süleïman, and emperors and sultans alike
loved to take refuge in this pleasant wilderness. How it may have been
with the Greeks I do not know, but for the Turks spring has always been
the season of the rivers. The northern extremity of Eyoub, bordering
the Silver Pools, is still called _Beharieh_, from a spring palace of
Sultan Mahmoud I that exists no more. It is with the name of his uncle
Ahmed III, however, that the two valleys are chiefly associated. The
last words of Nero might more justly have been uttered by this humane
and splendour-loving prince—_qualis artifex pereo!_ He delighted above
all things in flowers, water, and illuminations—though I cannot conceal
that he also cherished an extreme admiration for breathing beauty. He
was one of the greatest builders who have reigned in Constantinople,
and he had the good fortune to discover a grand vizier of like tastes
with himself. It happened that an intelligent young envoy of theirs,
known by the curious name of Twenty-eight Mehmed, from the number of
his years when he signed the Peace of Passarowitz went, in 1720, on a
special embassy to Paris. He brought back such accounts of the court of
Louis XV, such pictures and presents also, as to change the whole course
of Ottoman architecture. So vivid a description in particular did the
ambassador give of the new palace of Versailles and of its older rival
at Marly-le-Roi, that Ahmed III resolved to imitate them. He had already
built a seat on the banks of the Ali Bey Souyou, whose magnificent planes
and cypresses may still be admired there. He then turned his attention
to the Kiat Haneh valley, where he played strange tricks with the river,
laid out gardens, built a palace, and commanded his courtiers to follow
his example—_à la_ Louis XIV and the Signs of the Zodiac. There grew up
as by magic a continuous line of villas and gardens from the village of
Kiat Haneh to that of Sütlüjeh, opposite Eyoub. And the fête which the
sultan gave when he inaugurated this new pleasure-ground was the most
splendid of the many that marked his long reign. It befell him, however,
in 1730, to be dethroned. Whereupon a fanatical mob asked permission of
his successor to burn the palaces of Kiat Haneh. Mahmoud I replied that
he could not allow the palaces to be burned, lest other nations draw
unfavourable conclusions with regard to the inner harmony of the empire,
but that the palaces might be destroyed! They accordingly were—one
hundred and seventy-three of them. Of so much magnificence not one stone
now remains upon another, and he who rows past the Silver Pools to-day is
almost asphyxiated by the fumes of the brick-kilns that have replaced the
pleasances of old.
As for the river itself, it comes nearer deserving the name which
Europeans have given it, of the Sweet Waters of Europe. Why they did so
I do not know, unless they thought the real name too prosaic. Kiat Haneh
means Paper House, from a mill originally built there by Süleïman I. The
valley it waters has remained an open meadow of occasional trees—perhaps
in accordance with the old Turkish usage, whereby any place where the
sultan pitches his tent belongs thereafter to his people to the end
of time. I presume the meadow of Kiat Haneh is destined ultimately to
become a city park. In the meantime a palace of Abd ül Aziz, looking
rather like a frosted cake, stands in the walled park of Ahmed III. The
huge rooms are empty of furniture, and no one is there to watch the
river splash down its marble cascades except two sour custodians and
the gentle old _imam_ of the adjoining mosque. But for a few weeks in
spring, beginning with the open-air festival of Hîdîr Eless, the lower
part of the valley is a favourite place of resort. Sunday and Friday are
the popular days. Then arbours of saplings thatched with dried boughs
follow the curve of the river; then picnic parties spread rugs or matting
on the grass, partaking of strange meats while masters of pipe and drum
enchant their ears; then groups of Turkish ladies, in gay silks, dot
the sward like tulips; then itinerant venders of fruit, of sweets, of
nuts, of ice-cream, do hawk about their wares; then fortune-tellers,
mountebanks, bear tamers, dancers, Punch and Judy shows may be seen; and
boats pass and repass on the river like carriages on the Corso. Most of
them are _sandals_ of the smarter kind. But once in a while the most
elegant craft in the world skims into sight—a three-oared caïque, with
a piece of embroidered velvet, whose corner tassels trail in the water,
thrown over the little deck behind the seat. The _kaïkjis_ are handsome
fellows, in fuller white cotton knickerbockers than you can imagine, in
white stockings, in shirts of crinkly Broussa gauze and short sleeveless
jackets embroidered with gold.
[Illustration: Kiat Haneh]
Most of the ladies are in the modern Turkish costume, with a kind of
silk mantilla of the same material as the dress falling from the head
to the waist. The effect is very Spanish and graceful—more so than
when the ladies wear a white scarf over their hair and a long garment
as shapeless as a waterproof. In these degenerate days veils are more
often absent than not. I must warn you, however, that the Sweet Waters
of Europe are not the Sweet Waters of Asia. I remember noticing one day
on the river a gaudy little skiff rowed by two young and gaily costumed
boatmen. In the stern sat an extremely fat Turkish lady, steering. She
was dressed decorously in black, and the black veil thrown back from
her face allowed every one to remark that she was neither in her first
youth nor particularly handsome. Yet boatmen snickered as she passed,
and rowdies called after her in slang which it seemed to me should not
be used to a lady. I said as much to my _kaïkji_, who told me that the
lady was a famous _demi-mondaine_, named Madam Falcon, and that for the
rest I must never expect such good manners at Kiat Haneh as at Gyök Sou.
I must confess that I looked at Madam Falcon with some interest the next
time we passed; for the Turkish half-world is of all half-worlds the most
invisible, and so far as I knew I had never seen a member of it before.
Madam Falcon paid no attention to the curiosity she aroused. Sitting
there impassively in her black dress, with her smooth yellow skin, she
made one think of a graven image, of some Indian Bouddha in old ivory. So
venerable a person she seemed, so benevolent, so decorous and dead to the
world, that she only made her half-world more remote and invisible than
ever. But she was a sign—in spite of the smart brougham driving slowly
along the shore with a Palace eunuch sitting on the box—that the great
days of Kiat Haneh are gone. Nevertheless it has, during its brief time
of early green, a colour of its own. And the serpentine river, winding
between tufts of trees and under Japanesey wooden bridges, is always
a pleasant piece of line and light in a spring sun. But beware of the
coffee-house men on the shore! For their season is short, and if they
catch you they will skin you alive.
V
THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY
_Galata, que mes yeux désiraient dès longtemps..._
—ANDRÉ CHÉNIER.
_In Pera sono tre malanni:_
_Peste, fuoco, dragomanni._
—LOCAL PROVERB.
It is not the fashion to speak well of Pera and Galata. A good Turk
will sigh of another that he has gone to Pera, by way of saying that
he has gone to the dogs. A foreign resident will scarcely admit that
so much as the view is good. Even a Perote born pretends not to love
his Grande Rue if he happens to have read Loti or Claude Farrère. And
tourists are supposed to have done the left bank of the Golden Horn
when they have watched the Sultan drive to mosque and have giggled at
the whirling dervishes. A few of the more thorough-going will, perhaps,
take the trouble to climb Galata Tower or to row up the Sweet Waters of
Europe. For my part, however, who belong to none of these categories, I
am perverse enough to find Pera and Galata a highly superior place of
habitation. I consider that their greatest fault is to lie under the
shadow of Stamboul—though that gives them one inestimable advantage which
Stamboul herself lacks, namely the view of the dark old city crowned by
her imperial mosques. Pera—and I now mean the whole promontory between
the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus—Pera occupies a really magnificent
site, it has a history of its own, it contains monuments that would make
the fortune of any other town, and it fairly drips with that modern
pigment known as local colour. Who knows, it may even be destined to
inherit the renown of the older city. Stamboul tends to diminish, whereas
Pera grows and has unlimited room for growing. The left bank is already
the seat of the Sultan and of the bulk of the commerce and finance of the
capital. Moreover, the battles of the revolution fought there in 1909
give the place a peculiar interest in the eyes of the Young Turks. On
that soil, less encumbered than Stamboul with the débris of history, they
may find conditions more favourable for the city of their future.
If the story of Pera cannot compare with that of the grey mother city,
it nevertheless can boast associations of which communities more
self-important might be proud. Jason stopped there on his way to get
the Golden Fleece, and after him Beshiktash was known in antiquity as
Iasonion. In the valley behind that picturesque suburb there later
existed a famous laurel grove, sacred of course to Apollo, who, with
Poseidon, was patron of Byzantium. The sun-god was also worshipped at a
sacred fount which still exists in Galata, within the enclosure of the
Latin church of St. George. Legend makes this spring the scene of the
martyrdom of St. Irene, daughter of a Roman ruler, who was put to death
for refusing to sacrifice to Apollo and who became herself the patron
saint of the new Christian city of Constantinople. Christianity is said
to have been brought there by no less a person than the apostle Andrew.
He is also reputed to have died in Galata, though another tradition
makes Patras the scene of his death; but in any case he was buried in
Constantine’s Church of the Holy Apostles. The church of St. Irene where
he preached, somewhere in the vicinity of Top Haneh, was restored with
magnificence by Justinian. An earlier emperor, Leo the Great, had already
built in the neighbourhood of Beshiktash the celebrated church of St.
Mamas, together with a palace that was long a favourite resort of the
imperial family. In the light of recent history it is interesting to
recall that Krum, King of Bulgaria, sacked and burned the suburb of St.
Mamas, with the rest of Thrace, in 811.
Among the antiquities of the town, its names have been the subject of
much research and confusion. Pera is a Romaic word meaning opposite or
beyond, and first applied indiscriminately with Galata to the rural
suburb on the north shore of the Golden Horn. This hill was also called
Sykai, from the fig-trees that abounded there; and when the mortar-loving
Justinian beautified and walled the suburb, he renamed it after himself.
With regard to the word Galata there has been infinite dispute. I myself
thought I had solved the question when I went to Genoa and saw steep
little alleys, for all the world like those I knew in Genoese Galata,
which were named _Calata_—a descent to the sea—and of which the local
dialect made the _c_ a _g_. But the accent was different, and I lived to
learn that the name, as that of a castle on the water’s edge, has been
found in Byzantine MSS. dating from two hundred years earlier than the
time Genoa founded her colony there. Villehardouin also speaks of the
tower of “Galathas,” which the crusaders stormed as a preliminary to
their capture of Constantinople. It apparently stood in the vicinity of
the custom-house, and to it was attached the chain that padlocked the
Golden Horn. I would like to believe that the name came from Brennus
and his Gauls, or Galatians, who passed this way with fire and sword in
the third century B. C. There is more certainty, however, with regard to
its own derivatives. The Italian word _galetta_ is one of them, more or
less familiar in English and very common in its French form of _galette_.
Another French word, _galetas_, is also derived from Galata, meaning a
high garret and hence a poor tenement. Belonging at first to the castle
alone, the name seems to have spread to the whole surrounding settlement.
It now applies to the lower part of the hill, formerly enclosed by the
Genoese wall, while Pera is the newer town on top of the hill, “beyond”
the old.
The history of the town we know began in the Latin colonies that
originally fringed the opposite shore of the Golden Horn. Constantinople
has always been a cosmopolitan city. The emperors themselves were of many
races and the empire they governed was as full of unassimilated elements
as it is to-day. Then even from so far away as England and Denmark men
came to trade in the great city that was named from a citizen of York.
It was natural that Italians should come in the greatest number, though
they felt less and less at home as the emperors became more and more
Greek. The people of Amalfi and Ancona, the Florentines, the Genoese,
the Lombards, the Pisans, and the Venetians, all had important colonies
in Constantinople. And by the twelfth century four of them at least had
their own settlements between Seraglio Point and the Azap Kapou Bridge.
The easternmost were the Genoese, whose quarter was near the present
railway station; next came the Pisans, then the men of Amalfi—not far
from Yeni Jami—and last the Venetians.
The Venetian colony was long the most important. Basil II, the Slayer
of the Bulgarians, as early as 991 granted to Venice definite commercial
privileges, which were greatly extended a hundred years later by Alexius
II in gratitude for the help the Republic had given him against Robert
Guiscard and the Normans. The colony occupied an important strip of
water-front, from the western side of the outer bridge to the anchorage
of the wood galleons under the Süleïmanieh. During the Latin occupation
the Venetians naturally extended their borders, since the Republic
had taken so important a part in the Fourth Crusade; and the Doge now
added to his other titles that of Lord of a Quarter and a Half of the
Roman Empire. But in spite of the Greek restoration of 1261 and the
consequent rise of Genoese influence, the Venetians still maintained
their foothold. They continued to keep their strip of the Golden Horn and
to form an _imperium in imperio_ after the manner of foreign colonies
in Constantinople to-day. The origin, indeed, of the capitulations
which embarrass the Turks so much is perhaps the _Capitulare Baiulis
Constantinopolitani_ which governed the Balio. This functionary, sent
every two years from Venice, was both the viceroy of his colony and
minister resident to the emperor. As such he had places of honour in
St. Sophia and the Hippodrome, and the Byzantine government allowed him
certain supplies. The office continued, in fact, down to the end of
the Republic, though under the Turks the Balio was less viceroy than
ambassador. No trace seems to remain, however, of that long occupation.
I have often wondered if any of the old stone _hans_ in the quarter of
the Dried Fruit Bazaar go back so far, or the two marble lions which
still spout water into a pool in the court of one of them. I have also
asked myself whether the small _medresseh_ of Kefenek Sinan, with its
odd octagonal tower, ever had anything to do with Venice. But the only
indisputable relic of Venice I have come across is the _Varda!_ the
porters shout when they warn you out of their way. That is the Venetian
dialect for _guarda_, or “look out”—as any man can verify in Venice
to-day.
[Illustration: Lion fountain in the old Venetian quarter]
In the growing rivalry between Venice and Genoa the former enjoyed a
constant advantage in Constantinople until 1261. Then the Genoese very
nearly succeeded in dislodging the Venetians from Stamboul altogether.
They took possession of the Venetian churches and destroyed the palace
of the Balio, sending its stones to Genoa to be built into the cathedral
of San Lorenzo. A generation later they provoked a massacre of the
Venetians, in which the Balio himself was killed; and the fleets of
the two republics more than once came to blows in the Bosphorus. In the
meantime Michael Palæologus had given the Genoese, partly as a reward
for their services against the Venetians, partly to get rid of allies
so formidable, the town of Perinthos, or Eregli, in the Marmora. About
1267, however, the Genoese succeeded in obtaining the far more important
site of Galata. The conditions were that they should not fortify it,
and that they should respect the emperor as their suzerain. But the
enmity of Venice and the decadence of the Greeks brought it about that
Galata presently built walls, captured the old castle of the chain, and
otherwise conducted herself as an independent city. The existing Galata
Tower marks the highest point of the walls, which were twice enlarged,
and which in their greatest extent ran down on one side to Azap Kapou and
on the other as far as Top Haneh. The colony was governed by a Podestà,
sent every year from Genoa, who, like the Venetian Balio, was also
accredited as minister to the emperor.
Galata existed as a flourishing Genoese city for nearly two hundred
years. The coming of the Turks in 1453 put an end to the conditions
which had made her independence possible. Although cut off from Genoa,
however, she did not immediately cease to be an Italian city. Indeed, the
Conqueror might have been expected to deal more hardly with the Latin
suburb than he did; for while the Galatiotes had entered into amicable
relations with the invaders and had in the end voluntarily surrendered,
they had also been the backbone of the Greek defence. But in accepting
the keys of Galata Sultan Mehmed II assured the colonists the enjoyment
of their goods and their faith, merely enjoining them to build no more
churches, to forego the use of bells, and to throw down their land
fortifications. This last condition seems never to have been carried out.
[Illustration: Genoese archway at Azap Kapou]
Under the new régime Galata proceeded to reorganise herself as the
_Magnifica Communità di Pera_. The head of this Magnificent Community was
a _magnifico_, prior of the Brotherhood of St. Anne, who was aided by a
sub-prior and twelve councillors. Their deliberations chiefly concerned
the churches, since in civil affairs they were naturally subject to
the Porte. The Rue Voïvoda, the Wall Street of Galata, perpetuates the
title of the Turkish functionary who was the superior temporal power of
the Magnificent Community. The churches diminished in number, however,
as the Latin population dwindled, and by 1682 their administration had
passed into the hands of religious orders, or of the Patriarchal Vicar.
This dignitary represented that member of the papal court whose title of
Patriarch of Constantinople was the last shadow of the Latin occupation.
The Patriarchal Vicar has now been succeeded by an Apostolic Delegate. On
the other hand, the ambassadors of the Catholic powers, and particularly
of France, gradually assumed protection of the Latin colony—which was
no longer distinctively Genoese or Venetian. The Magnificent Community,
accordingly, ceased to have corporate existence. But the Latin “nation”
still forms one of the constituent elements of the Ottoman empire. And
while the population of Galata is now more Greek, even more Turkish and
Hebrew, than European, it is only within a generation or two that French
has begun to supersede Italian as the _lingua franca_ of the town, and it
still retains an indefinable Italian air.
Of that old Italian town modern Galata contains little enough, except for
the fanatic in things of other times. The Tower, of course, the whilom
_Torre del Cristo_, is the most visible memorial of the Genoese period.
The top, however, has been repeatedly remodelled. This great round keep
was built in 1348, during the first enlargement of the walls, which
originally extended no farther than the Rue Voïvoda. The Genoese took
advantage of the absence of the emperor John Cantacuzene to carry out
this contravention of his authority, and they further secured themselves
against reprisals by burning his fleet. He built another one in order
to punish his so-called vassals, but they defeated it and trailed the
emperor’s flag in disgrace through the Golden Horn. Galata Tower has now
degenerated to the peaceful uses of fire watchers and of those who love
a view, the small square at its base being also visited once a year by
a Birnam Wood of Christmas-trees. Of the fortifications that originally
extended from it there remains here only a reminiscence in the name
of the Rue Hendek—Moat Street. The greater part of the walls was torn
down in 1864, the inscriptions and coats of arms they contained being
ultimately removed to the imperial museum. Further down the hill remnants
of masonry still exist, and a few turrets. The garden of the monastery
of S. Pierre is bounded by a fragment of the turreted city wall of 1348,
while in the wall of S. Benoît is another turret, probably of the wall
of 1352. One or two others are to be seen along the water-front at Yagh
Kapan. The most picturesque fragment of all, and perhaps the oldest, is
behind the bath of Azap Kapou, where a little Turkish street called Akar
Cheshmeh—the Fountain Drips—passes through an archway in a high wall.
Above the arch is a tablet containing the arms of Genoa—the cross of St.
George—between the escutcheons of the two noble houses of Doria and De
Merude[1]; and an olive-tree waves banner-like from the top of the wall.
[1] For this information I am indebted to F. W. Hasluck, Esq.,
of the British School at Athens.
Galata has always been famous for its fires, to say nothing of its
earthquakes. These, and changes of population, with the street-widening
and rebuilding of our day, have left us very little idea of the
architecture of the Genoese colony. In the steep alleys on either side
of the Rue Voïvoda are a number of stone buildings, with corbelled upper
stories and heavily grated windows, which are popularly called Genoese.
They bear too close a resemblance to Turkish structures of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, and to the old houses of the Phanar, to be so
named without more study than any one has taken the trouble to give them.
But they are certainly mediæval and they suggest how Galata may once
have looked. The façade of one of them, in the Rue Perchembé Bazaar, is
decorated with a Byzantine marble panel. This was the fashionable quarter
of Genoese Galata. The palace of the Podestà was there, at the northeast
corner of the place where Perchembé Bazaar crosses Voïvoda. Indeed, this
Ducal Palace, much transformed, still survives as an office building and
rejoices in the name of Bereket Han—the House of Plenty.
Such slender honours of antiquity as Galata may boast cluster chiefly
about certain churches and missions. The story of these is a picturesque
chapter in the history of the mediæval orders. The Franciscans were
the first to come to Constantinople, opening a mission on Seraglio
Point in 1219, during the lifetime of St. Francis, and establishing
themselves in Galata as early as 1227. No trace of them now remains in
either place, each of the various branches into which the order divided
having eventually removed to Pera. The church of San Francesco d’Assisi,
belonging to the Conventuals, was the cathedral of the colony, and one
worthy of Genoa the Superb. Partially destroyed by fire in 1696, it was
seized by the mother of Sultans Moustafa II and Ahmed III, who built
on its site—below the Imperial Ottoman Bank—the existing Yeni Valideh
mosque. The church of Sant’ Antonio, on the Grande Rue de Pera, is the
direct descendant of the cathedral of San Francesco and the missionaries
of 1219.
The Dominicans were also settled at an early date on both sides of
the Golden Horn. Arab Jami, the mosque whose campanile-like minaret
is so conspicuous from the water, was formerly their church of San
Paolo. Tradition ascribes its foundation to St. Hyacinth, the great
Dominican missionary of the Levant. The fathers were dispossessed about
1535 in favour of the Moorish refugees from Spain, who also invaded
the surrounding quarter. The quarter is still Mohammedan, though the
Albanian costume now gives it most colour. Refugees of a less turbulent
character had come from Spain a few years earlier and found hospitality
at different points along the Golden Horn. These were the Jews driven
out by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. There was already a considerable
colony of Jews in Constantinople. Many of them had been Venetian subjects
and lived on the edge of the Venetian settlement, at the point where the
mosque of Yeni Jami now stands. When the great sultana Kyössem acquired
that property she exempted forty of the residents from taxation for life
and engaged herself to pay the Karaïte community an annual ground rent
of thirty-two piastres. This was a considerable sum in 1640, but it now
amounts to little more than a dollar a year! The sultana furthermore
granted the Jews new lands at the place called Hass-kyöi—which might
roughly be translated as Village of the Privy Purse—and a large Jewish
colony still lives there, most of whose members speak a corrupt Spanish.
As for the Dominican fathers, they took refuge in what is now the Mission
of S. Pierre. The building had originally been a convent of nuns of
St. Catherine and gardens were added to it by a generous Venetian, in
whose memory a mass is still performed once a year. This monastery has
been burned and remodelled so many times that little can be left of its
original appearance. Among its other claims to interest, however, is
a Byzantine icon kept in the church, said to be none other than that
celebrated icon of the Shower of the Way which I have already mentioned.
The latter end of this venerable work of art is involved in as great
mystery as its origin. According to the Greeks it was found in Kahrieh
Jami by the Turks in 1453 and cut to pieces. Whether they admit the icon
of Kahrieh Jami to have been the identical icon which the emperor Baldwin
presented to St. Sophia in 1204, and which the Venetian Balio took away
by force and put into the church of Pantocrator, now Zeïrek Kilisseh
Jami, I cannot say. The Latins, however, claim that the Venetians never
lost it, and that consequently it was never cut to pieces by the Turks,
but that it ultimately came into possession of the Dominican fathers.
Where doctors of divinity disagree so radically, let me not presume to
utter an opinion!
In the court of the church and on the façade of the monastery toward the
Rue Tchinar—the Street of the Plane-Tree—are stone escutcheons bearing
the lilies of France and the arms of a Comte de St. Priest. He was a
French ambassador at the time of our Revolutionary War. The building
being under French protection and on the central street of old, of oldest
Galata—the one which climbs past the palace of the Podestà from the
water’s edge to the Tower—was occupied at different times by the notables
of the French colony. Among these, about the middle of the eighteenth
century, was a merchant named Louis Chénier. Settling as a young man
in Galata, he had become deputy of the nation—an office peculiar to the
colony from the time of Colbert—right-hand-man to the ambassador, and
husband, like many a European before and after him, of a Levantine lady.
Her family, that is, were of European—in this case of Spanish—origin, but
by long residence in the Levant and by intermarriage with Greeks had lost
their own language. The seventh child of this couple was André Chénier,
the poet of the French Revolution. His birthplace is marked by a marble
tablet. The poet never saw the Street of the Plane-Tree, however, after
he was three years old. He grew up in Paris, where, as every one knows,
he was almost the last victim of the Terror.
The largest mission left in Galata is S. Benoît, whose walls now
overshadow the least monastic quarter of the town. Its history is even
more varied than that of S. Pierre, having been occupied and reoccupied
at different times by the Benedictines, the Observants, the Capuchins,
and the Jesuits. The last were the longest tenants, carrying on a
devoted work for nearly two hundred years. After the secularisation of
their order in 1773 they were succeeded by the Lazarists, who have not
fallen behind in the high traditions of the mission. The place has a
distinctly mediæval air, with its high walls, its Gothic gateway, and its
machicolated campanile. Nothing is left, alas, of the mosaics which used
to decorate the church. After so many fires I fear there is no chance
of their being discovered under modern plaster. But the pillars of the
porch are doubtless those which a diplomatic father obtained by gift
from the Sheï’h ül Islam in 1686. And there are a number of interesting
tablets about the building. One of them records not too truthfully the
rebuilding of the church by Louis XIV. The most notable, perhaps, is the
tombstone of Rakoczy, Prince of Transylvania and pretender to the throne
of Hungary, who lived twenty years in exile at Rodosto, on the Sea of
Marmora. When he died there in 1738 his friends asked permission to bury
him in Galata, but were refused. They accordingly pretended to inter him
at Rodosto. As a matter of fact, his coffin was sent in one of the many
boxes containing his effects to S. Benoît. There the royal exile was
secretly buried in the church, his grave long remaining unmarked. Another
grave, all mark of which seems to have disappeared, is that of Jan Van
Mour, a Fleming whom Louis XV made “peintre ordinaire du roy en Levant.”
He had the good fortune to live in Constantinople during the brilliant
reign of Ahmed III, and he was the painter who started in France the
eighteenth-century fashion of _turquerie_. The Museum of Amsterdam
contains a large collection of Turkish documents from his brush, while
there are others in France and in the castle of Biby in Sweden.
* * * * *
The stones of Galata have more to tell than those who ungratefully tread
them are wont to imagine. But they are by no means Christian stones
alone. Although the Latins naturally diminished in number after the
Turkish conquest, the city quickly outgrew its walls. While part of this
growth was due to the influx of Venetians, and later of Greeks, from the
opposite side of the Horn, a good deal of it came about through Turkish
colonisation. This was chiefly without the walls. You can almost trace
the line of them to-day by the boundary between populations. The Turkish
settlements gathered around mosques, palaces, and military establishments
built by different sultans in the country about Galata, mainly on the
water-front. One of the oldest of these settlements grew up in the deep
ravine just west of the Galata wall. It is now engaged in readjusting its
relations to the rest of the world, but it still remains like a piece of
Stamboul, and it is the home of many dervishes. It took its name from a
vizier of Süleïman the Magnificent, the conqueror of Nauplia and twice
governor of Egypt. He was known as Handsome Kassîm, but he ended his days
in bad odour. His quarter is supposed to take after him in the latter
rather than in the former particular by those who do not appreciate what
Kassîm Pasha adds to the resources of Pera. No one, however, should be
incapable of appreciating what the cypresses of Kassîm Pasha do for the
windows of Pera. They are all that is left of the great grove of the
_Petits Champs des Morts_, the old burial-ground of Galata. As the city
grew, the cemeteries, both Christian and Mohammedan, were removed to
the _Grands Champs des Morts_ at the Taxim. They, too, have now been
overtaken by the streets and turned in great part to other uses. But a
field of the dead was there again when the Young Turks took Pera from Abd
ül Hamid in 1909.
I have already mentioned the mosque of Pialeh Pasha and the naval
station which are among the greater lions of the left bank. A detail
of history connected with this famous shipyard is that we perhaps get
our word arsenal from it, through the Italian _darsena_. The accepted
derivation is from the Arabic _dar es sanaat_, house of construction,
from an ancient shipyard in Egypt captured by the founder of this
Arsenal. But as likely an origin is the Turkish word—from the Persian, I
believe—_terssaneh_, the house of slaves. At all events, this is where
the great bagnio of the galley-slaves used to be. These were Christians
captured in war; and of course the Christian powers repaid the compliment
by capturing all the Turks they could for their own galleys. At all
times during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries there
were from three to four thousand slaves in the Arsenal, while several
thousand more were chained to the oars of the imperial galleys. No less
than fifteen thousand were said to have been freed at the battle of
Lepanto. As the Turks became less warlike the number naturally declined,
and came to an end with the abolition of slavery in 1846. One of the
principal activities of the Catholic missions was among the inmates of
this and other bagnios. The fathers were allowed access to the Arsenal
and even maintained chapels there, confessing the slaves, arranging when
they could for their ransom, and heroically caring for them through
epidemics. St. Joseph of Leonissa, one of the pioneer Capuchins, caught
the plague himself from the slaves but recovered to labour again in the
bagnio—so zealously that he even aspired to reach the ear of the Sultan.
He was accordingly arrested and condemned to death. The sentence was
already supposed to have been executed when he was miraculously rescued
by an angel and borne away to his native Italy, living there to a ripe
old age. If the angel might have been discovered to bear some resemblance
to the Venetian Balio, his intervention doubtless seemed no less angelic
to the good missionary.
Another Turkish settlement grew up on the east side of Galata wall at
Top Haneh, Cannon House. The place has been the seat of artillery works
from the beginning of the Turkish era, for it must be remembered that
Mehmed II, in the siege of Constantinople, was the first general to
prove the practicability of cannon, and that during the whole of their
martial period the Turks had no superiors in this branch of warfare. The
conqueror turned a church and its adjoining cloisters into a foundery,
and his son Baïezid II built barracks there for the artillerymen, while
Süleïman I and Ahmed III restored and added to these constructions. There
was also another shipyard at Top Haneh, and another Prince of the Sea is
buried there near the mosque he built.
[Illustration: The mosque of Don Quixote and the fountain of Sultan
Mahmoud I]
I know not how it is that this mosque has so miraculously escaped
notoriety. The exterior, to be sure, is less imposing than the
neighbouring Nousretieh Jami, but there is a perfect little stone
courtyard, with such doorways as only Sinan knew how to draw, while the
interior is as happy in proportion as it is in detail. The _mihrab_ is
unusual in being brightly lighted, and the windows, set among tiles,
contain exquisite fragments of old stained glass. There are also tiled
inscriptions, by Hassan Chelibi of Kara Hissar, above the other windows.
The _mimber_, too, is a masterpiece of its kind, with its delicately
perforated marbles. Then the gallery contains a finely designed arcade
and an interesting marble rail and small rose windows—apparently of
brickwork—above the spandrels of the arches. A characteristic touch
is the big ship’s lantern that swings in front of the _mihrab_. This
beautiful mosque was built by an Italian. Born in Calabria and captured
by Algerian pirates, he turned Turk after fourteen years in the
galleys, and changed his name of Ochiali to Oulouj Ali—Big Ali. The
ex-galley-slave then became a commander of galleys. At the battle of
Lepanto he saved a shred of Turkish honour by capturing the flag-ship of
the Knights of Malta, turning the squadron of Doria, and bringing forty
galleys safely back to Constantinople. For this exploit he was made high
admiral of the fleet and his name was turned into Sword Ali—Kîlîj Ali. An
interesting side-light is thrown on this picturesque character from so
unexpected a source as the novel of “Don Quixote.” In chapter XXXII of
the first part of that book, “in which the captive relates his life and
adventures,” Cervantes tells, with very little deviation from the fact,
how he himself lost his left hand in the battle of Lepanto, how four
years later he was captured by pirates and taken to Algiers, and how he
lived there five years as the slave of a cruel Albanian master. Trying
then to escape, he was caught and brought for trial before a personage
whom he calls Uchali, but who was none other than our friend Kîlîj Ali.
The upshot of the matter was that the builder of our beautiful mosque
bought the author of our immortal novel, whom he treated with great
kindness, and presently accepted for him, in 1581, the very moderate
ransom of five hundred crowns. So might a half-forgotten building in Top
Haneh be brought back to light as the mosque of Don Quixote!
[Illustration: Interior of the mosque of Don Quixote]
[Illustration: The admiral’s flag of Haïreddin Barbarossa
Drawn by Kenan Bey]
The greatest of the Princes of the Sea lies farther up the Bosphorus, at
Beshiktash. The name is a corruption of _besh tash_, five stones, from
the row of pillars on the shore to which he used to moor his galleys.
Known to Europe by the nickname Barbarossa, from his great red beard, his
true name was Haïreddin. Beginning life as a Greek pirate of Mitylene,
he entered the service of the Sultan of Tunis, captured Algiers on his
own account, and had the diplomacy to offer his prize to Selim I. Under
Süleïman the Magnificent he became the terror of the Mediterranean and
his master’s chief instrument in a lifelong rivalry with Charles V. He
died in 1546, full of years and honours, leaving a fortune of sixty
thousand ducats and three thousand slaves. He wished to be buried by the
sea, at the spot where he moored so often in his lifetime; but shanties
and boat yards now shut him off from the water. Nothing could be quainter
or quieter than the little railed garden near the steamer landing, where
a vine-covered pergola leads to the _türbeh_ of that turbulent man of
blood. His green admiral’s flag hangs over his catafalque, marked in
white with inscriptions, with an open hand, and with the double-bladed
sword that was the emblem of his dignity, while his admiral’s lanterns
hang in niches on either side of the simple mausoleum.
The harbour of Jason and Barbarossa—and very likely the one that gave
access to the Byzantine suburb of St. Mamas—is also the place where
Sultan Mehmed II started his ships on their overland voyage. At least
I can never see the valley of Dolma Ba’hcheh—the Filled-in Garden—into
which the sea formerly entered, without convincing myself that it must
have been the channel of that celebrated cruise and not the steeper hill
of Top Haneh. However that may be, the descendants of Mehmed II have long
shown a partiality for the neighbourhood. Ahmed I built a summer palace
there as long ago as the beginning of the seventeenth century. Mehmed IV,
Ahmed III, and Mahmoud I constructed others, while for the last hundred
years the sultans have lived there altogether. The existing palace of
Dolma Ba’hcheh, which occupies most of the old harbour, dates only from
1853. The villas of Yîldîz are more recent still. The neighbourhood of
majesty has done less for the imperial suburb than might elsewhere be
the case. No one seems to find anything incongruous in the fact that
one of the Sultan’s nearest neighbours is a gas house. The ceremony of
_selamlîk_, salutation, when the Sultan drives in state to mosque on
Friday noon, is the weekly spectacle of Beshiktash—though less dazzling
than it used to be. After his prayer the Sultan gives audience to
ambassadors and visitors of mark. I know not whether this custom goes
back to the time of Albert de Wyss, ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire,
who used to turn out his embassy when Selim II rode by to mosque, or to
that of the later Byzantine emperors, who received every Sunday the heads
of the Latin communities.
The waterside settlements outside the walls of Galata were and are
prevailingly Turkish. The Christian expansion followed the crest of the
hill, founding the modern Pera. But there is a leaven of Islam even in
Pera. Baïezid II built a mosque in the quarter of Asmalî Mesjid—Vine
Chapel—and a palace at Galata Seraï. This palace finally became a school
for the imperial pages, recruited from among the Christian boys captured
by the Janissaries, and existed intermittently as such until it was
turned into the Imperial Lyceum. Galata Seraï means Galata Palace, which
is interesting as showing the old application of the name. The word
Pera the Turks have never adopted. They call the place Bey O’lou—the
Son of the Bey. There is dispute as to the identity of this Bey. Some
say he was David Comnenus, last emperor of Trebizond, or Demetrius
Palæologus, despot of Epirus—the youngest son of the latter of whom, at
any rate, turned Turk and was given lands in the vicinity of the Russian
embassy. Others identify the Son of the Bey with Alvise Gritti, natural
son of a Doge of Venice, who became Dragoman of the Porte during the
reign of Süleïman the Magnificent, and exercised much influence in the
foreign relations of that monarch. Süleïman himself built in Pera, or on
that steep eastward slope of it which is called Fîndîklî—the Place of
Filberts. The view from the terrace of the mosque he erected there in
memory of his son Jihangir is one of the finest in Constantinople. It
was his father Selim I who established the Mevlevi, popularly called the
Whirling Dervishes, in Pera. There they remain to this day, though they
have sold the greater part of the vast estates they once owned, a little
island of peace and mysticism in the unbelieving town that has engulfed
them. It is the classic amusement of tourists on Friday afternoons to
visit their _tekkeh_; and a classic contrast do the noise and smiles of
the superior children of the West make with the plaintive piping, the
silent turning, the symbolism and ecstasy of that ritual octagon. Among
the roses and ivy of the courtyard is buried a child of the West who also
makes a contrast of a kind. He was a Frenchman, the Comte de Bonneval,
who, after serving in the French and Austrian armies and quarrelling with
the redoubtable Prince Eugene, came to Constantinople, became general
of bombardiers, governor of Karamania, and pasha of three tails. He
negotiated the first treaty of alliance made by Turkey with a Western
country, namely, with Sweden, in 1740.
* * * * *
There are many other Turkish buildings in Pera, but the suburb is
essentially Christian and was built up by the Galatiotes. It began to
exist as a distinct community during the seventeenth century—about the
time, that is, when the Dutch were starting the city of New York. The
French and Venetian embassies and the Franciscan missions clustered
around them were the nucleus of the settlement on a hillside then known
as The Vineyards. We have already seen how the Conventuals moved to Pera
after the loss of San Francesco. Their grounds for two hundred years
adjoined those of the French embassy, but have gradually been absorbed
by the latter until the fathers lately built on another site. The first
Latin church in Pera, however, was S. Louis, of the Capuchins, who have
been chaplains for the French embassy since 1628. Ste. Marie Draperis is
also older in Pera than Sant’ Antonio. The church is so called from a
philanthropic lady who gave land in Galata to the Observants in 1584.
It passed to the Riformati because of the scandal which arose through
two of the brothers turning Turk, and in 1678 moved to The Vineyards for
the same reason as the Conventuals. It is now under Austrian protection
and serves as chapel for the embassy of that Power, though the fathers
are still Italians. The Observants, also known as Padri di Terra Santa,
preceded them by a few years in Pera, where they acted as chaplains for
the Venetian Balio. Their hospice, marked by the cross of Jerusalem is
between Ste. Marie and the Austrian embassy.
The first European ambassadors were not many in number nor did they
regularly follow each other, and they were usually quartered in a _han_
detailed for that use in Stamboul, facing the Burnt Column. The Venetian
Balio, I believe, always had a residence of his own. The French, however,
set up a country-seat at The Vineyards as early as the time of Henri IV.
And during the reign of Sultan Ibrahim, who in his rage at the Venetians
over the Cretan War threatened to kill every Christian in the empire,
beginning with the Balio, the ambassadors moved to the other side for
good. The Venetians occupied the site since pre-empted by the Austrians.
The Austrian embassy was originally on the other side of the Grande Rue,
beside the now disused church of the Trinitarians, while the Russian
embassy was the present Russian consulate. The existing Russian embassy
was the Polish embassy. The Dutch and the Swedes acquired pleasant
properties on the same slope. All these big gateways and gardens opening
off the Grande Rue give colour to another theory for the Turkish name of
Pera—that it was originally Bey Yolou, or the Street of Grandees.
The British embassy is by no means so young a member of this venerable
diplomatic colony as our own, but its early traditions are of a special
order. They are bound up with the history of the Levant Company. This
was one of those great foreign trading associations of which the East
India Company and the South Sea Company are, perhaps, more familiar
examples. Hakluyt tells us that at least as early as 1511 British vessels
were trading in the Levant, and that this trade became more active
about 1575. In 1579 it was in some sort regularised by letters which
were exchanged between Sultan Mourad III and Queen Elizabeth—“most wise
governor of the causes and affairs of the people and family of Nazareth,
cloud of most pleasant rain, and sweetest fountain of nobleness and
virtue,” as her imperial correspondent addressed her. At a later date
high-sounding epistles also passed between the Virgin Queen and her
majesty Safieh—otherwise the Pure—favourite wife of the Grand Turk, who
wrote: “I send your majesty so honourable and sweet a salutation of peace
that all the flock of nightingales with their melody cannot attain to the
like, much less this simple letter of mine.” The latter lady adds a touch
of her own to her time, having been in reality a Venetian, of the house
of Baffo. While on her way from Venice to Corfu, where her father was
governor, she was kidnapped by Turkish corsairs and sent as a present to
the young prince Mourad. So great became her influence over him that when
he succeeded to the throne she had to be reckoned with in the politics of
the Porte. Another royal correspondent of the Baffa, as the Balio called
his countrywoman in his reports to the Council of Ten, was Catherine de’
Medici. In the meantime Queen Elizabeth had already issued, in 1581,
letters patent to certain London merchants to trade in the Levant. In
1582 the first ambassador, Master William Harbone, or Hareborne, who
was also chief factor of the Levant Company, betook himself and his
credentials from London to Constantinople in the good ship Susan. The
charter of “the Right Worshipful the Levant Company” was revised from
time to time, but it was not definitely surrendered until 1825. And until
1821 the ambassador to the “Grand Signior,” as well as the consuls in
the Levant, were nominated and paid by the company. It was under these
not always satisfactory conditions that Mr. Wortley Montagu brought his
lively Lady Mary to the court of Ahmed III in 1717. Lord Elgin, of the
marbles, was the first ambassador appointed by the government. I have not
succeeded in gaining very much light as to the quarters provided by the
Levant Company for its distinguished employees. In the Rue de Pologne
there is a funny little stone house, now fallen, I believe, to the light
uses of a dancing-school, which was once the British consulate. The
present embassy is a Victorian structure and known to be in a different
place from the one where Lady Mary wrote her letters.
The town that grew up around these embassies is one of the most
extraordinary towns in creation. First composed of a few Galatiotes who
followed their several protectors into the wilderness, it has continued
ever since to receive accretions from the various nationalities of
Europe and Asia until it has become a perfect babel, faintly Italian
in appearance but actually no more Italian than Turkish, no more
Turkish than Greek, no more Greek than anything else you please. Half a
dozen larger worlds and nobody knows how many lesser ones live there,
inextricably intermingled, yet somehow remaining miraculously distinct.
There is, to be sure, a considerable body of Levantines—of those, namely,
who have mixed—but even they are a peculiar people. The fact gives Pera
society, so far as it exists, a bewildering hydra-headedness. The court
is not the centre of things in the sense that European courts are. The
Palace ladies do not receive, and it is an unheard-of thing for the
Sultan to go to a private house, while in other ways there are profound
causes of separation between the ruling race and the non-Moslem elements
of the empire. By the very constitution of the country the Armenians,
the Greeks, the Hebrews, and other fractions of the population form
communities apart. Even the surprisingly large European colony has
historic reasons for tending to divide into so many “nations.” These have
little in common with the foreign colonies of Berlin, Paris, or Rome. Not
students and people of leisure but merchants and missionaries make up
the better part of the family that each embassy presides over in a sense
unknown in Western cities. The days are gone by when the protection of
the embassies had the literal meaning that once attached to many a garden
wall. But the ambassadors cling to the privileges and exemptions granted
them by early treaties, and through the quarter that grew up around their
gates the Sultan himself passes almost as a stranger.
This diversity of traditions and interests has, of course, influenced the
development of Pera. Not the least remarkable feature of this remarkable
town is its lack of almost every modern convenience. I must admit, of
course, that a generation before New York thought of a subway Pera had
one—a mile long. And it is now installing those electric facilities
which Abd ül Hamid always objected to, on the ground that a dynamo must
have something to do with dynamite. But it will be long before Pera,
which with its neighbours sprawls over as much ground as New York,
will really take in the conception of rapid transit, or even the more
primitive one of home comfort. I hardly need, therefore, go into the
account of the more complicated paraphernalia of modern life. There
are no public pleasure or sporting grounds other than two dusty little
municipal gardens, laid out in old cemeteries, which you pay to enter.
Pictures, libraries, collections ancient or modern, there are none. I
had almost said there is neither music nor drama. There are, to be sure,
a few modest places of assembly where excellent companies from Athens
may be heard, where a visitor from the Comédie Française occasionally
gives half a dozen performances, and where the failures of European
music-halls oftenest air their doubtful charms. On these boards I have
beheld a peripatetic Aïda welcome Rhadames and a conquering host of five
Greek supers; but Brünnhilde and the Rhine maidens have yet to know the
Bosphorus. Not so, however, a translated “Tante de Charles.” When the
“Merry Widow” first tried to make her début, she met with an unexpected
rebuff. Every inhabitant of Pera who respects himself has a big Croat or
Montenegrin, who are the same rose under different names, to decorate
his front door with a display of hanging sleeves and gold embroidery. It
having been whispered among these magnificent creatures that the “Lustige
Witwe” was a slander on the principality—as it was then—of Nicholas I,
they assembled in force in the gallery of the theatre and proceeded to
bombard the stage with chairs and other detachable objects until the
company withdrew the piece.
Consisting of an accretion of villages, containing the conveniences of a
village, Pera keeps, in strange contradiction to her urban dimensions,
the air of a village, the separation of a village from the larger
world, the love of a village for gossip and the credulity of a village
in rumour. This is partly due, of course, to the ingrained belief of
the Turks that it is not well for people to know exactly what is going
on. The papers of Pera have always lived under a strict censorship,
and consequently there is nothing too fantastic for Pera to repeat or
believe. Hence it is that Pera is sniffed at by those who should know her
best, while the tarriers for a night console themselves with imagining
that there is nothing to see. I have never been able to understand why
it should be thought necessary nowadays for one town to be exactly like
another. I, therefore, applaud Pera for having the originality to be
herself. And within her walls I have learned that one may be happy even
without steam-heat and telephones. In despite, moreover, of the general
contempt for her want of intellectual resources, I submit that merely to
live in Pera is as good as a university. No one can hope to entertain
relations with the good people of that municipality without speaking
at least one language beside his own. It is by no means uncommon for a
Perote to have five or six at his tongue’s end. Turkish and French are
the official languages, but Greek is more common in Pera and Galata
proper, while you must have acquaintance with two or three alphabets
more if you wish to read the signs in the streets or the daily papers.
And then there remain an indeterminate number of dialects used by large
bodies of citizens.
A town so varied in its discourse is not less liberal in other
particulars. Pera observes three holy days a week: Friday for the Turks,
Saturday for the Jews, Sunday for the Christians. How many holidays she
keeps I would be afraid to guess. She recognises four separate calendars.
Two of them, the Julian and the Gregorian, followed by Eastern and
Western Christians respectively, are practically identical save that
they are thirteen days apart. There are, however, three Christmases in
Pera, because the Armenians celebrate Epiphany (Old Style); and sometimes
only one Easter. As for the Jews, they adhere to their ancient lunar
calendar, which is supposed to start from the creation of the world. The
Turks also follow a lunar calendar, not quite the same, which makes their
anniversaries fall eleven days earlier every year. Their era begins with
the Hegira. But in 1789 Selim III also adopted for financial purposes an
adaptation of the Julian calendar, beginning on the first of March and
not retroactive in calculating earlier dates. Thus the Christian year
1914 is 5674 for the Jews, and 1332 or 1330 for the Turks. There are also
two ways of counting the hours of Pera, the most popular one considering
twelve o’clock to fall at sunset. These independences cause less
confusion than might be supposed. They interfere very little, unless with
the happiness of employers. But where the liberty of Pera runs to licence
is in the matter of post-offices. Of these there are no less than seven,
for in addition to the Turks the six powers of Europe each maintain their
own. They do not deliver letters, however, and to be certain of getting
all your mail—there is not too much certainty even then—you must go or
send every day to every one of those six post-offices.
[Illustration: Grande Rue de Pera]
For those branches of learning of which Pera is so superior a mistress,
an inimitable hall of learning is her much-scoffed Grande Rue—“narrow as
the comprehension of its inhabitants and long as the tapeworm of their
intrigues,” as the learned Von Hammer not too good-humouredly wrote. I
am able to point out that it has broadened considerably since his day,
though I must add that it is longer than ever! It begins under another
name in Galata, in a long flight of steps from which you see a blue slice
of the harbour neatly surmounted by the four minarets of St. Sophia. It
mounts through a commerce of stalls and small shops, gaining in decorum
as it rises in altitude, till it reaches the height which was the heart
of old Pera. Here was the _Stavrothromo_ of the Perotes, where the Rue
Koumbaradji—Bombardier—climbs laboriously out of Top Haneh and tumbles
down from the other side of the Grande Rue into Kassîm Pasha. The Grande
Rue now attains its climax of importance much farther on, between Galata
Seraï and Taxim, whence, keeping ever to the crest of the hill, it passes
out into the country like another Broadway between apartment-houses and
vacant lots. Other Grandes Rues may be statelier, or more bizarre and
sketchable. This Grande Rue must have been more sketchable in the time
of Von Hammer, who found nothing picturesque in the balconies almost
meeting across the street, in the semi-oriental costumes of the Perotes
and the high clogs in which they clattered about the town. But even now
the Grande Rue is by no means barren of possibilities—where a motor-car
will turn out for an ox-cart or a sedan-chair, and where pedestrians are
stopped by an Anatolian peasant carrying a piano on his back, by a flock
of sheep pattering between two gaunt Albanians, or by a troop of firemen
hooting half-naked through the street with a gaudy little hand-pump on
their shoulders. There are any number of other types that only need the
seeing eye and the revealing pencil which Pera has too long lacked. And
few Grandes Rues can be full of contrasts more profound than meet you
here where East and West, the modern and the mediæval, come so strangely
together.
[Illustration: The Little Field of the Dead]
There are other streets in Pera, and streets that are visibly as well as
philosophically picturesque. There is, for instance, that noisome shelf
which ought to be the pride of the town, overhanging the Little Field of
the Dead, where cypresses make a tragic foreground to the vista of the
Golden Horn and far-away Stamboul, and where crows wheel in such gusty
black clouds against red sunsets. There are also the heights of Fîndîklî,
from which you catch glimpses, down streets as steep as Capri and Turkish
as Eyoub, of the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them. But for the
sketchable, for the pre-eminently etchable, Galata is the place—humble,
despised, dirty, abandoned Galata, with its outlying suburbs. If the
Grande Rue de Pera is Broadway, the main street of Galata is the Bowery.
It runs along the curve of the shore from Azap Kapou, at the Arsenal
wall, to the outer bridge and the Bosphorus. And nobody knows it, but
some very notable architecture adorns this neglected highway. Besides the
old Genoese Arab Jami and the mosque of Don Quixote, there is at Azap
Kapou another masterpiece of Sinan, a lovely little mosque founded by the
great Grand Vizier Sokollî Mehmed Pasha. At Fîndîklî, too, there is an
obscure waterside mosque whose aspect from the Bosphorus is admirable,
set as it is among boats and trees, with a valley cleaving the hill
behind it. And even the tall Nousretieh at Top Haneh, built by Sultan
Mahmoud II, has its points. These points, particularly as exemplified
in the twin minarets, are an inimitable slimness and elegance. And I
don’t care if the great door opening on to the parade-ground, and the
court at the north, are rococo; they are charming. There are also two
or three of the handsomest fountains in all Constantinople on this
long street—notably the big marble one at the corner of this very
parade-ground, by Mahmoud I, and the one of his mother at Azap Kapou.
The same princess left near Galata Tower, in that old Grande Rue of
the Genoese where the Podestà lived and André Chénier was born, a wall
fountain whose lamentable state of ruin is a reproach to the city that
can boast such a treasure. The entire left bank, in fact, is particularly
rich in these interesting monuments. This is the only part of the city
for which the sultans installed an entirely new water-system.
[Illustration: The fountain of Azap Kapou]
I could easily pass all bounds in enumerating the glories of Galata,
which Murray’s guide-book dismisses with little more than a remark about
the most depraved population in Europe. Of depravity I am not connoisseur
enough to pass judgment on this dictum. I can only say that if the
Galatiotes are the worst people in Europe, the world is not in so parlous
a state as some persons have imagined. I presume it must be to the
regions called Kemer Altî—Under the Arch—lying between Step Street and
the pious walls of S. Benoît, that the critic refers. Here the primrose
path of Galata winds among dark and dismal alleys, Neapolitan save for
the fezzes, the odour of mastic, and the jingling _lanterna_, the beloved
hand piano of Galata. Yet even here simplicity would be a truer word than
depravity. Among primrose paths this is at once the least disguised and
the least seductive which I have happened to tread. There is so little
mystery about it, its fantastic inhabitants make so little attempt to
conceal their numerous disadvantages, that no Ulysses should be compelled
to stop his ears against such sirens.
But Galata is by no means all primrose path. Other, more laborious paths
abound there, of drudgery manifold but chiefly of those who go down to
the sea in ships. The tangle of narrow streets between the “Bowery” and
the harbour is given up almost entirely to sailors and watermen—their
lodging, their outfitting, and their amusement. The thickest of these
streets in local colour are in the purlieus of Pershembeh Bazaar.
Pershembeh Bazaar means Thursday Market, and Thursday is a day to come
here. Then awnings shade the little streets around Arab Jami, and
venders of dreadful Manchester prints, of astonishing footwear, of
sweets, of perfumes, of variegated girdles, leave no more than a narrow
lane for passers-by, and there is infinite bargaining from sunrise to
sunset. The next morning there will be not a sign of all this commerce.
It has gone elsewhere: to be precise, to Kassîm Pasha. On Tuesdays you
will find these peripatetic merchants near Top Haneh.
[Illustration: Fountain near Galata Tower]
[Illustration: The Kabatash breakwater]
If the Thursday Market goes, the rest of Galata remains, and the best of
it: the alleys of jutting upper stories that know so well the value of a
grape-vine, the quaint shops and coffee-houses, the cavernous bakeries,
the place of broken lights where the oar makers ply the local variation
of their trade, the narrow courtyard where the sailmakers sit, the
wharves and landings of the Golden Horn, the quays of Top Haneh, the
breakwater of Kabatash—which is at its best in a south wind—and all that
enticing region called Kalafat Yeri, the Place of Pitch, where from time
immemorial men have built boats and caulked them, and fitted them out
with gear. In front of this shore, off the old Galata which the Genoese
originally walled in, lies the noble mass of shipping of which I have
already spoken. That is the supreme resource of Galata, and one which is
hidden under no bushel, waiting patiently to make the fortune of the man
who will etch it. Where were Mr. Murray’s eyes when he came to Galata?
Her vices would hardly have attracted his attention if he had taken in
the virtue of her contribution to the pictorial.
VI
THE CITY OF GOLD
Under this designation, gentle reader or severe, you probably never
would recognise the straggling settlement of wooden houses, set off by
a few minarets and shut in from the southeast by a great black curtain
of cypresses, that comes down to the Asiatic shore opposite the mouth of
the Golden Horn. That is because you have forgotten its old Greek name,
and mix it up in your mind with a certain notorious town in Albania.
Moreover, your guide-book assures you that a day, or even half a day,
will suffice to absorb its interest. Believe no such nonsense, however.
I have reason to know what I am talking about, for I have spent ten of
the best years of my life in Scutari, if not eleven, and have not yet
seen all its sights. By what series of accidents a New English infant,
whose fathers dwelt somewhere about the Five Towns long before Mr. Arnold
Bennett or even Mr. Josiah Wedgwood thought of making them famous, came
to see the light in this Ultima Thule of Asia, I hesitate to explain. I
tried to do so once before an election board in that sympathetic district
of New York known as Hell’s Kitchen, and was very nearly disfranchised
for my pains. Only the notorious example of the mayor, who also happened
to be born on the wrong side of the Atlantic and who nevertheless
had reached his high office without any intermediate naturalisation,
preserved to me the sacred right of the ballot. But the fact gives me
the right to speak of guide-books as cavalierly as I please.
Yet it also singularly complicates, I find, my intention of doing
something to draw my native town from the obscurity into which it has
too long relapsed. In considering its various claims to interest, for
instance, my first impulse is to count among them a certain lordly member
of the race of stone-pines. I used to look up at it with a kind of awe,
so high did its head tower above my own and so strangely did it parley
with the moving air. Our heads are not much nearer together now; but
unaccountable changes have taken place in the thatch of mine, while the
pine has lost none of the thickness and colour that delighted me long
ago. I suppose, however, that other pines are equally miraculous, and
that the pre-eminence of this one in my eyes is derived from the simple
fact that I happened to be born in sight of it. I will therefore struggle
as valiantly as I may against the enormous temptation to do a little
Kenneth Grahame over again, with Oriental variations. For the rest, there
must have been less difference between a Minor Asiatic infancy and a New
English one than might be imagined. It was conducted, for the most part,
in the same tongue. It was enlivened by the same games and playthings.
It was embittered by the same books and pianos. Its society was much
more limited, however, and it was passed, for the most part, behind high
garden walls, to adventure beyond which, without governess or guardian of
some sort, was anathema.
[Illustration: Fresco in an old house in Scutari]
I could easily lose myself in reminiscences of one or two Scutari
gardens. In fact, I can only save myself—and the reader—from such a
fate by making up my mind to write a separate chapter about gardens in
general. As for the houses that went with the gardens, they were very
much like the old houses of Stamboul. They were all halls and windows,
and they had enormously high ceilings, so that in winter they were about
as cosy as the street. I remember one of them with pleasure by reason of
the frescoes that adorned it, with beautiful deer in them and birds as
big as the deer stalking horizontally up the trunks of trees. Another was
a vast tumble-down wooden palace of which we humbly camped out in one
corner. It had originally belonged to an Armenian grandee who rejoiced in
the name of the Son of the Man Who Was Cooked. The Son of the Man Who Was
Cooked had the honour to be a friend of the Sultan of his day, who not
seldom visited him. His majesty used to come at all hours, it is said,
and sometimes in disguise. This was partly because the Son of the Man Who
Was Cooked loved to go loaded with jewels, as the legend went, and the
Sultan hoped by finding him in that case to have the better ground for
raising loans. But it is also whispered that other reasons entered into
the matter, and that on the men’s side of the house a secret stair was
built, enabling majesty to circulate in the house without attracting too
much attention. Certain it is that such a stair, black and breakneck,
existed, for my room was at the top of it—and as I lay in bed in winter
I could look out through the cracks in the wall and see the snow in the
garden. But I never wondered then, as I have wondered since, whether the
legend that Abd ül Hamid was half an Armenian had any connection with our
house. Another of its attractions was that it boasted in the cellar a
bottomless pit—or so the servants used to assure us.
These were they who lent, perhaps, the most local colour to that Minor
Asiatic youth. They were daughters of Armenia, for the most part. And
I sometimes think that if William Watson had enjoyed my opportunities
he never would have written “The Purple East.” Surely he never squirmed
under an Armenian kiss, which in my day partook both of sniffing and of
biting and which left the victim’s cheek offensively red and moist. Yet
how can I remember with anything but gratitude the kindly neighbours to
whom foreign children, coming and going between the houses that in those
distant days made a small Anglo-American colony in upper Scutari, were
always a source of interest? For some mysterious reason that is buried
in the heart of exiled Anglo-Saxondom, we really knew wonderfully little
about our neighbours. We never played with their children or entered
other than strangers the world outside our garden wall. Nor was it
because our neighbours were unwilling to meet us half-way. They paid us
the compliment of naming a certain place of amusement which existed in
our vicinity the American Theatre, hoping thereby to gain our patronage.
But I fear this hope met with no response. At any rate, I never came
nearer the unknown delights of the American Theatre than the top of our
garden wall, from which I remember once listening entranced to such
strains of music as never issued from our serious piano. I recognised
them years afterward, with a jump, in an opera of Suppé. I have also
lived to learn that Scutari, or the part of it where we lived, is a sort
of Armenian Parnassus, perhaps even an Armenian Montmartre, given over
entirely to the muses. Emancipated Armenian ladies, they tell me, do
such unheard-of things as to walk, on their own two feet, vast distances
over the hills of Asia with emancipated Armenian gentlemen in long locks
and flowing neckties; and imperishable Armenian odes have celebrated the
beauties of Baghlar Bashi and Selamsîz.
Nevertheless, we did not suffer the consequences of our aloofness.
Between our garden and another one, to which we were in time allowed
to go alone, there existed, unbeknownst to our elders, certain post
stations, as it were, where a wayfarer might stop for rest and
refreshment. Out of one barred window a lady always passed me a glass of
water. She rather reminded me of some docile overgrown animal in a cage.
Indeed I am not sure she could have got out if she tried—which apparently
she never did—for she was of immeasurable proportions. I thought of her
when I later came to read of a certain Palace lady pet-named Little
Elephant, who built a mosque in Scutari. I know not whether this was the
same whom a Sultan, having sent messengers to the four quarters of the
empire in search of the fattest beauty imaginable, found in my native
town, almost under his palace windows, and led away in triumph. As George
Ade has told us, slim princesses used not to be the fashion in Turkey.
From another window, higher above the street, attentions of another
sort used to be showered on us by an old gentleman who never seemed to
dress. He was always sitting there in a loose white gown, as if he had
just got up or were just going to bed, and he would toss us down pinks
or chrysanthemums, according to the season. But the person most popular
with us was a little old woman who lived in a house so old and so little
that I blush when I remember how greedy I used to be at her expense.
She used to reach out between the bars of her window spoonfuls of the
most heavenly preserve I have ever tasted, thick and white and faintly
flavoured with lemon. So distinguished a sweetmeat could only possess so
distinguished a name as bergamot.
Returning to Scutari long afterward, it came upon me with a certain
surprise that no one offered me sweets or flowers, or even a glass of
water. My case was oddly put to me by a man like one of Shakespeare’s
fools, who perhaps should not have been at large but who asked himself
aloud when he met me at a mosque gate: “I wonder what he is looking
for—his country?” If Scutari tempts me to do Kenneth Grahame over again,
it also tempts me to do Dr. Hale over again, to whose famous hero I could
give other points than that of the election board in Hell’s Kitchen. The
enduring taunt of my school-days was that I never could be President,
and it was a bitter blow to me when I learned that my name could never
be carved in the Hall of Fame above the Hudson. Yet when I went back to
Scutari, as a man will go back to the home of his youth, the inhabitants
were so far from recognising me as one of themselves that the thought
occurred to me how amusingly like life it would be if I, who am not
notable for the orthodoxy of my opinions, were massacred for a Christian
in the town where I was born! Nevertheless I have discovered with a good
deal of surprise, in the room of the vanished Scutari I used to know, a
Scutari that I never saw or heard of when I was young—I speak, of course,
to the race of men that likes Stamboul—a place of boundless resources,
of priceless possibilities—a true City of Gold.
* * * * *
The favourite story is that Chrysopolis was so called because of the
Persian satraps who once lived there and heaped up the gold of tribute.
Others have it, and I like their theory better, that the city took its
name from Chryses, son of Chryseis and Agamemnon, who, fleeing after
the fall of Troy from Ægisthus and Clytemnestra, met there his end. A
few poetic-minded individuals have found an origin for the word in the
appearance the town presents from Constantinople at sunset with all its
panes on fire. I don’t know that the idea is more far-fetched than any
other. An equal variety of opinion prevails with regard to the modern
name. Certain authorities claim that it is a corruption of Üsküdar, used
by the Turks, which is from a Persian word meaning a post messenger.
For myself, I am feebly impressed by all these Persians, who seem to me
dragged in by the ears. A Turkish savant told me once that he believed
Üsküdar to be a corruption of an old Armenian name, Oskitar or Voskitar,
which is merely a translation of Chrysopolis. When Mehmed II captured
Constantinople he brought a great many Armenians into it, to repopulate
the city and to offset the Greeks; and the richest of them, who came
from Broussa, he settled in Scutari, which has always retained a certain
Armenian tinge. I learn that in ancient Armenian some such word could
have been made out of Chrysopolis. But the name Scutari is much older
than the Turkish conquest. Villehardouin and at least one Byzantine
historian speak of the palace of Scutari, on the promontory that juts out
toward Seraglio Point. Also, I seem to remember reading in Gibbon of a
corps of _scutarii_ who had their barracks on that side of the strait.
I have never been able to lay my hand on those _scutarii_ again, and
so cannot found very much of an argument upon them. Any Latin lexicon,
however, will give you the word _scutarius_, a shield-bearer, and tell
you that a corps of them existed under the later empire. Wherefore I
formally reject and contemn Murray, Von Hammer and Company, with their
Persian postboys, and take my stand on those Roman shields. In all
probability the name spread, as in the case of Galata, from a barracks or
a palace to the entire locality, and Üsküdar must be a Turkish attempt to
pronounce the Greek Σκουτάριον.
Of that oldest Scutari I did not set out to write an account, but it is
convenient that the visitor should be aware of how ancient and honourable
a town he is treading the streets. I find it a little difficult to write
coherently, however, for two ancient and honourable towns are there.
The second one, lying next to the south and facing the Marmora instead
of the Bosphorus, is the more ancient, and I suppose in the eyes of
the world the more honourable. Chalcedon was its name—derived, by one
report, from the Homeric soothsayer Chalkas—and it is represented to-day
by the suburbs of Haïdar Pasha, Kadi Kyöi, and Moda. The history of
these adjoining quarters is so intertwined that it is sometimes hard to
distinguish between Chalcedon and Chrysopolis. Chalcedon, like Byzantium,
was founded by colonists from Megara, but a few years earlier. Its
greater accessibility and hospitality to ships and the flatness of its
site gave it advantages which Chrysopolis did not possess. Chrysopolis,
on the other hand, nearer Byzantium and commanding the mouth of the
Bosphorus, occupied the more strategic position with regard to the
traffic of the strait. Both cities suffered greatly during the Persian
wars, and were for a time ruled by the satraps of Darius. The Athenians
seized them early in the history of their league, in order to levy tolls
on passing ships. So early arose the vexed question of the straits.
Philip of Macedon included the two cities in his siege of Byzantium, but
was driven away by the Athenians. Xenophon stopped a week in Chrysopolis
on his way back from Persia. Hannibal ended his troubled days in a suburb
of Chalcedon. Nicomedes III of Bithynia left that town in his will to the
Romans, who fought over it with Mithridates of Pontus. The Goths ravaged
it on the occasion of their first raid into Asia Minor. The fate of the
Roman world was settled on the heights of Chrysopolis in 324, when that
other man without a country, Constantine of York, vanquished his last
rival, Licinius, and took him prisoner. The experiences and associations
of that victory must have had much to do with the transfer of the capital
from the Tiber to the Bosphorus. From that time onward the two Asiatic
cities lost something in importance but gained in peace—though Persians,
Saracens, and Turks later troubled them again. The fourth Ecumenical
Council sat in Chalcedon in 451, in that church of St. Euphemia which
had been a temple of Venus. The famous oracle of Apollo Constantine
destroyed, using its marbles for his own constructions on the opposite
side of the strait. From Chrysopolis he also took a celebrated statue of
Alexander the Great. His example was followed by the emperor Valens, who
utilised the walls of Chalcedon as a quarry for the aqueduct that still
strides across a valley of Stamboul. And even Süleïman the Magnificent
was able to find materials for his greatest mosque in the ruins of the
church of St. Euphemia and of the palace of Belisarius.
[Illustration: The Street of the Falconers]
To-day a few sculptured capitals remain above ground in Scutari,
and every now and then some one in Kadi Kyöi digs up in his garden a
terra-cotta figurine. Otherwise there is nothing left to remind you of
the antique cities that sat in front of Byzantium. They have disappeared
as completely as the quaint little Scutari of my youth. But two
settlements still remain there, and still different, although so long
united under one destiny. When projected trolley-cars and motor roads
come into being, as they are destined shortly to do, I fancy that this
separation will become less and less marked. For the time being, however,
Scutari and Kadi Kyöi might be on opposite sides of the Bosphorus. Kadi
Kyöi, with its warmer winds, its smoother lands, its better harbours, its
trim yachts, its affluent-looking villas, its international _Bagdadbahn_,
has acquired a good deal of the outward appearance of Europe. Whereas
Scutari remains Asiatic and old-fashioned. It is very much what it was
before Bagdad railways, when the caravans of the East marched through its
narrow streets, when the Janissaries pounded their kettledrums in the
square of Doghanjiler—the Falconers. And it contains almost all that is
to be seen in the two towns of interest to the comer from afar.
* * * * *
The great sight of Scutari, after all, is Scutari itself—which very few
people ever seem to have noticed. In front of it opens, somewhat north of
west, a nick in the shore known as the Great Harbour. As a matter of fact
it is very little of a harbour, whose inner waters are barely safe from
the swirl of the Bosphorus as it begins to squeeze past Seraglio Point.
The front door of Scutari is here, however, and one altogether worthy of
the City of Gold. Seen from the water it is admirably bordered with boats
and boat-houses, being no less admirably overlooked by minarets and
hanging gardens and climbing roofs and the dark overtopping wall of the
great cemetery, while nearer acquaintance proves it to be amply provided
with local colour in the way of plane-trees, fountains, and coffee-houses
galore. The heart of the town lies in an irregular amphitheatre which
twists back from the Great Harbour. Into the floor of the amphitheatre
project half a dozen buttresses of an upper gallery, and through the long
narrow corridors between them streets climb, sometimes by steps, to the
cypresses and their amply sweeping terrace. In this scene, if you like, a
lesser Stamboul is set. It has its old houses, its vines, its fountains,
its windows of grille work, its mosque yards, its markets, its covered
bazaar, even its own edition of the Sacred Caravan and the Persian
solemnity of _Mouharrem_. But it has an air of its own, as the storks
will tell you who nest near the flower market. It does not imitate, it
complements Stamboul. And it contains monuments so remarkable that I am
constantly amazed and scandalised to find out how little people know
about them.
Four mosques in particular are the pride and jewels of my native town.
They were all erected by princesses—the two oldest after the designs of
Sinan. The earliest one, dating from 1547, is the first you see when you
come to Scutari. It stands, like the mosque of Rüstem Pasha, on a terrace
above the hum of the landing stage. As a matter of fact it was built
by the wife of Rüstem Pasha, who was also the daughter of Süleïman the
Magnificent and Roxelana. Mihrîmah, this lady was called, which means
Moon and Sun. Her mosque is named after her, though it is also called the
Great Mosque and the Mosque of the Pitcher—for what reason I have yet
to penetrate. It is a little stiff and severe, to my way of thinking.
The minarets have not the spring that Sinan afterward learned to evoke,
and the interior is rather bare. Perhaps it has been pillaged. But the
courtyard, looking out through trees to the Bosphorus, is a delightful
spot, and it contains one of the most admirable mosque fountains I know.
There are also other fountains in the court, and an old sun-dial, too
overgrown by leaves to do its work, and a _mouvakît haneh_. When I was
speaking of mosque yards in general I did not mention this institution.
It may seem to us that people who count twelve o’clock at sunset cannot
pay much attention to the science of time keeping. But the exact hours
of prayer, like the exact direction of Mecca, are very important matters
for Mohammedans. The Arabs, I believe, were the first inventors of
clocks. At all events, the first clock seen in Europe was a present to
Charlemagne from Haroun al Rashid. A clock is an essential part of the
furniture of every mosque. Haroun al Rashid is a long time dead, however,
and most of the clocks seen to-day were made in England. Mosques of any
size, nevertheless, have their own corps of timekeepers, who do their
work in a pavilion called the _mouvakît haneh_—the house of time—and
incidentally repair the watches of the neighbourhood. Some of them also
take solar observations with instruments that were made for a museum.
[Illustration: Fountain in the mosque yard of Mihrîmah]
Next in chronological order is the mosque of the _Valideh Atik_—which
might be translated as the Old or, more politely, as the Wise Mother.
It is more popularly known as Top Tashi, or Cannon Stone. In a steep
street near the mosque lies a big stone cannon-ball from which the
quarter may take its name. However, the Wise Mother was a certain Nour
Banou, Lady of Light, who lies buried beside her husband, Sultan Selim
II, in the courtyard of St. Sophia. Her mosque stands on the second
story of Scutari, and its two minarets and contrasting cypresses,
with their encompassing arcade and massive-walled dependencies, make
the most imposing architectural group in the town. The mosque has
recently undergone a thorough restoration, which is rarely a very happy
proceeding. Luckily the restorers left the painted wooden ceilings that
decorate the under-side of the gallery—or so much of them as had not
been painted out before. There is also an elaborately perforated marble
_mimber_, whose two flags would seem to indicate that a church once
stood here. But what is best is the tiled recess of the _mihrab_. The
tile makers of Nicæa had evidently not begun to lose their cunning in
the day of the Lady of Light—unless she borrowed from some other place.
In any case, the two panels at right angles to the _mihrab_ are so high
an ornament of my native town that Scutari deserves to be celebrated
for them alone. They seem to me to rank among the finest tiles in
Constantinople, though Murray passes them by without a word. In Turkish
eyes this mosque has a further interest as being one of the spots known
to have been visited by Hîdîr or Hîzîr, lord of the Fountain of Life. In
the porch of the mosque hangs an illuminated manuscript commemorating
this illustrious visit, and near it are three holes by which Hîzîr is
supposed to have moved the mosque in token of his presence.
[Illustration: Tiles in the mosque of the Valideh Atik]
[Illustration: Chinili Jami]
The third princess to build in Scutari was one whose acquaintance we
have already made, the great _valideh_ Kyössem. Her mosque also stands
on the upper terrace, at the head of the long corridor known as Chaoush
Deresi. The Turks call it Chinili Jami, which really means the China
Mosque. It is a tiled mosque, much smaller than Rüstem Pasha, faced on
the inside and along the porch with blue and white tiles of not so good a
period. Between 1582, when the Lady of Light tiled her _mihrab_, and 1643
something had evidently happened in Nicæa. As a matter of fact, I believe
the tiles came from Kütahya. Nevertheless the mosque is charming, there
is the quaintest pagoda-like fountain in one corner of the court, and the
main gate of the yard composes with the fountain and the mosque and the
cypresses around it in the happiest possible way.
[Illustration: The fountains of the Valideh Jedid]
The latest of our four mosques was erected by the sultana who, being by
birth a Greek, took away San Francesco in Galata from the Conventuals.
At least that lady was the builder if she was the mother of Ahmed III as
well as of Moustafa II. She atoned, however, for that eminently feminine
piece of high-handedness by her mosque in Scutari. It is popularly
called the Valideh Jedid, the mosque of the New Mother, and it belongs
to that early period of Turkish rococo which Ahmed III borrowed from
Louis XV. For the mosque of a new mother, the style is admirably adapted.
It is to be seen at its most characteristic in the fountain of marble
embroideries which stands outside the north gate of the mosque yard. A
second fountain stands beside the first, of the sort where cups of water
are filled for passers-by. Then comes the tomb of the foundress, who
lies like the Kyöprülüs under a skeleton dome of bronze. And you should
see the roses that make a little garden around her in May. They are an
allusion, I suppose, to her graceful Turkish name, which may be less
gracefully rendered as Rose Attar of Spring. The mosque yard has no great
interest—except on Fridays, when a fair is established along its outer
edge. But I must draw attention to the bird-house, like a cross-section
of a little mosque with two minarets, on the façade of the forecourt, and
to the small marble beehive that balances it. This forecourt is the only
one of its kind in Scutari. As for the mosque itself, you may find the
windows too coquettish even for a New Mother. For myself I rather like
their flower-pots and flowers, though they clearly belong to a day other
than that of the old window jewellery of Sinan’s time. The green tiles
about the _mihrab_ also betray a symptom of decadence in that they are of
a repeating pattern. But the chief point of the mosque is one to which I
drew attention a good many pages back, namely its stencilling. Being a
native of Scutari, I can without presumption recommend to all Ministers
of Pious Foundations that they preserve that old painting as long as the
last flake of it hangs to the ceiling, and that before the last flake
falls they learn the secret of its effect. So may they in days to come
restore to Rüstem Pasha and Sultan Ahmed and Yeni Jami a part of their
lost dignity.
[Illustration: Interior of the Valideh Jedid
In the gallery at the left is the imperial tribune]
[Illustration: The Ahmedieh]
You are not to suppose that Scutari has no other mosques than these.
Áyazma Jami and the Selimieh are two other imperial monuments whose
delightful yards make up for their baroque interiors. And the small
Ahmedieh is an older structure which you must not attribute to any Sultan
Ahmed. Oldest of all is Roum Mehmed Pasha, once a Greek church. If I pass
it by, however, I simply cannot pass by a mosque which stands in its own
_medresseh_ court on the south side of Scutari harbour. I would rather
study theology there than anywhere else in the world. At least, I do not
believe any other theological school has so perfect a little cloister
lying so close to the sea. And while other cloisters were designed by
Sinan, I know of no other that was founded by a poet. The name of this
poet was Shemsi Pasha, and he was a soldier and a courtier as well. But
it was the poetry in him, together with his quick wit and gay humour,
that first drew him into the notice of Süleïman the Magnificent. Unlike
many men of his circle, he was a real Turk, being descended from a
Seljukian family that reigned at one time on the shores of the Black Sea.
He became a greater favourite of Selim II than he had been of Süleïman.
Selim made him master of ceremonies to receive the ambassadors who came
to Adrianople to congratulate the new Sultan on his accession. Among
these was a Persian, whom his European colleagues greatly astonished
by taking off their hats as he rode in with his magnificent suite. The
Persian asked Shemsi Pasha what the extraordinary gesture might signify,
and Shemsi Pasha told him it was a Christian way of showing that they
were ready to drop their heads at the feet of the Sultan. Under Mourad
III Shemsi Pasha reached an even higher pitch of fortune, and it was
then that he built his _medresseh_. He jokingly began to call himself
the Falcon of Petitions, for it was his business to receive petitions
that people brought to the Sultan—and the presents that accompanied them.
One day he came away from the Sultan in high good humour, saying: “At
last I have avenged the dynasty of my fathers, for if the house of Osman
caused our ruin I have prepared that of the house of Osman.” Asked what
he meant, he explained that he had just induced the Sultan—for forty
thousand ducats—to sell his favour. “From to-day the Sultan himself will
give the example of corruption, and corruption will dissolve the empire.”
[Illustration: Shemsi Pasha]
Were I a little more didactically inclined, this speech should inspire
the severest reflections on the man who made it and on the ironical
truth of his lightly uttered prophecy. As it is, I am more inclined to
reflect on the irony of the fact that ill-gotten gains may do more good
or create something nearer the immortal than the savings of honest toil.
At any rate, the _medresseh_ of Shemsi Pasha is such a place as only a
poet or a great architect could imagine; and many homeless people found
refuge there during the late Balkan War. The cloister is very small
and irregular. There are cells and a covered arcade on two sides. The
third, I think, from three or four quaint little windows of perforated
marble that remain in a corner of the wall, must once have been more
open to the Bosphorus than it is now. On the fourth side, and taking up
a good deal of the court, are the mosque and the tomb of the founder.
The mosque must have been a little jewel in its day. It is half a ruin
now. The minaret is gone and so is all but the pillars of the portico
that looked into the court. Within, however, are intricately panelled
shutters, and a little gallery painted on the under-side, and a carved
_mimber_ of woodwork like that in the tombs of Roxelana and her sons.
The refugees of 1912, poor wretches, saw no reason why they should not
drive as many nails as they needed into that precious wood. The greatest
ornament of the mosque is a magnificent bronze grille in the archway that
opens into the adjoining tomb. This grille is rather like one they show
you at Ravenna, in a crypt window of Sant’ Apollinare in Classe, except
that it has an arrow in each of the arched openings; and the surmounting
lunette is a more complicated design. Did Shemsi Pasha, who seems to have
had rather a genius for picking things up, get hold of a real Byzantine
grille and make this perfect use of it? The tomb itself is in a piteous
state of neglect. Nothing is left to show which of the three bare and
broken wooden catafalques marked the grave of the dead poet. Windows in
the outer wall look through a little marble portico upon a ruined quay.
And, tempered so, the splash and flicker of the Bosphorus come into the
mosque.
[Illustration: The bassma haneh]
[Illustration: Hand wood-block printing]
One of the sights of Scutari which always interests me is to be seen
behind Shemsi Pasha, where a bluff first begins to lift itself above the
sea. Here on any summer day you will notice what you may think to be
lines of clothes drying in the wind. The clothes are really those soft
figured handkerchiefs which are so greatly used in the East. Bare-legged
men dip them in the sea to set the colours; and from them you may
follow a gory trail of dye till you come to a house with thick wooden
bars tilted strangely out under the eaves like gigantic clothes-horses.
This is the _bassma haneh_—the printing-house. It has belonged to the
same family for two hundred years, and during that time it can hardly
have changed its methods of wood-block printing. Every bit of the work
is done by hand. Every stitch of it is lugged down to the salt water
for the colours to be made fast, and lugged back. And the factory, like
other old-fashioned institutions in Constantinople, is open only from
the day of Hîd’r Eless, in May, to that of Kassîm, in November. Once, as
I rather intrusively poked my way about it, I came upon a man, whether
old or young I could not say, who sat on the floor blocking out the
first pattern on long white strips of cloth that were ultimately, as
he told me, to make turbans for the people of Kürdistan. The room was
almost dark, and it contained hardly anything beside the mattress where
the man slept at night and a sizzling caldron beside him. The mixture in
the caldron, into which he kept dipping his block, was a dye of death:
so he told me, literally in those words, adding that it had already cut
ten years off his life. But his employers never could afford to put some
sort of a chimney over the caldron—and they assured him that employment
like his was to be found in no other country. Was it true? he asked me. I
thought to myself that the idyllic old days of hand labour, after which
so many of us sigh, may not always have been so idyllic after all.
* * * * *
If you go to the _bassma haneh_ by following the shore from the Great
Harbour, it is very likely that you will never get there, by reason of
the bluff to which I have just alluded. No road runs along the edge of
that bluff to Haïdar Pasha and Moda, as perhaps in some far distant day
of civic improvement may be the case; but here and there the houses are
set a little back, and so many streets come vertically down toward the
water that there are plenty of places to take in what the bluff has to
offer. And then you will see why so many sultans and emperors built
palaces there of old. I may, however, draw your attention for a moment to
the island lighthouse falsely known as Leander’s Tower. In an old Italian
map it is put down as _Torre della Bella Leandra_, and I have wondered if
there, haply, was a clew to the name or whether it is simply a sailor’s
jumble of the legend of the Dardanelles. In Turkish it is called _Kîz
Koulesi_—the Maiden’s Tower—and it has a legend of its own. This relates
to a Greek emperor who, being told that his daughter would one day be
stung by a serpent, built a little castle for her on that sea-protected
rock. But it happened to her to be seen by an Arab gallant, who expressed
his admiration by bringing her flowers in disguise. Among them a viper
chanced to creep one day, before the gallant left the mainland, and the
princess’s prophecy was fulfilled. The gallant immediately sucked the
poison out of her wound, however, and ran away with the princess. He was
the celebrated hero Sid el Battal, forerunner of the Spanish Cid, who
commanded the fifth Arab siege of Constantinople in 739 and who now lies
buried in a town named after him in Asia Minor. The existing Maiden’s
Tower was built in 1763 by Sultan Moustafa III. But a Byzantine one
existed before it, of the emperor Manuel Comnenus, from which a chain
used to be stretched in time of war across to Seraglio Point. And many
centuries earlier the rock bore the statue of a heifer in memory of
Damalis, wife of that Athenian Chares who drove away Philip of Macedon.
After her the bluff itself used to be called Damalis—which again may be
connected with the intricate myth of Io and the Bosphorus.
Every one knows the old story of the Delphian Oracle, who told the
colonists of Byzantium to settle opposite the City of the Blind. The City
of the Blind turned out to be the place whose inhabitants had passed
by the site of Seraglio Point. The reproach cannot be fastened on the
City of Gold, because Chalcedon really incurred it. But I have already
associated the two towns, and I am willing to do so again. For to live in
Scutari is to prove either that the oracle was blind or that Byzas made
a mistake. No other conclusion is possible for him who loiters on the
bluffs opposite Seraglio Point. One of the best places to see Stamboul
is there, where you look at it against the light. And it is something to
see in the early morning, with mists melting out of the Golden Horn and
making a fairyland of all those domes and pinnacles. As for the sunsets
of Scutari, with Stamboul pricking up black against them, they are so
notable among exhibitions of their kind that I cannot imagine why they
were not long ago put down among sunsets of San Marco and moonlights of
the Parthenon and I know not how many other favourite wonders of the
world.
[Illustration: The Bosphorus from the heights of Scutari]
I never heard, however, of guides recommending so simple an excursion.
What they will sometimes grudgingly recommend is to climb the hill
of Chamlîja. Chamlîja—the Place of Pines—is a hill of two peaks, one
a little higher than the other, on the descending terraces of which
amphitheatrically sprawls the City of Gold. Chamlîja is the highest hill
on the Bosphorus, and therefore is it dear to the Turks, who are like
the Canaanites of old in that they love groves and high places. The
groves, it is true, are now rather thinly represented by the stone-pines
that give the height its name; but Turkish princes, like their Byzantine
predecessors, have villas among them, while the hill is a favourite
resort of their subjects. The widest prospect, of course, is to be had
from the top of Big Chamlîja. But a more picturesque one is visible
from the south side of Little Chamlîja, taking in a vivid geography of
cypress forest and broken Marmora coast, and Princes’ Isles seen for
once swimming each in its own blue, and far-away Bithynian mountains;
while to the explorer of a certain northern spur, running straight to
Beïlerbeï Palace, is vouchsafed one of the most romantic of all visions
of the Bosphorus. Chamlîja has an especial charm for the people of the
country because of its water. No European can quite understand what that
means to a Turk. Being forbidden to indulge in fermented liquors, he is
a connoisseur of water—not mineral water, but plain H₂O—as other men
are of wine. He calls for the product of his favourite spring as might
a Westerner for a special vintage, and he can tell when an inferior
brand is palmed off on him. A dervish named Hafid Effendi once published
a monograph on the waters of Constantinople in which he described the
sixteen best springs, which he himself had tested. I will not enumerate
all the conditions which he laid down for perfect water. One of them
is that it must be “light”; another is that it should flow from south
to north or from west to east. A certain spring of Chamlîja meets
these requirements better than any other in Constantinople. A sultan,
therefore, did not think it beneath him to house this famous water of my
native town, and gourmets pay a price to put it on their tables.
A second pretext do guides and guide-books, out of the capriciousness
of their hearts, allow outsiders for visiting Scutari, and that is to
see the great cemetery. For that matter, few people with eyes of their
own and a whim to follow them could look up from the water at that
wood of cypresses, curving so wide and sombre above the town, without
desiring to know more of it. I have wondered if Arnold Böcklin ever saw
it, for in certain lights, and from the right point of the Bosphorus,
Scutari looks strangely like a greater Island of Death. In spite of its
vast population of old grey stones, however, there is to me nothing so
melancholy there as in our trim Western places of burial, shut away
from the world and visited only with whispers. There is, of course, a
gravity, the inseparable Turkish gravity, but withal a quiet colour of
the human. For the Turks have a different attitude toward death from
ours. I do not mean that they lack feeling, but they seem to take more
literally than we their religious teaching on the subject. They have no
conventional mourning, and the living and the dead seem much nearer to
each other. Nor is it merely that tombs and patches of cemetery ornament
the busiest street. “Visit graves,” says a tradition of the Prophet: “Of
a truth they shall make you think of futurity.” And “Whoso visiteth every
Friday the graves of his two parents, or one of the two, he shall be
written a pious son, even though he had been disobedient to them in the
world.” And people do visit graves. The cult of the _türbeh_ is a thing
by itself, while every cemetery is a place of resort. The cypresses of
Scutari are, therefore, the less funereal because the highways of common
life run between them. I speak literally, for the main thoroughfares
between Scutari and Kadi Kyöi pass through the cemetery. Under the trees
the stone-cutters fashion the quaint marble of the graves. Fountains are
scattered here and there for the convenience of passers-by. People sit
familiarly among the stones or in the coffee-houses that do not fail to
keep them company. I remember an old man who used to keep one of the
coffee-houses, and how he said to me, like a Book of Proverbs: “Death
in youth and poverty in age are hard, but both are of God.” He was born
in Bulgaria, he told me, when it was still a part of Turkey, but he
wished to die in Asia, and so he had already taken up his abode among the
cypresses of Scutari. A more tragic anticipation of that last journey
has been made by a colony of lepers. I went to visit them once, when I
thought less of my skin than I do now. They live in a stone quadrangle
set back from the Haïdar Pasha road, with windows opening only into their
own court. In front of the gate is a stone post where people leave them
food. When they offered me some of it, out of the hospitality of their
hearts, I must confess I drew the line. They kept house in families, each
in its own little apartment, and the rooms were clean and comfortable in
the simple Turkish way. But the faces and hands of some of the inmates
were not good to see. It made one’s heart sick for the children who are
born and innocently grow up in that place of death.
[Illustration: Gravestones]
The stones of Scutari are a study which I have often wished I had the
knowledge to take up. Every grave has a headstone and a footstone, taller
and narrower than our old-fashioned tombstones. You can tell at a glance
whether a man or a woman is buried beneath the marble slab that generally
joins the two stones. In old times every man wore a special turban,
according to his rank and profession, and when he died that turban was
carved at the top of his headstone. The custom is still continued,
although the fez has now so largely taken the place of the turban.
Women’s stones are finished with a carving of flowers. Floral reliefs are
common on all monuments, which may also be painted and gilded. And in the
flat slab will be a little hollow to catch the rain—for thirsty spirits
and the birds. The epitaphs that are the chief decoration are not very
different from epitaphs all over the world, though perhaps a little more
flowery than is now the fashion in the West. The simpler ones give only
the name and estate of the deceased, with a request for a prayer or a
_fatiha_—the opening invocation of the Koran—and some such verse as “He
is the Everlasting,” “Every soul shall taste death,” or “We are God’s
and we return to God.” This sentiment is also characteristic: “Think
of the dead. Lift up your hands in prayer, that men may some time visit
your grave and pray.” The epitaph is often rhymed, though it may be of
a touching simplicity—like “O my daughter! O! She flew to Paradise and
left to her mother only the sorrow of parting,” or “To the memory of the
spirit of the blessed Fatma, mother of Ömer Agha, whose children find
no way out of their grief.” Others are more complicated and Oriental,
ending, like the inscriptions on public buildings, in a chronogram. Von
Hammer quotes one, not in this cemetery, which is peculiarly effective in
Turkish:
_The joy of the life of Feïsi, inspector of markets,_
_Has vanished into the other world. O how to help it!_
_For he has lost his rosebud of a daughter,_
_Whose like will bloom no more. O how to help it!_
_The wind of death blew out in the lantern_
_The light of the feast of life. O how to help it!_
_In bitterness his eye swells with tears_
_That are like the tide of the sea. O how to help it!_
_In bitterness was written the verse of the number of the year:_
_Hüsseïna has gone away! O how to help it!_
Behind the house of the lepers a trail branches away into the most lonely
part of this strange forest, ultimately leading down a hill, too rough
for any but the most adventurous carriage, to a quaint little stone arch
mysteriously called Bloody Bridge that spans a thread of water beside a
giant plane-tree. On this southward-looking slope the cypresses attain a
symmetry, a slenderness, a height, a thickness of texture and richness
of colour unmatched in Stamboul. They grow in squares, many of them,
or in magic circles. The stones under them are older than the others,
and more like things of nature in the flowered grass. On certain happy
afternoons, when the sun brings a fairy depth and softness of green out
of the cypresses, when their shadows fall lance-like across bare or mossy
aisles, and the note of a solitary bird echoes between them, it is hard
not to imagine oneself in an enchanted wood.
In the eyes of most comers from afar the dervishes, those who are
ignorantly called the howling dervishes, stand for Scutari and all its
works. And the fact always irritates me because it indicates so perfect
a blindness to the treasures of the City of Gold—and something else that
no sightseer ever pardons in another. The tourists are not in the least
interested in dervishes in general. The subject of mysticism and its
Oriental ramifications is not one they would willingly go into. They do
not dream that Scutari is full of other kinds of dervishes. They have
never heard of the _Halveti_, as it were the descendants of the Sleepless
Ones of the Studion, who consider it a lack of respect to the Creator
to sleep lying down, or even to cross their legs, and who repeat every
night in the year the _temjid_, the prayer for pity of insomnia, which is
heard elsewhere only in Ramazan. No one has ever taken a tourist to see
so much as the beautiful ironwork of the tomb of the holy Aziz Mahmoud
Hüdaï, who lived eighteen years in a cell of the ancient mosque of Roum
Mehmed Pasha. They do not even know that _Roufaï_ is the true name of the
dervishes they go to stare at, and that there is more than one _tekkeh_
of them in Scutari. The traditional “howling” is all that concerns them.
And if I were the sheikh of that _tekkeh_ I would shut its doors to all
tourists—or at least to more than one or two of them at a time. They make
more noise than the dervishes.
[Illustration: Scutari Cemetery]
Having relieved my mind on this subject, in my quality of a native
of Scutari, I am able to continue in my other quality of peripatetic
impressionist. And incidentally I may record my observation that tourists
have, after all, rather a knack for choosing sights that are interesting
to see. I am a great admirer of the oblong wooden hall of the _Roufaï_,
coloured a dull green, with its weapons and inscriptions and brass
candlesticks at the end of the _mihrab_, and its recess of tombs, and
its latticed gallery. The floor under the gallery is railed off and set
apart for the spectators, who also overflow into the central quadrangle
in case of need—if they be of the faith. The ceremony itself has been
described so often that there is no need for me to describe it again,
though I would like to do so with a little more tolerance for unfamiliar
religious observances than some books show. I have never read, however,
of such a ritual as I once happened to see on the Mohammedan Ascension
Day. Part of the service was a sermon from the black-bearded _sheï’h_
upon the miraculous event of the day. At the end of the usual rite all
the dervishes and many of the spectators formed a great ring in the
centre of the hall, holding hands, and circled in a time of eight beats,
calling _“Allah! Allah! Al-lah!”_ The rhythm grew faster and faster, and
the calling louder and hoarser, until two or three visiting dervishes of
another familiar sect slipped into the middle of the ring and began to
whirl in their own silent way, while an old man with a rose tucked under
his black turban sang with a wildness of yearning that only Oriental
music can convey. Then the ring broke and they all marched in a long line
into the recess of the tombs, where each man prostrated himself before
the first of the turbaned catafalques.
Whether that was the end I have no means of knowing, for I was asked to
leave. That is always the case, I notice, when I want to stay after the
rest of the sightseers have got tired and gone away. It rather annoys me
that I should be classed with unbelievers, and made to sit with them on
a bench behind the railing instead of squatting on a sheepskin mat like
the other people of Scutari. Yet if it were not so it would never have
befallen me to come into contact with so eminent a personality of my day
as Mme. Bernhardt—or at least with her parasol. The actress has often
been to Constantinople, and she must have seen the howling dervishes many
times. Who knows what so great an expert in expression may have caught
from the ritual frenzy of the _Roufaï_? It so happened that one of those
times was also the occasion of my first visit. I went early, in order to
secure a good place. Mme. Bernhardt did not. She has no doubt learned by
long and flattering experience that however late she arrives she is sure
of a good place. Nor can I suppose she always manages it in the way she
did then. She arrived late, I say, and by the time she arrived there was
no room left in the front row of benches. I regret to confess that I did
not at once hop out of my seat and put her into it. The performance had
already begun, tourists were all the time coming in, and while I caught
some buzz about the Divine Sarah, I was just then paying more attention
to the men of God in front of me. Presently, however, I felt a fearful
poke in my back. I knew that poke. It was the eternal feminine. It was
beauty. It was genius. It was the Divine Sarah, desiring impressions and
not to be debarred from them by a small tourist _quelconque_—and divinely
unconscious that she might be imparting them, yet not unaware that many
a man would jump into the Seine or the Bosphorus at a poke from her.
What would you? I was young, the parasol was hard, and the Divine Sarah
was the Divine Sarah. I accordingly slipped out of my place, I hope not
without a gracious smile. And what I saw of the dervishes that day was
through the foliage of a very complicated hat. I must say that I resented
it a little. But I consoled myself by murmuring behind Sarah’s back—and
the poet’s—
“_To poke is human, to forgive divine._”
VII
THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS
_Giardini chiusi, appena intraveduti,_
_o contemplati a lungo pe’ cancelli_
_che mai nessuna mano al viandante_
_smarrito aprì come in un sogno! Muti_
_giardini, cimiteri senza avelli,_
_ove erra forse qualche spirto amante_
_dietro l’ombre de’ suoi beni perduti!_
—GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO: “Poema Paradisiaco.”
In the matter of gardens the Turk has never acquired the reputation of
his Moorish and Persian cousins. Perhaps it is that he belongs to a
younger race and has had more conflicting traditions out of which to
evolve a style. For no man likes a garden better than he. He never could
put up with a thing like the city back yard or the suburban lawn of the
New World. He is given to sitting much out-of-doors, he does not like to
be stared at while he is doing it, and he has a great love of flowers.
This is one of his most sympathetic traits, and one which was illustrated
for me in an unexpected quarter during the late Balkan War when I saw
soldiers in a temporary camp laying out patches of turf and pansies
around their tents. The fashion of the buttonhole is not yet perfectly
acclimated in Constantinople, but nothing is commoner than to observe a
grave personage marching along with one rose or one pink in his hand—of
which flowers the Turks are inordinately fond. Less grave personages do
not scorn to wear a flower over one ear, with its stem stuck under their
fez. And I always remember a fireman I once beheld who was not too busy
squirting water at a burning house to stop every now and then and smell
the rose he held between his teeth.
I cannot claim to know very much about the gardens of Stamboul, though no
one can walk there without continually noticing evidences of them—through
gateways, over the tops of walls, wherever there is a patch of earth
big enough for something green to take root. Any one, however, may know
something about the gardens of the Bosphorus. The nature of the ground
on which they are laid out, sloping sharply back from the water to
an average height of four or five hundred feet and broken by valleys
penetrating more gradually into the rolling table-lands of Thrace and
Asia Minor, makes it possible to visit many of them without going into
them. And the fact has had much to do with their character. Gardens
already existed on the banks of the Bosphorus, of course, when the
Turk arrived there, and he must have taken them very much as he found
them. Plane-trees still grow which, without any doubt, were planted by
Byzantine gardeners; and so, perhaps, were certain great stone-pines. I
have also wondered if the Turks did not find, when they came, the black
and white pebbles, generally arranged in un-Oriental-looking designs,
that pave so many garden paths. I am more inclined to believe that these
originated in the same order of things as the finer mosaic of church
walls than that they were imported from Italy. Perhaps the Italians
imported them from Constantinople.
It would be interesting to know whether the Byzantine influence played
any part in the gardens of the Renaissance, as it did in so many other
arts. However, there is no doubt that the Italian influence came back
to Constantinople after the Turkish period. It began to come most
definitely, if by a roundabout road, when Sultan Ahmed III imitated the
gardens of Versailles. It came again from the same quarter when the
successor of Ahmed III sent the son of Twenty-eight Mehmed on another
mission to Paris. And it came more definitely still, by a still more
roundabout road, when a Russian ambassador brought to Constantinople,
at the end of the eighteenth century, a painter named Melling. Like
Van Mour, Melling has left most interesting records of the Bosphorus
of his day. In the course of time it befell him to be recommended as
landscape-gardener to a member of the imperial family, the celebrated
Hadijeh _Soultan_. Through the good graces of this enlightened princess
he later became architect to her brother, Sultan Selim III, the Reformer.
I do not know whether it was the painter, in turn, who obtained for the
Sultan the brother of the gardener of Schönbrunn. But altogether Melling
must have done a good deal more for the gardens of the Bosphorus than to
paint them.
At the same time, no one has done more for them than the Bosphorus
itself. A terrace ten feet long may be as enviable as an estate reaching
from the water’s edge to the top of the hill, since it is the blue
panorama of the strait, with its busy boats and its background of
climbing green, that is the chief ornament of the garden. The Turks
lean, accordingly, to the landscape school. Their gardens have, really,
very little of an Italian air. The smallest patch of ground in Italy is
more architectural than the largest Turkish estate. However much stone
and mortar the Turks put together in retaining and enclosing walls,
the result has little architectural effect. They do not trim terraces
with marble balustrades, while the lack of garden sculpture is with
them a matter into which religion enters. Nor do they often plant
trees like the Italians—to balance each other, to frame a perspective,
to make a background. Still less, I imagine, do they consciously make
colour schemes of flowers. And Lady Mary Montagu noted a long time ago
the absence of the trim parterres to which she was accustomed. It is
perfectly in keeping with Oriental ideas of design, of course, for a
Turkish garden not to have too much symmetry. Yet it does have more
symmetry than an out-and-out landscaper would countenance, and definitely
artificial features. I always wonder whether the natural look of so many
paths and stone stairs and terraces is merely a result of time or whether
it is an accidental effect of the kind striven for by a school of our own
gardeners.
[Illustration: In a Turkish garden]
If Turkish gardens tend to look a little wild, it is partly because they
contain so many trees. In Constantinople, at least, there is so little
rain in summer that it would be almost impossible to keep the gardens
green without them—to say nothing of the shade and privacy they afford.
The old gardeners evidently studied the decorative effect of different
kinds of trees. Those who have never visited Constantinople sometimes
imagine the Bosphorus to be overhung by palms—I suppose because it washes
the coast of Asia and hows into the Mediterranean. They are accordingly
sadly disillusioned when they come to it at the end of a winter in other
parts of the Mediterranean and encounter a snow-storm. As a matter of
fact, the Bosphorus, which lies in about the same latitude as Long Island
Sound, has been solidly frozen over two or three times in history. The
last time was in February, 1621. That winter, if I remember correctly,
was also severe for certain adventurers lately come from England to
Massachusetts Bay. But if palms are as great a rarity in Constantinople
as in New York or Connecticut, the trees that do grow there belong to
a climate more like northern Italy. Among the most striking of them,
and happily one of the commonest, is the stone-pine. These are often
magnificent, marching in a row along the edge of a terrace or the top of
a hill with full consciousness of their decorative value. The cypress,
even more common, seems to me never to have been made the most of.
Perhaps the Turks, and the Greeks before them, associated it too much
with death to play with it as did the Italians of the Renaissance. The
Constantinople variety, it is true, inclines to raggedness rather than
to slenderness or height. Other evergreens, including the beautiful
cedar of Lebanon, have been domesticated in smaller numbers. Being
unscientifically minded, I can say that the magnolia might properly be
classed among them, the _Magnolia grandiflora_ of our Southern States,
since it keeps its glossy leaves all winter long. One of the less
tenacious brotherhood, the plane-tree, is easily king of the Bosphorus,
reaching a girth and height that almost fit it for the company of
the great trees of California. It always seems to me the most treey
of trees, so regularly irregular are the branches and so beautiful a
pattern do they make when the leaves are off. Limes, walnuts, chestnuts,
horse-chestnuts, Lombardy poplars, acacias of various sorts, mulberries,
the Japanese medlar, the dainty pomegranate, the classic bay, are also
characteristic. The pale branches of the fig are always decorative, and
when the leaves first begin to sprout they look in the sun like green
tulips. The olive and the glorious oleander will only thrive in sheltered
corners, while oranges and lemons grow in pots. In the hillside parks
that are the pride of the larger estates, nightingale-haunted in the
spring, pleasantly green in rainless summers, and warmly tawny in the
autumn, deciduous trees predominate altogether. Among them is one of
heart-shaped leaves and dark capricious branches with whose Latin name
I am unacquainted but which is one of the greatest ornaments of the
Bosphorus. The Turks call it _ergovan_, and its blossoming is the signal
for them to move to their country houses. In English, I believe, we call
it the Judas, after some legend that makes it the tree on which the
traitorous apostle hanged himself. He would apparently have been of high
descent, for the flowers, which took thereafter the stain of his blood,
have a decided violet tinge. They fledge the branches so thickly before
the leaves are out that they paint whole hillsides of April with their
magenta.
[Illustration: A Byzantine well-head]
[Illustration: A garden wall fountain]
In addition to the woodiness of the Bosphorus gardens, Lady Mary Montagu
remarked another element of their character which, I am afraid, has
become less frequent since her day. However, if garden sculpture of one
kind is rare, garden marbles of another kind do very definitely exist.
Here, too, I fancy the Turk found something when he came. There is a
smiling lion to be found in certain gardens who, unless I am greatly
mistaken, has Byzantine blood in his veins—if that may be said of a
water spouter. He is cousin german to the lion of St. Mark, who only
improved on him by growing wings. There are also well-heads which are
commonly supposed to have been turned to that use by the Turks out of
Byzantine capitals. But I do not see why some of them may not be original
well-heads. One sees exactly the same sort of thing in Italy, except
that the style of ornament is different in the two countries. The purely
Turkish garden marbles are of the same general order, having to do with
water. And, although there was less need of them when nature had already
been so generous, they are what the Turk brought most of himself to the
gardens of the Bosphorus. The Turkish well-heads are not particularly
interesting, being at their best not much more than a marble barrel. Much
more interesting are the marble basins and the upright tablets behind
them which mark the head of a water-pipe. These tablets are sometimes
charmingly decorated with arabesques and low reliefs of flowers. But the
real fountains are the most characteristic, and it seems to me that they
offer the most in the way of suggestion to the Western gardener. I think
no one has ever understood like the Oriental the poetry of water. Western
architects and gardeners have, of course, made great use of decorative
water; but we never seem to be happy unless we have a mountain of marble
and a torrent of water to work with. Whereas the architects of the East
have always known in this matter how to get the greatest effect out
of the least material. There are charms in a shallow pool or a minute
trickle of water which are of an entirely different order from those of
an artificial lake or cascade.
[Illustration: A jetting fountain in the garden of Halil Edhem Bey]
Almost every Turkish garden contains visible water of some sort, which
at its simplest is nothing but a shallow marble pool. In the centre of
the pool is sometimes a fountain which I always think of with regret when
there is pointed out for my admiration a too fat marble infant struggling
with a too large marble fish, or a dwarf holding an umbrella over its
head. This fountain consists of nothing but a series of jets, generally
on varying levels, set in a circle of those marble stalactites—here
should one call them stalagmites?—which are so familiar in Oriental
architecture. Nothing could be simpler, apparently, but nothing could
combine more perfectly all the essentials of a jetting fountain. There
is another fountain which deals even more delicately with the sound
of water. This is a dripping fountain, set always against a wall or a
bank. It is a tall marble tablet, decorated, perhaps, with low reliefs
of fruit and flowers, on the face of which a series of tiny basins are
carved. I have seen one where water started at the top from the eyes
of two doves and trickled into the first little basin, from which it
overflowed into two below, then back into one, and so on till it came
into three widening semi-circular pools at the bottom. _Selsebil_ is the
name of this fountain in Turkish, which is the name of a fountain in
Paradise; and a fountain of Paradise it may be indeed with all its little
streams atinkle. A more delightful ornament for a garden does not exist,
being equally adapted for the end of a vista or for a narrow space; and
it requires the smallest supply of water.
[Illustration: A _selsebil_ at Kandilli]
[Illustration: A _selsebil_ of Halil Edhem Bey]
The Turkish architects have not scorned more imposing effects when they
had the means, as did Ahmed III at Kiat Haneh. The marble cascades into
which he turned the Barbyses are called _chaghleyan_—something which
resounds. I have seen a smaller _chaghleyan_ in a garden on the Asiatic
shore of the Bosphorus. This is a series of descending pools, one
emptying into another till the water finally runs into a large round
marble basin. The water starts, between two curved flights of stone
steps, from three marble shells in the retaining wall of a terrace; and
from the terrace an arbour looks down the perspective of mirroring pools
to an alley that leads from the last basin away between arching trees.
This beautiful old garden belongs to the Turkish painter Ressam-Halil
Pasha, who studied in Paris at a time when the plastic arts were still
anathema among the Turks. In his studio are figure studies, made
during his student days, which even now he could scarcely exhibit in
Constantinople; and it would be thought a scandalous thing if he tried to
get Turkish models to sit for such pictures. When he heard where I came
from he asked if there were in America a painter called Mr. Cox, who had
studied with him under Gérôme.
* * * * *
There is rivalry between the gardens of the upper, the middle, and the
lower Bosphorus with regard to their advantages of position. The upper
Bosphorus is the most desirable from the European point of view. This
preference is fairly well established, for Lady Mary Montagu wrote
letters from Belgrade Forest two hundred years ago, and about the same
time a summer colony composed of Europeans and of the great Phanariote
families began to gather at Büyük Dereh and Therapia. In much earlier
times, however, the Byzantine emperors built villas at Therapia, and the
very name of the place indicates the antiquity of its repute as a place
of resort. The name has come down in the story of Jason and the Argo,
who sailed between these shores in the dawn of legend. When those early
voyagers returned from Colchis with Medea, that formidable passenger
threw out poison on the Thracian shore; whence the name Pharmakia,
changed by the euphemism of the Greeks to Therapia, or Healing. There
are reasons, to be sure, why it is better to look at Therapia than to be
in it. The view it commands is the bleakest on the Bosphorus, and the
prevailing north wind of midsummer, the _meltem_, which keeps the strait
much cooler than you would imagine from its latitude, sometimes gets on
one’s nerves. Nevertheless Therapia is a centre for an extraordinary
variety of pleasant excursions, there are delicious gardens in the
clefts of its hills, and from May till October the embassies impart to
it such gaiety as the somewhat meagre social resources of Constantinople
afford. I shall be surprised if the proximity of Belgrade Forest and
the magnificent beach of Kilios on the Black Sea, to say nothing of the
various other resources of the Bosphorus and the Marmora, do not some day
make Therapia much more famous as a summer resort.
[Illustration: In the garden of Ressam Halil Pasha]
Constantinople is, I believe, the sole diplomatic post to which summer
residences are attached. Each envoy also has a launch for keeping
in touch with the Sublime Porte, fifteen miles away. The local
legend is that the birds which are so characteristic a feature of the
Bosphorus—halcyons are they?—for ever skimming up and down just above
the surface of the water, are the souls of the Phanariote dragomans
who used to go back and forth so often between Therapia and Stamboul.
A despatch-boat, as well, is at the disposal of each ambassador except
the Persian. These dignities came about very naturally by reason of the
epidemics and disorders which used to break out in the city, the distance
of Constantinople from other European resorts, and the generosity of the
sultans. The English, French, and German governments all own beautiful
estates at Therapia, presented to them by different sultans, while the
Russians are magnificently established at the neighbouring village of
Büyük Dereh. Their great hillside park is a perfect wood, so dense in
summer that the water is scarcely visible from it. The Italians also make
_villeggiatura_ at Therapia, the Austrians and Persians being installed
farther down the Bosphorus. Our ambassador is the sole envoy of his
rank obliged to hunt up hired quarters, though even some of the small
legations occupy their own summer homes. Should Congress ever persuade
itself that diplomatic dignity is a thing worthy to be upheld, or should
some sultan present us with one of the old estates still available, I
hope we shall build an embassy, like the one the French occupied so long,
in keeping with its surroundings and not such a monstrosity as other
Powers have put up. The charming old French embassy, which originally
belonged to the famous Ypsilanti family, was one of the sights of the
Bosphorus until it burned up in 1913. The grounds are not so large as
some of the other embassy gardens, but none of the others seem to me so
happily placed or so sapiently laid out. A bridge led from the house to
the first terrace, whose trees and flowers irregularly follow the curve
of the hillside. A formal avenue and steep wood paths mount to the grassy
upper terrace, commanding between noble pines and beeches the mouth of
the Black Sea.
[Illustration: The upper terrace of the French embassy garden at
Therapia]
[Illustration: The garden of the Russian embassy at Büyük Dereh]
There are Turks, of course, in the upper Bosphorus, as there are
Christians in the middle Bosphorus. One of the most conspicuous of all
the Bosphorus gardens is at Beïkos, on the Asiatic shore—which, for the
rest, is much more Turkish than the European. Beïkos is also connected
with the Argonauts, being the place where they met with so unkind a
welcome from Amycus, king of the Bebryces. He or some other mythic
personage is supposed to have been buried on the hilltop behind Beïkos.
This height, popularly known as Giant’s Mountain, is the only one on the
Bosphorus from which you can see both the Black Sea and the Marmora—as
Byron recorded in a notorious stanza. A giant grave is still to be seen
there, some twenty feet long, which the Turks honour as that of rather
an unexpected personage. A little mosque adjoins the grave—built, I
believe, by the ambassador Twenty-eight Mehmed—and in the mosque is this
interesting inscription: “Here lies his excellency Joshua, the son of
Nun, who although not numbered among the apostles may well be called a
true prophet sent of God. He was despatched by Moses (on whom be peace)
to fight the people of Rome. While the battle was yet unfinished the sun
set. Joshua caused the sun to rise again and the Romans could not escape.
This miracle convinced them; and when Joshua invited them, after the
battle, to accept the true faith, they believed and accepted it. If any
man doubts, let him look into the sacred writings at the Holy Places of
the Christians and he will be satisfied.” The garden I have wandered so
far away from rises on a pyramid of terraces at the mouth of a smiling
valley which bears the grim name of _Hounkyar Iskelesi_—the Landing-Place
of the Manslayer. A white palace crowns the pyramid, facing the long
river-like vista of the Bosphorus. The palace was built by the great
Mehmed Ali, of Egypt, to whom the sultan of the day paid the honour of
coming to see his new pleasure-house and of expressing his admiration of
it. The viceroy accordingly assured his majesty, as Oriental etiquette
demands, that the palace and everything in it was his. Whereupon his
majesty, to the no small chagrin of the viceroy, graciously signified his
acceptance of the gift.
Beïkos and the shores of its great bay were a favourite resort of sultans
long before the day of Mehmed Ali. In general, however, the Turks have
always preferred the narrow middle stretch of the Bosphorus; and for
most reasons I am with them. The summer _meltem_—which some derive from
the Italian _maltempo_—often intensely irritating near the mouth of the
Black Sea, is here somewhat tempered by the windings of the strait.
Then here the coasts of the two continents approach each other most
closely, are most gracefully modelled and greenly wooded. The Asiatic
shore in particular, which opposite Therapia is forbidding enough, is
here a land of enchantment, with its gardens, its groves, its happy
valleys, its tempting points and bays, its sky-line of cypresses and
stone-pines, its weathered wooden villages, its ruined waterside castle
of Anadolou Hissar, its far-famed Sweet Waters—and most so if seen from
Europe in a light of sunset or early morning. If Mehmed Ali lost his
palace at Beïkos—and on Arnaout-kyöi Point there are the ruins of another
one which he was stopped from building—several of the most enviable
estates along this part of the Bosphorus belong to his descendants. The
beautiful wooded cape of Chibouklou, on the Asiatic side, is crowned
by the mauresque château of the present Khedive. Directly opposite, on
the southern point of Stenia Bay, is the immense old tumble-down wooden
palace of his grandfather Ismaïl, the spendthrift Khedive of the Suez
Canal, who died there in exile. The garden behind it is the largest and,
historically, one of the most interesting on the Bosphorus. The name of
the bay is derived, according to one story, from that of the Temple of
Sosthenia, or Safety, built by the Argonauts after their escape from
King Amycus. A temple of Hecate was also known there in more authentic
times, and a church dedicated to the Archangel Michael by Constantine
the Great. On a stormy night of 1352, the admirals Nicolò Pisani of
Venice and Paganino Doria of Genoa unwittingly took shelter in the bay
within bow-shot of each other, during an interval of a long sea-fight
which raged between them the whole length of the Bosphorus. Emirgyan,
the name of the village in which the khedivial estate is situated, was
that of a Persian general who surrendered Erivan to Sultan Mourad IV in
1635, and who ended his days in pleasant captivity on this wooded shore.
His beautiful Persian palace of Feridoun was the wonder of its day. His
conqueror used often to visit him there, for Emirgyan was a man of wit
and an accomplished musician. Not only did he first introduce into Turkey
a sort of Persian bassoon and the four-stringed Persian _chartar_ from
which we get our guitar, but he marked a new epoch in Turkish music.
There were also other reasons why Mourad used to visit the palace of
Feridoun, where, “in the design of refreshing his vital spirits and of
summoning the warmth which awakens joy, it pleased” the Sultan “to give
rein to the light courser of the beverage of the sunrise”—as a discreet
historian put that violent young man’s propensity to strong waters.
It was after a debauch here that he died, at the age of twenty-eight,
having beheaded a hundred thousand of his people and having entertained
a strange ambition to be the last of his line. He gave orders on his
death-bed that the head of his brother Ibrahim, the last surviving male
of his blood, be brought to him. But his courtiers took advantage of his
condition to dissemble their disobedience, and the imperial family to-day
springs from that brother. As for the luckless Emirgyan, he saved his
head from the elder brother, only to be deprived of it by the younger.
At Roumeli Hissar, still farther to the south, is a neglected garden
which belonged to Halim Pasha, brother of the prodigal Ismaïl. In it
are two unpretentious houses which look as if they were built of brown
stucco. There is sentiment in that stucco, however, for it is really mud
brought from the banks of the Nile. According to the law of Islam Halim
would have been Khedive in turn if Ismaïl had not bound the Turkish
government, by a substantial _quid pro quo_, to make the viceroyalty
hereditary to the eldest son in his own family. And Halim Pasha’s
family later suffered the misfortune to be nearly ruined by an English
speculator.
But there is one spot in their park which must have gone far to make up
for their disinheritance. It is the brow of a bluff which seems to drop
sheer into the Bosphorus. There an artful group of cypresses and one
gnarled olive frame the blue below; and there on sunny afternoons, there
most notably on starry evenings, when shore lights curve fantastically
through the underlying darkness and all land and water sounds have some
summer magic in them, an Antony might dream away content the loss of
Egypt.
Halim Pasha owned another splendid garden on Bebek Bay. Next to his faded
pink wooden _yalî_ in the dignified old Turkish style, and likewise
linked by bridges across the public road to a park that climbs the hill
behind, is the trim _art-nouveau_ villa of the actual Khedive’s mother.
This majestic old lady is one of the most familiar figures on the
Bosphorus. Her annual approach and departure on her son’s big turbine
yacht _Mahroussah_ are the signals for spring and autumn to open their
campaigns, while her skimming mahogany steam-launch is an integral part
of summer. She is, moreover, a person whom the poor of her neighbourhood
have cause to bless. During the lenten month of Ramazan she provides
_iftar_, the sunset breakfast of the day, for any who choose to come
to her door. So many choose to come that during that month her grocery
bills must be quite appalling. And on occasions of public rejoicing she
literally keeps open house—or open garden. She admits any and all within
her gates, offers them coffee, ices, and cigarettes, and entertains them
with music.
The custom, for the rest, is common among the Turks at all times of
festivity. I remember going one night to another garden in Bebek, not
by invitation but because any one was free to go in order to celebrate
the accession day of his majesty Abd ül Hamid II. The garden belonged
to a younger brother of that personage, popularly known as Cowherd
Solomon Esquire. For Turkish princes have no title other than that of
their humblest subject. A band was playing in the garden, which is on
the very top of Bebek hill, and the Greeks of the village were dancing
among the flower-beds, while a row of little princes and princesses
in big gilt armchairs looked solemnly on. Beyond them a clump of huge
umbrella-pines lifted themselves darkly against the fairy scene of the
illuminated Bosphorus. Every other villa was outlined in light, the water
burned with reflections of architectural designs or of Arabic texts of
fire, and the far-away hill of Chamlîja was one twinkling field of the
cloth of gold. Süleïman Effendi was reported to be not too strong in the
head but to make up for it by possessing the Evil Eye and the greatest
understanding of cows of any man in Constantinople. Of these he kept a
large herd, selling their milk like any commoner; and when he wished to
add to their number no man dared refuse to sell to him. If he did the cow
in question was sure to die within the month by reason of the Evil Eye of
the imperial milkman. Abd ül Hamid caused this eccentric old gentleman
much unhappiness, tormenting him greatly with spies. Süleïman Effendi
lived long enough to see the last of the spies, however, if not of Abd ül
Hamid. And he must have been not altogether destitute of human qualities,
for his wife died of grief the day after his death.
[Illustration: The Villa of the Sun, Kandilli]
The picturesque bay of Bebek and the opposite headland of Kandilli are
so involved with historic memories that I am more and more tempted to
stray out of my gardens. Kandilli, in particular, is full of plane-trees
and terraces and rows of stone-pines to prove that older generations
were not blind to its enchantments. Among other sultans, Mehmed IV
spent much of his time there. His favourite wife was the lady of taste
and determination who built the mosque of the New Mother in Scutari.
Discovering once that her lord spent more of his hours than she found
proper in the society of a Circassian dancing-girl, she caused a man
slave of her own to be educated in the terpsichorean art and presented
him to the Sultan. She then asked one night, as they sat at the edge of
the water at Kandilli, that the two dancers perform together for her
amusement. The slaves accordingly danced on the terrace before their
imperial masters, nearer and nearer the water, till the man, by a
seemingly careless thrust of his foot, tripped his companion into the
Bosphorus. She was immediately carried away into the dark by the current,
here extremely swift; and the Sultana doubtless slept the more sweetly,
knowing there was one less dancer in the world.
I do not know whether the imperial villa near the boat landing that was
torn down in 1913 was the scene of this little drama. _Yalî_ is the
true name of such a country house, if it is built, as it should be, on
the edge of the water, with gateways letting a little of the Bosphorus
into the lower hall and making there a boat-house and _porte cochère_
in one. In every country place of any size there is a _kyöshk_ as well,
otherwise a kiosk, built somewhere in the garden and constituting one of
its more formal ornaments. I once had the honour of being received in a
kiosk belonging to a member of the imperial family, which was larger than
the _yalî_ to which it belonged. It was, alas, no such place as I have
read of in Lady Mary Montagu, who describes a room built by the sultan
of her day for his daughter, “wainscotted with mother of pearl fastened
with emeralds like nails.” She also speaks of wainscotting of “cedar set
off with silver nails” and “walls all crusted with Japan China,” “the
whole adorned with a profusion of marble, gilding, and the most exquisite
painting of fruit and flowers.” These splendours were no invention of
Lady Mary, for many other visitors testify to them, as well as Melling,
Van Mour, and all their school of painters of the Bosphorus. Those villas
never were of an enduring architecture, and the spell of Europe—more
potent than ever for us was that of the gorgeous East—has been more fatal
to them than time and fire. Still, the most modern _yalî_, if designed by
an architect of the country, almost always has some saving touch of its
own. And in the middle Bosphorus there are quite a number of houses which
preserve the graceful old architecture.
The number of those which preserve even a remnant of the old interior
decoration is much more limited. One of them is a kiosk at Emirgyan
belonging to the _Sherifs_ of Mecca. And it is quaint to see what an
air, both whimsical and distinguished, that faded eighteenth-century
decoration gains from the ugly modern furniture set about a fountain
in the cross-shaped saloon of those descendants of the Prophet. The
most complete example of the work of the same period is the house on
Arnaout-kyöi Point belonging to an Armenian family, unmistakable by
its projecting upper stories and the agreeable irregularity of its
silhouette. Passers along the quay may catch a glimpse of a high rococo
ceiling in rose and gold. But a glimpse of a more perfect ceiling is
to be caught by any one who rows up the Asiatic shore from Anadolou
Hissar—if he be not too contemptuous of certain crazy wooden piles which
his caïque will pass.
[Illustration: An eighteenth-century villa at Arnaout-kyöi]
This ceiling, and the whole room to which it belongs, is the most
precious thing of its kind in all Constantinople, if not in all the
world. The design of the room is that of the earlier Broussa mosques, a
T-shaped arrangement with the top of the T in the garden and three square
bays, slightly raised above a central square, leaning out on piles above
the water. At the intersection of the two axes stands a fountain, with
a cluster of marble stalactites rising from a filigree marble pedestal,
in the centre of a shallow square tank of marble. On the garden side,
where the door is, there are no windows, but a series of cupboards and
niches of some light wood once delicately inlaid with wavy stems and
pointed leaves. On the water side an unbroken succession of windows,
not very tall and set at the level of the divan, look north and west and
south, and bring the Bosphorus like a great sparkling frieze into the
pavilion. They also make the water light, by reflection, the upper part
of the room. At the height of the window tops a shelf, slightly carved
and gilded, runs entirely around the walls. Above that rises a frieze of
painted panels in which tall sprays of lilies and other flowers stand in
blue and white jars, each in a pointed arch and each framed by garlands
of tiny conventionalised flowers. And above all hangs a golden ceiling,
domed over the fountain, over each bay hollowed into an oblong recess,
lovely with latticework and stalactites and carved bosses and Moorish
traceries of interlaced stars, and strange border loops of a blue that
echoes the jars below or the sea outside, and touches of a deep green,
and exquisite little flowers, all shimmering in a light of restless water.
[Illustration: The golden room of Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha]
The creator of this masterpiece was that great friend of the arts
Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha, to whose _medresseh_ in Stamboul I have already
referred. His _yalî_ has disappeared and his legendary pleasure-grounds
are now a wilderness, albeit superlatively pleasant still either to look
into or to look out of. In them is one of the sixteen famous springs of
Hafid Effendi. Historic garden-parties were given in this garden, and
ambassadors whom sultans delighted to honour were taken to sit in the
golden room. It used to be a detached kiosk in Hüsseïn Pasha’s garden.
In modern times a house has been added to it, and a retired provincial
governor has inherited the fallen splendour of the Kyöprülüs. Some day,
I suppose, it will all go up in smoke or tumble into the Bosphorus. In
the meantime the fountain is still, the precious marquetry has been
picked out of the doors, the woodwork cracks and sags, the blue jars and
the flowers become more and more ghostly, the gold of the ceiling grows
dimmer every day. But even so, the golden room has a charm that it can
never have had when the afternoon sun first shimmered into it.
* * * * *
The gardens of the lower Bosphorus are in many ways less picturesque than
those nearer the Black Sea. The hills on which they lie are in general
lower, farther apart, and more thickly covered with houses. With their
milder air, however, their more Mediterranean light, and their glimpse
into the Sea of Marmora, they enjoy another, a supreme, advantage.
The upper Bosphorus—well, in other places you may see sharply rising
slopes terraced or wooded. Beside the Nordfjord, the coast of Dalmatia,
or Lake Como, where would the Bosphorus be? But nowhere else may you
behold the silhouette of Stamboul. And that, pricking the sky above its
busy harbour, just not closing the wide perspective that shines away
to the south, is the unparalleled ornament of the gardens of the lower
Bosphorus. The garden that Melling laid out for the princess Hadijeh
was in this part of the strait, at the point of Defterdar Bournou,
above Orta-kyöi. Abd ül Hamid, who to his other crimes added a culpable
crudity of taste, pulled down the princess’s charming old house in order
to build two hideous new ones for two daughters of his own. Most of the
finest sites in the neighbourhood, or on the opposite shore, belong or
have belonged to different members of the imperial family. Abd ül Hamid
himself was brought back from Salonica at the outbreak of the Balkan War
and shut up in the Asiatic garden of Beïlerbeï. In this old pleasance of
the sultans Abd ül Aziz built a palace for the empress Eugénie when she
went to the East to open the Suez Canal. It must have been strange to
Abd ül Hamid to look out from its windows at the opposite park where he
reigned for thirty-three years. The city of palaces which grew up around
him there was never known otherwise than as Yîldîz Kiosk—the Pavilion of
the Star—from a _kyöshk_ his father built. Another pavilion in that park,
also visible from Beïlerbeï, is the Malta Kiosk, where Abd ül Hamid’s
older brother Mourad passed the first months of his long captivity, and
where Midhat Pasha, father of the Turkish constitution, was iniquitously
tried for the murder of Abd ül Aziz. In the pleasant lower hall of this
little palace, almost filled by a marble basin of goldfish, it is not
easy to reconstitute that drama so fateful for Turkey—which did not end
when Abd ül Hamid received from Arabia, in a box labelled “Old Japanese
Ivory,” the head of the murdered patriot.
The park of Yîldîz originally belonged to the palace whose name of
Chira’an—The Torches—has been corrupted by Europeans into Cheragan.
Only a ruin stands there now, on which Abd ül Aziz once squandered half
the revenues of the empire. He stumbled on the threshold the first time
he went into his new house, and never would live in it; but after his
dethronement he either committed suicide or was murdered there. His
successor, Mourad V, dethroned in turn after a reign of three months,
lived in his unhappy uncle’s palace for nearly thirty years. Abd ül
Hamid is said to have kept his brother so rigorously that the ladies of
the family were at one time compelled to dress in the curtains of the
palace. The so-called mad Sultan, deprived of books and even of writing
materials, taught his children to read and write by means of charcoal on
the parquet floor. The imperial prisoner occupied the central rooms of
the palace, the doors leading from which were nailed up. When architects
were called after his death to put the palace in order they found a foot
of water standing on the marble floor of the state entrance, at the north
end; and street dogs, jumping in and out of the broken windows, lived
in the magnificent throne-room above. Upon his own dethronement, Abd ül
Hamid begged to be allowed to retire to this splendid residence. It was
presented, instead, to the nation by Sultan Mehmed V for a parliament
house. But after two months of occupancy as such it was destroyed by
fire. It was only the last of many palaces, one of which was built by
Selim III and in which Melling, again, had a hand. The name Chira’an
goes back, I believe, to the time of Ahmed III, whose Grand Vizier and
son-in-law, Ibrahim Pasha, had a palace there. This minister, by some
reports a renegade Armenian, is famous in Turkish annals for his liberal
administration, for his many public buildings, and for his introduction
of printing into the Ottoman Empire. Among his other talents was one
for humouring the tastes of his splendour-loving master. Ibrahim
Pasha gave the Sultan one night at Chira’an a garden-party, at which
countless tortoises, with lights fastened to their shells, made a moving
illumination among the trees. Whence the name of The Torches.
Ahmed III gave many similar entertainments in his own gardens on Seraglio
Point, sometimes fêtes of lights, sometimes fêtes of flowers. Of the
latter he had such an admiration that he created at his court a Master
of Flowers, whose credentials, ornamented by gilt roses, ended thus: “We
command that all gardeners recognise for their chief the bearer of this
diploma; that they be in his presence all eye like the narcissus, all
ear like the rose; that they have not ten tongues like the lily; that
they transform not the pointed pistil of the tongue into the thorn of
the pomegranate, dyeing it in the blood of inconvenient words. Let them
be modest, and let them keep, like the rosebud, their lips closed. Let
them not speak before their time, like the blue hyacinth, which scatters
its perfume before men ask for it. Finally, let them humbly incline
themselves before him like the violet, and let them not show themselves
recalcitrant.” The tulip does not seem to be mentioned in this document,
but the culture of tulips under Ahmed III and his congenial Grand Vizier
became as extravagant a rage as ever it did in Holland. Indeed, tulips
were first introduced into the Low Countries from Constantinople, by the
Fleming Ogier de Busbecq, ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire to Süleïman
the Magnificent. Under the Latinised form of his name he has left a
quaint memoir of his two embassies. The word tulip is a corruption of
the Turkish word _dülbend_—turban—which was a favourite nickname of the
flower among the Turks. Ahmed III always celebrated tulip time, inviting
the grandees of the empire to come and admire his tulip beds. He devised
a way of illuminating them at night with the small glass cup lamps used
in mosques. Mahmoud I was of a taste to continue this pretty custom. He
also laid out special tulip and hyacinth gardens behind the summer palace
he built at the water’s edge. Alleys of cypress-trees were there, and a
great pool of marble, and about it the slaves of the harem would sing and
dance in the fairy light of the illuminated flowers.
Nothing is left now of this garden, or the palace to which it belonged,
or the Gate of the Cannon, after which they were named. A disastrous fire
and the building of the Bulgarian railway long made a waste of the tip of
Seraglio Point, until in 1913 it was turned into a public park. Seraglio
Point is an Italian misnomer for the Turkish _Seraï Bournou_—Palace
Point. But a palace and gardens remain, not far away, and to them has
been transferred the title of Top Kapou—Cannon Gate. Although this is now
the oldest palace in Constantinople, the name of _Eski Seraï_—the Old
Palace—belongs to the site of that older one which the Conqueror built
on the hill of the War Department. He was the first, however, to set
apart Seraglio Point as a pleasure-ground for his family, and he built
the _Chinili-Kyöshk_, now of the Imperial Museum. His son and grandson
built other pavilions of their own, but it was not until the reign of
his great-grandson Süleïman I that the court was definitely transferred
to the Seraglio. As in the Palace of Celestial Purity in the Forbidden
City, no woman had up to that time been permitted to sleep there. And
it is perhaps significant that the decadence of the empire began very
soon after the transfer of the harem to the new palace. From that time
on the Old Palace, whose grounds Süleïman greatly curtailed to make
room for his two principal mosques, was reserved for the families of
deceased sultans, while the new palace was continually enlarged and
beautified. Something legendary attaches to it in the eyes of the common
people, who are pleasantly inclined to confuse King Solomon, the friend
of the Queen of Sheba, and a great personage in Mohammedan folklore,
with their own Sultan Süleïman. A soldier from Asia Minor related to
me once how Sultan Solomon sent out four birds to the four quarters of
heaven to discover the most perfect site for a palace, and how they came
back with the news that no place was to be found in the world so airy
or so beautiful as Seraglio Point. He accordingly built the palace of
Top Kapou. And beneath it he hollowed out a space reaching far under the
sea in which he planted a forest of marble pillars. I cannot vouch for
the last part of the story, but I am inclined to agree with the Sultan’s
birds. Certainly the garden of the Seraglio has its superb situation
between the Golden Horn and the Marmora, its crescent panorama of cities,
seas, and islands, and its mementoes of the past, to put it alone among
the gardens of the world. Acropolis of ancient Byzantium, pleasance of
Roman, Greek, and Ottoman emperors for sixteen hundred years, it is more
haunted by associations than any other garden in Europe. One could make
a library alone of the precious things its triple walls enclose: the
column of Claudius Gothicus, the oldest Roman monument in the city; the
church of St. Irene, originally built by Constantine, whose mosaics look
down as Justinian and Leo left them on the keys of conquered cities, the
battle-flags of a hundred fields, the arms and trophies of the martial
period of the Turks; the sarcophagus of Alexander, which is but one
of the glories of the museum; the imperial library, where the MS. of
Critobulus was discovered; the imperial treasury, with its jewels, coins,
rare stuffs, gemmed furniture, the gifts and spoil of kings, in vaults
too dim and crowded for their splendour to be seen; the sacred relics of
the Prophet which Selim I captured with Egypt and which constitute the
credentials of the sultans to the caliphate of Islam. The structure in
which these are preserved, its broad eaves and crusting of flowered tiles
reflected in a pool bordered by lanterns to be lit on holy nights, is one
of the things that make that garden incomparable. Then there are quaint
turrets and doorways; there are kiosks; there are terraces; there are
white cloisters a little grassy and neglected; there are black cypresses
and monstrous plane-trees into which the sun looks with such an air of
antique familiarity.
Of all this every one has written who has ever been to Constantinople.
But not many have written of a part of the garden which until the fall
of Abd ül Hamid almost no outsider had visited. A few wrote then of the
strange scene which took place there when the slaves of the deposed
Sultan were set at liberty, and any Circassian who believed himself to
have a relative in the imperial harem was invited to come and take her
away. The dramatic contrasts and disappointments one could imagine made a
true term to all the passionate associations of that place. No one lives
there now. When a few more years have passed and no breathing person has
any vital memory connected with it, the harem of the old Seraglio will
be, like how many other places devised by a man to house his own life, a
resort for sightseers at so much a head, a mere piece of the taste of a
time. As it is, the Gate of Felicity does not open too easily, and one
can still feel the irony of its name.
[Illustration: In the harem of the Seraglio
Photograph by Abdullah Frères, Constantinople]
The entrance to the harem is under the pointed tower which catches
the eye from afar. You go first into the court of the black eunuchs,
narrow, high-walled on one side, overlooked on the other by a tiled
porch and by a series of cells which never can have been light enough
for the tiles that line them to be visible. A great hooded fireplace
terminates the dark passage into which they open. Up-stairs are roomier
and lighter quarters, also tiled, for the superior dignitaries of this
African colony. A few vestiges of their power remain in the vestibule
at the farther end of the court, in the shape of various instruments
of torture. In a dark angle of this place, which communicates with the
Court of the Pages and the Sultan’s quarters, a lantern hanging behind a
rail marks where the old _valideh_ Kyössem was strangled with a curtain
cord. Tiles of the same period as her mosque face one of the side walls
with an elegant row of cypress-trees. Beyond them opens another court.
More tiles are there, and a lane of turf, where only the Sultan might
ride, leads between the flagstones to a marble block. The interior of
the harem is a labyrinth so complicated that I would have to visit it
many more times to bring away any clear idea of its arrangement. There
is very little of what we would call splendour in those endless rooms
that sultan after sultan added to without order or plan. They contain,
as true Turkish rooms should, almost no furniture. What furniture they
do contain is late Empire, rather the worse for wear. Ugly European
carpets cover a few floors. Stuffy European hangings drape a few windows.
Gilded canopies cover a dais or two where a _valideh soultan_ held her
court—and almost the whole of a dark cupboard where a sultana did not
disdain to sleep. There are ceilings more or less elaborately carved and
gilded. There are big niches for braziers. There are doors inlaid with
tortoise-shell and ivory and mother-of-pearl. There are wall fountains,
some of them lovely with sculptured reliefs and painting. There are
baths, also containing fountains, and screens of filigree marble, and
marble tanks. There are, above all, tiles and tiles and tiles. They line
almost all the rooms, and many of them are very bad. The new fashion
in taste which Ahmed III imported from France became more and more
popular until it nearly swallowed up the whole palace. Who knows what
priceless walls were rifled in order to make room for cheap Dutch tiles
and frescoes of imaginary perspectives! Porcelain and marble have been
visibly painted over in some places, and panels that end up-stairs or in
another room prove how ruthlessly partitions were put up. Yet there is
a seducing quaintness about the Turkish rococo at its best. And there
are enough good tiles left in the palace to make up for all the rest.
I remember some simple ones in a passage, representing nothing but the
tents of a camp, and several showing the holy places of Mecca. These, I
believe, were of the time of Mehmed III. Others are absolutely the most
superb things of their kind in Constantinople. A room of Mourad III, the
gallery so called of Sultan Selim, and a magnificent hall which Süleïman
himself might have built, if he did not, give an idea of what a magic
place that old labyrinth may originally have been. Two rooms of Ahmed
I are also charming, one a small dining-room delicately painted with
fruit and flowers, the other a library, with inlaid cupboards for books
and a quantity of cool green tiles. Interesting in another way is the
_Kafess_, the Cage, where the young princes lived until it was time for
them to ascend the throne—or to be strangled. Sultan Ibrahim was there
when courtiers came to do homage to him, with the news that his terrible
brother Mourad IV was dead; but he would not believe it until his mother,
the great Kyössem, ordered Mourad’s body to be shown him. The broad eaves
and exterior tiles of the Cage overhang a court of two levels, through
the middle of whose stone pavement a fantastic little river is cut for
running water. The one open side, guarded by a balustrade of perforated
marble, overlooks a sunken garden and a bit of the Golden Horn. And I
remember another court, higher in the air, where an upper story leaned
out on brackets, as if for a better view of the Bosphorus, and where
cherry-trees stood in blossom around a central pool.
[Illustration: The “Cage” of the Seraglio
Photograph by Abdullah Frères, Constantinople]
[Illustration]
VIII
THE MOON OF RAMAZAN
_In the name of the most merciful God: Verily we sent down
the Koran in the night of Al Kad’r. And what shall make thee
understand how excellent the night of Al Kad’r is? The night
of Al Kad’r is better than a thousand months. Therein do
the angels descend, and the spirit of Gabriel also, by the
permission of their Lord, with his decrees concerning every
matter. It is peace until the rising of the morn._—Sale’s KORAN.
While Ramazan is the sole month of the Mohammedan calendar generally
known to the infidel world, the infidel world has never been very sure
whether to spell its last syllable with a _d_ or with a _z_. Let the
infidel world accordingly know that either is right in its own domain.
The Arabs say Ramadan, the Persians and the Turks say Ramazan. And they
all observe throughout the month a species of fast that has no precise
counterpart in the West. So long as the sun is in the sky, food or drink
of any kind may not pass the true believer’s lips. He is not even allowed
the sweet solace of a cigarette. But from the firing of the sunset gun
until it is light enough to distinguish a white hair from a black he may
feast to surfeiting.
Nothing is more characteristic of late afternoons in Ramazan than
the preparations for the evening meal which preoccupy all Moslems,
particularly those who work with their hands. As the sun nears the
horizon, fires are lighted, tables are spread, bread is broken, water
is poured out, cigarettes are rolled, and hands are lifted half-way to
the mouth, in expectation of the signal that gives liberty to eat.
This breaking of the daytime fast is called _iftar_, which means feast
or rejoicing, and is an institution in itself. The true _iftar_ begins
with _hors-d’œuvres_ of various sorts—olives, cheese, and preserves,
with sweet _simits_, which are rings of hard pastry, and round flaps of
hot unleavened bread, called _pideh_. Then should come a vegetable soup,
and eggs cooked with cheese or _pastîrma_—the sausage of the country—and
I know not how many other dainties peculiar to the season, served in
bewildering variety and washed down, it may be, with water from the
sacred well Zemzem in Mecca. Any Turkish dinner is colossal, but _iftar_
in a great house is well nigh fatal to a foreigner. Foreigners have the
better opportunity to become acquainted with them because Ramazan is the
proverbial time for dinner-parties. The rich keep open house throughout
the month, while the poorest make it a point to entertain their
particular friends at _iftar_. The last meal of the night also has a name
of its own, _sohour_, which is derived from the word for dawn. Watchmen
patrol the streets with drums to wake people up in time for it, while
another cannon announces when the fast begins again.
In a primitive community like that of the Prophet’s Arabia and in a
climate where people anyway sleep during much of the day, Ramazan might
be comparatively easy to keep. Under modern conditions, and especially
in a town containing so large an alien population as Constantinople, it
is not surprising that the fast is somewhat intermittently observed. The
more Europeanised Turks make no pretence of fasting, to the no small
scandal of their servants. Others strengthen their resolution by an
occasional bite in private or a secret cigarette. Every now and then
some such person is arrested and fined, for church and state are still
officially one in Turkey, and the _Sheriat_ is a system of Blue Laws that
would leave very little room for individual judgment if it succeeded in
altogether having its way. Those who are most conscientious are those
upon whom the fast falls most heavily—peasants and workmen who cannot
turn day and night about. So complete a derangement of all the habits of
life naturally has its effect. No one who employs Turks or does business
with them can get anything done, and tempers habitually mild grow
strained as the month proceeds. Thus in one way or another does Ramazan
continue to colour the whole life of the cosmopolitan city.
Stamboul, always solemn under her centuries and proud even in decay, is
never prouder or more solemn than when illuminated for the holy month of
Islam. It is one of the sights of the world to see the dark city under
the moon of Ramazan, constellated with circlets of light that bead the
galleries of numberless minarets. The imperial mosques that cut out so
superb a silhouette above the climbing roofs have two, four, or six
minarets to illuminate, some of them with three galleries apiece. And
they use a yet more magical device. Lines are slung between minaret and
minaret, and from them are suspended small glass mosque lamps in some
decorative order. During the first half of the month they spell, as if in
sparks of gold, a simple phrase like “O Allah!” or “O Mohammed!” After
the fifteenth they often trace in the dark sky the outline of a flower or
a ship. There is something starlike about these graceful illuminations,
but they are called _mahieh_—moonlight.
Théophile Gautier called Ramazan a Lent lined with a Carnival. The phrase
is a happy one if it does not lead the reader into attributing a Latin
vivacity to Turkish merrymakings. The streets of Stamboul, ordinarily so
deserted at night, are full of life during the nights of Ramazan. But
their gaiety is little enough like the uproar of a European Carnival.
Even in the busiest centres of amusement, where a carriage or even a man
often finds difficulty in passing, there is none of the wild hilarity
whereby an Occidental must express his sense of the joy of life. The
people stroll quietly up and down or sit quietly in the coffee-houses,
making their _kef_ in a way that reveals Turkish character on its most
sympathetic side. They are practically all men. Early in the evening
veiled women in their loose street costume may sometimes be seen,
accompanied by a servant with a lantern. But as the hours wear on they
disappear, leaving only fezzes and turbans in the streets. Even the
Christian women, who also inhabit their quarters of Stamboul, observe the
custom. It is the rarest thing in the world for an Armenian or a Greek of
the poorer classes to take his wife out with him at night.
The coffee-houses are, perhaps, the most characteristic feature of
Stamboul streets during the nights of Ramazan. In the daytime they are
closed, or the purely Turkish ones are, as there is then no scope for
their activities. They are open all night long, however. And few be they
that do not attempt to add in some way to their customary attractions.
This is often accomplished in a simple manner with the aid of an
instrument that we do not associate with the East—I mean the gramophone,
which enjoys an enormous popularity in Constantinople. There, however, it
has been taught to utter sounds which might prevent many from recognising
an old friend. I confess that I prefer myself the living executant to
his mechanical echo. One never has to go far during Ramazan to find
him. Itinerant gipsies, masters of pipe and tom-tom, are then much in
evidence in the humbler coffee-houses. There they go, two and two, a
man and a boy, in the wide black trousers, the dark-red girdle, and
the almost black fez which they affect. In larger coffee-houses there
will be a whole orchestra, so called, of the fine lute, if one may
so translate its Turkish title—a company of singers who also play on
instruments of strange names and curves that suit the music they make.
One such instrument, the _out_, is ancestor to the European lute. There
are those, indeed, who find no music in the broken rhythms, the mounting
minor, of a harmony which the Russian composers have only recently begun
to make comprehensible to Western ears. For myself, I know too little of
music to tell what relation it may bear to the antique modes. But I can
listen, as long as musicians will perform, to those infinite repetitions,
that insistent sounding of the minor key. It pleases me to hear in them
a music come from far away—from unknown river gorges, from camp-fires
glimmering on great plains. There are flashes, too, of light, of song,
the playing of shepherds’ pipes, the swoop of horsemen, and sudden
outcries of savagery. But the note to which it all comes back is the
monotone of a primitive life, like the day-long beat of camel bells. And
more than all, it is the mood of Asia, elsewhere so rarely understood,
which is neither lightness nor despair.
Dancing is not uncommon in the coffee-houses of the people during
Ramazan. Sometimes it is performed by the gipsy girls, dressed in vivid
cotton prints and jingling with sequins, who alone of their sex are
immodest enough to enter a coffee-house. Dancing boys are oftener the
performers—gipsies, Greeks, or Turks—who perpetuate a custom older than
the satyr dances of India or the Phrygian dances of Cybele. _Alimeh_,
whence the French _almée_, and _köchek_ are the technical names of
these not too respectable entertainers. Sometimes the habitués of the
coffee-house indulge in the dancing themselves, if they are not pure
Turks, forming a ring and keeping time to the sound of pipe and drum.
Of recent years, however, all this sort of thing has grown rare. What
has become rarer still is a form of amusement provided by the itinerant
story-teller, the _mettagh_, who still carries on in the East the
tradition of the troubadours. The stories he tells are more or less
on the order of the Arabian Nights, and not very suitable for mixed
companies—which for the rest are never found in coffee-shops. These men
are often wonderfully clever at character monologue or dialogue. They
collect their pay at a crucial moment of the action, refusing to continue
until the audience has testified to the sincerity of its interest by some
substantial token.
[Illustration: A Kara-gyöz poster]
A more elaborate form of entertainment is provided by coffee-houses
fortunate enough to possess a garden or some large back room. This is
the marionette theatre, and it is to be seen at no other time of the
year. The Turkish marionettes, known by the name of their star performer,
Kara-gyöz, are a national institution. In fact, their repertory includes
almost all there is of a national theatre. In common with other Asiatic
marionettes, they do not appear in person. The proscenium arch of their
miniature stage is filled with a sheet of lighted paper. The tiny actors,
cleverly jointed together of transparent materials, move between the
light and the paper, so that their coloured shadows are all that the
public sees. It is enough, however, to offer an amusement worth seeing.
The theatre of Kara-gyöz would make an interesting study in itself,
reflecting as it does the manners of the country. Sometimes, indeed, it
has reflected them so faithfully as to require the intervention of the
censor. But Kara-gyöz himself, otherwise Black-eye, is always amusing,
whatever may be his lapses from propriety. This truculent individual
must be a relative of Punch, although he is said to be a caricature of
a veritable person, one of Saladin’s viziers. He is a humpback with a
black beard and a raucous voice, to whom no enterprise is too difficult
or too absurd. He is accompanied by a right-hand man who points his
repartee and is alternately his dupe and his deceiver. The adventures of
this amorous pair and those of the crack-voiced ladies, the brilliantly
costumed gentlemen, the wonderful dogs, cats, mice, and other creatures
that go to make up the company, create a scene that a spectator of simple
tastes willingly revisits. Among the elements of his pleasure must be
counted the ill-lighted barrack or tent in which the representation
takes place, the gaily dressed children composing the better part of the
audience—here, for once, ladies are allowed!—the loquacious venders of
sweets and drinks, and the music of pipe and drum to the accompaniment of
which the little coloured shadows play on their lighted paper.
The shadow shows are by no means the only species of the dramatic art to
tempt the audiences of Ramazan. There are full-grown theatres that take
themselves, the drama—everything except the lives of their patrons—more
seriously. They are perfect fire-traps wherein the play’s the thing,
innocent as they in great part are of those devices of upholstery
which are the chief pride of the modern stage. The pit is aligned with
rush-bottomed stools and chairs, above which rise, in the European
fashion, tiers of not too Sybaritic boxes. A particularity of them is
that, like the cafés and the streets, they contain no ladies. While there
are Turkish theatres which ladies attend in the daytime, it is contrary
to custom for ladies to take part in public entertainments at night.
Consequently the European ladies who sometimes penetrate Stamboul during
the nights of Ramazan make themselves more conspicuous than is likely to
be pleasant and the objects of comment which it is well that they do not
understand. Women do appear on the stage, but they are never Turks. They
are usually Armenians, occasionally Syrians or Greeks, whose murder of
the language is condoned by the exigencies of the case.
The performances last the better part of the night. They begin at
three o’clock Turkish, or three hours after sunset at any season of
the year, and close in time for the last meal of the night. There is a
curtain-raiser, which is not seldom drawn from the manners of the people.
The piece of resistance, however, is a comedy or melodrama adapted from
the European stage. The first is more likely to be interesting to an
outsider, for the Turks are capital comedians. But the more serious
pieces are characteristic, too, in their mixture of East and West. Madam
Contess, as she is flatly pronounced, will be attended by servants in fez
and _shalvars_, and two gentlemen in top hats will salute each other with
earth-sweeping salaams.
Between the two plays intervene a couple of hours or so of singing and
dancing that are to many the meat in the sandwich. These entertainments
are also highly characteristic of the city that straddles two continents.
The costume of the performers is supposably European, although no Western
_almée_ would consent to be encumbered with the skirts and sleeves of
her Armenian sister, or let her locks hang so ingenuously down her back.
She would also be more scrupulous with regard to her colour schemes.
Whatever the tint of their costume, the _ballerine_ of Stamboul cherish
an ineradicable partiality for pink stockings. As feminine charm
increases, to the eye of an Oriental admirer, in direct proportion to the
avoirdupois of the charmer, the effect is sometimes startling.
The entertainment offered by these ladies is more of the East than of the
West. It is a combination of song and dance, accompanied by strings and
the clapping of the castanet. The music is even more monotonous, in the
literal sense of the word, than that of the fine lute. To the tyro one
song sounds exactly like another, each beginning on the same high note
and each _glissando_ to the same low one. And you are inclined to protest
that a lady suffering from so cruel a cold should never be permitted
to leave her room, much less appear in pink stockings at midnight on
a ramshackle wooden stage. But there is a melancholy passion in those
endless love-songs that haunts the memory—at least of most of those
present, who listen in the silence of perfect appreciation. The dancing
into which each song dies away has been a little more tampered with by
the West. While the basis of it is the Arab _danse du ventre_, it is a
_danse du ventre_ chastened by the cult of the toe. What there may be of
grossness about it is pleasantly tempered for an occasional spectator by
the personal equation. I remember watching, once, an _almée_ who must
have been in her prime before many of her public were in their cradles.
But they had grown up in her tradition, and cries of “One more!” greeted
each effort of her poor old cracked voice. There was nothing pitiable
about it. The audience had a frank affection for her, independent of her
overripe enchantments, and she danced terrible dances for them, eyes half
shut, with a grandmotherly indulgence that entirely took away from the
nature of what she was doing.
So popular is this form of entertainment that it is thrown in as a
sop to sweeten most of the variety performances with which Ramazan
abounds. The street of Stamboul where the theatres cluster is a perfect
Bowery of cinematographs, music-halls, shooting-galleries, acrobatic
exhibitions, and side-shows of a country circus. But it is a Bowery with
the reputation of Broadway, and a picturesqueness that neither can boast.
Part of the picturesqueness it had when I first knew it has gone—in
the shape of the quaint arcades that lined one stretch of it. But the
succession of bright little coffee-houses remains, and the white mosque,
ethereal at night among its dark trees, that Süleïman the Magnificent
built in memory of his dead son. Crowds and carriages abound in
Shah-zadeh-Bashi until two o’clock in the morning, itinerant peddlers of
good things to eat and drink call their wares, tom-toms beat, and pipes
cry their wild invitation to various smoky interiors.
[Illustration: Wrestlers]
One interior to which they invite is the open space, enclosed by green
tent-cloth and not too brilliantly lighted, where may be seen the great
Turkish sport of wrestling. Spectators of distinction are accommodated
with chairs under an awning; the others squat on their heels around
the ring. The wrestlers, sometimes several pairs at a time, appear
barefooted, in leather breeches reaching just below the knee. Their first
act, if you please, is to anoint themselves from head to foot with oil.
That done, each couple stand side by side, join right hands, and bend
with the right foot forward, while an old man recites over them some
incomprehensible rubric, giving their names and recommending them to the
suffrage of the public. They then prance forward to the tent of honour,
alternately clapping their hands and their leather legs. There they kneel
on one knee and salaam three times. Finally, after more prancing and
slapping, during the course of which they hastily shake hands once as
they run past each other, they are ready to begin. They do so by facing
each other at arm’s length, putting their hands on each other’s shoulders
and bending forward till their heads touch. They make no attempt at
clinching. That is apparently the one hold forbidden. The game is to
throw their opponent by pushing his head down till they can get him
around the body or by catching at his legs. Slippery as the wrestlers are
with oil, it is no easy matter. Time after time one will seem to have
his man, only to let him wriggle away. Then they go at each other again
with a defiant “Ho-ho!” The trick is generally done in the end by getting
hold of the breeches. When, at last, one of the two is thrown, the oily
opponents tenderly embrace and then make a round of the ring collecting
tips. Celebrated wrestlers, however, collect their money first. The scene
is picturesque enough under the moon of Ramazan, with the nude figures
glistening in the lamplight, the dimmer ring of faces encircling them,
and the troubled music of pipe and drum mounting into the night.
I must beware of giving the impression that Ramazan is merely a holiday
season. It is a holy month, and during its term religious zeal rises
higher than at any other time. It is enjoined upon the faithful to read
the Koran through during Ramazan, and to perform other meritorious deeds.
The last prayer of the day, which occurs two hours after sunset, takes on
a special significance. Ordinarily known as _yassî_, it is then called
_teravi_—repose—and in place of the usual five prostrations twenty-two
are performed. The ungodly say that this is to aid the digestion of those
who have just eaten a heavy _iftar_. Preaching also takes place every
night in the mosques, and many of the services are attended by women.
This custom was utilised during the Ramazan of 1326, otherwise 1908, for
enlightening the provinces on the subject of the constitution, as it was
in the capital for various attempts to subvert the same.
Two dates in the month have a particular importance. On the earlier of
these, the fifteenth, takes place the ceremony of kissing the Prophet’s
mantle. It used to be one of the most picturesque spectacles of the
city. It still must be for those fortunate enough to enter the Chamber
of the Noble Robe in the Seraglio. I have never done so, nor has any
other Christian unless in disguise. This is the place where the relics
of the Prophet are kept—his cloak, his banner, his sword, his bow, his
staff, one of his teeth, and several hairs of his beard. One of the
last has occasionally been given away as a mark of the highest possible
honour. The swords and other relics of the first three caliphs and of
the companions of the Prophet are also preserved there, together with
a silver key of the Kaaba. The most important are the Sacred Standard,
which used to lead the Sultan’s armies to war, and the Sacred Mantle.
This was given by Mohammed to a poet of his day, who composed the
celebrated ode in honour of the Prophet entitled _Al Borda_—The Mantle.
When, reciting it for the first time, he came to the verse, “For the
Prophet is a sword, drawn from the scabbard of God,” Mohammed threw his
own cloak over his shoulders. The poet religiously preserved the gift and
handed it down to his descendants, who performed miracles with the water
into which they dipped it.
To house these treasures Sultan Selim I, who captured them among the
spoils of Cairo, built a pavilion in the grounds of the Seraglio, which
was restored and enlarged at immense cost by Mahmoud I. Those who have
seen it say that the Chamber of the Noble Robe is a great domed room
lined with magnificent tiles, and that the sacred relics, under a sort
of silver baldacchino, are kept behind a wrought-silver screen in a
chest of beaten gold. The ceremony of opening them is performed by the
Sultan in person, who is supposed to oversee the necessary preparations
on the fourteenth, and who, on the morning of the fifteenth, goes in
state to the Seraglio accompanied by the members of his family and the
grandees of the empire. The mantle is said to be wrapped in forty silk
covers. Whether all of them or any of them are removed for the ceremony
I cannot say. At all events, those who attend it are given the privilege
of kissing the relic, in order of rank. Each time the spot is wiped with
a silk handkerchief inscribed with verses from the Koran, which is then
presented to the person whose kiss it removed. At the end of the ceremony
the part of the mantle or of its cover which received the homage of
those present is washed in a silver basin, and the water is preserved in
ornamental bottles for the Sultan and a few other privileged persons. A
drop of this water is considered highly efficacious against all manner
of ills, or is a much-prized addition to the drinking water of _iftar_.
The ceremony is repeated for the benefit of the ladies of the palace and
other great ladies. And a sort of replica of it takes place in the mosque
of Hekim-zadeh Ali Pasha, in the back of Stamboul, where a second mantle
of the Prophet is preserved.
Mohammedan doctors have greatly disagreed as to the most important
date of Ramazan. The Turks, at all events, now celebrate it on the
twenty-seventh. They then commemorate the night when the Koran was sent
down from the highest heaven to the lowest and when Gabriel began to make
revelation of it to the Prophet. Mohammedans also believe that on that
night are issued the divine decrees for the following year. They call it
the Night of Power, after the ninety-seventh chapter of the Koran, and
keep it as one of the seven holy nights of the year. Consequently, there
is little to be seen in the pleasure resorts of Stamboul on the Night
of Power—which, as foreigners are inclined to forget, is the eve of the
anniversary. Most people spend the evening in the mosques. A special
service takes the place of the usual prayer, and after it the larger
congregations break up into a series of groups around _mollahs_, who
expound the events of the sacred day.
On that one night of the year the Sultan goes to prayer outside of his
palace. The state with which he does so is a sight to be seen, being
a survival of a curious corollary of the tradition of the day. An old
custom made it obligatory upon the Sultan to take a new wife on the Night
of Power, in the hope that, as the divine gift of the Koran had come down
on that night to Mohammed, so to his Caliph would heaven send an heir.
Despite the solemnity of the occasion, therefore, the imperial progress
to the mosque partakes of the nature of a gala procession. This was
particularly so in the time of Abd ül Hamid, who devoutly maintained the
customs of his fathers. I happened to see the last of the processions
with which he went out on the Night of Power. The short avenue leading
from Yîldîz Palace to the Hamidieh mosque was lined with arches and loops
of light, the mosque itself was outlined with little oil-lamps, and the
dip beyond was illuminated by Arabic texts and architectural designs. The
effect was fairylike against the dark background of the harbour and the
city, twinkling with the dim gold of far-away masts and minarets. While
the crowd was smaller than at the ordinary Friday _selamlîk_, the police
precautions were even stricter. But Turkish police have their own way of
enforcing regulations. I remember a young man in a fez who approached the
mosque too closely. A gorgeous officer went up to him: “My bey, stand
a little down the hill, I pray you.” The young man made an inaudible
reply, evidently an objection. The gorgeous officer: “My brother, I do
not reprimand you. I pray you to stand a little down the hill. It is
the order. What can I do, my child?” The young man stood a little down
the hill. Presently other young men came, to the sound of music, their
bayonets glittering in the lamplight. Some of them were on horseback, and
they carried long lances with red pennons. They lined the avenue. They
blocked up the cross streets. They surrounded the mosque. Before the last
of them were in place the Palace ladies, spectators of all pageants in
which their lord takes part, drove down and waited in their carriages in
the mosque yard. For some of them too, possibly, this was an anniversary.
Finally, the voice of the _müezin_ sounded from the ghostly minaret. In
his shrill sweet minor he began to chant the _ezan_—the call to prayer.
Then bands broke into the Hamidieh march, fireworks filled the sky with
coloured stars and comets’ tails, and the imperial cortège poured from
the palace gate—a mob of uniforms and caparisons and big white wedding
lanterns, scintillating about a victoria drawn by two superb white
horses. The man on the box, magnificent in scarlet and gold, was a more
striking figure than the pale, bent, hook-nosed, grey-bearded man in a
military overcoat behind him, who saluted in response to the soldiers’
“_Padisha’m chok yasha!_” The procession wheeled into the mosque yard,
and majesty entered the mosque. For an hour fireworks exploded, horses
pranced, and the crowd circulated very much at its will, while a high
sweet chanting sounded at intervals from within. Then majesty reappeared,
mob and wedding lanterns and all, the soldiers shouted again, and the
tall white archway once more received the Caliph of Islam.
[Illustration: The imperial cortège poured from the palace gate
Drawn by E. M. Ashe]
What takes place within the mosque, and, I suppose, within all mosques
on the Night of Power, Christians are generally allowed to watch from
the gallery of St. Sophia. The sight is most impressive when the
spectators are most limited in number—as was the case the first time I
went, ostensibly as a secretary of embassy. But I must add that I was
considerably impressed by the fact that another spectator was pointed out
to me as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle! Of course the place itself contributes
chiefly to the effect. Its hugeness, its openness, its perfect
proportion, its reaching of pillar into arch, of arch into vault, of
vault into dome, make an interior that predisposes to solemnity. The gold
mosaic that was once its splendour is now largely hidden under the colour
wash of the modern restorer, but the Night of Power brings out another
gold. The cornices of the three galleries, the arches of the first, the
vast space of the nave, are illuminated by thousands of wicks whose
soft clear burning in glass cups of oil is reflected by the precious
marbles of the walls. You look down from the gallery through a haze of
light diffused by the chandeliers swinging below. These, irregularly
hung about three central chandeliers, are scalloped like flowers of six
petals. They symbolise the macrocosm, I believe, but they might be great
water-lilies, floating in their medium of dusky gold. Under them the
nave is striated by lines of worshippers, their darkness varied by the
white of turban or robe, men all, all shoeless, standing one close to
the next with hands folded and heads down. There is not an exception to
the universal attitude of devotion—save among the chattering spectators.
The _imam_, from his high hooded pulpit with the sword and the banners
of conquest, recites the prayers of the evening. Choirs, sitting
cross-legged on raised platforms, chant responses from the Koran in a
soaring minor that sounds like the very cry of the spirit. Every now and
then a passionate “_Allah!_” breaks out or a deep “_amin_” reverberates
from the standing thousands. The long lines bow, hands on knees, and
straighten again. Once more they bow, drop to their knees, bend forward
and touch their foreheads to the ground, with a long low thunder that
rolls up into the dome. The Temple of the Divine Wisdom can rarely have
witnessed a more moving spectacle of reverence and faith.
IX
MOHAMMEDAN HOLIDAYS
In nothing is the natural soberness of the Turk more manifest than in
his holidays. He keeps fewer of them than his Christian compatriot, and
most of them he celebrates in such a way that an outsider would scarcely
suspect the fact. This is partly, perhaps, a matter of temperament, and
partly because Islam has not yet passed a certain stage of evolution. A
holiday, that is, is still a holy day. Secular and patriotic festivals
are everywhere of comparatively recent origin. In Turkey, where church
and state are one to a degree now unknown in Western countries, there was
no real national holiday until 1909. Then the first anniversary of the
re-establishment of the constitution was celebrated on the 23d of July
(July 10, old style). A highly picturesque celebration it was, too, in
Constantinople at least, with its magnificent array of rugs and mediæval
tents on the Hill of Liberty, its review of troops by the Sultan, its
procession of the guilds of the city, and its evening illuminations.
Illuminations, however, were not invented by the constitution. Long
before a 23d or a 4th of July were, the splendour-loving Sultan Ahmed
III discovered how unparalleled a theatre for such displays were the
steep shores of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. The accession day of
the reigning sovereign made an annual occasion for great families to set
their houses and gardens on fire with an infinity of little oil-lamps
and, in all literalness, to keep open house. This was the one purely
secular holiday of the year—unless I except the day of Hîd’r Eless. I
have already pronounced the name of this mysterious divinity, who is also
called Hîzîr, and whom Mohammedan legend associates with the Fountain of
Life and with the change of the seasons. He is a distant relative of the
prophet Elijah, of the god Apollo, and I suspect of personages still more
antique. His day coincides with that of the Greek St. George, namely,
April 23d, old style, or May 6th according to our mode of reckoning.
I must add that he is frowned upon in orthodox circles, and feasted
only in Constantinople or other localities subject to Greek influence.
Nevertheless, many men who scorn the authenticity of his claims to
reverence scorn not to go forth into the fields on his day, where they
roast a lamb on a spit, eat _pilaf_, and otherwise rejoice over the
return of the sun. And you should follow them to Kiat Haneh, if you wish
to see a sight—so great and so characteristic is the press of those who
celebrate the day. Perhaps they do so the more willingly because their
coreligionaries the Persians keep in that way, a few weeks earlier, their
own feast of _No-rouz_. _No-rouz_, New Day, is the most sensible New
Year’s I know, falling as it does at the vernal equinox. The Turks also
observe _No-rouz_, to the degree of sending each other pots of sweetmeat
and poetical wishes that life may be as free from bitterness.
Having made these exceptions to the rule that holidays are holy days in
Turkey, I now perceive I must make one more. It is almost as trifling
as the last, however, for New Year’s is scarcely a holiday at all
with the Turks. It is not a day of feasting, of visit-paying, or of
present-giving. Persons of sufficiently exalted rank go to the palace
to felicitate the Sultan or to inscribe their names in his register,
and each receives a new gold piece—of no great denomination in these
economical days. Ordinary mortals content themselves with exchanging good
wishes and small change—lucky pennies, as it were. A penny is the luckier
if it is obtained on some pretext, without mentioning the day. About this
day is none of the monotonous invariability which distinguishes our own
calendar. It is, indeed, the first day of the first month, Mouharrem,
but of the old lunar year of Arabia. It therefore falls eleven days
earlier every year, making the backward round of the seasons in a cycle
of thirty-three years. A further element of latitude enters into its
determination, and that of other strictly Mohammedan holidays, by the
fact that the month is not supposed to begin until the new moon has been
discovered by the naked eye. In the good old times this verification of
the calendar gave rise to most refreshing divergences of opinion. New
Year’s might be celebrated in different towns on a number of different
days, according to the cloudiness of the sky; or, in case of a conflict
of authorities, two days might even be celebrated in the same town. But
the advent of the telegraph and a growing laxity in interpretations have
brought it about that some one in the empire is pretty sure to see the
new moon at the right hour. The day of the ascertaining of the new moon
has a name of its own, _arifeh_. And mark that a Mohammedan, like a
Hebrew day, begins and ends at sunset. The celebration of the eve of a
holiday in Western countries is doubtless due to the old prevalence of
the same usage.
The true holidays of Islam are connected with the life and teachings of
its founder. These are seven in number. They commemorate the birth of
the Prophet (12th of the third moon, Rebi ül Evvel); his conception
(6th of the seventh moon, Rejeb); his ascension—accomplished, be it
remembered, during his lifetime—(27th Rejeb); the revelation and
completion of his mission (15th of the eighth moon, Shaban, and 27th of
the ninth, Ramazan); the close of the fast of Ramazan (1st Shevval); and
the sacrifice of Abraham (10th of the last moon, Zilhijeh). This is not
the place to discourse of comparative religions, but it is interesting
to note in passing the relation between these observances and those of
the two other great religions which had their origin so near Arabia.
This relation is further indicated by the lenten month of Ramazan and
by the paschal week of _Kourban Baïram_. It is characteristic, however,
of the puritanism of Islam and of the Prophet’s desire to put from him
every pretence of divinity that his own anniversaries are celebrated the
most simply. They have never been an occasion, like the great Christian
festivals, for general feasting. On Mohammed’s birthday, to be sure—known
as _Mevloud_, from a celebrated panegyric of the Prophet read in the
mosques on that day—the hours of prayer are announced by cannon, and
sweets are distributed, particularly to the poor and to orphan children.
On that day, also, the Sultan goes in state to mosque. But otherwise
the outsider knows of these anniversaries only by the illumination of
the galleries of minarets. Whence the seven holy nights have come to be
called the Nights of Lamps.
Equally characteristic, in a different way, are the two general holidays
of the Mohammedan calendar. They are both known as _Baïram_—feast—and
the outsider has no difficulty in being aware of them. Indeed, it would
be rather difficult to remain unaware of so much cannon firing and flag
flying. The month of Ramazan has certain festal features, but they are
largely discounted by the total fast which every good Moslem observes
during the daylight hours. The close of Ramazan is marked by three days
of unlimited festivity. This, the lesser _Baïram_, is called _Sheker_,
or sometimes _Mendil Baïram_—Sugar or Handkerchief Feast. Then people
exchange sweets and handkerchiefs, if nothing else. It is, however, the
time to tip servants and dependants, to make presents, to discharge
debts, and in general to fulfil the law of the Prophet by dispensing
_zekyaat_, the surplus of one’s goods. I was once presented with an
interesting little leaflet, printed in silver, which was less a discreet
advertisement than a tract as to the true Moslem’s duty in this regard.
It represented half a fruit of the tree _touba_, under which in paradise
all true believers will gather on the resurrection day, and the seeds
of this fruit were circles in which were printed the exact quantity of
certain comestibles to be given away at _Baïram_. Preparations for this
generosity may be seen during the afternoons of Ramazan, when the bazaars
and the fashionable street of Shah-zadeh-Bashi are crowded with shoppers.
The courtyard of the mosque of Baïezid is also turned into a fair during
Ramazan. There the _beau monde_ of Stamboul resorts, that is to say the
masculine part of it, two or three hours before sunset. Sweetmeats are by
no means all that you may buy. Eatables of all sorts, perfumes, tobacco,
cigarette-holders, and beads of amber and other materials are also sold,
besides silks and rugs. In Abd ül Hamid’s time there was always a booth
for the sale of porcelain from his little factory at Yîldîz. And every
year the ancient pottery works of Kütahya send up a consignment of their
decorative blue ware.
[Illustration: Baïram sweets]
Both _Baïrams_ are an occasion for paying visits. Everybody calls on
everybody else, so that it is a wonder if anybody is found at home. In
the case of the Sultan, however, there is no uncertainty. On the first
morning of each _Baïram_ he holds a great levee, which is attended by
every one of a certain rank. The ceremony has taken place every year
since the time of Baïezid the Thunderbolt, who held his court in Broussa
in the fourteenth century. Foreigners take no part in this _mouayedeh_
(exchange of feast-day wishes), or _baise-main_, as they prefer to call
it, but the diplomatic corps and other notables of the European colony
are invited to watch it from the gallery of the throne-room. Or sometimes
a humbler individual may be introduced in the suite of his embassy,
as was the fortune of the present scribe on the occasion of the first
_baise-main_ of Sultan Mehmed V.
It rather reminded me of youthful operatic days to march through the
endless corridors and to climb the immeasurable stairs of Dolma Ba’hcheh
Palace and to look down at last from the high east gallery of the
throne-room. The top galleries of my youthful days, however, did not
contain gilt chairs upholstered in blue and white satin or buffets set
out with gold plate and presided over by lackeys in red and gold. The
lackeys, though, did look a little like the stage. While a Turk makes a
magnificent soldier or horseman, he never attains, impassive though he
be, the sublime superiority of a European footman. Is it that his livery
is unnatural, or is the human in him too strong to be quite purged away?
The operatic impression was further carried out by a crystal chandelier,
swinging from the dome exactly where it would cut off somebody’s
view, and by the rococo arches surrounding the central square of the
throne-room. This huge space was empty save for a crystal candelabrum
standing at each corner and a covered throne in the middle of the west
side. The throne was a small red-and-gold sofa, as we presently saw when
an old gentleman removed the cover. He also looked carefully under the
throne, as might a queen apprehensive of burglars or mice; but I suppose
it was to make sure no bomb was there.
In the meantime the courtiers began to assemble: the cabinet at the left
of the throne, the army and navy—in much gold lace—at right angles to
the cabinet, the church under the east gallery. On the south side of the
hall, facing the military, stood for the first time the new parliament.
The senators, who have all been official personages in their day, wore
their various uniforms of state. The deputies looked very European in
evening dress and white gloves, but capped, of course, with the fez of
rigour. Last to come in, taking their stand at the right of the throne,
were the imperial princes. They had been waiting with the Sultan in an
adjoining room, where they had paid homage to him in private. Then,
preceded by the grand master of ceremonies, the Sultan himself entered.
Every one made a _temenna_ to the ground, that graceful triple sweep of
the hand which is the Turkish form of salutation, while a choir hidden
under one of the galleries chanted: “Thou wilt live long with thy glory,
O Sultan, if God wills. Great art thou, but forget not that One is
greater.” For those who had made obeisance the year before and many other
years to Abd ül Hamid II there must have been something strangely moving
in the spectacle of the kindly faced old man, after all not very majestic
in person, who walked a little as if his shoes were too tight, yet who
took his place at the head of that great company with the natural dignity
of his house and race. He wore a stubby new beard, acquired since his
accession; for it is not meet that the Commander of the Faithful should
go shorn.
The ceremony was opened by a little old man in green, the _Nakib ül
Eshraf_, whose business it is to keep the pedigrees of the descendants of
the Prophet. He appeared from behind one of the crystal candelabra, bowed
low in front of majesty, made a deep _temenna_, stepped backward, and
offered a prayer. The Sultan and all the other Moslems present listened
to it with their hands held up in front of them, palms inward. Then
the first chamberlain of the court, holding a red velvet scarf fringed
with gold, took his place at the left of the throne, the band in the
north gallery—and a very good one—began to play, and the _baise-main_
commenced. It was not a literal _baise-main_. I suppose the Sultan could
hardly be expected to hold out his hand long enough for several hundred
people to kiss. It was a _baise-écharpe_ rather, as the Grand Vizier was
the first to prove. He made the _temenna_—or salaamed, as we put it in
English—stepped in front of the Sultan and salaamed a second time, kissed
the chamberlain’s scarf and touched it to his forehead, salaamed a third
time, and backed to his place. Hilmi Pasha was followed by his colleagues
in order. When the last of them had paid homage, the chamberlain passed
behind the throne to the right, and it was the turn of parliament. The
senators, for most of whom the _baise-main_ was no novelty, followed the
example of the cabinet. But when it came to the deputies, they emphasised
a new order of things by merely saluting, without kissing the scarf. To
their speaker, the ex-exile Ahmed Riza Bey, the Sultan paid the honour
of offering his hand. Ahmed Riza Bey started to kiss it, but the Sultan
prevented him, at the same time drawing him forward past the throne and
giving him a place at the left beyond the Grand Vizier.
The most picturesque part of the ceremony was when the _ülema_, the
dignitaries of the cult, in their gold-collared robes and white turbans
ornamented by a band of gold, paid homage. They did not come singly, as
had their predecessors, but in a long flowing line of colour. At their
head marched the _Sheï’h ül Islam_, the highest religious official in
the empire, who is also a minister of state. He wears white, like the
Pope. He was followed by the _Sherif_ Ali Haïdar Bey, Minister of Pious
Foundations. This handsome green-robed Arab is one of the greatest
aristocrats in Islam, being an authentic descendant of the Prophet.
And he has, if you please, an English wife. After him came a brilliant
company of lesser green robes, followed by a succession of fawn-coloured
and purple ones. Four dark blues and one sombre greybeard in black made
a period to the procession. The long double line had, to the detached
gallery-god view, the appearance of a particularly effective ballet as
it advanced parallel to the diplomatic gallery, turned half-way across
the hall at right angles, moved forward to the throne, and backed out
as it came. And the band did not a little to forward the detachment of
the gallery-god view by irreverently playing a potpourri from “Carmen”
as the fathers of the cult made obeisance before the throne. The _ülema_
were followed by the heads of the non-Moslem religions of the empire.
This also was an innovation, and the Greek Patriarch made a brief
address in honour of it. Last of all the army, the navy, and the civil
dignitaries took their turn. This time the band played the march from
“Tannhäuser”; and with real courtiers paying homage to a real ruler in a
real throne-room, to that music, illusion became fantastic. When the last
member of the official hierarchy had made his last _temenna_ the Sultan
withdrew, followed by the court, while the visitors in the gallery were
invited to refresh themselves at the buffet. Then the chiefs of missions
and their wives—but not humble individuals in their suites—were invited,
by way of further innovation, to have audience of his majesty.
The unofficial side of _Baïram_ is quite as full of colour in its more
scattered way. Then every man who can afford it, or whose master can,
puts on a new suit of clothes. He at least dons something new, if only
a gay handkerchief about his fez or neck. It is interesting to stand
at some busy corner in a Turkish quarter and watch the crowd in its
party-coloured holiday finery. Friends meeting each other stop, seize a
hand between their two, and solemnly rub cheeks. Inferiors try to kiss
the hand of superiors, who try in turn to snatch the hand away, their
success depending on the degree of their superiority. And everybody
wishes everybody else a blessed _Baïram_. The _bekjis_—watchmen who have
beaten drums during the nights of Ramazan in order to get people up in
time for their last meal—march about collecting tips. They announce
themselves by their drums, to which they often add a pipe or a small
violin, and they carry a pole that is gaudy with the handkerchiefs people
give them. The sound of music, however, often means that dancing is on.
There is sure to be something of the sort wherever Kürds or Laz gather
together. Your true Turk is too dignified for such frivolities. And be it
well understood that the only women who dance in the open at _Baïram_ are
gipsies, hussies who love to deck themselves out in yellow and who blush
not to reveal their faces or their ankles. I regret that I am too little
of an expert in matters terpsichorean to enter into the fine points of
these performances. I can no more than sketch out an impression of a
big green tent in some vacant lot, of the high lights of brass that go
with tea and coffee drinking in its shadow, and of fiercely moustachioed
persons in tall felt caps, in hooded or haply goatskin jackets, and in
wide trousers, if they be Kürds, or of slighter Laz with tight black legs
that bulge out at the top and hoods picturesquely knotted about their
heads, who join hands and begin very slowly a swaying step that grows
wilder and wilder with the throbbing of a demon drum.
[Illustration: The open spaces of the Mohammedan quarters are utilised
for fairs]
It is the children, however, to whom _Baïram_ chiefly belongs. In their
honour all the open spaces of the Mohammedan quarters are utilised for
fairs and playgrounds. The principal resort of the kind is the yard
surrounding the mosque of the Conqueror—or it used to be before gardens
were planted there. I discovered it quite by accident one day when I went
to Stamboul to see how _Baïram_ was being celebrated and saw a quantity
of carts, dressed out with flags and greens, full of children. I followed
the carts until I came upon the most festive confusion of voices, of
tents, of music, of horses, of donkeys, of itinerant venders, of fezzed
papas, of _charshafed_ mammas, of small girls in wonderful silks and
satins, and small boys as often as not in the uniform of generals. Amidst
them I remarked with particular pleasure a decorative Arab in white, who
strode about with a collection of divinatory green birds. A countryman
of his had a funny little peep-show, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, into
which I was dying to look but considered myself too dignified to do so.
Neither did I go into the tent which bore this ingratiating sign: “Ici
on expose animaux vivans et la demoiselle laquelle à la poitrine une
cavité.” In other tents the physical man was more particularly catered
to. Indeed, stuffing seems to be the great affair of _Baïram_. I must not
omit, however, the numerous contrivances for inducing motion more or less
violent. Merry-go-rounds propelled by hand, swings in the form of boats,
milder swings for girls, where one could sit under an awning like a lady
and run no risk of being dashed to death, and a selection of miniature
vehicles for the very little person, were so many arguments against Mr.
Kipling and the East-is-East theory. Another argument was put forward by
the discreet gambler, with his quick eye for the police, who in various
familiar ways tempted youth to flirt with destiny.
It was with some misgiving that I first entered this assemblage, mine
being the only hat and camera visible. But during the several _Baïrams_
that I returned there no one ever seemed to resent my presence except
one young and zealous police officer who made up his mind that I had no
other purpose in visiting the fair of Fatih than to take photographs of
ladies. At a tent where wrestling was going on they once demanded a pound
of me for admission, supposing that I was a post-card man and would make
vast gains out of their entertainment. But at another, where I paid the
customary ten cents or less, I was invited into the place of honour; and
there, no seats being left, a naval officer insisted on my occupying
his—because, as he said, I was an amateur of the great Turkish sport and
a guest, _i. e._, a foreigner. Occidental hospitality does not often take
that particular form. Another trait struck my transatlantic eye when I
happened once to be at Fatih on the last day of _Baïram_. The barkers had
all been shouting: “Come, children! Come! To-morrow is not _Baïram_!”
Presently cannon banged to announce _ikindi_, the afternoon hour of
prayer, which is both the beginning and the end of _Baïram_. All about me
I heard people saying: “_Baïram_ is finished.” And _Baïram_ was finished.
It was only the middle of a sunny afternoon, and in any other country the
merrymaking would have gone on till night. But the children went away,
and men began taking down the swings and tents in the most philosophical
manner. In 1911 and 1912 Baïram was hardly celebrated at all, as a mark
of mourning for the Italian and Balkan wars.
The greater _Baïram_, called _Kourban Baïram_, or the Feast of Sacrifice,
is more of a religious observance. It lasts one day longer than the
other. It commemorates, as I have said, the sacrifice of Abraham.
According to Mohammedan tradition, however, Ishmael and not Isaac was
the hero of that occasion. In memory of the miracle of his escape every
household that can afford to do so sacrifices at least one ram on the
10th Zilhijeh. Among the rich a ram is provided for each member of the
family, and those who have recently died are not forgotten. It is also
the custom to make presents of rams, as between friends, engaged couples,
and masters and dependants. The Sultan is naturally distinguished among
these donors by the scale of his generosity. He gives a sacrificial ram
to each of the imperial mosques and theological schools, as well as to
those whom he delights to honour. These huge creatures belong to a very
aristocratic race. They are bred by a semi-religious, semi-agricultural
community called the _Saïeh Ojaghî_, established since the early days
of the conquest in the inner valley of the Golden Horn. The members of
this community still maintain their mediæval customs and costumes and
enjoy certain traditional privileges. In return for these they rear
the imperial rams, which they bring in procession to the Palace every
year about a week before _Kourban Baïram_. There the rams are bathed,
their horns and hoofs are gilded, and they are further adorned by velvet
muzzles a-glitter with gold fringe and mirror glass. It is not an
uncommon sight, although in the already mythic days of Abd ül Hamid it
was far more common, to see an immaculate aide-de-camp driving in an open
victoria with one of these gaudy companions.
It naturally requires a great many rams to supply the demand of _Kourban
Baïram_. Consequently the open spaces of the Mohammedan quarters are full
of baa-ing and bargaining for a week or ten days before the sacrifice.
The landing-stages of Scutari and Beshiktash are headquarters of this
traffic, Top Haneh, and the vicinity of the mosques of Yeni Jami, St.
Sophia, Mohammed II, and Baïezid II. The last is perhaps the largest and
most characteristic of these markets. Single rams that have been grown
for the occasion stand picketed near the mosque awaiting a well-to-do
purchaser. They are sometimes as large and as gaily dressed as the
Sultan’s rams. They wear a necklace of blue beads to keep off the Evil
Eye, and bits of their uncut fleece will be tied up with tinsel or
ribbon. I remember one which had a red silk sash on which was printed
his name in gold letters—_Arslan_, lion. Such a _kourban_ represents a
sacrifice of five to fifteen pounds. Most buyers prefer to patronise
the shepherds who bring their flocks into the city for the occasion.
These shepherds, usually Albanians, make a very picturesque addition to
the scene with their huge square-shouldered cloaks of felt, fancifully
painted in red and blue. The sheep, too, are daubed with colour, to
distinguish one flock from another. They sell for rather less than a
pound apiece, growing cheaper as the day of sacrifice approaches. It is
amusing to watch and to listen to the bargaining that goes on between
shepherd and householder until their demands come within sight of each
other. Most amusing, though, is it to see the ram—which, I suspect, is
not seldom a sheep—when the bargain is made, carried away pickaback by
one of the innumerable _hamals_ who hang around for such an opportunity.
These strange couples are the characteristic harbinger of _Kourban
Baïram_, the ram staring over the man’s shoulder with vast apparent
interest in the sights he sees, his hind quarters making the roundest and
most comfortable curve in the small of the _hamal’s_ back.
[Illustration: Sheep-market at Yeni Jami]
The actual sacrifice I have never seen, and I hope I never may. I once
witnessed a cinematographic representation of what takes place at the
Palace, and that was enough for me. The moving pictures represented his
majesty returning from early morning prayer, alighting at the great
door of Dolma Ba’hcheh, and greeting the dignitaries there assembled to
receive him. He then read a brief prayer, took a knife from a platter
handed him by an attendant, and passed it to the actual executioner. In
theory, the head of each house is supposed to perform the sacrifice. The
flesh must be given away, and the fleece, or its proceeds, is used for
some charitable purpose.
X
TWO PROCESSIONS
I had been in and out of Constantinople a good many years before I even
heard of the Sacred Caravan. The first I heard of it then was on the
Bridge one day, when I became aware of a drum beating out a curious slow
rhythm: _one_, two, _three_, _four_, five, six; _one_, two, _three_,
_four_, five, six. I waited to see what would happen, and presently from
the direction of Stamboul straggled a procession that, of course, I had
no camera to photograph, against the grey dome and springing minarets
of Yeni Jami. It was led by two men with tom-toms beating in unison the
rhythm I had heard. I later learned that those tom-toms have a special
name, _kyöz_. After the drummers marched a number of boys in pairs,
carrying small furled flags of red silk embroidered with gold. Behind the
boys strode a serious-looking person who held a small round shield and
a drawn sword. He was followed by a man bearing a big green standard,
embroidered and fringed with gold, on a white staff tipped by a sort of
brass lyre in which were Arabic letters. Next came a palanquin of white
wood slung between mules. It had glass windows and wooden shutters, and
looked very cosy with its red silk cushions; but nobody was there to
enjoy them. In the rear of the palanquin were men carrying staves with
bunches of dyed ostrich feathers at their tips, like enormous dusters.
And then slouched along a magnificent camel. He wore a green silk
saddle-cloth embroidered in white, and above that a tall green silk
hoodah with gold embroidery; and ostrich plumes nodded from him in tufts,
and at his knees he wore caps of coloured beads. Behind him trotted a lot
of mules in pairs, all loaded with small hair trunks. I did not know that
the trunks were full of presents for the good people of Mecca and Medina.
So lamentable a state of ignorance would not be possible, I suppose, in
Cairo, where the annual departure of the _Mahmal_ is one of the stock
sights. But if the Constantinople caravan attracts less attention in
the larger city, it is the more important of the two. The Sultan Bibars
Boundoukdari, founder of the Mameluke dynasty of Egypt in the seventh
century, was the first to send every year to Mecca a richly caparisoned
camel with a new cover for the Kaaba. In the process of time other gifts
were sent by the Sacred Caravan to both the holy cities. The first of
the Turkish sultans to imitate this pious custom was Mehmed I, builder
of the beautiful Green Mosque in Broussa. His great-great-grandson Selim
I conquered Egypt in 1517, and with Egypt the relics of the Prophet and
the insignia of the caliphate, which were removed to Constantinople.
Having become by virtue of his conquest Protector and Servitor of the
Holy Cities, Selim largely increased the generosity of his fathers. His
descendants of to-day are unable to display the same munificence, but the
annual _sourreh_ still forms the strongest material bond between Turkey
and Arabia. It consists of money in bags, of robes, of uncut cloth, of
shoes, and even of a certain kind of biscuit. The total value of these
and other articles, which are all minutely prescribed by tradition and
which are the perquisite of particular families or dignitaries, now
amounts to some £ T. 30,000. As for the covering of the Kaaba, it is
still made in Egypt and sent from there. The old coverings afford quite
a revenue to the eunuchs in charge of the temple. The smallest shred is
a relic of price, while a waistcoat of the precious fabric is supposed
to make the wearer invulnerable and is a fit present for princes. The
hangings for the Prophet’s tomb at Medina, changed less frequently, are
woven in Constantinople. The work is a species of rite in itself, being
performed in a room of the old palace, near the depository of the relics
of the Prophet, by men who must be ceremonially pure, dressed in white.
The arrival of the imperial presents in Mecca is planned to coincide with
the ceremonies of the greater pilgrimage. These take place at the Feast
of Sacrifice, which with the two days preceding constitutes the holy
week of Islam. Pilgrimage is a cardinal duty of every Moslem, expressly
enjoined in the twenty-second Soura of the Koran. The first _Haj_ took
place during the lifetime of the Prophet, and every year since then
has seen the faithful gather in Mecca from the four quarters of the
Mohammedan world. Constantinople is one of their chief rallying places,
as being the seat of the Caliph and the natural point of departure for
the pilgrims of northern Asia. These holy palmers add a note of their
own to the streets of the capital during their seasons of migration,
with their quilted coats of many colours, their big turbans, and their
Mongol cast of feature. The day for the departure of the Sacred Caravan
is the eve of _Berat Gejesi_, or the night when Gabriel revealed his
mission to the Prophet. This is nearly four months before the great day
of _Kourban Baïram_. In the times when the caravan marched overland from
Scutari to Mecca, four months was none too much. But the pilgrimage has
been vastly shortened in these days of steam, and will be shorter still
when the last links of rail are laid between Constantinople and Mecca.
For the time being, however, the Sacred Caravan still makes its official
departure on the traditional day, going over to Scutari and waiting there
until it is ready to embark for Beyrout. It makes a stop of twenty-five
days in Damascus, where the imperial benevolence begins, and thence it
proceeds by the new Hejaz railway to Medina. There is also a traditional
day for the return of the pilgrims. Part of the ceremony of the Prophet’s
birthday is the delivery to the Sultan of a letter from the _Sherif_ of
Mecca, sent back by the leader of the Sacred Caravan in response to the
Sultan’s own, together with a cluster of dates from the Holy City.
[Illustration: Church fathers in the Sacred Caravan]
[Illustration: Housings in the Sacred Caravan]
The ceremonial attending the departure of the Sacred Caravan is one of
the last bits of Oriental colour left in Constantinople. I have now seen
it several times, however, and every year it seems to lose something. My
best procession was my first, which also happened to be the last under a
Caliph of absolute power to draw upon the public funds. And although I
had a camera with me that time, I was not allowed to use it. The convoy
I had encountered on the bridge was merely a preliminary of the true
pageant, escorting the _sourreh_ from the Ministry of Pious Foundations
to Yîldîz Palace. There the presents, installed for two days under rich
tents, were inspected by Abd ül Hamid and given into the custody of the
_Sourreh Emini_. Then after an imposing religious ceremony the Sacred
Caravan commenced its march. For a spectator without the palace walls
the first intimation of its approach was given by several carriages of
Palace ladies, who take an unofficial part in most public spectacles.
Religious and military dignitaries also began sauntering down the road,
which was bordered by soldiers, with an air of dispersing after some
important function. Presently a double line of cavalrymen came into
sight, preceding more religious and military dignitaries on horseback.
One of them was the _Emir ül Haj_, the official head of the caravan,
with much gold embroidery on his long coat. His post, still an important
one, was far more so in the days when the caravan was less certain
to escape attack on the way. Some of the horses, particularly of the
_ülema_, were led by grooms; others were followed by orderlies carrying
big cloth bundles. The body of the procession was made up of an irregular
crowd of priests, officers, eunuchs, Palace servants, and nondescripts
of various sorts, chanting at the top of their voices, followed by the
big camel I had already seen, and the palanquin. But there were eight
other camels this time, of all sizes, down to a fluffy little white one
that everybody wanted to pat; and two children were immensely enjoying
a ride in the palanquin. Behind that rode an official holding out on a
red satin cushion an autograph letter from the Sultan to the _Sherif_ of
Mecca, confirming him in his office for the coming year. Another bore a
huge parcel in his arms, done up in white tissue-paper. This was a robe
of honour sent by the Sultan to the _Sherif_. Others still carried silver
vessels in which sweet savours burned—“in honour of the angels,” as a
dervish once expressed it to me. Next marched a second irregular crowd,
louder and more amazing than the first. In front of it were two rows
of black men in scarlet robes, beating on tom-toms the rhythm I knew,
which they alternated with a quicker one. And midway of the crowd a ring
of excited persons brandished swords and challenged the enemies of the
Prophet to mortal combat. They were an unaccustomed reminder, in tolerant
Constantinople, of the early days of the faith. And then, tied with very
new rope to the backs of some thirty mules walking two and two, each gay
with flags and ostrich feathers and led by a solemn artilleryman, were
the quaint little hair trunks in which the Commander of the Faithful sent
his gifts to the far-away people of the Prophet.
[Illustration: The sacred camel]
[Illustration: The palanquin]
There is another annual procession to be seen in Constantinople which
recalls to Western eyes even more strangely than that of the _sourreh_
an older day of faith. Turks take no part in it, however, although
they also observe the 10th of Mouharrem, on which it falls, as the
anniversary of Joseph’s deliverance from prison in Egypt and of Noah’s
exit from the ark. They make in honour of the occasion and present to
their friends a sweet pudding to which they have given the name of the
anniversary—_ashoureh_, or tenth day. The basis of it is boiled wheat,
to which are added all manner of grains, nuts, and dried fruits; and
the legend is that Noah and his people made a similar pudding on Mount
Ararat out of what was left in the bins of the ark.
[Illustration: Tied with very new rope to the backs of some thirty mules
... were the quaint little hair trunks]
It is for the Persians that the day is peculiarly sacred. They also make
a special dish for it, called _zerdeh_, of rice, sugar, and saffron.
But that is a mere detail of what is for them the holiest season in the
year. The Persians and the Turks belong to two different sects that
have divided the Mohammedan world since the death of the Prophet. It is
not for an unlettered unbeliever lightly to declare that so serious a
matter was in the beginning a question of _cherchez la femme_. Still,
it is a fact that the enmity of Aïsheh, the youngest wife of Mohammed,
toward Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, did much to embitter
those early differences of opinion. This lady, while on a journey, once
caused tongues to wag by disappearing from her litter at a compromising
hour and being brought back by a man considerably younger than her
distinguished husband. Mohammed was finally forced to silence the voice
of scandal by the twenty-fourth _Soura_ of the Koran, entitled Light.
In the meantime, however, consulting with his four closest friends and
followers as to what should be done, he was assured by three of them
that there could be no doubt as to the innocence of the Mother of the
Moslems. The fourth, Ali, ventured to suggest that the matter would bear
investigation. Aïsheh never forgave the doubt of her step son-in-law,
and her enmity was a potent factor in keeping Ali from the caliphate. He
eventually did succeed, the fourth to do so, twenty-four years after the
Prophet’s death. But the Sunnites regard him as the least of the first
four Caliphs. The Shiïtes, on the other hand, do not recognise the first
three Caliphs at all. They even fête the anniversary of the death of the
second one, Omar. Ali is for them the vicar of God, and they hold his
descendants to the ninth generation in peculiar reverence. The twelfth
of these _Imams_, as they are called, the _Mehdi_, is supposed never to
have died. It is believed that he will reappear before the last judgment
in order, curiously enough, to overthrow antichrist. As for Ali, the
hatred of Aïsheh pursued him even after he became Caliph, and stirred up
disaffection against him. He was finally stabbed. His two sons, Hassan
and Hüsseïn, also met violent deaths, the former being poisoned and the
latter falling under thirty-three wounds on the heroic field of Kerbela.
These tragic events are what the Shiïtes commemorate on the 10th of
Mouharrem.
[Illustration: A Persian miniature representing the death of Ali]
In Persia the entire month is a time of mourning. During the first ten
days public passion-plays represent with bloody realism the lives and
deaths of the first _Imams_. In Sunnite Constantinople, where there are
some six thousand Persians, the commemoration is naturally less public,
although the two sects no longer come to blows over it. Most of the
Persian colony are from the region of Tabriz, where a Turkish dialect is
spoken. Their headquarters are in a number of old stone _hans_ near the
bazaars and the War Department. Large tents are put up in the courts of
these _hans_ during Mouharrem, and there every evening _mollahs_ recite
the story of the tragedy of Kerbela. It took place more than a thousand
years ago, and religious feeling has cooled much in those thousand years,
but the story still has a strange power to draw tears from the crowding
Persians who listen to it. After the third night men with banners and
torches give a greater semblance of reality to the recitation. On the
tenth night, or on the night of the tenth day, which is the anniversary
of the martyrdom of Hüsseïn, the torches and banners march about to the
various _hans_ where Persians live.
The last time I saw this ceremony it included picturesque features new
to me; and, by way of marking a dramatic contrast between century and
century, an aeroplane suddenly whirred across the square of sky visible
from the Valideh court. But I shall always remember the first of the
processions that I saw. It was in the same paved courtyard of Valideh
Han, surrounded by half-ruined cloisters. The central mosque, the
temporary shed in one corner, the sparse trees, the silently waiting
spectators, made so many vague shapes in the February dusk; and snow was
falling. A strange clamour of pipes and drums and shouting began to make
itself heard in the distance. Suddenly the archway giving entrance to the
_han_ lighted up with a smoky glare, and the procession surged slowly
into the court. It was led by men carrying flaming cressets of iron
basketwork and three enigmatic steel emblems on long staves. The central
one was a sort of sword-blade above a spindle-shaped fretting of Arabic
letters, while the other two were tridents springing from a similar
base; and from all three floated streamers of crape. Next came two files
of standard-bearers, dressed in black, with black caps on their heads.
The flags they bore were black or dark-coloured, triangular in shape,
with the names of the _Imams_ and other holy inscriptions embroidered on
them in silver. On top of some of the staves was an open hand of brass.
I was told that it commemorated the mutilation of Hüsseïn. Behind the
standard-bearers marched more men in black, chanting in a rhythm of six
beats and striking their bare breasts on the fifth. Even a foreigner
could distinguish the frequent names of Ali and Hüsseïn. Others held in
both hands a chain at the end of which was a bunch of smaller chains.
With this, first over one shoulder and then over the other, they beat
their backs. The thud kept time with the chanting, and vigorously enough
to leave visible, sometimes sickening signs, under the torn black of the
single garment they wore. Two white horses followed. The first, with
rich saddle-cloth and head-stall, carried a little boy on his back. On
the saddle of the second, caparisoned in blood-streaked white, were two
doves. Then came a band of musicians, singing, playing pipes, beating
drums, and clashing cymbals. And last of all, slowly advancing sidewise
in two long lines, appeared a gruesome company of men in white, who
chanted hoarsely and slashed their shaven heads with bloody swords. The
blood-stained figures in white, the black flagellants, the symbolic
horses, the mourning banners, the points of steel answering the flare of
the torches, made strange matter indeed for the imagination, moving with
desperate music through that veil of driving snow.
[Illustration: Valideh Han]
The procession marched round the courtyard three times and then went into
the tent, where a dirge was chanted in honour of the martyrs of Kerbela.
At different moments of the ceremony, and particularly at sight of the
child and the doves on horseback—symbolic of Hüsseïn’s son, who was
killed in his arms, and of the souls of the martyrs—many a Persian among
the spectators sobbed uncontrolledly. Other spectators smiled at the
tears streaming down bearded cheeks and at the frenzy of the flagellants.
For myself, I can never help feeling respect for any real emotion,
however far I may be from sharing it. People say, indeed, that these
processions are not what they used to be and that much of the slashing
is feigned. That may well enough be. Still, I found myself compelled to
turn aside when the men in white passed in front of me. More than one of
them, too, had to be helped staggering away before the procession came
to an end. It is not every one who takes part in these ceremonies. The
participants are men who fulfil a vow of their own or of their parents,
usually in gratitude for some deliverance. Their zeal is so great that
it is necessary to draw up a preliminary schedule for the processions,
so that no two shall meet and dispute the right of way. Each forms in
its own courtyard, but the men in white do not begin their cutting
till they are in the street. When the marchers finally return to their
own _han_—having, in the meantime, visited the public bath—they spread
rugs on the floor of the tent and spend the evening drinking tea and
entertaining their friends.
This ceremony is repeated in a milder form in Scutari, on the day
after _ashoureh_. Early in the morning the Persians flock to a valley
of cypresses called Seïd Ahmed Deresi, which is a corner of the great
cemetery reserved for their use. There they rejoice over such as have
by their own blood atoned for that of Hüsseïn. I have followed them
thither only once, but I am happy to say that no interment took place.
Tents were set up on the edge of the cemetery, of a faded green that
admirably set off the darker cypresses, and close-packed Persians
squatted in them, drinking tea or smoking their terrible _toumbeki_.
More Persians, recognisable by their black caps if not by their cast
of feature, roamed among the trees. Most of them were of the humbler
sort, in skirted coats of dull colours. Here and there was one in a
long stiff fuzzy black cloak, with a touch of gold at the throat. Many
had beards decoratively reddened with henna, and wore their hair shaved
high about the neck and off the middle of the forehead. There was much
embracing between hairy monsters who had not met, perhaps, since last
Mouharrem; and much patronising was there of ambulatory venders of good
things to eat. Finally, at what signal I know not, a company of men in
black marched out among the graves, bearing triangular flags of the sort
I have already described. At some distance they joined forces with a
company of coloured flags, headed by the strange ornaments of steel.
Two of the coloured flags should have been in a museum rather than in
Scutari cemetery on a wet winter day. They were unusually fine examples
of the Persian wood-block printing, and in the centre of each smiled an
inimitable lion with a curly tail. These two companies marched chanting
together to the end of the cemetery, where they met a third made up of
flagellants. But this time there were no men in white and no bloody
blades. Then they all proceeded down the long road to the water, the
steel emblems and the coloured flags first, the black banners next, and
the flagellants last, chanting, beating their breasts, and swinging their
heavy chains. Every few steps they stopped and went through their rite
with greater zeal. The stops were longest in front of institutions and
great houses, where a _mollah_ would intone from a parchment manuscript
he carried. And in the picturesque little square of Top Tashi, where some
fallen Greek pillars lie in front of the madhouse attached to the mosque
of the Valideh Atik, a Roufaï dervish, whom I remembered to have seen
in the _tekkeh_ of Karaja Ahmed, sang a long threnody in honour of the
martyred Hüsseïn. The procession was followed by hundreds of Persians who
joined in the chanting and breast beating. Their number, and the many
stops, made an opportunity for street vendors and for beggars. Cripples
sat on either side of the narrow street with a handkerchief spread out
in front of them on which lay a few suggestive coins. Gaudy gipsy girls
were not ashamed to show themselves on so solemn an occasion. I saw two
women of a race strange to me, with coppery faces and a perpendicular
mark painted in ochre on their foreheads. Strangest of all was a holy
man who stood humbly by the wayside. Yet, after all, he was of one
brotherhood with the mourners for Hüsseïn. He did not raise his eyes
as the procession passed him, nor did he hold out his hand. What first
attracted my attention to the goodness of his face were two small round
reddish things between which I saw it. Then I made out the reddish things
to be onions, spitted on either end of a steel skewer that pierced both
his cheeks.
XI
GREEK FEASTS
One of the most characteristic things about Constantinople is that while
it has become Turkish it has not ceased to be Greek. The same is true
of Thrace, Macedonia, and the fringe of Asia Minor, which contain large
Turkish and other populations, but which still form a part of the Greek
world to which they always belonged. The two races have indisputably
influenced each other, as their languages and certain of their customs
prove. A good deal of Greek blood now flows, too, in Turkish veins.
Nevertheless there has been remarkably little assimilation, after five
hundred years, of one element by the other. They coexist, each perfectly
distinct and each claiming with perfect reason the land as his own.
This is perhaps one cause why religious festivals are so common among the
Greeks of Turkey. It is as a religious community that they have remained
separate since the conquest. Through their religious observances they
live what is left them of a national life and assert their claim to the
great tradition of their race. The fact doubtless has something to do
with the persistence of observances that elsewhere tend to disappear.
At all events, those observances are extremely interesting. They have a
local colour, for one thing, of a kind that has become rare in Europe
and that scarcely ever existed in America. Then they are reckoned by the
Julian calendar, now thirteen days behind our own, and that puts them
into a certain perspective. Their true perspective, however, reaches much
farther back. Nor is it merely that they compose a body of tradition from
which we of the West have diverged or separated. Our religious customs
and beliefs did not spring out of our own soil. We transplanted them in
full flower from Rome, and she in turn had already borrowed largely from
Greece and the East. But in the Levant such beliefs and customs represent
a native growth, whose roots run far deeper than Christianity.
In the Eastern as in the Western church the essence of the religious
year is that cycle of observances that begin with Advent and culminate
at Easter. It is rather curious that Protestantism should have disturbed
the symbolism of this drama by transposing its climax. Christmas with the
Greeks is not the greater feast. One of their names for it, in fact, is
Little Easter. It is preceded, however, by a fast of forty days nearly as
strict as Lent. The day itself is purely a religious festival. A midnight
mass, or rather an early mass, is celebrated at one or two o’clock on
Christmas morning, after which the fast is broken and people make each
other good wishes. They do not exchange presents or follow the usage
of the Christmas tree, that invention of Northern barbarism, except in
places that have been largely influenced by the West.
The real holiday of the season is New Year’s Day. This is called _Aï
Vassíli_, or St. Basil, whose name-day it is. There is an old ballad
relating to this venerable Bishop of Cappadocia—too long, I regret, to
translate here—which men and boys go about singing on St. Basil’s eve.
The musicians are rewarded with money, theoretically for the poor of
the community. If it happens to stick in the pockets of the performers,
they doubtless regard themselves as representative of the brotherhood
for whose benefit they sing. This custom is imitated by small boys who
go among the coffee-houses after dark, begging. They make themselves
known by lanterns that are oftenest wicker bird-cages lined with coloured
paper. I have also seen ships, castles, and aeroplanes of quite elaborate
design. These curious lanterns are used as well on Christmas and Epiphany
eves of both calendars. The principal feature of St. Basil’s eve is the
_vassilópita_, a kind of flat round cake or sweet bread something like
the Tuscan _schiacciata_. At midnight the head of the house cuts the
_pita_ into as many pieces as there are members of the family. A true
_pita_ should contain a coin, and whoever gets it is sure to have luck
during the new year. The next day people pay visits, exchange presents,
tip servants, and make merry as they will. They also go, at a more
convenient hour than on Christmas morning, to church, where the ancient
liturgy of St. Basil is read.
[Illustration: Blessing the Bosphorus]
Epiphany, or the old English Twelfth-Night, has retained in the East
a significance that it has lost in the West. The day is supposed to
commemorate the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. Hence it is the day of
the blessing of waters, whether of springs, wells, reservoirs, rivers, or
the sea. Holy water plays a particular rôle in the Greek Church—although
the Roman custom of moistening the fingers with it, before making the
sign of the cross on entering a church, is not followed. On the first
of every month except January a ceremony called the Little Blessing
takes place in the churches, when water is blessed; and this ceremony
may be repeated by request in private houses. In January the Little
Blessing takes place on Epiphany eve, the fifth. But on Epiphany itself,
as early in the morning as local custom may dictate, takes place the
Great Blessing. It is performed in the middle of the church, on a dais
decorated with garlands of bay, and the important feature of the long
ceremony is the dipping of a cross into a silver basin of water. The
water is carefully kept in bottles throughout the next year and used
as occasion may require. It is sometimes administered, for instance,
to those who are not thought fit to take the full communion. The
outdoor ceremony which follows this one is extremely picturesque. In
Constantinople it may be seen in any of the numerous Greek waterside
communities—by those who care to get up early enough of a January
morning. One of the best places is Arnaout-kyöi, a large Greek village on
the European shore of the Bosphorus, where the ceremony is obligingly
postponed till ten or eleven o’clock. At the conclusion of the service
in the church a procession, headed by clergy in gala vestments and
accompanied by candles, incense, banners, and lanterns on staves of the
sort one sees in Italy, marches to the waterside. There it is added
to by shivering mortals in bathing trunks. They behave in a highly
unecclesiastical manner in their anxiety to get the most advantageous
post on the quay. The banners and lanterns make a screen of colour on
either side of the priests, incense rises, choristers chant, a bishop
in brocade and cloth of gold, with a domed gilt mitre, holds up a small
cross; he makes the holy sign with it, and tosses it into the Bosphorus.
There is a terrific splash as the rivals for its recovery dive after it.
In days gone by there used to be fights no less terrific in the water
over the precious object. The last time I saw the ceremony, however,
there was nothing of the kind. The cross was even made of wood, so that
there was no trouble in finding it. The first man who reached it piously
put it to his lips and allowed the fellow nearest him to do the same.
Then the half dozen of them paddled back to shore and hurried off to get
warm. The finder of the cross is a lucky man in this world and the world
to come. He goes from house to house with the holy emblem he has rescued
from the deep, and people give him tips. In this way he collects enough
to restore his circulation and to pass a convivial Epiphany. The cross is
his to keep, but he must provide a new one for the coming year.
The blessing of the waters is firmly believed by many good people to
have one effect not claimed by mother church. It is supposed, that
is, to exorcise for another year certain redoubtable beings known as
_kallikántzari_. The name, according to one of the latest authorities
on the subject,[2] means the good centaurs. Goodness, however, is not
their distinguishing trait. They are quarrelsome, mischievous, and
destructive monsters, half man, half beast, who haunt the twelve nights
of the Christmas season. One of the most efficacious means of scaring
them off is by firebrands, and I have wondered if the coloured lanterns
to which I have alluded might owe their origin to the same idea. Many
pious sailors will not venture to sea during the twelve days, for fear
of these creatures. The unfurling of the sails is one of the ceremonies
of Epiphany in some seaside communities. Similarly, no one—of a certain
class—would dream of marrying during the twelve days, while a child
so unfortunate as to be born then is regarded as likely to become a
_kallikántzaros_ himself. Here a teaching of the church perhaps mingles
with the popular belief. But that belief is far older than the church,
going back to Dionysus and the fauns, satyrs, and sileni who accompanied
him. In many parts of the Greek world it is still the custom for men and
boys to masquerade in furs during the twelve days. If no trace of the
custom seems to survive in Constantinople it may be because the early
fathers of the church thundered there against this continuance of the
antique Dionysiac revels, which became the Brumalia and Saturnalia of the
Romans.
[2] J. C. Lawson: “Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek
Religion.”
I should not say that no trace survives, because Carnival is, of course,
a lineal descendant of those ancient winter celebrations. As it exists
in Constantinople, however, Carnival is for the most part but a pale
copy of an Italian original, imported perhaps by the Venetians and
Genoese. It affords none the less pleasure to those who participate in
it, and curiosity of various colours to the members of the ruling race. I
remember one night in Pera overhearing two venerable fezzes with regard
to a troop of maskers that ran noisily by. “What is this play?” inquired
one old gentleman, who evidently had never seen it before and who as
evidently looked upon it with disapproval. “Eh,” replied the other, the
initiated and the more indulgent old gentleman, “they pass the time!”
The time they pass is divided differently than with us of the West. The
second Sunday before Lent is called _Apokreá_ and is the day of farewell
to meat. Which for the religious it actually is, although the gaieties of
Carnival are then at their height. The ensuing Sunday is called Cheese
Sunday, because that amount of indulgence is permitted during the week
preceding it. After Cheese Sunday, however, no man should touch cheese,
milk, butter, oil, eggs, or even fish—though an exception is made in
favour of caviar, out of which a delicious Lenten savoury is made. Lent
begins not on the Wednesday but on the Monday, which is called Clean
Monday. In fact the first week of Lent is called Clean Week. Houses are
then swept and garnished and the fast is stricter than at any time save
Holy Week. The very pious eat nothing at all during the first three days
of Lent.
[Illustration: The dancing Epirotes]
Clean Monday, nevertheless, is a great holiday. In Constantinople it is
also called Tatavla Day, because every one goes out to Tatavla, a quarter
bordering on open country between Shishli and Hass-kyöi. A somewhat
similar custom prevails in Venice, where every one goes on Ash Wednesday
to promenade on the ordinarily deserted quay of the Zattere. But no masks
are seen on the Zattere on Ash Wednesday, whereas masks are the order of
the day at Tatavla on Clean Monday. They are not so much the order of
the day, however, as the progress of a traditional camel, each of whose
legs is a man. It carries a load of charcoal and garlic, which are
powerful talismans against evil, and it is led about by a picturesquely
dressed camel driver whose face is daubed with blue. This simple form
of masquerading, a common one at Tatavla, descends directly from the
pagan Dionysia. Another picturesque feature of the day is the dancing
by Epirotes—Greeks or Christian Albanians. Masquerading with these
exiles consists in twisting a handkerchief about their heads in guise
of a fillet and in putting on the black or white _fustanella_—with its
accompanying accoutrements—of their native hills. They form rings in the
middle of the crowd, which is kept back by one of their number called
the Shepherd. Like the Christmas mummers of the Greek islands, he wears
skins and has a big bronze sheep or camel bell fastened to some part of
him. He also carries a staff to which is attached a bunch of garlic for
good luck. He often wears a mask as well, or is otherwise disguised, and
his clowneries give great amusement. In the meantime his companions join
hands and dance around the ring to the tune of a pipe or a violin. The
first two hold the ends of a handkerchief instead of joining hands, which
enables the leader to go through more complicated evolutions. Sometimes
he is preceded by one or two sword dancers, who know how to make the most
of their hanging sleeves and pleated kilts. Some of these romantic young
gentlemen are singularly handsome, which does not prepare one to learn
that they are butchers’ boys.
The Greeks keep no _mi-carême_, as the Latins do. Their longer and
severer fast continues unbroken till Easter morning—unless Annunciation
Day happens to fall in Lent. Then they are allowed the indulgence of
fish. Holy Week is with them Great Week. Services take place in the
churches every night except Wednesday, and commemorate the events of
Jerusalem in a more dramatic way than even in the Roman Church. The
symbolic washing of the disciples’ feet, however, which takes place in
Jerusalem on Holy Thursday, is not performed in Constantinople except
by the Armenians. On Good, or Great, Friday a cenotaph is erected in
the nave of each church, on which is laid an embroidery or some other
representation of the crucifixion. Sculpture is not permitted in the
Greek Church, although on this one occasion a statue has sometimes been
seen. The faithful flock during the day to the cenotaph, where they kiss
the embroidery and make some small donation. Each one receives from
the acolyte in charge a jonquil or a hyacinth. This graceful custom is
perhaps a relic of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which Easter superseded and
with whose symbolism, celebrating as they did the myth of Demeter and
Persephone, it has so much in common. Spring flowers, at all events,
play a part at Easter quite different from our merely decorative use
of them. Flower stands are almost as common at church doors as candle
stands. For people also make the round of the icons in the churches, on
Good Friday, lighting votive tapers here and there. The true use of the
tapers, however, is after dark. Then a procession figuring the entombment
of Christ issues from the church with the image of the cenotaph and
makes the circuit of the court or, in purely Greek communities, of the
surrounding streets, accompanied by a crowd of lighted candles. The image
is finally taken to the holy table, where it remains for forty days.
An even more striking ceremony takes place on Saturday night. About
midnight people begin to gather in the churches, which are aromatic
with the flowering bay strewn on the floor. Every one carries a candle
but none are lighted—not even before the icons. The service begins with
antiphonal chanting. The ancient Byzantine music sounds stranger than
ever in the dim light, sung by the black-robed priests with black veils
over their tall black caps. Finally, the celebrant, in a purple cope
of mourning, withdraws behind the _iconostásion_, the screen that in
a Greek church divides the holy table from the chancel. As the chant
proceeds candles are lighted in certain chandeliers. Then the door of
the sanctuary is thrown open, revealing a blaze of light and colour
within. The celebrant comes out in magnificent vestments, holding a
lighted candle and saying: “Come to the light.” Those nearest him
reach out their own tapers to take the sacred fire, and from them it
is propagated in an incredibly short time through the entire church.
In the meantime the priests march in procession out-of-doors, headed
by a banner emblematic of the resurrection. And there, surrounded by
the flickering lights of the congregation, the celebrant chants the
triumphant resurrection hymn. At this point tradition demands that the
populace should express their own sentiments by a volley of pistol-shots.
But since the reactionary uprising of 1909, when soldiers took advantage
of the Greek Easter to make such tragic use of their own arms, an attempt
has been made in Constantinople to suppress this detail. I have been told
that each shot is aimed at Judas. The unfaithful apostle, at all events,
used to be burned in effigy on Good Friday at Therapia. And I have heard
of other customs of a similar bearing.
The patriarchal church at Phanar is the most interesting place to see
the ceremonies of Easter morning. They are not for every one to see, by
reason of the smallness of the church. One must have a friend at court in
order to obtain a ticket of admission. Even then one may miss, as I once
did through ignorance, and perhaps through a lack of that persistence
which should be the portion of the true tourist, certain characteristic
scenes of the day. Thus I failed to witness the robing of the Patriarch
by the prelates of his court. Neither did I get a photograph of them
all marching in procession to the church, though I had moved heaven
and earth—_i. e._, a bishop and an ambassador—for permission to do so.
Nevertheless, I had an excellent view of the ceremony of the second
resurrection, as the Easter morning vespers are called. The procession
entered the church led by small boys in white and gold who carried a
tall cross, two gilt _exeptérigha_ on staves, symbolic of the six-winged
cherubim, and lighted candles. After them came choristers singing. The
men wore a species of fez entirely covered by its spread-out tassel. One
carried an immense yellow candle in front of the officiating clergy, who
marched two and two in rich brocaded chasubles. Their long beards gave
them a dignity which is sometimes lacking to their Western brothers,
while the tall black _kalymáfhion_, brimmed slightly at the top with a
true Greek sense of outline, is certainly a more imposing head-dress than
the biretta. The Patriarch came next, preceded and followed by a pair
of acolytes carrying two and three lighted candles tied together with
white rosettes. These candles symbolise the two natures of Christ and the
Trinity; with them His Holiness is supposed to dispense his blessing.
He wore magnificent vestments of white satin embroidered with blue and
green and gold. A large diamond cross and other glittering objects hung
about his neck. In his hand he carried a crosier of silver and gold and
on his head he wore a domed crown-like mitre. It was surmounted by a
cross of gold, around it were ornaments of enamel and seed pearls, and
in the gold circlet of its base were set immense sapphires and other
precious stones. The Patriarch was followed by members of the Russian
embassy, of the Greek, Montenegrin, Roumanian, and Servian legations,
and by the lay dignitaries of his own entourage, whose uniforms and
decorations added what they could to the splendour of the occasion. These
personages took their places in the body of the nave—standing, as is
always the custom in the Greek Church—while the clergy went behind the
screen of the sanctuary. The Patriarch, after swinging a silver censer
through the church, took his place at the right of the chancel on a high
canopied throne of carved wood inlaid with ivory. He made a wonderful
picture there with his fine profile and long white beard and gorgeous
vestments. On a lower and smaller throne at his right sat the Grand
Logothete. The Grand Logothete happens at present to be a preternaturally
small man, and time has greatly diminished his dignities. The glitter of
his decorations, however, and the antiquity of his office make him what
compensation they can. His office is an inheritance of Byzantine times,
when he was a minister of state. Now he is the official representative of
the Patriarch at the Sublime Porte and accompanies him to the Palace when
His Holiness has audience of the Sultan.
No rite, I suppose, surpasses that of the Greek Church in splendour.
The carved and gilded iconostasis, the icons set about with gold,
the multitude of candles, precious lamps, and chandeliers, the rich
vestments, the clouds of incense, make an overpowering appeal to the
senses. To the Western eye, however, there is too much gilt and blaze
for perfect taste, there are too many objects in proportion to the space
they fill. And certainly to the Western ear the Byzantine chant, however
interesting on account of its descent from the antique Greek modes, lacks
the charm of the Gregorian or of the beautiful Russian choral. At a point
of the service the Gospels were read by different voices in a number of
different languages. I recognised Latin and Slavic among them. Finally,
the Patriarch withdrew in the same state as he entered. On his way to
his own apartments he paused on an open gallery and made an address to
the crowd in the court that had been unable to get into the church.
Then he held in the great saloon of his palace a levee of those who had
been in the church, and each of them was presented with gaily decorated
Easter eggs and with a cake called, curiously enough, by the Persian
name of _chörek_—except that the Greeks mispronounce it _tsouréki_. These
dainties are the universal evidence of the Greek Easter—these and the
salutation “Christ is risen,” to which answer is made by lips the least
sanctimonious: “In truth he is risen.” Holy Thursday is the traditional
day for dyeing eggs. On Holy Saturday the Patriarch sends an ornamental
basket of eggs and _chörek_ to the Sultan. _Chörek_ is like the Easter
cake of northern Italy. It is a sort of big brioche made in three strands
braided together.
Easter Monday is in some ways a greater feast than Easter itself. In
Constantinople the Christian population is so large that when the Greeks
and Armenians stop work their fellow citizens find it easy to follow
suit. The Phanar is a favourite place of resort throughout the Easter
holidays, an open space between the patriarchate and the Golden Horn
being turned into a large and lively fair. The traditional place for the
celebration of the day, however, is in the open spaces of the Taxim, on
the heights of Pera. The old travellers all have a chapter about the
festivities which used to take place there, and remnants of them may
still be seen. The Armenians gather chiefly in a disused cemetery of
their cult, where the tomb of a certain St. Kevork is honoured at this
season and where peasants from Asia Minor may sometimes be seen dancing
among the graves. A larger and noisier congregation assembles at the
upper edge of the parade-ground across the street. Not a little colour is
given to it by Greeks from the region of Trebizond, who sometimes are not
Greeks at all, but Laz, and who often wear the hood of that mysterious
people knotted around their heads. They have a strange dance which they
continue hour after hour to the tune of a little violin hanging from
the player’s hand. They hold each other’s fingers in the air, and as
they dance they keep up a quivering in their thighs, which they vary by
crouching to their heels and throwing out first one leg and then the
other with a shout. An even more positive touch of colour is given to
the scene by the Kürds. They set up a tent in front of which a space is
partially enclosed by screens of the same material. I remember seeing one
such canvas that was lined with a vivid yellow pattern on a red ground.
There swarthy Kürds in gaily embroidered jackets or waistcoats gather to
smoke, to drink tea, and to dance in their own more sedate way, while
gipsies pipe unto them and pound a big drum. I once asked one of the
dancers how it was that he, being no Christian, made merry at Easter
time. “Eh,” he answered, “there is no work. Also, since the constitution
we are all one, and if one nation rejoices, the others rejoice with it.
Now all that remains,” he went on, “is that there should be no rich and
no poor, and that we should all have money together.” Interesting as I
found this socialistic opinion in the mouth of a Kürdish _hamal_, I could
not help remembering how it had been put into execution in 1896, when the
Kürds massacred the Armenian _hamals_ and wrested from the survivors the
profitable guild of the street porters. It was then that the Easter glory
departed from the Taxim. But the place had already been overtaken by the
growing city, while increasing facilities of communication now daily
lengthen the radius of the holiday maker.
One assembly of Easter week which still is to be seen in something of its
pristine glory is the fair of Balîklî. This takes place on the Friday
and lasts through Sunday. The scene of it is the monastery of Balîklî,
outside the land walls of Stamboul. It is rather curious that the Turkish
name of so ancient a place should have superseded even among the Greeks
its original appellation. The Byzantine emperors had a villa there
and several of them built churches in the vicinity. The name Balîklî,
however, which might be translated as the Fishy Place, comes from the
legend every one knows of the Greek monk who was frying fish when news
was brought him that the Turks had taken the city. He refused to believe
it, saying he would do so if his fish jumped out of the frying-pan—not
into the fire, but into the spring beside him. Which they promptly did.
Since when the life-giving spring, as it is called, has been populated by
fish that look as if they were half fried. The thing on Balîklî day is to
make a pilgrimage to the pool of these miraculous fish, to drink of the
water in which they swim, to wash one’s hands and face and hair in it,
and to take some of it away in a bottle. The spring is at one end of a
dark chapel, half underground, into which the crowd squeezes in batches.
After receiving the benefits of the holy water you kiss the icons in the
chapel. A priest in an embroidered stole, who holds a small cross in his
hand, will then make the holy sign with it upon your person and offer you
the cross and his hand as well to kiss, in return for which you drop a
coin into the slot of a big box beside him. Candles are also to be had
for burning at the various icons. The greater number of these, however,
are in the monastery church hard by. And so many candles burn before
them that attendants go about every few minutes, blow out the candles,
and throw them into a box, to make room for new candles. There are also
priests to whom you tell your name, which they add to a long list, and in
return for the coin you leave behind you they pray for blessing upon the
name. All this is interesting to watch, by reason of the great variety of
the pilgrims and the unconscious lingering of paganism in their faith.
And, while there is a hard commercial side to it all, you must remember
that a hospital and other charitable institutions largely profit thereby.
There are also interesting things to watch outside the monastery gate.
Temporary coffee-houses and eating places are established there in
abundance, and the hum of festivity that arises from them may be heard
afar among the cypresses of the surrounding Turkish cemetery. I must add
that spirituous liquors are dispensed with some freedom; for the Greek
does not share the hesitation of his Turkish brother in such matters,
and he considers it well-nigh a Christian duty to imbibe at Easter. To
imbibe too much at that season, as at New Year’s and one or two other
great feasts, is by no means held to impair a man’s reputation for
sobriety. It is surprising, however, how soberly the pleasures of the day
are in general taken. As you sit at a table, absorbing your own modest
refreshment, you are even struck by a certain stolidity in those about
you. Perhaps it is partly due to the fact that the crowd is not purely
Greek. Armenians are there, Bulgarians, Albanians, Turks too. Then many
of the pilgrims are peasants, come in ox-carts from outlying villages
and dazzled a little by this urban press. They listen in pure delight
to the music that pours from a hundred instruments. The crowning glory
of such an occasion is to have a musician sit at the table with you,
preferably a hand-organ man or a gipsy with his pipe. Gipsy women go
about telling fortunes. “You are going to have great calamities,” utters
one darkly when you refuse to hear your fate. “Is that the way to get a
piastre out of me?” you ask. “But afterward you will become very rich,”
she condescends to add. Other gipsies carry miniature marionette shows on
their backs in glass cases. Wandering musicians tempt you to employ their
arts. Vendors of unimaginable sweets pick their way among the tables.
Beggars exhibit horrible deformities and make artful speeches. “May you
enjoy your youth!” is one. “May you know no bitternesses!” exclaims
another with meaning emphasis. “May God forgive your dead,” utters a
third. “The world I hear, but the world I do not see,” cries a blind man
melodramatically: “Little eyes I have none.” Diminutives are much in
favour among this gentry. And every two minutes some one comes with a
platter or with a brass casket sealed with a big red seal and says, “Your
assistance,” adding, “for the church,” or “for the school,” or “for the
hospital,” if you seem to fail to take in what is expected of you. Your
assistance need not be very heavy, however, and you feel that you owe
something in return for the pleasures of the occasion.
Beyond the circle of eating places stretches an open field which is the
scene of the more active enjoyment of the day. There the boat-swings
beloved of Constantinople children are installed, together with
merry-go-rounds, weights which one sends to the top of a pole by means of
a hammer blow, and many another world-old device for parting the holiday
maker and his money. One novel variant is an inclined wire, down which
boys slide hanging from a pulley. Dancing is the favourite recreation of
the men. When they happen to be Bulgars of Macedonia they join hands and
circle about one of their number who plays the bagpipe. Every few steps
the leader stops and, steadied by the man who holds the other end of his
handkerchief, indulges in posturings expressive of supreme enjoyment. The
_pas’haliático_ of the Greeks is less curious but more graceful. After
watching the other dances, picturesque as they are, one seems to come
back with it to the old Greek sense of measure. And it is danced with a
lightsomeness which is less evident with other races. The men put their
hands on each other’s shoulders and circle in a sort of barn-dance step
to the strains of a _lanterna_. Of which more anon.
[Illustration: Bulgarians dancing]
[Illustration: Greeks dancing to the strains of a _lanterna_]
The feast of Our Lady of the Fishes is one of the greatest popular
festivals in Constantinople. By no means, however, is it the only one
of its kind. The cult of holy wells forms a chapter by itself in the
observances of the Greek Church. This cult has an exceptional interest
for those who have been touched by the classic influence, as offering
one of the most visible points at which Christianity turned to its own
use the customs of paganism. An ἁγίασμα, an _áyazma_ as the Greeks
colloquially call it, is nothing more or less than the sacred fount of
antiquity. Did not Horace celebrate such a one in his ode to the _Fons
Bandusiæ_? As a matter of fact, a belief in naiads still persists among
Greek peasants. And you can pay a lady no greater compliment than to tell
her that she looks, or even that she cooks, like a nereid. For under
that comprehensive style the nymphs are now known. But as guardians
of sacred founts they, like some of the greater divinities, have been
baptised with Christian names. There is an infinity of such springs in
and about Constantinople. Comparatively few of them are so well housed as
the _áyazma_ of Balîklî. Some of them are scarcely to be recognised from
any profane rill in the open country, while others are in Turkish hands
and accessible only on the day of the saint to which they are dedicated.
On that day, and in the case of an _áyazma_ of some repute on the days
before and after—unless the nearest Sunday determine otherwise—is
celebrated the _paniyíri_ of the patron of the spring. _Paniyíri_, or
_panayíri_ as perhaps it is more commonly known, has the same origin as
our word panegyric. For the reading of the saint’s panegyric is one of
the religious exercises of the day. Which, like the early Christian agape
and the contemporary Italian _festa_, is another survival of an older
faith. During the Byzantine period the annual pilgrimage in state of an
emperor to one of the shrines of the city was a πανήγυρις. But religious
exercises are not the essential part of a _panayíri_ to most of those who
take part in one. Nor need a _panayíri_ necessarily take place at a holy
well. The number of them that do take place is quite fabulous. Still, as
the joy of life was discovered in Greece, who shall blame the Greeks of
to-day for finding so many occasions to manifest it? And it is natural
that these occasions should oftenest arise during the clement half of the
year, when the greater feasts of the church are done.
One of the earliest “panegyrics” of the season is that of _Aï Saránda_,
which is held on the 9th/22d of March. _Aï Saránda_ means St. Forty to
many good people, although others designate thereby the Forty Martyrs of
Sebaste—now the Turkish city of Sîvas. There is a spring dedicated to
these worthies on the outskirts of Pera, between the place called The
Stones and the Palace of Dolma Ba’hcheh. I find it difficult to share
the popular belief that the forty martyrs of Sîvas ever had anything
to do with this site. It is true that the pious Empress Pulcheria dug
them up in the fifth century and transported them with great pomp to the
church she built for them on the farther side of the Golden Horn. It is
also true that their church was demolished shortly before the Turkish
conquest, and its marbles used in fortifying the Golden Gate. But why
should a Turkish tomb on the hillside above the _áyazma_ be venerated by
the Greeks as the last resting-place of “St. Forty”? Has it anything to
do with the fact that the forty martyrs are commemorated at the vernal
equinox, which happens to be the New Year of the Persians and which the
Turks also observe?
Being ignorant of all these matters, my attention was drawn quite by
accident to the tomb in question by some women who were tying rags to
the grille of a window. The act is common enough in the Levant, among
Christians and Mohammedans alike. It signifies a wish on the part of the
person who ties the rag, which should be torn from his own clothing.
More specifically, it is sometimes supposed to bind to the bar any
malady with which he may happen to be afflicted. Near this grille was a
doorway through which I saw people coming and going. I therefore decided
to investigate. Having paid ten _paras_ for that privilege to a little
old Turk with a long white beard, I found myself in a typical Turkish
_türbeh_. In the centre stood a ridged and turbaned catafalque, while
Arabic inscriptions adorned the walls. I asked the _hoja_ in attendance
who might be buried there. He told me that the Greeks consider the tomb
to be that of St. Forty, while the Turks honour there the memory of a
certain holy Ahmed. I would willingly have known more about this Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of a saint; but others pressed behind me, and the
_hoja_ asked if I were not going to “circulate.” He also indicated the
left side of the catafalque as the place for me to begin. I accordingly
walked somewhat leisurely around the room. When I came back to the
_hoja_ he surprised me not a little by throwing a huge string of wooden
beads over my head, obliging me to step clear of them. He then directed
me to circulate twice more, which I did with more intelligence, he
muttering some manner of invocation the while. The third time I was
considerably delayed by a Greek lady with two little boys who carried toy
balloons. The little boys and their balloon strings got tangled in the
string of the big wooden beads, and one of the balloons broke away to the
ceiling, occasioning fearful sounds of lamentation in the holy place.
The _hoja_ kept his temper admirably, however. He was not too put out to
inform me that I owed him a piastre for the service he had rendered me.
I begged his pardon for troubling him to remind me, saying that I was a
stranger. He politely answered that one must always learn a first time,
adding that a piastre would not make me poor nor him rich. I reserved my
opinion on the latter point when I saw how many of them he took in. At
the foot of the catafalque a Turkish boy was selling tapers. I bought
one, as it were an Athenian sacrificing to the unknown god, lighted it,
and stuck it into the basin of sand set for the purpose. That done, I
considered myself free to admire the more profane part of the _panaïr_—as
the Turks say.
Part of it covered the adjoining slopes, where peaceably inclined
spectators, including Turkish women not a few, might also contemplate
the blossoming peach-trees that added their colour to the occasion,
and the farther panorama of Bosphorus and Marmora. But the crux of the
proceedings was in a small hollow below the tomb. I must confess that I
shrank from joining the press of the faithful about the grotto of the
sacred fount. I contented myself with hovering on their outskirts. A
black group of priestly cylinders marked the densest part of the crowd,
and near them a sheaf of candles burned strangely in the clear spring
sunlight. A big refreshment tent was pitched not too far away to receive
the overflow of devotion, reaching out canvas arms to make further space
for tables and chairs. The faded green common to Turkish tents was lined
with dark red, appliquéd to which were panels of white flower-pots and
flowers. I wondered if the tent-man wittingly repeated this note of the
day. For flowers were everywhere in evidence. Lilacs, tulips, hyacinths,
jonquils, violets, and narcissi were on sale under big green canvas
umbrellas at the edge of the hollow, while every other pilgrim who came
away from the _áyazma_ carried a bottle of holy water in one hand and a
spring flower in the other.
Interesting as is the _panayíri_ of the forty martyrs, it does not rank
with the later and greater spring festival of St. George. This also has
Turkish affiliations—at least in Constantinople and Macedonia. Both races
count St. George’s Day, April 23d/May 6th, the official beginning of
summer—of the good time, as modern Greek pleasantly puts it. The Turks,
however, dedicate the day to Hîd’r Eless. But it is not too difficult to
relate this somewhat vague personage to our more familiar friend Elijah,
who in his character of St. Elias shares with St. George the mantle of
Apollo. Nor is the heavenly charioteer the only one of the Olympians
whose cult survives to-day among their faithful people. The Hebrew
prophet would doubtless have been much astonished to learn that he was to
be the heir of a Greek god. He owes it partly to the similarity of his
name to the Greek word for sun and partly to the chariot of fire that
carried him out of the world. As for “the infamous George of Cappadocia,”
as Gibbon denominates the patron saint of our ancestral island, his part
in the heritage of Apollo is due to his dragon, cousin german to the
python of the Far Darter. The sanctuaries of these two Christian legatees
of Olympus have replaced those of Apollo on all hilltops, while their
name-days are those when men feasted of old the return and the midsummer
splendour of the sun.
The place among places to celebrate St. George’s Day is Prinkipo. That
delicious island deserves a book to itself. Indeed, I believe several
have been written about it. One of them is by a political luminary of our
own firmament who flamed for a moment across the Byzantine horizon and
whose counterfeit presentment, in a bronze happily less enduring than
might be, hails the motor men of Astor Place, New York. Sunset Cox’s
work bears the ingratiating title of “The Pleasures of Prinkipo; or, The
Diversions of a Diplomat”—if that be the order of the alternatives. The
pleasures of Prinkipo are many as its red and white sage roses, but none
of them is more characteristic than to climb the Sacred Way through olive
and cypress and pine to the little monastery crowning the higher hill
of the island, and to take part in the ceremonies of rejoicing over the
return of the sun. This is a _panayíri_ much frequented by the people of
the Marmora, who come in their fishing-boats from distant villages of the
Marble Sea. Their costumes become annually more corrupt, I am pained to
state; but there are still visible among them ladies in print, sometimes
even in rich velvet, trousers of a fulness, wearing no hat but a painted
muslin handkerchief over the hair, and adorned with dowries in the form
of strung gold coins. They do not all come to make merry. Among them are
not a few ill or deformed, who hope a miracle from good St. George. You
may see them lying pale and full of faith on the strewn bay of the little
church. They are allowed to pass the night there, in order to absorb the
virtue of the holy place. I have even known of a sick child’s clothes
being left in the church a year in hope of saving its life.
But these are only incidents in the general tide of merrymaking. Eating
and drinking, music and dance, go on without interruption for three days
and three nights. The music is made in many ways, of which the least
popular is certainly not the way of the _lanterna_. The _lanterna_ is
a kind of hand-organ, a hand-piano rather, of Italian origin but with
an accent and an interspersing of bells peculiar to Constantinople.
It should attract the eye as well as the ear, usually by means of the
portrait of some beauteous being set about with a garland of artificial
flowers. And it is engineered by two young gentlemen in fezzes of an
extremely dark red, in short black jackets or in bouffant shirt-sleeves
of some magnificent print, with a waistcoat more double-breasted than you
ever saw and preferably worn unbuttoned; also in red or white girdles,
in trousers that flare toward the bottom like a sailor’s, and in shoes
or slippers that should have no counter. Otherwise the rules demand that
the counter be turned under the wearer’s heel. Thus accoutred he bears
his _lanterna_ on his back from patron to patron and from one _panayíri_
to another. His companion carries a camp-stool, whereon to rest his
instrument while turning the handle hour in and hour out. I happen,
myself, to be not a little subject to the spell of music. I have trembled
before Fitzner, Kneisel, and Sevčik quartettes and I have touched
infinity under the subtlest bows and batons of my time. Yet I must
confess that I am able to listen to a _lanterna_ without displeasure. On
one occasion I listened to many of them, accompanied by pipes, drums,
gramophones, and wandering violins, for the whole of a May night on
St. George’s hilltop in Prinkipo. What is more, I understood in myself
how the Dionysiac frenzy was fed by the cymbals of the mænads, and I
resented all the inhibitions of a New England origin that kept me from
joining the dancers. Some of them were the Laz porters of the island,
whose exhausting measure was more appropriate to such an orgy than to
Easter Monday. Others were women, for once; but they kept demurely to
themselves, apparently untouched by any corybantic fury. The same could
not be said of their men, whose dancing was not always decent. They
were bareheaded, or wore a handkerchief twisted about their hair like a
fillet, and among them were faces that might have looked out of an Attic
frieze. It gave one the strangest sense of the continuity of things.
In the lower darkness a few faint lights were scattered. One wondered
how, to them, must seem the glare and clangour of this island hilltop,
ordinarily so silent and deserted. The music went up to the quiet stars,
the revellers danced unwearying, a half-eaten moon slowly lighted the
dark sea, a spring air moved among the pines, and then a greyness came
into the east, near the Bithynian Olympus, and at last the god of
hilltops rode into a cloud-barred sky.
The second feast of Apollo takes place at midsummer, namely on St.
Elias’s Day (July 20/August 2). Arnaout-kyöi is where it may be most
profitably admired. Arnaout-kyöi—Albanian Village—is the Turkish name of
a thriving suburb which the Greeks call Great Current, from the race of
the Bosphorus past its long point. It perhaps requires a fanatical eye
to discover anything Apollonic in that lively settlement. No one will
gainsay, however, that the joy of life is visible and audible enough
in Arnaout-kyöi during the first three days of August. There also is
a sacred way, leading out of an odoriferous ravine to a high place
and a grove, whither all men gather in the heat of the day to partake
of the water of a holy well. But waters less sanctified begin to flow
more freely as night draws on, along the cool quay and in the purlieus
thereof. Fringes of coloured paper are strung from house to house, flags
hang out of windows or across the street, wine-shops are splendid with
banners, rugs, and garlands of bay, and you may be sure that the sound of
the _lanterna_ is not unheard in the land. The perfection of festivity
is to attach one of these inspiriting instruments to your person for the
night. The thing may be done for a dollar or two. You then take a table
at a café and order with your refreshments a candle, which you light and
cause to stand with a little of its own grease. In the meantime perhaps
you buy as many numbers as your means will allow out of a bag offered
you by a young gentleman with a watermelon under his arm, hoping to find
among them the mystic number that will make the melon your own. But you
never do. When your candle has burned out—or even before, if you be so
prodigal—you move on with your _lanterna_ to another café. And so wears
the short summer night away.
To the sorrow of those who employ Greek labour, but to the joy of him
who dabbles in Greek folklore, _panayíria_ increase in frequency as
summer draws to a close. The picturesque village of Kandilli, opposite
Arnaout-kyöi—and any church dedicated to the _Metamorphosis_—is the scene
of an interesting one on Transfiguration Day (August 6/19). No good
Greek eats grapes till after the Transfiguration. At the mass of that
morning baskets of grapes are blessed by the priests and afterward passed
around the church. I know not whether some remnant of a bacchic rite be
in this solemnity. It so happens that the delicious _chaoush_ grapes
of Constantinople, which have spoiled me for all others that I know,
ripen about that time. But as the blessing of the waters drives away the
_kallikántzari_, so the blessing of the grapes puts an end to the evil
influence of the _thrímes_. The _thrímes_ are probably descended from
the dryads of old. Only they now haunt the water, instead of the trees,
and their influence is baleful during the first days of August. Clothes
washed then are sure to rot, while the fate of him so bold as to bathe
during those days is to break out into sores.
The next great feast is that of the Assumption, which is preceded by a
fortnight’s fast. Those who would see its panegyric celebrated with due
circumstance should row on the 28th of August to Yeni-kyöi and admire
the plane-shaded avenue of that fashionable village, decorated in honour
of the occasion and musical with mastic glasses and other instruments
of sound. A greater _panayíri_, however, takes place a month later in
the pleasant meadows of Gyök Sou, known to Europe as the Sweet Waters of
Asia. Two feasts indeed, the Nativity of the Virgin and the Exaltation
of the Cross (September 8/21 and 14/27), then combine to make a week
of rejoicing. There is nothing to be seen at Gyök Sou that may not be
seen at other fêtes of the same kind. I do recollect, though, a dance of
Anatolian peasants in a ring, who held each other first by the little
finger, then by the hand, then by the elbow, and lastly by the shoulder.
And the amphoræ of the local pottery works in which people carry away
their holy water give the rites of the _áyazma_ a classic air. But this
_panayíri_ has an ampler setting than the others, in its green river
valley dotted with great trees, and it enjoys an added importance because
it is to all practical purposes the last of the season. No one can count
on being able to make merry out-of-doors on St. Demetrius’s Day (October
26 / November 8). St. Demetrius is as interesting a personality as St.
George. He also is an heir of divinity, for on him, curiously enough,
have devolved the responsibilities of the goddess Demeter. He is the
patron of husbandmen, who discharge labourers and lease fields on his
day. Among working people his is a favourite season for matrimony. I know
not how it is that some sailors will not go to sea after _Aï Thimítri_,
until the waters have been blessed at Epiphany. Perhaps it is that he
marks for Greeks and Turks alike the beginning of winter, being known to
the latter as Kassîm. This division of the seasons is clearly connected
with the Pelasgian myth of Demeter.
The feast of her successor I have never found particularly interesting,
though I must say I have seen it only at Kourou Cheshmeh. Kourou
Cheshmeh, or Dry Fountain, as the Turks call it, is where Medea, during
her somewhat stormy honeymoon in the Argo, planted a laurel, and where a
very different notability of a later day, St. Daniel the Stylite, stood
for many years on a pillar. No sign of laurel or pillar are there to-day,
or of the famous Byzantine church of the Archangel Michael, which existed
somewhere in the vicinity and which Sultan Mehmed II pulled down to build
into Cut-Throat Castle. But there is a remnant of antiquity in Kourou
Cheshmeh which goes very well with feasts of Demeter. This is an old
altar, half buried in the earth near the mosque of the village, festooned
about with garlands between battered rams’ heads—a curiously vivid symbol
of the contrasts and survivals that are so much of the interest of
Constantinople.
[Illustration: The mosque and the Greek altar of Kourou Cheshmeh]
I never saw any one lay a sacrifice to the Goddess of Plenty on that
ancient marble. A real rite of sacrifice may be seen, however, at
the last _panayíri_ of the year, in the village of San Stefano. The
_panayíri_, as you might suppose, is that of St. Stephen. In the Greek
calendar St. Stephen’s Day falls on the 27th of December (January 9th),
instead of the 26th. The most characteristic part of the _panayíri_ is a
church procession which takes place on the afternoon before the feast,
when priests and choir-boys march through the village with banners and
incense and a small flock of sheep. The sheep are gaily decorated, like
those of _Kourban Baïram_, and they come to the same end. In fact,
the Greeks apply to their own sacrifice the Turkish name of _kourban_.
The main difference is that each animal represents some special votive
offering. And the offering may take different forms, according to the
means of the giver. One rainy winter afternoon I was watching the sheep,
daubed with paint and decorated with ribbons and artificial flowers,
gather in the yard of the church, when an old crone came into the porch.
She had pulled two or three of her many skirts over her head to protect
herself from the rain, and when she dropped them into place there
appeared in her arms a big rooster. “My _kourban_,” she said, showing him
to a neighbour who greeted her, and she made no bones about taking him
with her into the church. Holding him tightly under one arm she proceeded
to buy, at the stall inside the door, three big candles, one of which she
lighted at the shrine of St. Stephen, another at that of the Virgin, and
a third in front of an icon which I did not recognise. That done, she
made the round of all the icons in the church, twice over, kissing each
one and piously crossing herself before it. Then she sat down in a stall
at the back of the church, her rooster blinking around as if determined
to pass his last hour with credit. The old woman encouraged him with pats
and with remarks which I was sorry not to catch. In the meantime candles
multiplied before the icons, a sharp sweet odour added itself to that of
the strewn bay on the floor, a brisk business was done by a choir-boy
who sold, wrapped up in gay tissue-paper, dried leaves supposed to be of
the plant which sprang from St. Stephen’s crown of martyrdom, and a big
frosted cake was brought in with ceremony and put between two candles on
a table opposite the bishop’s throne. At last the Bishop himself arrived,
rather wet and out of breath, and was inducted into his vestments beside
the stove at the back of the church, not far from where the old woman was
sitting with her cock. At that point the latter, unable to contain his
emotions any longer, suddenly filled the holy place with a loud and pagan
crow.
These _panayíria_ are only a few of an inexhaustible list, for every
church and spring has its own. I have not even mentioned certain famous
ones that are not easily visited. Of this category, though less famous
than the fairs of Darîja, Pyrgos, or Silivri, is the feast of the
_Panayía Mavromolítissa_. This madonna in the church of Arnaout-kyöi is a
black icon reputed to have been found in the fields at the mouth of the
Black Sea. Every year on the 5th of September she is carried back in a
cortège of fishing-boats—weeping, it is said—by priests and well-wishers
who hold a picnic _panayíri_ in the vicinity of the Cyanean Rocks. I have
not spoken, either, of Ascension Day, which it is proper to celebrate by
taking your first sea bath. Or of St. John’s Day, known by its bonfires
and divinations. The Greeks often burn in the fires of St. John one or
two effigies which are said to represent Judas, though Herod and Salome
should rather perish on that occasion. Then there is May Day, when young
men and maidens get up early in the morning, as they do in Italy, and go
out into the fields to sing, to dance, to drink milk, to pick flowers,
and to make wreaths which the swain hangs up on the door-post of the lady
of his heart. And equally characteristic, in a different way, are the
days when men eat and drink in honour of their dead.
No one, I suppose, tries any longer to prove that the modern Greek is
one with his classic ancestor. Yet he remains curiously faithful to the
customs of ancient Greece. Whereby he affords us an interesting glimpse
into the processes of evolution. In him the antique and the modern world
come together, and we see for ourselves, more clearly than on the alien
soil of the West, how strangely habit is rooted in the heart of man, and
how the forms of Christianity are those of the paganism that preceded it.
XII
FOUNTAINS
An anonymous American traveller who visited Turkey something less than
a hundred years ago wrote, in comparing the water facilities of New
York and Constantinople, that “the emporium of the United States is
some centuries behind the metropolis of Turkey.” I doubt whether the
comparison would still hold, since the building of Croton and other dams.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that water—fresh water, at all events—is
an element less native to the Anglo-Saxon than to the Turk. We have our
proverb about cleanliness and godliness, and we have our morning tubs,
and we have our unrivalled systems of plumbing; but we also have our
Great Unwashed. In Turkey, however, there is no Great Unwashed—save among
those who are not Turks. The reason is that for a follower of the Prophet
godliness is next to cleanliness. His religion obliges him to wash his
face, hands, and feet before each of his five daily prayers, while
innumerable public baths exist for the completer ablutions required of
him. Add to that the temperance enjoined upon him, whence is derived his
appreciation of good drinking water, and you will begin to understand why
there are so many fountains in Stamboul.
The fountains of Constantinople are very little like those of Rome and
Paris. There are no figures about them, and not many of them spout or
splash. In fact, I recently saw the most famous of them referred to in
an architectural handbook as a kiosk, so little resemblance does it
bear to the customary fountain. Fountains are, none the less, one of the
chief ornaments of Constantinople. If they are intended more strictly
for use than Western fountains, they also take the place—and often
most happily—of commemorative sculpture in Western countries. And so
faithfully have they followed all the vicissitudes of the art of building
in Turkey, have they reflected changes of taste and successive foreign
influences, that a study of them would yield valuable material toward a
history of Ottoman architecture.
I do not propose to make any such study of them now. The variety of these
small monuments is so great, however, that I must be academic enough
to divide them into four or five categories. Of which the first would
include the private fountains alluded to in earlier chapters. Numerous
and interesting as private fountains are, a foreigner naturally has
little opportunity to become acquainted with them. Their commonest form
is that seen in all Turkish houses—of a niche in the wall containing a
tap set over a marble basin. This arrangement, of course, amounts to
nothing more or less than a wash-stand. But mark that the hole in the
bottom of the basin contains no stopper. A Mohammedan would consider
that we wash our hands in dirty water, preferring, himself, to use
only the stream running from the faucet. Turkish houses—real Turkish
houses—are like Japanese ones in that they contain very little furniture
or bric-à-brac. The old architects, therefore, made the most of the
opportunity afforded by the ritual use of water, and found nothing
incongruous in treating a sanitary fixture architecturally, or even
in making it an important feature of decoration. This they oftenest
accomplished by setting the tap in the lower part of a tall marble
tablet, called the _aïna tashi_, or mirror stone, which they shaped to
suit the niche in which it stood and ornamented more or less elaborately
with carving and sometimes with painting too.
[Illustration: Wall fountain in the Seraglio
Photograph by Abdullah Frères]
Not many early examples can remain, on account of the unfortunate
propensity of Turkish houses to burn up. A number, however, are to be
seen in the old palace of Top Kapou. Perfectly simple but characteristic
and charming of their kind are the tiny wall fountains of a room in the
“Cage,” at each end of the window-seat in front of each of the four
windows. The same principle is used for more ornamental purposes by
putting one basin below another in such a way that the second will catch
the overflow of the first. There is a big wall fountain of this sort
in the splendid hall of Süleïman the Magnificent. In a private house
of much later date I have seen three graduated basins projecting from
their niche, rounded and scalloped like shells. There is also a pretty
_selsebil_ of a new kind in one of the baths of the Seraglio, where the
surface of the mirror stone is notched into a series of overlapping
scales so as to multiply the ripple of the water. But the prettiest
dripping fountain I know is in an old house in Bebek, on the European
shore of the Bosphorus. It stands in the entrance hall, at an odd little
angle where it will best catch the light, and it combines the miniature
basins of an ordinary _selsebil_ with a lower surface of marble scales.
What is least ordinary about it, however, are the spaces of marble lace
work bordering the shallow arched niche where the water trickles. There
is a free space behind them in order to give the proper relief to the
design. And there is an irregularity about the intertwined whorls which
a Western artist would have thought beneath him, but which only adds
interest to the work.
[Illustration: _Selsebil_ in Bebek]
[Illustration: The goose fountain at Kazlî]
This original _selsebil_ partakes also of the nature of a _fîskieh_, as
the Turks onomatopoetically call a spurting fountain. In the stalactites
bordering the two shallow basins at the bottom are jets which used to
add to the complicated tinkle of the fountain. Spurting fountains seem to
be rarer indoors than out, though I have already mentioned the beautiful
one in the Kyöprülü kiosk. They are not uncommon in the outer hall of
public baths. One that contravenes the canons of orthodox Mohammedan art
is to be admired in the handsome bath of St. Sophia—a work of Sinan—where
three dolphins, their tails in the air, spout water into a fluted basin.
I have wondered if these unorthodox creatures, like the lions of so many
gardens, may not perpetuate a Byzantine tradition if not actual Byzantine
workmanship. I have already referred to the pigeons on a _selsebil_ in
Candilli. I have not yet referred to, though I have been considerably
intrigued by, a fat goose that is the pride of a street fountain outside
the Golden Gate. But on another fountain in Stamboul there is to be seen
another unorthodox creature, that is of unimpeachable Mohammedan descent.
The fountain is of the bubbling kind which sometimes very pleasantly
adorns the centre of a room. In this case it was put into a niche in
the Tile Pavilion which the Conqueror built in the Seraglio grounds.
The fountain, however, would seem to date from Sultan Mourad III, who
restored the kiosk in 1590. On either side of the deep rectangular
recess are poetical inscriptions of that Sultan, gold on green, with a
quaint little climbing border picked out of the marble in gold, and a
surmounting shell. That shell, dear to the Renaissance designers and how
many before them, is supposed to have made its entrance into Mohammedan
architecture from this very niche. At the back of the niche is another
shell, and under it the unorthodox creature, a peacock, spreads his fan.
It was perhaps to diminish the importance of this unorthodox, of this
probably heretical Shiïte peacock, that the artist coloured him more
soberly than the flowers that bloom on either side of him, and made him
combine with the shell to form the outline of a symbolic egg.
[Illustration: The wall fountain of Chinili-Kyöshk]
A few interesting interior fountains are to be seen in mosques, though
Constantinople cannot equal Broussa in this respect. St. Sophia contains
two such fountains, put there by Sultan Mourad III, which are big
alabaster jars fitted with taps. Two more typical ones are in Sultan
Ahmed, their graceful mirror stones set against two of the enormous piers
that hold up the dome. The real mosque fountains, however, are those
which exist for purposes of ritual ablution outside of the smallest
_mesjid_. There you will always see a row of small taps, set near the
ground against the wall of the mosque or its yard, with stepping-stones
in front of them. They are rarely treated with much elaboration except
in later mosques like Nouri Osmanieh, but they agreeably break up a
flat wall surface. And at Eyoub they really form one element of the
picturesqueness of the outer court, with the bracketed roof that protects
them from the weather and their clambering vine.
[Illustration: _Shadrîvan_ of Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha]
Most mosques, as well as _medressehs_ and other pious institutions,
also have a larger and more decorative fountain which usually stands
in the middle of the court. The technical name of such a fountain is
_shadrîvan_, or _shadîravan_, really meaning “for the peace of souls.”
The fountain, that is, not only aids the faithful in their religious
exercises, but adds so much to the celestial credit of the builder or
of the person whom he commemorates. For many _shadrîvans_ were built,
after the mosque to which they are attached, by another person. Those in
the courts of Baïezid and Selim, for instance, are the work of Mourad
IV, whose soul needed what peace it could find, while so late a sultan
as Mahmoud I built the fanciful _shadrîvan_ in the somewhat stern court
of the Conqueror as well as that in the court of St. Sophia. The last
two are charming examples of the Turkish rococo. The commonest form of
_shadrîvan_ is a basin or reservoir, encircled about the bottom by
taps and protected by a roof from sun and rain. The simplest type is
to be seen in the _medresseh_ yard of Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha, with a
perfectly plain reservoir and a pointed roof held up by wooden pillars.
A similar one which lies more on the track of sightseers is in front
of the mosque known as Little St. Sophia, anciently the church of Sts.
Sergius and Bacchus. Here the reservoir is an octagon terminating in a
cone, while the roof is tiled and ornamented at the apex with a bronze
_alem_—a lyre or crescent containing a cobweb of Arabic letters. There
are also seats between the posts for the greater convenience of those
who use the fountain. Some _shadrîvans_ are partially enclosed and made
into pavilions, where it is very pleasant to rest. An excellent example
exists in the yard of the mosque of Ramazan Effendi, in Issa Kapou.
The perforated marble enclosing the upper part of the reservoir of this
_shadrîvan_ is a thing that is seen in many such fountains. Sometimes a
handsome grille work protects the water, as at St. Sophia and Sokollî
Mehmed Pasha. The latter fountain is uncommon in that the large round
reservoir is the whole _shadrîvan_, with projecting eaves to shelter
the people at the taps. But not all _shadrîvans_ are for purposes of
ablution. At the Süleïmanieh and at Yeni Jami they are merely covered
tanks without taps. The _shadrîvan_ of the Valideh Jedid in Scutari is of
the same kind, except that the water falls invisibly from the roof of the
tank, filling the court with a mysterious sense of sound and coolness.
[Illustration: _Shadrîvan_ of Ramazan Effendi]
[Illustration: _Shadrîvan_ of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha]
I do not suppose that street fountains are actually more numerous than
private ones, but they naturally seem so to a foreigner wandering through
Stamboul. It is not easy to classify them clearly, so many are the forms
they take. They affect, however, two principal types, known in Turkish
as _cheshmeh_ and _sebil_, either of which may be attached to a wall or
may exist as an independent structure. The original form is the applied
_cheshmeh_, which is merely a wall fountain put outside the house, and
enlarged in scale accordingly. These fountains are a very characteristic
feature of Constantinople streets. There are literally thousands of
them, and they offer so great a variety of interest that it is a wonder
no one has taken the trouble to give them the study they deserve. They
are a wide-spread example, for one thing, of Turkish philanthropy—and
incidentally of a passing conception of public utilities. Every one of
those fountains was originally a public benefaction, often made by a
Sultan, it is true, and on an imperial scale, but oftener by a private
citizen who wished to commemorate some member of his family, to ornament
the street in which he lived, or to confer a benefit upon his neighbours.
He therefore endowed his fountain, in many instances. Such endowments
form an appreciable fraction of the property administered by the
Department of Pious Foundations. Sometimes the benefactor stipulated that
water-carriers or other persons were or were not to have the right of
selling the water of his fountain. The water-carrier, the _saka_, belongs
to a race by no means yet extinct in Constantinople, though I doubt if
his guilds are quite what they were. There used to be two such guilds,
of the horse _sakas_ and of the hand _sakas_. The patron of both was the
hero who attempted to carry water to Hüsseïn in the battle of Kerbela.
The members of both may be recognised by the dripping goatskins in which
they carry water from house to house. In these degenerate days, however,
a hand _saka_ is more likely to carry a couple of kerosene tins, slung
over his shoulder from either end of a pole. But if he has the right to
be paid for carrying water, every man has the right to go himself to the
fountain and draw water without money and without price.
Until a few years ago Constantinople possessed no other water-system.
Now modern water companies operate in their more invisible ways. But the
Ministry of Pious Foundations is still the greatest water company of
them all. That it was a fairly adequate one our American traveller of a
hundred years ago is witness. Only recently, however, has the department
attempted to make some sort of order out of the chaos of systems which
it administers—some larger, like the water-supplies of the Sultans, some
limited to the capacity of one small spring, and all based on the idea of
a charity rather than that of a self-paying utility. Even now I doubt if
any exact and complete map exists of the water-supply of Constantinople.
The knowledge necessary to make such a map is distributed between an
infinity of individuals known as _souyoljîs_, waterway men, who alone
can tell, often, just where the pipes lie and how they are fed. And very
useful, if occasionally very trying, gentlemen are these to know. This
is sometimes amusingly illustrated on the outskirts of the city, where a
house or a group of houses may be supplied from some small independent
source of water. As time has passed and property has changed hands,
the tradition of the waterway has been preserved only in some humble
family that has profited by its knowledge, perhaps, to cultivate a tidy
vegetable garden. And every now and then the water runs low or stops
altogether in the quarter for whose benefit it was originally made to
flow, until on payment of a tip to the _souyoljî_ it miraculously begins
to flow again.
This system is probably the one the Turks found in use when they entered
the city. Water still runs in the aqueducts of Valens and Justinian, and
until the present generation Stamboul had no other water-supply than
that first collected by Hadrian and Constantine. The Sultans restored
and improved it, but I have no doubt that the conduits of many a Turkish
fountain were laid by a Roman emperor. Of Byzantine fountains remaining
to this day, I am not sure that any can positively be identified as
such. Many of the fountains of Stamboul, however, must occupy the place
of Byzantine fountains, whose materials may have been used in their
construction. And it would not have been strange if the new masters of
the city adapted to their own use models which they saw about them. The
great quadruple fountain of Kîrk Cheshmeh—Forty Fountains—is a case in
point. The Turks connect with it the name of Sultan Süleïman I, who is
said to have left forty fountains in the city. But its original level
was considerably below the existing street, and one of the four niches
is ornamented with a Byzantine relief of peacocks, while other Byzantine
fragments are built into the structure. The arches of two of the niches,
moreover, are round, which was not characteristic of Süleïman’s period.
So we are not without reasons for thinking that the fountain may have
been a Byzantine one restored by Süleïman—who also restored the aqueduct
that feeds it. The same is likely of others of his forty fountains. No
others of them bear Byzantine sculptures. In fact, the only other street
fountain on which I have seen any such decoration—unless the goose of
Kazlî be Byzantine—is that of the small Koumrülü Mesjid, between Fatih
and the Adrianople Gate. But the large Horhor Cheshmeh near Ak Seraï,
and another farther up the hill toward the old Forum Amastrianon, have a
distinct Byzantine air. At the same time, their general form is that of
the Turkish wall fountain—an arched niche, containing a faucet above a
stone or marble trough.
This form, in its simplest state, without any ornament or even a
“mirror stone,” is found in what may be the oldest Turkish fountain in
Constantinople. It lies within the enclosure of the castle of Roumeli
Hissar. The niche is deeper than in later fountains, and the bricks used
in its construction are the large flat ones which the Turks borrowed
from their predecessors. If truth compels me further to record that the
arch is not the pointed one preferred by the Turks until the eighteenth
century, I am able to add that neither are the arches of the castle
itself.
[Illustration: The Byzantine fountain of Kîrk Cheshmeh]
I suppose it is natural that few fountains of that early period remain to
us. The newcomers probably found the city well enough supplied already,
and five hundred years is a long time for such small structures to last
in the open. The oldest inscribed wall fountain I know is that of Daoud
Pasha, outside the mosque of the same personage, who was Grand Vizier to
the Conqueror’s son Baïezid II (A. H. 890/A. D. 1485). There is little
about the pointed arch or fairly deep niche to attract attention, save
the bold inscription above a small mirror stone of palpably later date:
“The author of charity deceased, the Grand Vizier Daoud Pasha.” This is
the earliest form of ornament that appears on Turkish fountains—though
I fancy the broad eaves that protect many of them did not wait long
to be invented. I have already dwelt on the importance of writing in
all Turkish decoration. I therefore need not add that the simplest
inscription on a fountain has for the Turks an importance of a kind we
do not appreciate. Some fountains are famous merely for the lettering
on them—as in its day was that of Feïzoullah Effendi, outside his
_medresseh_, whose inscription was designed by the celebrated calligraph
Dourmoush-zadeh Ahmed Effendi.
It must not be inferred that the matter of the inscription is
comparatively of less importance—though here again the Western critic
is not quite competent to judge. The commonest of all inscriptions is
a verse from the Koran: “By water all things have life.” Other verses,
mentioning the four fountains of Paradise and the pool Kevser into which
they flow, are also frequent, together with references to the sacred
well Zemzem, which Gabriel opened for Hagar in Mecca, to Hîzîr and the
Spring of Life, and to the battle of Kerbela, in which Hüsseïn and his
companions were cut off from water. Or the central tenet of Islam, “There
is no God but God and Mohammed is the Prophet of God,” may be carved
above the niche—sometimes without any indication of the name or epoch
of the founder. The majority, however, are not so modest. They are more
likely to give ampler information than he who runs may read. And after
the time of Süleïman the Magnificent it became increasingly the fashion
for celebrated poets to compose the verses which celebrated calligraphs
designed. Thus the historian Chelibi-zadeh records the end of the
inscription on a reservoir of Ahmed III: “Seïd Vehbi Effendi, the most
distinguished among the word-wizards of the time, strung these pearls
on the thread of his verse and joined together the two lines of the
following chronographic distich, like two sweet almonds breast to breast:
‘With what a wall has Ahmed dammed the waters! For of astonishment stops
the flood in the midst of its course.’”
Chronograms are as common on fountains as they are on other monuments.
The earliest I have happened to come across is an Arabic one on a
fountain near the Studion, which points the reader’s attention as
follows—“The date fell: We gave thee the fountain of Paradise.” The
latter phrase is from the Koran. Its numerical value is 970, or 1563 of
our era, which is twenty years later than the chronogram on the tomb of
the Prince. The ideal chronogram should contain the name of the builder
of the fountain and that of the writer of the verse—though I must
confess I never found one that attained that height of ingenuity. Most
of them mention the founder’s name alone, as “Sultan Mourad’s fountain
is a gift” (994/1586), or “O God, grant Paradise to Moustafa Pasha!”
(1095/1684). But the exigencies of arithmetic may relegate the names
to the earlier part of the inscription—as on one of two neighbouring
fountains in the quarter of Ak Bîyîk (_anglice_, White Whisker): “When
the mother of Ali Pasha, Vizier in the reign of Sultan Mahmoud, quenched
the thirst of the people with the clear and pure water of her charity,
Riza of Beshiktash, the _Nakshibendi_”—an order of dervishes—“uttered
the following epigraph: Come and drink water of eternal life from this
joyful fountain.” The value of the last phrase is 1148, or 1735. Even
in so general a sentiment, however, it is not always easy to get the
required figure. Various ingenious devices are resorted to, of which a
handsome Renaissance fountain in Kassîm Pasha is an excellent example:
“The famous Vizier, the victorious warrior Hassan Pasha, made this
fountain as a trophy for Mohammedans. His aims were always philanthropic
and he provided this fountain with water like Zemzem. This fountain is so
well situated and built in so pleasant a place that one would take it as
the site where flows the water of eternal life. Those who look upon it
drive away all sorrow from their hearts.” The numerical value of the last
sentence is 2080, a date even farther from the Mohammedan calendar than
from ours. But the value of the single word “sorrow” is 1040. Drive it
away, or in other words subtract 1040 from 2080, and you get 1040 again,
which is evidently the date of the construction (1631). The light values
of this inscription are as enigmatic as its numerical values, so that I
have never been able to photograph it properly. It also states that the
water rights are free, meaning that no one _saka_ may sell the water. The
builder of this interesting fountain was in his day a saddler, a cook,
and a sergeant, which did not prevent him from eventually becoming high
admiral of the fleet, inflicting a memorable defeat upon the Russians in
the Black Sea, and marrying the sister of Sultan Mourad IV.
[Illustration: The two fountains of Ak Bîyîk]
The taste for chronograms has continued to this day, but in time
the arithmetic of the reader was helped out by an incidental date.
The earliest numerals I have found are of the time of Süleïman the
Magnificent, on a fountain built by a Jew in the suburb of Hass-kyöi
(931, 1525). The same fountain is also decorated with the earliest
reliefs I have noted, consisting merely of a little tracery on the mirror
stone. Altogether this period was an important one for fountains as it
was for all Turkish architecture. But while a few of them are admirably
proportioned, like the little fountain in Avret Bazaar at the gate of the
soup-kitchen of the _Hasseki_—she was Hourrem, the Joyous One, who bore
to Süleïman his ill-fated son Moustafa—many of them are disappointingly
heavy. It may be that the great Sinan did not consider such small
monuments worth his while, or that they have suffered by restoration.
At all events, the lesser sultans who followed Süleïman left fountains
generally more graceful. Ahmed I is said to have built not less than a
hundred of them. In the meantime they gradually developed in detail.
The tracery, less floral than geometrical, covered more and more of the
marble. Conventionalised cypresses, with tops mysteriously bent, sprang
up on either side of the taps. Conventionalised roses, often having a
mystic symbolism, became a favourite ornament for the apex of the arch.
The occult pentagram or hexagram, symbolic of microcosm and macrocosm
and talismanic against evil, were sometimes carved at the corners. And
the top, when it was not shaded by broad eaves, was finished in various
decorative ways.
The golden age of street fountains was in the first half of the
eighteenth century, during the reigns of those notable builders Ahmed
III and his nephew Mahmoud I. The change which they introduced into the
architecture of their country was in many ways an unhappy one. It led
the Turks out of their own order of tradition, which is rarely a safe
or useful thing to do, into strange byways of bad taste where they lost
themselves for two hundred years. Still, an architecture that tries
experiments is an architecture that lives, and at its beginning the
Turkish rococo has an inimitable grace and spirit. The fountains of the
period are decorated, as no fountains had been decorated before, with
floral reliefs a little like those of the Renaissance tombs and with
fruits and flowers in various quaint receptacles. The earlier of the
garden _selsebils_ I have already mentioned is an example, and a more
typical one is the wall fountain of the Valideh Jedid in Scutari. The
sculptures also began to be touched up with colour and gilding, as in the
larger of the two fountains of Ak Bîyîk. So must have been the charming
fountain, now most lamentably neglected, on the street that drops from
Galata Tower to Pershembeh Bazaar.
[Illustration: Street fountain at Et Yemez]
Until this time the old pointed arch had been preferred, though, as we
have seen, the rounded shell of the Renaissance had already made its
appearance. But now round or broken arches began to be the order of
the day; and so great richness of detail could only degenerate into
the baroque. Yet I have bad taste enough to like, sometimes, even the
out-and-out baroque. There is a little fountain, for instance, in the
Asiatic suburb of Kanlîja, with a florid arch and rather heavy traceries
and four very Dutch-looking tiles set into the wall above them, which I
think is delightful. Long after photographing it I came across some more
of those tiles in the imperial tribune of the mosque built in Scutari
by Moustafa III, which gave me a clew to the date of the fountain.
And after that I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of the
gentleman whose summer _valî_ lies across the road from the fountain, and
he told me that the fountain was built by the Sheï’h ül Islam of Moustafa
III. There is, too, a fountain at Emirgyan, in front of the Khedival
garden, which, for all its baroque lines, seems to me to terminate a
vista very happily. But I do not hesitate to add that few wall fountains
built since the middle of the eighteenth century are worth any attention.
* * * * *
We can hardly call it a discovery that the architects made when they
first detached a street fountain from the wall and made something more
monumental out of it. The thing had already been done indoors and in the
courts of mosques. The earliest specimens, however, show their evolution
very clearly. They are nothing but wall fountains applied to a cube of
masonry. I suppose the religious associations of the _shadrîvan_ kept its
tradition from being followed, but with experience freedom was gained in
the treatment of the detached fountain. Typical of its kind is a fountain
in the waterside grove of plane-trees at Chibouklou, to which Ibrahim
Pasha, the Grand Vizier of Ahmed III, gave the name of Feïzabad—Place of
the Abundant Blessing of God. A great oblong pool reflects the trees,
and nearer the Bosphorus is a raised space of the kind the Turks call
a turf sofa. On one side of it a concave tablet, carved with a lamp
swinging from a chain, indicates the direction of prayer. On the other
stands a simple marble fountain, bearing three chronograms of 1133 or
1721. Twenty-eight Mehmed was then in Paris, and the new fashion was not
yet launched in fountains. An early and a very happy experiment in that
fashion adorns Ahmed’s park at Kiat Haneh. But the model and masterpiece
of this little golden age is the great fountain at Top Haneh, beside the
mosque of Don Quixote. It lacks, alas, the domed roof and broad eaves
that Melling represents in one of his pictures. Moreover a trolley post
has been planted squarely at its most conspicuous corner, while ugly iron
fences attack two of its sides; and the War Department thinks nothing
of making a dumping-ground of the enclosed angle. Yet none of these
indignities affect the distinction of the floral reliefs that cover its
white marble, or of its frieze of gold inscriptions spaced in a double
row of blue cartouches.
[Illustration: Fountain of Ahmed III in the park at Kiat Haneh]
[Illustration: Detail of the fountain of Mahmoud I at Top Haneh]
A less ornamental but a deservedly famous fountain of the same period
is to be seen on the upper Bosphorus, at Beïkos. I suspect, however,
that it was once more ornamental than it is. A tall marble pavilion
hospitably opens its arches on three sides to the streets of the village.
At the bottom of the wall on the fourth side water pours noisily out
of fifteen bronze spouts—or I believe they are thirteen now—into three
marble troughs sunk below the level of the street, and runs away through
a marble channel in the middle of the pavilion. From this T-shaped lower
level steps rise to two marble platforms at the outer corners, where
you may sip a coffee while drinking in the freshness and music of the
water. This delightful fountain was also built by Mahmoud I. I know not
whether the inhabitants of Roumeli Hissar got from Beïkos the idea of a
fountain of their own, much smaller, which is flat on top and furnished
with benches that are very popular on summer evenings. Another, at
Beïlerbeï, has a place of prayer on the top, which you reach by a steep
little stair of stone. Yet another might be pointed out at Top Haneh, in
front of the big mosque, as at least one good deed of the late Sultan
Abd ül Hamid II. It would not be fair to compare this structure with its
greater neighbour at the other end of the parade-ground. Nevertheless,
in spite of its ugly sculpture, it is one of the most successful modern
fountains in Constantinople. Suggested, perhaps, by a fountain behind the
Arsenal, built by the Admiral Süleïman Pasha in 1750, it is much happier
in its lines. And the architect had something like a stroke of genius
when he opened a space above the taps and filled it with twisted metal
work. The little dome was originally surmounted by an intricately wrought
_alem_. But the winter after the donor retired to Salonica this ornament
disappeared as well.
[Illustration: Fountain of Abd ül Hamid II]
* * * * *
No one can explore much of Stamboul without noticing certain large
grilled windows with metal cups chained to their sills. These are the
windows of _sebils_, which I have referred to as one type of street
fountain. If I have not yet mentioned them more fully it is because their
chronological place is after the wall fountain. They are also much less
numerous, though architecturally rather more important. The word _sebil_
means way or path: to build a _sebil_ is a step on the way to God. The
water comes into a small room or pavilion, and an attendant is supposed
to keep cups filled where they will be easily accessible from the street.
A simpler form of foundation provides for a man to go about the streets
giving water to those who ask for it. Or sometimes dervishes seek this
“way” of acquiring merit. They usually wear green turbans, and the inside
of the small brass bowl into which they pour water from a skin slung over
their shoulders is inscribed with verses from the Koran.
[Illustration: _Sebil_ behind the tomb of Sultan Mehmed III]
The Seljukian Turks of Asia Minor, I have been told, were the inventors
of this graceful philanthropy, remembering the thirst of the martyr
Hüsseïn at Kerbela and the women who brought water to the companions
of the Prophet at the battle of Bed’r. The earliest _sebil_ I know of
in Constantinople, however, is the one at the corner of the triangular
enclosure where the architect Sinan lies buried, near the great mosque he
built for Sultan Süleïman. Small and simple though it is, the lines have
the elegance that distinguishes the work of this master. And it proved
full of suggestion for succeeding architects. It showed them, for one
thing, how to treat a corner in a new and interesting way. And while the
metal work of the windows is the simplest, the designers in iron and
bronze found a new field for their craft. One or two architects took a
hint from the openwork that lightens the wall beyond the _sebil_ and
filled their windows with pierced marble, as in the fountain adjoining
the tomb of Sultan Mehmed III at St. Sophia. But most architects
preferred the lightness and the contrast of metal. Some of their
experiments may be rather too complicated and spidery. Nevertheless, the
grille work of _sebil_ windows would make an interesting study by itself.
In time _sebils_ were treated in the same variety of ways as other street
fountains. Perhaps the first example of an applied _sebil_ is that of
the eunuch Hafîz Ahmed Pasha. The fountain forms an angle of his mosque,
not far from that of the Conqueror. Ahmed Pasha was twice Grand Vizier
under Sultan Mourad IV. Shortly before his death the Conqueror appeared
to him in a dream, angrily reproaching him for building a mosque so near
his own and threatening to kill him. The old man was greatly troubled by
this vision of evil omen; and, sure enough, he was murdered about two
months afterward. There is something very attractive in his unpretentious
_sebil_, with its tall pointed windows, its little arched door, and its
lichened cupola. Another applied corner _sebil_, built by Sultan Ahmed
I behind his mosque, is unusual in that it is lined with tiles. Similar
tiles are to be seen in the window embrasures of that Sultan’s tomb.
Their conventionalised peacock eyes, a green-rimmed oval of blue on a
white ground, would be too coarse in the open; but seen in shadow through
the small hexagons of the grille, they are wonderfully decorative. By
an odd chance they were not destroyed by the fire that raged through
this quarter in 1912. Among other fountains which came off less happily
was one uniting a _sebil_ and a _cheshmeh_. This experiment, if I am not
mistaken, was first tried in the time of Ahmed III. A beautiful example
is to be seen on the busy street of Shah-zadeh, where Ahmed’s Grand
Vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, is buried within his own _medresseh_. Four windows
round the corner with a curve of handsome grille work, while the tall
arch of the _cheshmeh_ decorates the side street with its gilding and
delicate reliefs.
[Illustration: _Sebil_ of Sultan Ahmed III]
The most beautiful example of all, the king, in fact, of Constantinople
street fountains, is the one which Ahmed III built outside the great
gate of the Seraglio. It stands four-square on a circular marble base,
having a curved _sebil_ window at each corner and the pointed arch of a
_cheshmeh_ in the middle of each side. The overhanging roof is crowned
by live fantastic little domes and gilded _alems_. The traceries are not
quite so delicate, perhaps, as those of Top Haneh, nor does the whiteness
of marble make up any of the effect of this fountain. The brightness
of its original polychrome decoration has acquired a soft patina of
time. The main effect is given here by the great gold inscriptions on a
blue-green ground, framed in plain terra-cotta, and by a frieze of blue
and white tiles enclosed between two bands of a delicious dark velvety
green. The principal chronogram of the fountain, facing St. Sophia,
was written by the Sultan himself. It is said that his first version
added up to four less than the required sum, which should have been
1141 (1729). It read: “The date of Sultan Ahmed flows from the tongue
of the faucet. Praising God, drink of the fountain and pray for Ahmed
Khan.” A witty ecclesiastic to whom his majesty confided his dilemma
solved the difficulty by suggesting that it was necessary to turn on the
water before it would flow. The imperial poet thereupon added the word
“open” to his second hemistich and completed the chronogram. The other
inscriptions were chosen by competition from among the chief poets of
the day. This fountain is unsurpassed for the richness of its detail.
Even the under-side of the eaves is decorated with wavy gilt mouldings
and painted reliefs of fruit and flowers. But the details take nothing
away from the general effect. It is the balance of them, after all, the
admirable silhouette, the perfect proportion, that give this monument its
singular beauty and dignity.
There is another large detached _sebil_ in Galata, near the bridge of
Azap Kapou. It was built soon after the fountain of Ahmed III by the
mother of Sultan Mahmoud I. Crowded between the surrounding houses, it
enjoys no such advantages of perspective as its more famous rivals of
St. Sophia and Top Haneh. The greater part of the edifice, indeed, is no
more than a blank stone reservoir. But the side facing the main street is
treated with a masterly sense of its position. Projecting out from the
centre is the circular _sebil_ window, filled with a rich bronze grille,
while set a little back on either side, and slightly inclined toward
either perspective of the street, are two tall _cheshmehs_. The niche
of each and the whole face of the structure is incrusted with intricate
floral reliefs more delicate even than those of Top Haneh, though not
executed in so white a stone. There are also pots and vases of flowers
and sheaves of wheat, and above the tap of each niche is a pointed
openwork boss of bronze. Here, too, the richness of the ornament combines
with the composition and height of the façade and the sweep of the eaves
to reach something not far from a grand air.
No other _sebil_ of the left bank is executed in so refined a style as
this. But many other fountains, in all parts of the city, have a happy
knack of filling a space or turning a corner or screening a dark interior
with twisted metal work. The difficulty is to choose instances. I might
mention the _sebil_ of Baïram Pasha at Avret Bazaar; of Mehmed Emin
Effendi, half fountain and half tomb, which lends its elegance to the
neighbourhood of Dolma Ba’hcheh Palace; of Abd ül Hamid I at Fîndîklî; of
Laleli Jami, the Tulip Mosque, which Moustafa III built at Ak Seraï. For
the Western architect they are full of unexpected suggestions, if he have
the eye to see, while to the mere irresponsible impressionist they make
up a great part in the strangeness and charm of the Turkish capital.
XIII
A TURKISH VILLAGE
There are larger villages. There are more prosperous villages. There
are villages more fashionable. Great ladies lift their eyebrows when we
pronounce its name, even ladies not so great, and decide that we will
hardly do for their visiting lists. But few villages are so picturesque
as ours. And in one respect at least we are surpassed by no village.
For we sit on that cleft promontory of the Bosphorus where, during the
league-long coquetry of the two continents before their final union,
Europe most closely approaches Asia. The mother of nations, as we see her
some eight hundred yards away, is a slope sunburnt or green according to
the time of year but always discreetly overlooked by farther heights of
blue, a slope sharp enough, not too high, admirably broken by valleys and
points and one perfect little bay for which I sometimes think I would
give all the rest of the Bosphorus, a slope beaded irregularly along
the bottom with red-roofed summer _valîs_, variegated with gardens and
hamlets and nestling patches of wood, and feathered along the top with
cypresses and stone-pines in quite an Italian manner. For my part, I fail
to see why any one should ever have desired to leave so delectable a
continent, particularly at a period when the hospitality of our village
must have been more scant than it is now. But history has recorded many
a migration to our side of the strait. Here Xenophon crossed with the
remnant of his ten thousand. Here Darius sat upon a throne of rock and
watched Persia swarm after him against the Scythians. Here, too, the
great emperor Heraclius, returning to Constantinople after his triumphs
in the East, caused a pontoon bridge to be railed high with woven
branches in order to screen from his eyes the water he dreaded more than
blood. And here Sultan Mehmed II opened the campaign which ended in the
fall of the Roman Empire.
The castle he built in 1452, the summer before he took Constantinople, is
what gives our village its character and its name. Roumeli Hissar means
Roman, Greek, European, or western castle, distinguishing us from the
opposite village of Andolou Hissar, where stand the ruins of the earlier
fortress of Baïezid the Thunderbolt. To see the two round towers of
Roumeli Hissar facing each other across a ravine, the polygonal keep at
the water’s edge, the crenelated walls and turrets irregularly enclosing
the steep triangle between them, you would never guess that they sprang
up in about the time of a New York apartment-house. Yet that they did
so is better attested than the legend that their arrangement reproduces
the Arabic letters of their builder’s name. Having demanded permission
of the Greek emperor to put up a hunting-lodge on the Bosphorus, the
Conqueror proceeded to employ an army of masons, in addition to his
own troops, with orders to destroy any buildings they found convenient
to use for material. So it is that the shafts and capitals of columns,
the pieces of statues, the fragments of decorative brick and marble,
that give so interesting a variety of detail to the structure are a
last dim suggestion of the ancient aspects of the village. One of its
Byzantine names was that of the _Asomaton_, the Bodiless Angels, to whom
a monastery in the place was dedicated, while earlier still a temple of
Hermes had existed there. In three months the hunting-lodge was ready
for occupancy, and the Sultan called it Cut-Throat Castle, a play on the
Turkish word which means both throat and strait. It put the Bosphorus
at his mercy, as a Venetian galley that went to the bottom under a big
stone cannon-ball was the first to testify—though the Genoese commanded
the mouth of the Black Sea from another pair of castles. But in spite
of their hasty construction the walls have withstood the decay and
the earthquakes of nearly five hundred years. Will as much be said of
existing New York apartment-houses in the twenty-fifth century?
[Illustration: Cut-Throat Castle from the water]
[Illustration: The castle of Baïezid the Thunderbolt]
Powerful as the fortress was in its day, and interesting as it remains
as a monument to the energy and resource of its builder, it never played
a great part in the martial history of the Turks. The Bosphorus was not
then the important highway it is now. After the capture of Constantinople
the castle degenerated into a garrison of Janissaries and a state prison
of less importance than the Seven Towers. Not a few passages of romance,
however, attach to that diminished period. More than one European
diplomat spent a season of repose within the walls of Cut-Throat Castle,
in days when international law was less finical on such points than
it since has grown. And it formed a residence less agreeable than the
present country embassies, if we may judge from the account that has come
down to us of one such _villeggiatura_. This was written by a young
Bohemian attaché who spent two years of the sixteenth century in enforced
retirement at Roumeli Hissar. His name, Wenceslas Wratislaw, with those
of other prisoners, may still be seen in the stone of a little chamber
high in the north tower. In the same tower, commanding a magnificent
view, the Conqueror lived while preparing his great siege. Whether this,
or the angular tower by the water, or some other donjon of the Bosphorus
was the Black Tower which has so unsavoury a name in Turkish annals I
have never quite made up my mind.
To-day the castle has outlived even that period of usefulness. The true
cut-throats skulk in the bare hills at the mouth of the Black Sea, while
the ambassadors—with the single exception, it is true, of our own—pass
their summers in pleasant villas presented to them by different Sultans.
As for the towers, they survive only to add their picturesqueness to
the narrowest part of the Bosphorus, to flaunt ivy and even sizable
trees from their battlements, and to afford a habitation to bats and
carrion-crows. The last vestige of military uses clinging to them is the
pseudo-classic guard-house that crouches under the waterside keep. The
walls at least subserve the purpose, however, of sheltering a quarter of
our village. One of our thoroughfares enters the double gate by the north
tower, descends a breakneck alley of steps lattice-bordered and hung
with vine, pauses between a fountain, a ruined mosque, and a monstrous
mulberry-tree, and finally emerges upon the quay by a low arch that was
once the boat entrance to the sea tower. There is to a prying foreigner
some inheritance of other days in the inhabitants of this hanging suburb.
They are all of the ruling race and there is about them something
intrenched and aloof. The very dogs seem to belong to an older, a less
tolerant, dispensation. The Constantinople street dog, notwithstanding
the reputation that literature has attempted to fasten upon him, is in
general the mildest of God’s creatures. But the dog of Cut-Throat Castle
is quite another character. He is a distinct reactionary, lifting up his
voice against the first sign of innovation. It may be that generations
of surrounding walls have engendered in him the responsibilities of a
private dog. At all events he resents intrusion by day, and by night is
capable of the most obstinate resistance thereto.
[Illustration: The north tower of the castle]
Another memento of that older time is to be seen in the cemetery lying
under the castle wall to the south. It is, perhaps, the oldest Mohammedan
burying-ground in Constantinople, or at least on the European shore
of the Bosphorus. It certainly is the most romantic, with its jutting
rocks, its ragged black cypresses, its round tower and crenelated wall,
overhanging a blue so fancifully cut by Asiatic hills. It has, too, a
spicy odour quite its own, an odour compounded of thyme, of resinous
woods, of sea-salt, and I know not what aroma of antiquity. But its
most precious characteristic is the grave informality it shares with
other Mohammedan cemeteries. There is nothing about it to remind one of
conventional mourning—no alignment of tombs, no rectilinear laying out
of walks, no trim landscape gardening. It lies unwalled to the world,
the gravestones scattered as irregularly on the steep hillside as the
cyclamens that blossom there in February. Many of them have the same
brightness of colour. The tall narrow slabs are often painted, with the
decorative Arabic lettering, or some quaint floral design, picked out
in gold. It is another expression of the philosophy of the guard-house
soldiers who so often lounge along the water, of the boy who plays his
pipe under a cypress while the village goats nibble among the graves,
of the veiled women who preen their silks among the rocks on summer
afternoons. The whole place is interfused with that intimacy of life and
death, the sense of which makes the Asiatic so much more mature than the
European. The one takes the world as he finds it, while the other must
childishly beat his head against stone walls. It is the source of the
strength and of the weakness of the two stocks.
We also love to congregate, or in Empedoclean moods to muse alone, about
another old cemetery. There, on top of the steep slope behind the castle,
you will often see a row of women, like love-birds contemplating the
universe, or a grave family picnic. There too, especially on moonlight
nights, you will not seldom hear voices uplifted in the passionate minor
which has so compelling a charm for those who know it of old, accompanied
perhaps by an oboe and the strangely broken rhythm of two little drums.
It is the true music for a hilltop that is called the Place of Martyrs.
The victims of the first skirmish that took place during the building of
the castle lie there, under a file of oaks and cypresses. At the north
end of the ridge a few broken grey stones are scattered among tufts of
scrub-oak that soon give way to the rounded bareness of the hillside. At
the other end newer and more honourable graves, protected by railings,
attend a _tekkeh_ of Bektash dervishes. This establishment was founded
by a companion of the Conqueror. Mohammed gave him, as the story goes,
all the land he could see from the top of the hill. The present sheikh is
a descendant of the founder, but I do not believe he inherited all the
land he can see. The view from the Place of Martyrs is one of the finest
on the Bosphorus. I am not of the company of certain travellers in the
matter of that famous strait. I have seen hills with greater nobility of
outline and waters of a more satisfying blue. But when one has made all
due reservations in the interest of one’s private allegiances the fact
remains that the Bosphorus is a charming piece of water enclosed between
charmingly moulded hills. It bends below you like a narrow lake as you
see it from the Place of Martyrs. The northern sea is invisible; but
southward the tops of islands look over the heights of Scutari, and the
Marmora glimmers to the feet of a ghostly range that sometimes pretends
not to be there.
Nothing could be more abrupt than the contrast between the slopes facing
each other across the busy waterway, with all their picturesque detail
of garden, roof, and minaret, and the plateau of which the Bosphorus is
nothing but a crooked blue crack. From the Place of Martyrs it rolls
desolately away to the west, almost without a house or a tree to break
its monotony. Gullies cut it here and there. Patches of scrub-oak darken
its surface. Sheep move slowly across it, looking in the distance like
maggots in a texture of homespun. Otherwise you would never suppose that
life existed there. As you watch the sun set across those great empty
fields it is incredible that somewhere beyond them tilled lands and
swarming cities are. Your impression is not of mere wildness, however.
Two abandoned stone windmills on a far-off hill give the note of the
impression. Such silence is the silence that follows upon the beating
of many drums. You may sit upon that hilltop in evening light and
drink melancholy like an intoxication, musing upon all the change and
indifference of the world. Yet life lingers there still—life that neither
indifference nor change, nor time nor ruin nor death can ever quite stamp
out. Threads of water creep through some of the dry gullies, swelling
after rain into noisy brooks. Above them hang patches of cultivation,
dominated by the general brownness and bareness, but productive of
excellent strawberries in the spring. That, too, is one of the times
when the brown brightens for a little to green, while June colours whole
tracts of hillside with butcher’s-broom and the wild rose. And then I
have said nothing of heather, of crocuses, of violets, of I know not
how many flowers scattered along certain lonely lanes. On the edge of
the village these are paved like streets and pleasantly arched with
bay-trees. In the bottoms of the ravines, also, they have in their season
quite a sylvan air. They lead to stony trails in the open where you may
meet a soldier, an Albanian shepherd, or a peasant in gay jacket and
baggy blue trousers, wandering from nowhere to nowhere.
But I wander too far from our village, from that larger part of it
which the exigencies of space must long ago have pushed northward out
of the castle close into the underlying valley. There are those who
deprecate our streets, their many steps, the manner of their paving, the
irresoluteness with which they proceed to their destined ends, and the
desultoriness of their illumination at night. I, however, am partial to
a Gothic irregularity, and I applaud the law which admonishes us not
to go abroad two hours after sunset without a lantern. We do not take
the admonition too seriously, but there are chances enough of breaking
our necks on moonless nights to maintain a market among us for paper
lanterns. These, with the candles flaring in front of sacred tombs and
the casual window lamplight so pleasingly criss-crossed by lattices, make
Whistler nocturnes for us that they may never know who dwell in the glare
of electricity.
If I find anything to deprecate it is the tendency gaining ground among
us to depart from the ways of our fathers in the matter of domestic
architecture. The jig-saw and the paint pot begin to exercise their
fatal fascination upon us who were so long content with simple lines and
the colour of weathered wood. But the pert gables of the day are still
outnumbered by square old many-windowed houses with low-pitched roofs
of red tiles and corbelled upper stories inherited from the Byzantines.
Under the eaves you will often see a decorative text from the Koran,
framed like a picture, which insures the protection of heaven better
than premium or policy. No house is too small to have a garden, walled
as a garden should be, and doing more for the outsider by its green
suggestions of withdrawal than by any complete revelation of its charms.
Few of these pleasances do not enjoy some view of the Bosphorus. I know
one such, containing a Byzantine capital that makes the cedar of Lebanon
above it throw as secular a shade as you please, so cunningly laid out
at length on the hillside that the Bosphorus is a mere ornamental water
of a lower terrace. This Grand Canal of Constantinople enters bodily
into certain thrice enviable _yalîs_ on the water’s edge. Their windows
overhang the sea, or are separated from it merely by a narrow causeway.
And each contains its own marble basin for boats, communicating with the
open by a water-gate or by a canal or tunnel through the quay.
Distinctively Turkish as the flavour of our village is, we yet resemble
the city and the empire to which we are tributary in the variety of our
population. Of Greeks there are few. It was perhaps natural for them
to flee the first stronghold of their conquerors on this side of the
Bosphorus—if they ever inhabited it in any number. An Armenian quarter,
however, scrambles up the north side of the valley. You can recognise the
houses by their lack of lattices, and the priest by the high conical
crown of his hat. There are also Albanians, Croats, Jews, Macedonians,
and Montenegrins among us, in addition to nothing less exotic than a
small Anglo-American colony. It dwells on the upper fringe of habitation,
the American part of it being connected, principally, with the college
founded by a Mr. Robert of New York.
The grey stone buildings stand on a splendid terrace above the south
tower of the castle, visible from afar. And they always make me
sorry that such a chance was lost for some rare person equal to the
opportunity, who should have combined a knowledge of modern educational
requirements with a feeling for the simple broad-eaved houses of the
country and their picturesque corbels. However, there the grey stone
buildings stand, ugly and foreign, but solid and sufficient, an object
of suspicion to some, to others an example of the strange vicissitudes
of the world, whereby above a promontory sacred once to Hermes, later to
Byzantine saints, and again to Mohammed, there should fly to-day the flag
of a country so distant as our own. The condition on which the flag flies
is not the least picturesque of these incongruities. The proprietors
from whom the first land was obtained were the holy cities of Mecca
and Medina, and in conformity with the law governing such property the
college bound itself to pay them, in addition to the price of purchase, a
yearly tribute of some fourteen dollars.
I might speak of other public institutions flourishing in our midst: of
the primary school by the water where you hear the children studying
aloud while they rock back and forth over the Koran; of the Sünbüllü
dervishes farther down the quay, to whom laden wood boats throw out a few
sticks as they tow up the five-mile current; of the howling dervishes,
and the clever ruse by which they obtained their building; of our
three mosques—to say nothing of the _imam’s_ mother of the smallest
of them, an active yet beneficent public institution in herself, who,
when the American college dug foundations for a wall round a slope long
beloved by the Turkish ladies, threw her ample person most literally
into the breach and could only be persuaded to retire therefrom by the
Ministry of Public Works. Nor should I pass over our village green,
which was once a cemetery, but which is now a common meeting-place for
those of us who are happy enough to live about it. Some of us spend
most of our time there, in the company of our wives, our children, our
horses, our donkeys, and our hens. Most notable among the habitués—at
least to an alien eye—is a lady of African descent, espoused to a meek
Caucasian water-carrier and the mother of an infinite chocolate-and-cream
progeny. Her ardent disposition is reported to have led her through
many vicissitudes, matrimonial and otherwise. On one occasion it led
her to scratch out the eyes of another _habituée_ of the green, over
some matter of mulberries. It is a proof of the reasonableness of
justice among us that when condemned to a brief term of imprisonment she
first succeeded in postponing the execution of the sentence, I believe
through some expectation of presenting the happy water-carrier with a
new chocolate-cream, and then in causing her term to be subdivided,
alternately languishing in dungeons and enjoying the society of her
family until she had paid the full penalty of the law.
A larger, the true centre of our municipal life, is the _charshî_, or
market-place. Very notable, to the mind of one admirer, is ours among
market-places. My admiration is always divided between that crooked
street of it, darkened by jutting upper stories that sometimes actually
jump across it, wherein are situate the principal shops, the minor cafés,
a fountain or two, and the public bath, and that adjoining portion of
it which lies open to the sea. The latter certainly offers the most
facilities for the enjoyment of life. Indeed, one end of it is chiefly
given up to a Company for the Promotion of Happiness—if one may so
translate its Turkish name—whose English steamers carry us to town, seven
miles away, or to the upper Bosphorus, as quickly, as regularly, and
as comfortably as any company I know. It also does much to promote the
happiness of those who do not travel, through the sociable employees of
its wharf and by affording a picturesque _va et vient_ at almost any hour
of the day. I fear, however, that it does less to promote the happiness
of the boatmen who await custom at the adjacent wooden quay. They wait
in those trim little skiffs, so much neater than anything of the sort we
see for hire at home, which have almost superseded caïques because they
hold more passengers with greater comfort. And to one who observes how
much of the time they do wait, and how modestly they are remunerated for
their occasional excursions, it is a miracle how they contrive to live.
There is no fixed tariff. If you know the ropes you pay two and a half
piastres, some twelve cents, to be rowed across the Bosphorus or to the
next village. For ten they will take you almost anywhere. But they eke
out their incomes by fishing. We are famous for our lobsters at Roumeli
Hissar.
The boatmen, and others with them, often prefer to wait in certain
agreeable resorts along that same wooden platform. The first of these
is the café of the Armenian, whose corner rakes the Company for the
Promotion of Happiness. He profits thereby not a little, for when we
wish to take a steamer we do not always trouble ourselves to look up
the time-table beforehand. The Armenian is also a barber, and in his
low-ceiled room of many windows you may hear, to the accompaniment of
banging backgammon boards, the choicest of conversation. The only thing I
have against him is that I have to pay twice as much for my coffee as a
customer who wears a girdle and a fez.
[Illustration: The village boatmen and their skiffs]
A few doors away dwell the Albanians. You may know them by the gay
stockings, red embroidered with gold, which they wear outside the tight
white trousers of their country. Theirs is the dispensary of ice-cream in
summer and of _mahalibi_ in winter—the latter being a kind of corn-starch
pudding sprinkled with sugar and rose-water. These comestibles, of which
their people have a practical monopoly, they also peddle about the
streets. But it is better to partake of them in their shop, surrounded
by lithographic royalties and battle scenes of 1870; and best of all
in front of it, sitting comfortably in a rush-bottomed chair while the
never-ending diorama of the Bosphorus rolls by.
In suggestive proximity to this establishment is a Greek drug store.
It might be Venetian, so impregnate is it with the sound and light of
water. For situation, however, I never saw its equal in Venice. It has,
indeed—especially when late sunlight warms the opposite shore—so perfect
a view, the platform in front of it is so favourite a resort, the legend
“La Science est Longue, mais la Vie Courte” curls with such levity
about a painted Hippocrates within, that the place rather gives you the
impression of an operatic drug store. The polyglot youth in charge of it
stands at the door exactly as if he were waiting for the chorus on the
stage outside to give him his cue; and you cannot help asking yourself
whether there be anything in the porcelain jars about him.
[Illustration: In the market-place]
I have spoken with unbridled admiration of our market-place and its two
main branches. How shall I now speak admiringly enough of the square with
which they both communicate and which unites in itself the richness of
their charms? It is not a square in any geometric sense. It is a broad
stone quay of irregular width, tree-shaded, awning-hung, festooned with
vines and fish-nets, adorned of a flat-topped fountain whose benches
are a superior place of contemplation, bordered by a quaintly broken
architecture of shops, cafés, and dwellings, and watched upon by a high
white minaret. It is not subject to the intermittent bustle of the
Company for the Promotion of Happiness, but it carries on its own more
deliberate and more picturesque activities. Here commerce goes forward,
both settled and itinerant, with loud and leisurely bargaining. Here the
_kantarji_ exercises his function of weighing the freights unloaded by
the picture-book boats at the quay. The headquarters of one of them is
here, in a deep arch over the water. This is the bazaar caïque, that
goes early in the morning to the Golden Horn for the transport of such
freight and passengers as do not care to patronise the more expensive
Company for the Promotion of Happiness—a huge row-boat with an incurving
beak and a high stern, to pull whose oars the rowers drop from their feet
to their backs. And here is also the headquarters of the _hamals_, most
indispensable of men. These are Asiatic peasants who combine with many
others the offices of carts and carters in flatter towns. They carry our
furniture and fuel from the water on their backs. They chop our wood,
to saw it being what they refuse. They keep guard of our houses when we
go away. They patrol our streets at night, knocking the hour with their
clubs on the pavement and rousing us with blood-curdling yells if so much
as a hen-coop burn down at the Islands twenty miles away. They likewise
act as town criers; and during the holy month of Ramazan they beat us
up with drums early enough in the morning to be through breakfast by
the time you can tell a black hair from a white. They are a strong, a
faithful, even—if you choose to expend a little sentiment upon them—a
pathetic race, living in exile without wife or child, sending money home
as they earn it, going to their “countries” only at long intervals, and
settling there when they are too old to work for their guild.
Altogether a man might spend his days in that square and be the better
for it. As a matter of fact, a surprising number of us find it possible
to do so, sipping coffee, smoking cigarettes or water-pipes, and watching
life slip by on the strong blue current of the Bosphorus. And as I sit
there too, treated always with a charming courtliness yet somehow made
to feel the vanity of thanking God that I am not as other _gyaours_ are,
I often ask myself how these things may be. In other parts of the world
people enjoy no such leisure unless they have rents or an indifference as
to going to destruction. In Roumeli Hissar we neither go to destruction
nor have rents. The case may be connected with the theory that all
inhabitants of Constantinople are guests of its ruler. We are not subject
to military duty, we are exempt from certain burdens of taxation, and
other inducements are offered those of the true faith to settle in the
City of the Sultans. I have no means of knowing how persuasive these
may be, but it is astonishing how overwhelming a proportion of the less
skilled labour of the place is performed by outsiders—witness the Greek
shopkeepers of our village, the Albanian sweet vendors, and the _hamals_.
The case at all events is not without its charm. We may not accomplish
great things in the world. We may not perform memorable services for
state or humanity. We may not create works that shall carry our names
down the generations. But we live. We enjoy the sun, we taste each
other’s society, and we are little troubled for the morrow. Could life be
more?
XIV
REVOLUTION
1908
Constantinople is finished! So a reactionary impressionist groaned
to himself on a certain summer day—to be precise, on the 24th of
July, 1908—when the amazing truth became known that the constitution,
suppressed thirty-two years before, had been re-established.
Constitutions were well enough in their place, but their place was not
Constantinople. A Constantinople at whose gate your Shakespeare was not
taken from you as being a perilous and subversive book, a Constantinople
through whose custom-house you could not bribe your way, a Constantinople
which you might explore ungreeted by a derisive “_Gyaour!_” or a casual
stone, a Constantinople of mosques open to the infidel without money
and without price, a Constantinople wherein you were free to walk at
night without a lantern, a Constantinople indifferent to passports or
to ladies’ veils, a Constantinople where it was possible to paint in
the streets, to meet and see off steamers, to post a local letter—and,
what is more, receive one—a Constantinople without a censor, a spy, or a
dog, might be a Constantinople of a kind; but it would not be the true
Constantinople. It could never be the impenetrable old Constantinople
that lent a certain verisimilitude to stories like “Paul Patoff” and
made it possible for a romantic Gladstone to be taken seriously at his
most romantic moments. Violated of its mystery, laid open to the deadly
levelling of Western civilisation, what could save it from becoming a
Constantinople of straight streets, of pseudo-classic architecture,
of glaring lights, of impatient tram and telephone bells, of the
death-dealing motors that Abd ül Hamid would never allow, of the terrible
tourists—the German _Liebespaar_, the British old maid, the American
mother and daughter—who insist on making one place exactly like another?
Well, the Constantinople of a reactionary impressionist is finished. A
good deal of it vanished by magic on the night of the revolution. Of
the outward and visible remainder more has disappeared already than an
outsider might suppose. The dogs and the beggars went very soon, followed
by the worst of the cobblestones and the bumpy old bridge that every
traveller wrote a chapter about; and when I took a little journey in the
world after this process was well started it struck me that the streets
of Paris and New York were less clean than those of Stamboul. As for
the censor and the spies, if they still exist it is in a tempered form.
In the meantime the telephones, the motors, the dynamos so redoubted
by Abd ül Hamid, have made their appearance. And with them has come a
terrifying appetite for civic improvement. The mosaics of Justinian are
about to be lighted by electricity. Boulevards have been cut through
Stamboul. Old Turkish houses have been torn down by the hundred in
the interests of street widening. Only a miracle saved the city walls
from being sold as building material. I could wish that the edifices
encumbering the sphendone of the Hippodrome might be sold as building
material, in order to give back to the city its supreme ornament of a
sea view. Imagine what such a wide blue vision might be, seen from the
heart of the town—perhaps through a dark-green semicircle of cypresses!
In the meantime the Hippodrome has been made to blossom, not quite as the
rose, depriving Stamboul of its one good square and threatening to hide
the beauty of Sultan Ahmed’s marble mosque. If the new gardens also do
something to hide the Byzantino-Germanico-Turkish fountain which William
II, in remembrance of a memorable visit, had the courage to erect in
line with the obelisk of Theodosius and the twisted serpents of Platæa,
they will not have been planted altogether in vain. But direr changes
still have the people of Constantinople witnessed since their revolution
night—fire, pestilence, earthquake, mutiny, war. They have even lived to
hear, from streets of something less than sweet security, the nearing
thunder of cannon, and to ask themselves if the supreme change were at
hand, and Constantinople itself was to go.
Of all these things more has been written than is profitable to read.
It is still too soon to know very much about the Young Turks—their real
leaders, their real motives, their real aims, their real accomplishment.
It is fairly safe to conclude, however, that they were neither the
demigods acclaimed in 1908 as the saviours of their country nor
the rascals execrated as its destroyers in 1912. They were, in all
likelihood, men neither better nor worse than the rest of us, who found
their country in an evil case and who for no shameful reason lacked the
knowledge and the power to make it an earthly paradise. Yet it seems to
me that history will give them credit for breaking the spell of Abd ül
Hamid, that strange and tragic figure of myth who struggled to keep the
thirteenth century alive in the twentieth. Nor do I see how they could
have matched him otherwise than as they did, with his own weapon of
secrecy. And whatever their subsequent mistakes may have been, it also
seems to me that history will absolve them from much of the reproach
of losing their European empire. No one can fairly blame them for
wishing to make the Turk the dominant element in his own empire, and
for wishing to make that empire independent of the foreigner. Neither
they nor any one else, moreover, could in the long run have saved their
European provinces. It is a serious question whether they will succeed
in saving certain of their provinces that remain—or whether their own
good advises them to do so. There are influences of common blood and
common tradition which no mere political influence can indefinitely
withstand. In any case, I have come to look upon the Turkish revolution
with other than the eye of a reactionary impressionist. It would be a
reactionary impressionist indeed who put the picturesqueness of Stamboul
before the good of a people—and a blind one who failed to see what there
was of human colour in those dramatic events. And although time has
only partially fulfilled so many generous hopes, or has turned them to
bitterness, I refuse to believe that they were totally insincere. I shall
always count it, on the contrary, among the most enlarging experiences of
my life to have been in Constantinople in 1908, and to have seen a people
at one of those rare moments when it really lives.
[Illustration: Badge of the revolution: “Liberty, Justice, Fraternity,
Equality.”]
It is strange to recall, in the light of all that has happened since,
how silently that momentous change announced itself. We knew that there
were disturbances in Macedonia; but there were always disturbances in
Macedonia. We gathered that there were dissensions at the Palace, for
on the very day of his decoration by William II with the Black Eagle,
Ferid Pasha, the Albanian Grand Vizier, fell. But there were usually
dissensions at the Palace. And when, two days later, we read at the top
of our morning papers a bare official announcement that the constitution
had been re-established, that long-suspended constitution, the promise of
which had brought Abd ül Hamid to the throne, we asked each other what it
meant. Apparently no one could tell—least of all the diplomats supposed
to sit at the fountain-heads of information. The most frequent conjecture
was of a trick to gain time. It was only later that rumours began to run
about, in the true Constantinople way, of the revolt of Macedonia; of
the telegrams exchanged between Salonica and Yîldîz, and the memorable
night council at which Abd ül Hamid, fainting with exhaustion and rage,
acknowledged himself beaten at last; of the mysterious Committee of Union
and Progress that had performed the miracle, and of the men who had gone
about the country, disguised as pedlers and dervishes, feeding the hunger
for liberty and the courage to demand it, and of the women who carried
messages from harem to harem and so delivered them without writing, and
of the revolutionary circles that flourished under the eyes of spies,
subordinate to the larger circles of Constantinople, Salonica, and Paris,
wherein only one or two members knew of the definite existence of another
circle, and then of only one or two of its members.
When the lancers rode through the streets that Friday morning of the
24th of July to guard the Sultan on his way to mosque, a few Greeks
cheered them. The soldiers looked uneasy. Such a thing had never happened
to them. That afternoon a few shopkeepers hung out their flags. The
police went about zealously taking down the offenders’ names. By the
next day, however, the police gave up trying to keep track of the flags.
The whole city flapped with them. And other strange manifestations took
place. Music marched through the streets. Orators sprang up at every
corner. Newspapers quadrupled their editions and burst into extras at
the novelty of containing news. Hawkers everywhere sold long red badges
bearing golden words that it had been forbidden to utter—Liberty,
Justice, Equality, Fraternity. It was as if a cover had suddenly been
taken off. For thirty years this people had been kept in constantly
closer restriction, had lived under the eyes of that vast army of
informers from which they were not safe even within their own doors, had
been robbed one by one of all the little liberties of life so common in
other countries that we think nothing of them—to visit one’s friends, to
gather for amusement or discussion, to read the book of one’s choice,
to publish one’s sentiment or protest, to go out at night, to travel at
will. Hundreds of thousands had grown up to man’s estate knowing no other
manner of life. And from one day to another they were told that it was
all at an end—that they were free. Was it any wonder that at first they
were dazed? Was it not rather a wonder that they did not lose their heads?
The natural goodness and peaceableness of a race that has been accounted
one of butchers could have had no more triumphant proof than those trying
days when the whole machinery of government was disorganised. But of the
sanguinary scenes that have marked other revolutions there were none.
In Salonica, to be sure, where the constitution was proclaimed one day
earlier, a policeman was shot for tearing down the proclamation. Ten
notorious spies were also shot in honour of the date. Their comrades
had the Julian calendar to thank that the number was not twenty-three!
In Broussa another spy, the infamous Fehim Pasha of Constantinople, was
killed by a crowd he unwisely went out of his way to insult. In the
capital, however, although the Stamboul troops were ready to occupy Pera
and cut off Yîldîz, extreme measures proved unnecessary. The moderation
of the revolutionists, the astuteness of the Sultan, and the character
of the people combined to make the affair pass off without bloodshed. If
it had not been for foreigners employed in some of the public services,
who promptly set about fomenting strikes, nothing would have occurred
to disturb the peace. Zeki Pasha, it is true, the man who would have
repeated the Bloody Sunday of St. Petersburg, had his windows smashed.
Otherwise the hostility of the people toward the ringleaders of the
old régime restricted itself to cartoons of the most primitive drawing
and satire, which had an enormous sale in the streets and which were
ultimately suppressed by the Committee of Union and Progress. The
Committee sedulously fostered the belief that the real author of the
Hamidian régime had merely been the victim of his advisers.
The Bloody Sunday which might have been was the Sunday after the coup
d’état, when all day long deputation after deputation marched up
to the Palace in the July sun, until a hundred thousand fezzes and
turbans packed the avenues of approach. They had been the day before to
each of the ministers in turn, demanding their oaths to maintain the
constitution. They now came to the Sultan, loyal and unarmed, but asking
from him too an assurance that he would not a second time withdraw the
instrument which he had been the first of his line to promulgate. The
Palace guards did not resist, but within was such terror as those without
had never dreamed of inspiring. The Sultan, always chary of his person,
uncertain as to the designs of a mob the like of which he had never seen
before, refused to show himself. He merely sent messages to the people
and begged them to disperse. They would not. Then Zeki Pasha, Grand
Master of Artillery, asked leave to clear the crowd away—with his cannon.
Fortunately, most fortunately, the old martinet’s advice was not taken.
But still the Sultan did not appear. Finally, late in the evening, the
last deputation of all arrived. It was composed of the more enlightened
element of the population and contained members of the Committee. Like
those who had preceded them, they respectfully asked to see his majesty.
They were told that his majesty had retired. They insisted, with what
arguments one may never know. And at last, near midnight, his majesty
appeared on a balcony of the Palace and asked the people what they
wished. They, amid frantic demonstrations of loyalty, said that they
wished to see the imperial master who had so long been kept from them
by traitors, and to hear him swear fealty to his own constitution. He
replied: “My children, be certain that I shall shrink before no sacrifice
for your happiness. Henceforth your future is assured. I will work with
you in common accord. Live as brothers. I am overcome by the sentiments
of devotion and gratitude which you show. Return to your homes and take
your rest.” This speech, characteristic of its maker’s adroitness,
satisfied the thousands who did not hear it, and they went away.
It did not satisfy the instigators of the demonstration, who later
obliged the Sultan to make the desired oath on the Koran. It was his only
chance to save his throne. But bitter as his surrender doubtless was,
he must have had moments of compensation. One of them occurred on the
succeeding Friday, when a hundred thousand people gathered again to see
him go to mosque. Hours before the time of the ceremony the precincts of
the Palace were invaded, and _hamals_ kicked their heels from the edge
of the terrace reserved for visitors with cards from their embassies.
A great tree near the mosque was so full of men and boys that two or
three branches cracked off. When the imperial cortège came down from
the Palace there was such cheering as Abd ül Hamid, accustomed to the
perfunctory “_Padishah’m chok yasha!_” of his guard, could scarcely have
heard before. The monarch who all his life had been most afraid of bombs
and bullets may never have been so nervous, but he stood up like a man,
saluting his people with the red-and-white rosette of the constitution
pinned to his shoulder. They responded in a frenzy of emotion, tears
streaming from many of their eyes. After returning to the Palace the
Sultan showed himself again at a balcony and spoke a few words. Could
there have been only terror for him in the joyful shouting of a mob that
would have torn an assassin to shreds? Could he have seen there only
enemies who had overcome him by the brute force of numbers? Could he have
felt only the irony of his undoing by the very schools he had created, by
the very means he had taken to stamp out individual liberty?
There may be question as to whether any real generous impulse, any true
glimmer of repentance, visited that old lion at bay. But there can be
none as to the temper of the crowds that marched about the streets for
days with flags and music, cheering the army that had freed them,
cheering the Sultan who, they said, had been kept from them by traitors,
cheering the orators who told them again and again of their happiness
and assured them that thenceforward in the Ottoman Empire there was no
distinction between Armenian, Greek, Jew, and Turk: all were Ottomans,
all were brothers, all were free. It was, of course, too good to be true.
Yet, even in the light of subsequent history, I persist in remembering
those days as a little golden age which no one was the worse for having
known. A carriage wheel was crushed in the press. The hat—or should one
say the fez?—was instantly passed around, and the happy jehu was given
the wherewithal to buy fifty new wheels. A shop-window, again, was
accidentally broken. The shopkeeper presently had reason to wish that the
crowd would break a window every day. Ladies who never before would have
dared go alone through certain streets, or through any street at certain
hours, went unmolested when and where they chose. Races that had lived
under an armed truce, and not always that, suddenly fell on each other’s
necks. A cold-hearted impressionist more than once found it in him to
smile at respectable old gentlemen who insisted on kissing fervent young
orators on both cheeks. And when priests of different religions exchanged
such salutes it was even more a case of the lion lying down with the lamb.
[Illustration: Cartoon representing the exodus of the Palace camarilla]
The scattering of the Palace camarilla was one of the most picturesque of
the many picturesque events of the day. The true story of those precious
rascals is a piece of the Middle Ages—or of the flourishing days of New
York. Some of them were ministers, some chamberlains and secretaries,
one of them no more than an Arab astrologer, who gained immense credit
during the Greek war of 1897 by holding over telegrams and prophesying
their contents to the Sultan. Without this star-chamber nothing was done
in the empire. The council of ministers sat at the Sublime Porte, but the
true cabinet sat secretly in Yîldîz Palace. If the Grand Vizier did not
happen to belong to it, so much the worse for him. He must be prepared
to see his orders countermanded and his promises rendered void. It was
always possible to obtain such a result. Those who knew the ropes knew
the department of each member of the kitchen cabinet, and his price. For
that matter they were willing to be accommodating. They took from each
according to his means. And they were not too proud to be known as the
_kehayas_ of the industrial guilds. One accepted two hundred pounds a
month from the butchers of Constantinople, in return for leniency in the
matter of inspection. Another received a handsome allowance from the
corporation of bakers, who were also obliged to subsidise the police in
order to prevent the seizure of undersized loaves from being too serious.
A third drew a dollar for every bag of flour that came into the city. I
even heard of a pasha who allowed his kitchens to be supplied with butter
by a Kürdish chief. There was no possible source of revenue which these
men had not tapped—public funds, private enterprises, the distribution of
places, the granting of concessions. It mattered nothing to them that the
country was going to ruin, the development of its incalculable resources
stopped, so long as they built great palaces on the Bosphorus and fared
sumptuously every day.
The constitution took them more completely than any by surprise.
Accustomed to the variable climate of the court, they were prepared to
fall from favour, to be exiled, or even to lose their lives. But they
were not prepared for this. Not many of them were quick enough to grasp
the situation. The first to do so was Selim Pasha Melhameh, a Syrian. As
Minister of Agriculture, Mines, and Forests he was in the way of getting
good things from people who wanted concessions. His already comfortable
fortune was agreeably increased during his last winter in office by a
scarcity of fuel that caused great misery among the poor of the capital.
An imperial order was issued to bring down wood from the forests of the
interior and sell it at a fixed price. The wood was brought down and
the price fixed—by Selim Pasha. He is said to have been absent from the
all-night council at which the constitution was granted. At first he
would not believe the news, but when proof was given him he called for
his wife and told her to pack at once. She did so with such expedition
that three days later, borrowing the Italian embassy launch on the
pretext of seeing off their son, who was going to his post in the Turkish
embassy at Rome, they sailed on the steamer with him.
The next to leave was the notorious Izzet Pasha, the Sultan’s first
chamberlain. There was a mediæval character for you—that perfect
gentleman and connoisseur, descended from robber Bedouins beyond
Damascus, who became the greatest robber in the empire. He robbed so
shamelessly, he robbed so amusingly, that an irresponsible impressionist
cannot help investing him with a romantic interest. When the coup d’état
took place, his Syrian wit told him that a country he had plundered for
years was no longer the country for him. He accordingly bought for eight
thousand pounds, in the name of a French lady, a small Greek passenger
steamer worth some fifteen hundred, and prepared to decamp. When the
captain learned the identity of his new owner he refused to serve him.
Rather than excite suspicion by drumming up another crew, Izzet proceeded
to buy another steamer, this time under the British flag. Having been
bitten once, he stipulated that the owners should be paid in three
instalments—two thousand pounds down, fifteen hundred when he should get
away, by cash deposited with a third party, and fifteen hundred more
from his first port of call. When the owners presented their cheque for
two thousand pounds at Izzet Pasha’s bank they were informed that the
latter had withdrawn his account. Izzet Pasha expressed infinite regret
at the mistake, and courteously wrote out a second cheque on a bank
from which he had withdrawn his account. Before the owners had time to
present that Izzet Pasha, boarding his steamer from the German embassy
launch and a series of tugs, had got away with three of his four wives,
in spite of the crowd that shook their fists after him from Galata quay.
At the Dardanelles he was stopped. And perhaps the most novel of all
his experiences was to see a handful of gold he gave to the officer
keeping him under guard thrown scornfully overboard. But the English
register of his boat and a commission he displayed, sending him abroad
on imperial business, saved his skin. He was not heard from again till
he turned up at Genoa. There, telling his captain he was going to take
his family ashore for a walk, he took ticket for England. The captain
waited patiently till there was nothing left on board to eat or to burn,
and then he wired to his former owners. They had not received their third
payment, but as the second was duly made and as they got their boat back
they did not come off so badly.
The rest of the gang were not allowed to escape. They were entertained
at the War Department until they began to disgorge gold and lands. Zeki
Pasha gave up no more than ten thousand pounds; but Hassan Rami Pasha,
who had been Minister of Marine a year, handed over some two hundred
thousand. This act of penance performed, they and their colleagues were
sent to Prinkipo, where, under due surveillance, they were granted the
liberties of an island six miles in circumference until such time as
parliament should investigate their affairs.
In contrast to the scurrying to cover of the old régime was the return
of the exiles. During Abd ül Hamid’s long reign, and most actively
during the latter part of it, there had been a systematic clearing out
of independent personalities. Men who would not hide their disapproval
of the government, who could not be bought or silenced in any other
way, or whom chance spies happened to report on adversely, were banished
to remote parts of the empire. Others fled to countries where life was
made less difficult for them. Sixty thousand exiles are said to have
left Constantinople alone. And there remains the large number of those
who were suppressed in unavowed ways. One of the first acts of the new
government was to issue an amnesty for exiles and political prisoners.
There consequently set in an immediate tide of return. It happened that
the old French steamship line of the _Messagéries Maritimes_ brought
back most of the exiles, partly because many of them were settled in
Paris, partly because of the sympathy of educated Turks and of all
revolutionaries for France. So the arrival of the _Messagéries_ boat
became a weekly event of the city. Steamers would be chartered to go
down the Marmora, crowds would blacken the Galata quay, the windows,
balconies, and roofs overlooking it, the adjacent shipping, the old
bridge, to welcome back with flags, music, cheers, and frantic whistles
men like old Deli Fouad Pasha, mad Fouad Pasha, who prevented the
massacre of Armenians in Scutari in 1896; like the Armenian Patriarch who
proved too intractable at the same period; like young Prince Sabaëddin,
the Sultan’s nephew, who came back from Paris with the coffin of his
fugitive father. But not all of these returns were joyful. There were
tragic meetings at the coming of men broken by imprisonment or deadly
climates—as once when a pale figure was carried from the ship in a chair,
amid a silence that was broken only by some one sobbing on the quay. And
there were those who returned to the quay every week, scanning the decks
of arriving steamers for faces they never found.
Altogether there was matter enough for the eye of an impressionist
resentful of the demolishing of his city. Space would never suffice
me to report the scenes characteristic or picturesque, the stories
romantic and humorous, that could not fail to mark so great an event.
The sudden outburst of literary and dramatic activity, the movement
toward emancipation of the Turkish women, the honours paid by the Young
Turks to the memory of the Armenians massacred in 1896, the visits of
friendly deputations from Bulgaria, Greece, and Roumania, the events in
the Balkans and the Austrian boycott, the manœuvres of the reactionaries,
the removal of the Palace guard, the procedure of the elections, added
each its note of colour. Nothing, perhaps, filled the public eye quite
so obviously as the primary elections for parliament. Symbolic of what
the revolution had striven to attain, this event was celebrated in each
district with fitting ceremonies. One district in Stamboul solemnly
brought its voting urn to the Sublime Porte on the back of a camel. Five
villages on the Bosphorus, forming another district, made a water pageant
that reminded one of state days in Venice. But the five great fishing
caïques, with their splendid incurving beaks, their high poops gay with
flags and trailing rugs, their fourteen to twenty costumed rowers, were
no imitation of other days, like the Venetian _Bissone_. Most imposing
of all was the procession that carried the urns of Pera through the city
in decorated court carriages, attended by music, banners, soldiers,
school children, and other representative bodies to the number of
several thousand. Two of these were peculiarly striking. Near the head
of the procession, led by an Arab on a camel, rode a detachment of men
representing the different races of the empire, each in the costume of
his “country.” And later came a long line of carriages in which _imams_
and Armenian priests, _imams_ and Greek priests, _imams_ and Catholic
priests, _imams_ and Jewish rabbis, drove two and two in the robes of
their various cults.
The opening of parliament itself, with all the circumstance that arms and
majesty could lend it, marked a term for those effervescent days. The
Young Turks made it a particular point that the ceremony of December 17
should be held, not in the throne-room of Dolma Ba’hcheh, as the Sultan
wished, but in the place where the parliament of 1876 had been dissolved.
This Palladian structure behind St. Sophia, originally built for the
university and remodelled after the dissolution of the first parliament
for the uses of the Ministry of Justice, contained no hall of suitable
size. There was not even room in the chamber of deputies for the two
hundred odd members—if they all had arrived in time for the opening. The
invitations were consequently restricted to the smallest possible number:
to the greater dignitaries of state, to the heads of foreign missions
and their first dragomans—leaving out disappointed secretaries and
wives—and to a few representatives of the press. There was perhaps more
heartburning among these spoilt children of the century than among any
other section of the public. Some of them had travelled great distances
to attend this historic inauguration, only to be shut out of it. The
press of the country naturally had the first claim. The thorny question
of allotting tickets among the press of other countries was settled by
giving each head of a foreign mission two tickets to dispose of as he
chose. Those fortunate enough to get them were inclined to grumble at the
quarters assigned them—a species of low, dark theatre box above that of
the ambassadors, from which only the ten or fifteen first to arrive could
see the floor. But all could see the imperial box, directly opposite.
And I, for one, being no journalist, counted myself lucky to be there at
all.
The first arrival of importance was that of the diplomatic corps, led by
their formidable German dean, Baron Marschall von Bieberstein. Not least
noticeable among them was the Persian ambassador, in a coat so thickly
incrusted with gold that one could not tell what colour it was, and wide
scarlet trousers and black astrakhan cap. The tall chargé d’affaires
of Montenegro was also a striking figure in the national dress of his
country—loose trousers thrust into top-boots, embroidered bolero and
hanging sleeves, and black pill-box with red top—as was Mgr. Sardi, the
Apostolic Delegate, in his flowing violet robes. Another splash of colour
was presently made to the right of the tribune by the senators, in gala
uniform and decorations. They are forty in number, appointed for life
by the Sultan from among active or retired functionaries of state. A
sprinkling of green robes of the cult was conspicuous among them. They
were followed by the deputies in a body, or by as many of them as had
arrived. For in the remoter parts of the empire the elections were not
quite through by the time parliament, already a month late, opened. Their
prevailing soberness of frock coat and fez was relieved by an occasional
military uniform and by a surprising proportion of religious turbans.
There were also a few Syrian or Arab head-dresses above picturesque robes
of striped silk. In the meantime ministers, religious dignitaries, and
certain unofficial guests of the kind known in the East as notables, had
been taking their places. The ministers sat at the left of the tribune,
facing the house. They were resplendent in gold lace and orders, with the
single exception of the white-bearded Sheï’h ül Islam in his simple white
robe. Facing the ministers were the green, purple, and fawn-coloured
robes of the _ülema_. On the other side of the steps of the tribune, in
front of the senators, were the heads of the non-Moslem sects of the
empire. Their black robes and head-dresses made a contrastingly sombre
group, in which the red-topped turban of the _locum tenens_ of the Grand
Rabbinate and the crimson hat and veil of the Armenian Catholic Patriarch
were vivid notes of colour. But the most conspicuous contrast was made
by certain of the “notables” present, among whom were members of that
loquacious body known as the Balkan Committee and their ladies. I do
not know whether the latter appreciated the honour that was done them,
alone of their sex. These _komitajis_ were prudently tucked as far out of
sight as possible, where, nevertheless, their wayworn British tweeds and
sailor-hats did not fail to attract musing Oriental eyes, and to suggest
to light-minded impressionists the scenarios of comic operas.
By noon only the president’s tribune and the two boxes facing those of
the diplomats and the journalists, reserved for guests from the Palace,
remained without an occupant. Great doubt had been expressed as to
whether the imperial box would be filled at all. If the matter had been
left to Abd ül Hamid’s preference the box would doubtless have remained
empty. But the Committee had found a way of overcoming Abd ül Hamid’s
preferences, and not only did he reopen in person the parliament he had
tried to suppress, but he drove all the way from Beshiktash to Stamboul
to do it. He had not seen so much of his capital for fifteen years. The
arrival of his brilliant cortège we did not witness from our black pen
under the ceiling of the parliament chamber. We heard the fanfare of
bugles heralding the approach of majesty, the bands striking up one after
the other the Hamidieh March, the cheers sounding nearer and nearer till
the last rose from the court below. A few glittering personages near
the tribune, a deputy or two from the front row, who had gone to the
windows, resumed their places. There was a general stir of expectancy,
a last preening of orders and epaulets. After a few minutes a group of
very literally gilded youths was ushered into the left hand of the three
compartments of the imperial box. They were five of the Sultan’s sons,
accompanied by his cousin Abd ül Mejid Effendi. A moment later the box
above them filled with members of the imperial suite. In the midst of
their gold lace and jewels the black face and white eyeballs of a Palace
eunuch were a characteristic note.
These personages had time to admire and to be admired of all beholders
before the more august guest of the occasion arrived. In fact it was a
full quarter of an hour before a new splendour of uniforms was seen to
mount the stairs at the rear of the box, and the Sultan came in sight.
He then made the mistake of entering the compartment reserved for his
brother Mehmed Reshad Effendi and his cousin Youssouf Izzeddin Effendi,
the next two heirs to the throne—who failed to honour the occasion. With
earth-sweeping salaams the master of ceremonies inducted his majesty into
the central compartment. There seemed to be something less than imperial
ease in the hesitation with which he lingered a moment in the rear of
the box. He dropped his glove, and the master of ceremonies picked it
up. The dead silence that greeted him when he did step forward was a
surprise to those who had witnessed European acclamations of royalty. All
rose to their feet and stood with folded hands in the Oriental attitude
of respect. They did, however, permit themselves to look up. The Sultan
stood with his hand on his sword of empire, looking down, a figure of
dignity in his plain dark military overcoat, visibly bowed by years and
anxiety, yet not so grey as one might expect, keen-eyed, hawk-nosed,
full-bearded, taking in one by one the faces that represented every race
and region of his wide domains. The silence and the intentness of that
mutual regard grew dramatic as the seconds gathered into minutes. “A wolf
in a cage!” whispered some one behind me. There was too little room in
the epigram for the strangeness of the scene. One could fill the silence
with what one pleased of historic visions, of tragic memories, of hatreds
and ambitions, of victory and defeat. But all the East was in that
unyielding surrender and in that uncelebrated triumph.
The silence was suddenly broken by the voice of the Sultan’s secretary,
who began to read, beside the steps of the tribune, the speech from the
throne. My Turkish is too small and too colloquial to take in much of so
high-flown a document, but I caught references to the perfidy of Austria
and Bulgaria and to the author’s satisfaction in being able to open again
the assembly for which thirty years ago the country had not been ripe.
Twice the house broke into applause, which the Sultan acknowledged with
a military salute. At the close of the reading a green-robed _mollah_
offered prayer. The majority of those present listened to it, as Moslems
do, in an attitude very much like that of the Greek _adorante_ in Berlin,
except that the hands are held lower and closer to the body. When the
prayer came to an end, with a fervent responsive _amin_, the Sultan did
a thing that no one had expected. He made a brief speech. But the signal
had already been given, according to programme, for bands and cannon to
announce the inauguration of the new era. The consequence was that few
heard even the sound of his majesty’s voice. In a moment more he was
gone.
The entire ceremony, during which all remained on their feet, lasted
less than half an hour. When it was over, those who had lost the
spectacle of the Sultan’s arrival made haste to secure places whence they
might witness that of his departure. The view from the windows of the
parliament house was one never to forget—for its own picturesqueness,
for its historic significance, for its evocations of the unconquerable
vitality, of the dramatic contrasts and indifferences of life. The
sun was in gala mood that day, to match the mood and to bring out the
predominatingly Asiatic colour of the thousands that packed the square
which had been the Forum Augustæum of New Rome. Not only did they pack
the square, those Asiatic thousands, and every radiating open space as
far as the eye could reach; they loaded its bare trees, they filled the
windows and lined the roofs overlooking it, they darkened the buttresses,
the cupolas, the minaret galleries of St. Sophia. Two men even clung to
the standard of the crescent at the apex of the great dome. The brown
_chasseurs_ of Salonica, in recognition of the part they played in the
revolution, were given the honour of keeping open a narrow lane through
the middle of the square. They were assisted by tall blue Anatolians of
the imperial guard and by deputations with flags and inscribed banners. A
gilded barouche drove into the courtyard where once had stood the Roman
senate. A scarlet-and-gold coachman drove the four superb iron-grey
horses, and in front of them pranced a fifth iron-grey mounted by a
blue-and-silver outrider. Three buglers in black and scarlet faced the
porte-cochère. At the sound of their bugles the soldiers presented arms
and a band burst into the imperial march. The thin blue and brown fringe
of guards undulated with the eddies of motion that surged through the
pressing thousands in their frenzy to see the monarch whom they had
shorn of his power. Then, surrounded by the glitter of the princes and
his aides, preceded and followed by the scarlet flutter of the lancers’
banderoles, the Caliph of Islam flashed away toward the column of
Constantine.
XV
THE CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE
1909
What could be more aggravating to a greedy impressionist than to have
sat nearly two years in Constantinople, to have watched the amicable
revolution of 1908, to have been one of a privileged few to assist at
the reopening by Abd ül Hamid of the parliament he suppressed thirty-two
years ago, and then to have been caught in an ignoble Florentine pension,
among ladies passionate after pictures, when the mutiny of April 13 broke
out in Stamboul? And nothing, from the meagre Italian telegrams, was more
difficult to make out than the origin of that mutiny. Had the Committee
of Union and Progress made the mistakes their friends had feared? Had
the opposition liberals been unconsciously playing into the hands of
reactionaries? Had the Sultan, who appeared to swallow the revolution in
so lamblike a manner, merely been lying low? The only thing was to go
back and find out, and to get what reparation one could by seeing the
end of the affair—if end there were. For it must be recorded against the
sagacity of impressionists, or of one particular impressionist, that he
thought nothing at all might happen.
The first hint of anything to the contrary came from a _Neue Freie
Presse_, obtained at a Croatian railway-station, which announced that
by the 19th a Macedonian army would concentrate at Chatalja, some
twenty-five miles from Constantinople. The 19th was the next day, and I
was due in Stamboul on the morning of the 20th. There might, then, be
sights to see on the way. I had a further hint of them after getting into
the Constantinople sleeper that night at Belgrade. Two men were already
in bed in the compartment, and before morning I became conscious of the
porter telling one of them in Turkish that he must change for Salonica
in twenty minutes. I told myself that he must be a Young Turk hurrying
back from Europe to take part in—what? I had the strangest sense, as we
whistled through the dark toward Nisch, of forces gathering silently for
an impending drama.
We spent the next day crawling through Bulgaria, along that old highway
of the empire where Janissaries march behind the sacred banner of the
Prophet no more. Being no master of Slavic languages, I was dependent
on our polyglot porter for news. This gloomy individual, a Greek from
Pera, gathered assurance with each kilometre—and they were not few, for
the philanthropic Baron Hirsch, who was paid for each one, put in as
many of them as he could—that his family had been massacred. He looked
for confirmation of his fears at Moustafa Pasha. We reached that humble
frontier station about ten o’clock that night. There was no news, but
there were soldiers of a new kind, sturdy fellows in moccasins and white
leggings, who strode up and down between tracks with a businesslike air
entirely different from the usual Moustafa Pasha military. I was to see
more of those white leggings.
I got up early the next morning, in order to steal a march on the
lavatory. The porter, gloomier than ever, assured me that I need not have
taken the trouble. We had been delayed by troop trains and could not
reach Constantinople much before noon. That began to look interesting.
I must confess, though, that the interest paled as we stood still—and
breakfastless—at a small way station for something over an hour, with no
apparent reason. The reason became apparent at the station following,
where we overtook a long train of freight-cars. Their freight consisted
of horses, of camp baggage, and notably of soldiers, many of them in
moccasins and white felt leggings bound with black. Many others wore
the strong pointed slippers of the country, with the counter turned
under their heels, and white felt Albanian skull-caps. All of them were
friendly, curious as to a train so much more comfortable than their own,
and good-humouredly willing to be photographed. A whitecap who led a
party of inspection through our sleeping-car explained to his companions
why I could not instantly present them with their portraits. He did a
little photography himself, he told me; also that he was by profession
a municipal clerk in Macedonia, although for the moment a volunteer. I
asked him, in my ignorance, what side he was on and what he was going
to do. “We are for liberty,” he answered gravely. “We are going to kill
Sultan Hamid. In Stamboul the great men sit and eat _pilaf_ while we
starve. We have had enough.” And that was the general chorus. “Papa Hamid
is finished,” said a young officer whom I later met again in Stamboul. It
was clear what the Macedonians thought of the situation. The Sultan had
had his chance and he had lost it.
[Illustration: Soldiers at Chatalja, April 20]
The troop train left us to meditate for two or three hours on a siding,
but toward noon we renewed acquaintance with it—at Chatalja. That
name had yet to become a household word. Nevertheless I looked with
considerable interest at Chatalja, where the rumoured concentration
should by this time have taken place, where already existed the line of
fortifications that was to save Constantinople in 1912, and where of old
a Byzantine wall ran from sea to sea. Of Byzantine walls however, of
modern fortifications, or of concentrating armies, there was no sign.
There was merely a red-brown wooden station, a dusty road, a scarce less
dusty coffee-house beyond it, a group of quarantine shanties farther
away, and on a low rim of green that lifted itself against the April
blue something that looked like a ruined watch-tower. For the study
of this simple _mise en scène_ not less than five hours were afforded
us. The slightest incident, accordingly, assumed a grave importance.
A plump person in shoulder-straps rattled down the dusty road in an
ancient landau. Was he the generalissimo of the investing army? I
later had occasion to learn that he was not. A naval officer appeared
from somewhere and was fervently embraced by the officers of our troop
train. He might be bringing them assurance of the loyalty of the fleet.
In fact, I believe he did. Two individuals in black robes and white
turbans were brought in under guard of a new kind of soldier, smart
fellows in lightish blue. I was told that the priests were agitators
who had been caught trying to corrupt the soldiers, while their captors
belonged to the famous Macedonian gendarmerie. And after our troop train
had gone another one came, gaily decorated with boughs and flags. The
men were all volunteers—Albanians, Bulgars, Greeks, Jews, Vlachs. But
there was nothing of the tyro in the way they carried their rifles and
cartridge belts. I have no doubt that many of them were ex-brigands and
_komitajis_, turned into patriots by the mutiny at Constantinople. And
excellent patriots they made, poor fellows, many of whom were killed four
days later in the city to which they went so light-heartedly.
So the day passed, with long stops, with short advances, with pangs
of hunger which a disgusted Orient Express—itself some nine hours
late—reluctantly consented to appease, with melodramatic rumours of
battle, and with a final sight of soldiers making a thin black ant trail
over a bare hill. Night came upon us in the green valley of Sparta
Kouleh, at the end of which a gleam of the Marmora was visible, and the
Bithynian Olympus ethereal with snow. A bonfire reddened the twilight in
front of us, soldiers were singing not far away, frogs or tree-toads made
a silver music in the distance. To what grim things, I wondered as we so
mysteriously waited, did nature make this soft antithesis? At last a long
train, fifty-seven empty freight-cars, rumbled out of the dark from the
direction of the city. We then started on again, stopping only to take on
and let off officers at way stations, and reached town, fourteen and a
half hours late, at half past ten.
Expectation, after a checkered approach, had been raised to a pitch. But
Constantinople proved a most singularly beleaguered city. I perceived
that when I saw a couple of Macedonian officers get off the train with
me. I perceived it again when I passed the customs with an unaccustomed
ease and drove away through streets that gave no hint of siege. Still
more clearly did I perceive it during the three long days that followed
my arrival. Beleaguering there was, for rumour peopled the fields of
Thrace with advancing thousands, and Hüsseïn Hüssnü Pasha, commander of
operations at the front, issued manifestoes. To the garrison he offered
immunity on condition of their taking a solemn oath of obedience before
the Sheï’h ül Islam. To those of the populace not implicated in the late
uprising he promised security of person and property. And both apparently
made haste to put themselves on the right side. Deputation after
deputation went out to the enemy’s camp in token of surrender. The War
Office made plans for provisioning the invaders. Parliament assembled at
San Stefano in the shadow of the Macedonian camp, and the fleet followed
suit. At the same time the air was tense with the feeling that first came
to me when the porter of my sleeping-car called that unknown passenger at
Nisch. What was going to happen? It was an indication of the colour of
people’s thoughts that the outgoing steamers were crowded during those
days, and panics ran through the town like rumours. Some one would shout:
“They are coming!” The streets would instantly fill with the rush of
feet, the clang of closing shutters.
On Friday, the 23d, I went to _Selamlîk_. I also wrote a last will and
testament before doing so, which I left with careless conspicuousness
on my desk, for there was much talk of bombs and depositions. So much
was there that in the diplomatic pavilion, to which I was admitted by
courtesy of our embassy, no heads of missions were present. There were
also fewer general spectators than usual, and they were kept at a greater
distance. Otherwise the ceremony took place with its old pomp. I missed
the handsome white Albanian and the blue Arab zouaves, recently expelled
from the imperial guard; but the dark-blue infantry, the black-and-red
marines, the scarlet-pennoned lancers, the matched cavalry of Daoud
Pasha, a brown battalion of sappers, and even a detachment of the
Salonica sharpshooters, marched up the hill with sounding brass. Before
they had quite banked up the approaches to the Palace and the mosque the
sun, breaking from morning clouds, brought out all the colour of that
pageant set for the last time. Toward noon five closed court carriages
of ladies drove slowly down the avenue, surrounded by solemn black
eunuchs, and turned into the mosque yard. A group of officers in gala
uniform took their places in line opposite the diplomatic pavilion. At
their head stood Prince Bourhan ed Din, the Sultan’s favourite son. His
presence excited no little interest, for it had been reported that he
had run away. He looked unusually pale. Suddenly the _müezin’s_ shrill
sweet cry sounded from the minaret and the bands began to play the
Hamidieh March. Then the Sultan’s cortège—of brilliant uniforms on foot,
of trusty Albanian riflemen, of blue-and-silver grooms leading blooded
chargers—emerged from an archway in the Palace wall. Abd ül Hamid, in a
hooded victoria drawn by two beautiful black horses, sat facing Tevfik
Pasha, the Grand Vizier of the moment, and his son Abd ür Rahim Effendi.
He looked bent and haggard, the more because his sunken cheeks were
so palpably rouged. As he passed under the terrace of the diplomatic
pavilion he glanced up to see if any of the ambassadors were there. The
fact that none of them were was afterward said to have irritated him
intensely. He did not betray it, at all events, as he passed down the
avenue, saluting right and left to his cheering soldiers. After leaving
his carriage at the mosque door, where his little son Abid Effendi waited
quaintly in the uniform of an officer, he turned and saluted again before
going up the steps.
When the bowed figure disappeared it was as if a spring were suddenly let
go. Guards and spectators alike relaxed from a tension. There had been no
bomb. There had been no irruption of invading armies. There had been no
sign of disloyalty among troops who were supposed to have gone over to
the Macedonians. Indeed, they had cheered as I never heard them except
at the _Selamlîk_ after the re-establishment of the constitution. It did
not look very much as if Papa Hamid were finished, to quote my Macedonian
officer. It looked, on the contrary, as if what an aide-de-camp whispered
might be true—that Papa Hamid took the famous beleaguering as a bluff,
and proposed to call it. The situation became more equivocal than ever.
In the meantime big English tea baskets were brought up the avenue, and
the soldiers were served with tea, coffee, and biscuits at the expense of
a paternal sovereign. Then a bugle sounded and they jumped to attention,
gulping down last mouthfuls as the imperial carriage left the mosque. The
Sultan returned with the same ceremony as before, except that Bourhan ed
Din Effendi accompanied him. After he had entered the Palace the troops
dispersed in review order, marching up one side of the avenue to the
Palace gate and marching down the other. When most of them were gone the
Sultan appeared for a moment at a window overlooking the terrace of the
diplomatic pavilion. Again he was enthusiastically cheered.
It was for the last time. But the situation seemed to clear. That
afternoon Mahmoud Shefket Pasha, generalissimo of the Macedonian forces,
whom I did not see at Chatalja, issued the first of a notable series of
manifestoes. He announced his assumption of command at the front and his
intention to punish only those responsible for the late disturbance. One
phrase attracted particular attention. He said: “Certain intriguers,
in fear of punishment, have spread the rumour that the above-mentioned
forces have arrived in order to depose the sovereign. To these rumours I
oppose a formal denial.” Every foreign correspondent in Constantinople
thereupon telegraphed to his paper that the Salonica troops would make a
peaceful entry into the city and that Abd ül Hamid would remain on the
throne.
* * * * *
The next morning, Saturday, I was roused before six o’clock by a member
of our country household. “I don’t know,” he said, “but do you hear
anything?” I listened. I heard a light air in the garden trees, a
pervading twitter of birds. Then it seemed to me that I heard something
else in the distance, something faintly crackling, followed occasionally
by something more deeply booming. It sounded like firing, and I suddenly
remembered my friends of the white leggings. Yet the morning was so
delicious, the sky was so soft, the garden so full of birds. By the
time I got down to the wharf a few people were gathered there, talking
gravely in low voices. The shots we heard did not altogether break the
tension of the last few days. My friend the ticket seller gave me serious
advice. “Go back to your house,” he said. “Sit in your garden, and be
at peace. Lead falls into the sea like rain at Beshiktash. No steamers
run. They have all been sent back.” I was disinclined to believe him. It
seemed incredible that anything particular was happening—on such a day,
after so many overtures to the Macedonians. Among those at the _scala_ I
saw Habib the boatman, whom all men know for a liberal and a reader of
papers. “Habib,” I said, “let us row to the city. It is necessary for
me to go, and there seem to be no steamers. I will pay you a dollar.”
Habib regarded me as one might regard a lunatic for whom one entertains
friendly sentiments. “_Effendim_,” he replied, “what do you say? They
are fighting at Yîldîz, and not for one or for many dollars will I go.
What have you to do in town to-day?” I began to be rather annoyed. I had
to get some films, and there was no reason why I shouldn’t, if they were
fighting at Yîldîz. It didn’t occur to me that there could be trouble
anywhere else in the town. But neither boat nor boatman could be induced
to go down the Bosphorus.
I climbed Hissar hill again, to warn the rest of a town-going household
of the situation and to collect recruits for a forced march of seven
miles across country. They were not difficult to obtain. Three of us
were starting for a last reconnaissance of the _scala_, when we heard a
steamer whistle. We were just in time to jump triumphantly on board. So
the croakers were mistaken, after all! The passengers were few, however.
At the next station of Bebek, where a considerable English colony lives,
a number of friends joined us. At the station below that the captain
threw up the sponge. An up-bound steamer was there, which had turned
back. We told our captain he was a fool, a coward, and as many other
uncomplimentary things as we could think of, but he refused to budge.
We accordingly got off and took the stony street following the shore to
the city. People stared at us as Habib had stared at me. The tide of
travel was all the other way. There were carriages full of Turkish women,
with eunuchs on the box. There were Armenians, Greeks, and Jews of the
lower classes—the last distinguishable by the furred robes of the old
men—hurrying northward on foot, with babies and bundles in their arms.
There were, more notably, soldiers of the garrison, singly, in groups,
with or without rifles. We stopped the first we saw and asked what was
up. They all declared that they knew nothing, showing much haste to be
on. We afterward realised that they were running away. We saw some of
them bargaining for boats to take them to the Asiatic side.
There had been no firing for some time, and the sight of row-boats so
much nearer the scene of action than Hissar convinced me anew of a
false alarm. The Macedonians had probably come into town at last. The
Palace guard might very well have made a row. Perhaps even the Sultan
had been deposed, and had objected to it. But how was it possible
that there should be any general fighting? At Orta-kyöi, next to the
imperial suburb of Beshiktash, six of us got in to two _sandals_. We
soon separated. The boat in which I sat had not gone far toward the
harbour before firing broke out again. There was no doubt about it this
time. The crack of musketry, intensely sharp and sinister in the clear
spring morning, would be followed by the deeper note of a field-piece.
But we could see nothing. The roofs of Yîldîz nestled serene as ever
among their embosoming gardens. The imperial flag still floated from its
accustomed staff. Not a cloud, not a puff, indicated the direction of
the firing. It was uncanny. What could have happened? We skirted the
artillery magazines of Top Haneh, passed the embassy despatch-boats, and
began rounding into the harbour. Suddenly the man in the stern of the
boat uttered a quick “By Jove!” and ducked. A bullet had whizzed behind
his ear. Another splashed the water off our bow. A third sang over our
heads. I began to think that they had not been wrong at Roumeli Hissar
when they advised me to sit in my garden and be at peace. I was far from
being at peace and I decidedly wished that I were in my garden. The next
best place seemed to be the bottom of the boat. In the face of public
opinion, however, as represented by two Englishmen and a Turk, the only
course left a scared impressionist was to continue taking uncomfortable
impressions in as erect a posture as possible and be shot like a
gentleman. The sole satisfaction I had was in meditating of my last will
and testament, providently made the day before, and of its eventual
discovery. But it was never discovered and none of us were laid low.
While a few more bullets spattered around us, we were soon out of range
alongside Galata quay.
The first thing I saw there was a pair of white leggings on guard at a
gate. I went up to the sunburned soldier who wore them as to a long-lost
brother, and asked for news. My reception, I regret to confess, was not
too cordial. “Do not stop,” admonished the Macedonian. “If you have
business, do it and go. There is no danger, but the bridge is closed and
boats do not run. To-morrow everything will be the same as yesterday.” In
one respect, at least, he was right. The bridge was closed. Access not
only to Stamboul but to the great street of Galata was cut off by white
leggings. There was, accordingly, no chance of making the tunnel to Pera.
As my friends were divided as to their projects, I explored certain
noisome alleys leading back from the quay to see if I could reach the
street of steps climbing past the Genoese tower. On the way I met a party
of American tourists, hurrying for their steamer in charge of an embassy
_kavass_. They amusingly looked to an impressionist forgetful of his
partiality for the bottoms of boats as if they doubted whether they would
escape with their lives. Step Street luckily proved open. The shops,
however, were shut, and pedestrians were remarkably scarce. Moreover
most of them wore white leggings, or grey-blue ones. Young gentlemen so
apparelled, with rifles slung across their backs and cartridges festooned
about them, strolled up and down the streets or lolled in front of public
buildings. There was an engaging negligence about these picturesque
persons, who had an air of keeping an eye on things in spite of manifold
cigarettes. Rifles might pop desultorily in the distance, but there was
no doubt what had happened. The Macedonians had captured Constantinople.
[Illustration: Macedonian volunteers
Photograph by W. G. M. Edwards]
I went to the American Embassy to obtain details as to this historic
event. I found the gate guarded by cadets of the War College and
Macedonian Blues. One of the latter smoked cigarettes on the sidewalk
and scrutinised every one who passed. At a sign from him an approaching
group of marines was stopped and searched. A Turkish _hoja_ was even more
roughly handled, for his honourable cloth had been a favourite disguise
for political agitators. No one suspected of carrying weapons was let
by. The man in blue, it transpired, was one of many officers who escaped
during the mutiny and came back with the invading army as privates, or
so dressed for strategic reasons. As for news, it was remarkably meagre.
The Macedonians had occupied both banks of the Golden Horn early in the
morning and had encountered resistance at some of the barracks. There
were conflicting reports of the first shots being due to a mistake and of
treacherous flags of truce. At all events, the affair was not finished,
for every now and then we heard firing. But so far as any one knew there
had been no fight at Yîldîz.
What made me realise more sharply than anything else the seriousness of
the affair was the further news that Frederick Moore, of the New York
_Sun_, whom I had often met during the last six months, had been badly
wounded. I started up Pera Street to see what I could see. More people
were about by that time, but the shops were shut and no cabs or trams
were running. All the embassies, legations, and consulates were guarded,
like ours, by cadets and Macedonian gendarmes. Other Macedonians, they of
the white caps and white leggings, they of the careless Mauser and the
casual cigarette, mingled informally with the crowd. As an inhabitant of
a captured city, it was interesting to note the friendliness of captives
and captors. A rare shot was the sole reminder that there might be more
than one side to this question. By the time I reached the vicinity of
the Taxim artillery barracks, however, there were other reminders. I
saw an iron shutter neatly perforated by dozens of small round holes.
The windows of houses in otherwise good repair were riddled and broken.
Walls were curiously pockmarked, and I saw a shell embedded in one. These
phenomena were particularly visible about the local guard-house, which
I was told had only just surrendered. Several stretchers passed me,
carrying soldiers in contorted attitudes. A man went into the guard-house
with a ridged pine coffin on his back, followed by two of the dervishes
who wash the bodies of dead Mohammedans. I didn’t count how many more
coffins and dervishes I saw go into that guard-house.
[Illustration: A Macedonian Blue]
I followed one of the stretchers into the adjoining French hospital,
in hope of hearing from Moore. The resources of the place were
evidently overtaxed, and I took the liberty of going farther to verify
the information given me by a white-winged sister of charity. At a
hospitable English house across the street I found Mrs. Moore. Mr.
Graves, of the London _Times_, who had been reported as dead, was also
there, and two English officers of the Macedonian gendarmerie. They
had come up unofficially from Salonica to see how their men acquitted
themselves. It seemed they and Mr. Booth, of the _Graphic_, had been
with Moore that morning. They ran into the firing before they knew it,
thinking, as other people did, that the action was taking place around
Yîldîz. Their position was the more awkward because the Macedonians
were determined to prevent the soldiers of the garrison from getting
down into Pera, and there was cross-firing from side streets. The two
correspondents were wounded almost at the same moment, Booth getting
a bullet that grazed his scalp, and Moore being shot clean through
the neck. A Greek behind him was killed, apparently by the same ball.
The officers got Booth into an adjoining house, but by a regrettable
misunderstanding they left Moore lying in the street, whence he was
rescued by a young Greek sculptor.
[Illustration: Taxim artillery barracks, shelled April 24]
The streets grew more animated until the Grande Rue de Pera assumed the
appearance of a Sunday afternoon. But another aspect of the situation
was presented to me when I bearded the Blues of the telegraph office
for Mrs. Moore, and heard clerks politely regretting that all wires
were down except those to Europe by way of Constantza. I concluded that
Shefket Pasha, who did not trouble Yîldîz until he was sure of the
city, proposed to leave no loophole for reactionary telegrams to the
provinces. Returning to the Taxim for further reconnaissance, I was
taking snap-shots when shots of another kind began to snap again. They
were neither near nor many, but they caused an extraordinary panic.
People ran wildly back into Pera, the women screaming, the men tucking
those near and dear to them under their arms or abandoning them to the
mercy of the foe as their motor centres dictated. I, seeing some soldiers
grin, waited in the lee of a tree. When the street was clear I went on
to the artillery barracks that had given so much trouble in the morning.
The big building was quiet enough now, under the afternoon sun that made
jagged black shadows in the holes torn by Macedonian shells. Beyond, at
the far corner of the Taxim Garden, I saw a group of white leggings. A
bugle blew, and some of them crept around the wall into the side street.
As I came nearer a soldier ran toward me, brandishing his rifle. “What
are you doing here?” he demanded. I replied as politely as I could
that I was taking photographs. “Is this a time to take photographs?”
he vociferated. “We are killing men. Go back!” If other argument were
needed I had it in the form of renewed shots that banged behind him,
where I could see through trees the yellow mass of Tash Kîshla. I went
back less rapidly than I might have done, remembering the people who had
just run away. Opposite the garden was the parade-ground of the barracks,
bounded on its farther side by stables and a strip of wall behind which
heads bobbed. I began to repent of my retreat, also to thirst for human
companionship, and I resolved to join those comfortably ensconced
spectators. As I strolled toward them across the great empty space of sun
they hailed me from afar. I then perceived with some embarrassment that
they wore white caps, _à la macédonienne_, and that a portentous number
of rifle barrels were gaping at me. They were, in fact, reserves posted
for the afternoon attack on Tash Kîshla.
I cannot say that they received me too civilly. Grace, however, was
given me to appreciate that the moment was not one for civilities,
especially from men who had been under action for twelve hours. I also
appreciated the opportunity, urged without forms upon me, of studying
their picturesque rear. Tired soldiers smoked or slept on a steep grass
slope, and a mule battery lurked in the gully below. Wondering if it
might not yet be possible to see what was going on, I approached a young
man who stood at the door of a house behind the artillery stables and
asked him in my best French if he objected to my ascending to a balcony I
saw on the top story of his house. He, being a Greek, replied in his best
English that he would be happy to accompany me thither. On the way up he
pointed out to me, at a broken window of the opposite stable, the figure
of an artilleryman, his rifle across his knees, sitting dead and ghastly
against a wall. And he told me about the engagement of which he had been
an uncomfortably close witness: how the Macedonians marched in from the
valley of the Golden Horn early in the morning; how the first of them
were allowed to pass the artillery barracks, and were even cheered; how
another lot, who scrambled up the gully from Kassîm Pasha, saw a white
flag flying from the artillery stables, advanced more confidently, and
were met by a treacherous fire; how they then retired for reinforcements,
brought up machine guns and field-pieces, and took stable, barracks, and
guard-house after a nasty little fight of five hours.
[Illustration: They were, in fact, reserves posted for the afternoon
attack on Tash Kîshla]
From the balcony we had a perfect view of the last operations around
Tash Kîshla. That great yellow barracks will be memorable in the annals
of the Turkish revolution. Many an officer is said to have been tortured
there on suspicion of being connected with the Young Turks. It was there
that a detachment of the imperial guard fired on the first sharpshooters
brought up from Salonica to replace them. And there a battalion of those
same sharpshooters, who had been corrupted into fomenting the late
revolt and who knew how little quarter they might expect from their old
comrades, held out desperately, long after the other barracks had given
in. The last act of the tragedy looked less real than a stage tragedy on
that divine spring afternoon while we watched, as from a box at the play,
the white-legged figures crouching behind their wall, the farther figures
stealing up the side of a sunny road, the sortie of the last handful of
sharpshooters from their shot-riddled stronghold. They took refuge in a
garden before the barracks, where rifles blazed and men dropped until a
desperate white handkerchief fluttered among the trees.
The surrender of Tash Kîshla—the Stone Barracks—practically completed
the occupation of the city. But the tension was not over. There were
yet three days of uncertainty, of waiting, of a strange sense in the
air of contrast between the April sunlight and dark forces working in
silence. For Yîldîz, as ever, remained inscrutable. From the top of Pera
we could see, across the valley of Beshiktash, the scene of Friday’s
_Selamlîk_. No sign of life was visible now at the archway in the Palace
wall, on the avenue leading to the mosque. Had the Sultan surrendered?
Had he abdicated? Had he fled? All we knew, until the end, was that
white flags floated over two of the imperial barracks and that white
leggings nonchalantly appeared on Sunday morning at the Palace gates.
In the meantime Shefket Pasha, the man of the hour, continued to secure
his position. The redoubtable Selimieh barracks, scene of Florence
Nightingale’s work in Haïdar Pasha, he took on Sunday with half a dozen
shells. On the same day he proclaimed martial law. No one was allowed in
the streets an hour after sunset, weapons were confiscated, suspicious
characters of all sorts were arrested, and the deserters of the garrison
were rounded up. Thousands of them were picked out of row-boats on the
Bosphorus or caught in the open country. The poor fellows were more
sinned against than sinning. The most absurd stories had been spread
among them: that the invaders were Christians come forcibly to convert
them; that the son of the King of England intended to turn Abd ül Hamid
off the throne in order to reign himself; that if taken they would all
be massacred. Dazed by all that had been told them, lost without their
officers, worn out by the excitement and confusion of the last ten days,
their one idea was to get back to their Asiatic villages. On Monday
morning several hundred of them, including the remnant of the Tash Kîshla
sharpshooters, were marched away to the court martial at Chatalja. The
rest, who were merely the victims of an ignorant loyalty to their Caliph,
were sent to Macedonia for lessons in liberalism and road making.
[Illustration: Burial of volunteers, April 26
Photograph by George Freund]
I wondered whether it were by accident that the prisoners sent to
Chatalja marched down the hill by which their captors had entered
Pera, as preparations were being made on the same height, since named
of Perpetual Liberty, for the funeral of the first volunteers killed.
A circular trench was dug on the bare brown hilltop, and in it fifty
ridged deal coffins were symmetrically set toward the east, each covered
with the star and crescent and each bearing a fez at the head. Then a
long double file of whitecaps drew up beside it, and a young officer
made a spirited address. Not knowing, in my ignorance, who the officer
was or much of what he said—he turned out to be the famous Nyazi Bey
of Resna—I wandered away to the edge of the bluff. A few tents were
still pitched there, overlooking the upper valley of the Golden Horn.
Seeing a camera and hearing a foreign accent, the men were willing
enough to be photographed. They were from Cavalla, they said, where an
American tobacco company maintains a factory. One of them offered me his
tobacco-box in English. He had lived two years and a half in New York.
When I got back to the trench the soldiers had gone and the coffins were
almost covered. One officer was left, who made to the grave-diggers and
the few spectators a speech of a moving simplicity. “Brothers,” he said,
“here are men of every nation—Turks, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Jews;
but they died together, on the same day, fighting under the same flag.
Among us, too, are men of every nation, both Mohammedan and Christian;
but we also have one flag and we pray to one God. Now, I am going to
make a prayer, and when I pray let each one of you pray also, in his own
language, in his own way.” With which he raised his hands, palms upward,
in the Mohammedan attitude of prayer. The other Mohammedans followed his
example, while the Christians took off their caps or fezzes and crossed
themselves; and a brief “_amin_” closed the little ceremony.
[Illustration: Deputies leaving Parliament after deposing Abd ül Hamid,
April 27
Photograph by W. G. M. Edwards]
By Tuesday, parliament having returned to town the day before, and having
sat in secret session with no outward result, people began to say again
that the Sultan would keep his throne. As the morning wore on, however,
there began to be indications of a certain nature. In Pera Street I
encountered a long line of open carriages, each containing two or three
black eunuchs and a Macedonian soldier. The odd procession explained
itself. The eunuchs were from the Palace. Some of them looked downcast,
but the majority stared back at the crowd with the detachment supposed
to be of their nature, while a few of the younger ones appeared to be
enjoying an unaccustomed pleasure. It was not so with a procession I saw
later, crossing Galata Bridge. This was composed of the lower servants of
the Palace, on foot, marching four and four between a baker’s dozen of
sardonic Macedonians. There was no air of palaces about them. Some were
in _stamboulines_, frock coats with a military collar, that looked the
worse for wear. Others wore a manner of livery, coarse black braided with
white. Others still were in the peasant costume of the country. They were
followed by the last of the Palace guard, shuffling disarmed and dejected
between their sharp-eyed captors. A few jeers were raised as they passed,
but quickly died away. There was something both tragic and prophetic
about that unhappy company.
Returning to Galata, I found the approaches of the Bridge guarded by
soldiers, who kept the centre of the street clear. The sidewalks were
packed with people who waited—they did not know for what. More soldiers
passed, with flags and bands. It began to be whispered that a new sultan
was going over to Stamboul that afternoon. The rumour was presently
confirmed by an extra of the _Osmanischer Lloyd_, an enterprising
Franco-German paper, which was the first in Constantinople to publish the
news of Abd ül Hamid’s dethronement and the accession of his brother.
But still people could not believe the news they had been expecting
so long. They continued to wait, to see what would happen. I met some
friends who suggested going to the vicinity of Dolma Ba’hcheh Palace,
the residence of the heir presumptive. If he went out that afternoon
we should be surer of knowing it than if we joined the crowds in the
city. At the junction of the Pera road with the avenue behind Dolma
Ba’hcheh we were stopped by a white-legginged Albanian with a Mauser.
This tall, fair-haired, hawk-nosed, and serious young man saw no reason
why we should occupy better posts than the rest of the people—happily not
many—he held at bay. We accordingly waited with them, being assured by
the inexorability of the Albanian and by the presence of gunners mounting
guard beyond him that we should not wait in vain.
In front of us a wide paved space sloped down to the Bosphorus,
pleasantly broken by fresh-leaved trees and a stucco clock-tower. To
the left ran a tree-shaded perspective cut off from the water by the
white mass of Dolma Ba’hcheh. Before long we saw three steam-launches
pass close in front of us, making for the harbour. A few minutes later
a cannon banged. Another banged after it, another, and another, till
we could doubt no longer that what we had been waiting for had really
happened at last. Then, before we had time to taste the rushing emotion
of new and great things, a small-arm cracked in the distance. That
sharp little sound caused the strangest cold sensation of arrest.
More rifles cracked. People looked at each other. The soldiers began
feeling for their cartridges, their eyes on their officers. As the
firing became a fusillade, and drew nearer, one of the latter made a
sign to our Albanian. “Go back!” commanded that young man fiercely,
thrusting his musket at us. There was an instant retreat. Could it be
that reactionaries had chosen this moment to make an attack on the new
Sultan, that there had been a reply, and that battle was beginning again
in the streets? We had not gone far, however, before we saw men shooting
revolvers into the air and laughing. So we returned, not without
sheepishness, to our places. We were just in time to see our Albanian
discharge his rifle with the delight of a boy. The volley that followed
did not last long. “Who told you to fire?” demanded the officer who had
been so uneasy a moment before. “Eh, the others are firing,” replied the
Albanian. “Never mind what the others do,” retorted the officer sharply.
“We came here to show that we know how to obey orders. Now, stop firing.”
His soldiers did, although the city was by that time one roar of powder.
[Illustration: Mehmed V driving through Stamboul on his accession day,
April 27
Photograph by W. G. M. Edwards]
It was not long after three o’clock. We still had nearly four hours to
wait before Sultan Mehmed V should land at Seraglio Point, proceed to
the War Office for the first ceremonies of investiture, return to the
Seraglio to kiss the mantle of the Prophet, and then drive past us to
his palace. I could not help thinking of the other palace on top of the
hill from which the servants had been taken that morning. The boom of
saluting guns, the joyous crackle accompanying it, must have gone up with
cruel distinctness, through the still spring afternoon, to the ears of
one who had heard that very sound, on the supplanting of a brother by a
brother, thirty-three years before. As the time wore away our Albanian
grew less fierce. The light, unfortunately, did likewise, until all hope
of snap-shots failed. I then took my place at the edge of the avenue.
Finally, toward seven o’clock, a piqueur galloped into sight from behind
the wall that hid the right-hand stretch of the street. Behind him, in
the distance, rose a faint cheering. It came nearer, nearer, nearer,
until a squadron of dusty cavalry clattered into sight. After the
cavalry clattered a dusty brougham, drawn by two black horses, and in
the brougham an elderly man with a double chin bowed and smiled from the
windows as the crowd shouted: “_Padishah’m chok yasha-a-a!_” I shouted
with them as well as I could, not stopping to inquire why anything should
impede the throat of an indifferent impressionist from oversea, at the
spectacle of a fat old gentleman in a frock coat driving out between
two disreputable columns of cavalry. They made a terrific dust as they
galloped away through the young green of the avenue toward the white
palace—dust which a condescending sun turned into a cloud of glory.
* * * * *
During the days and nights of flags and illuminations that followed
there were other sights to see. One of them was the _Selamlîk_ of the
ensuing Friday. It took place at St. Sophia, whither Mehmed II rode to
pray after his conquest of Constantinople, and where popular opinion
willed that a later Mehmed, after this memorable recapture of the town,
should make his first public prayer. About this ceremony was none of
the pomp that distinguished the one I had witnessed the week before.
A few Macedonian Blues were drawn up by the mosque, a few Macedonian
cavalrymen guarded the gates of the Seraglio, and they were not all
in place by the time the Sultan, in a new khaki uniform, drove slowly
through the grounds of that ancient enclosure. Again, on the succeeding
Monday, we beheld the grisly spectacle of those who fomented the mutiny
among the soldiers, and who, in long white shirts, with statements of
their names and deeds pinned to their bosoms, swung publicly from great
tripods at the scene of their several crimes—three at the Stamboul end
of the Bridge, five in front of Parliament, and five in the square of
the War Department. And the new Sultan was once more the centre of
interest on the day he was girded with the sword of Osman. He went to
the sacred mosque of Eyoub with little of the pageantry that used to
celebrate that solemn investiture—in a steam-launch, distinguishable
from other steam-launches only by a big magenta silk flag bearing the
imperial _toughra_. From Eyoub he drove round the walls to the Adrianople
Gate, and then through the city to the Seraglio. His gala coach, his
scarlet-and-gold coachman, his four chestnut horses, his blue-and-silver
outriders, and his prancing lancers were the most glittering part of that
long procession. The most Oriental part of it was the train of carriages
bearing the religious heads of the empire, white-bearded survivors of
another time, in venerable turbans and green robes embroidered with gold.
But the most significant group in the procession was that of the trim
staff of the Macedonian army, on horseback, headed by Mahmoud Shefket
Pasha. Not least notable among the conquerors of Constantinople will be
this grizzled, pale, thin, keen, kind-looking Arab who, a month before
that day, was an unknown corps commander in Salonica. His destiny willed
that hardly more than four years after that day he should even more
suddenly go again into the unknown. His fate was a happy one in that it
overtook him at the height of power a Turkish subject may attain, when
he was at once Field-Marshal, Minister of War, and Grand Vizier, and
that it left in suspense the colder judgment of his time with regard
to the actual degree of his greatness. Legends and hatreds naturally
gathered around such a man. I do not know whether it was true that he
took the city before he was ready, with barely fifteen thousand men,
on a sudden night warning that the desperate Sultan plotted a massacre
for the next day. Neither was I there to see whether he actually sent
back to the new Sultan his present of a magnificent Arab charger, saying
that he was a poor man and had no stable for such a steed. The crucial
test of the Balkan War he had no opportunity to undergo. But less than
any other personality discovered by the Turkish revolution does he need
the favouring kindness of uncertainty. At the moment when if he chose
he might have been dictator, he did not choose. And the decision, the
promptness, the tact, the strategic ability with which he grasped the
situation of the mutiny and threw an army into Chatalja before the
blundering mutineers knew what he was about, made for him the one clear
and positive record of that confused time. They say he suffered from an
incurable disease, and captured cities for distraction.
[Illustration: Mehmed V on the day of sword-girding, May 10
Photograph by Apollon, Constantinople]
I had the honour of meeting Mahmoud Shefket Pasha a little later, in
company with Mr. Booth; and I owed it to the latter’s bandaged head and
to the interest which the general took in the wounded journalist that I
also obtained the coveted leave to visit Yîldîz. Yîldîz had so long been
a name of legend that one approached it with the vividest curiosity—even
though the innermost enclosure, jutting out into the park from the
crest of the hill on a gigantic retaining wall, at first remained
impenetrable. When at last the gates of the Forbidden City itself were
opened, it was strange to discover that the Sultan who stood for all that
was conservative and Oriental, who spent as he pleased the gold of the
empire, who might have created anew the lost splendours of the Seraglio,
had chosen to surround himself with would-be European cottages, for the
most part of wood, with a profusion of gables and jig-saw carpentry.
The more ornate were those intended for the reception of ministers and
ambassadors. The simplest and the largest was the long, low, L-shaped
structure where Abd ül Hamid lived with his extensive family. His private
apartments gave a singular picture of that singular man. The rooms were
all jealously latticed, even behind the fortifications of Yîldîz, and
one was scarcely to be distinguished in its use from another, so full
were they all of desks, screens, couches, weapons, and pianos. In one
of the least ambiguous, where white chairs stood about a long table,
was shown the gilt Vienna _Récamier_ in which Abd ül Hamid received the
notification of his dethronement. An orchestrion filled one end of the
room, where also was a piano. No less than four of these instruments
were in another room. Farther on were the empty safes where the old man
hoarded his gold and his famous jewels, a cupboard of ugly tiles that
was a mixture of Turkish _hamam_ and European bath, without the luxuries
of either, and a perfectly appointed carpenter’s shop. It is an old
tradition for the princes of the house of Osman to learn some trade,
in case their _kîsmet_ should suddenly require them to make their own
living. One chamber had more the air of a bedroom than any other. For
the Sultan rarely slept two nights in succession in the same place, or
undressed to do so. On a table were two of the bullet-proof waistcoats he
wore at _Selamlîk_. A handsome case of arms stood by the door. High on
the walls hung some crude pictures which he perhaps painted himself. He
was fond of playing with the brush. A canvas somewhere else represented
a boat full of priests, standing, to whom a group of plump pink sirens
beckoned from an arsenic shore. The officer in charge told us that the
faces of the priests were those of Midhat Pasha and other reformers.
With all their oddity, the rooms had a familiar air of habitation.
Things of use and of ornament were where Abd ül Hamid dropped them the
night he was taken away. Writing materials were strewn on the desks. A
photograph of the German imperial family looked out of a gold frame set
in brilliants. In a corner stood a table, a chair, and a footstool, all
with crystal legs, where the Sultan sat in thunder-storms. The whole
palace was full of small human touches of the suspicious, ignorant,
lonely old man who lived there. And East and West were strangely jumbled
in his well-worn furniture, as they were in his ancient empire—as they
were in the visitors inquisitively trampling the carpets and fingering
the belongings of the fallen master of the house.
The harem, by a characteristic piece of Oriental reserve, was not opened
even by its despoilers to the gaze of the profane. But we were allowed
to go into the harem garden, overlooked by the Sultan’s lattices.
An artificial canal wound through the middle of it. Row-boats, a
motor-boat, even a small sailboat, were moored there. Under the trees
stood a miniature replica of the fountain at Gyök Sou. Pigeons fluttered
everywhere and water-fowl were playing in the canal, while against the
wall cutting off the immense prospect the garden might have enjoyed stood
cages of gaudy birds. At one spot only did a small kiosk, execrably
furnished, give access to the view. Through the telescope on the upper
floor Abd ül Hamid used to watch the city he dared not enter. We also
saw a little theatre that communicated by a bridge with the harem. In
this bonbon box of red velvet the singers and variety actors visiting the
city used to be invited to perform—sometimes before a solitary spectator.
King Otto of Bavaria would have found no kinship with him, though. On the
wall a photograph of Arturo Stravolo, an Italian transformationist, hung
beside a large and bad portrait of Verdi.
Outside this inner citadel the fabled gardens descended to the sea.
Fabled they proved, indeed—as some city park, perhaps, though not so
neatly kept. A driveway, fabulously dusty, led between the massive
retaining wall and a miniature lake to Merassim Kiosque, a tawdry little
palace in an enclosure of its own which was built for William II of
Germany. I threaded a tortuous space, at one end of it not quite touching
the bastion of the Forbidden City, where a small iron door in the kiosk
faced a small iron door in the bastion. They had a potency, those small
iron doors, upon the imagination of a romantic impressionist. Beyond
stretched courts and stables, deserted save for a few last activities
of departure. A eunuch was giving shrill orders to a soldier. A drove
of buffaloes stood mild-eyed under a plane-tree, waiting to be driven
away. A horse whinnied in the silence. A cat lay blinking in the sun,
indifferent to the destinies of kings.
On a slope of thin shade farther on were grouped an ornate wooden
villa, a castellated porcelain factory, kennels where a few dogs yelped
miserably, and enclosures for all sorts of animals and birds. The one
really charming part of the park was the ravine behind Chira’an Palace,
cool with secular trees and the splash of water. Nightingales and strange
water-fowl had their habitation there, and some startled colts galloped
away as I descended a winding path. The look of the paths, neither wild
nor ordered, made me wonder again what four hundred gardeners did at
Yîldîz. I suppose they did what any gardener would do whose master never
came to see his garden. Chalets and summer-houses with red seals on their
doors stood among the trees. I went into an open lodge beside a gateway.
A bed was torn to pieces, clothes and papers strewed the floor, a cut
loaf and an open bottle stood on a shelf as if dropped there in some
hasty flight.
There was a point on the hillside whence a long view opened—of domed
Stamboul and cypressed Scutari reaching toward each other across an
incredible blue, with dim Asiatic mountains in the background. From the
height above he must often have looked out on that scene who brooded for
thirty-three years, in silence and darkness, behind the walls his terror
raised. So noble against sea and sky, so vastly spreading, so mysterious
in its invisible activities, the city must have been as redoubtable
to him as his bastioned hilltop was to the city. And I could not help
imagining how, during the days so lately passed, as he watched the city
that feared his power and whose power he feared, sounds must have come up
to him: of the foolish firing he ordered for the 13th of April; of a more
sinister firing eleven days later, when he waited for his deluded and
officerless soldiers, shut up in their barracks, to save his throne; of
that last firing, for him the sound of doom, proclaiming to his face the
joy of the distant city that his power over it was no more.
As we went away a line of buffalo carts, piled with nondescript
furniture, began to creak down the avenue where the imperial guard used
to parade at _Selamlîk_. A Macedonian gendarme stood in the great arched
gateway of the Palace court and checked them as they passed. Behind him a
monkey sat in the coil of a black tail, surveying the scene with bright,
furtive, troubled eyes.
XVI
WAR TIME
1912-1913
I.—THE HORDES OF ASIA
“The hordes of Asia....” That phrase, fished out of what reminiscence I
know not, kept running through my head as the soldiers poured through the
city. Where did they all come from? On the night of the 3d of October
the streets began to resound portentously with drums, and out of the
dark the voices of criers called every man, Moslem or Christian, married
or single, to leave his house and defend his country. Then the crowded
transports began to stream down the Bosphorus, sometimes as many as
seven or eight a day. Opposite each village the whistle blew, the men
cheered, and the people on shore waved handkerchiefs and flags. When the
transports came down after dark it was more picturesque. Bengal lights
would answer each other between sea and land, and the cheering filled
more of the silence. It somehow sounded younger, too. And it insensibly
led one into sentimentalities—into imaginations of young wives and
children, of old parents, of abandoned fields, of what other fields in
Thrace and Macedonia.
[Illustration: Arriving from Asia]
[Illustration: Reserves]
The hordes from the Black Sea made no more than their distant impression,
perhaps no less dramatic for being so; and for them Constantinople
can have been but a fugitive panorama of cypresses and minarets and
waving handkerchiefs. They passed by without stopping to the ports of
the Marmora. Other hordes, however, poured into the city so fast that
no troop train or barracks could hold them. Hundreds, even thousands,
of them camped every night under the mosaics of St. Sophia. At first
they all wore the new hay-coloured uniform of Young Turkey. Then older
reservists began to appear in the dark blue piped with red of Abd ül
Hamid’s time. Meanwhile, conscripts and volunteers of all ages and types
and costumes filled the streets. It took a more experienced eye than
mine, generally, to pick out a Greek or an Armenian marching to war
for the first time in the Turkish ranks. The fact is that a Roumelian
or seaboard Turk looks more European than an Anatolian Christian.
Nevertheless, the diversity of the empire was made sufficiently manifest
to the most inexperienced eye. The Albanians were always a striking
note. Hundreds of them flocked back from who knows where, in their white
skull-caps and close-fitting white clothes braided with black. They are
leaner and often taller than the Turks, who incline to be thick-bodied;
fairer, too, as a rule, and keener-eyed. Something like them are the
Laz, who are slighter and darker men but no less fierce. They have the
name of being able to ride farther in less time than any other tribe
of Asia Minor. Their uniforms were a khaki adaptation of their tribal
dress—zouave-jackets, trousers surprisingly full at the waist and
surprisingly tight about the leg, and pointed hoods with long flaps
knotted into a sort of turban. This comfortable Laz hood, with slight
variations of cut and colour, has been adapted for the whole army. I
shall always remember it as a symbol of that winter war. Certain swarthy
individuals from the Russian or Persian frontiers also made a memorable
figure, in long black hairy sleeveless cloaks and tall caps of black
lamb’s wool, tied about with some white rag. They gave one the impression
that they might be very uncomfortable customers to meet in a blind alley
on a dark night. These gentlemen, none the less, wore in their caps, like
a cockade, what might have seemed to the vulgar a paint-brush, but what
was in reality the tooth-brush of their country. Last of all the Syrians
began to appear. They were very noticeably different from the broader,
flatter, fairer Anatolian type. On their heads they wore the scarf of
their people, bound about with a thick black cord, and on cold days some
of them would drape a _bournous_ over their khaki.
[Illustration: Recruits]
[Illustration: Hand in hand]
Just such soldiers must have followed Attila and Tamerlane, and
the roving horseman who founded the house of Osman. And just such
pack-animals as trotted across Galata Bridge, balking whenever they came
to a crack of the draw. The shaggy ponies all wore a blue bead or two
against the Evil Eye, and their high pack-saddles were decorated with
beads or small shells or tufts of coloured worsted. Nor can the songs
the soldiers sang, I imagine, have changed much in six hundred years.
Not that many of them sang, or betrayed their martial temper otherwise
than by the dark dignity of bearing common to all men of the East. It
was strange to a Westerner to see these proud and powerful-looking
men strolling about hand in hand. Yet it went with the mildness and
simplicity which are as characteristic of them as their fierceness. One
of them showed me a shepherd’s pipe in his cartridge belt. That was the
way to go to war, he said—as to a wedding. Another played a violin as
he marched, a quaint little instrument like a _pochette_ or a _viole
d’amour_, hanging by the neck from his hand. By way of contrast I heard a
regimental band march one day to the train to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.”
At the train no more emotion was visible than in the streets. There was
a certain amount of arranged band playing and cheering by command, but
the men were grave and contained as ever. So were the friends who came
to see them off—unless they happened to be Christians. Nothing could
have been more characteristic than the groups of women, muffled in their
black dominoes and generally veiled, who stood silent while the trains
went out. The only utterance I ever happened to catch from them was from
an old body who watched a regiment march into the station. “Let them
cut,” she said, half to herself and half to those about her, making a
significant horizontal movement of her hand. “Let them cut!” I heard of
another who rebuked a girl for crying on a Bosphorus steamer after seeing
off some member of her family. “I have sent my husband and my son,” she
said. “Let them go. They will kill the unbelievers.”
[Illustration: Demonstration in the Hippodrome]
I presume similar sentiments were expressed often enough by men. Why
not, among so much ignorance, and at a time of so much resentment against
the unbeliever? Yet I did not chance to hear anything of the sort. On the
contrary, I was struck by what seemed to me a distinctly new temper in
Mohammedans. Nazîm Pasha sounded the note of it when he proclaimed that
this was a political, not a holy, war, and that non-combatants were to
be treated with every consideration. If the proclamation was addressed
partly to Europe, the fact remains that in no earlier war would a Turkish
general have been capable of making it. It may be, too, that the disdain
with which the Turk started out to fight his whilom vassals helped his
tolerance. Nevertheless, as I somewhat doubtfully picked my way about
Stamboul, wondering whether it was quite the thing to do at such a
time, the sense grew in me that the common people were at last capable
of classifications less simple than their old one of the believing and
the unbelieving. It did not strike me, however, that even the uncommon
people had much comprehension of the cause of the war. If they had I
suppose there would have been no war. “We have no peace because of this
Roumelia,” said an intelligent young man to me. “We must fight. If I die,
what is it? My son at least will have peace.” Yet there was no particular
enthusiasm, save such as the political parties manufactured. They
organised a few picturesque demonstrations and encouraged roughs to break
the windows of the Balkan legations. But except for the soldiers—the
omnipresent, the omnipassant, hordes of Asia—an outsider might never have
guessed that anything unusual was in the air. Least of all would he have
guessed it when he heard people exclaim _Mashallah!_ as the soldiers went
by, and learned that they were saying “What God does will!” So far is it
from Turkish nature to make a display of feeling. The nearest approach to
such a thing I saw was on the day Montenegro declared war. Then smiles
broke out on every face as the barefooted newsboys ran through Stamboul
with their little extras. And the commonest phrase I heard that afternoon
was: “What will be, let be.”
II.—RETROSPECTIVE
Did any one dream, then, what was to be? Yet one might have known. It
was not a question of courage or endurance. Nobody, after the first
surprise, doubted that. The famous hordes of Asia—they were indeed just
such soldiers as followed Attila and Tamerlane, and the roving horseman
who founded the house of Osman. That was the trouble with them. They
had not learned that courage and endurance are not enough for modern
warfare. All Europeans who have dealings with the Turk know that he is
the least businesslike of men. He is constitutionally averse to order,
method, promptness, discipline, responsibility. Numbers and calculations
are beyond him. It is impossible to imagine him as a banker, a financier,
a partner in any enterprise requiring initiative or the higher organising
faculties. He simply hasn’t got them, or at all events he has never
developed them. Moreover, there is about him a Hamlet-like indecision
which he shares with the rest of Asia. He cannot make up his mind. He
waits until he is forced, and then he has usually waited too long for his
own good.
I could fill pages with anecdotes that were told me before the war,
illustrating the endless dilly-dallying that was an inevitable part of
every army contract. Soldiers were sent to the front, in consequence,
with serious deficiencies in their equipment. There were not boots
enough to go around, or overcoats enough, or knapsacks enough, or tents
enough. Half the navy, at the beginning of winter, was in white duck,
simply because blue serge comes from England and had not been ordered
in time. As for ambulances and field-hospitals, there was practically
nothing of the kind. Then, although the mobilisation took place with a
despatch praised by foreign critics, it became evident that trains were
not getting away with anything like clockwork. Regiments left hours, in
some cases days, after the time appointed. And there began very early to
be rumours that all was not well with the commissariat. A soldier whom
I knew wrote back from Kîrk Kil’seh, ten days before the fatal battle,
that he and the members of his company lived like dogs in the street,
picking up food and shelter wherever they could. We heard the same thing
from San Stefano, at the very gates of the capital. And at that time the
general staff of the army was quartered there. They apparently had not
read, marked, and inwardly digested the opinion put forth at a memorable
council of war in that very town by Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice, in
the year of grace 1203, when he said: “For he that has supplies wages
war with more certainty than he that has none.” Regiments arriving by
boat were given money to supply their own wants, in the absence of any
other provision for them. But the resources of a village were inadequate
to feed an army, and many soldiers went hungry. Bread was accordingly
baked for them in Constantinople, and continued to be throughout the war.
Sometimes, however, a bread train would return to the city unloaded,
because it had been nobody’s business to attend to it. And for a while
small riots took place in the capital on account of the shortage in the
customary supply. The thing was the more serious because bread really is
the staff of life in Turkey, and no one makes his own.
In spite of so many straws to show how the wind blew—and I have said
nothing about the politics that honeycombed the army, the sweeping
changes of personnel that took place no more than a month or two before
the war, the mistake of sending first to the front untrained reserves
and recruits who had never handled a rifle till they found themselves on
the battle-field—the speed with which the allies succeeded in developing
their campaign must have surprised the most turcophobe European. As for
the Turks themselves, they have always had a fatalistic—a fatal—belief
that they will one day quit Europe. Many times before and after the
decisive battles I heard the question uttered as to whether the destined
day had come. But no Turk can have imagined that his army, victorious
on a thousand fields, would smash to pieces at the first onslaught of an
enemy inexperienced in war. They forgot that the flower of the troops of
the conquering sultans came from those very Balkan mountains.
At first the truth was held back. Long after Kîrk Kil’seh and Lüleh
Bourgass and the loss of Macedonia there were men in Constantinople who
did not know or could not believe the facts. The case must have been true
much longer in the remote corners of Asia Minor. When the truth did come
out it was crushing. The Turks had been too sure. Hardly an officer had
not promised his friends post-cards from Sophia or Belgrade or Cettinje
or Athens. And to have been beaten by the serfs of yesterday! But I, for
one, have hardly yet the heart to say they deserved it. I remember too
well a bey in civil life whom I knew, whose face two weeks of the war had
ravaged like a disease, and the look with which he said, when I expressed
regret at the passing of some quaint Turkish custom: “Everything
passes in this world.” I quite understood the Turkish girls who went
away in a body from a certain international school. “We cannot bear
the Bulgarians,” they said. “They look at us—” It was characteristic,
however, that they presently went back. One did not like, in those days,
to meet one’s Turkish friends. It was like intruding into a house of
death. But in this house something more than life had been lost. And I
pay my tribute to the dignity with which that great humiliation was borne.
I stood one day at a club window watching a regiment march through Pera.
Two Turkish members stood near me. “Fine looking men!” exclaimed one—and
he was right. “How could soldiers like that have run away?” The other
considered a moment. “If we had not announced,” he replied, “that this
was not a holy war, you would have seen!” I am inclined to believe that
there was something in his opinion. At the time, however, it reminded me
of the young man who complained that the Turks had no peace. They were no
quicker to understand the causes of their defeat than they had been to
understand the causes of the war.
Not long afterward I spent an evening with some humble Albanians of my
acquaintance. Being in a way foreigners like myself, they could speak
with more detachment of what had happened, although there was no doubt as
to their loyalty to the empire. They asked my views as to the reason of
the disaster. I tried, in very halting Turkish, to explain how the Turk
had been distanced in the art of war and many other arts, and how war no
longer required courage alone but other qualities which the Turk does not
seem to possess. I evidently failed to make my idea intelligible. Having
listened with the utmost politeness, my auditors proceeded to give me
their own view of the case. The one who presented it most eloquently had
been himself a soldier in the Turkish army. It was under the old régime,
too, when men served seven and nine years. He attributed the universal
rout of the Turks less to the incompetence than to the cupidity of the
officers. He believed, like his companions, and I doubt if anything will
ever shake their belief, that the officers, from Nazîm Pasha down, had
been bribed by the allies. What other possible explanation could there
be of the fact that soldiers starved amid plenty and that Mohammedans
ran—saving my presence!—from Christians? As for the European ingenuities
that I made so much of—the ships, the guns, the railroads, the
telephones, the automobiles, the aeroplanes—why should the Turks break
their heads learning to make them when they could buy them ready-made
from Europe? After all, what you need in war is a heart, and not to be
afraid to die. My Albanian then went on to criticise, none too kindly,
the Young Turk officer. In his day, he said, most of the officers rose
from the ranks. They had been soldiers themselves, they understood the
soldiers, and they could bear hardship like soldiers. The Young Turks,
however, had changed all that. The ranker officers had been removed to
make room for young _mekteblis_, schoolmen, who knew nothing of their
troops or of war. They knew how to wear a collar, perhaps, or how to turn
up their moustaches, _à la Guillaume_. But they didn’t know how to march
in the rain or to sleep on the ground, and when the Bulgarians fired they
ran away.
I am by way of being a schoolman myself, and I blushed for my kind as I
heard this tall mountaineer make our indictment. What could I answer him?
I knew that in many ways he was right. The schoolmen did not understand
the fighting men as the rankers had done. Then there were far too few of
them—as there were too many fighting men of the kind first sent to the
front, whom I saw being recruited with handcuffs. And there had not been
time to establish the new order of things on a sound footing.
III.—RED CROSS AND RED CRESCENT
After the hordes of Asia that went so proudly away it was a very
different horde that began very soon to trickle back. No bands
accompanied them this time, and if any of them had had violins or
shepherds’ pipes they had lost them in the fields of Thrace. It was
pitiful to see how silently, almost how secretly, those broken men came
back. One would occasionally meet companies of them on the Bridge or in
the vicinity of a barracks, in their grey ulsters and pointed grey hoods,
shuffling along so muddy, so ragged, so shoeless, so gaunt and bowed,
that it was impossible to believe they were the same men. Most of them,
however, came back in the night and were not able even to shuffle. Two
or three pictures are stamped in my memory as characteristic of those
melancholy days. The first of them I happened to see when I moved into
town for the winter, a few days after Kîrk Kil’seh. When I landed at dusk
from a Bosphorus steamer, with more luggage than would be convenient to
carry, I found to my relief that the vicinity of the wharf was crowded
with cabs—scores of them. But not one would take a fare. They had all
been commandeered for ambulance service. Near the first ones stood a
group of women, Turkish and Christian, silently waiting. Some of them
were crying. Another time, coming home late from a dinner-party, I passed
a barracks which had been turned into a hospital. At the entrance stood a
quantity of cabs, all full of hooded figures that were strangely silent
and strangely lax in their attitudes. No such thing as a stretcher was
visible. Up the long flight of stone steps two soldiers were helping
a third. His arms were on their shoulders and each of them had an arm
around him. One foot he could not use. In the flare of a gas-jet at the
top of the steps a sentry stood in his big grey coat, watching. The three
slowly made their way up to him and disappeared into the archway. Again,
a lady who lives in Stamboul told me her own impressions so vividly that
I remember them almost better than my own—of trains whistling all night
long as they came in from the front, of city rubbish carts rumbling
without end through the dark, and of peering out to see one under the
window, full of wounded, with refugee women and children trudging behind
in the rain.
After Lüleh Bourgass there was scarcely a barracks or a guard-house or
a mosque or a school or a club or an empty house that was not turned
into an impromptu hospital. For a moment, indeed, the resources of the
city were swamped, and train loads of wounded would wait in the station
for hours before any attempt could be made to unload them. Even then,
thousands must have died for lack of care, for there were neither beds
nor nurses enough. And it was only the more lightly wounded who came
back. The others, in the general rout and in the lack of any adequate
field-hospital service, died where they fell—unless the Bulgarians
took pity on them. In either case no news about them was available. No
casualty lists were published. I doubt if any one knew how many hospitals
there were. Women would go vaguely from one to another asking for Ali
or Hassan. There might be fifty Alis and Hassans in each one, or five
hundred, and who was to know which from which?
In the face of so great an emergency every one, Mohammedan or Christian,
native or foreigner, took some part in relief work. A number of Turkish
ladies of high rank and the wives of the ambassadors had already
organised sewing-circles. Madame Bompard, I believe, the French
ambassadress, was the first to call the ladies of her colony together
to work for the wounded. Mrs. Rockhill gave up her passage to America
in order to lend her services. Although our embassy is much smaller
than the others, a room was vacated for a workshop, a sailor from the
despatch-boat _Scorpion_ cut out after models furnished by the Turkish
hospitals, and the Singer company lent sewing-machines—to any, in fact,
who wanted them for this humanitarian use. Shall I add that America had
a further share in these operations in that the coarse cotton used in
most of the work is known in the Levant as American cloth? Lady Lowther
organised activities of another but no less useful kind, to provide for
the families of poor soldiers and for refugees. In the German embassy a
full-fledged hospital was installed by order of the Emperor. At the same
time courses in bandaging and nursing were opened in various Turkish
and European hospitals. And Red Cross missions came from abroad in
such numbers that after the first rush of wounded was over it became a
question to know what to do with the Red Cross.
There is also a Turkish humane society, which is really the same as the
Red Cross but which the Turks, more umbrageous than the Japanese with
regard to the Christian symbol, call the Red Crescent. Foreign doctors,
nurses, and orderlies wore the Turkish device on their caps or sleeves,
and at first a small crimson crescent was embroidered by request on
every one of the thousands of pieces of hospital linen contributed
by different branches of the Red Cross. It is a pity that a work so
purely humanitarian should in so unimportant a detail as a name arouse
the latent hostility between two religious systems. Is it too late to
suggest that some new device be found which will be equally acceptable
to all the races and religions of the world? To this wholly unnecessary
cause must be attributed much of the friction that took place between
the two organisations. But I think it was only in humbler quarters that
the Red Cross symbol was resented. At a dinner given by the prefect of
Constantinople in honour of the visiting missions, it was an interesting
thing, for Turkey, to see the hall decorated with alternate crescents and
crosses. For the rest, any work of the kind is so new in Turkey that it
was not surprising if some people failed to find the right note. It was
entirely natural for the Turks to prefer to care for their own wounded,
when they could, and to resent any implication that they were incapable
of doing so. And the ignorance of tongues of the foreigners, with their
further ignorance of Turkish tastes and the very doubtful human material
some of them contributed, gave many just causes for complaint.
This relief-work marked a date in Turkish feminism, in that Turkish women
for the first time acted as nurses in hospitals. They covered their hair,
as our own Scripture recommends for a woman, but they went unveiled.
Women also served in other capacities, and something like organised work
was done by them in the way of preparing supplies for the sick. A lady
who attended nursing lectures at a hospital in Stamboul told me that
her companions, most of whom were of the humbler classes, went to the
hospital as they would to the public bath, with food for the day tied up
in a painted handkerchief. There they squatted on the floor and smoked as
they sewed, resenting it a little when a German nurse in charge suggested
more stitches and fewer cigarettes.
It was also a new thing for men to volunteer for hospital work, as a
good many did under the auspices of the Red Crescent. They had charming
manners, as Turks usually do; but they proved less efficient than the
women, for the reason that the Turk of any breeding, and particularly
the Constantinople Turk, has no tradition of working with his hands. It
is not a question of snobbishness. He is in many ways more democratic
than we. He treats servants on a greater equality, and the humble rise in
the world even more easily than with us. But it is not the thing for him
to use his hands except in sport and in war. He is far too dignified a
being to carry a tray, for instance, in the presence of women or other
inferiors. Add to this his natural disinclination to do anything he can
get any one else to do, and you conceive the difficulties which might
surround the attendance of such a helper.
Difficulties of another kind were sometimes experienced when Red Cross
and Red Crescent doctors were thrown together. Medicine is a science
to which the Turks rather lean, I believe, and there are excellent
physicians and surgeons among them. But the excellent man, in science at
any rate, is hardly appreciated in Constantinople as yet. The persuasive
man has the lead of him. A foreign doctor described in my hearing the
“eminent superficiality” of some of his Turkish colleagues, who had the
graces and elegancies of diplomats and spoke French perfectly but who
seemed to lack the plain, unvarnished, every-day essentials of surgery.
And some sensitiveness or petty jealousy in them seemed to make them
wish, although there was work enough for everybody, to make themselves
felt wherever their foreign colleagues were at work. One of them was
supposed to supervise the operations of my informant. The Turk was very
agreeable, and interfered as little as possible, but reserved the right
of prescribing whatever medicine might be required by the soldiers. This
he did with great zeal, paying small heed to his European colleague’s
opinion of a case. But to ascertain that the patient took the medicine
prescribed he considered no part of his duty. Whole boxes of pills and
powders were regularly found under the soldiers’ pillows, where they
poked them as soon as the doctor turned his back.
The barracks and guard-houses allotted to some of the missions were
Augean stables which required Herculean efforts to clean out. It was the
more curiously characteristic because even the lower-class Turk is always
cleanly. His ritual ablutions make him more agreeable at close quarters
than Europeans of the same degree. I have one infallible way of picking
out the Christian soldiers in a Turkish regiment: by their nails. The
Turk’s are sure to be clean. And in his house he has certain delicacies
undreamt by us. He will not wear his street shoes indoors. He will not
eat without washing his hands before and after the meal. He considers it
unclean—as, after all, it is—to wash his hands or his body in standing
water. Yet vermin he regards as a necessary evil, while corporate
cleanliness, like anything else requiring organisation and perseverance,
seems as yet to be entirely beyond him.
I heard of a case in point from one of the great barracks in which two
thousand invalids were looked after by different missions. The men were
plentifully supplied with everything they required, but after the war
had been going on two months or so the supply of linen began to fall
amazingly low. The huge establishment was in charge of an amiable old
pasha without whom nothing could be done, but who was, of course, much
too grand a person to do anything himself. He asked the Red Cross to
furnish a new supply of linen. The Red Cross took the liberty of asking
him in return if his old linen had been washed. He replied emphatically
that there could be no doubt of it: the barracks contained a perfect
modern laundry. Nevertheless, no clean linen was forthcoming. One of
the foreign doctors, therefore, began to explore. He finally discovered
the perfect modern laundry, stuffed to the ceiling with an incalculable
accumulation of dirty linen, not one piece of which had ever been washed.
But the amiable pasha cried “Impossible!” when he was told of these
facts. And he either did not know them or refused to take official
cognisance of them until two ambassadresses, whom he could not refuse,
led him, one by either hand, and made him stick his exalted nose into the
perfect modern laundry. Shall I add that that laundry, neither so modern
nor so perfect as the pasha affirmed, was finally taken in hand and run
as long as the Red Cross had need of it by the doctor who discovered it?
And shall I further be so indiscreet as to add that his name was Major
Clyde S. Ford, U. S. A.?
Of the Turk as patient I heard nothing but praise. And, after all, there
were many more of him. I take the more pleasure in saying it because I
have hinted that in other aspects of the war the Turk did not always
strike a foreign critic as perfect. I had it again and again, from one
source after another, that as patients the Turks were perfect—docile
and uncomplaining, in many ways like great children, but touchingly
grateful. It became quite the thing for one of them who could write to
send a letter to the Turkish papers in the name of his ward, expressing
thanks to the doctors and nurses. And I wish I had space to quote some
of those letters, so charmingly were they worded, with such a Lincolnian
simplicity. It must have been a new and strange thing for most of the
men to have women not of their families caring for them. They took a
natural interest in their nurses, expressing a particular curiosity with
regard to their _état civil_ and wishing them young, rich, and handsome
husbands when they did not happen to be already provided with such. But I
heard of no case of rudeness that could not be explained by the patient’s
condition. On the contrary, an English nurse told me that she found an
innate dignity and refinement about the men which she would never expect
from the same class of patients in her own country. They often had a
child’s lack of realisation why one should be allowed what another was
not. They smoked much more than children should, counting more on their
cigarettes than on their food. They were also naturally inclined to find
foreign cooking more medicinal than palatable. But they were rarely
disobedient save when spirits or opiates were prescribed them. Those
they often steadfastly refused to take. Chloroform, too, they sometimes
objected to, as infringing the commands of the Prophet with regard to
intoxicants. Perhaps they were a little afraid of it, suspecting in their
peasant’s ignorance some foreign trick. I even heard of a Turkish doctor
who asked a foreign surgeon to perform an operation for him, but who
refused to allow an anaesthetic to be administered.
[Illustration: Convalescents]
I am not fond of going to stare at sick people, but I happened for one
reason or another to visit several hospitals and I brought away my
own very distinct if very hasty impressions. I remember most vividly
a hospital installed in a building which in times of peace is an
art school. Opposite the door of one ward, by an irony of which the
soldiers in the beds could scarcely be aware, stood a Winged Victory of
Samothrace. Samothrace itself had a few days before been taken by the
Greeks. The Victory was veiled—partly I suppose to keep her clean, and
partly out of deference to Mohammedan susceptibilities. But there she
stood, muffled and mutilated, above the beds of thirty or forty broken
men of Asia. I shall always remember the look in their eyes, mute and
humble and grateful and uncomprehending, as we passed from bed to bed,
giving them sweets and cigarettes. The heads that showed above the thick
coloured quilts were dressed in white skull-caps, for an Oriental cannot
live without something on his hair. It is a point both of etiquette and
of religion. Those who were farther on the way to recovery prowled
mildly about in baggy white pyjamas and quilted coats of more colour
than length. Their wearers had an admirable indifference as to who saw
them. A great many had a left hand tied up in a sling—a hand, I suppose,
that some Bulgarian had seen sticking a gun-barrel out of a trench in
Thrace. Some limped painfully or went on crutches. But it was not always
because of a bullet. There were a vast number of cases of gangrene,
simply from ill-fitting shoes or from puttees too tightly bound which
hands were too cold or too weak to undo. There were fewer resulting
amputations than would have been the case in other countries. Many of
the soldiers refused absolutely to have their legs cut off. Life would
be of no further use to them, they said. I heard of one who would not
go maimed into the presence of Allah. He preferred to go the sooner as
he was. And he did, without a word, without a groan, waiting silently
till the poison reached his heart. A European nurse told me that in
all her long experience she had never seen men die like these ignorant
Turkish peasants—so bravely, so simply, so quietly. They really believe,
I suppose. In any case, they are of Islam, resigned to the will of God.
After death they must lie in a place with no door or window open, for
as short a time as possible. A priest performs for them the last ritual
ablution, and then they are hurried silently away to a shallow grave.
IV.—RECONNOITRING BY TAXI
The war correspondent had arrived from Pekin too late to go to the
front. The front, however, seemed to be making its way as fast as it
could to the war correspondent. It was near enough, at any rate, to make
him feel a certain independence of permits, passes, and other pieces of
paper of which the War Office was exceeding chary. What could have made
the situation more patent than that a war correspondent should engage
a taxicab, a common Pera taxi, striped red and black and presumably
not infallible as to its mechanism, and should invite an amateur and a
British resident to help him ascertain whether the Chatalja lines were as
unapproachable as they were reported?
[Illustration: Stuck in the mud]
Our first plan was to strike northwest in the hope of coming out
somewhere between Hadem-kyöi, the headquarters of Nazîm Pasha, and the
forest region of Derkos, which local rumour had lately peopled with
Bulgarians. I may as well say first as last that this plan did not
succeed. Before we were half-way to the lines our road petered out into
a succession of quagmires and parallel ruts with heather growing so
high between them that it threatened to scrape off the under works of
the car. Into one of the quagmires we sank so deeply that only a pair
of hairy black buffalo could haul us out. For an irresponsible amateur,
however, the attempt had its impressions. The most abiding one was
that of the Constantinople _campagna_. It undulated to the horizon so
desolate in its autumn colour, so bare save for a few tawny clumps of
wood, so empty and wild, that no one would suspect the vicinity of a
great capital. We met almost no one. A few Greek peasants came or went
to market, apparently oblivious to wars or rumours of them. Not so a
convoy of Turkish refugees, toiling up a hill with all they had in the
world piled under matting on ox-carts with huge ungainly wheels. We
ran through one village inhabited by Greeks—Pyrgos is its name, and a
famous _panayíri_ is held there in August—who gave us anew a sense of
the strange persistence of their type through so many vicissitudes.
Among them were girls or women with big double-armed amphoræ on their
shoulders that might have come out of a museum. As we rammed the furze
a mile or two beyond we saw the minaret of a Turkish village, and heard
a _müezin_ call to noonday prayer. We heard a shot, too, crack suddenly
out of the stillness. It had to do duty with us for an adventure—unless
I mention a couple of deserters we met, one of whom drew his bayonet as
we bore down upon him. But I must not forget the fine Byzantine aqueduct
under which we stopped to lunch. As we stood admiring the two tiers of
arches marching magnificently across the ravine we heard a sound of bells
afar. The sound came nearer and nearer, until a string of camels wound
into sight. They took the car as unconcernedly as the car took them,
disappearing one by one through the tall gateway that Andronicus Comnenus
built across that wild valley.
[Illustration: The aqueduct of Andronicus I]
Our second attempt was more successful. It led us through Stamboul and
the cemetery cypresses outside the walls, into a _campagna_ flatter and
more treeless than the one we had seen in the morning, but not so void
of humanity. In the neighbourhood of the city the refugees made the
dominant note, with their clumsy carts and their obstinate cattle and
their veiled women and their own coats of many colours. Other refugees
were camped on the bare downs. The children would run toward us when
they caught sight of the car, laughing and shouting. For them war was a
picnic. Farther out the soldiers were more numerous than the refugees.
Every time we met one, at first, we expected to be stopped. Some of
them were driving cattle and horses into the city. Others were going
out with carts of supplies. Once we overtook a dark mass of _redifs_
making in loose order for the isolated barracks of Daoud Pasha—where the
Janissaries used to muster for a European campaign. We knew them by their
blue uniforms, piped with red, of Abd ül Hamid’s time. They looked mildly
at us as we charged them, and mildly made room. So did the officer who
rode at their head. On the ascent beyond him we saw two men in khaki
waiting for us. We concluded that our reconnaissance was at an end. But
we presently perceived that the men in khaki wore red crescents on their
sleeves and carried no rifles. They merely wanted to see us pass. It
was the same at a gendarmerie station a little farther on, and at the
aerodrome behind San Stefano.
[Illustration: Fleeing from the enemy
Photographed by Frederick Moore]
We found the road unexpectedly good, after the heather and quagmires of
the morning. There were bad bits in it, but they only gave us occasion to
bless the French syndicate that had had time to make the good ones before
the war broke out. After dipping through one wide hollow we came in sight
of the Marmora. A battle-ship making for the city drew a long smudge of
smoke across the vaporous blue—the German _Goeben_, we afterward learned
she was. On the low shore the Russian war monument of 1878 lifted its
syringe dome. Through all the region behind it a faint odour of carbolic
hung in the air, a reminder of the place of horror that San Stefano had
become since cholera broke out. We passed a few dead cattle. A huge dog
was tearing at one carcass, a creature that twilight would have made a
hyena. Some new-made graves, too, had their own story to tell.
Suddenly, on the brow of a hill, we came upon the sunset picture of
Küchük Chekmejeh. Below us, at the left, was a bay into which the sun was
dropping. To the right stretched a shining lake. And between them ran a
long bridge with one fantastically high and rounded arch that looked at
its own image in the painted water. I would like to believe that that
arch is the one mentioned in the epitaph of the architect Sinan and
romantically likened to the Milky Way; but I believe the true arch of
the Milky Way is at Büyük Chekmejeh. The village of Küchük Chekmejeh—the
Little Drawbridge—made a huddle of red-brown roofs at the right end of
the bridge. As we ran down to it we encountered more soldiers guarding
a railway line. In front of us a cart crossed the track with an empty
stretcher. Near it two men were digging or filling a grave. The village
itself was full of soldiers, who also guarded the bridge. We skimmed
across it, no one saying a word to us, and up into another high bare
rolling country bordered by the sea.
We decided to spend the night in Büyük Chekmejeh—the Great
Drawbridge—which is the Marmora end of the Chatalja lines, and in front
of which the Bulgarians were supposed to be massing for a battle that
might be the end of all things. Soldiers grew thicker as we ran on.
Presently we found ourselves in the midst of a camp. Fires were burning
between the tents and soldiers went to and fro carrying food. Then we
looked down on another picture, in composition very much like the first.
The bay and the lake were bigger, however, and we saw no arch of the
Milky Way as the bridge went lengthwise below us. The centre of interest
this time was a man-of-war and half a dozen torpedo-boats. They, and the
twilight in which we saw them, and the high black shores beyond, had an
unexpectedly sinister air. Nevertheless, we began slowly picking our way
down toward an invisible village. Soldiers were all about us. A line of
them were carrying big round platters. Another line of them sat beside
the road, in what I ingenuously took to be an unfinished gutter until
the war correspondent called it a trench. We began to ask ourselves
questions. We also asked them of a soldier, inquiring if we should find
room in the village to spend the night. He assured us that we would
find plenty of room: everybody had gone away. Oh! And where were the
Bulgarians? He pointed over to the black line of hills on the other side
of the bay.
We decided that we would not, after all, spend the night in Büyük
Chekmejeh! Our taxi, that had behaved irreproachably all day, chose
that inauspicious moment to balk. While the chauffeur was tinkering
with it an officer rode up and recommended him to be off as quickly as
possible. That officer was the first member of his army who had addressed
a question or a remonstrance to us all day. The chauffeur stated our
plight. “Never mind,” said the officer, as if a car were a mule that only
had to be beaten a little harder to make it move, “you must go back.
And you must be quick, for after six o’clock no one will be allowed on
the roads.” It was then half past five. And we realised with extreme
vividness that we were between the lines of the two armies, and that our
lamps would make an excellent mark for some Bulgarian artilleryman if he
took it into his head to begin the battle of Chatalja. As a matter of
fact, he obligingly waited till the next night. In the meantime the car
made up its mind to go on. We sputtered slowly up the long hill, passing
lighted tents that looked cosy enough to an amateur bound for the rear.
But once in open country a tire gave out and we lost our half-hour of
grace.
As we coasted down the hill to the bridge which should have been of the
Milky Way our lamps illuminated a hooded giant in front of us. He barred
the road with his bayonet, saying pleasantly to the chauffeur:
“It is forbidden, my child.”
“What shall we do?” asked the chauffeur.
“In the name of God, I know not,” replied he of the hood. “But the bridge
is forbidden.”
Personally, I did not much care. A southerly air warmed the November
night, a half-moon lighted it, and while there was not too much room in
the taxi for three people to sleep, still the thing could be done. The
British resident, however, who had grey hairs and a family, asked to
be taken to the officer in command. The gentleman in the hood did not
object. The British resident was accordingly escorted across the bridge
by another gentleman in a hood, who mysteriously materialised out of the
moonlight, while we waited until our companion came back with his story.
The point of it was that the officer in command happened to know the
name and the face of the British resident, and agreed with him that, if
stopping was to be done, it should have been done earlier in the day. The
colonel, therefore, let us through his lines. But he gave strict orders
that no one, thereafter, was to cross the bridge of Küchük Chekmejeh
without a pass from the War Office.
I forbear to dwell too long upon the rest of our return. We fell once
more into the hands of sentries, who were somehow softened by the
eloquence of the chauffeur. We broke down again and hung so long on the
side of a hill that we made up our minds to spend the night there. We
fell foul of bits of road that made us think of a choppy sea; and, in
turning off a temporary bridge into a temporary road, we stuck for a
moment with one wheel spinning over eternity. We passed many military
convoys, going both ways. Our lamps would flare for a moment on a grey
hood, on a high pack-saddle, on a cart piled with boxes or sacks, and
then the road would be ours again. Camp-fires flickered vaguely over
the dark downs. Sometimes we would overtake a refugee cart, the head of
the house leading the startled bullocks, the women and children walking
behind. As we began to climb out of the last dip toward the cypresses
and the city wall the road became one confusion of creaking wheels, of
tossing horns, of figured turbans, of women clutching a black domino
about their faces with one hand and with the other a tired child. Under
the sombre trees fires burned murkily, lighting up strange groups of
peasants and gravestones. And all the air was aromatic with burning
cypress wood.
At the Top Kapou Gate, where Mehmed II made his triumphal entry in 1453,
the press was so thick that we despaired of getting through. “It is no
use,” said a peasant when we asked him to pull his cart to one side.
“They are letting no one in.” It was true. The outbreak of cholera had
made precautions necessary. A line of grey hoods stood outside the gate
and kept back the carts that streamed townward more thickly than ever on
the eve of Chatalja. But our infidel car was allowed to enter the city of
the Caliph, although his true children, fleeing from an unknown terror,
waited outside among the graves. Stamboul was almost deserted as we sped
through the long silent streets, save for an occasional patrol or a
watchman beating out the hour on the pavement with his club. Twice we met
companies of firemen, pattering half naked after a white linen lantern,
with their little hand-pumps on their shoulders. Then came the parallel
lights of the new bridge, and dark Galata, and Pera that looked never so
urban or so cheery after those desolate downs.
On the comfortable leather cushions of the club—somehow they made me
think of the refugees among the cypresses—we told the story of our day.
“So,” said another war correspondent, who had been lucky enough to see
the battle of Lüleh Bourgass through the eyes of a lost dragoman, “you
saw nothing at all?”
“No,” I said. “Nothing at all.”
V.—SAN STEFANO
It is strange how San Stefano, in spite of herself, like some light
little person involuntarily caught into a tragedy, seems fated to be
historic. San Stefano is a suburb on the flat northwestern shore of the
Marmora that tries perseveringly to be European and gay. San Stefano
has straight streets. San Stefano has not very serious-looking houses
standing in not very interesting-looking gardens. San Stefano has a
yacht-club whose members, possessing no yachts, spend their time dancing
and playing bridge. And a company recently bought land and planted
groves on the edge of San Stefano with the idea of making a little Monte
Carlo in the Marmora. Whether San Stefano was trying to be worldly and
light-minded as long ago as 1203, when Enrico Dandolo stopped there with
the men of the fourth crusade, I cannot say—nor does Villehardouin.
Another far-come army to stop there was that of the Russians, in 1878,
who left not much light-heartedness in San Stefano. In 1909 the events
which preceded the fall of Abd ül Hamid turned the yacht-club for a
moment into the parliament of the empire, and the town into an armed
camp. Turned into an armed camp again at the outbreak of the Balkan War,
San Stefano soon became a camp of a more dreadful kind.
I did not see San Stefano, myself, at the moment of its greatest horror.
When I did go, one cold grey November morning, it was rather unwillingly,
feeling myself a little heroic, at all events wanting not to seem too
unheroic in the eyes of the war correspondent and the other friend he
invited to go. I did not know then, in my ignorance, that cholera can be
caught only through the alimentary canal. And my imagination was still
full of the grisly stories the war correspondent had brought back from
his first visit. There was nothing too grisly to be seen, however, as we
landed at the pier. Chiefly to be seen were soldiers, coated and hooded
in grey, as usual, who were transferring supplies of different kinds
from small ships to the backs of small pack-animals. The correspondent
accordingly took out his camera; but he pretended to focus it on us,
knowing the susceptibility of Turks in the matter of photography—a
susceptibility that had been aggravated by the war. Seeing that the
men were interested rather than displeased at his operations, he went
about posing a group of them. Unfortunately an enterprising young police
sergeant appeared at that moment. He took the trouble to explain to us
at length that to photograph soldiers like that, at the pier, with hay on
their clothes and their caps askew, was forbidden. People would say, when
we showed the prints in our country, “Ha! That is a Turkish soldier!” and
get a wrong impression of him. The impression I got was of his size and
good looks together with a mildness amounting to languor. I do not know
whether those men at the pier had been through the two great battles,
or whether the pest-house air of the place depressed them. A Greek who
witnessed our discomfiture came up and told us of a good picture we could
take, unmolested by the police, a little way out of the village, where
a soldier sat dead beside the railway track with a loaf of bread in his
hands. We thanked the Greek but thought we would not trouble him to show
us his interesting subject.
As we went on into the village we found it almost deserted except by
soldiers. Every resident who could do so had run away. A few Greek
and Jewish peddlers hawked small wares about. A man was scattering
disinfecting powder in the street, which the wind carried in gusts into
our faces. Patrols strolled up and down, sentinels stood at doors, other
soldiers, more broken than any I had yet seen, shuffled aimlessly past.
We followed a street that led toward the railway. On the sea side of
the line we came out into an open space enclosed between houses and the
high embankment. The grass that tried to grow in this space was strewn
with disinfecting powder, lemon peel, odds and ends of clothing—a boot,
a muddy fez, a torn girdle. That was what was left of the soldiers who
strewed the ground when the correspondent was there before. There were
also one or two tents. Through the open flap of the nearest one we saw a
soldier lying on his face, ominously still.
We followed our road through the railway embankment. Sentries were
posted on either side, but they made no objection to our passing. On
the farther slope of the bank men were burning underbrush. A few days
before their fellows, sent back from the front, had been dying there of
cholera. A little beyond we came to a large Turkish cholera camp. By
this time all the soldiers seemed to be under cover. We passed tents
that were crowded with them, some lying down, others sitting with their
heads in their hands. A few roamed aimlessly in the open. The ground was
in an indescribable condition. No one was trying to make the men use the
latrines that had been constructed for them. I doubt if any one could
have done so. Some of the soldiers, certainly, were too weak to get so
far. After all they had gone through, and in the fellowship of a common
misery, they were dulled to the decencies which a Mohammedan is quicker
than another to observe.
Near the station some long wooden sheds were being run up, to make
shelter for the men in the tents and for those who were yet to come back
from Hadem-kyöi. We made haste to be by, out of the sickening odour and
the sense of a secret danger lurking in the air we breathed. We crossed
the track and went back into the village, passing always more soldiers.
Some were crouching or lying beside the road, one against the other, to
keep warm. I could never express the shrunken effect the big fellows made
inside their big overcoats, with dog-like eyes staring out of sallow
faces. Some of them were slowly eating bread, and no doubt taking in
infection with every mouthful. Venders of lemons and lemon-drops came and
went among them. Those they seemed to crave above everything. In front
of the railway station were men who had apparently just arrived from
Hadem-kyöi. They were being examined by army doctors. They submitted
like children while the doctors poked into their eyes, looked at their
tongues, and divided them into categories. In a leafless beer-garden
opposite the station tents were pitched, sometimes guarded by a cordon
of soldiers. But only once did a sentry challenge us or otherwise offer
objection to our going about.
We finally found ourselves at the west edge of the village, where a
street is bordered on one side by open fields. This was where until a
few days before hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men had lain, those
with cholera and those without, the dying among the dead. The ground
was strewn with such débris of them as we had seen under the railway
embankment, but more thickly. And, at a certain distance from the road,
was a débris more dreadful still. At first it looked like a great heap
of discarded clothing, piled there to be burned—until I saw two drawn-up
knees sticking out of the pile. Then I made out, here and there, a
clinched hand, a grey face. A little omnibus came back from somewhere in
the fields and men began loading the bodies into it. The omnibus was so
short that most of the legs stuck out of the door. Sometimes they had
stiffened in the contortion of some last agony. And half the legs were
bare. In their weakness the poor fellows had foregone the use of the
long girdle that holds together every man of the East, and as they were
pulled off the ground or hoisted into the omnibus their clothes fell from
them. We did not go to see where they were buried. There had been so many
of them that the soldiers dug trenches no deeper than they could help.
The consequence was that the dogs of the village pawed into many of the
graves.
There are times when a man is ashamed to be alive, and that time, for me,
was one of them. What had I done that I should be strolling about the
world with clothes on my back and money in my pocket and a smug feeling
inside of me being a little heroic, and what had those poor devils done
that they should be pitched half naked into a worn-out omnibus and
shovelled into trenches for dogs to gnaw at? They had left their homes in
order to save their country. Before they had had time to strike a blow
for it they had been beaten by privation and neglect. Starved, sick,
and leaderless, they had fallen back before an enemy better fed, better
drilled, better officered, fighting in a better cause. Attacked then, by
an enemy more insidious because invisible, they had been dumped down into
San Stefano and penned there like so many cattle. Some of them were too
weak to get out of the train themselves and were thrown out, many dying
where they fell. Others crawled into the village in search of food and
shelter. A few found tents to crowd into. The greater number lay where
they could through wet autumn days and nights, against houses, under
trees, side by side in fields, and so died. Out of some vague idea of
keeping the water uncontaminated, the sentries were ordered to keep the
poor fellows away from the public drinking fountains, and hundreds died
simply from thirst.
The commander of an Austrian man-of-war, hearing of this horrible state
of affairs, went to see San Stefano for himself. He made no attempt to
conceal his disgust and indignation. He told the authorities that if
they wished to save the last vestige of their country’s honour they
should within twenty-four hours put an end to the things he had seen. The
authorities did so: by shipping several hundred sick soldiers—prodding
them with bayonets when they were too weak to board the steamer—off
to Touzla, on the Asiatic side of the Marmora, where they would be
safely out of sight of prying foreigners. We were told several times,
both by residents of the village and by outsiders, that they were
actually prevented from doing anything to help, because, forsooth, the
sick men had betrayed and disgraced their country and only deserved
to die. I cannot believe that any such argument was responsibly put
forward unless by men who needed to cover up their own stupidity and
criminal incompetence. How could human beings be so inhuman? Were they
simply overwhelmed and half maddened by their defeat? And, with their
constitutional inability to cope with a crisis, with the lack among
them of any tradition of organised humanitarianism, were they paralysed
by the magnitude of the emergency? I am willing to believe that the
different value which the Oriental lays on human life entered into the
case. In that matter I am inclined to think that our own susceptibility
is exaggerated. But that does not explain why the Oriental is otherwise.
Part of it is, perhaps, a real difference in his nervous system. Another
part of it is no doubt related to that in him which has kept him behind
the West in all practical contrivances. Human life was not of much
account in Europe a few hundred years ago. And in the back of the Turk’s
brain there may be some proud Islamic view of battle and dying therein,
descended from the same remote Asiatic conception as the Japanese theory
of suicide. Certainly the Turk fears death less and bears it more
stoically than we. Does that give him the right to think less of the life
of his fellow beings?
The Austrian officer raised his voice, at least, for the soldiers
in San Stefano. The first to lift a hand was a Swiss lady of the
place. Her name has been pronounced so often that I shall not seem
yellow-journalistic if I mention it again. Almost every resident who
could possibly leave San Stefano had already done so. Fräulein Alt,
however, remained. She carried the soldiers the water from which the
sentries kept them. She also made soup in her own house and took it to
the weakest, comforting as best she could their dying moments. It was,
of course, very little that she could do among so many. But she was
the first who dared to do it. She was soon joined by another lady of
the place, Frau Schneider. And presently a few Europeans from the city
helped them make a beginning of relief-work on a larger scale. One of
the new recruits was a woman also, Miss Graham, of the Scotch mission
to the Jews. The others were Rev. Robert Frew, the Scotch clergyman of
Pera; Mr. Hoffman Philip, first secretary of the American embassy; and
two gentlemen who had come to Constantinople for the war, the English
writer Maurice Baring, and Major Ford, whom I have already mentioned,
of our own army medical staff. English and American friends and the
American Red Cross contributed help in other ways and obtained that of
the authorities. These half-dozen good Samaritans left their own affairs
and did what they could to make a hospital out of a Greek school into
which sick soldiers had been turned. It was a heroic thing to do, for at
that time no one knew that the men were chiefly suffering from dysentery
brought on by privation, and Red Cross missions were hesitating to go.
Moreover the sanitary conditions of the school were appalling. Six
hundred men were lying there on the filthy and infected floor, as well
as in a shed which was the rainy-day playground of the school, and in a
few tents in the yard. Some of the soldiers had been dead two or three
days. Many of them were dying. None of them had had any food besides the
intermittent bread of the municipality, or any care save such as Fräulein
Alt had been able to give them.
[Illustration: Cholera
Photograph by Frederick Moore]
I felt not even a little heroic by the time I went into the yard of
this school, next the field where the heap of dead soldiers lay, and
saw these voluntary exiles coming and going in their oilskins. I felt
rather how rarely, in our padded modern world, is it given a man to come
down to the primal facts of life. This reflection, I think, came to me
from the smart tan gloves which one of the Samaritans wore, and which,
associating them as I could with embassies and I know not what of the
gaieties of life, looked so honourably incongruous in that dreadful work.
The correspondent, of course, was under orders to take photographs; but
his camera looked incongruous in another way in the face of realities
so horrible—impertinent, I might say, if I did not happen to like the
correspondent. A soldier lurched out of the school with the gait and in
the necessity characteristic of his disease. He looked about, half dazed,
and established himself at the foot of a tree, his hands clasped in
front of his knees, his head sunk forward on his breast. Other soldiers
came and went in the yard, some in their worn khaki, some in their big
grey coats and hoods. One began to rummage in the circle of débris which
marked the place of a recent tent. He picked up a purse—one of the
knitted bags which the people of Turkey use—unwound the long string,
looked inside, turned the purse inside out, and put it into his pocket.
An older man came up to one of my companions. “My hands are cold,” he
said, “and I can’t feel anything with them. What shall I do?” We also
wore hats and spoke strange tongues, like the miracle-workers within: the
poor fellow thought we could perform a miracle for him. As we did not he
started to go into the street, but the sentry at the gate stopped him.
Two orderlies came out of the school carrying a stretcher. A dead man lay
on it, under a blanket. The wasted body raised hardly more of the blanket
than that of a child.
When we went away the sick soldier was still crouching at the foot of
his tree, his hands clasped about his knees and his head sunken on his
breast.
VI.—THE PONTIFF OF THE EAST
The incidents of the Balkan War monopolised so much interest that another
incident of those days in Constantinople attracted less attention. It
is, perhaps, natural that those not on the ground should have small
understanding of the part the Ecumenical Patriarchate has played in the
politics of Turkey. In the Levant, however, the death of His All-Holiness
Joachim III, Patriarch of Constantinople and ranking prelate of the Greek
Orthodox Church, was an event no less important than in the West would
be the death of the Pope. And for those of his spiritual flock, as for
many outside it, the disappearance, at such a moment, of that remarkable
personality, together with the circumstances of his funeral, were a part
of the larger aspects of the war.
The organisation of the Eastern church is far less centralised than that
of the Western, and the political relations of the countries in which it
holds sway have tended to keep it so. There are three other Patriarchs
within the Turkish empire—in Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—while
the churches of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Roumania, Russia, and
Servia, as well as of the Orthodox populations of Austria-Hungary, are
independent of Constantinople. One of these churches, the Bulgarian,
has been excommunicated by the Patriarchate. Over two others only,
those of Greece and Servia, does the Phanar maintain so much authority
as to provide them with the oils for the sacrament of the Holy Chrism.
But the Patriarch of Constantinople enjoys dignities accorded to no
other primate of his faith, and as spiritual chief of the Greeks of
Turkey he exercises much of the temporal power claimed by the Pope. The
autocephalous sister churches, moreover, acknowledge his spiritual
supremacy, and have usually been careful to avoid the name of patriarch
in their own hierarchies. And to his throne attaches all the prestige of
its ancient history. That history, reaching back without a break to the
time of Constantine, has not yet found its Von Ranke. The schism of East
and West and the political as well as the religious relation of Western
Christianity to Rome has caused Constantinople to be neglected by Western
scholars. But if the Patriarchate can boast no such brilliant period as
that of the papacy during the Renaissance, its closer association with
the establishment and early development of the church, and with the lands
where Christianity originated, gives it an interest which the papacy can
never claim.
[Illustration: Joachim III, Patriarch of Constantinople
Photograph by Andriomenos, Constantinople]
When the Roman Empire came to an end and every Greek Orthodox country
except Russia was overrun by the Turks, the Patriarchate did not cease to
play a great rôle. As a matter of fact, it began to play a greater one
than for many centuries before. It would be a study worth undertaking
to determine the part the Patriarchs have acted in the gradual release
from Islam of Orthodox Christendom. The weapon for this release was
given them by the Conqueror himself. On the 1st of June, 1453, three
days after Mehmed II stormed the city, he ordered the clergy left
in Constantinople to elect a successor to the late Patriarch and to
consecrate him according to the historic procedure. The candidate chosen
was the learned monk Gennadius, otherwise known as George Scholarius,
of the monastery of the Pantocrator. This was where the Venetians had
their headquarters during the Latin occupation, and the palace of the
Balio which the Genoese pulled down in 1261 seems to have been a part
of the monastery. Its great triple church, now known as Zeïrek Kil’seh
Jami, was where the Venetians put the icon of the Shower of the Way when
they stole it from St. Sophia. Other relics of the church are now in the
treasury of St. Mark’s. I do not know whether the portrait of Gennadius
is to be seen in the Riccardi Chapel at Florence, where Benozzo Gozzoli
painted his delightful fresco of the Three Kings and put so many faces
of noted men of his time. One of the Three Kings is none other than
John VII Palæologus, whom Gennadius accompanied in 1438 to the Council
of Ferrara in an attempt to bring about the reunion of the churches.
In 1452, however, Gennadius defeated the last effort to reconcile the
two rites, and he became the first Patriarch under the régime which, as
the catchword of the day had it, preferred the turban of the Turk to
the tiara of the Pope. In the ceremony of his investiture the Sultan
played the part formerly enacted by the Greek emperor, with the sole
exception of receiving the communion from the hands of the new pontiff.
The Conqueror then invited Gennadius to a private audience, at which he
received him with every distinction. When the Patriarch took leave the
young Sultan presented him with a jewelled staff of office, and said:
“Be Patriarch, and may Heaven guide you. Do not hesitate to rely on my
friendship. Enjoy all the rights and privileges which your predecessors
have enjoyed.” He then accompanied his guest to the outer gate, ordering
the highest dignitaries of his own suite to accompany His All-Holiness
to the Patriarchate. Which was done, the Patriarch riding one of the
Sultan’s finest horses. The Conqueror afterward confirmed his words in
writing, making inviolable the person of the Patriarch, and confirming
the Greeks in the possession of their churches and their cult. Thus the
Greek Patriarch is one of the greater dignitaries of the Ottoman Empire.
He ranks immediately after the members of the cabinet, taking precedence
of every Mohammedan cleric except a Sheï’h ül Islam in office.
[Illustration: The south pulpit of the Pantocrator]
We have already seen how the Sultan made similar concessions in favour
of the Latins of Galata. These two acts, purely voluntary, created the
precedent for the status of non-Moslems in the Ottoman Empire. This
status is one of the most peculiar features of Turkish polity. The
Armenians, the Greeks, the Jews, the Levantine Catholics, and various
other fractions of races and religions form each what is called in
Turkish a _millet_—a nation. Each has its own spiritual head, who also
exercises jurisdiction in all temporal matters of his flock that concern
marriage, the family, and education. Similarly, those who are not Ottoman
subjects enjoy rights and privileges which no Western country would
tolerate for one moment. This is in virtue of the capitulations granted
by early sultans, partly out of magnanimity, partly out of disdain.
The Conqueror has been praised for his generosity and statesmanship
in granting these concessions. From the Christian point of view he
may deserve praise. But if I were a Turk I would be more inclined to
denounce his youth and lack of foresight for creating conditions that
entailed the ruin of the empire. He did not, it is true, altogether
create those conditions. The Byzantine emperors, who ruled an empire more
diverse than his own, set the example which Mehmed II followed. But if
he had shown less mercy as a conqueror or less deference as a newcomer
among old institutions, if he had cleared the Christians out or forced
them to accept all the consequences of the conquest, he would have spared
his successors many a painful problem. He might even have assimilated a
hopelessly heterogeneous population, and his flag might fly to-day on the
shore of the Adriatic.
[Illustration: Portrait of John VII Palæologus as one of the Three Wise
Men, by Benozzo Gozzoli. Riccardi Chapel, Florence
Photograph by Alinari brothers, Florence]
Be that as it may, the Turks lived to regret the policy of the Conqueror.
The whole history of the Patriarchate during the Turkish period has been
one of constant encroachment on its privileges and constant attempts
to preserve them. During this long struggle not even the person of the
Patriarch has always been safe. At least four have met violent deaths at
the hands of the Turks. The last was Gregory V, who, in revenge for the
part played by the Phanariotes in the Greek revolution, was hanged on
Easter morning of 1822 in the gateway of his own palace. This gate, at
the top of a re-entering flight of steps, has never since been opened.
The Conqueror himself, having already seized the glorious cathedral of
Eastern Christianity, so far went back on his word as to take possession
of the Church of the Holy Apostles. This structure, built by Constantine
and magnified by Justinian, had been an imperial Pantheon. After the loss
of St. Sophia it became the seat of the Patriarchate. It is true that the
Latins had sacked it in 1204, and that Gennadius had voluntarily moved
his throne to the church of the All-blessed Virgin. Nevertheless, it was
not precisely in accord with the Conqueror’s promises when he razed to
the ground the magnificent church that had been the model for St. Mark’s
of Venice, and built on its site the first of the mosques bearing a
sultan’s name. This example was so faithfully followed by his successors,
that of the twenty-five or thirty Byzantine churches still in existence
only one is now in Greek hands. It is only fair to add, however, that
a few modern churches in Stamboul occupy ancient sites, and that the
decrease of the Greek population caused others to be abandoned by their
original worshippers.
The one exception I have noted is a small church in the Phanar quarter
called St. Mary the Mongolian. This curious name was that of the founder,
a natural daughter of Michael Palæologus. After driving out the Latins
in 1261 the emperor thought to consolidate his position by offering the
hand of the Princess Mary to Holagou, that redoubtable descendant of
Tamerlane who destroyed the caliphate of Bagdad. Holagou died, however,
while his bride was on her way to him. But the Palæologina continued her
journey and married the son of her elderly fiancé. After he in turn had
gone the way of his father, the princess returned to Constantinople and
built her church and the monastery of which it formed a part. The Lady of
the Mongols, as the Greeks called her, was the first member of her house
whom the founder of the house of Osman had seen, and she treated him
so contemptuously that he paid her back by capturing the city of Nicæa
as a base for his future operations against the empire of her fathers.
When, less than two hundred years later, the descendant of Osman took
the capital of the Palæologi and built there his great mosque, he made a
present of St. Mary the Mongolian to his Greek architect. So it is that
the Greeks have always been able to retain possession of the church.
Joachim III, two hundred and fifty-fourth in the long line of Ecumenical
Patriarchs of Constantinople, played a memorable part in the struggle
between the two powers. Like his cousin of the Vatican, he was of humble
family. His father was a fisherman in the village of Boyaji-kyöi, on
the Bosphorus. The boy was given to the church when he was no more than
twelve years old, going in 1846 with his village priest to a monastery
of Mount Athos. After the death of his priest, three years later, he
found a more powerful protector in the person of the Metropolitan of
Cyzicus, who sent him to Bucharest in charge of the Metropolitan of that
city. For in those days Bucharest was merely the capital of Wallachia,
a Turkish province governed by Phanariote Greeks. In Bucharest the
young ecclesiastic definitely took orders and was ordained as a deacon
at the age of eighteen. Before his eventual return to Constantinople
he found occasion to see something more of the world, spending not
less than four years in Vienna. These _wanderjahren_ made up to him in
considerable measure his lack of any systematic education. In 1860 his
protector became Patriarch, and the young priest was called to make
part of his court. Three years later the Patriarch fell from power. But
in 1864 Joachim was elected Metropolitan of Varna. The fisherman’s son
had already become, that is, and without the favour of his protector,
a prince of the church; for the Metropolitans of the Patriarchate form
a body corresponding to the College of Cardinals. Eight years later
he became a member of the Holy Synod, which is the executive council
of the Patriarchate, composed of twelve Metropolitans. In 1874 he was
transferred to the important see of Salonica. It is rather curious
that the three cities of his longest ecclesiastical residence outside
of Constantinople should have passed out of Turkish hands during his
lifetime, and in the order of his residence in them. He remained but four
years in Salonica. In 1878, at the age of forty-four, he was elected to
the throne of St. John Chrysostom.
Sultan Abd ül Hamid II had but recently come to the throne of Osman. As
he took account of his empire, shaken by a disastrous war, and gathered
the reins of government into his own hands, he discovered that the
Orthodox Church had a stanch defender at its head. In 1884, however,
Joachim III was compelled to retire. The Sultan, who was no less stanch
a defender of the rights of his people as he saw them, had decreed that
in all questions at law the Greek priests should no longer be subject to
the Patriarchate, but should be tried like Turkish priests by the Moslem
religious courts. This the Patriarch stoutly objected to; but he finally
expressed his willingness to agree that in criminal cases his priests
should be given up to the Turkish courts. The concession was to him a
verbal one only, since it is not often that a priest becomes entangled in
criminal procedure. As it involved the whole question of the rights of
the Patriarchate, however, the Holy Synod refused to countenance even a
verbal concession, and Joachim resigned. He then spent sixteen years in
“repose,” visiting the different Patriarchates of the empire and finally
establishing himself on Mount Athos. He occupied there for several years
the picturesque residence of Milopotamo, a dependency of the monastery
of the Great Lavra. But in 1901 he was elected a second time to the
Patriarchal throne, which he thereafter occupied to the day of his death.
His second reign of eleven years coincided with one of the most crucial
periods in Turkish history. The early days of it were marred by such
bitterness between Greeks and Bulgarians in Macedonia that Joachim III
must have been surprised himself, during the last days of his life,
to see soldiers of the two races fighting together against a common
enemy. He had grown up in a church that acknowledged no rival and that
had formed the habit of detecting and opposing encroachments on its
privileges. Not only did he live, however, to see the boundaries of the
Patriarchate draw nearer and nearer Constantinople, but to hear members
of its diminished flock request the right to use languages other than the
Greek of the Gospels, to be served by clergy from among themselves. He
had been a bishop in Bulgaria when the Turks, past masters in the art of
dividing to rule, listened to the after all not unreasonable plea of the
Bulgars to control their own religious affairs and still further narrowed
the powers of the Patriarchate by creating a new Bulgarian _millet_ with
a primate of its own called the Exarch. A hundred years previously,
as a matter of fact, the Bulgarians had had a Patriarch of their own
at Ochrida, in Macedonia. But this brought down, in 1870, the ban of
excommunication. There followed a merciless feud between the two churches
and their followers which reached its height during the second reign of
Joachim III. And the _odium theologicum_ was imbittered by an old racial
jealousy reaching far back into Byzantine history; for each church was
the headquarters in Turkey of a nationalist propaganda in favour of
brothers across the border.
In the meantime the revolution of 1908 created new difficulties for the
Patriarchate. The Young Turks avowed more openly than the old Turks
had done their desire to be rid of capitulations, conventions, special
privileges, and all the old tissue of precedent that made the empire a
mass of _imperia in imperio_. Joachim III, however, had profited by
the lesson of his first reign. During his retirement the Patriarchate,
refusing to yield to Abd ül Hamid, had answered him by closing the
churches. To us this seems a childish enough protest, but it is a measure
of rigour immensely disliked by the Turks on account of the discontent
it arouses among the large Greek population. After holding out six
years, the Sultan finally gave in to the Patriarchate, and in 1891 a
species of _concordat_ was drawn up between the two parties. Joachim
III, accordingly, met the Young Turks more vigorously than he had met
Abd ül Hamid. So vigorously did he meet them that Mahmoud Shefket Pasha,
in the heat of a controversy over the military service of non-Moslems,
burst out one day at the Patriarch: “I will smash the heads of all the
Greeks!” The question of schools also became acute, the government
demanding a supervision of Greek institutions which the Patriarchate
refused to admit. And a policy of pin-pricks was instituted against all
the heads of the non-Moslem communities, in a belated attempt to retake
the positions lost by Mehmed II and to limit the Patriarchs to their
spiritual jurisdiction. It was only after the outbreak of the Italian
War and the consequent fall of the Committee of Union and Progress that
normal relations with the Porte were restored.
An outsider is free to acknowledge that it was natural enough for the
Turks to regret the mistakes of a mediæval policy and to wish to do what
they could to unify their very disparate empire. They made the greater
mistake, however, of not seeing that it was too late; that, if they
were not strong enough to tear up agreements when it suited them, the
only course left was to devise some frank and just federation between
the different elements of the empire. On the other hand, an outsider is
also free to acknowledge that the Patriarchate was, perhaps, too prone
to fancy itself attacked, too ready to credit the Turks with stupidity
or ill will, too obsessed by the memory of its own historic greatness.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that Joachim III was a remarkable prelate.
If there was anything personal in his ambition to unite the churches
of the East under the ægis of the Phanar, he proved that his views had
broadened since the days of the Bulgarian schism and that he held no
mean conception of his rôle as the shepherd of a disinherited people.
Imposing in his presence, a natural diplomat, more of a scholar than his
youthful opportunities had promised, and for those who knew him a saint,
he faced the cunning Abd ül Hamid like an equal monarch, never allowing
himself to be cozened out of his vigilance. He did more than protect
his people. He gave them weapons. He wished his clergy and his laymen
to be educated, to be better educated than the masters of the land. He
therefore built great schools for them, and created a press. He was not
only a statesman, however. It was a matter of concern with him that his
church should be alive. Many interesting questions of reform arose during
his incumbency—of what would be called, in the Roman Church, Americanism.
Indeed, he was sometimes taxed with being too progressive, almost too
protestant. He and the Archbishop of Canterbury made overtures to each
other, from their two ends of Europe, in the interest of a closer union
of Christendom. I know not what there may have been of politics in this
ecclesiastical flirtation.
At the outbreak of the Balkan War Joachim III was seventy-eight years
old. He was none the less able to conduct the affairs of his church. No
one can have taken a greater interest than he in the earlier events of
that remarkable campaign. He was still alive when the Bulgarian cannon
drew so near that their thunder was audible even at the Phanar. What
feelings did the sound rouse in that old enemy of the Exarchate? He must,
at all events, have hoped that to him would be given the incomparable
honour of reconsecrating St. Sophia. That consummation, which for a
moment seemed within the possibilities, was not granted him. He died
while the negotiations for an armistice were going on at Chatalja. His
funeral took place on the 1st of December, 1912.
The Patriarch Gennadius, as we have seen, first took up his residence
in the church of the Holy Apostles and afterward in that of the
Pammakaristos—the All-blessed Virgin. There sixteen of his successors
reigned in turn till 1591, when Sultan Mourad III turned that interesting
eighth-century church into Fetieh Jami—the Mosque of Conquest—in honour
of his victories in Persia and Georgia. Then the Patriarchate moved
three times more, finally settling in 1601 in the church of St. George
at the Phanar. This has been the Vatican of Constantinople for the past
three hundred years. The Patriarchs have never made, at the Phanar, any
attempt at magnificence. Exiled from St. Sophia, and hoping, waiting, to
return thither, they have preferred to live simply, to camp out as it
were in expectation, thinking their means best devoted to schools and
charitable institutions. The wooden palace of the Patriarchate is a far
from imposing building, while the adjoining church is small and plain.
It contains little of interest save an old episcopal throne and a few
relics and icons, which are supposed to have been saved from St. Sophia.
Nevertheless the funeral of Joachim III was a dignified, an imposing,
even a splendid ceremony. To this result the Turkish authorities
contributed not a little, by maintaining a service of order more perfect
than I have seen at any other state pageant in Constantinople. No one
who had not a card of admission was allowed even in the street through
which the procession was to pass. Along this street black masts were
set at intervals, from which hung black gonfalons with white crosses in
the centre, while black and white wreaths or garlands decorated all the
houses. On either side of the rising curve from the main street to the
gate of the Patriarchate, students from the theological college at Halki
made a wonderfully picturesque guard of honour in their flowing black
robes and brimless black hats, each supporting the staff of a tall church
lantern shrouded in black. Within the church even stricter precautions
had been taken to prevent the dignity of the ceremony from being marred.
The number of tickets issued was sternly limited to the capacity of the
narrow nave, and none were granted to ladies—a severity which brought
down a violent protest from the better half of Byzantium.
[Illustration: Church of the All-blessed Virgin (Fetieh Jami)]
A Greek church sometimes impresses a Westerner as containing too many
glittering things within too small a space. On this occasion the natural
twilight of the interior and the black gauze in which lamps and icons
were veiled toned down any possible effect of tawdriness, while the
tall carved and gilded _ikonostasion_ made the right background for the
splendour of the ceremony. One hardly realised that it was a funeral.
There was no coffin, no flowers, no mortuary candles. The dead Patriarch,
arrayed in his pontifical cloth of gold and crowned with his domed gold
mitre, sat in his accustomed place at the right of the chancel, on a
throne of purple velvet. I was prepared to find it ghastly; but in the
half light I found rather a certain Byzantine solemnity. On the purple
dais at the right of the Patriarch stood his handsome Grand Vicar, in the
flowing black of the church. At the left another priest stood, one of the
twelve archimandrites attached to the Patriarchate, holding the episcopal
staff which the Conqueror is supposed to have given Gennadius, tipped
like Hermes’ caduceus with two serpents’ heads of gold. In front of the
dais burned an immense yellow candle, symbolic of the Light of the World,
which an acolyte called the Great Candle-bearer always carries before the
Patriarch.
[Illustration: The lantern-bearers]
The officiating clergy, consisting of the members of the Holy Synod and
a number of visiting bishops, stood in front of the _ikonostasion_,
some in simple black, others in magnificent vestments of white satin
embroidered with gold. The rest of the church was given up to invited
guests. In stalls at the dead Patriarch’s left sat the heads of the other
non-Moslem communities of the empire, headed by the Armenian Patriarch
and including the Grand Rabbi of Turkey, and even a representative of
the Bulgarian Exarch. At the right were grouped the representatives of
the Sultan, of the cabinet, and of different departments of government,
all in gala uniform and decorations. On the opposite side of the chancel
was ranged the diplomatic corps, headed by the Russian ambassador with
all his staff and the Roumanian minister. Their Bulgarian, Greek,
Montenegrin, and Servian colleagues, being absent, seemed at that
historic moment to be only the more present. The other foreign missions,
as less concerned with the Orthodox Church, were represented by two
secretaries apiece. The overflow of the diplomatic corps, the officers of
the international squadron then in the Bosphorus, and a number of Greek
secular notabilities filled the body of the nave, in chairs which had
been provided for them contrary to all precedents of the Greek Church.
The spectacle was extremely brilliant, nor less so for the twilight of
the church—and a strange one when one realised that it was all in honour
of the old man in the purple chair, his head bowed and his eyes closed,
sitting so still and white in his golden robes. But strangest of all was
something unuttered in the air, that reminded me a little of when Abd ül
Hamid opened his second parliament—a feeling of all that was impersonated
there by robe and uniform and star, a sense of forces interwoven past
extricating, a stirring of old Byzantine ghosts in this hour of death,
which was also in some not quite acknowledged way an hour of victory.
Joachim III would scarcely have had a more dramatic funeral if it had
taken place in St. Sophia.
The ceremony was not very long. It consisted chiefly of chanting—of
humming one might almost say, so low was the tone in which the priests
sang the prayers for the dead. No instrumental music is permitted in
the Greek rite. At one point of the office two priests in magnificent
chasubles, one of whom carried two candles tied together and the other
three, went in front of the Patriarch, bowed low, and swung silver
censers. Then the secretary of the Holy Synod mounted a high pulpit and
delivered a panegyric of Joachim III. And at last he was lifted as he
was, sitting on his throne, and carried in solemn procession to his grave
in the monastery of Balîklî.
[Illustration: The dead Patriarch]
I did not see the procession in any ordered picture but only as a
current surging down the steps, from a door at right angles to the one
where Gregory V was hanged a hundred years ago, and away between the
motionless black figures with their tall lanterns—a crowded current
of robes, of uniforms, of priests swinging censers, of other priests
carrying jewelled decorations on cushions, and one who bore a silver
pitcher of wine to be poured into the grave in the fashion of the older
Greeks. Turkish soldiers made a guard of honour before the steps, at
this pause of another Greek war. They looked up with a sort of wondering
proud passivity at the figure of the dead pontiff, and the two-headed
Byzantine eagle emblazoned in gold on the back of his purple throne. I
did not see either the last embarking of Joachim III on the yacht lent
by the government—did not Mehmed II lend Gennadius his horse?—or his
triumphal progress, surrounded by the prelates of his court, through the
opened bridges of the harbour, to the Marmora side of the city. We drove,
instead, to the monastery of Our Lady of the Fishes, outside the walls,
where the priests showed us the church darkened with crape and the grave
that was not quite ready. It was an underground room rather, with tiled
floor and cemented walls, and beside it lay iron girders for roofing
over the top. For the Patriarchs are buried as they come to the grave,
sitting, according to the ancient custom of their church.
Presently a false alarm called us to the open, where another crowd was
waiting. There was still a long time, however, before the procession
came into sight. We spent it in the cypress lane which leads, between
Turkish cemeteries, to the monastery. Among the graves a camp of refugees
from Thrace was quarantined. Twenty or thirty new mounds were near
them, scattered with chloride of lime. Ragged peasants leaned over the
wall, grateful, no doubt, for something to break the monotony of their
imprisonment. The names of Kîrk Kil’seh and Lüleh Bourgass recurred
in their talk. At last an advance guard of cavalry spattered down the
muddy lane. After them came policemen, mounted and on foot, followed by
choir-boys carrying two tall silver crosses and six of the six-winged
silver ornaments symbolising the cherubim of the Revelation. Then all the
Greeks about us began to exclaim: “There he is!” and we saw the gold-clad
figure coming toward us between the cypresses on his purple throne. Until
then there had seemed to me nothing ghastly or barbaric about it. I had
looked upon it as a historic survival worthy of all respect. But the
dignity was gone as the tired bearers stumbled through the mud carrying
the heavy dais. And the old man who had been so handsome and imperious
in life looked now, in the clear afternoon sunlight, weary and shrunken
and pitiful. I was sorry I had come to stare at him once more. And long
afterward an imagination of him haunted me, and I wondered if he were in
his little tiled room at last, sitting at peace in his purple chair.
VII.—REFUGEES
They say they do not like Christians to live in the sacred suburb of
Eyoub. But they are used by this time to seeing us. Too many of us
go there, alas, to climb the hill and look at the view and feel as
sentimental as we can over Aziyadé. And certainly the good people of
Eyoub made no objection to Lady Lowther when she established in their
midst a committee for distributing food and clothing and fuel to the
families of poor soldiers and to the refugees. The hordes of Asia had not
stopped pouring through the city on their way to the west before another
horde began pouring the other way, out of Europe. Within a month there
could hardly have been a Turk left between the Bulgarian border and the
Chatalja lines. It was partly, no doubt, due to the narrowness of the
field of operations, lying as it did between two converging seas, which
enabled the conquering army to drive the whole country in a battue before
it. But I cannot imagine any Western people trekking with such unanimity.
They would have been more firmly rooted to the soil. The Turk, however,
is still half a tent-man, and he has never felt perfectly at home in
Europe. So village after village harnessed its black water-buffalo or its
little grey oxen to its carts of clumsy wheels, piled thereon its few
effects, covered them with matting spread over bent saplings, and came
into Constantinople.
How many of them came I do not imagine any one knows. Thousands and tens
of thousands of them were shipped over into Asia Minor. Other thousands
remained, in the hope of going back to their ruined homes. The soldiers
and the sick had already occupied most of the spare room that was to be
found. The refugees had to take what was left. I knew one colony of them
that spent the winter in the sailing caïques in which they fled from the
coast villages of the Marmora. Being myself like a Turk in that I make
little of numbers and computations, I have no means of knowing how many
men, women, and children, from how many villages, swelled the population
of Eyoub. I only know that their own people took in a good number, that
they lived in cloisters and empty houses, that certain mosques were
given up to them entirely, that sheds, storehouses, stables, were full
of them. I even heard of four persons who had no other shelter than a
water-closet. And still streets and open spaces were turned into camping
grounds, where small grey cattle were tethered to big carts and where
people in veils and turbans shivered over camp-fires—when they had a
camp-fire to shiver over. They could generally fall back on cypress
wood. It always gave me a double pang to catch the aroma of such a fire,
betraying as it did the extremity of some poor exile and the devastation
at work among the trees that give Constantinople so much of its colour.
[Illustration: Exiles]
I have done a good deal of visiting in my day, being somewhat given to
seek the society of my kind. But it has not often happened to me, in
the usual course of visiting, to come so near the realities of life as
when, with another member of our subcommittee, I visited the mosque of
Zal Mahmoud Pasha, in Eyoub. The mosque of Zal Mahmoud Pasha is worth
visiting. It was built by Sinan, and its founder, a Vizier of Selim II,
was nicknamed Zal, after a famous Persian champion, because, with his
own hands, he finally succeeded in strangling the strong young prince
Moustafa, son of Süleïman the Magnificent. Like its greater neighbour,
the mosque of Zal Mahmoud Pasha has two courts. They are on two levels,
joined by a flight of steps, each opening into a thoroughfare of its own.
And very cheerless they looked indeed on a winter day of snow, especially
for the cattle stabled in their cloisters. The mosque itself was open
to any who cared to go in. We did so, pushing aside the heavy flap that
hangs at any public Turkish doorway in winter. We found ourselves in
a narrow vestibule in which eight or ten families were living. One of
them consisted of two children, a little boy flushed with fever and a
pale and wasted little girl, who lay on the bricks near the door without
mattress or matting under them. They were not quite alone in the world,
we learned. Their mother had gone away to find them bread. The same was
the case with a larger family of children who sat around a primitive
brazier. The youngest was crying, and a girl of ten was telling him that
their mother would soon be back with something to eat.
We lifted a second flap. A wave of warm smoky air met us, sweetened by
cypress wood but sickeningly close. Through the haze of smoke we saw
that the square of the nave, surrounded on three sides by a gallery,
was packed as if by a congregation. The congregation consisted chiefly
of women and children, which is not the thing in Turkey, sitting on the
matted floor in groups, and all about them were chests and small piles of
bedding and stray cooking utensils. Each of these groups constituted a
house, as they put it. As we went from one to another, asking questions
and taking notes, we counted seventy-eight of them. Some four hundred
people, that is, were living huddled together under the dome of Zal
Mahmoud Pasha. In the gallery and under it rude partitions had been made
by stretching ropes between the pillars and hanging up a spare rug or
quilt. In the open space of the centre there was nothing to mark off
house from house save the bit of rug or matting that most of the families
had had time to bring away with them, or such boundaries as could be
drawn by the more solid of the family possessions and by the row of
family shoes. Under such conditions had not a few of the congregation
drawn their first or their last breath.
Nearly every “house” had a brazier of some kind, if only improvised
out of a kerosene tin. That was where the blue haze came from and the
scent of cypress wood. Some had a little charcoal, and were daily near
asphyxiating themselves. Others had no fire at all. On a number of the
braziers we noticed curious flat cakes baking, into whose composition
went bran or even straw. We took them to be some Thracian dainty until
we learned that they were a substitute for bread. The city was supposed
to give each refugee a loaf a day, but many somehow did not succeed in
getting their share. A few told us that they had had none, unless from
their neighbours, for five days. It struck me, in this connection, that
in no other country I knew would the mosque carpets still have been lying
folded in one corner instead of making life a little more tolerable for
that melancholy congregation. Of complaint, however, we heard as little
as possible. The four hundred sat very silently in their smoky mosque.
Many of them had not only their lost homes to think of. A father told us
that when Chorlou was spoiled, as he put it, his little girl of nine had
found a place in the “fire carriage” that went before his, and he had not
seen her since. One old man had lost the rest of his family. He had been
unable to keep up with them, he said: it had taken him twenty-two days
to walk from Kîrk Kil’seh. A tall ragged young woman, who told us that
her _effendi_ made war in Adrianople, said she had three children. One of
them she rocked beside her in a wooden washing trough. It came out only
by accident that she had adopted the other two during the hegira from
Thrace. We wondered how, if the _effendi_ ever came out of Adrianople
alive, he would find his wife and his baby; for hardly one in fifty of
these peasants could read or write, and no exact register of them was
kept. Many of them were ill and lay on the floor under a coloured quilt.
If another member of the family wanted to take a nap he would crawl under
the same quilt. Is it any wonder that diseases became epidemic in the
mosques? Cholera did not break out in many of them except St. Sophia,
which was used as a barracks. But in Zal Mahmoud Pasha there were at
one time cases of consumption, pneumonia, typhoid fever, scarlet fever,
measles, mumps, and smallpox. Five cases of the last were found under one
quilt. Still, the refugees would not be vaccinated if they could help it.
The only way to bring them to it was to cut off their bread. And not many
of them were willing to go away or to let members of their families be
taken away to hospitals. How did they know whether they would ever see
each other again, they asked? A poor mother we knew, whose husband had
been taken as a soldier and had not been heard of since, and whose home
had burned to the ground before her eyes, lost her four children, one
after the other. A neighbour afterward remarked of her in wonder that she
seemed to have no mind in her head.
[Illustration: Lady Lowther’s refugees]
In distributing Lady Lowther’s relief we did what we could to
systematise. Having visited, quarter by quarter, to see for ourselves
the condition of the people and what they most needed, we gave the
head of each house a numbered ticket, enabling him or her to draw on
us for certain supplies. Most of the supplies were dealt out on our
own day at home. They say it is more blessed to give than to receive.
I found, however, that it was most possible to appreciate the humorous
and decorative side of Thrace when we received, in the coffee-shop of
many windows which was our headquarters. It is astonishing how large a
proportion of Thrace is god-daughter to Hadijeh or Aïsheh, Mothers of the
Moslems, or to the Prophet’s daughter Fatma. Many, nevertheless, reminded
one of Mme. Chrysanthème and Madam Butterfly. On our visiting list were
Mrs. Hyacinth, Mrs. Tulip, Mrs. Appletree, and Mrs. Nightingale. I am
also happy enough to possess the acquaintance of Mrs. Sweetmeat, Mrs.
Diamond, Mrs. Pink (the colour), Mrs. Cotton (of African descent), Mrs.
Air (though some know her as Mother Eve), Miss May She Laugh, and Master
He Waited. This last appellation seemed to me so curious that I inquired
into it, and learned that my young gentleman waited to be born. These are
not surnames, you understand, for no Turk owns such a thing. Nor yet, I
suppose, can one call them Christian names! To tell one Mistress Hyacinth
from another you add the name of her man; and in his case all you can do
is to call him the son of so and so.
If we found the nomenclature of Mistress Hyacinth and her family a source
of perplexity, she in turn was not a little confounded by our system of
tickets. We had one for bread. We had another for charcoal. We had a
third for groceries. We had a fourth and a fifth for fodder. We had a
sixth, the most important of all, since it entitled the bearer to the
others, which must be tied tight in a painted handkerchief and never be
lost. “By God!” cried Mistress Hyacinth in her honoured idiom, “I know
not what these papers mean!” And sometimes it was well-nigh impossible
to explain it to her. A good part of her confusion, I suspect, should be
put down to our strange accent and grammar, and to our unfamiliarity with
the Thracian point of view. Still, I think the ladies of that peninsula
share the general hesitation of their race to concern themselves with
mathematical accuracy. Asked how many children they had, they rarely
knew until they had counted up on their fingers two or three times. It
is evidently no habit with them to have the precise number in mind. So
when they made an obvious mistake we did not necessarily suspect them of
an attempt to overestimate. As a matter of fact, they were more likely
to underestimate. Other failures of memory were more surprising, as that
of a dowager in ebony who was unable to tell her husband’s name. “How
should I know?” she protested. “He died so long ago!” When questioned
with regard to their own needs they were equally vague. “I am naked,” was
their commonest reply. “Whatever your eye picks out, I will take.” But if
our eye failed to pick out the right thing, they would in the end give us
a hint.
Altogether it is evident that the indirections of Mistress Hyacinth
follow a compass different from our own. I remember a girl not more than
sixteen or seventeen who told us she had three children. Two of them were
with her: where was the third, we asked? “Here,” she answered, patting
herself with the simplicity of which the Anglo-Saxons have lost the
secret. Yet she was most scrupulous to keep her nose and mouth hidden
from an indiscriminate world. Another woman, asked about a child we knew,
replied non-committally: “We have sent him away.” “Where?” we demanded
in alarm, for we had known of refugees giving away or even selling their
children. “Eh—he went,” returned the mother gravely. “Have you news of
him?” one of us pursued. “Yes,” she said. And it was finally some one
else who had to enlighten our obtuseness by explaining that it was to
the other world the child had gone. But none of them hesitated to give
the rest of us an opportunity to go there too. Many women came into our
coffee-shop carrying in their arms a baby who had smallpox, and were a
little hurt because we got rid of them as quickly as possible.
With great discreetness would Mistress Hyacinth enter our presence,
rarely so far forgetting herself as to lean on our table or to throw
her arms in gratitude about a benefactress’s neck. For in gratitude she
abounds, and in such expressions of it as “God give you lives” and “May
you never have less.” With a benefactor she is, I am happy to report,
more reserved. Him she addresses, according to her age, as “my child,”
“my brother,” “my uncle,” or haply “my mother and my father.” I grew
so accustomed to occupying the maternal relation to ladies of all ages
and colours that I felt slighted when they coldly addressed me as their
lord. Imagine, then, my pleasure when one of them called me her creamy
boy! In the matter of discretion, however, Mistress Hyacinth is not
always impeccable—so far, at least, as concerns the concealment of her
charms. Sometimes, indeed, she will scarcely be persuaded to raise her
veil even for a lady to recognise her; but at others she appears not to
shrink from the masculine eye. One day a Turk, passing our coffee-shop,
was attracted by the commotion at the door. He came to the door himself,
looked in, and cried out “Shame!” at the disreputable spectacle of a mild
male unbeliever and a doorkeeper of his own faith within the same four
walls as some of Lady Lowther’s fairer helpers and a motley collection of
refugee women, many of them unveiled. But the latter retorted with such
promptness that the shame was rather upon him, for leaving the _gyaour_
to supply their wants, that he was happy to let the matter drop. On
this and other occasions I gathered a very distinct impression that if
Mistress Hyacinth should ever take it into her head to turn suffragette
she would not wait long to gain her end.
The nails of Mistress Hyacinth—speaking of suffragettes—are almost always
reddened with henna, I notice, and very clean. The henna often extends
to her fingers as well, to the palms of her hands, and to her hair. If
she happen to be advancing in years, the effect is sometimes very strange
to a Western eye. There is no attempt to simulate a youthful glow. The
dye is plentifully applied to make a rich coral red. In other points
of fashion Mistress Hyacinth is more independent than her sisters of
the West. What the ladies of Paris wear must be worn by the ladies of
Melbourne, New York, or St. Petersburg. But no such spirit of imitation
prevails in Thrace, where every village seems to have modes of its own.
We had great difficulty in getting rid of a quantity of clothing sent out
by charitable but unimaginative persons in England, who could hardly be
expected to know the fashions of Thrace. Articles intended to be worn
out of sight were accepted without a murmur when nothing better was to
be had, such as a quilted coat of many colours that we bought by the
hundred in the Bazaars, called like the Prophet’s mantle a _hîrka_. But
when it came to some very good and long golf capes, the men were more
willing to take them than the women—until they thought of cutting them
up into children’s coats. Mistress Hyacinth herself scorned to put on
even so much of the colour of an unbeliever, preferring the shapeless
black mantle of her country, worn over her head if need be, and not quite
hiding a pair of full print trousers.
The village whose taste I most admire is that of Vizeh, the ladies of
which weave with their own hands a black woolen crash for their mantles,
with patches of red-and-blue embroidery where they button, and with
trousers of the same dark blue as the sailor collar of a good many of
them. I wish I might have gone to Vizeh before the Bulgarians did. There
must have been very nice things to pick up—in the way, for instance, of
such “napkins” as Lady Mary Montagu described to her sister on the 10th
of March, 1718, “all tiffany, embroidered with silks and gold, in the
finest manner, in natural flowers.” She added: “It was with the utmost
regret that I made use of these costly napkins, as finely wrought as
the finest handkerchiefs that ever came out of this country. You may be
sure that they were entirely spoiled before dinner was over.” But you,
madam, may be sure they were not, for I bought some of them from the
ladies of Thrace, rather improved than not by their many washings. They
are technically known as Bulgarian towels, being really Turkish; but it
seems to me that the tradition which persists in this beautiful peasant
embroidery must be Byzantine. Mistress Hyacinth was able to make it, as
well as to sell it. And to turn an honest penny she and her friends set
up their funny little hand-looms in a house we hired for them, and wove
the narrow cloth of their country, loosely mingled of linen or cotton and
silk, and shot, it might be, with bright colours of which they had the
secret.
[Illustration: Peasant embroidery]
The consort of Mistress Hyacinth, I regret to add, seemed to show less
willingness to add to the resources of the family. Perhaps it was because
of an inward conviction of which I once or twice caught rumours, that
as unbelievers had deprived him of his ordinary means of sustenance, we
other unbelievers were in duty bound to keep him alive. For the rest he
is outwardly and visibly the decorative member of the family. He inclines
less to bagginess than Mistress Hyacinth, or than his brother of Asia. He
affects a certain cut of trouser which is popular all the way from the
Bosphorus to the Adriatic. This trouser, preferably of what the ladies
call a pastel blue, is bound in at the waist by a broad red girdle which
also serves as pocket, bank, arsenal, and anything else he pleases. Over
it goes a short zouave jacket, more or less embroidered, and round my
lord’s head twists a picturesque figured turban, with a tassel dangling
in front of one ear. He is a surprisingly well-made and well-featured
individual—like Mistress Hyacinth herself, for that matter, and like the
roly-poly small fry at their heels. On the whole they give one the sense
of furnishing excellent material for a race—if only the right artist
could get hold of it.
[Illustration: Young Thrace]
VIII.—SEMIPHILOSOPHIC FINALE
One day I stopped on the quay to watch a cheering transport steam down
the Bosphorus. An old Turkish lady who happened to be passing stopped to
watch it too.
“Poor things! Poor things!” she exclaimed aloud. “The lions! You would
think they were going to a wedding!” And then turning to me she suddenly
asked: “Can you tell me, _effendim_, why it is that Europe is against us?
Have we done no good in six hundred years?”
The attitude of Europe was the crowning bitterness of the war. In the
beginning, Europe had loudly announced that she would tolerate no change
in the _status quo_. How then did Europe come to acquiesce so quickly in
the accomplished fact? Why did Germany, the friend of Abd ül Hamid, and
England, the friend of Kyamil Pasha, and France, the friend of everybody,
raise no finger to help? I am not the one to suggest that Europe should
have done otherwise. There is a logic of events which sometimes breaks
through official twaddle—a just logic drawing into a common destiny those
who share common traditions and speak a common tongue. I make no doubt
that Austria-Hungary, to mention only one example, will one day prove it
to her cost. Nevertheless, I am able to see that there is a Turkish point
of view. And my old lady’s question struck me as being so profound that I
made no pretence of answering it.
I might, to be sure, have replied what so many other people were saying:
“Madam, most certainly you have done no good in six hundred years. It is
solely because of the evil you have done that you enjoy any renown in
the world. You have done nothing but burn, pillage, massacre, defile,
and destroy. You have stamped out civilisation wherever your horsemen
have trod. And what you were in the beginning you are now. Your enemy
the Bulgarian has advanced more in one generation than you have in
twenty. You still cling to the forms of a bloody and barbaric religion,
but for what it teaches of truth and humanity you have no ear. You make
one justice for yourself and one for the owner of the land you have
robbed. Your word has become a byword among the nations. You are too
proud or too lazy to learn more than your fathers knew. You fear and try
to imitate the West; but of the toil, the patience, the thoroughness,
the perseverance that are the secret of the West you have no inkling.
You will not work yourself, and you will not let others work—unless for
your pocket. You have no literature, no art, no science, no industry,
worth the name. You are incapable of building a road or a ship. You take
everything from others—only to spoil it, like those territories where
you were lately at war, like this city, which was once the glory of the
world. You have no shadow of right to this city or to those territories.
The graves of your ancestors are not there. You took them by the sword,
and, like everything else that comes into your hands, you have slowly
ruined them. It is only just that you should lose them by the sword. For
your sword was the one thing you knew how to use, and now even that has
rusted in your hand. You are rotten through and through. That is why
Europe is against you. Go back to your tents in Asia, and see if you will
be capable of learning something in another six hundred years.”
So might I have answered my old lady—had my Turkish been good enough. But
I would scarcely have convinced her. Nor would I quite have convinced
myself. For while it is a simple and often very refreshing disposal of a
man to damn him up and down, it is not one that really disposes of him.
He still remains there, solid and unexplained. So while my reason tells
me how incompetent a man the Turk is from most Western points of view, it
reminds me that other men have been incompetent as well, and even subject
to violent inconsistencies of character; that this man is a being in
evolution, with reasons for becoming what he is, to whom Dame Nature may
not have given her last touch.
In this liberal disposition my reason is no doubt quickened, I must
confess, by the fact that I am at heart a friend of the Turk. It may be
merely association. I have known him many years. But there is something
about him I cannot help liking—a simplicity, a manliness, a dignity.
I like his fondness for water, and flowers, and green meadows, and
spreading trees. I like his love of children. I like his perfect manners.
I like his sobriety. I like his patience. I like the way he faces death.
One of the things I like most about him is what has been perhaps most his
undoing—his lack of any commercial instinct. I like, too, what no one has
much noticed, the artistic side of him. I do not know Turkish enough to
appreciate his literature, and his religion forbids him—or he imagines
it does—to engage in the plastic arts. But in architecture and certain
forms of decoration he has created a school of his own. It is not only
that the Turkish quarter of any Ottoman town is more picturesque than
the others. The old Palace of the sultans in Constantinople, certain old
houses I have seen, the mosques, the _medressehs_, the _hans_, the tombs,
the fountains, of the Turks are an achievement that deserves more serious
study than has been given them. You may tell me that they are not
Turkish because they were designed after Byzantine or Saracen originals,
and because Greeks and Persians had much to do with building them. But I
shall answer that every architecture was derived from another, in days
not so near our own, and that, after all, it was the Turk who created the
opportunity for the foreign artist and ordered what he wanted.
I have, therefore, as little patience as possible with the Gladstonian
theory of the unspeakable Turk. When war ceases, when murders take place
no more in happier lands, when the last riot is quelled and the last
negro lynched, it will be time to discuss whether the Turk is by nature
more or less bloody than other men. In the meantime I beg to point out
that he is, as a matter of fact, the most peaceable, with the possible
exception of the Armenian, of the various tribes of his empire. Arab,
Kürd, and Laz are all quicker with their blades. To his more positive
qualities I am by no means alone in testifying. If I had time for chapter
and verse I might quote more than one generation of foreign officers in
the Turkish service, and a whole literature of travel—to which Pierre
Loti has contributed his share. But I do not hesitate to add that this is
a matter in which Pierre Loti may be as unsafe a guide as Mr. Gladstone.
For blind praise is no more intelligent than blind condemnation. Neither
leads one any nearer to understanding the strange case of the Turk.
To understand him at all, I think one needs to take a long view of
history. When we consider how many æons man must have lived on this
planet and how short in comparison has been the present phase of Western
civilisation, it does not seem as if we had good ground for expressing
definitive opinions with regard to Eastern peoples. A hundred years ago
there was no hint in the West of the expansion that was to come through
the use of steam and electricity. Three hundred years ago communications
in most of Europe were not so good as, and I doubt if life and property
were more secure than, they are in Turkey to-day. For some reason the
Turk has lagged in his development. He is to all practical purposes a
mediæval man, and it is not fair to judge him by the standards of the
twentieth century.
Why it should be that men who have a common origin should have followed
such different roads, and at such an uneven pace, is in many ways an
insoluble problem. But it should not be, by this time, an unfamiliar one.
It would rather be strange, and the world would be much poorer than it
is, if humanity had marched from the beginning in a single phalanx—if the
world had been one great India, or one great Egypt, or one great Greece.
The Turk, then, as I have no need of insisting, is a mediæval man. And
one reason why he is so may be that he has a much shorter heritage of
civilisation than the countries of the West. He is a new man as well as
a mediæval one. In Europe and in Asia alike he is a parvenu who came on
to the scene long after every one else. It is only verbally that the
American is a newer man; for in the thirteenth century, when the warlike
Turkish nomads first began to make themselves known, the different states
which have contributed to make America were already formed, while India,
China, and Japan had long before reached a high degree of civilisation.
It seems to me that this fact might well account for much of the
backwardness of the Turk. He has a much thinner deposit of heredity in
his brain cells. It is conceivable, too, that another matter of heredity
may enter into it. Whether civil life originated in Asia or not, it is
certain that of existing civilisations the Oriental are older than the
Occidental. Perhaps, therefore, the Asiatic formed the habit of pride and
self-sufficiency. Then as successive tides of emigration rolled away,
Asia was gradually drained of everything that was not the fine flower of
conservatism. He who believed whatever is is best stayed at home. The
others went in search of new worlds, and found them not only in the field
of empire but in those of science and art. This continual skimming of the
adventurous element can only have confirmed Asia in the habit of mind so
perfectly expressed by the Book of Ecclesiastes. And the Turk, who was
one of the last adventurers to emerge from Asia, impelled by what obscure
causes we hardly know, must have a profound racial bent toward the belief
that everything is vanity and vexation of spirit. He asks himself what is
the use, and lets life slip by.
Many people have held that there is something in Islam which
automatically arrests the development of those who profess it. I cannot
think, myself, that the thesis has been sufficiently proved. While no one
can deny that religion, and particularly that Islam, is a great cohesive
force, it seems to me that people have more to do with making religions
than religions with making people. The principles at the root of all
aspiring life—call it moral, ethical, or religious, as you will—exist in
every religion. And organised religion has everywhere been responsible
for much of the fanaticism and disorder of the world. For the rest, I
find much in Mohammedanism to admire. There is a nobility in its stern
monotheism, disdaining every semblance of trinitarian subtleties. Its
daily services impress me as being a more direct and dignified form of
worship than our self-conscious Sunday mornings with their rustling
pews and operatic choirs. Then the democracy of Islam and much of what
it inculcates with regard to family and civil life are worthy of all
respect, to say nothing of the hygienic principles which it succeeded
in impressing at a very early stage upon a primitive people. At the
same time there can be no doubt that Mohammedanism suffers from the
fact that it was designed, all too definitely, for a primitive people.
Men at a higher stage of evolution than were the Arabs of the seventh
century require no religious sanctions to keep themselves clean. For
modern men the social system of Islam, with its degrading estimate of
woman, is distinctly antisocial. And many of them must find the Prophet’s
persuasions to the future life a little vulgar. The question is whether
they will be able to modernise Islam. It will be harder than modernising
Christianity, for the reason that Islam is a far minuter system. Is there
not something moving in the spectacle of a people committed to an order
which can never prevail? Even for this one little ironic circumstance
it can never prevail in our hurrying modern world, because it takes too
much time to be a good Mohammedan. But the whole order is based on a
conception which the modern world refuses to admit. The word Islam means
resignation—submission to the will of God. And there can be no doubt that
the mind of Islam is saturated with that spirit. Why does one man succeed
and another fail? It is the will of God. Why do some recover from illness
and others die? It is the will of God. Why do empires rise or fall? It
is the will of God. A man who literally believes such a doctrine has no
chance against the man, however less a philosopher, who believes that his
destiny lies in his own hand.
It would be an interesting experiment to see what two generations, say,
of universal education might do for the Turks. By education I mean no
more than the three R’s, enough history and geography to know that Turkey
is neither the largest nor the most ancient empire in the world, and some
fundamental scientific notions. It is incredible how large a proportion
of Turks are illiterate, and what fantastic views of the world and their
place in it the common people hold. To nothing more than this ignorance
must be laid a great part of Turkey’s troubles. But another part is due
to the character of the empire which it befell the Turk to conquer. If he
had happened, like ourselves, into a remote and practically empty land
he might have developed his own civilisation. Or if he had occupied a
country inhabited by a single race he would have stood a better chance.
Or if, again, he had appeared on the scene a few centuries earlier,
before Europe had had time to get so far ahead of him, and before the
spread of learning and an increasing ease of communications made it
increasingly difficult for one race to absorb another, he might have
succeeded in assimilating the different peoples who came under his
sway. Why the conquerors did not exterminate or forcibly convert the
conquered Christians has always been a question with me. It may have
been a real humanity on the part of the early sultans, who without doubt
were remarkable men and who, perhaps, wished their own wild followers
to acquire the culture of the Greeks. Or it may have been a politic
deference to new European neighbours. In any case, I am convinced that it
was, from the Turkish point of view, a mistake. For the Turk has never
been able to complete his conquest. On the contrary, by recognising the
religious independence of his subjects he gave them weapons to win their
political independence. And, beset by enemies within and without, he has
never had time to learn the lessons of peace.
Here, I think, we come very near the root of his difficulties. Not only
has he paid, not only does he continue and will he long continue to pay,
the price of the invader, incessantly preoccupied as he is with questions
of internal order. He created a form of government which could not last.
At its most successful period it depended on the spoils of war—not only
in treasure but in tribute-boys, carefully chosen for the most famous
corps of the army and for the highest executive posts in the empire.
This form of government was highly efficient so long as the frontiers of
the empire continued to advance. But it was not self-contained, and it
kept the native-born Turk from developing normal habits and traditions
of government. The traditions it chiefly fostered in him were those
of plunder and idleness. Much of the proverbial readiness of Turks in
office to receive “presents” is less a matter of dishonesty than the
persistence of a time-honoured system of making a living in irregular
ways. The system is one that naturally dies out with the disappearance
of irregular sources of income. There must inevitably follow, however,
a painful period of forming new habits, of creating new traditions. How
radical this process had to be with the Turks can scarcely be realised
by a country like England, for instance, which has been able to continue
for a thousand years developing the same germ of government. The Turk
himself hardly realises yet how little he can build on the foundations
of his former greatness. And he has been the slower to come to any such
realisation because circumstances have kept up an illusion of that
greatness long after the reality was gone. If England, if France, if
Germany, were to be left to-morrow without a bayonet or a battle-ship,
they would still be great powers by the greatness of their economic,
their intellectual, their artistic life. Could the same be said of the
Ottoman Empire? For a century or more that empire has continued to play
the rôle of a great power simply through comparison with smaller or the
mutual jealousies of greater ones. It is a long time since the Turk has
really stood on his own feet. He has too often been protected against the
consequences of his own acts. And, the last comer into the land he rules,
he has been too ready to ignore the existence of other rights. But now,
stripped of his most distant and most ungovernable provinces, enlightened
by humiliation as to the real quality of his greatness, he may, let us
hope, put aside illusion and pretence and give himself to the humbler
problems of common life. If he sincerely does he may find, in the end,
that he has unwittingly reached a greatness beyond that won for him by
the Janissaries of old.
MASTERS OF CONSTANTINOPLE
Byzas of Megara founded Byzantium _about_ B. C. 658
Darius Hystaspes, King of Persia 515
Pausanias of Sparta 478
First Athenian (Delian) League 477
Sparta 440
Alcibiades of Athens 408
Lysander of Sparta 405
Spartan League 404
Thrasybulus of Athens 390
Second Athenian League 378
League of Byzantium, Caria, Chios, Cos, and Rhodes 357
Alexander the Great 334
Rome 196
The Free City of Byzantium 64
Septimius Severus destroyed Byzantium and renamed it
Augusta Antonina A. D. 196
Constantine the Great 323
Dedicated New Rome 330
Constantius II 337
Julian the Apostate 361
Jovian 363
Valens 364
Theodosius I, the Great 378
Arcadius 395
Theodosius II 408
Marcian 450
Leo I 457
Leo II 474
Zeno 474
Anastasius I 491
Justin I 518
Justinian I, the Great 527
Justin II 565
Tiberius 578
Maurice 582
Phocas 602
Heraclius 610
Heraclius Constantine III and Heracleonas 641
Constans II 642
Constantine IV 668
Justinian II 685
Leontius 695
Tiberius III 697
Justinian II (restored) 705
Philippicus 711
Anastasius II 713
Theodosius III 715
Leo III, the Isaurian 717
Constantine V Copronymus 740
Leo IV 775
Constantine VI 779
Irene 797
Nicephorus I 802
Stauracius 811
Michael I Rhangabe 811
Leo V, the Armenian 813
Michael II, the Amorian 820
Theophilus 829
Michael III 842
Basil I, the Macedonian 867
Leo VI, the Wise 886
Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus 912
Co-emperors:
Alexander 912-913
Romanus I Lecapenus 991-945
Constantine VIII and Stephanus reigned five weeks in 944
Romanus II 958
Basil II, the Slayer of the Bulgarians 963
Co-emperors:
Nicephorus II Phocas 965-969
John I Zimisces 969-976
Constantine IX 976-1025
Constantine IX (sole emperor) 1025
Romanus III Argyrus 1028
Michael IV 1034
Michael V 1042
Theodora and Zoe 1042
Constantine X Monomachus 1042
Theodora (restored) 1054
Michael VI Stratioticus 1056
Isaac I Comnenus 1057
Constantine XI Ducas 1059
Michael VII Ducas and Romanus IV Diogenes 1067
Nicephorus III Botoniates 1078
Alexius I Comnenus 1081
John II Comnenus 1118
Manuel I Comnenus 1143
Alexius II Comnenus 1180
Andronicus I Comnenus 1183
Isaac II Angelus 1185
Alexius III Angelus 1195
Isaac II Angelus (restored) and Alexius IV Angelus 1203
Nicholas Canabus 1204
Alexius V Ducas, Murtzuphlus 1204
Baldwin I (Count of Flanders) 1204
Henry 1205
Peter 1217
Robert 1219
John of Brienne 1228
Baldwin II 1237
Michael VIII Palæologus (fifth emperor of Nicæa; succeeded 1260) 1261
Andronicus II Palæologus 1282
Co-emperor: Michael IX 1295-1320
Andronicus III Palæologus 1328
John V Palæologus 1341
Co-emperor: John VI Cantacuzene 1341-1355
Manuel II Palæologus 1391
John VII Palæologus 1425
Constantine XII Palæologus 1448
Mehmed II, the Conqueror (seventh Ottoman sultan; succeeded
1451) 1453
Baïezid II 1481
Selim I 1512
Süleïman I, the Magnificent 1520
Selim II 1566
Mourad III 1574
Mehmed III 1595
Ahmed I 1603
Moustafa I 1617
Osman II 1618
Moustafa I (restored) 1622
Mourad IV 1623
Ibrahim 1640
Mehmed IV 1649
Süleïman II 1687
Ahmed II 1691
Moustafa II 1695
Ahmed III 1703
Mahmoud I 1730
Osman III 1754
Moustafa III 1757
Abd ül Hamid I 1774
Selim III 1788
Moustafa IV 1807
Mahmoud II, the Reformer 1808
Abd ül Mejid 1839
Abd ül Aziz 1861
Mourad V 1876
Abd ül Hamid II 1876
Mehmed V 1909
A CONSTANTINOPLE BOOK-SHELF
Abbott, G. F.: “Turkey in Transition.” 1909.
American, an (J. E. De Kay?): “Sketches of Turkey.” 1833.
Amicis, Edmondo de: “Costantinopoli.” 1877.
Andréossy, Comte A. F.: “Constantinople et le Bosphore.” 1820.
Antoniades, E. M.: “Sainte Sophie.” 1905.
Ashmead-Bartlett, Ellis: “With the Turks in Thrace.” 1913.
Baedeker, Karl: “Konstantinopel und Kleinasien.” 1905.
Baring, Maurice: “Letters from the Near East.” 1912.
Bayet, Ch.: “L’Art Byzantin.” 2d ed. 1904.
Belin, M. A.: “Histoire de la Latinité de Constantinople.” 2d ed. 1894.
Bérard, Victor: “La Révolution Turque.” 1909.
Beylié, L. de: “L’Habitation Byzantine.” 1902.
Bode, Dr. Wilhelm: “Altpersische Knüpfteppiche.” 1904.
⸺ “Vorderasiatische Knüpfteppiche.”
Boppe, A.: “Les Peintres du Bosphore au Dixhuitième Siècle.” 1911.
Brown, John B.: “The Dervishes.” 1868.
Brown, B. M.: “Foreigners in Turkey.” 1914.
Bury, J. B.: “A History of the Later Roman Empire.” 1889.
⸺ Notes to Gibbon.
⸺ “The Ottoman Conquest.” Cambridge Modern History, 1, 3.
Busbecq: “Life and Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq.” Translated by
C. T. Forster and F. H. B. Daniell. 1881.
Byron, George Gordon, Lord: “Childe Harold,” 1812, and “Don Juan.” 1824.
Cervantes, Miguel: “Don Quixote de la Mancha.” 1605-15.
Choiseul-Gouffier, Comte de: “Le Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce.”
Illustrated. 1782.
Choisy, A.: “L’Art de Bâtir chez les Byzantins.” 1884.
Crawford, F. Marion: “Paul Patoff.” 1887.
Creasy, E. S.: “History of the Ottoman Turks.” 1878.
Diehl, Charles: “Études Byzantines.” 1905.
⸺ “Figures Byzantines.” 2 series.
⸺ “Manuel d’Art Byzantin.”
Djélal Essad: “Constantinople—de Byzance à Stamboul.” 1909.
Djelal Noury: “The Sultan.” 1912.
Dwight, Henry O.: “Constantinople and Its Problems.” 1901.
⸺ “Turkish Life in War Time.” 1879.
Ebersolt, Jean: “Le Grand Palais de Constantinople.” 1910.
⸺ “Églises Byzantines de Constantinople.” 1914.
Edhem Pacha: “L’Architecture Ottomane.” 1873.
Eliot, Sir Charles (Odysseus): “Turkey in Europe.” 2d ed. 1908.
Eliot, Frances: “The Diary of an Idle Woman in Constantinople.”
Epstein, M.: “The Early History of the Levant Company.” 1908.
Evlia Chelibi: “The Voyages of Evlia Chelibi.” Translated from the
Turkish.
Falke, Otto von: “Majolica.”
Farrère, Claude: “L’Homme qui Assassina.”
Fazy, Edmond, and Abdul Halim Memdouh: “Anthologie de l’Amour Turque.”
Finlay, G.: “A History of Greece.” 1877.
Fouquet, Dr.: “Contribution à l’Etude de la Céramique Orientale.” 1900.
Gallaway, James: “Constantinople Ancient and Modern.” Published London,
1797.
Gardner, Alice: “Theodore of Studium.”
Garnett, Lucy M. J.: “Mysticism and Magic in Turkey.” 1912.
⸺ “The Turkish People.” 1909.
⸺ “The Women and Folklore of Turkey.”
Gautier, Théophile: “Constantinople.” 1854.
Gibb, E. J. W.: “A History of Ottoman Poetry.” 5 vols. 1900-8.
Gibbon, Edward: “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire.” Edited by J. B. Bury. 7 vols. 1896.
Goodell, William: “Forty Years in the Turkish Empire.” 1876.
Grelot: “Rélation Nouvelle d’un Voyage de Constantinople.” Illustrated
1680.
Grosvenor, Edwin A.: “Constantinople.” Illustrated. 2d ed. 1900.
Gurlitt, Cornelius: “Die Baukunst Konstantinopels.” 1907-12.
Hagopian, H. H.: “Ottoman-Turkish Conversation Grammar.” 1907.
Hakluyt, Richard: “The Principall Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and
Discoveries of the English Nation....” 1598-1600.
Halidé Edib Hanoum: “Handan.” 1913.
Hamlin, Cyrus: “Among the Turks.” 1878.
Hamlin: “My Life and Times.” 1893.
Hammer, Joseph von, Purgstall: “Constantinopolis und der Bosporos.” 1822.
⸺ “Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches.” 10 vols. 1827.
⸺ “Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman....” Traduit par J.-J. Hellert. 18 vols.
and atlas. 1835.
Harrison, Frederic: “Nicephorus,” 1906, and “Theophano.” 1904.
Hatch, Dr.: “The Organization of the Early Christian Churches.” 1880.
Hawley, Walter: “Oriental Rugs, Antique and Modern.” 1913.
Hichens, Robert: “The Near East.” 1913.
Hutton, W. H.: “Constantinople.” (Mediæval Towns Series.) 2d ed. 1904.
Jackson, Sir T. G.: “Byzantine and Romanesque Architecture.” 1912.
James, Lionel: “With the Conquered Turk.” 1913.
Jannaris, A. N.: “A Concise Dictionary of the English and Modern Greek
Languages.” 1895.
Jenkins, Hester D.: “Behind Turkish Lattices.” 1912.
Johnson, Mrs. (Susannah Willard): “A Narrative of Captivity.” 1796;
reprinted 1907.
Knolles, Richard: “A Generall Historie of the Turks.” 1603. Continuation
by Sir Paul Ricaut. 1687.
Kondakov: “Les Émaux Byzantins.” 1892.
Koran, The. Translated by George Sale. 1734.
Krumbacher: “Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur.” 2d ed. 1897.
Kúnos, Ignace: “Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales.” 1913.
La Barte, Jules: “Le Palais Impérial de Constantinople.” 1861.
Lamartine, Alphonse de: “Voyage en Orient.” 1835.
Lane-Poole, Stanley: “Life of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.” 1888.
⸺ “Oriental Coins in the British Museum.” 10 vols. 1875-90.
⸺ “Saracenic Arts.” 1886.
⸺ “Turkey.” (Story of the Nations Series.) 1886.
Lawson, J. C.: “Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion.” 1910.
Leclerq, H.: “Manuel d’Archéologie Chrétienne.” 1907.
Le Comte, Prétextat: “Les Arts et Métiers de la Turquie et de l’Orient.”
1902.
Le Hay: “Engraved Costumes of the Levant.” Paris, 1714.
Lethaby and Swainson: “Sancta Sophia.” 1894.
Lewis, G. G.: “The Practical Book of Oriental Rugs.” 2d ed. 1913.
Loti, Pierre: “Aziyadé.” 1876.
⸺ “Les Désenchantées.” 1906.
⸺ “Fantôme d’Orient.” 1892.
⸺ “Turquie Agonisante.” 1913.
Lybyer, Albert H.: “The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of
Süleïman the Magnificent.” (Harvard Historical Studies.) 1913.
Mahmud Mukhtar Pascha: “Meine Führung im Balkankriege, 1912.” 1913.
Margoliouth, D. S.: “Mahommed and the Rise of Islam.” 1906.
McCabe, Joseph: “The Empresses of Constantinople.” 1913.
McCullagh, Francis: “The Fall of Abdul Hamid.” 1910.
Melek Hanoum and Grace Ellison: “Abdul Hamid’s Daughter.” 1913.
Melling: “Le Voyage Pittoresque de Constantinople et des Rives du
Bosphore.” (Plates.) 1819.
Midhat Bey, Ali Haydar: “The Life of Midhat Pasha.” 1903.
Miller, William: “The Costumes of Turkey.” 1802.
Miller, William: “The Latins in the Levant.” 1908.
⸺ “The Ottoman Empire: 1801-1913.” 1913.
Millingen, Alexander van: “Byzantine Churches in Constantinople.” 1912.
⸺ “Byzantine Constantinople: The Walls....” 1899.
⸺ “Constantinople.” 1906.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley: “Letters.” 1763 _et al._
Mordtmann, Dr.: “Esquisse Topographique de Constantinople.” 1892.
Mour, J. van: “Recueil de Cent Estampes Représentant Différentes Nations
du Levant.” (Plates.) 1712.
Muir, Sir William: “The Life of Mohammad.”
Mumford, J. K.: “Oriental Rugs.” 1901.
“Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Constantinople....” 1900.
Neale, J. M.: “The Fall of Constantinople.”
Norden, W.: “Das Papsttum und Byzanz.” 1903.
d’Ohsson, Ignatius Mouradgea: “Tableau Général de l’Empire Ottoman.”
Illustrated. 1824.
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1892.
Pardoe, Miss, and W. H. Bartlett: “The Beauties of the Bosphorus.”
Illustrated. 1832.
Pears, Sir Edwin: “The Destruction of the Greek Empire.” 1903.
Pears: “The Fall of Constantinople.” 1885.
⸺ “Turkey and Its People.” 1911.
Racine, Jean: “Bajazet.” 1672.
Ramsay, Sir William M.: “Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern
Provinces of the Roman Empire.” 1906.
⸺ “The Revolution in Constantinople and Turkey.” 1909.
Redhouse, Sir James: “Turkish-English and English-Turkish Dictionary.”
Rémond, Georges: “Avec les Vaincus.” 1913.
Rosedale, H. G.: “Queen Elizabeth and the Levant Company.” 1904.
Saladin, H., and G. Migeon: “Manuel d’Art Musulman.” 1907.
Schiltberger, Johann: “Bondage and Travels.” Translated by J. B. Telfer.
1879.
Schlumberger, Gustave: “Un Empereur Byzantin au Dixième Siècle.” 1890.
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⸺ “Les Îles des Princes.” 1884.
Sélim Bey: “Carnet de Campagne d’un Officier Turc.” 1913.
Smith, Francis: “Eastern Costumes.” 1769.
Stanley, Dean: “The Eastern Church.” 1861.
Strzygowski: “Die Byzantinischen Wasserbehälter von Konstantinopel.”
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Thalasso, A.: “Karagueuz.”
⸺ “Le Théâtre Turc.” 1884.
Tinayre, Marcelle: “Notes d’une Voyageuse en Turquie.” 1909.
Townsend, Meredith: “Asia and Europe.” 3d ed. 1909.
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Walsh, Robert: “Constantinople and the Seven Churches of Asia.”
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Walsh: “A Residence in Constantinople.” 1836.
Washburn, George: “Fifty Years in Constantinople and Recollections of
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INDEX
References in italics are chiefly to illustrations.
Abraham, 287, 297.
Admirals:
Haïreddin Pasha Barbarossa, 139, 169, 170.
Hassan Pasha, 368.
Kîlîj Ali Pasha, 129, 166.
Pialeh Pasha, 130, 140, 163.
Sokollî Mehmed Pasha, 139.
Süleïman Pasha, 376.
Adrianople, 40, 69, 210, 525.
Aïvan (Eïvan) Seraï, 87.
Ak Bîyîk, 367, 370.
Ak Seraï, 364, 381.
Albanians, 30, 159, 298, 325, 334, 392, 394, 397, 406, 429, 431, 446,
449, 450, 461, 470.
_Alem_, 301, 312, 316, 359, 376, 380.
Alexander the Great, 197, 259.
Algiers, 166, 169.
Ali, 310, _311_, 313.
Ali Bey Souyou, 142, 143.
Ambassadors and Ambassadresses, xi, 24, 60, 84, 109, 110, 134, 143,
156, 160, 170, 173, 174, 175, 176, 210, 229, 238 _et seq._,
243, 254, 289, 293, 329, 385, 418, 419, 431, 432, 473, 474,
478, 497, 517, 520, 527. See also Lady Mary Montagu.
Americans, xi, 16, 80, 81, 192, 193, 237, 240, 352, 362, 394, 395,
403, 431, 438, 440, 473, 474, 478, 497, 529, 541.
Amsterdam, 162.
Anadolou Hissar, 245, 251, 383.
Anemas, 88.
Apollo, 149, 197, 285, 341, 344.
Appian Way, 75.
Aqueducts, 80, 142, 197, 363, 364, 483, _484_.
Arabic numerals, 104, 369.
Arabs, 9, 14, 20, 88, 128, 135, 159, 200, 215, 227, 265, 266, 270,
274, 286, 292, 295, 411, 417, 419, 431, 453, 537, 540.
Architects:
Christodoulos, 508.
Haïreddin, 41.
Kemaleddin Bey, xi, 41.
Sinan, 41, 42, 49, 50, 53, 60, 61, 65, 139, 165, 182, 200, 206,
210, 356, 369, 377, 486, 523.
Vedad Bey, 41.
Zia Bey, xii, 41.
Architecture:
Byzantine, 9, 40, 76, 77, 78, 88, 89, 94, 95, 100, 106, 508. See
also Churches and Palaces.
Romanesque, 77.
Turkish, 7, 8, 39, 41, 42 _et seq._, 143, 353, 357, 365, 369, 370,
371, 393, 536. See also Fountains, _Hans_, Houses, Mosques,
Palaces, _Türbehs_, etc.
Ardebil, 48.
Argonauts, 86, 149, 238, 240, 245, 347.
Armenians, 18, 81, 134, 176, 179, 192, 193, 195, 256, 268, 272, 330,
332, 393, 416, 417, 460, 504, 516, 537.
Arnaout-kyöi, 245, 251, _252_, _321_, 344, 345.
Arsenal, 119, 128, 129, 130, 140, 163, 376.
Artillery, 164.
Ash Wednesday, 324.
Athens and Athenians, 75, 76, 78, 99, 157, 197, 216, 469, 545.
Avret Bazaar, 369, 381.
_Áyazma_, 87, 149, 333, 336 _et seq._, 345, 346, 350.
Azap Kapou, 107, 124, 128, 151, 154, 157, 182, 380.
Aziz Mahmoud Hüdaï, 224.
Bagnio, 163, 164.
_Baïram_: _see_ High Days and Holidays.
_Baise-main_ (_mouayedeh_), 289 _et seq._
“Bajazet,” 58.
Balat, 48, 87.
Balîklî, 332 _et seq._, 515, 520.
Balio, 128, 152, 153, 160, 164, 173, 174, 502.
Barbarossa: _see_ Admirals.
Barbyses: _see_ Kiat Haneh Souyou.
_Basma haneh_, 213, 214.
Battles and Sieges:
Adrianople, 525.
Algiers, 169.
Bed’r, 377.
Byzantium, 107, 197, 545.
Cairo, 278, 302.
Chatalja, 481 _et seq._, 514.
Chios, 130.
Chrysopolis, 197.
Constantinople, 80, 85, 92, 97, 99, 108, 128, 132, 135, 140, 154,
163, 164, 170, 195, 215, 333, 330, 347-383 _et seq._, 404, 425
_et seq._, 502.
Famagusta, 140.
Kerbela, 310, 311, 314, 362, 366, 377.
Kîrk Kil’seh, x, 467, 469, 472, 520, 525.
Lepanto, 128, 129, 166.
Lüleh Bourgass, 469, 473, 490.
Malta, 130.
Platæa, 107, 404.
Szigeth, 139.
Vienna, 25, 31.
Bazaars: _see_ Markets.
Bebek, _23_, 247, 248, 355, 434.
Beehive, 206.
Beïkos, 240, 244, 373, 375.
Beïlerbeï, 217, 255, 375.
Belgrade forest, 238.
Bellini, Gentile, _iv_.
Benedictines, 161.
Benozzo Gozzoli, 502, _505_.
Beshiktash, _121_, 149, 150, 169, 170, 298, 420, 434, 443.
_Bezesten_: _see_ Markets.
Bible House, 80, 82.
Bird-house, _72_, _135_, 218, _313_.
Black Sea, 3, 30, 114, 122, 124, 127, 210, 238, 240, 243, 350, 369,
384, 391, 459.
Boats and Shipping, _23_, 85, 114 _et seq._, _115_, _118_, _119_,
_121_, _122_, _123_, 129, 132, _145_, 146, 157, 175, 182, 184,
187, 188, 323, 396, _397_, 399, 417, 522.
Borgia, Alexander, 92.
Bosphorus, 113, 128, 130, 196, 197, 198, 200, 212, 216, _217_, 218,
228 _et seq._, _243_, _249_, _252_, _321_, 322, 340, 344, 382,
384, 390, 391, 393, 394, 396, _397_, 417, 458, 450.
Bragadin, Marcantonio, 140.
Brangwyn, Frank, 4, 77.
Bridge, 29.
Broussa, 15, 40, 48, 61, 146, 195, 251, 289, 302, 358, 408.
Bulgaria and Bulgarians, 98, 150, 334, 335, _336_, 417, 429, 446,
473, 480, 481, 487, 488, 500, 511, 514, 517, 521, 531, 535.
Büyük Chekmejeh, 486, 487.
Büyük Dereh, 238, 240.
Byron, 79, 243, 549.
Byzantium, 74, 77, 107, 142, 196, 197, 216, 259, 545.
Byzas, 142, 216.
“Cage,” _263_, 264, 354.
Calendars:
Byzantine, 104.
Gregorian, 99, 179.
Hebrew, 179.
Julian, 99, 178, 318, 348, 408.
Mohammedan, 179, 265, 277, 279, 284, 286.
Caliphate, 260, 277, 279, 302, 310.
Calligraphers and Calligraphy, 13, 46, 131, 140, 166, _167_, 366.
Camels, 142, 301, 306, _307_, 324, 417, 483.
_Campagna_, 79, 142, 391, 482, 483.
Capitulations, 152, 176, 504, 511.
Capuchins, 161, 164, 172.
Carnival, 323.
Catherine de’ Medici, 174.
Ceilings, 12, 191, 202, 212, 251, 252, _253_, 262, 380.
Cemeteries, 8, 107, _109_, _111_, 132, 140, _141_, 163, _181_, 182,
189, 199, 218 _et seq._, _221_, _223_, 315, 331, 334, _384_,
389, 390, 395, 483, 489, 520.
Cervantes, 166.
Chalcedon, 196, 197, 216.
Chamlîja, 216 _et seq._, 248.
Charles II, 24.
Chatalja, 426, 427, _428_, 433, 445, 454, 481, 486, 488, 490, 514,
521.
Chénier, André, 148, 161, 183.
Chibouklou, 245, 372.
Chinili Kyöshk: _see_ Palaces.
Cholera, 486, 489, 491 _et seq._, _498_, 520, 526.
Christmas: _see_ High Days and Holidays.
Chronograms, 61, 221, 367 _et seq._, 380.
Chrysopolis, 113, 195 _et seq._
Churches:
Byzantine—
Archangel Michael, 245, 347.
Blacherne, 87.
Chora—“Our Saviour in the Fields” (Kahrieh Jami), 96 _et seq._,
_97_, _98_, _102_, _104_, 160.
Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, 338.
Holy Apostles, 150, 507, 514.
Myrelaion (Boudroun Jami), _83_.
Pammakaristos—“All-Blessed Virgin” (Fetieh Jami), 96, 507, 514,
_515_.
Pantocrator (Zeïrek Kil’seh Jami), 160, 502, _503_.
Pege (Balîklî), 333.
SS. Cosmas and Damian, 142.
St. Euphemia, 197.
St. Irene, 96, 128, 259.
St. Irene (Galata), 150.
St. Mamas, 150.
St. Mary the Mongolian, 508.
SS. Sergius and Bacchus (Küchük Aya Sofya), 84, 359.
St. Sophia (Aya Sofya), 40, 46, 62, 63, 75, _77_, 81, 82, 90, 92,
96, 152, 160, 180, 282, 298, 358, 360, 378, 423, _447_, 451,
460, _465_, 502, 507, 514, 518, 526.
Studion (Imrahor Jamisi), 91 _et seq._, 93.
Greek—
Balîklî, “Our Lady of the Fishes,” 333, 520.
Metamorphosis (Kandilli), 345.
St. George (Phanar), 133, 327 _et seq._, 514, 516.
St. George (Prinkipo), 342.
St. Stephen, 349.
Taxyarch (Arnaout-kyöi), 322, 350.
Latin—
Sant’ Antonio, 159, 172.
S. Benoît, 157, 161, 184.
San Francesco (Yeni Valideh Jamisi), 158, 172, 205.
St. George, 149.
S. Louis, 172.
Sta. Maria Draperis, 172.
San Paolo (Arab Jami), 159, 186.
S. Pierre, 157, 159, 160.
Trinitarians, 173.
Cimabue, 105.
Cisterns, 81, 82, 93.
Climate, 3, 231, 238, 244.
_Cloaca_, 82.
Clocks, 201.
Coffee and Coffee-Houses, 2, 20 _et seq._, _23_, _26_, _27_, _29_,
_31_, 35, 140, 187, 199, 219, 268 _et seq._, 275, 334, 396,
_397_, 398, 400.
Colour, 3, 15, 114, 390.
Columns:
Constantine (Burnt Column), 72, 107, 173, 424.
Claudius Gothicus, 259.
Marcian, 83.
Committee of Union and Progress, 406, 408, 409, 425, 512.
Conqueror: _see_ Sultan Mehmed II.
Constitution, 30, 136, 255, 277, 284, 332, 402, 406, 410, 413.
Convents, 83, 132, 159.
Conventuals, 158, 172, 205.
Corbels, _5_, 10, _11_, _12_, _13_, _72_, _133_, 158, _199_, 251,
_252_, 264, _313_, 358, 393, 394, _399_.
Costumes, 30, 117, 146, 159, 177, 181, 220, 269, 272, 273, 283, 290
_et seq._, _299_, 303, _305_, 307, _311_, 312, 314, 315, 322,
325, 327, 328, _331_, 332, 342, 343, 392, 419, 423, 427, 431,
435, 448, _451_, 452, 460, _462_, _485_, _517_, _523_, _526_,
530, 531, 532, _533_.
Courts, 7, _40_, 42, 63 _et seq._, _64_, _69_, 70, 72, 77, 94, _135_,
136, 139, 152, _153_, 160, 164, 165, 183, 200, _201_, 206, 211,
212, 260, 261, 262, _263_, 264, 288, _289_, 311, 312, 315, 358,
_359_, _360_, _361_, 523.
Crete, 88, 173.
Croats, 130, 177, 394.
Crusades:
First, 142.
Fourth, 77, 80, 85, 89, 92, 132, 150, 152, 491, 507.
Cut-Throat Castle, 347, 364, 383 _et seq._, _384_, _387_, 390.
Cydaris: _see_ Ali Bey Souyou.
Cypress: _see_ Trees.
Cyprus, 129, 140.
Dancers and Dancing, 145, 248, 249, 258, 269, 270, 273, 274, 294,
325, _331_, 332, 335, _336_, _337_, 343, 344.
Demeter, 347.
Derivatives, 19, 23, 118, 123, 128, 151, 163, 244, 246, 257, 269.
Dervishes:
Bektashi, xii, 390.
Halveti, 223.
Mevlevi, xii, 108, 148, 171.
Roufaï, 222 _et seq._, 316, 394.
Sünbüllü, 394.
Diehl, 103, 549.
Doges’ Palace, 89.
Dogs, 127, 389, 402, 403.
Dominicans, 159.
“Don Quixote,” 166.
Doors, 9, 12, _37_, _40_, _41_, 55, 62, _64_, _65_, _69_, _70_, _71_,
_135_, 165, _204_, _209_, _213_, _252_, _253_, 254, 260, _261_,
262, _281_, _313_, _377_.
Doria, 157, 166, 245.
Earthquakes, 17, 85, 96, 110, 157.
Easter: _see_ High Days and Holidays.
Eastern Church, 92, 113, 318 _et seq._, 500 _et seq._, 553.
Eaves, _5_, 10, _11_, _13_, _64_, _135_, 136, _183_, _199_, _213_,
260, _263_, 264, 360, 366, 370, 373, _375_, _379_, 380, 381,
393.
Egypt, 163, 244, 246, 247, 260, 278, 302, 303.
Eleusinian Mysteries, 326.
Elijah: _see_ St. Elias.
Embassies, 134, 171, 172, 173, 175, 238 _et seq._, _241_, _243_, 386,
438, 473, 474.
Embroidery, 57, 146, 301, 312, 328, 531, _532_.
Emirgyan, 245, 246, 251, 372.
Emperors and Empresses, 545 _et seq._:
Alexius II, 152.
Anastasius I, 87.
Andronicus I, 483.
Andronicus II, 99, 100.
Andronicus III, 99.
Baldwin I, 160, 547.
Basil II the Slayer of the Bulgarians, 152.
Caracalla, 107.
Constans, 80.
Constantine I the Great, 4, 75, 82, 84, 85, 92, 107, 150, 197, 363,
424, 501, 507.
Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, 84, 88.
Constantine X Monomachus, 92.
Constantine XII, 81.
Eudoxia, 92.
Hadrian, 82, 363.
Heraclius, 87, 383.
Isaac Angelus, 88.
John V Cantacuzene, 86, 157.
John VII Palæologus, 502, _505_.
Justinian I the Great, 4, 78, 85, 90, 96, 97, 98, 132, 142, 150,
259, 363, 507.
Leo I the Great, 150.
Leo III the Isaurian, 96, 259.
Manuel I Comnenus, 215.
Manuel II Palæologus, 92.
Martian, 83, 87.
Michael VII Palæologus, 85, 92, 154, 508.
Nicephorus Phocas, 85, 88.
Pulcheria, 87, 92, 338.
Septimius Severus, 107.
Theodosius I the Great, 109.
Theodosius II, 92, 108, 109, 142, 404.
Valens, 197, 363.
Empress Eugénie, 255.
England and English, 4, 24, 76, 79, 151, 157, 173 _et seq._, 189,
192, 197, 233, 238, 239, 246, 250, 293, 394, 402, 403, 414,
415, 420, 434, 436, 440, 445, 454, 467, 474, 478, 481, 488,
497, 513, 521, 527, 529, 531, 534, 537, 542. See also Byron,
Gibbon, and Lady Mary Montagu.
Epiphany: _see_ High Days and Holidays.
Epirus and Epirotes, 171, 325, _331_.
Escutcheons, 157, 160.
Evil Eve, 248, 298, 325, 463.
_Evkaf_: _see_ Ministry of Pious Foundations.
Excavation, 78, 80, 94, 198.
Exiles, 416.
Eyoub, 135 _et seq._, 452, 521 _et seq._
Fasting, 265, 266, 319, 324, 325, 346.
_Fatih_: _see_ Sultan Mehmed II.
Ferdinand and Isabella, 159.
Fez, 1, 220, 269, 291, 328, 343.
Fîndîklî, 171, 182, 381.
Fireplaces, 12, 55, 134, 261, 262.
Fires, 2, 8, 19, 36, 82, 83, 134, 157, 158, 160, 161, 181, 240, 250,
256, 354, 378, 400, 490.
Flagellants, 312 _et seq._
Florence and Florentines, 55, 85, 107, 151, 502. See also Benozzo
Gozzoli, Cimabue, and Giotto.
Flowers, 7, 28, 110, 111, 136, 140, 143, 172, 193, 206, 227, 228,
230, 232, 233, 257, 258, 264, 326, 340, 341, 389, 392.
_Fondaco dei Turchi_, 19, 89.
Fountains, viii, 352 _et seq._, 536:
House and Garden Fountains—
Bubbling, _357_.
Cascade (_chaghleyan_), 236, _239_.
Dripping (_selsebil_), 235, _236_, _237_, 354, _355_, 356, 370.
Jetting (_fîskieh_), 152, _153_, 233, _235_, 251, _253_, 254,
255, 260, 355, 356.
Wall, 11, _233_, 234, 262, 353 _et seq._, _354_.
Mosque Fountains—
Interior, 358.
Exterior—
Applied, 35, _135_, 358.
Detached (_shadrîvan_), 63, _64_, 65, 72, _77_, _135_, 139,
200, _201_, 205, 358 _et seq._, _359_, _360_, _361_.
Street Fountains—
Applied (_cheshmeh_), 130, 183, _185_, _199_, _205_, 206, 219,
336, 361 _et seq._, _365_, _368_, _371_, 495.
Detached—
_Cheshmeh_, _165_, 183, 361, 372, 373, _374_, _375_, 404, 456.
_Sebil_, _71_, 72, 136, 183, _205_, 206, 361, 376 _et seq._,
_377_, _379_.
France and French, 46, 48, 143, 156, 160, 162, 172, 229, 239, 240,
255, 262, 416, 473, 485, 534, 542. See also Chénier, Gautier,
Loti, Louis, and Paris.
Franciscans, 158, 172.
Frescoes, 100, 103, _191_.
Friends of Stamboul, 70, 85.
Gabriel, 124, 265, 279, 303, 366.
Galata, 124, 141, 148 _et seq._, 180, 182 _et seq._, 415, 416, 436,
448, 490.
Galata Tower, 148, 154, 156, 160, 183, 370.
Gardens, viii, 2, 10, 54, 134, 143, 169, 170, 173, 190, 227 _et
seq._, _230_, _239_, _241_, _243_, 393, 456, 457.
Design, 228, 229, 230, 234, 235, 236, 258, 264.
Marbles, _232_, _233_ _et seq._, _235_, _236_, _237_, _239_.
Mosaic, 228.
Gautier, Théophile, 267, 550.
Genoa and Genoese, 124, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, _155_, 156, 157,
158, 188, 245, 323, 384, 502.
Germans and Germany, 124, 239, 404, 406, 414, 419, 448, 456, 457,
471, 474, 475, 486, 534, 542.
Giant’s Mountain (_Yousha Daghi_), 243.
Gibbon, 79, 195, 341.
Giotto, _102_, 103, 104, 105.
Gipsies, 269, 294, 316, 332, 334.
Gladstone, 402, 537.
_Goeben_, 486.
Golden Gate, 92, 108, _109_, 110, 113, 339.
Golden Horn, 4, 39, 87, 88, 106, 107, 112, 113 _et seq._, _115_,
_119_, _123_, _141_, _145_, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 157,
_181_, 188, 189, 259, 284, 330.
Grand Bazaar: _see_ Markets.
Grand Logothete, 99, 329.
Grand Vizier:
Daoud Pasha, 365.
Ferid Pasha, 406.
Hafîz Ahmed Pasha, 378.
Hüsseïn Hilmi Pasha, 292.
Ibrahim Pasha (Mourad III), 62.
Ibrahim Pasha (Ahmed III), 143, 256, 372, 379.
Kyamil Pasha, 534.
Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha, 71 _et seq._, 253.
Kyöprülü Mehmed Pasha, 72.
Mahmoud Pasha, 48.
Mahmoud Shefket Pasha, x, 428, 433, 440, 444, 453, 454, 512.
Midhat Pasha, 255.
Rüstem Pasha, 49, 62, 200.
Sokollî Mehmed Pasha, 65, 128, 139, 140, 182.
Tevfik Pasha, 431.
Grapes, 345, 346.
Grape-vines, 19, _21_, 28, 65, _72_, _135_, _153_, 187, _213_, _271_,
358, 386.
Gravestones, 8, 34, _109_, _111_, 139, _141_, 218, 219, 220 _et
seq._, _221_, _223_, _384_, 389.
Greeks, 18, 55, 105, 113, 117, 121, 122, 123, 124, 132, 133, 154,
156, 160, 161, 162, 169, 175, 176, 177, 178, 205, 268, 269,
272, 318, _321_, 325, 330, 331, 334, _337_, 338, 339, 344, 345,
350, 393, 401, 407, 411, 418, 426, 429, 446, 460, 483, 500,
_501_, 504, 509, 511, 512, _517_, 537.
Grilles, 7, _9_, _35_, 39, 65, _71_, 72, _133_, 136, _183_, 199,
_205_, 212, 224, _207_, _263_, 360, _361_, _375_, 376, 378,
_379_, 381.
Guilds, 19, 30, 117, 118, 119, 120, 124, 284, 325, 332, 362, 400, 412.
Gyök Sou, 146, 245, 346, _385_, 456.
Hagar, 366.
Haïdar Pasha, 196, 214, 444.
Halcyons, 239.
Hannibal, 197.
_Hans_, 16, 19, 20, 81, 82, 152, _153_, 173, 311, 312, _313_, 315,
536.
Hass-kyöi, 159, 324, 369.
High Days and Holidays:
Greek—
Annunciation, 325.
Ascension, 350.
Assumption, 346.
Balîklî Day (Our Lady of the Fishes), 332 _et seq._, _336_.
Carnival, 323.
_Apokreá_, 324.
Cheese Sunday, 324.
Christmas, 157, 179, 319, 323.
Easter, 92, 179, 327 _et seq._
Easter Monday, 330.
Epiphany (Great blessing), 320 _et seq._, _321_.
Exaltation of the Cross, 346.
Forty Martyrs (_Aï Saránda_), 338 _et seq._
Lent, 324 _et seq._
Clean Monday (Tatavla Day), 324 _et seq._, _331_.
Great Week (Holy Week), 325 _et seq._
Little Blessing, 320.
May Day, 350.
Nativity of the Virgin, 346.
New Year (_Aï Vassíli_), 319.
_Panayía Mavromolítissa_, 350.
St. Demetrius (_Aï Thimítri_), 347.
St. Elias, 285, 341, 344.
St. George, 285, 341 _et seq._
St. John, 350.
St. Stephen, 348.
Transfiguration, 345.
Mohammedan—
Accession Day, 248, 284.
_Arifeh_, 286.
_Ashoureh_ (Death of Hüsseïn), 200, 308 _et seq._
_Baïram_—
Greater or _Kourban Baïram_, 287, 288, 297 _et seq._, _299_,
303.
Lesser or _Sheker Baïram_, 64, 287, 288 _et seq._, _289_.
_Berat Gejesi_ (Revelation of Prophet’s Mission), 287, 303.
Hîd’r Eless (Hîzîr), 144, 213, 285, 341.
_Hirkaï Sherif_ (the Noble Robe), 277.
_Kad’r Gejesi_ (Night of Power), 265, 279 _et seq._, _281_, 287
Kassîm, 213, 347.
Liberty Day, 284, 408.
_Mevloud_ (Prophet’s Birthday), 286, 287, 304.
_Miraj Gejesi_ (Ascension), 224, 287.
New Year, 179, 285.
Nevrouz (No-rouz), 285, 339.
_Ramazan_, 39, 64, 223, 247, 265 _et seq._, _271_, _275_, 287, 288,
400.
_Reghaïb Gejesi_ (Prophet’s Conception), 287.
Hippodrome, 56, 75, 83, 152, 403, _465_.
Hîzîr, 202, 203, 285, 341, 366. See also High Days and Holidays.
Holagou, 508.
Holy Week: _see_ High Days and Holidays.
Holy Wells: _see_ _Áyazma_.
Horse Tails, 129.
Hospitals, 66, 467, 472 _et seq._, _480_, 497 _et seq._
Houses:
“Genoese,” 158.
Phanariote, _133_, 134.
Turkish, viii, 2, _5_, 8, _72_, _138_, 139, _155_, _199_, _213_,
_295_, _387_, _399_, _447_, 536.
_Konak_, 9 _et seq._, _11_, _12_, _13_, 133, 191, 353, 393.
_Kyöshk_ (Kiosk), 48, 246, 247, 250, 251 _et seq._, _253_, 255,
258, 260, 356, _357_.
_Yalî_, 240, 245, 250, 251, _252_, 256, 354, 372, 382, 393, _397_.
Howells, W. D., vii.
Hungary and Hungarians, 139, 162.
Hüsseïn, 310, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 362, 366, 377.
Iconoclasts, 91, 96, 97.
Icons, 333, 349, 516.
_Panayía Mavromolítissa_, 350.
Shower of the Way, 92, 97, 160, 502.
_Iftar_, 247, 266, 277, 279.
Illuminations, 143, 248, 257, 258, 267, 280, 282, 284, 287.
Inscriptions:
Greek, 100, 108.
Latin, 108, 109, 110, 157, 161.
Turkish, 10, 13, 46, 47, 61, _63_, _67_, 73, _131_, _167_, _203_,
220, 221, 224, 243, _261_, _357_, 366 _et seq._, 373, 380.
Io, 142, 216.
Ishmael, 297.
Islam, 34, 66, 246, 260, 267, 282, 284, 286, 287, 292, 303, 366, 481,
496, 539 _et seq._
Issa Kapoussou, 108, 360.
Izzet Pasha, 414.
Janissaries, 130, 198, 385, 426, 484, 543. Also Sinan.
Jesuits, 161.
Jews, 134, 159, 369, 429, 435, 446, 504, 517.
Jihangir Soultan, 61, 171.
Joshua, 243.
Judas, 233, 327, 350.
Kaaba, 57, 277, 302, 303.
Kabatash, _118_, _187_, 188.
Kadi-kyöi, 196, 198, 219.
Kalafat Yeri, 188.
_Kallikántzari_, 322.
Kandilli, 248, _249_, 345, 356.
Kanlîja, 371.
Kara-gyöz, 270 _et seq._, _271_.
Kassîm Pasha, 128, 130, 140, 163, 180, 187, 368, 443.
Kazlî, _356_, 364.
Kemer Altî, 184.
Keroessa, 142.
Khedives, 244, 245, 246, 247.
Kiat Haneh, 143 _et seq._, 236, 285, _373_.
Kiat Haneh Souyou, 142, 143, 144, _145_, 146, 147, 236.
Kilios, 238.
Kiosk: _see_ Houses.
Kîrk Cheshmeh, 364.
Kîrk Kil’seh: _see_ Battles and Sieges.
Knockers, 9, 62.
Konia, 30, 40, 48.
Koran, 23, 47, 57, 66, 73, 127, 131, 220, 265, 277, 278, 279, 283,
303, 310, 366, 367, 393, 410.
Kourou Cheshmeh, 347, _348_.
Küchük Chekmejeh, 486, 489.
Kürds, 214, 294, 332, 412, 537.
Kütahya, 47, 205, 288.
Kyöprülü: _see_ Grand Vizier.
Kyössem: _see_ Sultana.
Lady Lowther, 474, 520, 527.
Lady Mary Montagu, 79, 175, 230, 233, 238, 250, 531.
Lady of Light: _see_ Sultana.
Lady of the Fishes, Our: _see_ Balîklî.
Lady of the Mongols, 508.
_Lanterna_, 184, 334, 336, _337_, 343, 345.
Lanterns, _115_, 129, 130, 166, 170, 268, 281, 282, 320, _321_, 322,
323, 392, 490, 515, _517_, 519.
Latins, 92, 105, 151, 154, 156, 162, 171, 172, 504, 508. See also
Genoese, Venetians, etc.
Laz, 117, 121, 294, 331, 344, 461, 537.
Lazarists, 161.
Leander’s Tower: _see_ Maiden’s Tower.
Lent: _see_ High Days and Holidays.
Lepanto: _see_ Battles and Sieges.
Lepers, 219.
Levant Company, 24, 174, 175.
Levantines, 161, 176.
Libraries, 66, 70, 73, 139, 177, 259, 263.
London, 24, 76, 175.
Loti, Pierre, 141, 148, 521, 537.
Louis XIV, 25, 143, 161.
Louis XV, 143, 162, 206.
Lüleh Bourgass: _see_ Battles and Sieges.
Macedonia and Macedonians, 36, 197, 216, 259, 325, 335, 394, 406, 426
_et seq._, 511.
_Magnifica communità di Pera_, 155, 156.
Maiden’s Tower, 214.
Malta and Maltese, 117, 130, 166.
Manuscripts, 57, 70, 91, 150, 202, 259.
Markets, 15, 18, 34, 199, _399_.
Bazaars (Grand Bazaar), 15.
_Bezesten_, 15.
Copper market, 18.
Dried Fruit Bazaar, 18, 120, 152.
Egyptian (Spice) Bazaar, 17.
Fish market, 18.
Flower market, 18, 200.
Friday market, 187, 206.
Fruit market, 120.
Monday market, 19.
Rug market, 16.
Thursday market, 184.
Tuesday market, 187.
Vegetable market, 18.
Wood market, 122, 152.
Marquetry, 16, 36, 55, 57, _59_, 130, 134, _203_, 251, _253_, 254,
_261_, 262, 295.
Mary Ducas, 98, 103.
Mary Palæologus: _see_ Lady of the Mongols.
Master of Flowers, 257.
Mecca and Medina, 39, 57, 200, 251, 266, 302, 303, 304, 306, 394.
Medea, 117, 238, 347.
_Medresseh_, 17, 66 _et seq._, 358.
Ali Pasha, 73.
Feïzoullah Effendi, 69, _70_, 366.
Hassan Pasha, _72_.
Ibrahim Pasha, 379.
Kefenek Sinan, 152.
Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha, _71_, _359_.
Shemsi Pasha, 209 _et seq._, _211_.
Sokollî Mehmed Pasha, _65_, 66, _69_, _361_.
Megara, 107, 142, 196.
Mehmed Soultan, 60, 61.
Melling, 220, 250, 254, 256, 373.
_Meltem_, 238, 244.
_Mese_: _see_ Streets.
_Mihrab_, 30, 46, 50, _51_, 53, _67_, 95, 130, _131_, 166, _167_,
202, 204, 206, _207_, 224.
Mihrîmah Soultan, 200.
_Mimber_, 39, 50, _67_, _131_, 166, _167_, 202, 212.
Ministry of Pious Foundations, xi, xii, 42, 66, 94, 206, 292, 362.
Mirror stone, 354, 358, 364.
Missions, 80, 157, 158 _et seq._, 164, 172, 173.
Mitylene, 169.
Moda, 196, 214.
Mohammed, xi, 14, 57, 66, 73, 127, 135, 139, 219, 251, 266, 267, 277,
278, 279, 286, 287, 288, 293, 303, 304, 307, 309, 310, 352,
450, 479, 540.
Monasteries, 91, 93, 96, 157, 158 _et seq._, 332, 342, 383, 502, 508,
509, 510, 520.
Montagu: _see_ Lady Mary.
Mosaic:
Glass, 77, 78, 84, 95, 96, _98_, 100 _et seq._, _102_, _104_, 161,
259, 282.
Marble, 55, 89, _90_, 94, 95.
Pebble, 228.
Mosques:
Bebek, _23_.
Galata and Pera—
Arab Jami (San Paolo): _see_ Churches.
Asmalî Mesjid, 171.
Fîndîklî, 182.
Hamidieh, 280, 282, 410, 431, 444.
Jihangir, 171.
Kîlîj Ali (“Don Quixote”), _165_, _167_, 182.
Nousretieh, 165, 182.
Pialeh Pasha, 130, _131_, 163.
Sokollî Mehmed Pasha, 182.
Yeni Valideh Jamisi (San Francesco): _see_ Churches.
Giant’s Mountain, 243.
Kourou Cheshmeh, 347, _348_.
Roumeli Hissar, 394, 398.
Scutari—
Ahmedieh, _209_.
Áyazma, 209, _213_, 371.
Chinili Jami, _204_.
Mihrîmah, 200, _201_.
Roum Mehmed Pasha, 209, 224.
Selimieh, 209.
Shemsi Pasha, 209, _211_, 212.
Valideh Atik, 202, _203_, 316.
Valideh Jedid (Yeni Valideh), 45, 205, _207_, 249, 360, 370.
Stamboul—
Aïvas Effendi, 88.
Atik Ali Pasha, 41.
Aya Sofya (St. Sophia): _see_ Churches.
Boudroun Jami (Myrelaion): _see_ Churches.
Eyoub Soultan, _135_, 136, 141, 358, 452.
Feïzoullah Effendi, 70.
Fetieh Jami (Pammakaristos): _see_ Churches.
Hafîz Ahmed Pasha, 378.
Hasseki, 369.
Hekim-zadeh Ali Pasha, _35_, 279.
Imrahor Jami (Studion): _see_ Churches.
Jerrah Pasha, _37_.
Kahrieh Jami (Chora): _see_ Churches.
Koumrülü Mesjid, 364.
Küchük Aya Sofya (SS. Sergius and Bacchus): _see_ Churches.
Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha, 73.
Laleli Jami, 42, 381.
Mahmoud Pasha, 35.
Nouri Osmanieh, 42, 358.
Ramazan Effendi, 108, _360_.
Rüstem Pasha, 49 _et seq._, _50_, _51_, _52_, 200, 206.
Shah-zadeh, 35, 60, 275.
Sokollî Mehmed Pasha, _65_, _67_, _69_, 360.
Sultan Ahmed I, _21_, 45, 49, _53_, 75, 84, 206, 358, 404.
Sultan Baïezid II (“Pigeon Mosque”), 35, _40_, 41, 64, 288, 298,
358.
Sultan Mehmed II, 35, _64_, _289_, 295, 298, 358, 508.
Sultan Selim I, 64, 82, 358.
Sultan Süleïman I, _41_, 42, 46, 47, 58, 197, 360.
Yeni Jami, 18, 35, 42, _43_, 45, 46, 53, 54, 56, 63, 107, 119,
122, 151, 159, 206, 298, _299_, 360.
Zal Mahmoud Pasha, 523 _et seq._
Zeïneb Soultan, 42.
Zeïrek Kil’seh Jami (Pantocrator): _see_ Churches.
Mount Athos, 509, 510.
Moustafa Soultan, 59, 61, 369, 523.
_Müezin_, 35, 280, 431, 483.
Museum, xi, 48, 85, 157, 258, 259.
Music:
Bulgarian, 335.
Byzantine, 319, 327, 328, 329, 518.
Greek, 325, 331, 334, 336, 343, 345, 346, 518.
Persian, 246.
Turkish, 145, 172, 246, 268, 269, 272, 273, 276, 280, 282, 283,
291, 294, 301, 305, 307, 312, 314, 331, 332, 334, 390, 464.
Mutiny of 1909, 404, 425, 452, 454, 458.
Names, xi, 527.
“Nations” (_millet_), 30, 151, 154, 156, 162, 175, 176, 293, 332,
504, 511, 516, 541.
New Year: _see_ High Days and Holidays.
New York, 10, 33, 114, 172, 177, 189, 342, 383, 394, 403, 446.
Nicæa, 48, 49, 99, 202, 204, 508.
Nicephorus Gregoras, 99.
Night of Power: _see_ High Days and Holidays.
Noah, 124, 308.
Nyazi Bey, 445.
Observants (_Padri di Terra Santa_), 161, 173.
Odoun Kapan, 122, 152.
Omar, 128, 310.
Orta-kyöi, 255, 435.
Padua, 103, 104.
Painters and Painting, 78, 100, 103 _et seq._, 134, 162, 191, 229,
250, 237.
Byzantine, 77, 91, 100. See also Icons.
Turkish, 66, 202, 212, 237, 250, 251, 252, _253_, 262, 263, 354,
_357_, 370, 373, 380.
Palace Camarilla, 119, 411, _412_.
Palaces:
Byzantine—
Blacherne, 85, 87, 108, 112.
Porphyrogenitus (Tekfour Seraï), 48, 88, _90_, 134.
Great or Sacred Palace, 75, 84, 85, 87, 92, 113, 550.
Bucoleon, 85.
Hormisdas, 85.
House of Justinian, 85, _86_.
Daphne, 84.
Magnaura, 84.
Porphyra, 84.
Pege (“Balîklî”), 333.
St. Mamas, 150.
Scutari, 195, 214.
Therapia, 238.
Turkish—
Ali Bey Souyou, 143.
Beharieh, 143.
Beïlerbeï, 217, 255.
Dolma Ba’hcheh, 170, 290, 300, 338, 418, 449.
Chira’an, 255 _et seq._, 457.
Eski Seraï, 258.
Galata Seraï, 171.
Hounkyar Iskelesi, 244.
Kiat Haneh, 143, 144, _373_.
Scutari, 214.
Seraglio—
Chinili Kyöshk, 48, 258, _357_.
“Top Kapou,” xii, 54, 84, 258 _et seq._, _261_, _263_, 277,
278, 303, _354_, 450, 452.
Yîldîz, 170, 255, 280, 288, 304, 406, 408, 410, 412, 417, 434,
435, 438, 440, 444, 448, 450, 454 _et seq._
Palladium, 92.
_Panayíri_, 87, 91, 338 _et seq._, 483.
Paris, 76, 77, 106, 143, 161, 229, 237, 403, 406.
Parks, 34, 144, 177, 258.
Parliament, 106, 256, 290, 292, 415, 417, 418 _et seq._, 425, 430,
447, 452, 491.
Patriarchate (œcumenical), xii, 133, 327 _et seq._, 507, 514 _et
seq._, _519_.
Patriarchs:
Armenian, 516.
Armeno-Catholic, 420.
Bulgarian, 511.
Greek, 132, 330, 500 _et seq._
Cerularius, 92.
Gennadius (George Scholarius), 502 _et seq._, 514, 516, 520.
Gregory V, 507, 519.
Joachim III, 293, 328 _et seq._, 500, _501_, 509 _et seq._, _519_.
Latin, 156.
Pausanias, 107.
Pera, 29, 134, 148 _et seq._, 171 _et seq._, _180_, _181_, 330, 338,
408, 417, 438, _441_, 445, 449, 469, 490.
Persia, Persian, and Persians, 14, 17, 26, 30, 45, 46, 48, 50, 54,
63, 85, 107, _126_, 195, 196, 197, 210, 239, 245, 285, 309 _et
seq._, _311_, 383, 537.
Petrion, 132.
Phanar, 132 _et seq._, _133_, 327 _et seq._, 514 _et seq._, _517_, _519_.
Phanariotes, 133, 238, 239, 240, 507, 509.
Philanthropy, 56, 66, 73, 362, 363, 377.
Philip of Macedon, 197, 216.
Pigeons, 36, 64, _135_, 139.
Pilgrimage, 87, 91, 303, 338.
Place of Martyrs (_Shehidler_), 390.
Plane: _see_ Trees.
Platæa: _see_ Battles and Sieges.
Podestà, 154, 158, 160, 183.
Poets and Poetry, 14, 61, 85, 99, 161, 192, 193, 210, 221, 243, 357,
366, 380.
Popes, 92, 99, 109, 156, 500, 501, 503.
Poseidon, 142, 149.
Prinkipo, 342 _et seq._, 415.
Printing, 256.
Pronunciation, ix.
Prophet: _see_ Mohammed.
Pyrgos, 350, 483.
Quarters, 3, 83, 107, 130, 132, 139, 193, 367.
Queen Elizabeth, 174.
Rakoczy, 162.
Ramazan: _see_ High Days and Holidays.
Ravenna, 95, 103, 212.
Red Crescent and Red Cross, 474 _et seq._, 497.
Refugees:
Balkan, 36, 211, 212, 473, 483, 484, _485_, 489, 490, 520, 521 _et
seq._, _523_, _526_, _533_
Hebrew, 159.
Moorish, 159.
Relics:
Byzantine, 77, 92, 160, 333, 502, 516.
Turkish, 57, 136, 260, 277, 278, 303.
Renaissance, 9, 76, 78, 79, 98, 103, 105, 106, 231, 357, 368, 501.
Renegades, 55, 56, 60, 92, 130, 139, 140, 166, 169, 171, 172, 173,
174, 193, 205, 256, 293, 542. Also Rüstem Pasha and Sinan.
Revolution, viii, 149, 277, 402 _et seq._, 425, 454, 511.
Rhodian plates, 47, 48, 49.
Riformati, 173.
Robert College, 394, 395.
Rococo, 42, 143, 183, 205, 263, 358, 370.
Rodosto, 162.
Rome, 4, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 82, 84, 92, 111, 197, 501.
Rose Attar of Spring: _see_ Sultana.
Roth, E. D., xii, 4, _5_, _37_.
Roumania (Moldavia, Wallachia, and Vlach), 87, 133, 329, 429, 500,
509, 517.
Roumeli Hissar, viii, 246, 347, 364, 375, 382 _et seq._
Roxelana: _see_ Sultana.
Rue: _see_ Streets.
Rugs, 12, 16, 36, 39, 46, 58, 284.
Russia and Russians, 56, 60, 78, 94, 103, 104, 173, 229, 240, 269,
329, 369, 486, 491, 500, 502, 517.
Rüstem Pasha: _see_ Grand Vizier.
Sacred Caravan, 200, 301 _et seq._, _305_, _306_, _307_, _308_, _309_.
Sacrifice, 297 _et seq._, 347.
Saint: _see_ Churches _and_ High Days and Holidays.
St. Andrew, 149
St. Basil, 319, 320.
St. Daniel the Stylite, 347.
St. Francis, 158.
St. Hyacinth, 159.
St. Irene, 149.
St. Luke, 92.
St. Mamas, 150, 170.
St. Mark’s, 76, 89, 139, 502, 508.
_Sainte Chapelle_, 77.
Salonica, 96, 103, 255, 406, 408, 423, 426, 431, 440, 444, 453, 509,
510.
San Stefano, 348, 430, 468, 485, 486, 490 _et seq._
Sculpture:
Antique, 74, 76, 78, 80, 81, 85, 90, 109, 197, 198, 259, 347.
Byzantine, 74, 76, 84, 85, 90, 94, 100, 129, 158, 232, 233, 356,
364, _365_, 383, 393.
Turkish, 54, 61, 66, 70, 72, 129, 130, 166, _201_, 202, _205_,
206, _207_, 211, 219, 220, _221_, 229, _233_ _et seq._, _236_,
_237_, 251, _253_, 262, 264, 353 _et seq._, _354_, _355_,
_356_, _360_, _368_, _371_, _373_, _374_, _375_, _377_, _379_,
389.
Scutari, 15, 45, 113, 141, 189 _et seq._, 298, 304, 315 _et seq._,
371, 391, 416.
_Sebil_: _see_ Fountains.
_Selamlîk_, 170, 280, 407, 410, 430 _et seq._, 451, 458.
_Selsebil_: _see_ Fountains.
Semistra, 142.
Septimius Severus: _see_ Emperors.
Seraglio: _see_ Palaces.
Seraglio Point, 92, 107, 114, 151, 158, 195, 198, 216, 257, 258, 259,
450.
Serbs and Servia, 130, 139, 140, 177, 329, 394, 419, 426, 469, 500,
517.
Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, _126_, 127.
Seven Towers, _109_, 110, 385.
_Shadrîvan_: _see_ Fountains.
Sheï’h ül Islam, 161, 292, 372, 419, 430, 504.
Ebou Sououd Effendi, 140.
Feïzoullah Effendi, 69, 366.
Shemsi Pasha, 210.
_Sherif_ of Mecca, 251, 304, 306.
Shiïtes, 310, 357.
Sicily, 96, 100, 103, 113, 152.
Sid el Battal, 215.
Silver Pools, 142, 143, 144.
Sinan: _see_ Architects.
Sîvas, 73, 338.
Slaves, 130, 139, 140, 163, 166. Also Janissaries, Rüstem Pasha, and
Sultana.
Snuff, 25.
Solomon, 259.
Sparta, 107, 545.
Spies, 402, 403, 407, 408, 416.
Stained glass, 10, 12, 46, 55, 58, 61, 66, 166, 206.
Stamboul, xi, 1 _et seq._, 33 _et seq._, 74 _et seq._, 114, 120, 122,
123, 132 _et seq._, 148, 151 _et seq._, 173, 197, 216, 228,
254, 257 _et seq._, 267 _et seq._, 288, 295 _et seq._, 301,
311 _et seq._, 327 _et seq._, 332 _et seq._, 352, 354, 356 _et
seq._, 365, 367, 369, 376 _et seq._, 403, 404, 417, 418 _et
seq._, 436, 450, 451, 452, 458, 465, 472, 475, 479, 483, 490,
502, 507, 508, 514 _et seq._, 521 _et seq._, 536.
Stencilling, 10, 18, 42 _et seq._, 46, 50, 54, 61, _167_, 206, _207_.
Stenia, 245.
Stone-pine: _see_ Trees.
Storks, 200.
Story-tellers, 270.
Streets, 3, _5_, 7, 10, 14, 19, 54, 70, 71, _111_, _133_, 138, 139,
140, 158, 182, 184, 187, 198, _199_, _204_, _205_, _209_,
_213_, 214, 219, 220, 222, 268, 280, 386, 392, 449. See also
Markets.
Akar Cheshmeh, _155_, 157.
Divan Yolou (Via Egnatia, Mese), 8, _9_, _72_, 75.
Grande Rue de Galata (“Bowery”), _165_, 182, _183_, 184, _187_,
_374_, _375_.
Grande Rue de Pera, 148, 159, 173, 179 _et seq._, _180_, 438, 440,
447.
Mahmoud Pasha, 16, 35.
Pershembeh Bazaar, 158, 160, 183, 184, 370.
Rue Hendek, 157.
Rue Koumbaradji, 180.
Rue de Pologne, 175.
Rue Tchinar, 160, 161.
Rue Voïvoda, 156, 158.
Shah-zadeh-Bashi, 274, 288, 379.
“Step Street” (Yüksek Kaldîrîm), 180, 184, 437.
Street of the Falconers, _199_.
Suez Canal, 139, 245, 255.
Sultan and Sultana (_soultan_), 55.
Sultan:
Abd ül Aziz, 144, 255.
Abd ül Hamid I, 381.
Abd ül Hamid II, 130, 163, 176, 192, 248, 255, 256, 260, 279,
_281_, 288, 291, 298, 304, 376, 403, 404, 406, 408, 409, 410,
411, 412, 414, 415, 418, 420, 421 _et seq._, 425, 427, 431,
432, 433, 435, 444, 447, 448, 454 _et seq._, 460, 484, 510,
512, 513, 518, 534.
Ahmed I, 25, 55, 57, 58, 170, 263, 369, 378.
Ahmed III, 48, 58, 108, 143, 144, 158, 165, 170, 175, 205, 229,
236, 256, 257, 262, 284, 367, 370, 375, 380.
Baïezid I, 192, 289, 383.
Baïezid II, 64, 92, 97, 165, 171, 258, 365.
Ibrahim, 25, 55, 63, 173, 246, 264.
Mahmoud I, 25, 58, 143, 144, 170, 183, 278, 358, 370, 375, 380.
Mahmoud II, 182.
Mehmed I, 302.
Mehmed II, _iv_, xi, 57, 64, 85, 108, 128, 129, 135, 154, 164, 170,
195, 258, 347, 357, 365, 378, 383, 384, 386, 390, 451, 489, 502
_et seq._, 507, 508, 512, 516, 520.
Mehmed III, 62, 263, 378.
Mehmed IV, 24, 55, 58, 130, 140, 170, 249.
Mehmed V, xi, 139, 256, 290, 291 _et seq._, 421, 448, 450, 451,
452, _453_, 454.
Mourad III, 62, 139, 140, 174, 210, 263, 357, 358, 514.
Mourad IV, 24, 25, 55, 58, 108, 245, 246, 264, 358, 369, 378.
Mourad V, 255, 256.
Moustafa I, 63.
Moustafa II, 58, 69, 158, 205.
Moustafa III, 215, 371, 372, 381.
Osman I, 136, 210, 452, 455, 463, 466, 508.
Osman II, 58, 110.
Osman III, 58.
Selim I, 48, 64, 128, 169, 171, 258, 260, 263, 278, 302.
Selim II, 59, 62, 128, 130, 139, 170, 210, 523.
Selim III, 229, 256.
Süleïman I, 24, 46, 49, 58, 60, 61, 128, 139, 140, 142, 144, 163,
165, 169, 171, 197, 200, 210, 258, 263, 354, 364, 369, 372, 523.
Sultana:
Hadijeh (Tarhan), 56, 58, 63.
Kyössem (Mahpeïker), 53, 55 _et seq._, 58, 81, 159, 203, 261, 264.
“Little Elephant,” 193.
Nour Banou (Lady of Light), 202, 204.
Rebieh Gülnüsh (Rose Attar of Spring), 158, 205, 249.
Roxelana, 45, 58 _et seq._, 59, 200.
Safieh (“the Baffa”), 174.
Sun-dial, 200.
Sunnites, 13, 14, 229, 310, 311, 356.
Sütlüjeh, 144.
Sweden, 162, 172.
Sweet Waters of Asia: _see_ Gyök Sou.
Sweet Waters of Europe: _see_ Kiat Haneh.
Syria and Syrians, 40, 97, 103, 104, 201, 413, 414, 419, 462.
Tabriz, 48, 311.
Tash Kîshla, 442, 443, 444, 445, 477.
Tatavla, 324.
Taxim, 163, 180, 330, 332, 439, 440.
Tekfour Seraï: _see_ Palaces.
_Temenna_, 26, 291, 292.
Tents, 144, 275, 284, 294, 296, 304, 315, 332, 341.
Theatre, 177, 192, 272 _et seq._, 417, 456.
Theodore Metochites, 98 _et seq._
Therapia, 238 _et seq._, 327.
Thrace, 36, 142, 150, 228, 430, 459, 471, 480, 526, 527, 528, 530,
531.
_Thrímes_, 346.
Tiles, 10, 45, 47 _et seq._, _50_, _51_, _52_, _53_, _57_, 58, _59_,
60, 61, 62, _63_, 65, 66, _67_, 70, _131_, 136, 139, 166,
_167_, 202, _203_, 204, 206, _207_, 250, 260, _261_, _263_,
264, 278, 371, 378, _379_, 380, 455, 550.
Time, 179, 200, 273.
Tobacco, 20, 23, 24, 25.
Top Haneh, 150, 154, 164, _165_, _167_, 180, 187, 188, 298, 373,
_374_, _375_, 436.
Transfiguration: _see_ High Days and Holidays.
Trebizond, 117, 171, 331.
Trees, 111, 140, 150, 230, 231, 247, 264, 340, 386, 390, 393, 457.
Cypress, 7, 34, 65, _111_, 112, 132, 139, 140, 163, _181_, 182,
189, 199, 202, _204_, 205, 218, 219, _221_, 222, _223_, 231,
245, 247, 258, 260, 382, 389, 390, 483, 489, 522.
Judas, 233.
Plane, 28, _31_, 34, 35, _41_, _43_, 132, _135_, 136, 222, 228,
232, 248, 260, 372, 457.
Stone-pine, _23_, _118_, 190, 217, 228, 231, _243_, 245, 248,
_249_, _252_, 382.
Triumphal Way, 75.
Tulips, 257.
_Türbehs_, 8, 56 _et seq._, _138_, 219.
Aziz Mahmoud Hüdaï, 224.
Eyoub Sultan, 136.
Haïreddin Pasha Barbarossa, _169_.
Hazreti Ahmed (“St. Forty”), 339.
Ibrahim Pasha (Ahmed III), 379.
Ibrahim Pasha (Mourad III), 62, _63_.
Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha, 72.
Kyöprülü Mehmed Pasha, 72.
Mahmoud Pasha, 48.
Mehmed Emin Effendi, 381.
Moustafa Soultan, 61.
Pialeh Pasha, 132.
Rebieh Gülnüsh (Rose Attar of Spring), _205_, 206.
Roxelana, 45, 58, _59_, 60, 212.
Rüstem Pasha, 62.
Shah-zadeh (Mehmed Soultan), 45, 60 _et seq._
Shemsi Pasha, _211_, 212.
Sokollî Mehmed Pasha, 139.
Sultan Ahmed I, 56, _57_, 58, 378, _465_.
Sultan Ibrahim, 63.
Sultan Mehmed II, 57.
Sultan Mehmed V, 139.
Sultan Selim II, 62.
Sultan Süleïman I, 58.
Yeni Jami, 45, 56, 58, 63.
Turks, 2, 15, 27, 31, 36, 76, 128, 136, 139, 145, 193, 210, 218, 219,
247, 266, 267, 268, 280, 283, 290, 294, 296, 318, 352, 400,
404, 446, 461, 463 _et seq._, 475 _et seq._, 491, 493, 496,
512, 521, 525 _et seq._, 534 _et seq._
Twenty-eight Mehmed (Yirmi Sekiz Chelibi), 143, 229, 241, 372.
Valideh Han, 81, 82, 312 _et seq._, _313_.
_Valideh Soultan_, 55.
Van Mour, 162, 229, 250.
Venice and Venetians, _iv_, vii, 19, 76, 89, 96, 103, 105, 108, 110,
118, 127, 129, 132, 134, 140, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 159,
160, 162, 171, 172, 174, 245, 323, 324, 384, 417, 468, 491, 502.
_Via Egnatia_, 75, 108, 109, 110.
Vienna, 25, 31, 76, 106.
View, 4, 80, 110, 112, 114, 141, 148, 157, 171, _181_, 182, 189, 195,
198, 216, _217_, 218, _243_, 244, 247, 254, 259, 386, 390, 403,
458, 486.
Villehardouin, 74, 95, 150, 195, 491.
Vizeh, 531.
Von Hammer, viii, 127, 179, 181, 196, 221, 551.
Wallachia: _see_ Roumania.
Walls, 2, 87, 92, 106 _et seq._, _109_, _111_, _112_, 132, 135, 154,
_155_, 156, 157, 403.
Water, 26, 27, 218, 266, 278, 352.
Water-carriers, 362, 369, 376.
Water-system, 82, 184, 352, 362, 363.
Well-heads, _232_, 234.
“White Sea,” 124, 128.
William II, 404, 406, 456, 457, 471, 474.
Windows, 7, _9_, 10, _11_, 12, _13_, 14, 16, _35_, _37_, _41_, 45,
47, 55, _65_, _67_, _71_, _72_, _167_, 191, 199, _203_, _204_,
_205_, 206, _207_, _209_, _211_, _252_, _263_, _313_, _348_.
Women, 14, 34, 55, 58, 146, 268, 272, 273, 274, 279, 316, 390, 417,
431, 464, 469, 473, 475, 525, 527 _et seq._
Wood-block stamping, 213, _215_.
Woodwork, 12, 16, 17, 45, 54, _59_, 61, 134, 212, 251, 252, 380.
Wrestling, _275_, 296.
Writing: _see_ Calligraphy.
Xenophon, 197, 383.
Yagh Kapan, 157.
_Yalî_: _see_ Houses.
Yemish, 120.
Yeni-kyöi, 346.
York, 151, 197.
Young Turks, 106, 149, 163, 404, 417, 418, 426, 443, 460, 471, 511,
512.
Zattere, 324.
Zeki Pasha, 408, 409, 415.
Zemzem, 266, 366, 368.
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