' '^iiTi'^WJiLt'fW.iUiliilfllittfil^KV ''*''" 'U^tti'iH**^*!^''^ '-r V '■'; '.*■) 'V'J "r, CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW H . G. DWIGHT BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrg W. Sage 1 891 fi^o»»im mxiih. 93°* _ Cornell University Library DR 722.D99 Constantinople 3 1924 028 529 562 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028529562 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW Photograph by Ahn ii Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror From the portrait by Gentile Bellini in the Layard Collection CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW BY H. G. DWIGHT ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1915 Copyright, 1915, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published September, 1915 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. How- ells'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, per- haps, 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 httle 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 com- parison with Venice and I know not how many other cities, and particularly that Turkish Constantinople, has been wonderfully httle "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 obhgation to do. Then the present writer found viii OF HIS BOOK 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 ad- mirable side of Constantinople. And soon after his re- turn there took place the revolution of 1908, whose various consequences have attracted so much of inter- national 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 un- touched, 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 documen- tary 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 pos- sible, I have mainly followed the not infallible Von Ham- mer, and most of my Turkish translations are borrowed OF HIS BOOK ix from him or otherwise acquired at second hand. More- over, I have unexpectedly been obhged 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 Hst 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 con- tains almost no original sources and it gives none of the detailed and classified information which a bibfiography should. It is merely what I call it, a Hst 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 speUing of the Turkish names and words which occur in these pages. The great difficulty of rendering in Enghsh the sound of foreign words is that Enghsh, hke Turkish, does not spell itself. For that reason, and because whatever in- terest this book may have will be of a general rather than of a speciahsed kind, I have ventured to deviate a Kttle 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 Enghsh, with the ex- ception that g is always hard and 5 is never pronounced hke z. The gutturals gh and kh have been so softened by the Constantinople dialect that I generally avoid X OF HIS BOOK them, merely suggesting them by an /). 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 Conti- nental 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 Kirk Kihss, 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 Kke 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 some- times in Enghsh by the u of sun. Neither really ex- presses it, however, nor does any other letter in the Roman alphabet. I have therefore chosen to indicate it by i, chiefly because the circumflex suggests a dif- ference. For the reader's further guidance in pronuncia- tion 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 Hiissein, or the word serai, pal- ace. 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 occa- sion 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 OF HIS BOOK XI arbitrary rules. Stamboul I continue so to call, though to the Turks it is something more like Istambol; and words like bey, caique, 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 in- debtedness 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 admis- sion, letters of introduction, and other facilities for col- lecting 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 Hussein Danish Bey, of the Ottoman Public Debt; to H. E. Ismail Jenani Bey, Grand Master of Ceremonies of the Imperial Court; to H. E. Ismet Bey, Prejet adjoint of Constantinople; to Kemaleddin Bey, Architect in Chief of the Ministry of Pious Foundations; to Mah- XII OF HIS BOOK moud Bey, Sheikh of the Bektash Dervishes of Roumeli Hissar; to Professor Alexander van Millingen; to Fred- erick Moore, Esq.; to Mr. Panayotti D. Nicolopoulos, Secretary of the Mixed Council of the (Ecumenical Patri- archate; 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 Wilham 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 repubhsh those chapters which orig- inally 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 sub- stitute new illustrations for a large number that had al- ready been made. Hamadan, 6th Sefer, 1332. CONTENTS Chapter I PACE Stamboul I 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 xiii xiv CONTENTS Chapter IX ^^^^ Mohammedan Holidays 284 Chapter X Two Processions 301 Chapter XI Greek Feasts 3^8 Chapter XII Fountains . 35^ 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 ^^^ 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 Stam- boul streets 21 A water-side coffee-house 23 "Drinking" a. nargileh 26 Fez-presser in a coffee-house 27 Playing tavli 29 The plane-tree of Chengel-kyoi 31 The yard of Hekim-zadeh AH Pasha 35 "The Little Mosque" 37 From an etching by Ernest D. Roth Entrance to the forecourt of Sultan Baiezid II 40 Detail of the Suleimanieh 41 Yeni Jami 43 Tile panel in Riistem Pasha 50 The mihrab of Riistem Pasha 51 XV xvi ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE In Riistem Pasha 5^ Tiles in the gallery of Sultan Ahmed 53 The tomb of Sultan Ahmed I 57 In Roxelana's tomb 59 The tiirbeh of Ibrahim Pasha 63 The court of the Conqueror 64 The main entrance to the court of SokoUl Mehmed Pasha ... 65 The interior of SokoUi Mehmed Pasha 67 The court of Sokolli Mehmed Pasha . . 69 Doorway in the medresseh of Feizoullah Effendi 70 Entrance to the medresseh of Kyopriilii Hiissein 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 po Interior of the Studion q2 Kahrieh Jami gy Mosaic from Kahrieh Jami : Theodore Metochites offering his church to Christ .... rv8 Mosaic from Kahrieh Jami : the Massacre of the Innocents lOI Giotto's fresco of the Massacre of the Innocents, in the Arena chapel, Padua . jqj Mosaic from Kahrieh Jami : the Marriage at Cana 109 • ■ . . 104 The Golden Gate ILLUSTRATIONS xvii PAGE Outside the land walls m 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 Caiques 121 Sailing caiques 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 Bibliotheque 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 Haireddin Barbarossa ........ 169 Drawn by Kenan Bey Grande Rue de Pera 180 The Little Field of the Dead 181 The fountain of Azap Kapou 183 PAGE xviii ILLUSTRATIONS Fountain near Galata Tower 185 The Kabatash breakwater 187 Fresco in an old house in Scutari iQi The Street of the Falconers i99 Fountain in the mosque yard of Mihrimah 201 Tiles in the mosque of the Valideh Atik 203 Chinihjami 204 The fountains of the Valideh Jedid 205 Interior of the Valideh Jedid 207 TheAhmedieh 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 Biiyiik Dereh 241 The upper terrace of the French embassy garden at Therapia . 243 ILLUSTRATIONS xix PAGE The Villa of the Sun, Kandilli 249 An eighteenth-century villa at Arnaout-kyoi 252 The golden room of Kyopriilii Htisse'in Pasha 253 In the harem of the Seraglio 261 The "Cage" of the Seraglio 263 A Kara-gyoz poster 271 Wrestlers 275 The imperial cortege poured from the palace 'gate 281 From a drawing by E. M. Ashe Bairam sweets 289 The open spaces of the Mohammedan quarters are utilised for fairs 29s Sheep-marEet 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 XX ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Wall fountain in the Seraglio 354 Sehebil in Bebek 355 The goose fountain at Kazli' 35^ The wall fountain of Chinili-Kyoshk • • • ■ 357 Shadrtvan of Kyopriilii Hussein Pasha 359 Shadrtvan of Ramazan Effendi 3^0 Shadrtvan of SokoUi Mehmed Pasha 361 The Byzantine fountain of Kirk Cheshmeh 365 The two fountains of Ak Biyik 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 ul 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 Baiezid 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 .... 41 2 Soldiers at Chatalja, April 20 428 Macedonian volunteers 437 A Macedonian Blue 430 ILLUSTRATIONS xxi PAGE Taxim artillery barracks, shelled April 24 441 They were, in fact, reserves posted for the afternoon attack on Tash Kishla 443 Burial of volunteers, April 26 446 Deputies leaving Parliament after deposing Abd ill 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 Palaeologus 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 mor- tification, 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 con- ceive 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 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 Stam- boul? You Hke 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 con- sciousness 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 2 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW word is really jess? — appeared at car windows, peas- ants on station platforms had something about them that recalled youthful associations. The change grew more and more marked as we neared the Turkish fron- tier. And I reahsed 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 remem- bered wooden houses could be, and dusty little gardens, and glimpses of a wide blue water through ruinous ma- sonry, and people as out-at-elbow and down-at-the-heel as their houses, who even at that shining hour of a sum- mer morning found time to smoke hubble-bubbles in tipsy httle coffee-houses above the Marmora or to squat motionless on their heels beside the track and watch the fire-carriage of the unbehever 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 spruce- ness and sohdity. Yet Stamboul, if you belong to the same race of men as I, has a way of rehabilitating her- self 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 mod- ern conveniences, and the latest amusements. She has ambitions in that direction. I may live to see her at- tain them. I have aheady Hved to see half of the Stam- boul 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, STAMBOUL 3 for no true map of it, in this year of grace 19 14, as yet exists, and no man knows his street or number. What he knows is the fountain or the cofTee-house near which he lives, and the quarter in which both are situ- ated, named perhaps Coral, or Thick Beard, or Eats No Meati 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 Hke 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. Constanti- nople 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 un- suffused 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 4 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW of the mosques they crown. It is only the lesser min- arets 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 archaeologists tefl you that Constan- tinople, like Rome, is built on seven hills, don't believe them. They are merely riding a hobby-horse so an- cient that I, for one, am ashamed to mount it. Con- stantinople, 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 to- ward 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 From an etching by ErntrsL L) Kuil A Stamboul street STAMBOUL 7 their pyramids of domes and lance-Iike minarets tell most against the light, are what make the silhouette of Stamboul one of the most notable things in the world. Of the many voyagers who have celebrated the pan- orama of Constantinople, not a few have recorded their disappointment on coming to closer acquaintance. De gusdbus ... 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 par- ticular to say in that matter. But since I am now speak- ing of the general aspects of Stamboul I can hardly pass over the part played by the mosques and their depen- dencies. 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 8 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 tilrbeh, lifts its dome. Life and death seem never very far apart in Constantinople. In other cities the fact that hfe has an end is put out of sight as much as pos- sible. Here it is not only acknowledged but taken ad- vantage 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 per- sons 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 re- cently 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 com- plain 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 fa- natic 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 hues, 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 hke to do more than to build, and to set a fashion of building, from less perishable STAMBOUL 9 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 19 1 il 1 ' ''I^^^^^^^^^B I^^^H hI^I Divan Yolou Arabic about them, at all events, and their interior ar- rangement resembles that of any palazzo of the Renais- sance. 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 propor- tion, for there is almost no ornament about it. The doorway is the most decorative part of the facade. 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 hght filled with a fan or star of swallow- 10 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Chris- tians 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 it- self affords and also assures a better view. If it inci- dentally 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 in- vocation, which more rarely decorated a blue-and-white tile and which nowadays is generally printed on paper and framed hke a picture — "O Protector," "O Con- queror," "O Proprietor of all Property." And over all is a low-pitched roof, hardly ever gabled, of the red tiles you see in Italy. 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 Stam- boul lacks its patch of green; and branching or double stairways lead to the upper regions. Other big halls are STAMBOUL II 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 M 1 P ' ^^S^^^^L 1 1 |i ^^ M "^'■^^^M 1 p-w jP 1 %m r ;^3B ^M^ iS H ' ' - 1 jL^>^ i. ..B^ 1^ ffl i 9 1 .mm ■Mai ■1 mhI 1 A house in Eyoub anywhere but in the diseased imagination of an up- holsterer. 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 cup- boards and niches, which may be charmingly decorated with painted flowers and gilt or coloured moulding. The 12 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW ceiling is treated in the same way, the strips of mould- ing 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 usjed. There may also be a fireplace, not set A house at Aya Kapou 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. STAMBOUL 13 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 The house of the pipe 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, there- fore, take with them the place of pictures, and they col- lect the work of famous calHgraphs as Westerners collect other works of art. While a real appreciation of this art 14 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 form- ing them, and there is no limit to the number of ways in which they may be grouped. By adding to an inscrip- tion 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 hterally be called a word-picture of the Prophet. To paint a portrait of him would contravene all the tradi- tions 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. However, I did not start out to describe the interior of Stamboul, of which I know as Kttle 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 per- fect 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 hfe, 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 beUef. We STAMBOUL 15 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 in- sists 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 arrange- ment 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 soHdIy 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 fife; 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 essen- tial colour of Constantinople, which is neither Asiatic nor European, but a mingfing of both. A last fragment of old Stamboul is walled in the heart of this maze, a square enclosure of deeper twifight which is called the Bezesten. Tradition has it that the shopkeepers of the Bezesten originally served God as well 1 6 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Iamb no more highly than by call- ing it antika. At any rate, the Bezesten is almost a little too good to be true. It might have been arranged by some Gerome 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-a-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 bans 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 STAMBOUL 17 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 Jiappy. 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 assembhng 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 archi- tectural point of view, is called Missir Charshi, 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 1 8 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 perspec- tive 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 niarkets, 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, bring- ing produce which is sold in the pubHc 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 awn- ings or big canvas umbrellas. But other sections of it, as the copper market and the flower market, overflow STAMBOUL 19 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 bans, 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 stor- age, 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 Itahan word fondaco comes from the Arabic Jindik, which in turn was derived from the vavSoxelov of Con- stantinople. But whether any of these old stone build- ings 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-mak- ing, 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, hke 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 20 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW public way an arbour that seduces the passer-by to stop and taste the taste of Hfe. 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 trav- eller 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 Con- stantinople 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 coflFee-shop may often be seen in the street, in a scrap of sun or shade, accord- ing to the season, where a stool or two invite the passer- by to a moment of contemplation. And no ban or public building is without its facilities for dispensing the indispensable. I know not whether the fact may contribute any- thing 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 prop- erties 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 enter- That grape-vine is one of the most decorative elements of Stamboul streets STAMBOUL 23 prise 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," ^4|^^^^Hf^' WBm^'t [ f ■•It**':*^?^ "Z £al^Bkk^ i K^^j^HPB^^^]^ ^y f - .iTlr^iSI >•>. 0, ■ A water-side coffee-house as a poet styled the Arabian berry, was variously de- nounced 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 cafe and coffee, is a 24 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW slight modification of an Arabic word — literally meaning that which takes away the appetite — which is one of the names of wine. Siile'iman 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 cen- turies coflFee-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 for- bade 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, d 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 ex- tending 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 Enghsh 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 Retayhng of Coffee may be an innocente Trayde; but as it is used to nourysshe Sedition, spredde Lyes, and scandalyse Create Menne, it may also be a common Nuisaunce." In the meantime an envoy of Mehmed IV introduced coffee in 1669 to the court of STAMBOUL 25 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 fore- runner of modernity, who also advocated a mediaeval 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 poHtical reasons in 1730- There is, it is true, a coffee habit, whose abuse is no less demorahsing than that of any other drug. But it is so rare, and Stamboul coffee-houses are so different from American or even most European cafes, that it is hard to imagine their causing so much commotion. Nothing stronger than coffee is dispensed in them — unless I ex- cept the nargileh, the water-pipe, whose effect is wonder- fully 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 yau drink tobacco. 26 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW You may also drink tea, in little glasses, as the Persians do. And to desecrate it, or coffee either, with the ad- mixture of milk is an unheard-of sacrilege. But you may content yourself with so mild a refreshment as a bit of "Drinking" a nargileh rahat locoum, more familiar to you, perhaps, as Turkish Dehght, and a glass of water. 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 utter- ing the greeting merhaba, or by making the temenna, that STAMBOUL 27 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 hon- As for the essential function of the coffee-house, it our Fez-presser in a coffee-house 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 en- joyment of the cup that cheers, as expressing apprecia- tion and general well-being. The current price for a coffee, in the heart of Stamboul, is ten para — some- thing like a penny — for which the waiter will say: "May God give you blessing." Mark, too, that you do not tip 28 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 pubhc eye. Neither, hav- ing 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 hke 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 sugges- tive jar of leeches reminds you how cathoHc was once the art of the barber in other parts of the world. There is also the resource of games — such as backgammon, STAMBOUL 29 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 Playing tavli 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. 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 habitues 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 30 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 clientele that the most vagrant im- pressionist 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 some- thing more like modern trade-unioris. 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 Chris- tian and wears an orange girdle shall lay railroad ties; that none save a landlubber from the hinterland of the Black Sea may row a caique or, they of Konia peddle yo'ourt, or 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 STAMBOUL 31 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 '' ' < ,. -■'O'k ■^!5?r. ^ ^ M'^j^^-'^r ..li^- MKi^^V:&. 1 ^^-^S£^ -"'"•', ^^v.. H^& '^L.^^ST'^m u^ ^'t / __. ''-^^?^M| The plane-tree of Chengel-kyoi cigarettes and sipping httle cups of coffee? Some con- clude 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 Hke 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 32 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW coffee-houses, to enjoy simple pleasures, to watch common spectacles, to fmd that in Hfe which every one may pos- sess — hght, 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 Hkely, 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 hving 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 hfe, 33 34 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 ^he 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 will- ingly cast their giant shadow. Gravestones also con- gregate there. And there a centre of hfe is which can never lack interest for the race of men that likes Stam- boul. Scribes sit under the trees ready to write let- ters 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 MOSQUE YARDS 35 leading to the Bazaars — which is entirely given up to coflfee-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 The yard of Hekim-zadeh AH Pasha combination is one that I, at any rate, am incapable of resisting. I dare not guess how many days of my Hfe I have I cannot say wasted in the coffee-houses of Mah- moud Pasha, and Yeni Jami, and Baiezid, and Shah- zadeh, and Fatih. The company has an ecclesiastical tinge. Turbans bob much together and the neighbour- ing 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 milezin, the chanter, sounds 36 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW from his high white tower. "God is most great!" he chants to the four quarters of the earth. "I bear wit- ness 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!" In the mosque the atmosphere is very much that of the mosque yard. There may be more reverence, per- haps, 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 con- versazione 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 cor- ner, 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 them- selves 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 per- manent abode on tiled cornices or among the marble stalactites of capitals. 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 ofl" your shoes from off your feet — unless you shuffle about in the big sHppers that are kept in some mosques for for- From an etching by Ernest D, Roth " The Little Mosque " MOSQUE YARDS 39 eign 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 stand- ard, 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 kiirsi. 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 trib- une 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 orna- ments. The place of the mosque in the Turkish community is symbolised, like that of the mediaeval cathedral, by its architectural pre-eminence. Mark, however, that Stam- boul 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 40 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW mosques are found to contain almost all that Stamboul has of architectural pretension. They form an achieve- ment, to my mind, much greater than the world at large seems to reahse. The easy current dictum that they are Entrance to the forecourt of Sultan Baiezid II 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 re- mote Asiatic impulse as the Byzantine church, absorbed MOSQUE YARDS 41 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 Detail of the Siileimanieh mistake to look for all Turkish architecture in Sinan. The mosques of Atik Ali Pasha and of Sultan Baiezid 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 Haireddin, and he, first among the Turks, used the monoHthic shaft and the stalactite capital. How perfect they are, though, in the 42 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW arcades of Baiezid! Nothing could be better in its way than the forecourt of that mosque, and its inlaid min- arets 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 Siilei- manieh, 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 prin- cesses, has an inimitable grace. The way in which each structural necessity adds to the general effect, the cli- mactic 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 Zeineb Sultan, Nouri Osmanieh, and Laleli Jami. And the present generation, under men like Vedad Bey and the architects of the EvkaJ, 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 archi- tecture, 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 Yeni Jami MOSQUE YARDS 45 many a fine interior by their atrocious baroque draperies or colour-blind colour schemes. If I were a true behever 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 ara- besque design in black, dark red, pale blue, and orange, perhaps happily toned by time, which a recent restora- tion was wise enough to spare. The tomb of Roxelana and the great tomb beside Yeni Jami also contain a Httle interesting stencilling. But the most complete example of good work of this kind is outside Stamboul, in the Yeni VaHdeh 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 eff"ect 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 sugges- tions not a few to his Western cousin. 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 inter- laced stars. Higher up the windows are arched and are made more interesting by the broad plaster muIHons of 46 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW which I have already spoken. These make against the hght a grille of round, oval, or drop-shaped openings which are wonderfully decorative in themselves. The same principle is refined and compHcated into a result more decorative still when the plaster setting forms a complete design of arabesques, flowers, or writing, some- times framing symmetrically spaced circles or quad- rangles, sometimes composing an all-over pattern, and filled in with minute panes of coloured glass. Huys- mans • compared the windows of Chartres to Persian rugs, because the smallness of the figures and their height above the floor make them merely conventional arrange- ments 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 reahsm that mars so much modern glass. The secret of the effect Hes in the smallness of the panes used and the visibiHty 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 Siileimanieh, and Yeni Jami — where two shm cypresses make dehcious panels of green Hght 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 bear- ing 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 His- sar, the great calligrapher of Suleiman's time, and exe- MOSQUE YARDS 47 cuted in simple dark blue and white in one of the imperial tile factories, this art became a means of dec- oration which we can only envy the Turks. Such in- scriptions are always from the Koran, of course, and they are often happily chosen for the place they oc- cupy. Around the great dome of the Siileimanieh, 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, cov- ered 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 Suleiman's period have sometimes been attributed a Persian and sometimes a Rhodian origin — for they have many simi- larities with the famous Rhodian plates. The Turks themselves generally suppose that their tiles came from Kiitahya, where a factory still produces work of an in- ferior kind. The truth lies between these various the- ories. 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. 48 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW The Musee 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 pro- duced in Asia Minor long before the capture of Con- stantinople 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 con- taining 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 Con- stantinople are to be seen at the Chinili Kyoshk 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 set- tled 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, Nico- media, and Constantinople itself. One is supposed to have been in Eyoub, though no trace of it remains to- day unless in the potteries of Chomlekjiler. 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 Nicsea to the ruined Byzantine palace of Tekfour Serai. A colony of glass-blowers there are the last remnant to-day of the tile makers of two hundred years ago. The art itself declined and gradually died out as the MOSQUE YARDS 49 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 Sii- leiman 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 cer- tain 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 reKef. 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 in- stance, 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 Hnoleum — 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 Rustem Pasha, son-in-law and Grand Vizier to Siilei- man 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 50 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Riistem Pasha brought back these tiles from his wars in Persia and built a mos- que 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 deco- ration. 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 Tile panel in Riistem Pasha MOSQUE YARDS 51 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 The mihrab of Riistem Pasha 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 52 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 I .„■<■■ ^ In Riistem Pasha 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 com- mercial tile making. It was an art. Two mosques of a later period in Stamboul are com- MOSQUE YARDS 53 pletely 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 archi- tect was not altogether ignorant of what he was about. He put his best tiles there, where they can only be seen '^ip pSKjj^ l£SKJSIS^(d^'fiii^^^^HH^If^^23^SE^^^ii^^ s ''."^'^■fVl r '^^^M ^^ S. [■ .\^w| H r ** J, ' t ^ '' XiJ^^^HKi ■satfM 1 j^w; X Wf»^Hp\l ^^]kWi ^KL ' S \i'»^ \5VV SC^MBPMMBMBBmSBBBSI^^^^^PiSS^^H^^^B^SS'^^'' i^gn^ i^S gi\ ^ ^1 I^^^Hj HJMHnW n^ Sii^M B^^K S^^^^^B^ ^1 iHHHbB HH^^^^ i^l'- H ^P ^i^^^^^M p I^I^KS ^^^P, ?« S^ m ^H 1 1 ^^^E^T BBBMBSSSBHBiiTHWBIiBMBKffw^'E^W'ft^h'^ffli^ *'^fftf^!ftfty^W 1 Tiles in the gallery of Sultan Ahmed at close range. And his best is very good. I have counted twenty-nine varieties of tiles there, or rather of designs, divided, Hke those of Riistem Pasha, into framed panels. The tiles facing the mihrab, where the gallery widens over the main doorway, are so good that I some- times 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 54 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 in- vented. Then come two magnificent panels of larger spindles against a thicket of peach-blossoms or Judas blos- soms, 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 smafl 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 Seragho. Yeni Jami is better suited for tihng, being compara- tively 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 out- side by a covered incHned way which enabled the Sultan to ride directly up to the level of his gallery. At the same level is also a Httle 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 apart- ment 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 fight, under a vandal coat of brown paint, the old gilding of the wood- work. But the tiles of the wafls remain — except where MOSQUE YARDS 55 they have been replaced by horrible panels of some com- position imitating Florentine mosaic. Among them are charming cypresses and peach-trees. There are also re- mains 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 Seragho was Mahpeiker — Moon Face. She is oftenest remembered, however, by the name Kyossem, 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 Kyossem, the boy Mehmed IV, came to the throne, the great valideh con- tinued, 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 56 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 soultaji jamisi, the mosque of the new empress mother. In com- mon 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 Kyossem 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 associa- tions. When space permits they he 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 tiirbeh. This is a domed structure, usually octagonal in shape, cheerfully lighted by two or three tiers of win- dows. Every tomb has its own guardian, called the turbedar, 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 simphcity with regard to their central feature. There is no sarcophagus of marble or porphyry. The occupant of the tiirbeh 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 in- cHned from the head, where a wooden standard supports the turban of the deceased. A woman's catafalque has MOSQUE YARDS SI 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 hang- ing from the Kaaba at Mecca or from the Prophet's tomb at Medina. But nothing is imposing about the The tomb of Sultan Ahmed I catafalque unless its size, which indicates the importance of the person commemorated. The largest one I remem- ber is that of Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror. And the rail around the catafalque is all that suggests perma- nence, 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 hghted on holy nights. Near'by may be an inlaid folding stand with an illuminated Koran. The 58 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW floor Is matted and covered with rugs like a mosque or a house. The tombs attached to the imperial mosques are naturally the most important. Not every sultan built his own, however. In the tilrbeh 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 Ba'iezid, 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 Suleiman 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 magnifi- cence were to disappear. His tiirbeh, 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 sur- rounds 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 Kyossem was a more celebrated princess whose name has been for- gotten in Europe. It is perfectly true that Siileiman MOSQUE YARDS 59 did put to death his eldest son Moustafa, a prince of the greatest promise, and that Roxelana's son, SeUm II, did inherit the throne accordingly — and so cut off the line In Roxelana's tomb of great sultans. But it has yet to be proved that Roxe- lana 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 6o CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 mean- ing 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 unprece- dented compliment of making her his legal wife. He even built for her, unhke 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 mau- soleum 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. There is another tomb behind another mosque of Suleiman, 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 indi- viduahty. This tomb was built, like the mosque to which it belongs, in memory of Suleiman's second and best-beloved son, the young Prince Mehraed. 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 MOSQUE YARDS 6i and the trees about it to make one of the happiest archi- tectural groups in Stamboul. As for the tiirbeh, it fortu- nately remains very much as Sinan left it. The design of the tiles is more abstract and masculine than those in Roxelana's tiirbeh, being mainly an intricate weaving of Unes and arabesques. But there is about them a refine- ment, 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 stencilhng of its dome, as well as for the lovely frag- ments 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 symboHse the throne which Suleiman hoped his son might inherit. Beside the prince, but not under the canopy, rests his humpbacked younger brother Jihangir. As for the un- happy Prince Moustafa, he was buried in Broussa, in the beautiful garden of the Mouradieh. The tiirbeh of Prince Mehmed has, in my mind, an- other pre-eminence which perhaps it does not deserve. As in most other pubhc buildings of Stamboul, an inscrip- tion is carved over the door. These inscriptions are gen- erally in poetry and sometimes very long. The unini- tiated reader would never guess that the last verse of many of them is also a date, for the Arabic letters, Hke certain Roman letters, have a numerical value. And the date of many a Turkish monument is hidden in a chron- ogram, 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. 62 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW I am not learned enough to say when this recondite fash- ion started, but the chronogram of this tomb is the ear- liest 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 en- closure, of which the most important are those of Riis- tem 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 tiirheh, which seems to me in its neglected way a Httle masterpiece. Consider me now its door — how ad- mirably 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 decora- tive was ever imagined. Sehm II, the unworthy supplanter of him who might have been Mehmed III, Hes in a tomb handsomer than he deserves, in the court of a mosque built by a greater than he — St. Sophia. His large tiirheh 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 eff'ect, dotted with Httle tulips and other flowers en- MOSQUE YARDS 63 closed in small Persian spindles. Four other sultans are buried in the precincts of St. Sophia, the mad Mous- tafa I and the dethroned Ibrahim lying in dishonour- able neglect in the bare, whitewashed chamber that was once the baptistery of the cathedral. And it was through having been the slave of Ibra- him 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! These tiirbehs, 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 pre- cincts 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, in- deed, 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 cen- tre of the cloister a covered fountain should bubble, sometimes under trees. I have already mentioned one The tUrheh of Ibrahim Pasha 64 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW of the best examples of such a court. It belongs to the old mosque of Sultan Baiezid 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 The court of the Conqueror 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 Bairam. 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 per- MOSQUE YARDS ^5 haps due to the fact that it is more remote and there- fore more subject to silence. Above the barred win- dows that look into the outer sunhght are lunettes of The main entrance to the court of SokoUi Mehmed Pasha tiles, while around the fountain cypresses and grape- vines make an inimitable shade. Nor can I pass by the court of SokoIIi Mehmed Pasha, the last and great- est vizier of Suleiman I. This is supposed to be a lesser work of Sinan, but I like it almost better than any 66 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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. 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 hbraries, 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 pecuKarly 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, in- deed, has not some philanthropy connected with it, They are administered, mosques and dependencies and all, by a separate and very important department ol government called the Ministry of the EvkaJ — of Pious Foundations. The necessities of space do not always allow these dependencies to gather around their central mosque yard Or sometimes they are independent foundations anc may have a yard of their own of which a small mosqu( The interior of Sokolli Mehmed Pasha MOSQUE YARDS 69 is merely one feature. Two very interesting examples are medressehs in the vicinity of the mosque of the Con- queror. They both belong to the same period and their The court of Sokolli Mehmed Pasha founders were both ministers of Sultan Moustafa II, who was dethroned in 1703. The smaller and more ruinous was built by FeizouIIah EfTendi, Sheih ill 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 medres- 70 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW seh nearly perished too, in 191 2, 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 orna- ment is the structure to the left of the gateway, where a flight of steps mounts under a wonder- ful 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 con- tains fragments of good tiling and a charming little door. The library has the same little door, shallow-arched and orna- mented with fine stalac- tites of marble. The in- terior of the Hbrary is almost filled by a square cage, which has a corres- ponding door of its own and a dark inner com- partment. 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 Doorway in the medressek of FeizouUah Effendi MOSQUE YARDS 71 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. Entrance to the medresseh of Kyopriilii Hussein 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 Hussein Pasha — the Son of the Uncle. I need hardly point out that Hussein 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 Kyopriilii, who gave Turkey five of her best grand viziers. The head of the house, that iron 72 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 tiirbeh of marble and bronze on Divan Yolou, near the Burnt Column. Hiis- sein Pasha's tomb is also open to the street and to the The medresseh of Hassan Pasha Note the bird-house with minarets 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 pa- goda of a fountain, looked upon by white cloisters for MOSQUE YARDS 73 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. 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 won- derful tribute to the philanthropy of another day — the day of the great schools of Bagdad and Cairo and Cor- dova, the day of the mediaeval 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 hkes Stamboul there is a great charm in these places, with their picturesqueness and their air, part gravity, part melancholy, famihar 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 Httle. But there is also a germ in them of something that might conceivably save Stam- boul 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. Hahl Bey and Van Ber- chem, in their monumental Corps d' Inscriptions Arabes, quote an epigraph to the same effect from a thirteenth- century medresseh in Sivas: "The pursuit of knowledge is an obhgation 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? Ill OLD CONSTANTINOPLE Now you may know that those who had never before seen Constanti- nople 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 notic- ing things of an order strange to him — a sculptured cap- ital 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 74 OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 75 the vanished capital of the Caesars. Divan Yolou is for them the Mese of old. In the Hippodrome they still hear the thunder of Roman chariots. And many a Turk- ish 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 Byzan- tinist 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 dis- appeared, but I am Phihstine 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 im- portant street of Stamboul was the Triumphal Way of the Byzantine emperors — and earher still the home- stretch of a famous Roman road, the Via Egnatia, which continued from Dyrrhachium on the Adriatic, the Du- razzo 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 incon- sistent enough to be sorry that Byzantinists are so rare, and to be a httle 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 role 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 incKned to forget that link in the chain. 76 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW Different from Rome and Athens, as they differed from each other, Constantinopfe fused in her own crucible, with others of Oriental origin, the elements of civilisa- tion which they furnished. Out of these elements she formulated a new rehgion, created the architecture to embody it, codified a system of law. Having thus col- lected and enriched the learning of antiquity, she be- queathed it to the adolescent Europe of the Renaissance. We are accustomed to speak of the dark ages that fol- lowed 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 vil- lages as London, Paris, and Vienna were merely, for the time being, the darker. To them Constantinople was what Paris is to us, the ville lumiere, and far more. She was the centre of a civilisation whose splendour and re- finement 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, with- out many of the palaces of the Grand Canal, without the lion, even, whi6h is as Byzantine as Byzantine can be. Several other Italian cities contain notable examples of OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 11 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, Keproduced by permission of C. W. Kraushaar, N. Y. St. Sophia From an etching by Frank Brangwyn 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 Ro- manesque building, while few now deny that the Italian 78 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW school of painting was derived directly from the mosa- ics 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. 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 exca- vaters 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 master- pieces of antiquity. For about Athens will always Hn- ger some glamour of the Periclean 'age, and its sculpture, Hke its Hterature, remains the high-water mark of a cer- tain artistic achievement. The case of Rome, however, is more compHcated. Rome never created an art so orig- inal as Byzantine architecture or Byzantine mosaic; and Justinian it was, not Caesar 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 rehgious tradi- tions from Rome, we still entertain some vague ances- tral prejudice against Orthodoxy and its capital. The present masters of Constantinople have, of course, greatly encouraged this prejudice by taking no interest them- selves in the history of the city or allowing others to do so. Then other details of accessibihty enter into the matter, and of language, and a thousand subtleties of OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 79 association. Rome, for instance, has long been a prov- ince 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 paint- ers and sculptors, have made a whole public that knows or cares very little about the Csesars feel at home in Rome; whereas Gibbon and Byron and Lady Mary Montagu are the sole greater Enghsh names that at- tach 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 pic- ture of the Eternal City; whereas Constantinople can be looked at through no such magnify ing-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 un- challenged 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 elo- quent page, is but a dooryard to the campagna of Con- 8o CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW stantinople, 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 undoubt- edly 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 mar- ble may yet come to light. The soil of Stamboul is vir- gin 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 founda- tions of the main building, an ancient burial-ground was unearthed. The bones, with lamps and other small ob- jects, were protected by great tiles set triangularly to- gether, 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 beau- OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 8i tiful 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 horizon- tally 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 capi- tals. 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 Kyossem. After her death were 82 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 ac- cidentally 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 reahty, 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 Thou- sand and One Columns to the small one of the Bible House and Valideh Han. Others, hke the cistern beside the mosque of Sultan Sehm I, were always uncovered. These are usually called choukour bostan, hollow garden, from the fact that vegetable gardens are wont to flour- ish 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 en- larged 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 Hnes of the cloaca of Rome. But as no one has ever bfeen able to study these systems thoroughly, there remains some- thing half mythic about them. 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 Stam- boul than to look at the ashes of some familiar, of some OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 83 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 j^ 'i!i^Ht '-->^niffi— ._^ ^^■^ m^ ^i The Myrelaion 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 httle tenth-cen- tury church of the Myrelaion — the convent of Myrrh and OiL The fires which an archaeologist might best have been suspected of setting were those of 191 2 and 19 1 3, which swept the slope between the Hippodrome 84 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Hippo- drome, opening by a monumental gateway into the Augustseum, now the square of St. Sophia. To Constan- tine 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 im- perial children were born. I cannot attempt even to catalogue the other splen- dours 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 OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 85 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 em- perors 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 cru- saders occupied the city in 1204, and after the restoration of 1 26 1 Michael Palseologus hved 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 Httle 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 Constan- tine the Great, was pulled down as late as 1871, when the RoumeHan railway was built. Two lions from a balcony of its sea facade now flank the east staircase of the Im- perial Museum. The ruins of the eastern palace, the so-called House of Justinian, where the great emperor may very well have hved before he came to the throne, were barely saved by the Friends of Stamboul when the railway was double-tracked in 191 2. To-day this pile of ancient brickwork, rising from the edge of the Mar- 86 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW mora, is almost the last vestige of the palace whose legen- dary splendour filled so many mediaeval 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 in- corporated into the surrounding houses. Might it be, The House of Justinian 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 hfe, 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 OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 87 attraction for me. And I marvel that no one has yet taken advantage of its present accessibihty to learn pre- cisely what, after so many fires and earthquakes and other spoilers, may be left of its old arrangement. 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 Hne 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 fife of the ancient city. There was even a day in the year when the emperors bathed in the Holy Well of the church. This ayazma may still be seen in the waterside quarter of Balat. The name Balat is a Turkish corruption of the Greek word for palace, and Aivan Serai', as the adjoining quarter is called, means the Palace of the Balcony. These names are another re- minder 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 erop out of the ground or stand visibly among the houses all the way up the hill. 88 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW Indeed, I suspect that a good deal of the hill itself is arti- ficial. Such, at least, is the case of the high terrace bor- dering the city wall where the mosque of AiVas Efifendi 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, archaeology 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 Byzan- tinised 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 unarchseological 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. On top of the hill stands the well-preserved ruin known in Turkish as Tekfour Serai, 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 cen- tury 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 archaeologists take a particular interest in Tekfour Serai, because it is the only authentic piece of domestic building left of Byzantine Constantinople. The main facade is divided OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 89 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 archi- tecture. We should not take that version too Hterally, 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 Serai is not hke that of the Fondaco dei Turchi, to whose designed irregularity Ruskin drew attention. Neither has the checker-work of the facade anything in common with the plaques of porphyry and serpentine re- flected in the Grand Canal. It suggests, rather, the checker-work of the Ducal Palace. The first tier of arches, too, looks Hke 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 facade of Tekfour Serai. The question lies so near the fan- tastic, however, and so far from any track of sober archaeology where I have happened to browse, that I merely ask it and hurry on, leaving for some happy ex- pert, with means to excavate and knowledge to com- pare, to state the true afFdiations of the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus. The richest remains of old Constantinople are its churches. Little as they are generally known, almost 90 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Sojya. The cross no longer surmounts that old cathedral, it is true, nor are Christian forms of worship IM. ^ <^&^> |^W| ihy^^'mtaJ'' _.._iir«^ ^ «M ^^^ .'.^m't r.i .- ■"■.,.^ '^^m •*^^ r<;. '-'^S'^^Mffy^- -SXj^^K' hs^^'^ '^^ \m^uB^Bmmmm:^^^^iw^M^^m "^'0^ .«,"•<-? t-y '^.^ -■/ ■ :,- ^ ,,.-^«^ ^ ■■^;^^^^;Jf2Ji[^p^K?es:^ ' ,;^^'' ':H^f^M^^: ■: '■'■tt ;^,/^.^. /-.---. -^V' ;' . ' ^'^i^^HJH^^^^^^'' ''^^^^ji ^■■■-^'^■'""'"^■■■^^■■■•' : ■"■•"^^*''-'' ■ .,■ ■ -^4? /^ J- %V\.Sf' The Palace of the Porphyrogehitus permitted within its walls. In the divine wisdom, how- ever, 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 OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 91 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 Httle Turkish rearrange- ments are swallowed up in it, as must have been the ghtter 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 perfec- tion 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 mon- astery 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. Neverthe- less, they found time to gain renown as copyists and il- luminators 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 Stu- dion became the most important monastery in the city. Its abbot took precedence of all other abbots. The em- perors visited it annually in state. Two of them even exchanged their crowns for its habit. In 1054 several 92 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW meetings took place there between Constantine X and the legates who had come from Rome to settle the dif- ferences 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 Palseologus drove the Latin emperors from Con- stantinople in 1 26 1, 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 oSrjyrjTpia, the Showcr of the Way, which he left in the church. This sacred painting, ascribed to the pro- lific 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 Seragho Point. The refic 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 cere- monies of Easter. The Studion possessed other precious rehcs 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 Baiezid the Thunder- bolt, who died there of the plague in 141 7. Brought up as a hostage at the court of Manuel Palaeologus, he be- came a Christian, but for fear of incurring his father's displeasure the monks would not baptise him till his last illness. It was under Baiezid 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. OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 93 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. Interior of the Studion Of the monastery very Httle remains save a fine cis- tern 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 94 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 asso- ciated 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 entabla- ture of an early transition period from Corinthian to Byzantine. After the disuse of the basilica as a mosque, the Russian Archaeological 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 dis- posed 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 dis- agreement arose between the Russians and the Minis- try of Pious Foundations, and the work was stopped. Nothing was done, however, to protect the ruined ba- silica, and the last time I saw it the pavement was lost in weeds. There are some twenty-five other buildings in Stam- boul that were originally Byzantine churches. That is, of course, but a small proportion of the multitude that OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 95 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 basiHca to the high-domed trefoil church of the fourteenth century. This develop- ment 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 repre- senting 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 archaeology 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 Kght. But several of the attributions of churches are disputed. Their true names were lost with their original worship- pers, and it is a comparatively short time since Chris- tians 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 96 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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, pubhc mon- uments and private houses without number were tapes- tried with mosaic, there are in 19 14 only four buildings where anything is visible of this lost art. The atten- dants of St. Sophia used to make quite an income by sell- ing 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, correspond- ingly 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 Kttle 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 Fetich 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 exam- ple of the work of that period is to be seen in Kahrieh Jami, once Our Saviour in the Fields. 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 origi- nally the church of a monastery, and its history goes OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 97 back as far. Like the Studion, also, it suffered from the quarrels of iconoclasm, it gave hospitahty at a historic moment — namely during the last siege — to the mi- raculous icon of the Shower of the Way, and it fell into Turkish hands during the reign of Baiezid IL Kahrieh Jami means the Mosque of Woe, from the scenes that Kahrieh Jami were enacted there when the Turks stormed the walls. The church seems always to have had a particular con- nection 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 fmally 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 98 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Bul- garian blood in her veins, the church owes its present lines and perhaps a part of its interior decoration. Photograph by S6bah and Joaillier, Constantinople Mosaic from Kahrieh Jami: Theodore Metochites offering his church to Christ 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 OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 99 parents in Nicaea, 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 IL 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 fa- vourite pupil in the latter science was Nicephorus Gre- goras, a monk of Our Saviour in the Fields, who, three hundred years before Gregory XIII, proposed to rectify the Juhan calendar. If Greek priests realised this fact, and how nearly ahke were the names of the two church- men, they might be more wiUing to adopt a system which was christened after a Pope. It was characteris- tic of the time that Metochites took as much interest in astrology as he did in astronomy. Philology was an- other subject that engrossed him. He made six hun- dred years ago an attempt which is being made in Ath- ens to-day to restore the Romaic Greek language to its Attic purity, for he was a devoted student of Aris- totle and particularly of Plato. With all these scholarly tastes, however, he was a man of affairs. By his suc- cess as an ambassador and in other pubHc posts, he rose from one responsibihty 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 Turk- ish peril. Among his writings, too, are some curiously modern reflections on absolute monarchy. Neverthe- less he became involved, through his fidehty to his im- perial master, in the long quarrel between Andronicus II and his grandson Andronicus III. When the latter 100 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 re- tired 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 ahve the memory of his humanism and of his loyalty. The grace of its proportions, the beauty of its marbles, the dehcacy of its sculpture, everything about it sets the church apart as a Httle 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 epi- taph. 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 hid- den, waiting as if for the day of release from a strange enchantment. But in the narthexes Mohammedan sensi- bihties have for once spared two long series of scenes from the hfe of Christ and the legend of Mary. And they make one ask oneself again why so noble an art is practi- cally lost. For richness of effect no other form of sur- face 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 Cefalu. More- over, it has decorative effects of its own which painting never can rival, while its greater brilliancy is better Photograph by Sebah and JoaiUier, Constantinople Mosaic from Kahrieh Jami: the Massacre of the Innocents Photograph by Alinari Brothers, Florence. Reproduced by permission Giotto's fresco of the Massacre of the Innocents, in the Arena chapel, Padua OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 103 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 proc- esses of reproduction. But the mosaics of Venice, Ra- venna, and Sicily, of Salonica and Constantinople, will last as long as the buildings that contain them. 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 sub- ject 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 archaeologist Schmitt, who has written the completest monograph on the subject — and who picked enough plaster away in the nave to as- sure 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 104 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 ex- pressed their opinions neither of them was aware of an odd httle fact quite lately estabhshed not by a Byzan- tinist but by a layman who was looking at some photo- graphs of the mosaics. In the photograph of the central bay of the outer narthex he dis- covered, above a two- handled jar which a servant carries on his shoulder to the mar- riage 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 equiv- alent to 1303. The find was interesting in itself as being the earhest use yet recorded — if I am not mis- taken — of Arabic numerals on a public monument. It has a further interest in pointing to the Syrian affiha- tions 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 defi- nitely 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. I do not know whether any one, in discussing this Photograph by Sebah and Joaillier, Constantinople Mosaic from Kahrieh Jami: the Marriage at Cana OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 105 matter, has drawn attention to so small a detail as a cer- tain 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 unhkely 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. Con- stantinople had for the young Itahan 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, hke his master Cimabue, made pictures with little cubes of coloured glass. I will not say that the Itahans, 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 inspira- tion. 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 io6 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Constan- tinople 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 re- main. 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 dis- dain 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 preserva- tion, which they began to demolish five hundred years ago and since have left to encumber the earth. More- over, 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 fortifica- tions, 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 OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 107 them will ever read this obscure page I will content my- self 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 trav- ellers' handbooks! Constantinople has long been famous for her walls. About the rocky headland of Seraglio Point, which was the acropoKs of the first settlers from Megara, may still He some blocks of the fortifications built by Pausanias after the battle of Platsea, 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 de- stroyed 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 io8 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 im- portance of the Blacherne quarter necessitated fresh en- largements 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). 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, mono- grams, and inscriptions of every period they contain, the associations they have had so much time to accumu- late. Two points, however, have a special interest for expert and layman afike. I have already spoken of Tekfour Serai, 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 OLD CONSTANTINOPLE 109 been built as a triumphal arcK over the Egnatian Way by Theodosius the Great, after his defeat of Maximus in 388. The statue of the emperor and the other sculptures m ^""Itef" ' 'J ^K^^' 1^ r F':. mss^M^^m^ ^^^s - ,■?-. ^^^§ The Golden Gate 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 S^CLO 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 no CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 hes 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 Turk- ish 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 re- main 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 with- out 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 reahty for so many breathing men, is now but a pleasant quickening of ro- mance 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 OLD CONSTANTINOPLE II I 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 Outside the land walls 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 ram- parts? 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 112 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW part of background. The landscape is most dramatically accidented where you look past the high terraces of Bla- cherne 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-hke between the moat and the cypresses, dips and rises and dips again toward the Golden Gate J A last marble tower stands superbly out of the blue 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 civiHsation was safely planted there; and of something yet more intangible, that is deepest and strangest in human fate. 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 al- ways 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 fa- mous 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 prob- ably named so for even less reason than the orange valley behind Palermo — because some one a long time ago hked 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-hke basin where the Bosphorus and the Mar- mora come together, one of the most satisfactory pieces 113 114 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 some- what 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. All harbours bring the ends of the earth together, and the part of the Golden Horn outside the bridges looks a Httle like them all. Flags of every country fly there, beside stone quays or moored to red buoys in the open. Trim Hners and workaday tramps bring in a little atmosphere from the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the far-off Atlantic. Tugs puff busily about. Cranes take 1^1 t1 ' ^ r O H THE GOLDEN HORN 117 up the white man's burden as naturally as in any other port. Every harbour brings the ends of the earth to- gether 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 rowboat very much like other rowboats, 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 pro- vided at each with an upstanding post which is conve- nient 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 redoubt- able race of beings. These men are Laz, a race of dare- devils from the region of Trebizond, which was the an- cient Colchis. You may know them by their tight black clothes, by the sharpness of their shoes, ending in a kather thong, and by the pointed hood of two long flaps which they wear knotted about their heads Hke 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 pecuhar 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 Httle 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 com- merce of the port in no gentle hand. He will neither ii8 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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. The lightermen are by no means the only guild in the Golden Horn, though I suppose they are doomed to Lighters 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 THE GOLDEN HORN 119 guild in high quarters. Under the old regime the kehayas of the principal guilds were members of the palace cama- rilla. 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 hghtermen and the Sandals custom-house porters are obhged to give the War Depart- ment so many men on so many days a week. The outer bridge draws a sharp boundary-Hne be- tween 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 120 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW - 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 head- quarters 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 caique. I am sorry to say it, because I do not Kke to see the Turks change their own customs for European ones, but truth com- pels me to add that I have lolled too much in gondolas to be an unbridled admirer of the caique. 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 caique 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. Caiques 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. If I were really to open the chapter of caiques 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 ka'ik of the Golden Horn ferries to the big pazar ka'ik. 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 diff"erent villages on the Bosphorus, rowed by men who stand to the heavy- THE GOLDEN HORN 121 handled oars and drop with them to their backs. There are also caiques with sails, undecked boats built on the lines of a fishing caique, 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 Caiques other of a fearsome stick, boom and gaff in one, that spears the heavens. The human part of the caique has its picturesque points as well. The sail caiques are navi- gated more often than not by Greeks. As with fishing caiques, it depends on the village they come from. The men of the bazaar caiques 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; 122 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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. Another boundless chapter is that of the larger ves- sels that frequent the inner Horn. You get an inkhng Sailing caiques 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 he beside the caravels of Co- lumbus — 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 Suleiman, THE GOLDEN HORN 123 and the most notable part of it, for me, is always made up of certain ships called gagali 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 httle one side of the bow. Galleons that might have sailed out of the Middle Ages anchor there now 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. One or two minor fleets, made up of small Greek alamdnas or Turkish chektirmehs, are usually tied up off other Stamboul markets. But the most imposing one of 124 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 saihng 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 bafHed even an old German engraver. I wonder a man can ever fmd 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 Httle more hke 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 sa'ika from either, or to discover that Flying Dutchman of a craft of whose exis- tence I have been credibly informed, namely, the Ship of the Prophet Noah. 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 Httoral of the Black Sea. The Prophet Noah also, whom I have just mentioned, is Hkewise 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- By courtesy of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus From a Persian miniature THE GOLDEN HORN 127 bone of a goose, and wrote talismanic invocations on different parts of the ship — as "0 Steadfast One" on the planks, and "0 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 AI Rakim, used to be writ- ten 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 astrologi- cally, 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 jar- gon of their trade is almost purely Itahan. Even the boatmen in the harbour shout sia when they want each other to back water, not suspecting that the gondohers in Venice do exactly the same — though the gondohers 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 sHghtly Turkified or Grecicised, as the case may be, but an Itahan sailor would be lost only on a steamer. There a Turkish captain uses Enghsh words as ghbly 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. 128 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 ex- ploits of the Turks were connected with the sea. The deep valley of Kassim 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 success- fully 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. Kassim Pasha does not seem to me altogether to fit the contemporary descrip- tions, 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 15 15, was enlarged by his son Suleiman 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 thou- sand men, could not shake the empire. The Grand Vizier SokoIIi Mehmed Pasha said to the Venetian Balio, THE GOLDEN HORN 129 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, 157 1-2, one hundred and fifty-eight gafleys of different sizes were laid down in the Arsenal. And when that famous Prince of the Sea Kilij Ah 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 sil- ver, cables of silk, and sails of satin." A few rehcs 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 parch- ment, 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 caiques, 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 gafley. 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 130 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW lines of the hull are precisely those of any caique. 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 Kassim Pasha. It is chiefly inhabited by naval officers, who under Abd iil Hamid II outnumbered their men! There is a quarter of it called Kalliounjou Koullouk, which means the • Guardhouse of the Galleon Men. There are also a number of fountains in Kassim Pasha carved with three ship lanterns to show who built them. And not the least famous of the Princes of the Sea Hes 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 Kassim 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 THE GOLDEN HORN 131 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 The mihrab of Pialeh Pasha 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 archi- tectural interest it would be worth a visit for the charm 132 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW of its plane-shaded yard and the cypress grove behind the mosque where Pialeh lies in a neglected tiirbeh. 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 per- tained 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 en- closure 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 Hved 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. THE GOLDEN HORN 133 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 Old houses of Phanar 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 134 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW around the Patriarchate. The ambassadors of the trib- utary 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 Phanari- otes 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 Hve 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 beheve, 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 mediaeval Greek in Stamboul was very hterally 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 in- mates 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 mon- umental fireplaces, what plaster mouldings, what mar- quetry 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. THE GOLDEN HORN 135 Of a very different character is the hollow of con- verging 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 The outer court of Eyoub his last resting-place so many legendary things are re- lated 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 H was making his own siege, eight hundred years later, he opportunely dis- covered the burial-place of the saintly warrior. This discovery having stimulated the flagging ardour of the besiegers, with what results we know, the Conqueror 136 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Con- stantinople, 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 dis- guise, or so much as its outer court. Even now it is not easy for a Christian to see the inside of the tur- beh. 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 feehng 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 hun- dred years ago. The mosque itself is not very interest- ing, having been restored too many times. It contains one much-prized relic, however, consisting of a print of Eyoub THE GOLDEN HORN 139 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. 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 Hne 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 Suleiman 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 SokoIIi Mehmed, whose destiny it was to become the Treasurer of Suleiman, 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 H 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 SokoIIi ruled the empire throughout Selim's reign and part of that of Mourad HI. Three hundred years before De Lesseps he conceived the idea of the Suez Canal, and might 140 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW have carried it out had he Hved. 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 Kassim Pasha for the edification of the galley-slaves, this bloody trophy was at last presented to the Venetians, who gave it hon- ourable burial in their own Pantheon of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. Lala Moustafa was himself of Christian origin, being of the same Serb race as SokoIIi 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 HI and Mehmed IV. Although not born in the faith, Ferhad Pasha was renowned for the beauty of his calligraphy. Among this group of mauso- leums is that of one real Turk, the celebrated Shei'h iil Islam Ebou Sououd Effendi, who drew up and inter- preted the laws of Suleiman. The tiirbehs cluster so thickly between the mosque and the water that one avenue is lined by nothing else, and from it Httle 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, par- ticularly 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 THE GOLDEN HORN 141 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 phi- losophy. 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 cemetery of Eyoub the minarets of the mosque and the procession of siege- battered towers scaHng the slope beyond, upon the whole picture of the Golden Horn framed between its two beethng 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 visi- ble to remind you what a meeting-place of nations is here. 142 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW On this hilltop stood in old times the castle of Cos- midion, 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 beheve 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 Argyrohmnai, 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. lo, 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 hon- our 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 meta- morphosis of lo, we have the mythic origin of the name of the Golden Horn. The two rivers are now called AH 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 Suleiman, and emperors and THE GOLDEN HORN 143 sultans alike loved to take refuge in this pleasant wilder- ness. 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 HI, 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 artijex 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 num- ber 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 pic- tures and presents also, as to change the whole course of Ottoman architecture. So vivid a description in par- ticular did the ambassador give of the new palace of Versailles and of its older rival at Marly-Ie-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 — a la Louis XIV and the Signs of the Zodiac. There grew up as by magic a con- tinuous line of villas and gardens from the village of Kiat 144 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW Haneh to that of Siitliijeh, opposite Eyoub. And the fete 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 har- mony of the empire, but that the palaces might be de- stroyed ! 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 Siilei- man 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 iil 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 Hidir Eless, the THE GOLDEN HORN 145 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 Kiat Haneh Turkish ladies, in gay silks, dot the sward like tuhps; 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 146 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW most elegant craft in the world skims into sight — a three-oared caique, with a piece of embroidered velvet, whose corner tassels trail in the water, thrown over the little deck behind the seat. The ka'ikjis 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. 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 gar- ment 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 kaikji, 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 Gyok 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 THE GOLDEN HORN 147 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 in- visible 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 Hne 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 ahve. V THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY Galaia, que mes yeux desiraient des longtemps. . . — Andre Chenier. In Pera sono tre malanni : Peste, fuoco, dragomanni. — Local Proverb. It is not the fashion to speak well of Pera and Ga- lata. 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 Farrere. 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 whirhng dervishes. A few of the more thorough- going will, perhaps, take the trouble to chmb Galata Tower or to row up the Sweet Waters of Europe. For my part, however, who belong to none of these cate- gories, 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 Stam- boul — though that gives them one inestimable advan- tage 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 148 THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 149 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 al- ready the seat of the Sultan and of the bulk of the com- merce 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 de- bris 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 lasonion. In the valley behind that pic- turesque suburb there later existed a famous laurel grove, sacred of course to Apollo, who, with Poseidon, was pa- tron 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 her- self the patron saint of the new Christian city of Con- stantinople. 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 150 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Be- shiktash the celebrated church of St. Mamas, together with a palace that was long a favourite resort of the imperial family. In the hght of recent history it is in- teresting to recall that Krum, King of Bulgaria, sacked and burned the suburb of St. Mamas, with the rest of Thrace, in 8 1 1 . 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 sub- urb 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 httle alleys, for all the world hke 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 eafher than the time Genoa founded her colony there. Ville- hardouin 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 be- THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 151 lieve 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 Ital- ian word galetta is one of them, more or less familiar in English and very common in its French form of ga- lette. Another French word, galetas, is also derived from Galata, meaning a high garret and hence a poor tene- ment. Belonging at first to the castle alone, the name seems to have spread to the whole surrounding settle- ment. 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 cos- mopolitan city. The emperors themselves were of many races and the empire they governed was as full of unas- similated 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 impor- tant 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 Pi- sans, then the men of Amalfi — not far from Yeni Jami — and last the Venetians. The Venetian colony was long the most important. 152 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Siileimanieh. During the Latin occupation the Venetians naturally extended their bor- ders, 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 1 26 1 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 for- eign colonies in Constantinople to-day. The origin, in- deed, of the capitulations which embarrass the Turks so much is perhaps the Capitulare Baiulis Constantinopoli- tani 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 supphes. 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 bans in the quar- ter of the Dried Fruit Bazaar go back so far, or the two marble Hons 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 octag- THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 153 onal tower, ever had anything to do with Venice. But the only indisputable reHc 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. Lion fountain in the old Venetian quarter In the growing rivalry between Venice and Genoa the former enjoyed a constant advantage in Constanti- nople until 1 26 1. Then the Genoese very nearly suc- ceeded in dislodging the Venetians from Stamboul alto- gether. 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 BaHo himself was killed ; and the 154 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW fleets of the two republics more than once came to blows in the Bosphorus. In the meantime Michael Palseologus had given the Genoese, partly as a reward for their ser- vices against the Venetians, partly to get rid of allies so formidable, the town of Perinthos, or Eregli, in the Mar- mora. 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, cap- tured 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 Podesta, 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 inde- pendence possible. Although cut ofi" from Genoa, how- ever, 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 sur- rendered, 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 THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 155 down their land fortifications. This last condition seems never to have been carried out. Genoese archway at Azap Kapou Under the new regime Galata proceeded to reorganise herself as the Magnifica Communitd di Pera. The head of this Magnificent Community was a magnifico, prior of 156 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW the Brotherhood of St. Anne, who was aided by a sub- prior and twelve councillors. Their deliberations chiefly concerned the churches, since in civil afl"airs they were naturally subject to the Porte. The Rue Voivoda, 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 protec- tion of the Latin colony — which was no longer distinc- tively Genoese or Venetian. The Magnificent Com- munity, accordingly, ceased to have corporate existence. But the Latin "nation" still forms one of the constituent elements of the Ottoman empire. And while the popula- tion 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 inde- finable Itahan 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 Crista, 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 Voivoda. The Genoese took advantage of the THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 157 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 vas- sals, 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 ex- tended 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 in- scriptions and coats of arms they contained being ulti- mately removed to the imperial museum. Further down the hill remnants of masonry stifl 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. Benoit 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 frag- ment of aH, 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 con- taining the arms of Genoa — the cross of St. George — between the escutcheons of the two noble houses of Doria and De Merude*; and an olive-tree waves banner- like from the top of the wall. Galata has always been famous for its fires, to say nothing of its earthquakes. These, and changes of pop- ulation, with the street-widening and rebuilding of our * For this information I am indebted to F. W. Hasluck, Esq., of the British School at Athens. 158 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW day, have left us very little idea of the architecture of the Genoese colony. In the steep alleys on either side of the Rue Voivoda are a number of stone buildings, with corbelled upper stories and heavily grated windows, which are popularly called Genoese. They bear too close a re- semblance 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 mediaeval and they suggest how Galata may once have looked. The facade of one of them, in the Rue Perchembe Bazaar, is decorated with a Byzantine marble panel. This was the fashionable quarter of Genoese Galata. The palace of the Podesta was there, at the northeast corner of the place where Perchembe Bazaar crosses Voivoda. 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 mis- sions. The story of these is a picturesque chapter in the history of the mediaeval orders. The Franciscans were the first to come to Constantinople, opening a mis- sion on Seraglio Point in 12 19, 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 THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 159 Sant' Antonio, on the Grande Rue de Pera, is the direct descendant of the cathedral of San Francesco and the missionaries of 12 19. The Dominicans were also settled at an early date on both sides of the Golden Horn. Arab Jami, the mosque whose campanile-Hke minaret is so conspicuous from the water, was formerly their church of San Paolo. Tradi- tion 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 hospitahty at different points along the Golden Horn. These were the Jews driven out by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. There was aheady a considerable colony of Jews in Constantinople. Many of them had been Venetian subjects and Hved on the edge of the Venetian settlement, at the point where the mosque of Yeni Jami now stands. When the great sultana Kyossem acquired that property she exempted forty of the residents from taxation for hfe and engaged herself to pay the Karaite community an annual ground rent of thirty-two piastres. This was a considerable sum in 1640, but it now amounts to Httle more than a dollar a year! The sultana furthermore granted the Jews new lands at the place called Hass-kyoi — which might roughly be translated as Village of the Privy Purse — and a large Jewish colony still lives there, most of whose mem-, bers 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 i6o CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 appear- ance. 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 Baho took away by force and put into the church of Pantocrator, now Zeirek Kihsseh 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 posses- sion 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 facade 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 cHmbs past the palace of the Podesta 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 Chenier. Settling as a young THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY i6i 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 Andre Chenier, 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. Benoit, 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, carry- ing 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 mediaeval 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 Shei'h iil 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 nota- 1 62 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW ble, 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. Benoit. 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 ordi- naire du roy en Levant." He had the good fortune to live in Constantinople during the brilliant reign of Ahmed ni, 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 docu- ments 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 Vene- tians, and later of Greeks, from the opposite side of the Horn, a good deal of it came about through Turkish col- onisation. This was chiefly without the walls. You can almost trace the hne of them to-day by the boundary between populations. The Turkish settlements gathered around mosques, palaces, and mihtary estabhshments built by diff"erent sultans in the country about Galata, mainly on the water-front. One of the oldest of these THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 163 settlements grew up in the deep ravine just west of the Galata wall. It is now engaged in readjusting its rela- tions to the rest of the world, but it still remains hke a piece of Stamboul, and it is the home of many dervishes. It took its name from a vizier of Suleiman the Magnificent, the conqueror of Nauplia and twice governor of Egypt. He was known as Handsome Kassim, 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 Kassim Pasha adds to the resources of Pera. No one, however, should be in- capable of appreciating what the cypresses of Kassim 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 cem- eteries, 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 iil 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 Itahan darsena. The ac- cepted derivation is from the Arabic dar es sanaat, house of construction, from an ancient shipyard in Egypt cap- tured 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 captur- 1 64 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW ing 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 ar- rested 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 begin- ning 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 foun- THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 165 dery, and his son Baiezid II built barracks there for the artillerymen, while Suleiman I and Ahmed III restored and added to these constructions. There was also an- other shipyard at Top Haneh, and another Prince of the Sea is buried there near the mosque he built. The mosque of Don Quixote and the fountain of Sultan Mahmoud I I know not how it is that this mosque has so miracu- lously 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 door- ways as only Sinan knew how to draw, while the interior is as happy in proportion as it is in detail. 1 66 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW The mihrab is unusual in being brightly lighted, and the windows, set among tiles, contain exquisite frag- ments of old stained glass. There are also tiled in- scriptions, by Hassan Chelibi of Kara Hissar, above the other windows. The mimber, too, is a master- piece 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 four- teen years in the galleys, and changed his name of Ochiali to Oulouj Ali — Big Ah. The ex-galley-slave then be- came 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 Con- stantinople. For this exploit he was made high admiral of the fleet and his name was turned into Sword Ali — Ktlij 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 Kilij Ali. The upshot of the matter was that the builder of our beautiful Interior of the mosque of Don Quixote THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 169 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 hun- dred crowns. So might a half-forgotten building in Top Haneh be brought back to light as the mosque of Don Quixote! The greatest of the Princes of the Sea hes farther up the Bosphorus, at Beshiktash. The name is a corruption of besh task, 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 Ha'ireddin. 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 Suleiman the Magnificent he became the terror of the Mediterranean and his master's chief instru- ment in a Hfelong 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 hfetime; 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 tiirbeh of that turbulent man of blood. His green admiral's flag Drawn by Kenan Bey The admiral's flag of Ha'ir- eddin Barbarossa 170 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW hangs over his catafalque, marked in white with inscrip- tions, with an open hand, and with the double-bladed sword that was the emblem of his dignity, while his ad- miral's lanterns hang in niches on either side of the simple mausoleum. The harbour of Jason and Barbarossa — and very Kkely 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 neigh- bourhood. 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 hved there ahogether. The existing palace of Dolma Ba'hcheh, which occupies most of the old harbour, dates only from 1853. The villas of Yildiz 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 selamlik, 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 THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 171 mosque, or to that of the later Byzantine emperors, who received every Sunday the heads of the Latin com- munities. The waterside settlements outside the walls of Galata were and are prevailingly Turkish. The Christian ex- pansion followed the crest of the hill, founding the mod- ern Pera. But there is a leaven of Islam even in Pera. Baiezid II built a mosque in the quarter of Asmali Mesjid — ■ Vine Chapel — and a palace at Galata Serai. 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 Serai 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 Palaeologus, 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 Suleiman the Magnificent, and exercised much influence in the foreign relations of that monarch. Suleiman him- self built in Pera, or on that steep eastward slope of it which is called Findikli — 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 Con- stantinople. 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. 172 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW a little island of peace and mysticism in the unbelieving town that has engulfed them. It is the classic amuse- ment 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 symbohsm 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 quarreUing with the redoubtable Prince Eugene, came to Constantinople, became general of bom- bardiers, 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 com- munity 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 Con- ventuals 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 THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 173 Galata to the Observants in 1584. It passed to the Riformatf 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 Conven- tuals. 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 ban detailed for that use in Stamboul, facing the Burnt Column. The Vene- tian Baho, I believe, always had a residence of his own. The French, however, set up a country-seat at The Vine- yards as early as the time of Henri IV. And during the reign of Sultan Ibrahim, who in his rage at the Vene- tians over the Cretan War threatened to kill every Christian in the empire, beginning with the Balio, the am- bassadors 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 Rus- sian embassy was the Polish embassy. The Dutch and the Swedes acquired pleasant properties on the same slope. All these big gateways and gardens opening oflF 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 mem- 174 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW ber 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. Hak- luyt tells us that at least as early as 151 1 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 Ehzabeth — "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 corre- spondent 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 Hke, 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 BaHo 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 THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 175 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 1 82 1 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 171 7. 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 Le- vant Company for its distinguished employees. In the Rue de Pologne there is a funny httle stone house, now fallen, I beheve, to the Hght uses of a dancing-school, which was once the British consulate. The present em- bassy is a Victorian structure and known to be in a dif- ferent 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 nationali- ties 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 Hve there, inextricably intermingled, yet somehow remaining miraculously distinct. There is, to be sure, a considerable body of Levantines — of those, namely, who 176 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW have mixed — but even they are a pecuHar 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 Sul- tan 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 popu- lation 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 BerHn, Paris, or Rome. Not students and people of leisure but mer- chants and missionaries make up the better part of the family that each embassy presides over in a sense un- known in Western cities. The days are gone by when the protection of the embassies had the hteral meaning that once attached to many a garden walk But the ambassadors cling to the privileges and exemptions granted them by early treaties, and through the quar- ter 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 ad- mit, 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 facihties which Abd iil 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 THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 177 over as much ground as New York, will really take in the conception of rapid transit, or even the more primi- tive one of home comfort. I hardly need, therefore, go into the account of the more comphcated paraphernaha of modern hfe. There are no pubHc pleasure or sport- ing grounds other than two dusty Httle municipal gar- dens, 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 Comedie Fran^aise 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 peri- patetic Aida welcome Rhadames and a conquering host of five Greek supers; but Briinnhilde and the Rhine maidens have yet to know the Bosphorus. Not so, how- ever, a translated "Tante de Charles." When the "Merry Widow" first tried to make her debut, she met with an unexpected rebuff. Every inhabitant of Pera who respects himself has a big Croat or Montene- grin, 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 contra- diction to her urban dimensions, the air of a village, the 178 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 hke another. I, therefore, applaud Pera for having the originahty 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 Hve in Pera is as good as a uni- versity. No one can hope to entertain relations with the good people of that municipahty 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 Hberal in other particulars. Pera observes three holy days a week: Friday for the Turks, Saturday for the Jews, Sunday for the Christians. How many hoHdays she keeps I would be afraid to guess. She recognises four separate calendars. Two of them, the Juhan and the THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 179 Gregorian, followed by Eastern and Western Christians respectively, are practically identical save that they are thirteen days apart. There are, however, three Christ- mases in Pera, because the Armenians celebrate Epiph- any (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 pur- poses an adaptation of the Julian calendar, beginning on the first of March and not retroactive in calculating earlier dates. Thus the Christian year 19 14 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 get- ting 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. 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 comprehen- sion 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 i8o CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW add that it is longer than ever! It begins under an- other name in Galata, in a long flight of steps from which you see a blue slice of the harbour neatly sur- mounted by the four minarets of St. Sophia. It mounts through a commerce of stalls and small shops, gaining Grande Rue de Pera in decorum as it rises in altitude, till it reaches the height which was the heart of old Pera. Here was the Stavro- thromo 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 Kassim Pasha. The Grande Rue now attains its climax of importance much farther on, between Gal- ata Serai and Taxim, whence, keeping ever to the crest of the hill, it passes out into the country like another THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY i«i 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 noth- ing picturesque in the balconies almost meeting across the mmmi / '■'»: *-'i- ■''WW ^mJLl.\ 1 i _ tT-^ The Little Field of the Dead 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 Anatohan peasant carrying a piano on his back, by a flock of sheep pattering between two gaunt Alba- nians, or by a troop of firemen hooting half-naked through the street with a gaudy httle hand-pump on their shoul- 1 82 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW ders. 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 mediaeval, come so strangely together. 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 Findikli, from which you catch ghmpses, 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 out- lying 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 SokoIIi Mehmed Pasha. At Findikli, 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 THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 183 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 The fountain of Azap Kapou 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 Podesta lived and Andre Chenier was born, a wall fountain whose lamentable state of ruin is a re- proach to the city that can boast such a treasure. The entire left bank, in fact, is particularly rich in these in- 1 84 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW teresting monuments. This is the only part of the city for which the sultans installed an entirely new water- system. I could easily pass all bounds in enumerating the glories of Galata, which Murray's guide-book dismisses with httle 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 Alti — Under the Arch — lying between Step Street and the pious walls of S. Benoit, 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 simpHcity 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 httle mystery about it, its fantastic inhabitants make so Kttle 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 wa- termen — their lodging, their outfitting, and their amuse- ment. 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 httle streets around Arab Fountain near Galata Tower THE MAGNIFICENT COMMUNITY 187 Jami, and venders of dreadful Manchester prints, of astonishing footwear, of sweets, of perfumes, of varie- gated 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 The Kabatash breakwater all this commerce. It has gone elsewhere: to be pre- cise, to Kassim Pasha. On Tuesdays you will find these peripatetic merchants near Top Haneh. If the Thursday Market goes, the rest of Galata re- mains, 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 1 88 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 straggHng 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 forgot- ten its old Greek name, and mix it up in your mind with a certain i;iotorious town in Albania. Moreover, your guide-book assures you that a day, or even half a day, will suffice to absorb its interest. BeHeve no such non- sense, however. I have reason to know what I am talk- ing about, for I have spent ten of the best years of my Hfe in Scutari, if not eleven, and have not yet seen all its sights. By what series of accidents a New Enghsh 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 hesi- tate 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 of- fice without any intermediate naturalisation, preserved to me the sacred right of the ballot. But the fact gives 190 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 con- sidering 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 httle 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. 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 THE CITY OF GOLD 191 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 horizon- tally 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 be- longed to an Armenian gran- dee 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 some- times 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 at- tention. Certain it is that such a stair, black and breakneck, existed, for my room was at the top of it — Fresco in an old house in Scutari 192 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 iil 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 httle 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 compHment of naming a certain place of amusement which existed in our vicinity the American Theatre, hoping thereby to gain our pat- ronage. 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 THE CITY OF GOLD 193 opera of Suppe. I have also lived to learn that Scutari, or the part of it where we hved, 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 Selamsiz. Nevertheless, we did not suff"er 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 re- freshment. 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 ap- parently 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, sHm 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 194 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 be- tween 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 colild 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 bound- THE CITY OF GOLD 195 less 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 hke their theory better, that the city took its name from Chryses, son of Chryseis and Agamemnon, who, fleeing after the fall of Troy from vEgisthus 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 au- thorities claim that it is a corruption of Uskiidar, 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 Uskiidar to be a corruption of an old Armenian name, Oskitar or Voskitar, which is merely a translation of Chrysopolis. When Mehmed II captured Constanti- nople 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 read- ing in Gibbon of a corps of scutarii who had their barracks 196 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 lexi- con, 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 con- temn Murray, Von Hammer and Company, with their Persian postboys, and take my stand on those Roman shields. In all probabihty the name spread, as in the case of Galata, from a barracks or a palace to the entire locality, and Uskiidar must be a Turkish attempt to pronounce the Greek 1,KovTdpiov. 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 tread- ing the streets. I find it a little difficult to write co- herently, 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 Haidar Pasha, Kadi Kyoi, and Moda. The history of these ad- joining quarters is so intertwined that it is sometimes hard to distinguish between Chalcedon and ChrysopoHs. Chalcedon, like Byzantium, was founded by colonists from Megara, but a few years earlier. Its greater accessi- bifity and hospitahty to ships and the flatness of its site gave it advantages which ChrysopoHs did not pos- sess. ChrysopoHs, 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 THE CITY OF GOLD 197 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. Phihp 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. Hanni- bal ended his troubled days in a suburb of Chalcedon. Nicomedes HI 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 Chrysopohs he also took a cele- brated 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 Siilei- man the Magnificent was able to find materials for his greatest mosque in the ruins of the church of St. Eu- phemia and of the palace of Belisarius. To-day a few sculptured capitals remain above ground 198 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW in Scutari, and every now and then some one in Kadi Kyoi digs up in his garden a terra-cotta figurine. Other- wise there is nothing left to remind you of the antique cities that sat in front of Byzantium. They have dis- appeared 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 Kyoi might be on opposite sides of the Bosphorus. Kadi Kyoi, with its warmer winds, its smoother lands, its better' harbours, its trim yachts, its afHuent-Iooking villas, its international Bagdadbahn, has acquired a good deal of the outward appearance of ■ Europe. Whereas Scutari remains Asi- atic 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 Scu- tari is here, however, and one altogether worthy of the City of Gold. Seen from the water it is admirably bor- dered with boats and boat-houses, being no less admi- THE CITY OF GOLD 199 rably 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 Street of the Falconers 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 edi- 200 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW tion 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 con- tains 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 Riistem Pasha, on a terrace above the hum of the landing stage. As a matter of fact it was built by the wife of Riistem Pasha, who was also the daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent and Roxelana. Mihrimah, 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. Per- haps 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 foun- tains 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 mouvakit haneh. When I was speaking of mosque yards in general I did not mention this insti- tution. It may seem to us that people who count twelve o'clock at sunset cannot pay much attention to the sci- ence 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 THE CITY OF GOLD 201 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, Fountain in the mosque yard of Mihrimah 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 mouvakit haneh — the house of time — and incidentally repair the watches of the neighbour- 202 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW hood. Some of them also take solar observations with instruments that were made for a museum. Next in chronological order is the mosque of the Valideh Atik — which might be translated as the Old or, more poHtely, as the Wise Mother. It is more popularly known as Top Tashi, or Cannon Stone. In a steep street near the mosque hes 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 Hes buried beside her husband, Sultan Sehm II, in the courtyard of St. Sophia. Her mosque stands on the second story of Scutari, and its two minarets and con- trasting cypresses, with their encompassing arcade and massive-walled dependencies, make the most imposing architectural group in the town. The mosque has re- cently undergone a thorough restoration, which is rarely a very happy proceeding. Luckily the restorers left the painted wooden ceihngs 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 mar- ble mimher, 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 Nicsea had evi- dently 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 Constanti- nople, 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 Hidir or Hizir, lord of the Fountain of Life. In the porch of the mosque hangs an illuminated manuscript THE CITY OF GOLD 203 commemorating this illustrious visit, and near it are three holes by which Hizir is supposed to have moved the mosque in token of his presence. Tiles in the mosque of the VaHdeh Atik The third princess to build in Scutari was one whose acquaintance we have already made, the great valideh Kyossem. Her mosque also stands on the upper terrace, at the head of the long corridor known as Chaoush 204 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW Deresi. The Turks call it Chinili Jami, which really means the China Mosque. It is a tiled mosque, much smaller than Riistem Pasha, faced on the inside and Chinili Jami 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 Nicaea. As a matter of fact, I believe the tiles came THE CITY OF GOLD 205 from Kiitahya. 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. The fountains of the Valideh Jedid The latest of our four mosques was erected by the sul- tana who, being by birth a Greek, took away San Fran- cesco 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 VaHdeh Jedid, the mosque of the New Mother, and it belongs to that early period of Turkish rococo which Ahmed III 2o6 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Kyopriiliis under a skeleton dome of bronze. And you should see the roses that make a Httle 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 facade of the fore- court, 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 jew- ellery of Sinan's time. The green tiles about the mihrah 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 fafls they learn the secret of its effect. So may they in days to come restore to Riistem Pasha and Sultan Ahmed and Yeni Jami a part of their lost dig- nity. Interior of the Valideh Jedid In the gallery at the left is the imperial tribune THE CITY OF GOLD 209 You are not to suppose that Scutari has no other mosques than these. Ayazma Jami and the Sehmieh 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 The Ahmedieh 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 210 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Suleiman 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 favour- ite of Selim II than he had been of Suleiman. Selim made him master of ceremonies to receive the ambas- sadors 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 extraor- dinary 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 accom- panied 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 dis- solve the empire." THE CITY OF GOLD 211 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 inchned to reflect on the irony of the fact that ill-gotten gains may do more good or create something nearer the immortal than the Shemsi Pasha 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 Httle windows of perforated marble that remain in a corner of the wall, must once have been 212 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 httle 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 19 12, 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 arch- way that opens into the adjoining tomb. This grille is rather like one they show you at Ravenna, in a crypt window of Sant' ApoIIinare in Classe, except that it has an arrow in each of the arched openings; and the sur- mounting 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 Httle marble portico upon a ruined quay. And, tempered so, the splash and flicker of the Bos- phorus come into the mosque. One of the sights of Scutari which always interests me is to be seen behind Shemsi Pasha, where a bluflF 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 THE CITY OF GOLD 213 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 Hke gigantic clothes- horses. This is the hassma haneh — the printing-house. It has belonged to the same family for two hundred years, and during that time it can hardly have changed The bassma haneh 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, Hke other old-fashioned institutions in Constantinople, is open only from the day of Hid'r Eless, in May, to that of Kassim, 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. 214 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Kurdistan. The room was almost dark, and it contained hardly any- thing 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 Haidar Pasha and Moda, as perhaps in some far dis- tant 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, how- ever, 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 delta 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 Kh Koulesi — the Maiden's Tower — and it has a legend of THE CITY OF GOLD 215 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 Hand wood-block printing the princess's prophecy was fulfilled. The gallant imme- diately 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 Hes buried in a town named after him in Asia Minor. The existing Maiden's Tower was built in 1763 by Sultan Moustafa HI. But a Byzantine one existed before it, of the emperor Manuel Comnenus, from which a chain used to be stretched in time of war 2i6 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW across to Seraglio Point. And many centuries earlier the rock bore the statue of a heifer in memory of Dama- lis, 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 in- tricate myth of lo and the Bosphorus. Every one knows the old story of the Delphian Ora- cle, who told the colonists of Byzantium to settle oppo- site 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 Stam- boul 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. I never heard, however, of guides recommending so simple an excursion. What they will sometimes grudg- ingly recommend is to climb the hill of Chamlija. Cham- lija — 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. Chamlija is the highest hill on the Bosphorus, and there- THE CITY OF GOLD 217 fore 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 Turk- ish princes, like their Byzantine predecessors, have villas among them, while the hill is a favourite resort of their ■1 ' If'pVili ^^^ • - '^■- *■■'"'■;, ,. Lggr fi ., J ^^KKBmm;^-^-'^ . c - II The Bosphorus from the heights of Scutari subjects. The widest prospect, of course, is to be had from the top of Big Chamlija. But a more picturesque one is visible from the south side of Little Chamlija, taking in a vivid geography of cypress forest and broken Marmora coast, and Princes' Isles seen for once swim- ming each in its own blue, and far-away Bithynian moun- tains; while to the explorer of a certain northern spur, running straight to Beilerbei Palace, is vouchsafed one 2i8 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW of the most romantic of all visions of the Bosphorus. Chamlija 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 hquors, he is a connoisseur of water — not mineral water, but plain H^O — 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 pubhshed 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 "Hght"; another is that it should flow from south to north or from west to east. A certain spring of Chamlija 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 Bocklin ever saw it, for in certain Hghts, and from the right point of the Bosphorus, Scutari looks strangely hke 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 grav- THE CITY OF GOLD 219 ity, 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 busi- est 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 turbeh is a thing by itself, while every cem- etery is a place of resort. The cypresses of Scutari are, therefore, the less funereal because the highways of com- mon life run between them. I speak hterally, for the main thoroughfares between Scutari and Kadi Kyoi pass through the cemetery. Under the trees the stone- cutters fashion the quaint marble of the graves. Foun- tains are scattered here and there for the convenience of passers-by. People sit famiharly 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 220 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW stone quadrangle set back from the Ha'idar 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 hos- pitality of their hearts, I must confess I drew the line. They kept house in families, each in its own little apart- ment, 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. 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 wifl be a httle 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 sim- pler ones give only the name and estate of the deceased, with a request for a prayer or a Jatiha — 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 THE CITY OF GOLD 221 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 "0 my daughter! O! She flew to Paradise and left to her mother only the sorrow of parting," or "To the memory Gravestones of the spirit of the blessed Fatma, mother of Omer Agha, whose children find no way out of their grief." Others are more complicated and Oriental, ending, like the in- scriptions on public buildings, in a chronogram. Von Hammer quotes one, not in this cemetery, which is pecu- liarly effective in Turkish: The joy of the life of Feizi, inspector of markets, Has vanished into the other world. O how to help it! 222 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW For he has lost his rose-bud 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. how to help it! In bitterness his eye swells with tears That are like the tide of the sea. how to help it! In bitterness was written the verse of the number of the year: HUssema has gone away! how to help it! Behind the house of the lepers a trail branches away into the most lonely part of this strange forest, ulti- mately leading down a hill, too rough for any but the most adventurous carriage, to a quaint httle stone arch mys- teriously 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 slen- derness, 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 after- noons, when the sun brings a fairy depth and softness of green out of the cypresses, when their shadows fall lance-hke 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 ram- ifications is not one they would wiUingly go into. They do not dream that Scutari is full of other kinds of THE CITY OF GOLD 223 dervishes. They have never heard of the Halved, as it were the descendants of the Sleepless Ones of the Studion, Scutari Cemetery 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 224 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW one has ever taken a tourist to see so much as the beau- tiful ironwork of the tomb of the holy Aziz Mahmoud Hiidai, who Hved eighteen years in a cell of the ancient mosque of Roum Mehmed Pasha. They do not even know that Roujai 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. Having reheved my mind on this subject, in my qual- ity of a native of Scutari, I am able to continue in my other quahty of peripatetic impressionist. And inciden- tally 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 Roujai, coloured a dull green, with its weapons and inscriptions and brass candlesticks at the end of the mihrah, 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 Uke to do so with a httle more toler- ance for unfamihar 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 she'i'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 THE CITY OF GOLD 225 of eight beats, calling "Allah! Allah! Al-lah!" The rhythm grew faster and faster, and the calHng louder and hoarser, until two or three visiting dervishes of another famihar 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 hne into the recess of the tombs, where each man prostrated him- self before the first of the turbaned catafalques. Whether that was the end I have no means of know- ing, for I was asked to leave. That is always the case, I notice, when I want to stay after the rest of the sight- seers have got tired and gone away. It rather annoys me that I should be classed with unbehevers, and made to sit with them on a bench behind the raihng instead of squatting on a sheepskin mat hke the other people of Scutari. Yet if it were not so it would never have be- fallen me to come into contact with so eminent a person- ality of my day as Mme. Bernhardt — or at least with her parasol. The actress has often been to Constanti- nople, and she must have seen the howhng dervishes many times. Who knows what so great an expert in expression may have caught from the ritual frenzy of the Rouja'i? 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 226 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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, de- siring 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 fohage of a very complicated hat. I must say that I resented it a Httle. 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, contemplati a lungo pe' cancelli die mat nessuna mano al viandante smarrito apri come in un sogno! Muti giardini, cimiteri senza avelli, ove erraforse qualche spirto amanle dietro I'ombre de' suoi heni perduti! — Gabriele D'Annunzio: "Poema Paradisiaco." In the matter of gardens the Turk has never acquired the reputation of his Moorish and Persian cousins. Per- haps 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 hkes a garden better than he. He never could put up with a thing hke the city back yard or the suburban lawn of the New World. He is given to sitting much out-of-doors, he does not hke 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 unex- pected 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 but- tonhole is not yet perfectly acchmated in Constanti- nople, 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 inordi- nately fond. Less grave personages do not scorn to wear a flower over one ear, with its stem stuck under their' 227 228 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 gar- dens of Stamboul, though no one can walk there with- out 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-Iooking de- signs, that pave so many garden paths. I am more in- chned to beheve 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 im- ported them from Constantinople. It would be interesting to know whether the Byzan- tine 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 THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 229 to Constantinople after the Turkish period. It began to come most definitely, if by a roundabout road, when Sultan Ahmed HI 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 MeUing. Like Van Mour, Melling has left most interesting records of the Bosphorus of his day. In the course of time it be- fell him to be recommended as landscape-gardener to a member of the imperial family, the celebrated Hadijeh Soultan. Through the good graces of this enhghtened princess he later became architect to her brother. Sul- tan 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 Schonbrunn. But alto- gether 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 architec- tural 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 balus- trades, while the lack of garden sculpture is with them 230 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 In a Turkish garden 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 sym- metry than an out-and-out landscaper would counte- nance, 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. THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 231 If Turkish gardens tend to look a little wild, it is partly because they contain so many trees. In Con- stantinople, at least, there is so Httle 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 stud- ied the decorative effect of different kinds of trees. Those who have never visited Constantinople some- times imagine the Bosphorus to be overhung by palms — I suppose because it washes the coast of Asia and flows 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 en- counter a snow-storm. As a matter of fact, the Bos- phorus, which lies in about the same latitude as Long Island Sound, has been soHdIy 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 com- mon, 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 Constantino- ple variety, it is true, incHnes to raggedness rather than to slenderness or height. Other evergreens, including the beautiful cedar of Lebanon, have been domesticated 232 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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, Lom- bardy poplars, acacias of various sorts, mul- berries, the Japanese medlar, the dainty pom- egranate, the classic bay, are also characteristic. The pale branches of the fig are always deco- rative, 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 A Byzantine well-head THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 233 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 orna- ments of the Bosphorus. The Turks call it ergovan, and its blossoming is the signal for them to move to their country houses. In En- glish, I believe, we call it the Judas, after some legend that makes it the tree on which the trai- torous apostle hanged himself. He would ap- parently have been of high descent, for the flowers, which took thereafter the stain of his blood, have a de- cided violet tinge. They fledge the branches so thickly before the leaves are out that they paint whole hillsides of April with their magenta. In addition to the woodiness of the Bos- phorus 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 A garden wall fountain 234 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 gener- ous, 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 in- teresting 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 under- stood Hke 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 great- est 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. Almost every Turkish garden contains visible water of some sort, which at its simplest is nothing but a shal- THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 235 I low marble pool. In the centre of the pool is some- times a fountain which I always think of with regret when there is pointed out for my admiration a too fat marble infant strugghng with a too large marble fish, or a dwarf holding an umbrella over its head. This foun- tain consists of nothing but a series of jets, generally on A jetting fountain in the garden of Halil Edhem Bey 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 dehcately with the sound of water. This is a dripping fountain, set always against a wall or a bank. It is a tall mar- ble tablet, decorated, perhaps, with low rehefs of fruit 236 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 fittle 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 Httle streams atinkle. A more deHghtfuI or- nament 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. The Turkish architects have not scorned more im- posing 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 — some- thing which resounds. I have seen a smaller chagh- leyan 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 A selsebil at Kandilli THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 237 marble basin. The water starts, between two curved flights of stone steps, from three marble shells in the re- taining wall of a terrace; and from the terrace an ar- bour 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 Turk- ish 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 dur- ing his student days, which even now he could scarcely ex- hibit in Constanti- nople; and it would be thought a scan- dalous 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 caHed Mr. Cox, who had studied with him under Gerome. A selsehil of Halil Edhem Bey 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. 238 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW This preference is fairly well established, for Lady Mary Montagu wrote letters from Belgrade Forest two hun- dred years ago, and about the same time a summer colony composed of Europeans and of the great Pha- nariote families began to gather at Buyiik Dereh and Therapia. In much earlier times, however, the Byzan- tine 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 voy- agers returned from Colchis with Medea, that formida- ble passenger threw out poison on the Thracian shore; whence the name Pharmakia, changed by the euphe- mism 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 bleak- est 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, some- times gets on one's nerves. Nevertheless Therapia is a centre for an extraordinary variety of pleasant excur- sions, 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 re- sources 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 Mar- mora, do not some day make Therapia much more fa- mous as a summer resort. 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 Sub- THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 239 lime 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 Stam- In the garden of Ressam Halil Pasha boul. 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 dis- tance of Constantinople from other European resorts, and the generosity of the sultans. The EngHsh, French, and German governments all own beautiful estates at Therapia, presented to them by different sultans, while 240 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW the Russians are magnificently established at the neigh- bouring village of Biiyiik Dereh. Their great hillside park is a perfect wood, so dense in summer that the water is scarcely visible from it. The ItaHans also make villeggiatura at Therapia, the Austrians and Per- sians being installed farther down the Bosphorus. Our ambassador is the sole envoy of his rank obHged to hunt up hired quarters, though even some of the small lega- tions occupy their own summer homes. Should Con- gress ever persuade itself that diplomatic dignity is a thing worthy to be upheld, or should some sultan pre- sent us with one of the old estates still available, I hope we shall build an embassy, like the one the French occu- pied 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 191 3. 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. 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 Beikos, on the Asiatic shore — which, for the rest, is much more Turkish than the European. Beikos 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 The garden of the Russian embassy at Biiyiik Dereh THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 243 is supposed to have been buried on the hilltop behind Be'ikos. This height, popularly known as Giant's Moun- tain, 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 The upper terrace of the French embassy garden at Therapia is Still to be seen there, some twenty feet long, which the Turks honour as that of rather an unexpected per- sonage. A httle mosque adjoins the grave — built, I be- heve, 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 244 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 ter- races 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 signi- fied his acceptance of the gift. Beikos and the shores of its great bay were a favour- ite resort of sultans long before the day of Mehmed Ali. In general, however, the Turks have always pre- ferred the narrow middle stretch of the Bosphorus; and for most reasons I am with them. The summer meltem — which some derive from the Itahan 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 THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 245 happy valleys, its tempting points and bays, its sky-line of cypresses and stone-pines, its weathered wooden vil- lages, its ruined water-side castle of Anadolou Hissar, its far-famed Sweet Waters — and most so if seen from Europe in a hght of sunset or early morning. If Meh- med Ah lost his palace at Beikos — and on Arnaout- kyoi Point there are the ruins of another one which he was stopped from building — several of the most envi- able estates along this part of the Bosphorus belong to his descendants. The beautiful wooded cape of Chi- bouklou, on the Asiatic side, is crowned by the mau- resque chateau of the present Khedive. Directly oppo- site, on the southern point of Stenia Bay, is the immense old tumble-down wooden palace of his grandfather Is- mail, 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 Bos- phorus. 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 Nicolo 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 be- tween them the whole length of the Bosphorus. Emir- gyan, 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 246 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW visit him there, for Emirgyan was a man of wit and an accompHshed musician. Not only did he first intro- duce 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 hne. 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 Roumeh Hissar, still farther to the south, is a neglected garden which belonged to Hahm Pasha, brother of the prodigal Ismail. In it are two unpre- tentious 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 Hahm would have been Khedive in turn if Ismail had not bound the Turkish government, by a substantial quid pro quo, to make the viceroyalty hereditary to the eldest son in his own fam- ily. And Halim Pasha's family later suffered the mis- fortune to be nearly ruined by an Enghsh speculator. THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 247 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 Bos- phorus. There an artful group of cypresses and one gnarled ohve frame the blue below; and there on sunny- afternoons, there most notably on starry evenings, when shore Hghts curve fantastically through the underlying darkness and all land and water sounds have some sum- mer magic in them, an Antony might dream away con- tent the loss of Egypt. HaHm Pasha owned another splendid garden on Bebek Bay. Next to his faded pink wooden yali in the dignified old Turkish style, and likewise linked by bridges across the pubhc road to a park that climbs the hill behind, is the trim art-nouveau villa of the ac- tual 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 tur- bine yacht Mahroussah are the signals for spring and autumn to open their campaigns, while her skimming mahogany steam-launch is an integral part of sum- mer. She is, moreover, a person whom the poor of her neighbourhood have cause to bless. During the lenten month of Ramazan she provides ijtar, the sunset break- fast 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 occa- sions of pubHc rejoicing she Hterally keeps open house — or open garden. She admits any and all within her gates, offers them coffee, ices, and cigarettes, and enter- tains 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 248 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW but because any one was free to go in order to celebrate the accession day of his majesty Abd iil Hamid IL The garden belonged to a younger brother of that person- age, 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 httle princes and princesses in big gilt armchairs looked solemnly on. Beyond them a clump of huge umbrella-pines hfted themselves darkly against the fairy scene of the illuminated Bosphorus. Every other villa was outlined in Hght, the water burned with reflections of architectural designs or of Arabic texts of fire, and the far-away hill of Chamlija was one twinkhng field of the cloth of gold. Suleiman Eflfendi was reported to be not too strong in the head but to make up for it by possessing the Evil Eye and the greatest understand- ing of cows of any man in Constantinople. Of these he kept a large herd, selHng their milk Hke 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 ques- tion was sure to die within the month by reason of the Evil Eye of the imperial milkman. Abd iil Hamid caused this eccentric old gentleman much unhappiness, tormenting him greatly with spies. Siileiman Effendi lived long enough to see the last of the spies, however, if not of Abd iil Hamid. And he must have been not altogether destitute of human quahties, for his wife died of grief the day after his death. The picturesque bay of Bebek and the opposite head- land of Kandilli are so involved with historic memories that I am more and more tempted to stray out of my gardens. Kandilh, in particular, is full of plane-trees THE GARDENS OF THE BOSHPORUS 249 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 determina- tion who built the mosque of the New Mother in Scutari. The Villa of the Sun, Kandilli 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 ac- cordingly danced on the terrace before their imperial 250 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW masters, nearer and nearer the water, till the man, by a seemingly careless thrust of his foot, tripped his com- panion into the Bosphorus. She was immediately car- ried 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 191 3 was the scene of this httle drama. Yali 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 httle of the Bosphorus into the lower hall and making there a boat-house and porte cochere in one. In every country place of any size there is a kyoshk as well, otherwise a kiosk, built some- where in the garden and constituting one of its more formal ornaments. I once had the honour of being re- ceived in a kiosk belonging to a member of the imperial family, which was larger than the yali to which it be- longed. 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 hke 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 Melhng, Van Mour, and all their school of painters of the Bos- phorus. Those villas never were of an enduring archi- tecture, 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 yali, if designed by an architect of the country, almost THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 251 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 Hmited. One of them is a kiosk at Emirgyan belonging to the Sherijs of Mecca. And it is quaint to see what an air, both whim- sical and distinguished, that faded eighteenth-century decoration gains from the ugly modern furniture set about a fountain in the cross-shaped saloon of those de- scendants of the Prophet. The most complete example of the work of the same period is the house on Arnaout- kyoi Point belonging to an Armenian family, unmis- takable by its projecting upper stories and the agree- able irregularity of its silhouette. Passers along the quay may catch a glimpse of a high rococo ceiling in rose and gold. But a ghmpse of a more perfect ceihng 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 caique will pass. This ceihng, and the whole room to which it belongs, is the most precious thing of its kind in all Constantino- ple, if not in all the world. The design of the room is that of the earher Broussa mosques, a T-shaped arrange- ment with the top of the T in the garden and three square bays, shghtly raised above a central square, leaning out on piles above the water. At the inter- section of the two axes stands a fountain, with a cluster of marble stalactites rising from a fihgree marble ped- estal, 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 deHcately inlaid with wavy stems and pointed leaves. On the water side an unbroken succes- 252 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW sion 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 pa- vilion. 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 An eighteenth-century villa at Arnaout-kyoi around the walls. Above that rises a frieze of painted panels in which tall sprays of hlies 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 THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 253 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. !-i&4:?. it,.:^^-'- The golden room of Kyopriilii Hussein Pasha The creator of this masterpiece was that great friend of the arts Kyopriilii Hiissein Pasha, to whose medresseh in Stamboul I have already referred. His yali has dis- appeared and his legendary pleasure-grounds are now a wilderness, albeit superlatively pleasant still either to 254 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW look into or to look out of. In them is one of the six- teen famous springs of Hafid Effendi. Historic garden- parties were given in this garden, and ambassadors whom sultans dehghted to honour were taken to sit in the golden room. It used to be a detached kiosk in Hussein 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 Kyopriiliis. 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 per- spective that shines away to the south, is the unparal- leled 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 THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 255 Bournou, above Orta-kyoi. Abd iil 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 oppo- site shore, belong or have belonged to different mem- bers of the imperial family. Abd iil Hamid himself was brought back from Salonica at the outbreak of the Balkan War and shut up in the Asiatic garden of Bei- lerbei. In this old pleasance of the sultans Abd iil Aziz built a palace for the empress Eugenie when she went to the East to open the Suez Canal. It must have been strange to Abd iil Hamid to look out from its win- dows 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 Ytldiz Kiosk — the Pavihon of the Star — from a kyoshk his father built. Another pavilion in that park, also visible from Beilerbei', is the Malta Kiosk, where Abd iil 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 iil Aziz. In the pleasant lower hall of this httle 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 iil Hamid received from Arabia, in a box labelled "Old Japanese Ivory," the head of the murdered patriot. The park of Yildiz originally belonged to the palace whose name of Chira'an — The Torches — has been cor- rupted by Europeans into Cheragan. Only a ruin stands there now, on which Abd iil Aziz once squandered half the revenues of the empire. He stumbled on the thresh- old the first time he went into his new house, and never 256 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW would live in it; but after his dethronement he either committed suicide or was murdered there. His suc- cessor, Mourad V, dethroned in turn after a reign of three months, lived in his unhappy uncle's palace for nearly thirty years. Abd iil 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 iil 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 occu- pancy as such it was destroyed by fire. It was only the last of many palaces, one of which was built by Sehm III and in which MeHing, 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 an- nals for his hberal 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 THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 257 fastened to their shells, made a moving illumination among the trees. Whence the name of The Torches. Ahmed HI gave many similar entertainments in his own gardens on Seragho Point, sometimes fetes of lights, sometimes fetes 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 recog- nise for their chief the bearer of this diploma; that they be in his presence all eye Hke 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, hke the rosebud, their Hps closed. Let them not speak before their time, Hke the blue hyacinth, which scatters its perfume before men ask for it. Finally, let them humbly inchne themselves before hirn Hke the violet, and let them not show themselves recalcitrant." The tuhp does not seem to be mentioned in this docu- ment, but the culture of tuhps under Ahmed HI and his congenial Grand Vizier became as extravagant a rage as ever it did in Holland. Indeed, tuHps were first in- troduced into the Low Countries from Constantinople, by the Fleming Ogier de Busbecq, ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire to Suleiman the Magnificent. Under the Latinised form of his name he has left a quaint memoir of his two embassies. The word tuhp is a corruption of the Turkish word diilbend — turban — which was a favourite nickname of the flower among the Turks. Ahmed HI 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. 258 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW Mahmoud I was of a taste to continue this pretty cus- tom. He also laid out special tulip and hyacinth gar- dens 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 illumi- nated 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 191 3 it was turned into a public park. SeragHo Point is an ItaHan misnomer for the Turkish Serai Bournou — Palace Point. But a pal- ace 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 Con- stantinople, the name of Eski Serai — 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 SeragHo Point as a pleasure- ground for his family, and he built the Chinili-Kyoshk, now of the Imperial Museum. His son and grandson built other pavihons of their own, but it was not until the reign of his great-grandson Suleiman 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 Suleiman greatly curtailed to make room for his two principal mosques, was reserved for the famiHes of deceased sultans, while the new palace was THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 259 continually enlarged and beautified. Something legen- dary attaches to it in the eyes of the common people, who are pleasantly incHned to confuse King Solomon, the friend of the Queen of Sheba, and a great personage in Mohammedan folk-lore, with their own Sultan Sulei- man. 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 reach- ing far under the sea in which' he planted a forest of mar- ble pillars. I cannot vouch for the last part of the story, but I am inclined to agree with the Sultan's birds. Cer- tainly 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 hun- dred 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 col- umn 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 Alex- ander, 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 stuff's, gemmed furniture, the gifts and spoil of 26o CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW kings, in vaults too dim and crowded for their splen- dour to be seen; the sacred relics of the Prophet which Sehm I captured with Egypt and which constitute the credentials of the sultans to the cahphate 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 Ht 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 iil 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 beHeved 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 passion- ate associations of that place. No one hves 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, Hke 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. The entrance to the harem is under the pointed tower which catches the eye from afar. You go first into the THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 261 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 hght enough for the tiles that hne them to be visible. A great hooded fire- place terminates the dark passage into which they open. Up-stairs are roomier and hghter quarters, also tiled, for Photograph by Abdullah Frferes, Constantinople In the harem of the Seraglio 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 instru- ments of torture. In a dark angle of this place, which communicates with the Court of the Pages and the Sul- tan's quarters, a lantern hanging behind a rail marks where the old valideh Kyossem was strangled with a curtain cord. Tiles of the same period as her mosque 262 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 comphcated 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 Euro- pean carpets cover a few floors. Stuffy European hang- ings 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 sul- tana 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 tor- toise-shell and ivory and mother-of-pearl. There are wafl fountains, some of them lovely with sculptured rehefs and painting. There are baths, also contain- ing fountains, and screens of fihgree marble, and mar- ble tanks. There are, above ah, tiles and tiles and tiles. They hne 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 fres- coes 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 seduc- THE GARDENS OF THE BOSPHORUS 263 ing 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 HI. 0th- Photograph by Abdullah Frferes, Constantinople The "Cage" of the Seraglio ers are absolutely the most superb things of their kind in Constantinople. A room of Mourad HI, the gallery so called of Sultan Selim, and a magnificent hall which Suleiman 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. 264 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Ibra- him 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 Kyossem, 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. 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 ex- cellent 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 Moham- medan calendar generally known to the infidel world, the infidel world has never been very sure whether to spell its last syllable with a c? or with a z. Let the infidel world accordingly know that either is right in its own domain. The Arabs say Ramadan, the Per- sians and the Turks say Ramazan. And they all ob- serve 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 hghted, 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 sig- 265 266 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW nal that gives liberty to eat. This breaking of the day- time fast is called ijtar, which means feast or rejoicing, and is an institution in itself. The true iftar begins with hors-d'oeuvres 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 pastirma — the sausage of the country — and I know not how many other dainties pecuHar to the season, served in bewildering variety and washed down, it may be, with water from the sa- cred well Zemzem in Mecca. Any Turkish dinner is colossal, but iJtar 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 iJtar. The last meal of the night also has a name of its own, sohour, which is derived from the word for dawn. Watch- men 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 Hke that of the Prophet's Arabia and in a climate where people anyway sleep dur- ing 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 Con- stantinople, 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, THE MOON OF RAMAZAN 267 for church and state are still officially one in Turkey, and the Sheriat is a system of Blue Laws that would leave very httle room for individual judgment if it succeeded in altogether having its way. Those who are most con- scientious 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 any- thing 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 silhou- ette above the climbing roofs have two, four, or six minarets to illuminate, some of them with three gal- leries 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. Theophile Gautier called Ramazan a Lent lined with a Carnival. The phrase is a happy one if it does not 268 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW lead the reader into attributing a Latin vivacity to Turkish merrymakings. The streets of Stamboul, ordi- narily 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 Hfe. 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 ser- vant 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 quar- ters 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 charac- teristic 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 ac- complished in a simple manner with the aid of an in- strument that we do not associate with the East — I mean the gramophone, which enjoys an enormous pop- ularity 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 my- self the hving executant to his mechanical echo. One THE MOON OF RAMAZAN 269 never has to go far during Ramazan to find him. Itin- erant 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 in- strument, 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 httle of music to tell what relation it may bear to the antique modes. But I can Usten, as long as musi- cians 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 un- known 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 under- stood, 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 immod- est enough to enter a coffee-house. Dancing boys are oftener the performers — gipsies, Greeks, or Turks — who 270 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW perpetuate a custom older than the satyr dances of India or the Phrygian dances of Cybele. Alimeh, whence the French almee, and kochek are the technical names of these not too respectable entertainers. Sometimes the habitues of the coffee-house indulge in the dancing them- selves, 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 com- panies — which for the rest are never found in coffee- shops. These men are often wonderfully clever at char- acter 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. 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 thea- tre, 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-gyoz, are a national institution. In fact, their repertory includes almost all there is of a national theatre. In common with other Asiatic mar- ionettes, 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 pubHc sees. It is enough, however, to offer an amusement worth seeing. The theatre of Kara-gyoz THE MOON OF RAMAZAN 271 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 inter- vention of the censor. But Kara-gyoz himself, other- wise Black-eye, is always amusing, whatever may be his lapses from propriety. This truculent individual must A Kara-gyoz poster be a relative of Punch, although he is said to be a car- icature 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 gen- 272 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW tiemen, the wonderful dogs, cats, mice, and other crea- tures that go to make up the company, create a scene that a spectator of simple tastes wilHngly revisits. Among the elements of his pleasure must be counted the ill-Iighted barrack or tent in which the representa- tion 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 accom- paniment of which the little coloured shadows play on their Hghted 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 Kves 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 fash- ion, tiers of not too Sybaritic boxes. A particularity of them is that, hke the cafes and the streets, they con- tain 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 pene- trate Stamboul during the nights of Ramazan make them- selves more conspicuous than is Hkely 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. THE MOON OF RAMAZAN 273 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 melo- drama adapted from the European stage. The first is more Hkely 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 almee would consent to be encum- bered 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 par- tiahty 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 some- times starthng. 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 Hteral sense of the word, than that of the fine lute. To the tyro one song sounds exactly hke another, each 274 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW beginning on the same high note and each glissando to the same low one. And you are incHned 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 hsten in the silence of perfect appre- ciation. 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 tem- pered for an occasional spectator by the personal equa- tion. I remember watching, once, an almee who must have been in her prime before many of her pubhc were in their cradles. But they had grown up in her tradi- tion, 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 per- formances with which Ramazan abounds. The street of Stamboul where the theatres cluster is a perfect Bowery of cinematographs, music-halls, shooting-gal- leries, acrobatic exhibitions, and side-shows of a coun- try 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 THE MOON OF RAMAZAN 275 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 Suleiman the Mag- nificent built in memory of his dead son. Crowds and carriages abound in Shah-zadeh-Bashi until two o'clock Wrestlers 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. 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 sev- 276 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW eral 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 ru- bric, 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 em- brace 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 lamp- Hght, 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 Rama- zan is merely a hohday season. It is a holy month, and THE MOON OF RAMAZAN 277 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 signif- icance. Ordinarily known as yassi, it is then called teravi — repose — and in place of the usual five prostra- tions twenty-two are performed. The ungodly say that this is to aid the digestion of those who have just eaten a heavy ijtar. 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 enhghtening the provinces on the subject of the constitution, as it was in the capi- tal for various attempts to subvert the same. Two dates in the month have a particular impor- tance. 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 dis- guise. 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 rehcs of the first three caHphs and of the com- panions 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 278 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 descen- dants, who performed miracles with the water into which they dipped it. To house these treasures Sultan Selim I, who cap- tured 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 L 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 per- formed by the Sultan in person, who is supposed to over- see 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 THE MOON OF RAMAZAN 279 of ijtar. 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 sec- ond 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 28o CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW particularly so in the time of Abd iil Hamid, who de- voutly maintained the customs of his fathers. I hap- pened to see the last of the processions with which he went out on the Night of Power. The short avenue leading from Yildiz Palace to the Hamidieh mosque was Hned with arches and loops of Hght, the mosque itself was outlined with little oil-lamps, and the dip beyond was illuminated by Arabic texts and architec- tural 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 selamlik, the police precautions were even stricter. But Turkish police have their own way of enforcing regula- tions. 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 Httle 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 Httle 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 lamphght. 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. Be- fore 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 miiezin sounded from the ghostly minaret. In his shrill sweet minor he began to chant the ezan — the call to prayer. Then THE MOON OF RAMAZAN 281 bands broke into the Hamidieh march, fireworks filled the sky with coloured stars and comets' tails, and the imperial cortege poured from the palace gate — a mob Drawn by E. M. Ashe The imperial cortege poured from the palace gate of uniforms and caparisons and big white wedding lan- terns, scintillating about a victoria drawn by two superb white horses. The man on the box, magnificent in scar- let and gold, was a more striking figure than the pale, bent, hook-nosed, grey-bearded man in a military over- 282 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW coat behind him, who saluted in response to the sol- diers' "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. 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 spec- tators are most Hmited in number — as was the case the first time I went, ostensibly as a secretary of em- bassy. But I must add that I was considerably im- pressed 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 huge- ness, 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- THE MOON OF RAMAZAN 283 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 excep- tion 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 con- quest, 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 Hnes bow, hands on knees, and straighten again. Once more they bow, drop to their knees, bend forward and touch their fore- heads to the ground, with a long low thunder that roHs 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 hohdays. 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-estab- lishment of the constitution was celebrated on the 23d of July (July 10, old style). A highly picturesque cele- bration it was, too, in Constantinople at least, with its magnificent array of rugs and mediseval tents on the Hill of Liberty, its review of troops by the Sultan, its procession of the guilds of the city, and its evening il- luminations. 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 gar- 284 MOHAMMEDAN HOLIDAYS 285 dens 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 Hid'r Eless. I have already pronounced the name of this mysterious divinity, who is also called Hizir, 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 EHjah, 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 Constan- tinople or other locahties 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 Iamb on a spit, eat pilaj, 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 holi- days 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 286 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 ob- tained on some pretext, without mentioning the day. About this day is none of the monotonous invariabihty 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 earher every year, making the backward round of the seasons in a cycle of thirty-three years. A further ele- ment 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, arijeh. And mark that a Mohammedan, like a Hebrew day, begins and ends at sunset. The celebra- tion of the eve of a holiday in Western countries is doubtless due to the old prevalence of the same usage. The true hoHdays of Islam are connected with the life and teachings of its founder. These are seven in number. They commemorate the birth of the Prophet MOHAMMEDAN HOLIDAYS 287 (i2th of the third moon, Rebi iil Evvel); his conception (6th of the seventh moon, Rejeb) ; his ascension — ac- complished, be it remembered, during his lifetime — (27th Rejeb); the revelation and completion of his mis- sion (15th of the eighth moon, Shaban, and 27th of the ninth, Ramazan); the close of the fast of Ramazan (ist Shevval); and the sacrifice of Abraham (loth 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 Bdiram. 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, Kke the great Christian festivals, for general feasting. On Mohammed's birth- day, 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 gal- leries 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 Bdiram — feast — and the outsider has no difficulty in being aware of them. In- deed, it would be rather difficult to remain unaware of so much cannon firing and flag flying. The month of 288 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Ram- azan is marked by three days of unlimited festivity. This, the lesser Bairam, is called Sheker, or sometimes Mendil Bairam — Sugar or Handkerchief Feast. Then people exchange sweets and handkerchiefs, if nothing else. It is, however, the time to tip servants and de- pendants, 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 pre- sented 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 Bairam. 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 Baiezid 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 iil Hamid's time there was always a booth for the sale of porcelain from his little factory at Yildiz. And every year the ancient pottery works of Kiitahya send up a consign- ment of their decorative blue ware. Both Bairams axe. an occasion for paying visits. MOHAMMEDAN HOLIDAYS 289 Everybody calls on everybody else, so that it is a won- der if anybody is found at home. In the case of the Sultan, however, there is no uncertainty. On the first morning of each Ba'iram he holds a great levee, which is attended by every one of a certain rank. The cere- Bairam sweets mony has taken place every year since the time of Ba'i- ezid 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 290 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW his embassy, as was the fortune of the present scribe on the occasion of the first baise-main of Sultan Meh- med 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 magnifi- cent 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 gentle- man 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 MOHAMMEDAN HOLIDAYS 291 official personages in their day, wore their various uni- forms 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 ul Hamid H there must have been something strangely moving in the spectacle of the kindly faced old man, after all not very majestic in per- son, who walked a little as if his shoes were too tight, yet who took his place at the head of that great com- pany with the natural dignity of his house and race. He wore a stubby new beard, acquired since his acces- sion; for it is not meet that the Commander of the Faithful should go shorn. The ceremony was opened by a Httle old man in green, the Nakib ill EshraJ, 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 292 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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-echarpe 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 ex- ample 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 iilema, 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 She'ih ill Islam, the highest relig- ious official in the empire, who is also a minister of state. He wears white, like the Pope. He was followed by the SheriJ Ali Ha'idar Bey, Minister of Pious Foundations. This handsome green-robed Arab is one of the greatest aristocrats in Islam, being an authentic descendant of the MOHAMMEDAN HOLIDAYS 293 Prophet. And he has, if you please, an English wife. After him came a brilHant 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 httle 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 iilema were followed by the heads of the non-Moslem rehgions 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 "Tann- hauser"; 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 Bairam is quite as full of col- our 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 hohday finery. Friends 294 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Ba'iram. 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 Kiirds 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 Ba'iram 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 httle 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 Kiirds, or of shghter 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. It is the children, however, to whom Ba'iram chiefly belongs. In their honour all the open spaces of the Mohammedan quarters are utiHsed for fairs and play- grounds. The principal resort of the kind is the yard MOHAMMEDAN HOLIDAYS 295 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 Bairam was being celebrated and saw a quantity of carts, dressed out with flags and greens, full of chil- dren. I followed the carts until I came upon the most festive confusion of voices, of tents, of music, of horses. The open spaces of the Mohammedan quarters are utilised for fairs 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 country- man of his had a funny little peep-show, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, into which I was dying to look but con- sidered myself too dignified to do so. Neither did I go 296 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW into the tent which bore this ingratiating sign: "Ici on expose animaux vivans et la demoiselle laquelle a la poi- trine une cavite." In other tents the physical man was more particularly catered to. Indeed, stuffing seems to be the great affair of Ba'iram. 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 ve- hicles for the very little person, were so many arguments against Mr. Kipling and the East-is-East theory. An- other argument was put forward by the discreet gambler, with his quick eye for the pohce, 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 Ba'irams 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 wrestfing was going on they once demanded a pound of me for ad- mission, supposing that I was a post-card man and would make vast gains out of their entertainment. But at an- other, 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 hospi- tality 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 Bairam. The barkers had all been shouting: "Come, children! Come! To- MOHAMMEDAN HOLIDAYS 297 morrow is not Bairam!" Presently cannon banged to announce ikindi, the afternoon hour of prayer, which is both the beginning and the end of Bairam. All about me I heard people saying: "Bairam is finished." And Bairam 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 191 1 and 191 2 Bairam was hardly celebrated at all, as a mark of mourn- ing for the Italian and Balkan wars. The greater Bairam, called Kourban Bairam, 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 loth 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 dehghts to honour. These huge creatures belong to a very aristocratic race. They are bred by a semi-religious, semi-agricultural community called the Saieh Ojaghi, established since the early days of the conquest in the inner valley of the Golden Horn. The members of this community still maintain their mediaeval customs and costumes and enjoy certain tradi- tional privileges. In return for these they rear the im- 298 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW perial rams, which they bring in procession to the Palace every year about a week before Kourban Ba'iram. 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 un- common sight, although in the already mythic days of Abd iil Hamid it was far more common, to see an im- maculate 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 Ba'iram. Consequently the open spaces of the Mohammedan quarters are full of baa-ing and bargaining for a week or ten days before the sacri- fice. The landing-stages of Scutari and Beshiktash are headquarters of this traffic. Top Haneh, and the vicin- ity of the mosques of Yeni Jami, St. Sophia, Mohammed II, and Baiezid 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, fanci- fully painted in red and blue. The sheep, too, are daubed with colour, to distinguish one flock from another. They sefl for rather less than a pound apiece, growing cheaper MOHAMMEDAN HOLIDAYS 299 as the day of sacrifice approaches. It is amusing to watch and to hsten to the bargaining that goes on be- Sheep-market at Yeni Jami tween 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 300 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW sheep — when the bargain is made, carried away pick- aback by one of the innumerable hamals who hang around for such an opportunity. These strange couples are the characteristic harbinger of Kourban Bdiram, the ram staring over the man's shoulder with vast apparent in- terest in the sights he sees, his hind quarters making the roundest and most comfortable curve in the small of the hamal's back. The actual sacrifice I have never seen, and I hope I never may. I once witnessed a cinematographic rep- resentation of what takes place at the Palace, and that was enough for me. The moving pictures represented his majesty returning from early morning prayer, alight- ing 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 execu- tioner. 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. Jour, five, six. I waited to see what would hap- pen, and presently from the direction of Stamboul strag- gled a procession that, of course, I had no camera to photograph, against the grey dome and springing min- arets 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, kyoz. After the drummers marched a number of boys in pairs, carrying small furled flags of red silk embroi- dered with gold. Behind the boys strode a serious-look- ing person who held a small round shield and a drawn sword. He was foHowed 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 cush- ions; 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, hke enormous dusters. And then slouched along a magnificent camel. He wore a green silk saddle-cloth embroidered in white, 301 302 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW and above that a tall green silk hoodah with gold em- broidery; and ostrich plumes nodded from him in tufts, and at his knees he wore caps of coloured beads. Be- hind 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 depar- ture 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 imi- tate this pious custom was Mehmed I, builder of the beautiful Green Mosque in Broussa. His great-great- grandson Sehm I conquered Egypt in 15 17, and with Egypt the rehcs of the Prophet and the insignia of the cahphate, which were removed to Constantinople. Hav- ing become by virtue of his conquest Protector and Servitor of the Holy Cities, Sehm 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 famihes or dignitaries, now amounts to some £ T. 30,000. As for the TWO PROCESSIONS 303 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 life- time 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 caste 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 Bairam. In the times when the caravan marched overland from Scutari to Mecca, four months was none too much. But the pil- grimage has been vastly shortened in these days of steam, 304 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 oflG- cial 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 pil- grims. Part of the ceremony of the Prophet's birthday is the delivery to the Sultan of a letter from the SheriJ 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. 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, how- ever, 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 Min- istry of Pious Foundations to Yildiz Palace. There the presents, installed for two days under rich tents, were inspected by Abd iil Hamid and given into the custody of the Sourreh Emini. Then after an imposing rehgious ceremony the Sacred Caravan commenced its march. For a spectator without the palace walls the first inti- mation of its approach was given by several carriages of Palace ladies, who take an unofficial part in most public spectacles. Rehgious and military dignitaries also began sauntering down the road, which was bordered by soldiers, TWO PROCESSIONS 305 with an air of dispersing after some important function. Presently a double line of cavalrymen came into sight, preceding more religious and mihtary dignitaries on horse- back. One of them was the Emir ill Haj, the official head of the caravan, with much gold embroidery on his Church fathers in the Sacred Caravan 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 iilema, were led by grooms; others were followed by orderhes 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 3o6 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 httle white one that everybody wanted to pat; and two children were immensely enjoying a ride in the palanquin. Behind that rode an official holding Housings in the Sacred Caravan out on a red satin cushion an autograph letter from the Sultan to the Sherij 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 Sherij. 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 TWO PROCESSIONS 307 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 The sacred camel of the Prophet to mortal combat. They were an unac- customed 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. 3o8 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 loth of Mouharrem, on which it falls, as The palanquin 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 TWO PROCESSIONS 309 his people made a similar pudding on Mount Ararat out of what was left in the bins of the ark. 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 ^^^t0^ "^^^^ ^^■i*'-^ r. _, XiEL:._ Lt^\ ih 'im'J^*t gR^i i fe''^^/ l^m^^^^m^ /\ ^r'K m^ j'i>-\ «J -4' - -^» 1 3- •' y ' 1 i 4^ ^. Tied with very new rope to the backs of some thirty mules . . . were the quaint little hair trunks 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 Hghtly to declare that so serious a matter was in the beginning a question of cherchez la Jemme. Still, it is a fact that the enmity of Aisheh, the youngest wife of Mohammed, 310 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 htter 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 Sour a of the Koran, entitled Light. In the mean- time, however, consulting with his four closest friends and followers as to what should be done, he was as- sured by three of them that there could be no doubt as to the innocence of the Mother of the Moslems. The fourth, AH, ventured to suggest that the matter would bear investigation. Aisheh 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 Shiites, on the other hand, do not recognise the first three Caliphs at all. They even fete the anniversary of the death of the second one, Omar. Ah 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 Aisheh pursued him even after he became Caliph, and stirred up disaff'ection against him. He was finally stabbed. His two sons, Hassan and Hussein, also met violent deaths, the former being poi- soned and the latter falling under thirty-three wounds on the heroic field of Kerbela. These tragic events are what the Shiites commemorate on the loth of Mouharrem. TWO PROCESSIONS 311 In Persia the entire month is a time of mourning. During the first ten days pubhc passion-plays represent with bloody reahsm the lives and deaths of the first Imams. In Sunnite Constantinople, where there are some six thousand Persians, the commemoration is nat- urally less pubhc, although the two sects no longer come to blows over it. Most of the Persian colony are from A Persian miniature representing the death of Ali the region of Tabriz, where a Turkish dialect is spoken. Their headquarters are in a number of old stone bans near the bazaars and the War Department. Large tents are put up in the courts of these bans during Mouharrem, and there every evening mollabs recite the story, of the tragedy of Kerbela. It took place more than a thousand years ago, and rehgious feehng 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 reahty to the recitation. On 312 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW the tenth night, or on the night of the tenth day, which is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Hussein, the torches and banners march about to the various bans where Persians hve. The last time I saw this ceremony it included pictur- esque 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 re- member the first of the processions that I saw. It was in the same paved courtyard of Vahdeh Han, surrounded by half-ruined cloisters. The central mosque, the tem- porary 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 clam- our of pipes and drums and shouting began to make itself heard in the distance. Suddenly the archway giving en- trance to the ban hghted 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 cen- tral one was a sort of sword-blade above a spindle-shaped fretting of Arabic letters, while the other two were tri- dents springing from a similar base; and from all three floated streamers of crape. Next came two files of stand- ard-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 Hussein. 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 for- TWO PROCESSIONS 313 eigner could distinguish the frequent names of Ali and Hussein. Others held in both hands a chain at the end of which was a bunch of smaller chains. With Valideh Han 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, some- times sickening signs, under the torn black of the single garment they wore. Two white horses followed. The 314 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW first, with rich saddle-cloth and head-stall, carried a little boy on his back. On the saddle of the second, capari- soned in blood-streaked white, were two doves. Then came a band of musicians, singing, playing pipes, beat- ing drums, and clashing cymbals. And last of all, slowly advancing sidewise in two long lines, appeared a grue- some 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 symbohc horses, the mourning banners, the points of steel answering the flare of the torches, made strange matter indeed for the imagination, moving with desper- ate music through that veil of driving snow. 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 dif- ferent moments of the ceremony, and particularly at sight of the child and the doves on horseback — symboHc of Hussein's son, who was killed in his arms, and of the souls of the martyrs — many a Persian among the spec- tators gobbed uncontrolledly. Other spectators smiled at the tears streaming down bearded cheeks and at the frenzy of the flagellants. For myself, I can never help feehng respect for any real emotion, however far I may be from sharing it. People say, indeed, that these pro- cessions 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 dehverance. Their zeal TWO PROCESSIONS 315 is so great that it is necessary to draw up a prelimi- nary 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 ban — having, in the mean- time, 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 caHed Seid 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 Hussein. I have fol- lowed 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 ofl" 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 be- tween 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 ffags of the sort I have already described. At some distance 3i6 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 print- ing, and in the centre of each smiled an inimitable lion with a curly tail. These two companies marched chant- ing 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 aH 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 institu- tions and great houses, where a mollah would intone from a parchment manuscript he carried. And in the pictur- esque 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 Rouja'i dervish, whom I remembered to have seen in the tekkeh of Karaja Ahmed, sang a long threnody in honour of the martyred Hussein. 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. TWO PROCESSIONS 317 Yet, after all, he was of one brotherhood with the mourn- ers for Hussein. He did. not raise his eyes as the proces- sion 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 Constan- tinople is that while it has become Turkish_it has not ceased to be Greek. The same is true of Thrace, Mace- donia, 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. NgYgrthel ess there ^has_been remarkably little assimilation, after five hundred yearsT^T^Hie element by the~othei\ They~coexist7^each perfectly distinct and eacLxIaim ingjSElpeBEect reason the Ja,ndlas^his_j5ffin. 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 hve what is left them of a national Hfe 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 318 GREEK FEASTS 319 into a certain perspective. Their true perspective, how- ever, 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 cus- toms 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 repre- sent 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 symboHsm 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 pre- ceded, 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 Ai Vassili, or St. Basil, whose name-day it is. There is an old baflad 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, theoreticafly for the poor of the community. If it hap- pens to stick in the pockets of the performers, they 320 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 aero- planes 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 vassilopita, a kind of flat round cake or sweet bread something like the Tuscan schiacciata. At mid- night 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. Epiphany, or the old English Twelfth-Night, has re- tained in the East a significance that it has lost in the West. The day is supposed to commemorate the bap- tism 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 role 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 Bless- ing takes place on Epiphany eve, the fifth. But on Epiphany itself, as early in the morning as local custom GREEK FEASTS 321 may dictate, takes place the Great Blessing. It is per- formed 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 through- out the next year and used as occasion may require. It Blessing the Bosphorus is sometimes administered, for instance, to those who are not thought fit to take the full communion. The out- door ceremony which follows this one is extremely pic- turesque. 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-kyoi. ^Jarge Greek vil- lage~orPthe EuropeaiT shore of the Bosphorus, where the 322 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 pad- dled 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 beheved by many good people to have one eflFect not claimed by mother church. It is supposed, that is, to exorcise for another year certain redoubtable beings known as kallikdntzari. The name, according to one of the latest authorities on GREEK FEASTS 323 the subject/ means the good centaurs. Goodness, how- ever, is not their distinguishing trait. They are quarrel- some, 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 col- oured 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 unfurhng of the sails is one of the cere- monies 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 unfor- tunate as to be born then is regarded as likely to become a kallikdntzaros himself. Here a teaching of the church perhaps mingles with the popular behef. But that be- Hef 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 Brumaha and Saturnaha of the Romans. I should not say that no trace survives, because Car- nival is, of course, a lineal descendant of those ancient winter celebrations. As it exists in Constantinople, how- ever, 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 ■^ J. C. Lawson: " Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion." 324 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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," repHed 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 Apokred and is the day of farewell to meat. Which for the rehgious it actually is, although the gai- eties 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. Clean Monday, nevertheless, is a great hohday. In Constantinople it is also called Tatavia Day, because every one goes out to Tatavia, a quarter bordering on open country between Shishli and Hass-kyoi. A some- what 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 Tatavia 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 GREEK FEASTS 325 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 com- mon one at Tatavia, descends directly from the pagan The dancing Epirotes 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 Justanella — with its accompanying accoutrements — of their native hills. They form rings in the middle of the crowd, which is kept 326 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 clown- eries give great amusement. In the meantime his com- panions 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. Some- times 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-careme, 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 sym- bolic 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 per- mitted in the Greek Church, although on this one occa- sion 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 GREEK FEASTS 327 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 sym- bohsm, 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, accom- panied by a crowd of Hghted 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 Hghted — not even before the icons. The service begins with antiphonal chanting. The ancient Byzantine music sounds stranger than ever in the dim Hght, sung by the black-robed priests with black veils over their tall black caps. Finafly, the celebrant, in a purple cope of mourning, withdraws behind the icono- stdsion, the screen that in a Greek church divides the holy table from the chancel. As the chant proceeds candles are lighted in certain chandehers. Then the door of the sanctuary is thrown open, reveahng a blaze of hght and colour within. The celebrant comes out in magnificent vestments, holding a Hghted candle and saying: "Come 328 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW to the light." Those nearest him reach out their own tapers to take the sacred fire, and from them it is prop- agated in an incredibly short time through the entire church. In the meantime the priests march in proces- sion 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 senti- ments by a volley of pistol-shots. But since the reaction- ary 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 inter- esting place to see the ceremonies of Easter morning. They are not for every one to see, by reason of the small- ness 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 cere- mony 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 GREEK FEASTS 329 cross, two gilt exepterigha on staves, symbolic of the six- winged cherubim, and lighted candles. After them came choristers singing. The men wore a species of fez en- tirely 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 kalymdjhion, 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, pre- ceded 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 Hohness is supposed to dis- pense his blessing. He wore magnificent vestments of white satin embroidered with blue and green and gold. A large diamond cross and other ghttering 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, Monte- negrin, 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 330 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW wood inlaid with ivory. He made a wonderful picture there with his fine profile and long white beard and gor- geous 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 glit- ter 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 min- ister of state. Now he is the official representative of the Patriarch at the Subfime Porte and accompanies him to the Palace when His HoKness 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 ob- jects in proportion to the space they fill. And certainly to the Western ear the Byzantine chant, however inter- esting 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 apart- ments 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 GREEK FEASTS 331 I Persian name of chorek — except that the Greeks mis- pronounce it tsoureki. 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 chorek to the Sultan. Chorek is hke 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 popula- tion 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 hoHdays, 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 some- times 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 Httle 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 con- tinue hour after hour to the tune of a httle viohn hanging from the player's hand. They hold each other's fingers 332 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Kurds . 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 Hned with a vivid yellow pattern on a red ground. There swarthy Kiirds 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 re- mains," 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 sociahstic opinion in the mouth of a Kurdish hamal, I could not help remembering how it had been put into execution in 1896, when the Kiirds 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 grow- ing 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 Balikli. This takes place on the Friday and lasts through Sunday. The scene of it is the monastery of Balikli, outside the land walls of Stamboul. It is rather curious that the Turkish name of so ancient a place should have super- seded even among the Greeks its original appellation. GREEK FEASTS 333 The Byzantine emperors had a villa there and several of them built churches in the vicinity. The name Balikli, 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 beheve 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 Ba- likli 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 per- son 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, how- ever, 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 334 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 estabhshed 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 hesita- tion of his Turkish brother in such matters, and he con- siders 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. Arme- nians 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 hsten in pure dehght 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 teUing 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 GREEK FEASTS 335 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 Constanti- nople 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 hoHday 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 ex- pressive of supreme enjoyment. The pas'halidtico 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 Hghtsomeness which is less evi- 336 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW dent 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. The feast of Our Lady of the Fishes is one of the greatest popular festivals in Constantinople. By no I s pSjT"^ )k J I ■ H m^ M R 1 HR HB K ^1 'jm ^ 1 1^^ 3^ En ■1 ■H H M^^^^ ^8 I^^^^^^^bRt^'^H m| fi^wf '- ^^ ^^^ 1 J ^ ^ § Bulgarians dancing 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 in- terest for those who have been touched by the classic in- fluence, as offering one of the most visible points at which Christianity turned to its own use the customs of pagan- ism. An a^iaa-fia, an ayazma as the Greeks collo- quially call it, is nothing more or less than the sacred GREEK FEASTS 337 fount of antiquity. Did not Horace celebrate such a one in his ode to the Fons Bandusix ? As a matter of fact, a behef 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. Greeks dancing to the strains of a lanterna 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 Chris- tian names. There is an infinity of such springs in and about Constantinople. Comparatively few of them are so well housed as the dyazma of Balikli. Some of them are scarcely to be recognised from any profane rill in the open country, while others are in Turkish hands and 338 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW accessible only on the day of the saint to which they are dedicated. On that day, and in the case of an dyazma of some repute on the days before and after — unless the nearest Sunday determine otherwise — is cele- brated the paniyiri of the patron of the spring. Pani- yiri, or panayiri 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 Jesta, is another sur- vival 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 iravij'yvpK. But religious exercises are not the essential part of a panayiri to most of those who take part in one. Nor need a panayiri neces- sarily take place at a holy well. The number of them that do take place is quite fabulous. Still, as the joy of hfe 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 earhest "panegyrics" of the season is that of A'i Sardnda, which is held on the 9th/22d of March. A'i Sardnda means St. Forty to many good people, al- though others designate thereby the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste — now the Turkish city of Sivas. 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 Sivas 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 GREEK FEASTS 339 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 fortify- ing the Golden Gate. But why should a Turkish tomb on the hillside above the dyazma 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 Chris- tians and Mohammedans alilje. 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 some- times supposed to bind to the bar any malady with which he may happen to be aflSicted. Near this grille was a doorway through which I saw people coming and go- ing. 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 tiirbeh. 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 wiUingly 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 cata- falque as the place for me to begin. I accordingly walked somewhat leisurely around the room. When I came 340 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 cir- culate 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 httle 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 lamen- tation in the holy place. The hoja kept his temper ad- mirably, however. He was not too put out to inform me that I owed him a piastre for the service he had ren- dered 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 seHing tapers. I bought one, as it were an Athenian sacrificing to the unknown god, hghted 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 panair — as the Turks say. Part of it covered the adjoining slopes, where peace- ably inchned 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 con- tented myself with hovering on their outskirts. A black group of priestly cyhnders marked the densest part of GREEK FEASTS 341 the crowd, and near them a sheaf of candles burned strangely in the clear spring sunhght. A big refresh- ment 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, ap- pliqued 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 dyazma carried a bottle of holy water in one hand and a spring flower in the other. Interesting as is the panayiri 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 Hid'r Eless. But it is not too difficult to relate this somewhat vague personage to our more fa- miliar friend Elijah, who in his character of St. Ehas 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 aston- ished 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 heri- 342 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW tage 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 Prin- kipo 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 Httle 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 panayiri 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, wear- ing no hat but a painted musHn handkerchief over the hair, and adorned with dowries in the form of strung gold coins. They do not all come to ma\e 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. GREEK FEASTS 343 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 hfe. 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 Itahan origin but with an accent and an interspersing of bells pecuhar 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 magnifi- cent 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 Hke a sailor's, and in shoes or shppers that should have no counter. Otherwise the rules demand that the counter be turned under the wearer's heel. Thus ac- coutred he bears his lanterna on his back from patron to patron and from one panayiri to another. His companion carries a camp-stool, whereon to rest his instrument while turning the handle hour in and hour out. I hap- pen, myself, to be not a little subject to the speH of music. I have trembled before Fitzner, Kheisel, and Sevcik quar- tettes and I have touched infinity under the subtlest bows and batons of my time. Yet I must confess that I am able to Hsten to a lanterna without displeasure. On one occasion I Hstened to many of them, accompanied by pipes, drums, gramophones, and wandering viohns. 344 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 maenads, 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, appar- ently 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 hand- kerchief twisted about their hair hke 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 Hghted 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). Arna- out-kyoi is where it may be most profitably admired. Arnaout-kyoi — 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 ApoIIonic in that lively settlement. No one will gainsay, however, that the joy of Hfe is visible and audible enough in Arnaout-kyoi during the first three days of August. GREEK FEASTS 345 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 instru- ments to your person for the night. The thing may be done for a dollar or two. You then take a table at a cafe and order with your refreshments a candle, which you hght 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 cafe. 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 folk-lore, panayiria increase in frequency as summer draws to a close. The picturesque village of Kandilh, opposite Ar- naout-kyoi — and any church dedicated to the Metamor- phosis — is the scene of an interesting one on Trans- figuration 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 solem- 346 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW nity. It so happens that the dehcious 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 kallikdntzari, so the blessing of the grapes puts an end to the evil influence of the thnmes. The thnmes 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-kyoi and admire the plane-shaded avenue of that fashionable village, deco- rated in honour of the occasion and musical with mastic glasses and other instruments of sound. A greater pana- yiri, however, takes place a month later in the pleasant meadows of Gyok 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 Gyok Sou that may not be seen at other fetes of the same kind. I do recollect, though, a dance of Anatohan 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 amphorae of the local pottery works in which people carry away their holy water give the rites of the dyazma a classic air. But this panayiri 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 GREEK FEASTS 347 one can count on being able to make merry out-of-doors on St. Demetrfus'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 responsibihties of the goddess Demeter. He is the patron of husbandmen, who dis- charge 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 Ai Thimitri, 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 Kassim. This division of the seasons is clearly connected with the Pelasgian myth of Demeter. The feast of her successor I have never found par- ticularly 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 notabihty 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 Con- stantinople. I never saw any one lay a sacrifice to the Goddess of Plenty on that ancient marble. A real rite of sacrifice 348 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW may be seen, however, at the last panayiri of the year, in the village of San Stefano. The panayiri, as you might suppose, is that of St. Stephen. In the Greek calendar St. Stephen's Day falls on the 27th of December (Jan- The mosque and the Greek altar of Kourou Cheshmeh uary 9th), instead of the 26th. The most characteristic part of the panayiri 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, hke those of Kourban Bairam, and they come GREEK FEASTS 349 to the same end. In fact, the Greeks apply to their own sacrifice the Turkish name of kourban. The main differ- erence 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. Hold- ing 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 re- marks 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 martyr- dom, and a big frosted cake was brought in with cere- mony 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 350 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 panayiria 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 Darija, Pyrgos, or Silivri, is the feast of the Panayia Mavromolitissa. This madonna in the church of Arnaout-kyoi 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 cortege of fishing-boats — weeping, it is said — by priests and well- wishers who hold a picnic panayiri 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 aflFords us an interesting ghmpse GREEK FEASTS 351 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 ahen 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 com- paring the water facihties of New York and Constanti- nople, that "the emporium of the United States is some centuries behind the metropohs of Turkey." I doubt whether the comparison would still hold, since the build- ing 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 godhness, and we have our morning tubs, and we have our unri- valled systems of plumbing; but we also have our Great Unwashed. In Turkey, however, there is no Great Un- washed — save among those who are not Turks. The reason is that for a follower of the Prophet godliness is next to cleanhness. His rehgion obhges him to wash his face, hands, and feet before each of his five daily prayers, while innumerable pubhc 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 Httle Hke 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 35^ FOUNTAINS 353 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 Constantino- ple. If they are intended more strictly for use than West- ern fountains, they also take the place — and often most happily — of commemorative sculpture in Western coun- tries. And so faithfully have they followed all the vicis- situdes of the art of building in Turkey, have they re- flected 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 afluded to in earher chap- ters. 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 con- taining a tap set over a marble basin. This arrange- ment, 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, prefer- ring, himself, to use only the stream running from the faucet. Turkish houses — real Turkish houses — are like Japanese ones in that they contain very httle furni- ture or bric-a-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 accomphshed by setting the tap in the lower part of a 354 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW tall marble tablet, called the aina 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. 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 Suleiman 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 sur- face of the mirror stone is notched into a series of over- lapping 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 Photograph by Abdullah Fr&res Wall fountain in the Seraglio FOUNTAINS 355 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 SelseUl in Bebek 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. This original selsebil partakes also of the nature of a Jiskieh, as the Turks onomatopoetically call a spurting fountain. In the stalactites bordering the two shallow 356 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Kyopriilii kiosk. They are not un- common in the outer hall of pubHc baths. One that contra- venes the canons of orthodox Moham- medan 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 crea- tures, Hke the lions of so many gar- dens, may not per- petuate a Byzan- tine 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 bubbhng The goose fountain at Kazli FOUNTAINS 357 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 Mou- rad III, who re- stored the kiosk in 1590. On either side of the deep rectangular recess are poetical inscrip- tions of that Sultan, gold on green, with a quaint little climb- ing border picked out of the marble in gold, and a sur- mounting 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 inche. 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 Shiite 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. A few interesting interior fountains are to be seen in The wall fountain of Chinili-Kyoshk 358 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW mosques, though Constantinople cannot equal Broussa in this respect. St. Sophia contains two such fountains, put there by Sultan Mourad IH, 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 hke 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. Most mosques, as well as medressehs and other pious institutions, also have a larger and more decorative foun- tain which usually stands in the middle of the court. The technical name of such a fountain is shadrivan, or shadiravan, really meaning "for the peace of souls." The fountain, that is, not only aids the faithful in their rehgious exercises, but adds so much to the celestial credit of the builder or of the person whom he commem- orates. For many shadrivans were built, after the mosque to which they are attached, by another person. Those in the courts of Baiezid and Sehm, 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 shadrivan 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 shadrivan is a basin or FOUNTAINS 359 reservoir, encircled about the bottom by taps and pro- tected by a roof from sun and rain. The simplest type is to be seen in the medresseh yard of Kyopriilii Hussein 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 Shadrivan of Kyopriilii Hiissein Pasha 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 conve- nience of those who use the fountain. Some shadrivans are partially enclosed and made into pavilions, where it is very pleasant to rest. An excellent example exists in 36o CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW the yard of the mosque of Ramazan Effendi, in Issa Kapou. The perforated marble enclosing the upper part of the reservoir of this shadrivan is a thing that is seen in many such fountains. Sometimes a handsome grille work pro- tects the water, as at St. Sophia and SokoIIi Mehmed Pasha. The latter fountain is uncommon in that the Shadrivan of Ramazan Effendi large round reservoir is the whole shadrivan, with project- ing eaves to shelter the people at the taps. But not all shadrivans are for purposes of ablution. At the Siilei- manieh and at Yeni Jami they are merely covered tanks without taps. The shadrivan 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. FOUNTAINS 361 I do not suppose that street fountains are actually niore 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 Shadrtvan of SokoUi Mehmed Pasha may be attached to a wall or may exist as an independent structure. The original form is the apphed 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 Hterally 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 362 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW are a wide-spread example, for one thing, of Turkish philanthropy — • and incidentally of a passing concep- tion 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 hved, 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 selhng the water of his fountain. The water- carrier, the saka, belongs to a race by no means yet ex- tinct 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 Hussein 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 degen- erate 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 with- out price. Until a few years ago Constantinople possessed no other water-system. Now modern water companies op- erate 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 Ameri- can traveller of a hundred years ago is witness. Only FOUNTAINS 363 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-sup- plies 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 indi- viduals known as souyoljis, waterway men, who alone can tell, often, just where the pipes He and how they are fed. And very useful, if occasionally very trying, gentle- men 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 suppHed from some small in- dependent source of water. As time has passed and property has changed hands, the tradition of the water- way 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 souyolji it miraculously begins to flow again. This system is probably the one the Turks found in use when they entered the city. Water stifl 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 Sul- tans 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 identi- fied as such. Many of the fountains of Stamboul, how- 364 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW ever, must occupy the place of Byzantine fountains, whose materials may have been used in their construc- tion. 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 foun- tain of Kirk Cheshmeh — Forty Fountains — is a case in point. The Turks connect with it the name of Sultan Siileiman 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 rehef of peacocks, while other Byzan- tine fragments are built into the structure. The arches of two of the niches, moreover, are round, which was not characteristic of Suleiman's period. So we are not with- out reasons for thinking that the fountain may have been a Byzantine one restored by Suleiman — who also restored the aqueduct that feeds it. The same is hkely 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 Kazli be Byzantine — is that of the small Koumriilii Mesjid, between Fatih and the Adri- anople Gate. But the large Horhor Cheshmeh near Ak Serai, 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 orna- ment or even a "mirror stone," is found in what may be the oldest Turkish fountain in Constantinople. It hes 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 FOUNTAINS 365 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. The Byzantine fountain of Kirk 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 Baiezid 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 366 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 foun- tains — 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 FeizouIIah EfFendi, outside his medresseh, whose inscription was designed by the celebrated calh- graph Dourmoush-zadeh Ahmed Effendi. It must not be inferred that the matter of the in- scription 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 Hizir and the Spring of Life, and to the battle of Kerbela, in which Hussein 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, how- ever, are not so modest. They are more likely to give ampler information than he who runs may read. And after the time of Suleiman the Magnificent it became in- creasingly the fashion for celebrated poets to compose the verses which celebrated calhgraphs designed. Thus the historian Chehbi-zadeh records the end of the in- FOUNTAINS 367 scription on a reservoir of Ahmed III: "Seid 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 hnes of the following chron- ographic 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 earhest 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/ 1 684). But the exigencies of arithmetic may relegate the names to the earlier part of the inscrip- tion — as on one of two neighbouring fountains in the quarter of Ak Biyik (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 NaksLibendi" — an order of dervishes — "uttered the following epigraph : Come and drink water of eternal Hfe from this joyful fountain." The value of the last phrase is 1 148, or 1735. Even in so general a sentiment, however, it is not always easy to get the required figure. 368 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW Various ingenious devices are resorted to, of which a handsome Renaissance fountain in Kassim 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 - m WMW^^S^^^ t^ :'a ^'ifW ■ • I' % ^^^^iW^^^m^^^SB^^^S. wt^k -' '';$'■■''' III :pi:': - |fc^,'., '-WR^^ IS iH ) ■ ■ ■. - 11 The two fountains of Ak Biyik. and he provided this fountain with water hke 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 FOUNTAINS 369 again, which is evidently the date of the construction (1631). The light values of this inscription are as enig- matic 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 Rus- sians in the Black Sea, and marrying the sister of Sultan Mourad IV. 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 earhest numerals I have found are of the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, on a fountain built by a Jew in the suburb of Hass-kyoi (931/1525). The same fountain is also decorated with the earliest rehefs 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 ad- mirably proportioned, Hke the Httle fountain in Avret Bazaar at the gate of the soup-kitchen of the Hasseki — she was Hourrem, the Joyous One, who bore to Suleiman his ill-fated son Moustafa — many of them are disap- pointingly heavy. It may be that the great Sinan did not consider such small monuments worth his while, or that they have sufl"ered by restoration. At afl events, the lesser sultans who followed Suleiman 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. Conventionahsed cypresses, with tops mysteriously bent. 370 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW sprang up on either side of the taps. Conventionalised roses, often having a mystic symbolism, became a fa- vourite ornament for the apex of the arch. The occult pentagram or hexagram, symboHc 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 decora- tive 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 Turk- ish rococo has an inimitable grace and spirit. The foun- tains of the period are decorated, as no fountains had been decorated before, with floral reliefs a Httle Hke 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 wafl fountain of the Vah- deh 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 Biyik. So must have been the charming fountain, now most lamentably neglected, on the street that drops from Galata Tower to Pershembeh Bazaar. Until this time the old pointed arch had been pre- ferred, though, as we have seen, the rounded shell of the Renaissance had already made its appearance. But now FOUNTAINS 371 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, some- times, even the out-and-out baroque. There is a Httle Street fountain at Et Yemez fountain, for instance, in the Asiatic suburb of Kanlija, 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 372 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW me a clew to the date of the fountain. And after that I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of the gentle- man whose summer yali Hes across the road from the foun- tain, and he told me that the fountain was built by the Shei'h ill Islam of Moustafa III. There is, too, a fountain at Emirgyan, in front of the Khedival garden, which, for all its baroque hues, 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 apphed to a cube of masonry. I sup- pose the religious associations of the shadrivan kept its tradition from being followed, but with experience free- dom was gained in the treatment of the detached foun- tain. 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 Feizabad — Place of the Abundant Blessing of God. A great oblong pool reflects the trees, and nearer the Bos- phorus 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 FOUNTAINS 373 at Kiat Haneh. But the model and masterpiece of this httle golden age is the great fountain at Top Haneh, be- side the mosque of Don Quixote. It lacks, alas, the domed roof and broad eaves that Mailing represents in one of his pictures. Moreover a trolley post has been planted squarely at its most conspicuous corner, while Fountain of Ahmed III in the park at Kiat Haneh Ugly iron fences attack two of its sides; and the War De- partment 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. A less ornamental but a deservedly famous fountain of the same period is to be seen on the upper Bosphorus, at Beikos. T suspect, however, that it was once more 374 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 Detail of the fountain of Mahmoud I at Top Haneh are thirteen now — into three marble troughs sunk be- low the level of the street, and runs away through a marble channel in the middle of the pavihon. From this T-shaped lower level steps rise to two marble plat- forms at the outer corners, where you may sip a coffee FOUNTAINS 375 while drinking in the freshness and music of the water. This dehghtful fountain was also built by Mahmoud I. I know not whether the inhabitants of Roumeli Hissar got from Beikos the idea of a fountain of their own, much Fountain of Abd ill Hamid II smaller, which is flat on top and furnished with benches that are very popular on summer evenings. Another, at Beiflerbei, 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. 376 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW as at least one good deed of the late Sultan Abd iil Hamid IL It would not be fair to compare this struc- ture with its greater neighbour at the other end of the parade-ground. Nevertheless, in spite of its ugly sculp- ture, it is one of the most successful modern fountains in Constantinople. Suggested, perhaps, by a fountain behind the Arsenal, built by the Admiral Suleiman Pasha in 1750, it is much happier in its hues. And the archi- tect had something Hke 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. No one can explore much of Stamboul without notic- ing 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 attend- ant 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 der- vishes 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. The Seljukian Turks of Asia Minor, I have been told. FOUNTAINS 377 were the inventors of this graceful philanthropy, remem- bering the thirst of the martyr Hussein 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 Sebil behind the tomb of Sultan Mehmed III 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 Siilei'- man. Small and simple though it is, the Hnes have the elegance that distinguishes the work of this master. And it proved full of suggestion for succeeding architects. 378 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 apphed sebil is that of the eunuch Hafiz 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 un- pretentious 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 fined with tiles. Similar tiles are to be seen in the window embrasures of that Sultan's tomb. Their conventionafised 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 hexa- gons of the grille, they are wonderfully decorative. By an odd chance they were not destroyed by the fire that raged FOUNTAINS 379 through this quarter in 19 12. 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 1 mi Ail J i 4 1 O WAR TIME 507 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. Be that as it may, the Turks hved to regret the poHcy of the Conqueror. The whole history of the Patriarchate during the Turkish period has been one of constant en- croachment 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 5o8 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW he razed to the ground the magnificent church that ha( been the model for St. Mark's of Venice, and built on it 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 stil in existence only one is now in Greek hands. It is onb fair to add, however, that a few modern churches ii Stamboul occupy ancient sites, and that the decrease o the Greek population caused others to be abandoned b^ their original worshippers. The one exception I have noted is a small church ii the Phanar quarter called St. Mary the Mongolian This curious name was that of the founder, a natura daughter of Michael Palseologus. After driving out th( Latins in 1261 the emperor thought to consoHdate hi: position by offering the hand of the Princess Mary t( Holagou, that redoubtable dgsceadant of Tamerlane wh( destroyed the cahphate of Bagdad. Holagou died, how ever, while his bride was on her way to him. But th( Palaeologina continued her journey and married the soi of her elderly fiance. . After he in turn had gone the waj of his father, the princess returned to Constantinople anc built her church and the monastery of which it formed i part. The Lady of the Mongols, as the Greeks callec her, was the first member of her house whom the founde: of the house of Osman had seen, and she treated him s( contemptuously that he paid her back by capturing th( city of Nicsea as a base for his future operations agains' the empire of her fathers. When, less than two hundrec years later, the descendant of Osman took the capital o the Palaeologi and built there his great mosque, he madi a present of St. Mary the Mongolian to his Greek archi tect. So it is that the Greeks have always been able t( retain possession of the church. WAR TIME 509 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-kyoi, 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 Metropohtan 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 b y Phan ariote 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 wanderjahrej^ made up to him in considerable measure his lack of any systematic education. In i860 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 Metropohtan 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 Metropohtans 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, com- posed of twelve Metropohtans. In 1874 he was trans- ferred 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 510 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 iil 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 starich 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 Hke Turkish priests by the Moslem rehgious courts. This the Patriarch stoutly objected to; but he finally expressed his wilhngness to agree that in criminal cases his priests should be given up to the Turkish courts. The conces- sion 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 coun- tenance even a verbal concession, and Joachim resigned. He then spent sixteen years in "repose," visiting the different Patriarchates of the empire and finally estab- lishing 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 1 90 1 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 WAR TIME 511 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, hstened 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 fol- lowed 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 im- bittered by an old racial jealousy reaching far back into Byzantine history; for each church was the headquar- ters 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, 5i'2 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW however, had profited by the lesson of his first reign. During his retirement the Patriarchate, refusing to yield to Abd iil 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 189 1 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 iil Hamid. So vigorously did he meet them that Mahmoud Shefket Pasha, in the heat of a controversy over the military ser- vice of non-Moslems, burst out one day at the Patriarch : "I will smash the heads of all the Greeks!" The ques- tion of schools also became acute, the government de- manding a supervision of Greek institutions which the Patriarchate refused to admit. And a poHcy of pin-pricks was instituted against all the heads of the non-Moslem communities, in a belated attempt to retake the posi- tions lost by Mehmed II and to limit the Patriarchs to their spiritual jurisdiction. It was only after the out- break 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 mediaeval poficy 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 WAR TIME 513 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 segis of the Phanar, he proved that his views had broadened since the days of the Bulgarian schism and that he held no mean con- ception of his role as the shepherd of a disinherited peo- ple. 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 iil 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 there- fore 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 ahve. 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 earher events of that remarkable campaign. He was still ahve when the 514 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW Bulgarian cannon drew so near that their thunder w( audible even at the Phanar. What feehngs did the soun rouse in that old enemy of the Exarchate? He mus at all events, have hoped that to him would be given tt incomparable honour of reconsecrating St. Sophia. Th£ consummation, which for a moment seemed within ib. possibilities, was not granted him. He died while tB negotiations for an armistice were going on at Chataiji His funeral took place on the ist of December, 1912. The Patriarch Gennadius, as we have seen, first too up his residence in the church of the Holy Apostles an afterward in that of the Pammakaristos — the All-blesse Virgin. There sixteen of his successors reigned in tur till 1 59 1, when Sultan Mourad HI turned that interesi ing eighth-century church into Fetieh Jami — the Mosqu of Conquest — in honour of his victories in Persia an Georgia. Then the Patriarchate moved three times mon finally setthng in 1601 in the church of St. George at th Phanar. This has been the Vatican of ConstantinopI for the past three hundred years. The Patriarchs hav never made, at the Phanar, any attempt at magnificenc( Exiled from St. Sophia, and hoping, waiting, to retur thither, they have preferred to five simply, to camp ou as it were in expectation, thinking their means bes devoted to schools and charitable institutions. Th wooden palace of the Patriarchate is a far from imposin building, while the adjoining church is small and plair It contains httle of interest save an old episcopal thron and a few rehcs and icons, which are supposed to hav been saved from St. Sophia. Nevertheless the funer£ of Joachim III was a dignified, an imposing, even a spier did ceremony. To this result the Turkish authoritie contributed not a little, by maintaining a service of orde more perfect than I have seen at any other state pagear WAR TIME 515 in Constantinople. No one who had not a card of ad- mission 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 Church of the All-blessed Virgin (Fetieh Jami) side of the rising curve from the main street to the gate of the Patriarchate, students from the theological college at Haiki 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 hmited to the capacity of the narrow nave, and none were 5i6 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW granted to ladies — a severity which brought down ; violent protest from the better half of Byzantium. A Greek church sometimes impresses a Westerner a containing too many glittering things within too small ; space. On this occasion the natural twihght of the in terior and the black gauze in which lamps and icons wen veiled toned down any possible effect of tawdriness while the tall carved and gilded ikonostasion made th( right background for the splendour of the ceremony One hardly reahsed that it was a funeral. There was nc coffin, no flowers, no mortuary candles. The dead Patri arch, arrayed in his pontifical cloth of gold and crownec with his domed gold mitre, sat in his accustomed plac( at the right of the chancel, on a throne of purple velvet I was prepared to find it ghastly; but in the half Hghi I found rather a certain Byzantine solemnity. On th( purple dais at the right of the Patriarch stood his hand' some Grand Vicar, in the flowing black of the church At the left another priest stood, one of the twelve archi- mandrites attached to the Patriarchate, holding the episcopal staff which the Conqueror is supposed to have given Gennadius, tipped hke Hermes' caduceus with twc serpents' heads of gold. In front of the dais burned ar immense yellow candle, symbolic of the Light of the World, which an acolyte cafled the Great Candle-bearei always carries before the Patriarch. The officiating clergy, consisting of the members o; the Holy Synod and a number of visiting bishops, stooc in front of the ikonostasion, some in simple black, other; in magnificent vestments of white satin embroidered witf gold. The rest of the church was given up to invitee guests. In stafls at the dead Patriarch's left sat the heads of the other non-Moslem communities of the em- pire, headed by the Armenian Patriarch and including WAR TIME 517' 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 The lantern-bearers 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 min- ister. Their Bulgarian, Greek, Montenegrin, and Ser- vian colleagues, being absent, seemed at that historic 5i8 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW moment to be only the more present. The other foreigr missions, as less concerned with the Orthodox Church, were represented by two secretaries apiece. The over- flow of the diplomatic corps, the officers of the interna- tional squadron then in the Bosphorus, and a number ol Greek secular notabihties 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 ex- tremely brilliant, nor less so for the twihght of the church ■ — and a strange one when one reahsed 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 httle of when Abd iil Hamid opened his second parhament — 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 secre- tary of the Holy Synod mounted a high pulpit and de- Hvered a panegyric of Joachim III. And at last he was hfted as he was, sitting on his throne, and carried in solemn procession to his grave in the monastery ol Balikli. WAR TIME 519 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 The dead Patriarch 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 em- blazoned in gold on the back of his purple throne. I did not see either the last embarking of Joachim III on the 520 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW yacht lent by the government — did not Mehmed U 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 ol the city. We drove, instead, to the monastery of Oui 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 oi 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 Kirk Kil'seh and Liileh Bourgass recurred in their talk. At last an ad- vance guard of cavalry spattered down the muddy lane. After them came pohcemen, mounted and on foot, fol- lowed by choir-boys carrying two tall silver crosses and six of the six-winged silver ornaments symboHsing 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 tc me nothing ghastly or barbaric about it. I had looked upon it as a historic survival worthy of all respect. Bui the dignity was gone as the tired bearers stumblec WAR TIME 521 through the mud carrying the heavy dais. And the old man who had been so handsome and imperious in Hfe 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 Httle 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 Aziyade. 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 sol- diers 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 Chataija hnes. 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 con- quering 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 Httle grey oxen to its carts of clumsy wheels, piled thereon its few effects, covered them 522 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 re- mained, 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 caiques in which they fled from the coast villages of the Marmora. Being my- self Hke 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. 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 reahties of life as when, with another member of our subcommittee, I visited the WAR TIME 523 mosque of ZaI Mahmoud Pasha, in Eyoub. The mosque of ZaI Mahmoud Pasha is worth visiting. It was built by Sinan, and its founder, a Vizier of Selim II, was nick- named ZaI, after a famous Persian champion, because, with his own hands, he finally succeeded in strangling the strong young prince Moustafa, son of Suleiman the Exiles Magnificent. Like its greater neighbour, the mosque of ZaI 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 fiap that hangs at any public Turkish doorway 524 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW in winter. We found ourselves in a narrow vestibule in which eight or ten famihes were living. One of them consisted of two children, a httle boy flushed with fever and a pale and wasted Httle 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 cry- ing, 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 con- sisted 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 smaH piles of bedding and stray cooking utensils. Each of these groups con- stituted 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 hving huddled together under the dome of ZaI Mahmoud Pasha. In the gaflery and under it rude par- titions had been made by stretching ropes between the piflars 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 sohd 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. WAR TIME ^2^ 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 asphyxi- ating themselves. Others had no fire at all. On a num- ber 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 neigh- bours, for five days. It struck me, in this connection, that in no other country I knew would the mosque car- pets still have been lying folded in one corner instead of making life a little more tolerable for that melan- choly 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 Chor- lou 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 Kirk 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 ahve, 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 526 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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. Lady Lowther's refugees But in ZaI 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 wifling to go away or to let members of their famihes be taken away to hospitals. How did WAR TIME 527 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. In distributing Lady Lowther's rehef 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, enabUng him or her to draw on us for certain supphes. 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 Aisheh, Mothers of the Moslems, or to the Prophet's daughter Fatma. Many, neverthe- less, reminded one of Mme. Chrysantheme 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 528 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 at- tempt 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 Mis- WAR TIME 529 tress 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 an- swered, 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 ad- dresses, according to her age, as "my child," "my broth- er," "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 shghted when they coldly addressed me as their lord. Imagine, then, my pleasure when one of them called me her creamy 530 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 ap- pears not to shrink from the mascuHne 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 unbeHever 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 suffra- gettes — 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 pre- vails 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 un- WAR TIME 531 imaginative persons in England, who could hardly be expected to know the fashions of Thrace. Articles in- tended 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 hun- dred in the Bazaars, called like the Prophet's mantle a Mrka. 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, pre- ferring 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 loth of March, 171 8, "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 Bul- garian towels, being really Turkish; but it seems to me 532 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 hon- est 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 col- ours of which they had the secret. Peasant embroidery The consort of Mistress Hyacinth, I regret to add, seemed to show less wilUngness to add to the resources of the family. Perhaps it was because of an inward con- viction of which I once or twice caught rumours, that as unbehevers 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 incHnes 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 WAR TIME 533 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 Young Thrace front of one ear. He is a surprisingly well-made and well- featured individual — hke 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 furnish- ing excellent material for a race — if only the right artist could get hold of it. 534 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 wed- ding!" 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 an- nounced that she would tolerate no change in the status quo. How then did Europe come to acquiesce so quickly in the accomphshed fact? Why did Germany, the friend of Abd iil 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 twad- dle — 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 WAR TIME 535 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 en- emy the Bulgarian has advanced more in one generation than you have in twenty. You still chng 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 imi- tate the West; but of the toil, the patience, the thorough- ness, 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, Hke 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 536 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW convinced her. Nor would I quite have convinced my- self. 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 incom- petent as well, and even subject to violent inconsis- tencies 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 hberal 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 associa- tion. I have known him many years. But there is something about him I cannot help hking — a simphcity, a manhness, a dignity. I like his fondness for water, and flowers, and green meadows, and spreading trees. I like his love of children. I hke his perfect manners. I like his sobriety. I Hke his patience. I Hke the way he faces death. .One of the things I Hke most about him is what has been perhaps most his undoing — his lack of any commercial instinct. I hke, too, what no one has much noticed, the artistic side of him. I do not know Turkish enough to appreciate his hterature, and his religion forbids him — or he imagines it does — to en- gage 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 Pal- ace of the sultans in Constantinople, certain old houses I have seen, the mosques, the medressehs, the bans, the tombs, the fountains, of the Turks are an achievement that deserves more serious study than has been given WAR TIME 537 them. You may tell me that they are not Turkish be- cause 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, Kiird, and Laz are all quicker with their blades. To his more positive qualities I am by no means alone in testi- fying. 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 bhnd praise is no more intelligent than bhnd 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 aeons 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 538 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW 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 com- munications in most of Europe were not so good as, and I doubt if Hfe 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 pur- poses a mediaeval 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 ori- gin should have followed such diflFerent roads, and at such an uneven pace, is in many ways an insoluble prob- lem. 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 medi- aeval 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 mediaeval 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 warhke Turkish nomads first began to make themselves known, the different states which have contributed to make America were already formed, while India, China, and Ja- pan 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 con- ceivable, too, that another matter of heredity may enter into it. Whether civil life originated in Asia or not, it WAR TIME 539 is certain that of existing civilisations the Oriental are older than the Occidental. Perhaps, therefore, the Asi- atic 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 pro- found racial bent toward the belief that everything is vanity and vexation of spirit. He asks himself what is the use, and lets fife 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 rehgion, 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 rehgious, as you will — exist in every rehgion. And organised religion has everywhere been responsible for much of the fanaticism and dis- order of the world. For the rest, I find much in Moham- medanism to admire. There is a nobihty 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 540 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW and operatic choirs. Then the democracy of Islam and much of what it inculcates with regard to family and civil hfe 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 mod- ern 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 mod- ernising 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 circum- stance it can never prevail in our hurrying modern world, because it takes too much time to be a good Mohamme- dan. 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 WAR TIME 541 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 ilht- erate, 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 civihsation. 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 earher, 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 as- similating 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 rehgious independence of his subjects he gave them weapons to win their pohtical independence. And, beset by enemies within and with- out, he has never had time to learn the lessons of peace. 542 CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW Here, I think, we come very near the root of his diffi- culties. 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 govern- ment. 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 Hving in irregular ways. The system is one that naturally dies out with the dis- appearance 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 reahsed 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 reahses yet how httle 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 WAR TIME 543 same be said of the Ottoman Empire? For a century or more that empire has continued to play the role 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, enhghtened by humiliation as to the real quahty of his greatness, he may, let us hope, put aside illusion and pretence and give himself to the humbler problems of common hfe. If he sincerely does he may find, in the end, that he has unwittingly reached a great- ness 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 Constantino 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 5^7 Justin II 565 S4S 546 MASTERS OF CONSTANTINOPLE Tiberius A.D.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) 7°5 Philippicus 711 Anastasius II 7^3 Tlieodosius III 7^5 Leo III, the Isaurian 7^7 Constantine V Copronymus 74° Leo IV 775 Constantine VI 779 Irene 797 Nicephorus I 802 Stauracius 811 Micliael I Rhangabe 811 Leo V, the Armenian 813 Michael II, the Amorian 820 Theophilus 829 Michaellll 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 MASTERS OF CONSTANTINOPLE 547 Michael V A. D. 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 1 203 Nicholas Canabus 1 204 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 Palaeologus (fifth emperor of Nicaea; succeeded 1260) 1261 Andronicus II Palaeologus .... 1282 Co-emperor: Michael IX 1295-1320 Andronicus III Palaeologus 1328 John V Palaeologus . 1341 Co-emperor: John VI Cantacuzene 1341-1355 Manuel II Palaeologus 1391 John VII Palaeologus 1425 Constantine XII Palaeologus 1448 Mehmed II, the Conqueror (seventh Ottoman sultan; succeeded 1451) 1453 Baiezid II 1481 SelimI 1512 Suleiman I, the Magnificent 1520 548 MASTERS OF CONSTANTINOPLE Selim II A. D. 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 Suleiman II 1687 Ahmed II 1691 Moustafa II 1695 Ahmed III 1703 Mahmoud I 1730 Osman III 1754 Moustafa III 1757 Abd iil Hamid I 1774 Sehm III 1788 Moustafa IV 1807 Mahmoud II, the Reformer 1808 Abd iil Mejid 1839 Abd iil Aziz 1861 Mourad V 1876 Abd iil 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. Andreossy, Comte A. F.: "Constantinople et le Bosphore." 1820. Antoniades, E. M.: " Sain te 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 Latinite de Constantinople." 2d ed. 1894. Berard, Victor: "La Revolution Turque." 1909. Beylie, L. de: " L'Habitation Byzantine." 1902. Bode, Dr. Wilhelm: " Altpersische Kniipfteppiche." 1904. " Vorderasiatische Kniipfteppiche." Boppe, A. : "Les Peintres du Bosphore au Dixhuitieme Siecle." 1911. Brown, John P.: "The Dervishes." 1868. Brown, P. 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, i, 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-GoufiBer, Comte de: "Le Voyage Pittoresque de la Grece." Illustrated. 1782. Choisy, A.: "L'Art de Batir chez les Byzantins." 1884. Crawford, F. Marion: "Paul Patoff." 1887. Creasy, E. S.: "History of the Ottoman Turks." 1878. Diehl, Charles: "Etudes Byzantines." 1905. "Figures Byzantines." 2 series. "Manuel d'Art Byzantin." 549 550 A CONSTANTINOPLE BOOK-SHELF Djelal Essad: "Constantinople — de Byzance a 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. "Eglises 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. EvUa Chelibi: "The Voyages of EvHa Chelibi." Translated from the Turkish. Falke, Otto von: "Majolica." Farrere, Claude: "L'Homme qui Assassina." Fazy, Edmond, and Abdul Halim Memdouh: "Anthologie de I'Amour Turque." Finlay, G.: "A History of Greece." , 1877. Fouquet, Dr.: "Contribution a I'Etude de la Ceramique 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. " 1 909 . "The Women and Folklore of Turkey." Gautier, Theophile: "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: "Relation Nouvelle d'un Voyage de Constantinople." Illus- trated. 1680. Grosvenor, Edwin A.: "Constantinople." Illustrated. 2d ed. 1900. Guriitt, 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 Enghsh Nation . . ." 1598-1600. ^ Halide Edib Hanoum: "Handan." 1913. Hamlin, Cyrus: "Among the Turks." 1878. A CONSTANTINOPLE BOOK-SHELF 551 Hamlin: "My Life and Times." 1893. Hammer, Joseph von, Purgstall: " Constantinopolis und der Bosporos." 1822. " Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches." 10 vols. 1827. "Histoire de I'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." (Mediaeval 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." 191 2. Johnson, Mrs. (Susannah Willard): "A Narrative of Captivity." 1796; reprinted 1907. Knolles, Richard: "A Generall Historie of the Turks." 1603. Con- tinuation by Sir Paul Ricaut. 1687. Kondakov: "Les £maux Byzantins." 1892. Koran, The. Translated by George Sale. 1734. Krumbacher: "Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur." 2d ed. 1897. Kunos, Ignace: "Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales." 1913. La Barte, Jules: "Le Palais Imperial de Constantinople." 1861. Lamartine, Alphonse de: "Voyage en Orient." 1835. Lane-Poole, Stanley: "Life of Lord Stratford de Redclifie." 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'Archeologie Chretienne." 1907. Le Comte, Pretextat: "Les Arts et Metiers de la Turquie et de I'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. 552 A CONSTANTINOPLE BOOK-SHELF Loti, Pierre: "Aziyade." 1876. "Les Desenchantees." 1906. "Fant6me d'Orient." 1892. "Turquie Agonisante." 1913. Lybyer, Albert H.: "The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent." (Harvard Historical Studies.) 1913- Mahmud Mukhtar Pascha: "Meine Fiihrung im Balkankriege, 1912." 1913- Margoliouth, D. S.: "Mahommed and the Rise of Islam." 1906. McCabe, Joseph: "The Empresses of Constantinople." 1913. McCuUagh, 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, WilHam: "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 Representant Differentes 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 General de I'Empire Otto- man." Illustrated. 1824. Oman, C. W. C: "The Byzantine Empire." (Story of the Nations Series.) 1892. Pardoe, Miss, and W. H. Bartlett: "The Beauties of the Bosphorus." Illustrated. 1832. Pears, Sir Edwin: "The Destruction of the Greek Empire." 1903. A CONSTANTINOPLE BOOK-SHELF 553 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: " 'J'urkish-English and English-Turkish Dic- tionary." Remond, 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 Dixieme Siecle." 1890. "L'Epopee Byzantine." 1896-1905. "Les lies des Princes." 1884. Selim Bey: "Carnet de Campagne d'un Ofi&cier Turc." 1913. Smith, Francis: "Eastern Costumes." 1769. Stanley, Dean: "The Eastern Church." 1861. Strzygowski: " Die Byzantinischen Wasserbehalter von Konstantinopel." "Orient oder Rom." 1901. Thalasso, A.: "Karagueuz." "Le Theatre Turc." 1884. Tinayre, Marcelle: "Notes d'une Voyageuse en Turquie." 1909. Townsend, Meredith: "Asia and Europe." 3d ed. 1909. Twain, Mark: "The Innocents Abroad." 1869. Vambery, Arminius: "Manners in Oriental Countries." 1876. " The Story of My Struggles." 1904. "Travels in Central Asia." 1864. "The Turkish People." 1885. Vandal, A.: "Une Ambassade Franjaise en Orient sous Louis XV." Villehardouin, Geoffroi de: "De la Conqueste de Constantinople ..." Translated by Sir Frank Marzials. (Everyman's Library.) Vincent and Dickson: "A Handbook of Modern Greek." 1904. Wallace, Lew: "The Prince of India." 1893. Walsh, Robert: "Constantinople and the Seven Churches of Asia." Illustrated. 1840. 554 A CONSTANTINOPLE BOOK-SHELF Walsh: "A Residence in Constantinople." 1836. Washburn, George: "Fifty Years in Constantinople and Recollections of Robert College." 1909. Whitman, Sidney: "Turkish Reminiscences." 1913. Willis, N. P.: "Pencillings by the Way." 1844. Wratislaw, A. H., M.A.: "Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz; what he saw in the Turkish Metropohs, Constantinople; experienced in his captivity; and after his happy return to his country, committed to writing in the year of our Lord 1599." Literally translated from the original Bohemian. 1862. Young, George: "Corps de Droit Ottoman." 7 vols. 1905. Zanotti, Angelo: "Autour des Murs de Constantinople." 1911. Zeyneb Hanoum: "A Turkish Woman's European Impressions." 1913. INDEX References in italics are chiefly to illustrations Abraham, 287, 297. Admirals : Halreddin Pasha Barbarossa, 139, 169, 170. Hassan Pasha, 368. Kilij Ali Pasha, 129, 166. Pialeh Pasha, 130, 140, 163. SokoUi Mehmed Pasha, 139. Suleiman Pasha, 376. Adrianople, 40, 69, 210, 525. Aivan (Eivan) Serai, 87. Ak Biyik, 367, 370. Ak Serai, 364, 381. Albanians, 30, 159, 298, 325, 334, 392, 394, 397, 406, 429, 431, 446, 449, 45°, 461, 470. Alem, 301, 312, 316, 359, 376, 380. Alexander the Great, 197, 259. Algiers, 166, 169. AH, 310, 311, 313. Ali Bey Souyou, 142, 143. Ambassadors and Ambassadresses, xi, 24, 60, 84, 109, no, 134, 143, 156, 160, 170, 173, 174, 17s, 176, 210, 229, 238 et seg., 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, S29, S4i- Amsterdam, 162. Anadolou Hissar, 245, 251, j5j. 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. Haireddin, 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, TUr- behs, etc. Ardebil, 48. Argonauts, 86, 149, 238, 240, 245, 347. Armenians, 18, 8i 134, 176, 179, 192, 193, 195, 256, 268, 272, 330, 332, 393, 416, 417, 460, 504, 516, 537. Arnaout-kyoi, 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. Ayazma, 87, 149, 333, 336 et seq., 345, 346, 35°- Azap Kapou, 107, 124, 128, 151, 154, 157, 182, 380. Aziz Mahmoud Hiidai, 224. Bagnio, 163, 164. Bairam: see High Days and HoHdays. Baise-main (mouayedeh) , 289 et seq. "Bajazet," 58. Balat, 48, 87. 555 556 INDEX Balikli, 332 et seq., 515, 520. Balio, 128, 152, 153, 160, 164, 173, 174, 502. Barbarossa: see Admirals. Barbyses: see Kiat Haneh Souyou. Basma haneh, 21 j, 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, 13s, 149, 154, 163, 164, 170, 19s, 215, 333, 339, 347, 383 et seq., 404, 425 et seq., 502. Famagusta, 140. Kerbela, 310, 311, 314, 362, 366, 377. Kirk Kil'seh, x, 467, 469, 472, 520, 525- Lepanto, 128, 129, 166. Liileh Bourgas, 469, 473, 490. Malta, 130. Platasa, 107, 404. Szigeth, 139. Vienna, 25, 31. Bazaars: see Markets. Bebek, 23, 247, 248, 355, 434. Bee-hive, 206. Beikos, 240, 244, 373, 375. Beilerbei, 217, 255, 375. Belgrade forest, 238. Bellini, Gentile, iv. Benedictines, 161. Benozzo Gozzoli, 502, ^0$. Beshiktash, 121, 149, 150, 169, 170, 298, 420, 434, 443. Bezesten : see Markets. Bible House, 80, 82. Bird-house, ^2, jj5, 218, jij. 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., J15, 118, iig, 121 , 122, 123, 129, 132, 14s, 146, 157, 17s, 182, 184, 187, 188, 323- 396, 397, 399, 417, 522. Borgia, Alexander, 92. Bosphorus, 113, 12S, 130, 196, 197, ig8, 200, 212, 216, 21'j, 218, 228 et seq., 243, 249, 252, 321, 322. 340, 344, 382, Bosphorus — continued. 384, 390, 391, 393, 394, 396, 397, 4i7, 458, 459- Bragadin, Marcantonio, 140. Brangwyn, Frank, 4, ^y. 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, sii, 514, 517, 521, 531, S35- Biiyiik Chekmejeh, 486, 487. Biiyiik 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. JuHan, 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, i6y, 366. Camels, 142, 301, 306, 30?, 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, 2S3, 262, 380. Cemeteries, 8, 107, log, iii, 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. Charalija, 216 et seq., 248. Charles II, 24. Chatalja, 426, 427, 428, 433, 445, 454, 481, 486, 488, 490, 514, 521. ChSnier, Andre, 148, 161, 183. Chibouklou, 245, 372 Chinili Kyoshk: see Palaces. Cholera, 486, 489, 491 et seq., 4g8, 520, 526. INDEX 551 Christmas: see High Days and Holidays. Chronograms, 6i, 221, 367 el seq., 380. Chrysopolis, 113, iqs et seq. Churches: Byzantine — Archangel Michael, 245, 347. Blacherne, 87. Chora — "Our Saviour in the Fields'' (Kahrieh Jami), 96 et seq., gj, gS, 102, 104, 160. Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, 338. Holy Apostles, 150, 507, 514. Myrelaion (Boudroun Jami), 8j. Pammakaristos — "All-Blessed Vir- gin" (Fetieh Jami), 96, 507, 514, Pantocrator (Zeirek Kil'seh Jami), 160, 502, 50J. Pege (Balikli), 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 (Kuchiik 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, 46s, 502, S07, S14, 518, 526. Studion (Imrahor Jamisi) ,gietseq.,g3 Greek — Balikli, "Our Lady of the Fishes," 333, 520- Metamorphosis (Kandilli), 345. St. George (Phanar), 133, 327 et seq., S14, S16. St. George (Prinkipo), 342. St. Stephen, 349. Taxyarch (Arnaout-kyoi), 322, 330. Latin — Sant' Antonio, 159, 172. S. Benoit, 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. CHmate, 3, 231, 238, 244. Cloaca, 82. Clocks, 201. Coffee and Coffee-Houses, 2, 20 et seq., 23, 26, 27, 2g, 31, 35, 140, 187, 199, 219, 268 el seq., 275, 334, 396, sgr, 398, 400. Colour, 3, IS, 114, 390. Columns : Constantine (Burnt Column), 72, 107, 173, 424- Claudius Gothicus, 259. Marcian, 83. Committee of Union and Progress, 406, 408, 409, 42s, 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, igg, 251, 232, 264, 313, 358, 393, 394, 399- Costumes, 30, 117, 146, 159, 177, 181, 220, 269, 272, 273, 283, 290 et seq., igg, 303, 305, 307, 311, 312, 314, 31S, 322, 325, 327, 328, 331, 332, 342, 343, 392, 419, 423, 427, 431, 435, 448, 451, 452, 460, 462, 485, S17, 523, 526, 530, 531, S32, 533- Courts, 7, 40, 42, 63 et seq., 64, 6g, 70, 72, 77, 94, 135, 136, 139, 152, 153, 160, 164, 165, 183, 200, 201, 206, 211, 212, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 288, 28g, 311, 312, 315, 358, 35g, 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., 3S4, 3S7, 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. 558 INDEX Derivatives, ig, 23, 118, 123, 128, i5i, 163, 244, 246, 257, 269. Dervishes : Bektashi, xii, 390. Halved, 223. Mevlevi, xii, 108, 148, 171. Roufai, 222 et seq., 316, 394. Siinbiillii, 394. Diehl, 103, 549. Doges' Palace, 89. Dogs, 127, 389, 402, 403. Dominicans, 159. "Don Quixote," 166. Doors, 9, 12, J7, 40, 41, 55, 62, 64, 65. 69, 70, 71, 13s, 165, 204, 2og, 213, 252, 253, 254, 260, 261, 262, 2S1, 313, 377. Doria, 157, 166, 245. Earthquakes, 17, 85, 96, no, 157. Easter: see High Days and Holidays. Eastern Church, 92, 113, 318 el seq., 500 et seq., 553. Eaves, 5, 10, 11, 13, 64, 13s, 136, 183, igg, 213, 260, 263, 264, 360, 366, 370, 373, 37S, 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 n, 152. Anastasius I, 87. Andronicus I, 483. Andronicus II, 99, 100. Andronicus III, gg. 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, SOI, 507. Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, 84, 88. Constantine X Monomachus, 92. Constantine XII, 81. Eudoxia, 92. Emperors and Empresses — continued. Hadrian, 82, 363. HeracHus, 87, 383. Isaac Angelus, 88. John V Cantacuzene, 86, 157. John VII Palaeologus, 502, 50$. Justinian I the Great, 4, 78, 85, go, g6, 97, 98, 132. 142, ISO, 2sg, 363, 507- Deo I the Great, 150. Leo III the Isaurian, g6, 259. Manuel I Comnenus, 215- Manuel II Palaeologus, 92. Marcian, 83, 87. Michael VIII Palaeologus, 85, 92, 154, 508. Nicephorus Phocas, 85, 88. Pulcheria, 87, 92, 338. Septimius Severus, 107. Theodosius I the Great, 109. Theodosius II, 92, 108, log, 142, 404. Valens, 197, 363. Empress Eugenie, 255. England and EngUsh, 4, 24, 76, 79, 151, 157, 173 el 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 Eye, 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 11. Ferdinand and Isabella, 159. Fez, I, 220, 269, 291, 328, 343. FindikU, 171, 182, 381. Fire-places, 12, 55, 134, 261, 262. Fires, 2, 8, ig, 36, 82, 83, 134, 157, 158, 160, 161, 181, 240, 250, 256, 354, 378, 400, 490. Flagellants, 312 rf seq. Florence and Florentines, 55, 85, 107, 151, 502. See also Benozzo Gozzoli, Cimabue, and Giotto. INDEX 559 Flowers, 7, 28, no, in, 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 el seq., 536: House and Garden Fountains — Bubbling, 357. Cascade (chaghleyan) , 236, s^p. Dripping {sdsebil), 235, 236, 237, 354, 355, 356, 37°- Jetting (fiskieh), 152, ijj, 233, 23s, 251, 2S3, 254, 25s, 260, 3SS, 356. Wall, ii,2jj, 234, 262, 353 et seq., 354. Mosque Fountains — Interior, 358. Exterior — Applied, 35, 13s, 358. Detached (shadrivan), 63, 64, 65, 72, 77, 135, 139. 200, 201, 205, 358 et seq., 35Q, 360, 361. Street Fountains — Applied (cheshmeh), 130, 183, l8s, igg, 20s, 206, 2ig, 3$6 361 el seq., 365, 368,371, A9S- Detached — Cheshmeh, 165, 183, 361, 372, 373, 374, 375, 404, 456- Sebil, 71, 72, 136, 183, 205, 206, 361, 376 et seq., 377, 37$. France and French, 46, 48, 143, 156, 160, 162, 172, 229, 239, 240, 255, 262, 416, 473, 48s, 534, 542. See also Che- nier, Gautier, Loti, Louis, and Paris. Franciscans, 158, 172. Frescoes, 100, 103, igi. 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, 23g, 241, 243, 393. 456, 457 Design, 228, 229, 230, 234, 235, 236, 258, 264. Marbles, 232, 233 et seq., 23s, 236, 237, 239- Mosaic, 228. Gautier, Theophile, 267, 550. Genoa and Genoese, 124, 130, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157 158, 188. 24s, 323. 384, 502. Germans and Germany, 124, 239, 404, 406, 414, 4i9> 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, log, no, 113, 339. Golden Horn, 4, 39, 87, 88, 106, 107, 112, 113 et seq., 115, 119, 123, 141, 14s, 148, 149, 15°, 151, 152, 157, iSl, 188, 189, 259, 284, 330. Grand Bazaar : see Markets. Grand Logothete, 99, 329. Grand Vizier: Daoud Pasha, 365. Ferid Pasha, 406. Hafiz Ahmed Pasha, 378. Hussein Hilmi Pasha, 292. Ibrahim Pasha (Mourad III), 62. Ibrahim Pasha (Ahmed HI), 143, 256, 372, 379- Kyamil Pasha, 534. Kyopriilii Hussein Pasha, 71 et seq., 253. Kyopriilii Mehmed Pasha, 72. Mahmoud Pasha, 48. Mahmoud Shefket Pasha, x, 428, 433, 440, 444, 453, 454, S12. Midhat Pasha. 255. Riistem Pasha, 49, 62, 200. SokoUi Mehmed Pasha, 65, 128, 139, 140, 182. Tevfik Pasha, 431. Grapes, 345, 346. Grape-vines, 19, 21, 28, 65, 72, 13$, 153, 187, 213, 271, 358, 386. Gravestones, 8, 34, log, iii, 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, 17s, 176, 177, 178, 205, 268, 269, 272, 318, ,?27, 325, 330, 331,334, 337, 338, 339, 344, 345. 35°, 393, 4°!, 407, 411, 418, 426, 429, 446, 460, 483, SCO, 501, 504, 509, sij, 512, 517, 537. Grilles, 7, g, 35, 39, 65, 71, 72, 133, 136, 183, 199, 20s, 212, 224, 207, 263, 360, _ 361, 375, 376, 378, 379, 381. Guilds, 19, 30, 117, 118, ng, 120, 124, 284, 325, 332, 362, 400, 412. Gyok Sou, 146, 245, 346, 385, 456. 560 INDEX Hagar, 366. Haldar Pasha, 196, 214, 444. Halcyons, 239. Hannibal, 197. Hans, 16, ig, 20, 81, 82, 152, xj^, 173, 311, 312, 313, 315, 536. iass-kyoi, 159, 324, 369. . High Days and Holidays: Greek — Annunciation, 325. Ascension, 350. Assumption, 346. Balikli Day (Our Lady of the Fishes) , 332 etseq., 336. Carnival, 323. Apokred, 324. Cheese Sunday, 324. Christmas, 157, 179, 319, 323. Easter, 92, 179, 327 et scq. Easter Monday, 330. Epiphany (Great Blessing), 320 et seq., 321. Exaltation of the Cross, 346. Forty Martyrs (Ai Sardnda), 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 (Ai Vassili), 319. Panayia MavromolUissa, 350. St. Demetrius {Ai Thimitri), 347. St. EHas, 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 Hussein), 200, 308 et seq. Bairam — Greater or Koiirban Bairam, 287, 288, 297 et seq., 2gg, 303. Lesser or Sheker Bairam, 64, 287, 288 et seq., 28g. Berat Gejesi (Revelation of Prophet's Mission), 287, 303. High Days and Holidays — continued. Hid'r Eless (Hizir), 144, 213, 285, 341. Hirkai Sherif (the Noble Robe), 277. Kad'r Gejesi (Night of Power), 265, 279 et seq., 281, 287. Kassim, 213, 347. Liberty Day, 284, 408. Meoloud (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. Reghaib Gejesi (Prophet's Concep- tion), 287. Hippodrome, 56, 75, 83, 152, 403, 46s. Hizir, 202, 203, 285, 341, 366. See also High Days and Holidays. Holagou, 508. Holy Week: see High Days and Holidays. Holy Wells: see Ayazma. 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, 15s, igg, 213, 2gs, 3S7, 399, 447, 536- Konak, 9 et seq., 11, 12, 13, 133, 191, 3S3> 393- KySshk (Kiosk), 48, 246, 247, 250, 251 el seq., 253, 255, 258, 260, 356, 357- Yalt, 240, 24s, 250, 251, 252, 256, 354, 372, 382, 393, 397- Howells, W. D., vii. Hungary and Hungarians, 139, 162. Hussein, 3ro, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 362, 366, 377. Iconoclasts, 91, 96, 97. Icons, 333, 349, 516. Panayia MavromolUissa, 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, no, 157, 161. INDEX 561 Inscriptions — continued. Turkish, 10, 13, 46, 47, 61, 63, 67, 73, 131, 167, 20J, 220, 221, 224, 243, 261, 3S7, 366 et seq., 373, 380. lo, 142, 2l6. 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, IS9, 369, 429, 435, 446, 504, Si_7- Jihangir Soultan, 61, 171. Joshua, 243. Judas, 233, 327, 350. Kaaba, 57,277, 302, 303. Kabatash, 118, 187, 188. Kadi-kyoi, 196, 198, 219. Kalafat Yeri, 188. Kallikdntzari, 322. Kandilli, 248, 249, 345, 356. Kanlija, 371. Kara-gyoz, 270 et seq., 271. Kassim Pasha, 128, 130, 140, 163, 180, 187, 368, 443. Kazli, 3s6, 364. Kemer Alti, 184. Keroessa, 142. Khedives, 244, 245, 246, 247. Kiat Haneh, 143 el seq., 236, 285, 373. Kiat Haneh Souyou, 142, 143, 144, 14^, 146, 147, 236- Kilios, 238. Kiosk: see Houses. Kirk Cheshmeh, 364. Kirk Kil'seh: see Battles and Sieges. Knockers, 9, 62. Konia, 30, 40, 48. Koran, 23, 47, 57, 66, 73, 127, 131, 220, 26s, 277, 278, 279, 283, 303, 310, 366, 367, 393, 410- Kourou Cheshmeh, 347, 348. Kiichiik Chekmejeh, 486, 489. Kurds, 214, 294, 332, 412, 537. Kiitahya, 47, -205, 288. Kyoprulii: see Grand Vizier. Kyossem: see Sultana. Lady Lowther, 474, 520, 527. Lady Mary Montagu, .7:9, 175, 230, 233, 238, 25°, S3I- Lady of Light : see Sultana. Lady of the Fishes,. Our: see Balikli. Lady of the Mongojs, 508. Lantema, 184, 334, 336, 337, 343, 345. Lanterns, 11$, 129, 130, 166, 170, 268, 281, 282, 320, 321, 322, 323, 392, 490, 515, -5^7, 519-^: '.. Latins, 92, 105, isi,,j.54, 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. Liileh Bourgas: see Battles and Sieges. Macedonia and Macedonians,, 36, 197, 216, 259, 325, 335, 394, 406, 426 et seq., 511. Magnifica communitd di Peru, 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, ig. Rug market, 16. Thursday market, 184. Tuesday market, 187. Vegetable market, 18. Wood market, 122, 15.2. Marquetry, 16, 36, 55, 57, 59, 130, 134, 203, 251, 253, 254, 261, 262, 295. 562 INDEX Mary Ducas, 98, 103. Mary Palasologus: see Lady of the Mon- gols. Master of Flowers, 257. Mecca and Medina, 39, 57, 200, 251, 266, 302, 3°3. 304, 306, 394- Medea, 117, 238, 347. Medresseh, 17, 66 et scq., 358. All Pasha, 73. FelzouUah Effendi, 69, 70, 366. Hassan Pasha, 72. Ibrahim Pasha, 379. Kefenek Sinan, 152. Kyopriilii Hiissein Pasha, ^i, j^g. Shemsi Pasha, 209 et seq., 211. SokoUi Mehmed Pasha, <5j, 66, 6p, 361. Megara, 107, 142, 196. Mehmed Soultan, 6c, 61. Melling, 229, 250, 254, 256, 373. Meltem, 238, 244. Mese: see Streets. Mihrab, 39, 46, 50, 51, 53, 67, 95, 130, 131, 166, 167, 202, 204, 206, 207, 224. Mihrimah 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, 13s, 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, gS, 100 et seq., 102, 104, 161, 259, 282. Marble, 55, 89, po, 94, 95. Pebble, 228. Mosques : Bebek, 23. Galata and Pera — Arab Jami (San Paolo) : see Churches. Asmali Mesjid, 171. Flndikli, 182. Hamidieh. 280, 282, 410, 431, 444. Jihangir, 171. Mosques — continued. Kilij All ("Don Quixote"), 165, 167, 182. Nousretieh, 165, 182. Pialeh Pasha, 130, 131, 163. SokoUi 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. Ayazma, 209, 213, 371. Chinili Jami, 204. Mihrimah, 200, 201. Roum Mehmed Pasha, 209, 224. Selimieh, 209. Shemsi Pasha, 209, 211, 212. Valideh Atik, 202, 203, 316. Valideh Jedid (Yeni Valideh), 45, 20s, 207, 249, 360, 370. Stamboul — Aivas Effendi, 88. Atik Ali Pasha, 41. Aya Sofya (St. Sophia) : see Churches. Boudroun Jami (Myrelaion): see Churches. Eyoub Soultan, 135, 136, 141, 358, 452. FeizouUah Effendi, 70. Fetieh Jami (Pammakaristos) : see Churches. Hafiz Ahmed Pasha, 37S. Hasseki, 369. Hekim-zadeh Ali Pasha, 35, 279. Imrahor Jami (Studion): see Churches. Jerrah Pasha, 37. Kahrieh Jami (Chora) : see Churches. Koumrillii Mesjid, 364. Kiichiik Aya Sofya (SS. Sergius and Bacchus) : see Churches. Kyoprulii Hussein Pasha, 73. LaleH Jami, 42, 381. Mahmoud Pasha, 35. Nouri Osmanieh, 42, 358. Ramazan Effendi, 108, 360. Riistem Pasha, 49 et seq., $0, 51, 52, 200, 206. Shah-zadeh, 35, 60, 275. SokoUi Mehmed Pasha, 65, 67, 69, 360. INDEX 563 Mosques — continued. Sultan Ahmed, 1 21, 45, 49, 53, 75, 84, 206, 358, 404. Sultan Baiezid II (" Pigeon Mosque") 35, 40, 41, 64, 288, 298, 358. Sultan Mehmed II, 35, 64, zSg, 295, 298, 358, 508- Sultan Selim I, 64, 82, 358. Sultan Suleiman 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, 2pp, 360. Zal Mahmoud Pasha, 523 et seq. Zeineb Soultan, 42. Zelrek Kil'seh Jami (Pantocrator) : see Churches. Mount Athos, 509, 510. Moustafa Soultan, 59, 61, 369, 523. Miiezin, 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, S18. Persian, 246. Turkish, 145, 172, 246, 268, 269, 272, 273j 276, 280, 282, 283, 291, 294, 301, 30s. 307, 3i2> 314, 331. 332. 334, 390. 464- Mutiny of 1909, 404, 425, 452, 454, 458. Names, xi, 527. "Nations" {millet), 30, 151, 154, 150, 162, 175- 176, 293, 332, 504, 511, S16, 541- New Year: see High Days and Holidays. New York, 10,33, ii4> ^72. i77, 189,342, 383, 394, 403, 446. Nicsea, 48, 49, 99, 202, 204, 508. Nicephorus Gregoras, 99. Night of Power: see High Days and Holi- days. Noah, 124, 308. Nyazi Bey, 445. Observants {Padri di Terra Santa), 161, 173- Odoun Kapan, 122, 152. Omar, 128, 310. Orta-kyoi, 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, 2S3, 262, 263, 354, 357, 370, 373, 380. Palace Camarilla, 119, 411, 412. Palaces : Byzantine — Blacherne, 85, 87, 108, 112. Porphyrogenitus (Tekfour Serai), 48, 88, go, 134. Great or Sacred Palace, 75, 84, 85, 87, 92, 113, 550. , Bucoleon, 85. Hormisdas, 85. House of Justinian, 85, S6. Daphne, 84. Magnaura, 84. Porphyra, 84. Pege ("Balikli"), 333. St. Mamas, 150. Scutari, 195, 214. Therapia, 238. Turkish— Ali Bey Souyou, 143. Beharieh, 143. Beilerbei, 217, 255. Dolma Ba'hcheh, 170, 290, 300, 338, 418, 449. Chira'an, 255 et seq., 457. Eski Serai, 258. Galata Serai, 171. Hounkyar Iskelesi, 244. Kiat Haneh, 143, 144, 373. Scutari, 214. Seraglio — ChiniU Kyoshk, 48, 258, J57. "Top Kapou," xii, 54, 84, 258 et seq., 261, 263, 277, 278, 303, 354, 45°, 452. Yildiz, 170, 255, 280, 288, 304, 406, 408, 410, 412, 417, 434, 435, 438, 440, 444, 448, 45°, 454 etseq. Palladium, 92. Panay'iri, 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- 564 INDEX Patriarchate (oecumenical), xii, 133, 327 el seq., 507, 514 et seq., jig. Patriarchs : Armenian, 516. Armeno-Catholic, 420. Bulgarian, 511. Greek, 132, 330, 500 et seq. Cerularius, 92. Gennadius (George Scholarius), 502 et seq., 514, 5r6, 520. Gregory V, 507, 519. Joachim III, 293, 328 et seq., 500, 501, S09 et seq., jig. Latin, 156. Pausanias, 107. Pera, 29, 134, 148 el seq., 171 el seq., 180, iSi, 330, 338, 408, 417, 438, 441, 445, 449, 469, 49°- 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 el seq., 311, 383, 537. Petrion, 132. Phanar, 132 et seq., 133, 327 el seq., 514 el seq., 517, 5ig. 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. Plataea: see Battles and Sieges. Podesta, 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 el seq., 4x5. 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 Riistem Pasha and Sinan. Revolution, viii, 149, 277, 402 et seq., 425, 454, S"- 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, III, 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. Riistem Pasha : see Grand Vizier. Sacred Caravan, 200, 301 el seq., 30 j, 306, 307, 308, 3og. Sacrifice, 297 el 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. INDEX 363 Sainte Chapelle, 77. Salonica, g6, 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, log, 197, 198, 259, 347' Byzantine, 74, 76, 84, 85, 90, 94, 100, 129, 158, 232, 233, 356, 364, 36s, 3^3, 393- Turkish, S4, 61, 66, 70, 72, 129, 130, 166, 201, 202, 205, 206, 2oy, 211, 219, 220, 227, 229, 233 et seq., 236, 237, 251, 25J, 262, 264, 3S3 el seq., 354, 3SS, 356, 360, 368, 371, 373, 374, 375, 377, 379, 389- Scutari, 15, 45, 113, 141, 189 et seq., 298, 304, 315 el seq., 371, 391, 416. Sebil: see Fountains. Sdamlik, 170, 280, 407, 410, 430 el seq., 4SI, 458- Sdsebil: 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, SCO, 517. Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, 126, 127. Seven Towers, log, no, 385. Shadrivan: see Fountains. Shei'h ullslam, 161, 292,372,419,430,504. Ebou Sououd EfEendi, 140. Feizoullah Effendi, 69, 366. Shemsi Pasha, 210. Sherif oi Mecca, 251, 304, 306. Shiites, 310, 357. Sicily, 96, 100, 103, 113, 152. Sid el Battal, 215. Silver Pools, 142, 143, 144. Sinan: see Architects. Sivas, 73, 338. Slaves, 130, 139, 140, 163, 166. Also Janissaries, Riistem Pasha, and Sul- tana. 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, c el seq., 33 et seq., 74 et seq., 114, 120, 122, 123, 132 el seq., 148, 151 et seq., 173, 197, 216, 228, 254, 257 el seq., 267 et seq., 288, 295 et seq., 301, 311 et seq., 327 et seq., 332 et m-, 352, 3S4, 356 el 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 el seq., 536. StencilHng, 10, 18, 42 etseq., 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, iii, 133, 138, 139, 140, 158, 182, 184, 187, 198, igg, 204, 20 j, 2og, 213, 214, 219, 220, 222, 268, 280, 386, 392, 449. See also Markets. Akar Cheshmeh, 755, 157. Divan Yolou (Via Egnatia, Mese), 8, g, 72, 75- Grande Rue de Galata ("Bowery"), 163, 182, 183, 184, 187, 374, 37S. Grande Rue de Pera, 148, 159, 173, 179 el seq., 180, 438, 440, 447. Mahmoud Pasha, 16, 35. Pershembeh Bazaar, 158, 160, 183, 184, 37°- Rue Hendek, 157. Rue Koumbaradji, 180. Rue de Pologne, 175. Rue Tchinar, 160, 161. Rue Voivoda, 156, 158. Shah-zadeh-Bashi, 274, 288, 379. "Step Street" (Yiiksek Kaldirlm), 180, 184, 437- Street of the Falconers, igg. Suez Canal, 139, 245, 255. Sultan and Sultana {soullan), 55. Sultan : Abd ul Aziz, 144, 255. Abd iil Hamid I, 381. Abd iil Hamid II, 130, 163, 176, 1921, 248, 255, 256, 260, 279, 2^7, 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, 43S, 444, 447, 448, 454 el seq., 460, 484, 510, 512, 513, 518, S34- 566 INDEX Sultan — continued 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. Baiezid I, 192, 289, 383. Baiezid 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, 4jj, 454- Mouradlll, 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. Moustaf a 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, no. 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 in, 229, 256. Suleiman 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. Kyossem (Mahpeiker), 53, 55 et seq., 58, 81, 159, 203, 261, 264. "Little Elephant," 193. Nour Banou (Lady of Light), 202, 204. Rebieh GiilnUsh (Rose Attar of Spring), 158, 205, 249. Sultana — continued Roxelana, 45, 58 et seq., 59, 200. Safieh ("theBaffa"), 174. Sun-dial, 200. Sunnites, 13, 14, 229, 310, 311, 356. Siitliijeh, 144. Sweden, 162, 172. Sweet Waters of Asia: see Gyok Sou. Sweet Waters of Europe: see Kiat Haneh. Syria and Syrians, 40, 97, 103, 104, 201, 413, 414, 419, 462. Tabriz, 48, 311. Tash Kishla, 442, 443, 444, 445, 477. Tata via, 324. Taxim, 163, 180, 330, 332, 439, 440. Tekfour Serai: see Palaces. Temenna, 26, 291, 292. Tents, 144, 27s, 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. Thrlmes, 346. Tiles, 10, 45, 47 et seq., jo, 57, 52, S3, 57, 58, 5p, 60, 61, 62, (5 J, 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 Holi- days. Trebizond, 117, 171, 331. Trees, in, 140, 150, 230, 231, 247, 264, 340, 386, 390, 393, 457- Cypress, 7, 34, 65, iii, 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, 13s, 136, 222, 228, 232, 248, 260, 372, 457- Stone-pine, 23, 118, 190, 217, 228, 231, 243, 245, 248, 24g, 2S2, 382, Triumphal Way, 75. Tulips, 257. INDEX 5^1 Tiirhehs, 8, 56 et seq., 138, 219. Aziz Mahmoud Hiidai, 224. Eyoub Sultan, 136. Haireddin Pasha Barbarossa, i6q. Hazreti Ahmed ("St. Forty"), 339. Ibrahim Pash'a (Ahmed III), 379. Ibrahim Pasha (Mourad III), 62, 63. Kyopriilu HUssein Pasha, 72. Kyopriilii Mehmed Pasha, 72. Mahmoud Pasha, 48. Mehmed Emin EfEendi, 381. Moustafa Soultan, 61. Pialeh Pasha, 132. Rebieh Gulniish (Rose Attar of Spring), 20-S, 206. Roxelana, 45, 58, 59, 60, 212. Rustem Pasha, 62. Shah-zadeh (Mehmed Soultan), 45, 60 et seq. Shemsi Pasha, 211, 212. SokoUt Mehmed Pasha, 139. Sultan Ahmed I, 56, 57, 58, 378, 463. Sultan Ibrahim, 63 . Sultan Mehmed II, 57. Sultan Mehmed V, 139. Sultan Selim II, 62. Sultan Suleiman I, 58. Yeni Jami, 45, 56, 58, 63. Turks, 2, IS, 27, 31, 36, 76, 128, 136, 139, 14s, 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, no, 118, 127, 129, 132, 134, 140, 151, 152, 153. IS4, 156. 159, 160, 162, 171, 172, 174, 24s, 323, 324, 384, 417, 468, 491. 502- Via Egnatia, 75, 108, 109, no. Vienna, 25, 31, 76, 106. View, 4, 80, no, 112, 114, 141, 148, 157, 171, 181, 182, 189, 195, 198, 216, 21'/, 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, SSI- Wallachia: see Roumania. Walls, 2, 87, 92, 106 et seq., log, iii, 112, 132. 135. 154, 155, 156. IS7, 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, p, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 55, 37, 41, AS, 47, 55, ^5, 67, 71, 72, 167, 191, 199, 203, 204, 20s, 206, 207, 2og, 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 e< seq. Wood-block stamping, 213, 2//. Woodwork, 12, 16, 17,45,54,55,61,134, 212, 251, 252, 380. Wrestling, 275, 296. Writing: see Calligraphy. Xenophon, 197, 383. Yagh Kapan, 157. Yalt: see Houses. Yemish, 120. Yeni-kyoi, 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.