Janissaries, which was the first enclosure of the Seraglio. This large
courtyard is still surrounded by various long, irregular buildings and
shaded by groups of trees, among the latter of which the huge plane
tree of the Janissaries is conspicuous with its mighty trunk, which
the outstretched arms of ten men cannot span. On the left as you enter
stands the church of St. Irene, founded by Constantine the Great, and
converted into an armory by the Turks; all around stood the Seraglio
hospital, the treasury, the orange storehouses, imperial stables,
kitchens, the barracks of the kapuji, the mint, and the residences of
high officials of the court. Beneath the plane tree may still be seen
the two small stone pillars which mark the spot where public executions
took place. Through this enclosure every one had to pass on his way
either to the Divân or the presence of the Pâdishah: it was like a
great open anteroom, always crowded with people and filled with bustle
and confusion. In the enormous kitchens two hundred cooks with their
assistants presided over a hundred and fifty ovens, preparing all
the food consumed by that vast family “who ate the bread and salt of
the Grand Seignior,” while opposite crowds of guards and attendants,
feigning illness, tried to gain admission to the luxurious and
sumptuous hospital, in which twenty physicians and an army of slaves
were kept constantly employed. Long files of mules and camels brought
provisions for the kitchens, or arms taken from victorious battlefields
to the church of St. Irene, where, with the sword of Muhammad II., was
that of Skanderbeg and the armlet of Tamerlane. Tax-collectors went by,
followed by slaves laden with gold for that treasury which already,
according to Sokolli, grand vizier under Suleiman the Magnificent,
contained money enough to pay for the construction of an entire fleet
of vessels, with silken rigging and anchors of silver; and handsome
Bulgarian grooms led up and down the nine hundred horses of Murad
IV., which fed out of mangers of solid silver. All day long there was
a never-ceasing flash and glitter of gorgeous uniforms. Here towered
the high white turbans of the Janissaries, and there the heron-quills
of the _solaks_ or silver helmets of the _peiks_; members of the
sultan’s guard lounged about in their golden tunics fastened about
the waist with jewelled belts; the _zuluftu-baltagé_, employed under
the officials of the bed-chamber, could be distinguished by the tuft
of wool hanging from their caps; the _kasseki_ carried their wands
of office, and the _balta-gi_ their axes; while the grand vizier’s
pages were furnished with whips ornamented with silver chains. Then
there were members of the _bostangi_, or guards of the gardens, in big
purple caps--the _courageous guard_, the _impetuous guard_, archers,
lancers, treasury guards, a countless variety of colors and devices;
white eunuchs and black, esquires, and sciaus; tall, ponderous men,
whose haughty bearing savored of the atmosphere of the court, while
their scented garments filled the air with heavy perfume. Confused and
disorganized as this vast throng may have appeared to the onlooker,
it was, in reality, governed by a strict and minute schedule. Every
individual who came and went through that courtyard was something
like an automaton, moved about on a board by an unseen but powerful
mechanism. At daybreak there arrived the thirty muezzins of the court,
selected from among the sweetest singers in Stambul, who on their way
to announce the sunrise from the minarets of the Seraglio mosques
would encounter parties of astronomers and astrologers descending
from lofty terraces where they had passed the night in studying the
heavenly bodies with a view to determining what hours would be most
propitious for the Sultan’s various undertakings. Next to arrive would
be the head physician of the Seraglio to inquire touching the health
of his lord, and after him a member of the _ulema_ charged with the
religious instruction of his illustrious pupil. Next the private
secretary would come to read all the petitions received in the course
of the preceding day. Professors of the arts and sciences passed
through on their way to instruct the imperial pages, and one after
another, each at his appointed hour, every individual in the personal
service of the Grand Seignior presented himself to receive the orders
for the day. The _bostangi-basci_, general of the imperial guard and
governor of the Seraglio and of all the Sultan’s villas scattered
along the shores of the Bosphorus and Propontis, came to inquire if
his mighty lord proposed to make an expedition by water, as in that
case to him belonged the honor of steering, and to his _bostangi_
that of rowing, the boat. The master of the hunt, head falconer, and
chiefs of the vulture, white falcon, and hawk-hunt came to inquire
the Pâdishah’s will. Then all the superintendents of the kitchens,
storehouses, mint, and treasury, and the superintendent-general of the
city, arrived, each one in his appointed order, with his memoranda,
his set speech, his train of servants, and his distinctive style
of dress. Later, the viziers of the cupola, followed by a crowd of
secretaries and hangers-on, would be seen on their way to the Divân,
while every grade of official, up to the very highest, would alight
from horse or chair or carriage at the second gate, beyond which no one
was permitted to go except on foot. In some way the position, rank,
or office of every individual in all that great crowd was so plainly
indicated as to be instantly distinguishable. The shape of the turban,
fashion of the sleeves, quality of the furs, color of the facings,
ornamentation of the saddle, the wearing of moustaches only or of a
beard in addition,--each and all gave the clue, and there was not the
smallest room for confusion or mistake. The _mufti_ were dressed in
white, the viziers in pale green, the chamberlains in scarlet; dark
blue indicated one of the six chief justices, the chief of the _emirs_,
and the judges of Mecca, Medina, and Constantinople; the head _ulema_
wore violet, the _murdâs_ and _sheikhs_ light blue, while pale sky-blue
denoted a feudal _sciaù_ or vizier’s _agha_; deep green was reserved
for the aghas of the imperial staff and sacred standard-bearers; Nile
green was the uniform of the imperial stables; generals of the army
wore red shoes, officials of the Porte yellow, members of the _ulema_
turquoise-blue. To all this careful scale of color exactly corresponded
the degree of reverence shown in the obeisances. The _bostangi-basci_,
chief of the Seraglio police force and commander of an army of jailors
and executioners, the mere sound of whose name or echo of whose
footfall spread terror and consternation, strode across the courtyard
between two ranks of heads bowed to the very earth; the chief eunuch
and grand marshal of the court, both internal and external, approached,
and down went all those turbans, plumes, and helmets as though struck
by a hundred invisible hands. The grand almoner made his progress
amid a flutter of obsequious bows. Every one in personal attendance
upon the Sultan--such as the master of the stirrup, who assisted him
to mount; master of the bed-chamber, who brought him his sandals; the
_silidar agha_, who cleaned his armor; the white eunuch, who licked the
pavement before spreading out his lord’s rug; the page, who poured
out the water for his ablutions; he who handed him his arquebuse
during the hunt; and those who had charge of his turbans and robes of
black fox skin and dusted off his jewelled plumes--were the objects of
special curiosity and veneration. A subdued murmur of voices preceded
and followed the passage of the _imâm_ of the court, and the grand
master of the wardrobe, who was charged with the distribution of money
among the people during the imperial fêtes; while envious glances
followed that fortunate Mussulman to whose lot it fell every ten days
to shave the head of the Sultan of sultans. The crowd fell back with
marked alacrity before the head surgeon, who circumcised the imperial
princes; the chief oculist, who prepared washes and unguents for the
eyelids of the _kadynas_ and odalisques; and the grand master of the
flowers, whose life was passed in carrying out the capricious fancies
of a hundred spoiled beauties, and who carried beneath his caftan his
diploma of poetry ornamented with gilded roses. The head cook received
his adulatory greetings, while smiles and salutations were showered
upon the keeper of the nightingales and parrots, to whom the doors of
the most secret kiosks were thrown open.
It was a vast hierarchy, composed of thousands of persons, subject to
a ceremonial filling fifty volumes, and clad in an endless variety of
picturesque costume, which thronged the great courtyard, intermingling
and separating every moment. From time to time all the heads would
turn to look after the hurrying form of a special emissary: now it
was the vizier _khara khulak_, despatched by the Sultan to hold a
secret consultation with the grand vizier; now a kapuji, hastening to
the palace of a pasha fallen under suspicion to acquire his instant
attendance before the Divân; or the _bearer of good tidings_ on his
way to announce to the Pâdishah the safe arrival of the great caravan
at Mecca. Other special messengers employed between the Sultan and
chief officials of the state, each one distinguished by a title and
some peculiarity of attire, would traverse the space cleared before him
by the crowd at a run, and disappear through one or other of the two
gateways. Files of _kahveji_ (coffee-bearers) passed through to the
kitchens; troops of imperial huntsmen bending beneath the weight of
their gilded gamebags; porters laden with rich stuffs preceded by the
Grand Merchant, purchaser for the Sultan; and bands of galley-slaves
led by other slaves to perform the heavier kinds of work in the
Seraglio,--all could be seen intent upon their several duties. Twice
daily the doors of the kitchens opened to emit processions of scullions
bearing huge pyramids of rice, and sheep roasted whole, which they
distributed among the guards and attendants scattered about beneath
the plane trees, under the arcades, and all along the walls, so that
the great courtyard presently assumed the festive appearance of an
encampment of the army holding a revel. By and by the scene would
change, and now it was a foreign ambassador who would make his stately
progress between _two walls of gold and silk_ to that presence to
which, as Suleiman the Magnificent wrote to the Shah of Persia, “flowed
the entire universe.” Side by side with ambassadors from Charles V.
were those of Francis I.; envoys from Hungary, Servia, and Poland
entered with representatives of the Genoese and Venetian republics.
The _peskesdgi-basci_, who received all the gifts, would go as far as
the Bâb-i-Humayûn to meet the foreign caravans, and return, amidst the
curious gaze of thousands of spectators, accompanied by elephants with
gold thrones on their backs, enormous gazelles, lions in cages, Tartary
horses, and steeds of the desert laden with tiger-skins or shields made
out of elephants’ ears; envoys from Persia brought vases of costly
porcelain, and those from the sultans of India golden boxes filled
with jewels; African kings sent rugs made out of the skins of young
camels torn from their mothers’ bodies, and pieces of silver brocade
which the backs of ten slaves could barely carry; and ambassadors from
northern kingdoms brought gifts of rare furs and valuable weapons.
After a successful campaign conquered generals, laden with chains,
would be led through for exhibition before the Pâdishah, and captive
princesses veiled and followed by their mournful little company of
disarmed and helpless attendants; eunuchs of all colors and ranks,
seized as spoils of war or offered as gifts to the victorious princes;
and in the mean time officers of the conquering army crowded to the
treasury doors to deposit rich booty in the shape of sabres studded
with pearls and magnificent brocades taken in the sack of some Persian
city, the gold and jewels of the vanquished Mamelukes of Egypt, cups
of gold found among the treasures of the chevaliers of Rhodes, statues
of Diana and Apollo brought from Greece and Hungary, and the keys of
conquered cities and strongholds; and others still, led the youths
and maidens stolen from the isle of Lesbos into the inner court. All
the enormous quantities of stores of every description brought to the
Seraglio from the various ports of Africa, Morea, Caramania, and the
Ægean Sea were either received between those walls or flowed through
them to the inner courts, and an army of majordomos and clerks were
kept constantly occupied in registering what was brought, giving
receipts, paying out money, and arranging audiences. Merchants from the
slave-markets of Brusa and Trebizond would await their turn to enter
with poets come from Bagdad to recite their verses in the presence of
the Sultan. Governors fallen into disgrace, bearing basins full of
gold coins wherewith to purchase pardon, stood side by side with the
messenger of a pasha bringing a beautiful girl of thirteen, found,
after months of careful search, in a cabin in Anatolia, as a present
to the Grand Seignior, and with them emissaries returned from the
farthermost confines of the empire, tired little family groups just
arrived from some far-off province to seek justice at the hands of
their lord, and women and children of the lowest orders in Stambul come
to present their grievances before the Divân. On those days when the
Divân was to hold its sessions ambassadors from rebel provinces would
be seen passing slowly through the curious and mocking crowd, mounted
upon asses, with shaven faces and women’s caps upon their heads, or
the too insolent envoys of some Asiatic prince with their noses split
open by the cimeters of the _sciaùs_. Sometimes state officials would
pass out bearing a magnificent shawl which they were to take to a
distant governor as a present from the grand vizier, quite unconscious
that their own death-sentence was concealed within its folds. Now the
radiant face of some ambitious schemer showed that his plots had been
so far successful, and a _sanjak_ was his, while the pallid countenance
of another proved all too plainly that he had heard in the Divân the
first dark rumors of approaching disgrace. Messengers went by with
those inexorable _hattiscerifs_ which they were to carry in their
saddle-croups three hundred miles for the purpose of spreading ruin and
death through the palace of a viceroy, and those terrible court-mutes
sent to strangle illustrious prisoners in the subterranean dungeons of
the Castle of Seven Towers. Crowds of _beys_, _mollahs_, and _emirs_
passed back and forth, to and from audiences, with bent heads, eyes on
the ground, and hands hidden in their big sleeves; viziers who made
it a habit to carry a copy of the Koran about with them, so as to be
prepared at a moment’s notice to read the office of the dead; the
despotic grand vizier, constantly shadowed by an executioner, who never
went abroad without a copy of his will concealed somewhere about his
person, so as to be ready to face death at any moment.
And all of them maintained the most perfect decorum, passing by with
measured steps and serious mien, either silent or else conversing
only in undertones and in such circumspect and correct language as
was suitable to the sacred precincts of the Seraglio. There was a
constant interchange of grave, scrutinizing looks; hands were laid on
the forehead or breast, and momentary breaks occurred in the murmured
conversations--a discreet rustling and patter of slippers and long
cloaks, a subdued clanking of cimeters, a something monastic and
mournful, which contrasted strangely with the haughty, warlike faces,
pompous coloring, and splendid armor seen on all sides. In every eye
could be read the reflection of the same ruling idea, on every brow
was written the awe and dread of a single man, high above them all,
wielding an absolute power over each and every one of them, and before
whom all were ready to bow down, cringe, crawl, efface themselves; it
seemed as though every object bore the imprint of his image, every
sound carried the echo of his name.
From this court the Bâb-el-Selam,[G] Gate of Health, gives access to
the second court. It is still standing intact, flanked by two massive
towers, and can only be passed even now on presenting a firman or order
from the Sultan. Formerly the great doors which shut it on either side
enclosed a space between them which was used as a chamber of execution,
where persons could be detained and secretly despatched. The cell of
the executioner was just below, and communicated by secret passage-ways
with the hall of the Divân. Persons of rank who had incurred the
displeasure of the Divân would be detained there while awaiting their
sentence, which not infrequently was first made known to them by being
carried out. At other times a suspected governor or vizier, summoned
to the Seraglio on some pretext or other, came, passed unsuspiciously
beneath that sinister roof, entered the council hall, and, being
received with benevolent smiles or such mitigated severity as laid his
fears to rest, would pass tranquilly forth again, to suddenly feel a
knife beneath his shoulders or a cord about his neck, and sink to the
ground without seeing any one or being able so much as to make one
effort at resistance. At the sound of his dying cry a hundred heads
in the outer court would turn quickly, but in an instant every one
would have resumed his occupation in perfect silence. Presently the
head would be carried out to the Bâb-i-Humayûn, the body thrown to the
ravens on the shore near St. Stephen’s, the news sent to the Sultan,
and the whole matter be finished.
[G] The name of this gate is the Orta Kapu, or Middle
Gate.--TRANS.
To the right and under the roof can be seen the small iron doorway of
the chamber into which those victims were cast whose death-sentence
had been recalled just in time, or others whose agony it was wished to
prolong or who were to be sent into exile instead.
Passing beneath the gateway, you enter the second court, and begin to
breathe more unmistakably the sacred atmosphere which surrounded the
lord “of the two seas and two worlds.” Entering there for the first
time, one pauses involuntarily on the threshold, held back by feelings
of awe and veneration and fear. It was a huge, irregular courtyard, a
sort of enormous open hall, surrounded by graceful buildings with gold
and silver domes: here and there were groups of tall trees, while two
avenues crossed each other, flanked by great cypresses. All around it
ran a low gallery, supported on graceful marble columns and protected
by a spreading roof covered with lead. To the left as you enter was
the hall of the Divân, surmounted by a glittering dome, and beyond
it the reception chamber, before which stood six huge columns of
Marmora marble supporting a wide roof with undulating border. Bases
and capitals, walls, roofs, doorways, arches, all were embossed,
carved, chiselled, painted, and gilded, and as light and graceful
as pavilions made of lace and encrusted with gems, while a group of
superb plane trees cast their shadows over it all. On the other side
were the apartments where the robes of state were kept, the archives,
the tents, the residence of the chief of the black eunuchs, and the
kitchens of the court. Here was to be found that intendant on whom far
more devolved than on one of the ministers of state, under whom were
employed fifty sub-lieutenants and a whole army of cooks, supplemented
on great occasions by chefs collected from every corner of the empire.
On the days of the Divân, dinner was served here for all the viziers,
and, when such functions as imperial weddings or circumcisions were
in progress, were prepared those far-famed pastry gardens, sugar
swans, giraffes, falcons, and camels; and roasted sheep from which
flocks of birds issued, to be carried later on in great pomp to the
Hippodrome square; here too were manufactured those sweetmeats of every
conceivable form and flavor designed to melt away in the thousand
greedy little mouths of the harem. On fête-days eight hundred workmen
swarmed close by the kitchens, occupied in getting out the Sultan’s
tents and those of the harem, which they were to erect all about the
Seraglio gardens and on the hillsides overlooking the Bosphorus;
and when even these apparently inexhaustible storehouses gave out,
pavilions were constructed from the sails of the fleet, and cypress
trees taken up by the roots from the gardens of the imperial villas.
The residence of the chief eunuch near by was a small royal palace in
itself, between which and the third court flowed a constant stream
of black eunuchs, slaves, and servants. Foreign ambassadors passed
through on their way to the reception-chamber of the Sultan, and then
the gallery would be hung from one end to the other with scarlet cloth,
while the walls and pavements were as polished and glittering as the
floor of a room. Two hundred Janissaries, spahis, and silidars, members
of the Divân guard, would stand drawn up in the shade of the cypress
and plane trees, dressed and armed like princes, while troops of
white and black eunuchs, perfumed and anointed, flanked the entrance.
Everything within this second enclosure indicated the vicinity of the
Grand Seignior: voices were pitched in a lower key, steps were more
measured, and all noises which indicated labor or toil, and the sounds
of horses’ hoofs, were rigorously banished. Soldiers and servants alike
went back and forth in silence, and a certain sanctuary-like stillness
reigned over the entire courtyard, broken only from time to time by
the sudden cry of a bird winging its way among the high branches of the
trees or the resounding clang of the great iron doors being swung to by
the kapuji.