trees was thickest, the murmur of the fountains most musical, the
twittering of the birds loudest, rose the harem, like a little separate
district of the imperial city, composed of a great number of small
white buildings surmounted by leaden domes, shaded by orange trees and
umbrella pines, and divided from one another by little walled gardens
overrun with ivy and eglantine and interspersed with footpaths covered
with tiny shells laid out in mosaic patterns, which wound out of sight
among roses, ebony, and myrtle trees. Everything was on a small scale,
enclosed, divided up, and subdivided, the balconies roofed, windows
grated, loggias hidden behind rose-colored hangings, the windows of
stained glass, doors barred, and streets open at one end only. Over
all there brooded a soft twilight, the freshness of the forest, and
a dreamy sense of mystery and calm. Here lived and loved, suffered
and obeyed, all that great female family of the Seraglio, constantly
changing and being reinforced. It was like some large conventual
establishment whose religion consisted in pleasure, and whose god was
the Sultan. Here were the imperial apartments; here dwelt the kadyns,
those four members of the imperial harem who had a recognized position
and rank, each one with her own kiosk, her little court, her state
officials, her barges hung with satin, her gilded coach, her eunuchs
and slaves, and her _slipper-money_, which consisted of the entire
revenue of a province. Here too dwelt the validéh sultan with her
innumerable court of _ustàs_, divided into companies of twenty, each
one charged with a special duty, and all the female relatives of the
Sultan, aunts, sisters, daughters, nieces, who, with the royal princes,
formed a court within the court. Then there were the _gheduelùs_,
the twelve most beautiful of whom, having each her special title and
duty, were selected for personal attendance upon the Sultan; and the
_shaghirds_, or novices, undergoing the necessary course of instruction
in order to fit them for the vacant posts among the _ustàs_; and a
swarm of slaves gathered from all lands, of every shade of complexion
and type of beauty; carefully selected from among thousands of others,
who filled the hive-like compartments of that huge gynæceum with a rush
and stir of eager, radiant youth, a hot breath of Asiatic and African
voluptuousness, which, mounting to the head of the god of the temple,
expended itself in his fierce passions throughout the entire empire.
[Illustration: A Turkish Woman.]
What associations are connected with the trees of those gardens and the
walls of those little white kiosks! How many beautiful daughters of
the Caucasus, the Archipelago, the mountains of Albania and Ethiopia,
the desert and the sea, Mussulman, Nazarene, idolator, conquered by
pashas, bought by merchants, presented by princes, stolen by corsairs,
have passed like shadows beneath those silver domes! Can these be the
selfsame walls and gardens amid which Ibrahim, his head crowned with
flowers, his beard glittering with jewels, committed his mad acts of
folly--he who raised the price of slaves in every market in Asia, and
caused Arabian perfumes to increase to double their usual value; which
witnessed the frantic orgies of the third Murad, father of a hundred
sons, and of Murad IV., worn out by excesses at the age of thirty-one,
and which re-echoed to the delirious ravings of Selim II.? Here were
celebrated those strange nocturnal revels when ships and vases of
flowers were traced in fiery outlines upon the domes and trees and
roofs, their dancing flames reflected in innumerable little mirrors
like a great burning flower-garden. Crowds of women pressed around the
bazârs overflowing with precious objects, while eunuchs and slaves
went through the swaying measures of the dance half hidden in clouds
of burning spices and perfumes, which the breezes from the Black Sea
wafted over the entire Seraglio, and accompanied by strains of barbaric
and warlike music.
Let us try to bring it all to life again, just as it appeared on some
soft April day during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent or the
third Ahmed.
The sky is clear, the atmosphere heavy with the odors of spring,
the gardens a mass of bloom. Through the network of paths still wet
with dew black eunuchs wearing gold-colored tunics and slaves clad
in garments of every hue carry baskets and dishes covered with green
cloths back and forth between the kitchens and the various kiosks.
Ustàs of the validéh, coming hurriedly out of the little Moorish
doorways, run against the Sultan’s _gheduclùs_, passing by with haughty
mien and followed by novice slaves carrying the imperial linen. All
eyes follow the youngest of all the _gheduclùs_, the cup-bearer, a
Syrian child, singled out by Allah, since she has found such favor
in the eyes of the Grand Seignior that he has bestowed upon her the
title of “_daughter of felicity_,” and the sable mantle will follow
so soon as she shall have given signs of approaching maternity. In
the distance the Sultan’s jesters are playing in the shade of the
sycamores dressed in harlequin costumes, and with them a number of
dwarfs with huge turbans on their heads, while beyond them, again,
half concealed by a hedge, a gigantic eunuch with a slight movement
of head and hand directs five mutes charged with the duty of carrying
out punishments to present themselves before Kizlar-aghàsi, who needs
them for a secret affair. Youths of an ambiguous beauty and clad in
rich feminine-looking garments run and chase one another among the
borders of a garden shaded by a single huge plane tree. At another
place a troop of slaves suddenly pause, and, separating in two lines,
bow low before the khasnadâr, superintendent of the harem, who returns
their greetings with a stately wave of her staff adorned with tiny
silver blades and terminating in the imperial seal. At the same moment
a door opens, and out comes one of the _kadyns_, dressed in pale blue
and enveloped in a thick white veil. She is followed by her slaves,
and is on her way to take advantage of the permission obtained from
the superintendent on the previous day to play at battledore and
shuttlecock with another _kadyn_. Turning down a shady alley, she meets
and exchanges soft greetings with one of the Sultan’s sisters going to
the bath accompanied by her children and maid-servants. At the end of a
sequestered path a eunuch stands before the kiosk of another _kadyn_,
awaiting permission to admit a Hebrew woman with her wares consisting,
though not entirely, of precious stones. She has only obtained the
right of entrance to the imperial harem after endless wirepulling
and scheming, and now carries concealed among her jewels more than
one secret missive from an ambitious pasha or daring lover. At the
extreme end of the harem enclosure the hanum charged with the duty
of examining slaves for admission is looking for the superintendent
to inform her that the young Abyssinian brought in the day before
is, in her opinion, worthy of being admitted among the _gheduclùs_,
if a tiny lump on the left shoulder-blade may be overlooked. In the
mean time, the twenty nurses of the little princes born in the course
of the current year are assembled beneath a high arbor in a pasture
planted with myrtles; a group of slaves play upon flutes and guitars
surrounded by a party of children, dressed in blue velvet and crimson
satin, who jump and dance about or scramble merrily for the sugarplums
which the validéh sultan throws from a neighboring terrace. Up and down
the shady avenues pass teachers of music, dancing, and embroidery, on
their way to give instruction to the _shaghirds_; eunuchs carrying
great platters heaped with sugar parrots and lions and sweetmeats of
various fantastic shapes; slaves clasping vases of flowers or rugs in
their arms, the gifts of a _kadyn_ to a sultana or the validéh, or
from the validéh to a granddaughter. Presently the treasurer of the
harem arrives, accompanied by three slaves, and wearing the look of
one who has welcome news to communicate. Sure enough, word has been
received that the imperial ships sent to intercept a fleet of Genoese
and Venetian galleys came up with them twenty miles from the port of
Sira, and succeeded in buying up the entire cargo of silk and velvet
for the Pâdishah’s harem. A eunuch, arriving breathless to announce to
a trembling sultana that her son’s circumcision has been successfully
accomplished, is followed by two others bearing upon silver and gold
dishes to the mother and validéh respectively the instruments used
by the surgeon. There is a continual opening and shutting of doors
and windows, a raising and dropping again of curtains, that messages,
letters, news, gossip may pass in and out.
Any one whose gaze could have pierced through those different roofs and
domes would have looked upon many a contrasting scene. In one apartment
a sultana, leaning against the window, gazes mournfully between the
satin curtains at the blue mountains of Asia, thinking, possibly, of
her husband, a handsome young pasha, governor of a distant province,
who, in accordance with a certain practice, had been torn from her arms
after six short months of happiness, so that he might have no sons. In
another small room, entirely lined with marble and looking-glasses, a
pretty fifteen-year-old _kadyn_, who expects to receive a visit from
the Pâdishah during the day, is frolicking with the slaves who are
engaged in perfuming and anointing her, setting off her charms to the
very best advantage, and raising little flattering choruses of delight
and surprise at every fresh revelation of her beauty. Youthful sultanas
run up and down the walled gardens, chasing each other around gleaming
marble basins filled with goldfish, and making the shells with which
the paths are laid rattle beneath their tiny flying feet encased in
white satin slippers; others, shrinking back in the farthest corner
of darkened rooms with pale set faces and averted looks, seem to be
brooding over some act of despair or revenge. In one apartment, hung
with rich brocades, children who from the hour of their birth have
been condemned to death nestle upon satin cushions striped with gold
beneath walls of mother-of-pearl; beautiful princesses lave their
shapely limbs in baths of Paros marble; _gheduclùs_ lie stretched full
length upon rugs fast asleep; groups of slaves and servants and eunuchs
pass back and forth through covered galleries and dim corridors and
secret stairways and passages; and everywhere curious faces peering
from behind grated windows, mute signs interchanged between terrace
and garden, furtive signals from behind half-drawn curtains, low
conversations carried on in monosyllables in the shadow of a wall or
archway, broken by a ripple of half-suppressed laughter, followed by
the swish of feminine garments and patter of flying slippers dying away
among those cloister-like walls.
But lovers’ intrigues and childish escapades were not the only
pursuits which occupied the time and attention of the occupants of
that labyrinth of gardens and temples. Politics crept in through the
cracks of doors and between window-bars, and the power exercised
there by beautiful eyes over affairs of state was not one whit less
far-reaching than in any other royal palace of Europe; indeed, the very
monotony and seclusion of the life led by the inmates gave an added
force to their jealousies and ambitions. Those little jewel-crowned
heads from their perfumed and luxurious prisons bent the court, the
Divân, the entire Seraglio, to their will. By means of the eunuchs they
were enabled to hold direct communication with the muftis, viziers,
and the aghas of the Janissaries, and, as they were allowed to have
interviews with the administrators of their personal property from
behind a curtain or through a grating, they had opportunities of
keeping themselves thoroughly informed as to every minutest detail of
the court and city, knew what especial dangers threatened them, and
were perfectly familiar with the name and character of every official
from whom they had anything to hope or fear. Thus equipped, they move
with a sure hand and infinite patience all the tangled threads of those
conspiracies by which they compassed the overthrow of their enemies
and the elevation of their especial favorites. Every department of the
court, every corner of the empire, had a root, a hundred roots, in
the harem, nourished in the hearts of the validéh sultan, the sisters
of the Pâdishah, the _kadyns_ and odalisques. There was a continual
plotting and scheming for the education of this one’s son, the marriage
of that one’s daughter, to secure a dowry, to obtain precedence at
the fêtes, or the royal succession for one of the princes--to bring
about war or peace. The whims of these spoiled beauties sent armies
of thirty thousand Janissaries and forty thousand spahis to strew
the banks of the Danube with dead bodies, and fleets numbering a
hundred sails to dye the blue waters of the Archipelago and Black Sea
with blood. European princes provided themselves with letters to the
harem in order to ensure the success of their missions. Little white
hands assigned the government of provinces and positions of rank in
the army. It was the caresses of Roxalana which drew the noose about
the necks of the viziers Ahmed and Ibrahim, and the kisses of Saffié,
the beautiful Venetian, “pearl and shell of the khalifate,” that
maintained for so many years friendly relations between the Porte and
the Venetian republic. Murad III.’s seven _kadyns_ ruled the empire for
the last twenty years of the sixteenth century, while the beautiful
Makpeiker, “image of the moon,” the _kadyn_ of the two thousand seven
hundred shawls, held undisputed sway over two seas and two worlds
from the reign of Ahmed I. to the accession of the fourth Muhammad.
Rebia Gulnuz, the odalisque of the hundred silver carriages, ruled
the imperial Divân for the first ten years of the latter half of the
seventeenth century, and Shekerbuli, the “_little lump of sugar_,” kept
the sanguinary Ibrahim travelling back and forth between Stambul and
Adrianople like an automaton to suit her own ends.
[Illustration: Gateway of the Imperial Palace at the Sweet Waters of
Asia.]
What opposing interests, what an intricate web of jealousy, suspicion,
intrigue, and petty ambition, must have been drawn close about
that omnipotent and voluptuous little city! Wandering up and down
those paths and alley-ways, I seemed to hear all about me the
murmur of female voices, now rising high and shrill, now dying
away in the distance--expostulations, questionings, explanations,
supplications--the entire secret chronicle of the Seraglio; and a
varied and curious one it must have been, treating of such questions
as--which of the _kadyns_ had been chosen by the Sultan to accompany
him in the summer to his kiosk at the Sweet Waters; what dot the
Pâdishah’s third daughter, who was to marry the grand admiral,
would have; if it were really true that the herbs procured by the
superintendent Raazgié from the magician Sciugaa for the third
_kadyn_, childless these five years, had been the cause of her having
a son; if it were settled that the favorite, Giamfeda, was to have
the governorship of Caramania for the governor of Anatoli. From one
kiosk to another the news flew that the first _kadyn_ had a child,
and that the new grand vizier, in order to outshine his predecessor,
had presented her with a cradle of solid silver set with emeralds;
that the Sultan’s favorite was not the slave sent by the governor
of Caramania at all, but the one presented by the Kiaya-harem: that
the chief of the white eunuchs was about to die, and that in order
to obtain the long-coveted position the young page Mehemet was to
sacrifice his manhood: it was whispered about that the plan
proposed by the grand vizier Sinau for a canal in Asia Minor was to be
abandoned, so that the progress of the work on the new kiosk building
for Baffo Sultan might not be kept back; that _kadyn_ Saharai, who
was thirty-five years old, had been crying her eyes out for the past
forty-eight hours for fear she was going to be put in the Old Seraglio;
that the buffoon Ahmed had sent the Sultan off into such a hearty
fit of laughter that he had made him an agha of Janissaries on the
spur of the moment. And then there would be thousands of choice bits
of gossip and news to exchange in connection with the approaching
nuptials of Otman Pasha with Ummetulla Sultan, when a bronze dragon
was to vomit fire in the At-Meidan; and about the validéh sultan’s
sable robe, whose every button was a jewel valued at a hundred golden
scudis; or the new carriage of _kadyn_ Kamarigé, “moon of beauty;” or
the tribute from Wallachia; or the little blood-colored rose found on
the neck of the _Shamas-hirusta_, care-taker of the Sultan’s linen;
or the pretty, curly, golden hair of the Genoese ambassadress; or the
wonderful letter written with her own hand by the first wife of the
Shah of Persia in reply to one sent her by Sultana Khurrem, “_the
joyous one_.” All the news received in the city, every topic discussed
by the Divân, every rumor afloat in the Seraglio, was talked over
and commented upon in each individual kiosk and garden among groups
of busy, inquisitive little heads. Anonymous madrigals written by
pâdishahs were passed about from mouth to mouth--the independent
and melancholy verses of Abdul-Baki, the _immortal_; the sparkling
poems of Abu-Sud, whose “every word was a diamond;” Fuzuli’s songs,
redolent of wine and opium; and the licentious verses of Gazali. The
whole character and life of the place, however, would change according
to the tastes of the reigning Pâdishah. Now a current of tenderness
and melancholy would creep across the face of that little world,
leaving the imprint of a certain gentle dignity upon every brow;
the passion for ease and luxury would subside; morals and customs
undergo a process of reformation; language become purified; a taste
for devotional reading, meditation, and religious exercises come into
fashion; the very fêtes themselves, although conducted upon the same
scale of royal magnificence, assume more the character of gay but
dignified ceremonials. And then a prince ascends the throne trained
from infancy in every form of vice and dissipation, and immediately
the scene changes: the god of self-indulgence regains his kingdom;
veils are thrown back, noisy laughter, free language, and shameless
immodesty prevail; messengers travel the length and width of Georgia
and Circassia in search of beauty; a hundred slaves boast of the Grand
Seignior’s preference; the kiosks are crowded, the gardens overrun with
children; the public treasury pours out rivers of gold; the wines of
Cyprus and Hungary sparkle on flower-bedecked tables; Sodom raises its
head, Lesbos is triumphant; faces lit up by great black eyes become
paler and more wasted; the entire harem--mad, fevered, glutted with
self-indulgence, intoxicated with the fumes of that heavy, sensual
perfumed air, awakes one night dazed and helpless to find itself
confronted by the vengeance of God under the form of the flashing
cimeters of the Janissaries. It was indeed too true that those nights
of horror fell upon the little flower-imbedded Babylon as well. Revolt
respected that sacred third enclosure no more than it did the other
two, and, beating down the Gate of Felicity, poured even into the harem
itself. A hundred armed eunuchs, fighting desperately with daggers at
the doors of the kiosks, beheld the Janissaries climb upon the roofs
and break open the cupolas, from whence, leaping into the rooms below,
they tore the infant princes from their mothers’ arms; validéhs were
dragged feet foremost from their hiding-places, fighting furiously
with teeth and nails, to be overpowered finally, pinned to the floor
by a _baltagi’s_ knee, and strangled with the silken cords of the
window-curtains. Sultanas returning to their apartments would utter a
piercing shriek at sight of the empty cradle, and, turning wildly to
interrogate their slaves, read the answer in an ominous silence, which
meant, “Go seek your son at the foot of the throne.” Terrified eunuchs
would bring word to a favorite, whom the sound of distant tumult had
already rendered uneasy, that her head was demanded by the mob, and
she must at once prepare for death. The third Selim’s three _kadyns_,
condemned to the noose and sack, were aroused one after another in the
dead of night and heard each other’s screams, dying in the darkness
in the convulsive grasp of the mutes. Vindictive jealousy and bitter
revenge filled the kiosks with tragedies and spread terror and dismay
throughout the entire harem. The Circassian mother of Mustafa tore
Roxalana’s face; rival favorites cuffed and boxed Shekerbuli; Tarkan
Sultan beheld the dagger of Muhammad IV. flash above the head of her
offspring; the first _kadyn_ of Ahmed I. strangled the slave who
dared to be her rival with her own hands, and in her turn fell at the
Pâdishah’s feet stabbed in the face and uttering shriek on shriek of
rage and pain. Jealous _kadyns_ lay in wait for one another in dark
passage-ways, flinging out the insulting words “bought flesh” as they
pounced like tigresses and tore their victims’ skin or buried poisoned
stilettos in their backs. Who can form any idea of the number of secret
unrecorded tragedies?--slaves held in the fountains until they were
drowned, struck down by a blow on the temple from a dagger-hilt, beaten
to death by the eunuch’s _colbac_, or crushed in the deadly embrace and
arms of steel of a dozen jealous furies. Veils choke the cries of the
dying, flowers cover up the blood-stains, and two dusky figures, moving
down the dimly-lighted path, carry a sinister something between them.
The sentinels pacing up and down upon the battlements which overlook
the Sea of Marmora are startled for a moment by the sound of a heavy
splash; then all is still, and the dawn, awakening the harem to another
day of laughter and pleasure, whispers no tales of that one among its
thousand rooms found empty.