about that famous spot, raising my eyes from time to time to the
grated windows of one or another of those kiosks, now as mournful and
neglected-looking as sepulchres. And yet, notwithstanding all the
horrible associations of the place, one is conscious of a thrill of
delicious excitement, a throbbing of the pulses, a languid, voluptuous,
half-melancholy sense of pleasure, at the thought of all the youth
and beauty and loveliness which once had its being here. These little
stairways, up and down which I pass, once felt the pressure of their
flying feet; these shady alleys, through which I walk, have heard the
soft rustle of their garments; the roofs of these little porticoes,
against whose pillars I brush in passing, have echoed the sound of
their infantile laughter. It seems as though some actual token of their
presence must still linger within those walls, hover in the very air,
and I long to search for it, to cry aloud those famous names, one
after another, over and over again, when surely some voice, faint,
distant, ghostly, will reward my efforts, some shadowy white-robed
figure flit across a lofty terrace or appear for a moment at the end
of a dim, leafy vista. What would I not have given, as I scanned each
barred door and grated window, to have known behind which of them the
widow of Alexius Comnenus was confined--the most beautiful of all the
fair Lesbos prisoners, as well as the most fascinating Grecian of her
time--or where the beloved daughter of Errizo, governor of Negropont,
had been stabbed for preferring death to the brutal caresses of
Muhammad II.! And Khurrem, Suleiman’s favorite, at what window did she
linger, graceful, languid, her great black eyes fixed upon the Sea
of Marmora beneath their veil of silken lashes? How often must this
very path have felt the light pressure of that fascinating Hungarian
dancer’s feet who effaced the image of Saffié from the heart of Murad
III., slipping like a blade of steel between the imperial arms! Above
this flowery bank must Kesem, that beautiful Grecian and jealous fury
who beheld the reigns of seven sultans, have bent her pale proud face
to pluck a flower in passing. And that gigantic Armenian who drove
Ibrahim insane for love of her, has she not plunged her great white
arms into the cool depths of this very fountain? And whose feet were
the smaller? The fourth Muhammad’s “_little favorite_,” two of whose
slippers together did not measure the length of a stiletto, or Rebia
Gulnuz, “_she who drank of the roses of spring_”? And who had the
prettiest blue eyes in the Archipelago? And whose foot left no trace
on the white sand of the garden-walk? Was the hair of Marhfiruz, “_the
favorite of the stars of the night_,” thicker and more golden than that
of Miliklia, the youthful Russian odalisque, who kept the ferocity of
the second Osman in check? And those Persian and Arabian children who
lulled Ibrahim to sleep with their fairy-tales, and the forty maidens
who drank the third Murad’s blood, is there nothing left of them
all--not so much as a tress of hair, a thread from a single veil, an
imprint on the walls? For answer I saw a strange, weird vision far off
where the great trees grew thickest. Beneath the long shadowy arcades
I beheld a mournful procession: one after the other, in ghostly,
never-ending succession, they filed by--validéh sultans, sisters of
pâdishahs, _kadyns_, odalisques, slaves, children hardly arrived at
womanhood, middle-aged, old and white-haired, timid young maidens,
faces contorted with savage jealousy, rulers of an empire, favorites of
a single day, playthings of an hour, representatives of ten generations
and a hundred peoples--leading their children by the hand or clasping
them convulsively to their breasts. Around this one’s neck the noose
is still hanging; from that one’s heart sticks a dagger-hilt; the salt
waters of the Sea of Marmora drip from another’s clothes. Brilliant
with jewels, covered with dagger-thrusts, their faces contorted from
the action of poison or the long-drawn-out agonies of the Old Seraglio,
on they came, an interminable, mute, but eloquent procession, fading
away one after another in the gloom of the cypress trees, leaving
behind them a trail of faded flowers, of tears, and of drops of blood,
which swept over my heart in a great wave of indescribable horror and
pity.
Beyond the third enclosure there extends a long level stretch of
ground covered with a luxuriant vegetation and dotted over with pretty
little buildings, in the midst of which rises the so-called Column
of Theodosius, of gray granite, surmounted by a beautiful Corinthian
capital and supported upon a large pedestal, on one side of which may
still be traced the last two words of a Latin inscription which ran as
follows: “_Fortunæ reduci ob devictos Gothos_.” Here the elevated plain
upon which stands the great central rectangle of the Seraglio buildings
comes to an end; beyond, as far as Seraglio Point, and covering the
entire space between the walls of the three courts and the outer
boundary-walls, rose a great forest of plane trees, cypresses, pines,
laurels, and terebinths, all along the hillsides, and poplars draped
with vines and creepers, shading a succession of gardens filled with
roses and heliotropes, and laid out in the form of terraces, from which
wide flights of marble stairs led down to the shore.
Along the walls facing Skutari rose the new palace of Sultan Mahmûd,
opening out on the water by a great door of gilded copper. Near
Seraglio Point stood the summer harem, a vast semicircular building,
designed to accommodate five hundred women, with its great courtyards
and magnificent baths and gardens--the scene of those ingenious
illuminations which under the name of “_tulip festivals_” became so
famous. Beyond the walls, opposite the harem and just above the shore,
was placed the celebrated Seraglio Battery, consisting of twenty guns
of different designs and covered with sculptures and inscriptions: each
of these was captured on some battlefield and from Christian armies in
the course of the earlier European wars. The walls were furnished with
eight gates, three of them on the city side and five facing toward the
sea. Great marble terraces extended from the walls along the banks, and
subterranean passage-ways leading from the royal palace to the gates on
the Sea of Marmora offered a means of escape to the sultans, who could
thus take ship for Skutari or Topkhâneh in case they were besieged from
the land.
Nor yet was this all of the Seraglio. Near the outer walls and all
along the sides of the hills there arose numberless other kiosks,
built to imitate little mosques or forts or tunnels, each one of which
communicated by a narrow footway, concealed behind lofty screens of
foliage, with the smaller gates of the third court. There was the Yali
Kiosk, now destroyed, which was reflected in the waters of the Golden
Horn; there stands to-day, almost intact, the New Kiosk, a little
royal residence in itself, circular and covered with gilt ornaments
and paintings, to which the sultans used to repair at sunset to feast
their eyes upon the spectacle of the thousand ships riding at anchor in
the port. Near the summer harem stood the Looking-glass Kiosk, where
the treaty of peace by which Turkey ceded the Crimea to Russia was
signed in 1784, and the kiosk of Hassan Pasha, all resplendent with
gilding, its walls covered with mirrors which threw back fantastic
reflections of the fêtes and nocturnal orgies of the sultans. The
Cannon Kiosk, out of whose windows bodies were thrown into the Sea
of Marmora, stood hard by the battery on Cape Seraglio. The Kiosk of
the Sea, where the validéh of Muhammad IV. held her secret councils,
overhung the spot where the waters of the Bosphorus mingle with those
of the Sea of Marmora. The Kiosk of Roses looks out upon the esplanade
where the pages were exercised, and it was here that in 1839 the new
constitution of the empire, embodied in the Hatti Sherif of Gül-Khâneh,
was signed. Some of the kiosks on the other side of the Seraglio which
are still standing are the Review Kiosk, from which, himself unseen,
the Sultan could watch all who passed by to the Divân; the Alai Kiosk,
at that angle of the walls near St. Sophia whence Muhammad IV. flung to
his mutinous soldiers his favorite Meleki, together with twenty-nine
officials of his court, to be torn to pieces before his eyes; and at
the far end of the wall the Sepedgiler Kiosk, near which the sultans
gave final audiences to their admirals about sailing for the seat of
war.
Thus the huge palace spread out and down from the summit of its
hills--where were gathered and carefully defended all its more vital
parts--to the seashore crowned with towers, bristling with cannon,
decked with flowers, its gilded barges shooting across the waters
in all directions, its thousand perfumes floating heavenward in a
great cloud as from some huge altar; the myriad torches of its fêtes
reflected in the placid waters; flinging from its battlements gold to
the people, dead bodies to the waves--yesterday the plaything of a
slave, to-day the sport of a maniac, to-morrow at the mercy of the mob,
beautiful as an enchanted island and forbidding as a living sepulchre.
The night is far advanced: each glittering star is reflected in the
calm bosom of the Sea of Marmora, while the moon turns the Seraglio’s
thousand domes to silver and whitens the tips of the cypress and
plane trees. Deep shadows are cast across the open spaces below, and,
one by one, the lights in all those innumerable little windows are
extinguished. Mosque and kiosk rise white as snow against the dark
background of the woods, and each spire and pointed minaret, aërial
crescent, door of bronze, and gilded grating shines and sparkles among
the trees as though part of a golden city. The imperial residence
sleeps, the last of the three great gates has just been closed, and
the far-off rattle of its huge keys can be heard as the kapuji turns
away. In front of the Gate of Health a troop of kapujis stand watch
beneath the lofty roof, while stationed along the wall by the Gate of
Felicity, their faces in the shadow, immovable as so many bas-reliefs,
thirty white eunuchs mount guard. From the walls and towers hundreds of
hidden sentinels keep an active watch upon all the approaches, the sea
and harbor, the deserted streets of the city, and the huge silent pile
of St. Sophia. An occasional light still gleams in the huge kitchens
of the first court, where some belated worker is finishing his task;
then that too disappears, and the building becomes dark. Lights are
still burning, though, in the houses of the Veznedar Agha and the
Defterdar Effendi, and there seems to be some stir about the residence
of the chief of the black eunuchs. Eunuchs patrol the deserted paths
and wander in and out among the dark and silent kiosks, hearing no
sounds save the sighing of the trees rocked by the sea-breeze and
the monotonous murmur of the fountains. Perfect peace seems to enfold
all that little world in its calm embrace, but only seemingly, for
underneath those myriad roofs a tide of passionate life is stirring.
That vast family of slaves, soldiers, prisoners, and servants, with
their ambitions and heart-burnings, their loves and hates, let loose
into the stillness of the night a brood of restless longings, dreams,
and visions, which, scaling the Seraglio walls, find their way to every
corner of the globe, seeking out homes of childhood, mothers lost in
infancy, resuscitating half-forgotten scenes of horror. Prayers and
supplications mingle with plots of vengeance in the moonlit walks
and the overmastering impulses of secret ambition. The great palace
sleeps, but it is a restless, disturbed sleep, interrupted by sudden
fearful visions of alarm and terror; mutterings in a hundred different
languages mingle with the voices of the night. Close together, divided
by but a few walls, sleep the dissolute page, the imâm who has preached
the word of God, the executioner who has strangled the innocent,
the imprisoned prince awaiting death, and the enamored sultana on
the eve of her nuptials. Unhappy wretches, stripped of everything
they possessed in the world, find themselves side by side with the
possessors of fabulous riches. Beauty which is almost divine, absurd
deformity, every form of vice and misfortune, every prostitution of
soul and body, are to be found shut in between the same walls.
Against the starlit sky are outlined the bizarre shapes of Moorish
tower and roof, and shadows of garlands and leafy festoons play over
the walls; the fountains shimmer in the moonlight like cascades of
diamonds and sapphires; and all the perfumes of the gardens, gathered
into one powerful odor, are swept by the breeze through every open
lattice, every crack and crevice, leaving in their wake soft,
intoxicating dreams and memories.
At such an hour as this the eunuch seated in the shadow of the trees,
his eyes fixed upon the soft light issuing from a neighboring kiosk,
gnaws out his heart and touches with trembling fingers his dagger hilt,
and the poor little maid, stolen and sold into bondage, gazes from the
window of her lofty cell with streaming eyes upon the serene horizon of
Asia, thinking with unutterable longing of the cabin where she was born
and the peaceful valley where her fathers lie buried. At this hour,
too, the galley-slave laden with chains, the mute stained with blood,
the despised miserable dwarf, reflect with a thrill of dismay upon the
infinity of space which separates them from that being before whom
they all must bow, and passionately interrogate the “_hidden powers_”
as to why they must be deprived of liberty, speech, and the ordinary
shape of the human form, while everything is given to one man. And
this, too, is the hour in which the neglected and unhappy weep, while
those who are great and successful are haunted with misgivings as they
think uneasily of the future. In some of the buildings lights are still
burning, illuminating the pale, anxious brows of the treasurers bending
over their accounts. Odalisques, embittered by neglect, toss restlessly
among their pillows, vainly seeking sleep. Janissaries lie stretched
out upon the ground, the savage smile upon their bronzed faces telling
of dreams of carnage and plunder. Through those thin walls come
voluptuous sighs, sobs, broken expostulations. In one kiosk flows the
accursed liquor amid a circle of dishevelled revellers; in another a
wretched sultana, mother for but one short moment, stifles her shrieks
beneath the pillows that she may not see her child’s life-blood
flowing from the artery opened by order of the Pâdishah; and in the
marble niches of the Bâb-i-Humayûn blood is still dropping from the
heads of beys executed at nightfall. Within the loftiest kiosk of the
third enclosure there is a room hung with crimson brocade and flooded
with soft radiance from a Moorish lamp of chased silver suspended
from the cedar-wood roof. Upon a sable-covered couch, surrounded by a
magnificent disorder of pearl-embroidered cushions and velvet draperies
worked in gold, there sits a beautiful brunette, enveloped in a great
white veil, who not many years before conducted her father’s herds
across the plains of Arabia. Bending her timid gaze upon the pallid
countenance of the third Murad, who reclines half asleep at her feet,
she begins in gentle murmuring tones: “Once upon a time there lived in
Damascus a merchant named Abu-Eiub, who had accumulated great riches
and lived in honor and prosperity. He had one son, who was handsome
and who knew all sorts of wonderful things, and his name was Slave of
Love, and a daughter who was very beautiful, and she was named Power
of Hearts. Now, it came to pass that Abu-Eiub died, and he left all
his possessions and all his wealth wrapped up and fastened with seals,
and upon everything was written ‘For Bagdad.’ So, then, Slave of Love
said to his mother, ‘Why is “For Bagdad” written on everything my
father left?’ And his mother replied, ‘My son----’” But the Pâdishah
has fallen asleep, and the slave lets her head sink gently down among
the cushions, and sleeps as well. Every door is closed, every light
extinguished, a hundred cupolas gleam like silver in the moonlight,
crescents and gilded lattices shine through the foliage; the fountain’s
splash and gurgle are heard through the stillness, and at last the
entire Seraglio slumbers.
And so for thirty years has it slept the sleep of neglect and decay
upon its solitary hill. Those verses of the Persian poet which came
into the mind of Muhammad the Conqueror when he first set foot in the
despoiled palace of the emperors of the East are equally appropriate
here: “In the dwellings of kings see where the loathsome spider weaves
her busy web, while from Erasciab’s proud summit is heard the raven’s
hoarse cry.”
THE LAST DAYS.
At this point I find that the chain of my reminiscences is broken. I
can no longer recollect clearly what I did and saw, nor give those
long, minute descriptions which flowed so readily from my pen when
writing of the earlier part of my visit. It was nothing now but a
succession of hurried expeditions back and forth across the Golden
Horn, and from Europe to Asia and back again, followed in the evening
by visions of populous towns, throngs of people, forests, fleets,
hills, all tinged with a faint touch of melancholy by the ever-present
shadow of the day of departure now drawing rapidly near, as though
already these sights were only memories of what had been. And yet
through all the sense of hurry and confusion which the thought of those
last days is sure to bring up, certain objects stand out clearly in
my memory. I remember, for instance, very distinctly that beautiful
morning on which I visited for the first time the greater number of
the imperial mosques, and at the mere thought of it I seem instantly
to find myself surrounded by an immense space and a solemn stillness.
The tremendous impression made upon one’s mind by St. Sophia does not
seem to detract from the effect produced by the first sight of those
titanic walls. Here, as elsewhere, the religion of the conquerors has
appropriated to itself the religious art of the conquered. Almost all
the other mosques are built in imitation of Justinian’s great basilica,
with huge domes and semi-domes, courts, and porticoes, some even having
the form of a Greek cross. But Islamism has tinged everything with a
light and color all its own, which, joined to these familiar features,
results in an altogether different style of building, where one sees,
as it were, the horizon of an unknown world and breathes the atmosphere
surrounding a strange God.
These mosques have enormous naves, white, austere, majestic in their
simplicity, over which a flood of soft, uniform light pours from
numberless windows; every object stands out distinctly from one
extremity to the other, and mind and sight seem lulled to sleep by a
dreamy sense of utter peacefulness and calm, as though in some misty
valley surmounted by a serene white heaven; only the reverberation of
your own footsteps recalls the fact that you are in an enclosure. There
is nothing to distract the mind; the imagination, spanning directly
and without effort the intervening space and light, arrives at once
before the object of adoration. There is nothing to suggest either
melancholy or terror--no illusions, no mysteries, no shadowy corners
in which the symbols of a complicated hierarchy of supernatural beings
glimmer vaguely before the confused senses. There is the one clear,
distinct, all-compelling idea of a sole and omnipotent God, who demands
in his temple the severe nakedness of the sunlit desert, and permits
no likeness or image of himself other than the sky. All the imperial
mosques of Constantinople possess these common characteristics--a
majesty which uplifts and a simplicity which concentrates upon one
single object the mind of the worshipper, differing so little from one
another, even in the matter of detail, that it is difficult to preserve
any distinct recollection of them.
The Ahmediyeh has a peculiarly graceful and pleasing exterior,
possessing, notwithstanding its great size, the airy lightness of a
fabric built of clouds; its dome is supported on enormous white marble
piers around which four small mosques could be built, and it is the
only one in Stambul which can boast of the glorious girdle of six
minarets. The mosque of Suleiman, more like a little sacred city than a
single temple, where a stranger might readily lose his way, has three
great naves, and its dome, higher than that of St. Sophia,[J] rests
upon four marvellous columns of red granite, suggesting the trunks
of those gigantic trees in California. The mosque of Muhammad is a
white and radiant St. Sophia; that of Bayezid has the pre-eminence
for elegance of outline; that of Osman is built entirely of marble;
the Shazadeh mosque possesses the two most exquisite minarets in
Stambul; that in the Ok Serai quarter is the most charming example
of the renaissance of Turkish art. The Selimiyeh is the most severe,
the mosque of Mahmûd the most elaborate, the Validéh Sultan the most
ornate. Each one has some peculiar beauty of its own, or else a legend
or special privilege attached to it. The Ahmediyeh guards the standard
of the Prophet; the Bayezidiyeh is crowned by clouds of pigeons; the
Suleimaniyeh can boast of inscriptions written by the hand of Kara
Hissari; in the mosque of the Validéh Sultan is the imitation gold
column which cost the conqueror of Candia his life. Sultan Muhammad
sees, “eleven imperial mosques bow their heads around him, even as
the sheafs of Joseph’s brothers bowed themselves before his sheaf.”
In one may be seen the columns carried away from the imperial palace
and Augusteon of Justinian which formerly supported statues of Venus,
Theodora, and Eudoxia; in others are marbles from the ancient churches
of Chalcedon, pillars from the ruins of Troy, columns from Egyptian
temples, precious stained glass stolen from Persian palaces, building
materials, the plunder of circus and forum, aqueduct and basilica,
all engulfed and lost sight of in the white immensity of the religious
art of the victors.
[J] “The dome itself is 86 feet in diameter internally and
156 feet in height. At St. Sophia the dome is 108 feet
in diameter and 175 feet in height, or 22 and 19 more,
respectively.”--Fergusson, _Hist. Architecture_.--TRANS.
[Illustration: Panorama of Mosque of Bayezid.]
The interiors differ from one another even less than the exteriors.
At the farther end is a marble pulpit, facing it, the Sultan’s seat
enclosed within a gilded lattice; beside the _mihrab_ stand two huge
candelabra supporting tapers which look like the trunks of palm trees;
innumerable lamps composed of large crystal globes are disposed about
the nave in so singular a manner as to seem more fitting adjuncts of a
grand ball than of religious solemnities. Inscriptions encircling the
columns, doorways, and windows, friezes painted in imitation of marble,
and floral designs executed in stained glass are the sole attempts at
ornamentation which break the white monotony of those lofty walls. The
marble treasures of the pavements in the vestibules, the galleries
surrounding the courtyards, the ablutionary fountains, and minarets do
not impair at all the character of charming yet severe simplicity which
marks those great white fabrics, framed in verdure, whose lofty domes
stand out clear and sparkling against the blue sky.
And, after all, the _jami_--that is, the mosque proper--covers only
a minor part of the enclosure which goes by its name, the rest being
taken up by a labyrinth of courtyards and buildings, consisting of
auditoriums, where the Koran is read; treasuries, where private
individuals deposit their valuables for safe-keeping; academies,
medical colleges, children’s schools, quarters for students, and
soup-kitchens for the poor; insane asylums, hospitals, khâns for
travellers, and baths--a little philanthropic settlement nestling at
the base of the lofty temple as at that of a mountain, and shaded by
mighty trees.
Now, however, all these things have faded into one another in my
memory. I only see the tiny black speck of my own insignificant self
wandering like a detached atom up and down those vast naves, between
two lines of diminutive Turks prostrated at their devotions. As I
move on, dazzled by the pervading whiteness, stupefied by the strange
light, awed and subdued by the immensity around me, dragging my worn
slippers--and my humbled pride as a descriptive writer as well--it
seems as though one mosque melted into another, and that all around
me in every direction there arose interminable ranks of roofs and
pilasters, a white illimitable throng in which sight and sense are
swallowed up.