From there, skirting along the edge of a large Mussulman cemetery which
extends from the top of the Kassim Pasha hill to Tersâne, we proceeded
again in a northerly direction, and, descending into the valley,
reached the little district of Piale Pasha, almost buried in her trees
and gardens, and paused before the mosque from which the quarter
takes its name. It is white and surmounted by six graceful domes; the
courtyard is surrounded by arches supported on airy columns; there is
a charming minaret, and surrounding the whole a circle of enormous
cypress trees. At that hour all the neighboring houses were tightly
closed, the streets empty, and even the courtyard of the mosque itself
deserted; the drowsiness and heat of noonday brooded over everything,
and, except for the dull buzzing of the insects, not a sound was to be
heard. Looking at our watches, we found it wanted just three minutes to
twelve o’clock, one of the Mussulman’s five canonical hours, at which
the _muezzin_, appearing upon the gallery of every minaret, announces
to the four quarters of the globe the religious formula of Islam. We
were perfectly well aware that in all Constantinople there is not a
minaret upon which, punctual as clockwork, the messenger of the Prophet
does not appear at his appointed hour; at the same time we could hardly
bring ourselves to believe that in that farthest outpost of the immense
city, on that solitary, out-of-the-way mosque as well, and amid that
profound silence and apparent desertion, the figure would rise up,
the message be delivered. Watch in hand, I stood waiting with lively
curiosity the stroke of the hour, glancing now at the minute-hand, now
at the small doorway opening out on the gallery of the minaret, about
as high from the ground as the fourth story of an ordinary house.
Presently the minute-hand reaches the sixtieth little black speck:
no one appeared. “He is not there,” said I.--“There he is,” replied
Yunk; and, true enough, there he stood. The balustrade of the gallery
concealed all his person but the face, of which the distance was too
great to distinguish the features clearly. For a few seconds he stood
perfectly motionless: then, closing both ears with his fingers and
raising his face toward heaven, he chanted slowly, in high, piercing
accents, solemnly, mournfully, the sacred words which at the same
moment were resounding from every minaret in Africa, Asia, and Europe:
“God is great! there is but one God! Mahomet is his Prophet! Come to
prayer! come and be saved! God is great! there is none other! Come to
prayer!” Then, proceeding a part of the way around the balcony, he
repeated the same words toward the north, then to the west, and then to
the east, and finally disappeared as he had come. At the same instant
we caught the faint far-away tones of a similar voice in the distance,
sounding like some one calling for help. Then all was still, and we
two were left standing motionless and silent, with a vague feeling of
hopelessness, as though those two voices had been addressed solely to
us, calling upon us to fall down and pray, and with the disappearance
of the vision we had been left alone in that still valley, like beings
abandoned by God and man. No tolling or chime of bells has ever
appealed to me so strongly, and I then understood for the first time
why it was that Mahomet decided in favor of the human voice as a means
of summoning the faithful to their devotions, rather than the ancient
trumpet of the Israelites or tymbal of the Christians. He hesitated for
some time before making up his mind, so that the entire Orient narrowly
escaped wearing an aspect totally different from that of the present
day. Had he selected the tymbal, which must inevitably have become a
bell later on, it is very certain that the minaret would have gone, and
with it would have disappeared for ever one of the most charming and
distinctive features of both town and country in the East.