But think what this city must have been in the great days of the
Ottoman glory! I kept thinking of that all the time. How it must have
looked when not a single cloud of smoke arose from the Bosphorus, all
white with sails, to make ugly, black marks against the blue of sky
and water! In the port and the inlets of the Sea of Marmora, among
the picturesque battle-ships of that period with their lofty carved
prows, silver crescents, violet standards, and gilded lanterns,
floated the battered and blood-stained hulks of Spanish, Genoese,
and Venetian galleys. No bridges spanned the Golden Horn, which was
covered with myriads of gayly-decorated boats plying constantly from
one shore to the other, among which could be distinguished afar off
the snowy-white launches of the Seraglio, covered with gold-fringed
scarlet hangings and propelled by rowers dressed in silk. Skutari was
then no more than a village: seen from Galata, she only appeared to
have a few houses scattered about on the hillside; no lofty palaces as
yet reared their heads above the hilltops of Pera; the appearance of
the city was doubtless less impressive than now, but far more Oriental
in character: the law prescribing the use of colors being then in full
force, one could determine accurately the religion of the occupant from
the color of each house. Except for its public and sacred edifices,
which were white as snow, Stambul was entirely red and yellow; the
Armenian quarters were light, and the Greek quarters dark gray; the
Hebrew quarter, purple. As in Holland, the passion for flowers was
universal, so that the gardens were like huge bouquets of hyacinths,
tulips, and roses. The exuberant vegetation not having been as yet
checked on the surrounding hillsides by the growth of new suburbs,
Constantinople presented the appearance of a city built in a forest.
The public thoroughfares were nothing but lanes and alleys, but they
were rendered picturesque by the varied and brilliant crowds which
thronged them. The huge turbans worn by the men lent them all an air
of dignity and importance. The women, with the single exception of the
Sultan’s mother, were so rigorously veiled as to show nothing but the
eyes, and so formed a population apart, anonymous, enigmatical, which
lent to the entire city a certain air of secresy and mystery. Severe
laws controlled the dress of every individual, so that from the shape
of his turban or color of his caftan one could tell the precise rank,
occupation, office, or condition of every one he met, as though the
city had been one great court. The horse being as yet almost “man’s
only coach,” thousands of cavaliers filled the crowded streets, while
long files of camels and dromedaries belonging to the army traversed
the city in all directions, giving it something of the savage and
imposing air of an ancient Asiatic metropolis. Gilded arabas, drawn
by oxen, passed carriages hung with the green cloth of the _ulemi_ or
scarlet cloth of the _kâdi-aschieri_, and light _talike_ hung with
satin and fantastically painted. Troops of slaves marched along,
representing every country from Polonia to Ethiopia, clanking the
chains riveted on them in the field of battle. On the street-corners,
in the squares and the courtyards of the mosques, groups of soldiers
collected, clad in glorious rags, displaying their battered arms and
scars still fresh from wounds received at Vienna, Belgrade, Rodi,
and Damascus. Hundreds of orators recounted to rapt and enthusiastic
audiences the heroic deeds and brilliant victories achieved by the
army fighting at a distance of three months’ march from Stambul.
Pasha, bey, agha, musselim, numberless dignitaries and personages of
high rank, clad with theatrical display and accompanied by throngs of
attendants, made their way through the crowds, who bowed before them
like grain before the wind. Ambassadors representing every court in
Europe, accompanied by princely retinues, who had come to Stambul to
sue for peace or arrange an alliance, swept by. Caravans laden with
propitiatory gifts from Asiatic and African kings filed slowly along
the principal thoroughfares. Companies of _silidars_ and _spahis_,
haughty and insolent, swaggered by, their sabres stained with the blood
of twenty different nations, while the handsome Greek and Hungarian
Seraglio pages, dressed like little kings, pushed haughtily through the
obsequious multitude, who, recognizing in them the unnatural caprices
of their lord, respected them accordingly. Here and there a trophy of
knotted clubs before some doorway indicated the presence of a corps
of Janissaries, who at that time acted as police in the interior of
the city. Parties of Hebrews would be seen hurrying to the Bosphorus
with the dead bodies of the victims of justice. Every morning a body
would be found in the Baluk Bazâr, lying with the head under the right
armpit, a stone holding in place the sentence affixed to the breast.
Law-breakers to whom summary justice had been meted out would dangle
from a beam or hook in the public highway, while after nightfall one
was liable to stumble over the body of some unfortunate who, after
having his hands and feet pounded with clubs, had been thrown from the
window of the torture-chamber. In the broad light of day merchants,
caught in the act of cheating, would be nailed through the ear to their
own shop-doors, and, there being no law controlling the free right of
sepulture, the work of digging graves and burying the dead was carried
on at all hours and in all places--in the gardens, in the lanes and
open squares, and before the doors of dwellings. The cries of lambs
and sheep could be heard from the courtyards where they were being
slaughtered in sacrifice to Allah on the occasion of a circumcision
or a birth. From time to time a troop of eunuchs, galloping by with
warning cries, would be the signal for a general stampede; the streets
would become deserted; doors and windows fly to, blinds be drawn down,
and an entire neighborhood suddenly assume the look and air of a city
of the dead. Then in long procession files of gorgeously-decorated
coaches filled with the ladies of the imperial harem would pass by,
scattering around them an atmosphere of perfume and laughter. Sometimes
it would happen that an official of the court, making his way through
some thoroughfare, would suddenly encounter six quite ordinary-looking
individuals about to enter a shop, and at that sight grow unaccountably
pale. These six, however, would be the Sultan, four officers of his
court, and an executioner making their rounds from shop to shop in
order to verify the weights and measures.
[Illustration: Interior of Mosque of Ahmed.]
Throughout the whole of the city’s huge body there coursed an
exuberant and feverish life; the treasury overflowed with jewels, the
arsenal with arms, the barracks with soldiers, the caravanseries with
strangers; the slave-market was thronged with merchants and lofty
personages come to inspect the crowds of beautiful slaves. Scholars
pressed to examine the archives of the great mosques; long-winded
viziers prepared for the delectation of future generations the
interminable annals of the Empire; poets, pensioned by the
Seraglio, assembled in the baths, where they sang the imperial loves
and wars; swarms of Bulgarian and Armenian workmen toiled at the
erection of mighty mosques, employing huge blocks of granite and Paros
marble, while by sea, columns from the temples of the Archipelago, and
by land, spoils from the churches of Pesth and Ofen, were brought to
contribute to their splendor. In the harbor a fleet of three hundred
sail made ready to carry terror and dismay to every coast in the
Mediterranean; between Stambul and Adrianapolis companies of falconers
and gamekeepers, to the number of seven thousand, were stationed; and
in the intervals between military uprisings at home, foreign wars, and
conflagrations which would reduce twenty thousand houses to ashes in a
single night, revels would be celebrated, lasting thirty days, in honor
of the representatives of every court in Asia, Africa, and Europe. On
these occasions the glorifications of the Mussulmans degenerated into
folly: sham battles were fought by the Janissaries in the presence of
the Sultan and the court, amid huge _palme di nozze_ laden with birds,
mirrors, and fruits of various kinds, in order to make room for which
walls and houses were ruthlessly destroyed; and processions of lions
and sugar mermaids, borne on horses whose trappings were of silver
damask, and mountains of royal gifts sent from every part of the Empire
and every court in the world; dervishes executed their furious dances,
and bloody massacres of Christian prisoners were followed by public
banquets where ten thousand dishes of _cuscussù_ were served to the
populace; trained elephants and giraffes danced in the Hippodrome,
while bears and wolves, with fireworks tied to their tails, were let
loose among the people; allegorical pantomimes, grotesque masquerades,
wanton dances, fantastic processions, games, comedies, symbolic cars,
rustic dances, followed each other in rapid succession. Little by
little as night descended the festival degenerated into a mad orgy,
and then the lights from five hundred brilliantly illuminated mosques
spread a great aureole of fire over the entire city and announced
to the watching shepherds on the mountain-heights of Asia and the
wayfarers on the Propontis the revels of this new Babylon.
Such was once Stambul, a haughty sultaness, voluptuous, formidable,
wanton, as compared with which the city of to-day is little more than
some weary old queen, peevish and hypochondriacal.