TURKISH TRAITS: II
Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart,
Undone by goodness! Strange, unusual blood,
When man’s worst sin is, he does too much good.
SHAKESPEARE, _Timon of Athens_
THE conditions of life under an autocracy naturally tend towards a sense
of loyalty degenerating into adulation and servility on the part of
public servants, as well as towards greed and corruption on the part of
those whose high position places endless opportunities for dishonesty
within their reach.
To estimate the character of the Turk, therefore, by the corruption at
the Palace would not be fair to him. As well might we ourselves be
judged by the wiles of the company promoter or the outside broker in the
City of London. For despotism, however well intentioned, offers a
similar field of operations for the dishonest; only the thousands who
are annually robbed and ruined in the City of London, and the doings of
the vultures who rob them, are not nearly so much in the public eye as
the rogueries of the influential parasites in Turkey.
Strange it is that side by side with despotic authority and its
narrowing effect on the development of character there should still
exist an extraordinary appreciation of personal worth, intellectual and
moral. You will never hear a Turk refer to a man as being rich, or as
being “worth so much.” All the time I spent among them I never once knew
a Turk single out such qualifications as worthy of remark. A man’s value
lies in his character. Thus he is “instruit, fidèle, un homme qui a
rendu de grands services et en rendra encore.” Neghib Bey, a dark-eyed
Syrian, exclaims: “Speak not to me of politicians, nor of men of wealth.
I am ready to make use of them, but they do not otherwise attract me.
Rather let me meet those of high thought, of talent, of genius, men with
ideals. To obtain such as friends and to resemble them would be my
ambition.”
The greatest stress is laid upon the fidelity of those who have shown
themselves to be true. When a deserving person received a reward a
common remark would be: “Yes, he has received a favour of His Majesty,
but he well deserves it.” Instead of being envious when he sees a friend
distinguished above him, the Turk rejoices in the exaltation of that
friend. It has come under my notice more than once that when somebody
received a distinction from the Sultan his friends were pleased, and
said even exultingly to him: “You will obtain yet higher recognition,
because you deserve it (parce que vous l’avez mérité).” It is ever a
recurring reference to what you have done and for which you should be
richly rewarded.
Great is the gratitude of the Turk for sympathy shown to him.
Partisanship he does not look for. The most that he hopes for is freedom
from prejudice and fairness towards his race and his religion. Should
the stranger go so far as to betray a partiality for his country, a
liking free from the suspicion of its being quickened by an expectation
of baksheesh, his satisfaction is as genuine as it is spontaneous. A
Frenchman is astonished if the stranger does not admire everything
French; the Englishman is apt to be disdainful if the foreigner does not
immediately admit the superiority of everything English. The Turk is
more modest and self-restrained, and he is thankful if his feelings are
not hurt by the “Frank.”
His appreciation is apt to show itself in the smallest matters. One day,
as I was about to go to the bazaar to buy a present, Ahmed Midhat
offered to let one of his uniformed officials accompany me. This, said
he, would ensure my being treated fairly by the Mohammedan traders. On
going round that part of the bazaar known as “Bezestan,” mostly tenanted
by Mohammedans, I stopped before a stall belonging to a magnificent type
of Turk. He might have been an Assyrian king as far as appearance and
dignity of manner went. He sat, with legs crossed, perched up on high,
immediately behind his show-case of curios—old watches and silver and
gold bric-à-brac of all sorts. I pointed to a riding whip made of
rhinoceros horn, mounted in gold, and asked the price. The answer my
companion got was, “Tell your friend that it is the work of the Frank”
(European workmanship), implying thereby inferiority in quality. He had
been informed by the official accompanying me that, as I was a friend of
the Osmanli, he was to treat me as one of themselves. Thus he did not
want me to purchase an inferior article, even though he would have made
a profit by selling it to me.
The Turk holds in grateful memory the names of those foreigners who have
rendered Turkey unselfish service, even though it be generations ago. Of
Englishmen, Hobart Pasha is still remembered; of Germans, Moltke. More
remarkable still, a Vienna doctor, Professor Riedler, who organized the
School of Medicine at Constantinople as far back as the reign of Sultan
Mahmoud, more than eighty years ago, is to this day held in honour by
the Turks, and this in an age of kaleidoscopic changes and short
memories!
The genuine spirit of hospitality of the Turks, the noble traditions of
which have come down to us through the Arabs, together with their
chivalry, has long been recognized, in spite of the fanaticism of
Christian detractors. The lavish hospitality to be found in Spain is
perhaps traceable to a common Arabian origin; for it is significantly
absent as a distinctive trait among all the other branches of the
so-called Latin races. Its most remarkable feature is the custom, when a
visitor expresses admiration for an object belonging to his host, of
immediately offering it to him. This still obtains in Spain, and is to
be met with, as I have myself experienced, in distant Kurdistan.
But it is not among those who have gold and silver to dispose of that
Turkish hospitality or other Turkish qualities can be tested. What
really constitutes the most interesting feature of Turkish character is
that these virtues are to be seen practised among the humblest classes.
Thus, whereas Emerson’s renowned treatise on “English Traits” deals
almost exclusively with types of character observed among the well-born,
no study of Turkish character could be complete, or, in fact, of any
value, which did not deal with the characteristics which are to be found
throughout the broad strata of the Mussulman population. Writers of
Emerson’s spirit deal with the apex of a pyramid; he who deals with the
Turks must treat of its broad base—the great mass of the Turkish
population, which alone adequately reflects the many excellent qualities
of the Mohammedan world.
There is ample evidence that the Turks in their prime, notably when they
became the conquerors of Constantinople and overthrew the corrupt
Byzantine Empire, felt contempt for the Christians they came across.
Thus, when the arrival of the Ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire was
signalled at the Sublime Porte, the answer came, “Let the _giaour_ be
admitted”; and when, after his audience, the illustrious person was
dismissed by the Grand Vizier, it might even happen that he would be
pelted with eggs by the crowd. But there was more of good-natured
contempt than of animosity in this treatment. Of intolerance to the
Christian faith there was none at this period. Not only the Christian
but the Jewish population lived free and unmolested in Constantinople.
The tolerance which the Jews have always enjoyed in Turkey is well
known. At the time when they were being burnt at the stake in the public
square in the town of Valladolid in Spain, Jewish overseers were deputed
by the Jewish community in Constantinople to sit in the public
bakehouses and see that the bread which was baked for Jewish consumption
was prepared according to Jewish rites. Individual Jews were even
permitted by the authorities to exercise a kind of police supervision
over the Turks themselves at a time when their co-religionists were
being exterminated like vermin in some Christian countries. Under Sultan
Suleyman, one of the most influential of Turkish Ministers of Foreign
Affairs was a Christian, Ludovico Gritti, a son of Andrea Gritti, the
Doge of Venice. Sultan Suleyman even went so far as to have his portrait
painted by a Christian, Melchior Lorenz, an inhabitant of Flensburg. One
of the men most honoured by Sultan Mohammed Fatè, the conqueror of
Constantinople, was again a Christian, an Italian of the name of Gentil
Gellini, who was treated by the Turkish monarch with the greatest
distinction. When subsequently war broke out between Venice and Turkey,
the Sultan commissioned Gellini to take back to Venice the body of
Enrico Dandolo, a former Doge, the first conqueror of Constantinople,
during the Fourth Crusade, whose sarcophagus was found in the Church of
Saint Sophia. Even the outbreak of war and all the supposed fanaticism
of the Turks did not prevent a Turkish Sultan from pursuing a course of
conduct which, even after five centuries, would be looked upon as an
exceptionally chivalrous action among Christians.
When I was in Salonica there was no virulent Turkish Press to hound on
the Turks against the Greeks, although a large proportion of the
inhabitants in Salonica, albeit Turkish subjects, were Greeks in open
sympathy with the Greek cause, even joining Greek committees, an act of
high treason—in every country but Turkey. Nor did the Greeks take any
trouble to hide this feeling, poring over the Greek newspapers in public
as they arrived day by day. Yet no signs of popular resentment were
visible during my stay on the part either of the populace or of the
soldiery. The same passive toleration was to be observed in
Constantinople, where the narrow streets leading to the French Consulate
in Pera were crowded with Greeks seeking to obtain the protection of the
French Embassy. They were not molested in any way. This might, perhaps,
seem to be a matter of course, if we were not reminded of what happened
to the Germans in Paris at the outbreak of the war in 1870.
How little is known of the record of the Turks in offering shelter to
the oppressed of other races! Who was it that sheltered the Hungarian
revolutionists who, when captured, were hanged or imprisoned? Is it not
an historical fact established beyond question that a Sultan of Turkey
risked war with Austria and Russia combined rather than break the sacred
laws of hospitality of Mohammed, and surrender the Hungarian leaders
Kossuth, Görgey, and many others? How do these facts, I ask, tally with
the slander heaped upon the Turkish people and their rulers?
In no country in Europe are there so many foreigners, both as regards
nationality and religion, as in Turkey, and nowhere else would aliens
have a chance of such careers as some of them have made there. And yet I
never came across any signs of Turkish jealousy. I have heard Turks
speak with the highest respect of individual foreigners whom the Sultan
had loaded with favours, but who at least had shown gratitude and
attachment to the interests of their adopted country. We have only to
think of the Dutch crew of adventurers who came over with William III
from Holland to find an analogy, and compare the sentiments of the
English towards them with those of the Turks towards foreigners in high
place and pay in Turkey to illustrate even more closely the generosity
of the Turks, and how far they can go in their tolerance of an alien
element. Such favouring of the foreigner, even if it could exist in
other countries, would inevitably evoke intense jealousy and intrigue on
the part of the natives.
Speaking of a foreign pasha noted for his bumptious arrogance, and
referring to some of his countrymen, a high-placed Turk said to me: “Que
voulez-vous, mon cher? On les tolère.” But whatever the Turks may feel,
they have never shown it by malevolence towards foreigners who were in
the employ of their Government.
Many Turkish Ambassadors abroad have at different times been Christians.
The Turkish Ambassador in Berlin some years ago was a Greek, who, mainly
through his position as Ambassador, was enabled to make a rich marriage.
Far from feeling any gratitude to the Turkish Government for his career,
he left his private fortune to some Greek institution at Athens,
although at that particular moment Greece was meditating war against
Turkey.
We have had of late years only too many instances of Christian ministers
lending themselves to denunciation and depreciation of the Moslem. I
have gleaned from the lips of missionaries, and their wives more rabid
than themselves, both in Macedonia and in Asia, how ignorant prejudice
can blind the understanding. A pathetic instance of this, verging on
imbecility, is to be found in a book written by an Englishwoman which
circulates in the Tauchnitz Collection of British authors, entitled
“Diary of an Idle Woman in Constantinople.”[27] In relating that she had
seen a eunuch at the Selamlik with the Sultan’s ladies, she exclaims:
“He was a fat giant, a wretch.” Why a poor devil who has been deprived
of manhood should be a “wretch” the ingenuous authoress does not
explain. Yet, so far as my experience goes, a good deal of what has been
written in disparagement of the Turks has no better logical foundation
than this exclamation. For all that, there can be no doubt that this
eunuch abomination is a feature of Turkish life which has always created
a strong prejudice in the Christian world against the Mohammedans. Hence
it is not without interest to emphasize once for all that this unnatural
institution is not of Mohammedan origin at all, but, as well as every
other kind of human mutilation, is strictly forbidden by the Koran.
Eunuchs were a common feature in antiquity, and in spite of the efforts
of both Constantine the Great and the Emperor Justinian to do away with
them they were quite common among the “good” Christians of the Byzantine
Empire. Even at the present day the eunuchs in Constantinople—who, by
the way, are only to be found in the household of the Sultan and of a
few wealthy pashas—are supplied from the Christian monasteries of the
East, notably those of Abyssinia.
Footnote 27:
Vol. 2921, p. 320.
Is it to be wondered at that people nurtured on misleading data can
scarcely be brought to believe that there is less crime in Turkey than
in almost any other country; that the punishment for crime is far more
lenient than in most countries; that the deposed Sultan was never known
to sign a death-warrant; and that the Mohammedan Turks, as distinct from
the Christian inhabitants of the Levant, are so kind to animals of every
variety, beast or bird, that a Society for the Protection of Animals,
however vigilant, would find its occupation gone in Turkey?
The Turk’s kindness to the dogs of the capital, since exterminated, is
well known, as is also his kind treatment of horses. The beneficent
results of this can be witnessed by the visitor to Constantinople when
he sees saddled horses standing, free and unfettered, for hours by the
kerbstone waiting to be hired, as docile as dogs, without anybody
looking after or controlling them.
One of the favourite sports of the Christian Levantine population in
Turkey is to shoot all kinds of singing birds, which are served up in
restaurants in the Turkish national dish, pilaf. Any day in the autumn
one can see crowds of doughty Christian Nimrods, armed with guns, going
out in quest of the lark and the throstle, but never a Mohammedan Turk.
This sight is a disgusting one to all lovers of nature, and when I was
last in Constantinople the wife of the German Ambassador availed herself
of the opportunity of an audience with the Sultan to intercede for the
little songsters, asking His Majesty to issue an Iradè that they should
not be exterminated.
If procrastination and dilatory methods of business are sometimes
calculated to bring a highly strung European or American to despair in
Turkey, patience and forbearance and long-suffering, on the other hand,
rise with the Turks to the dignity of virtues. Rarely are these virtues
more striking than in connexion with the calumny to which the Turk is
continually subjected. Mehmet Izzet said to me, in the midst of a storm
of invective let loose by the English Press upon the Turks: “Mon cher,
nous sommes un peuple taciturne, nous ne pouvons pas nous défendre.”
One day I was present at the Palace when an elderly man was engaged in
earnest conversation with Izzet Pasha, the Second Secretary of the
Sultan, supposed to be the most influential, as well as the most
unscrupulous, man in Turkey. As the conversation was in Turkish I could
not follow it, but the tone of supplication of the visitor was so marked
that it made me think it must be a question of imploring mercy for some
serious delinquency. So I ventured to say: “My dear Pasha, I hope you
will be merciful to that poor fellow.” “Mon cher,” he replied, “the fact
of the matter is that he is Governor of Jerusalem, and he wants me to
get him a better appointment. We are old school-fellows, and I would
like to oblige him, but it is quite beyond my power to do so in this
instance.”
Ample contact with the Turks in all manner of positions in life has
convinced me that many of the wicked stories circulated about them have
no better foundation in fact than the supposition involved in the above
incident, of which I was an eye-witness.
* * * * *
Those who are acquainted with the character of Turkish women cannot
speak too highly of their kindness of heart and their devotion to their
children. During the Armenian massacres there were many instances of
Armenians who sought refuge in the harem, and were saved by the
interposition of Turkish women. This is all the more noteworthy since in
other countries, notably those of Latin race, in times of great
political excitement the women—as was the case with the Paris Commune in
1871—are often far more ferocious than the men. But here, among the
Mohammedan women, mercy was to be met with—
No ceremony that to great ones ’longs,
Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,
Become them with one-half so good a grace
As mercy does.[28]
Footnote 28:
Shakespeare: “Measure for Measure,” II. 2.
The stranger, whatever his opportunities, only comes into contact with
one-half of the Mohammedan population; the other is barred from his
observation, from his very sight. In the course of all my visits to
Turkey I never had an opportunity of approaching a Turkish woman within
speaking distance. Even when I visited Ahmed Midhat, at his patriarchal
residence at Beikos on the Bosphorus, in spite of our intimacy I saw no
woman, though it was a large family gathering.
Avellis was my principal source of information regarding Turkish women,
as he now and again was admitted to the harem in connexion with his
calling. He often spoke to me of the distinction and the kindliness of
the Turkish lady. But their graceful bearing was easily observable as
they alighted from their carriages to shop in the Grande Rue de Pera.
Their costumes—the quality of the rich silks of dark hues of blue or
purple—were all noticeable, and indicative of good taste. Never have I
seen a gaudily attired Turkish lady.
Only once was I privileged to obtain an idea of the impulsive kindness
of their hearts. It was one afternoon at Scutari, when I went with
Avellis and two ladies to visit the English cemetery. A closed carriage
passed us, which, to judge by the richly gilt harness and the striking
uniform of the menservants, evidently belonged to some high-placed Turk.
Not until the third time it passed us did it attract our attention, when
our two ladies had separated from us and had gone a little ahead. Then
we saw all on a sudden two veiled faces lean out of the carriage and
kiss their hands to the beautiful English-woman with auburn hair and
angel face. Never am I likely to forget this incident, since she who was
thus distinguished by high-bred Turkish ladies was the mother of my
children.
A feeling of clannish affection for their family is said to be
especially strong among Turkish women. It shows itself in their lasting
attachment to their family long after they have left their homes and
been separated from their kith and kin. For many of the women of the
Imperial harem and of those of the great dignitaries of State come from
the interior of Asia Minor, and are of lowly origin. Yet they keep up a
regular communication with their relations in distant parts of the
Empire, and are often the means of bringing these relations to
Constantinople, where they are now and then given good appointments.
Hassan Bey, the Circassian who assassinated Hussein Avni Pasha, the
Minister of War, in open Council (June 15, 1876), was a brother of the
favourite mistress of Sultan Abdul Aziz, whose death he wanted to
avenge.
A certain primitive simplicity in the Mohammedan character—not the least
of its attractions—is pointedly illustrated by the following incidents
drawn from Mohammed’s life, for which, as for so much else in these
pages, I am indebted to my deceased friend Ahmed Midhat.
In his early days Mohammed belonged to a humble sphere of life. At the
age of twenty-four he married the widow of a rich merchant in whose
employ he had been in a subordinate capacity. He remained devotedly
attached to her, although she was sixteen years his senior. Only after
her death did he marry again; but his thoughts would still revert to the
one he had lost and to whom he owed his rise in the world. This excited
the jealousy of his second wife, with whom otherwise he lived most
happily. One day she pressed him to assure her that she was as dear to
him as his first wife had been. “I love you dearly,” Mohammed replied,
“but do not ask me to say that I love you as much as Chadidja, for she
was the first human being to believe in me.” It was only after his first
wife’s death that Mohammed, at the age of forty, really came forward and
proclaimed himself a leader of men with a divine mission.
It is related of Mohammed that when he felt his end approaching he
summoned his followers around him, and, being still possessed of
sufficient strength to address them, told them that he knew his days
were numbered, and he wished to ask whether there was anyone present who
could say that he had done him a wrong; if so, he was ready to crave his
forgiveness. They replied with one voice that Mohammed had been their
friend and benefactor and that he had wronged no man. Then someone got
up and said he had a claim against him. On a certain occasion he had
been present when a beggar had solicited alms of Mohammed, who,
apparently having no money with him, had borrowed a drachma of the
speaker to give to the beggar. This drachma Mohammed had omitted to
return to him. Such, we are told, was the slight record of wrong and
indebtedness of the founder of a religion which hundreds, aye thousands,
of millions of human beings have professed in life and have adhered to
until their last breath.
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