Sultan Mahmoud at his Devotions—Comparative Splendour of Papal,
Austrian, and Turkish Equipages—The Sultan’s Barge or
Caïque—Description of the Sultan—Visit to a Turkish
Lancasterian School—The Dancing Dervishes—Visit from the
Sultan’s Cabinet—The Seraskier and the Capitan Pacha—Humble
Origin of Turkish Dignitaries.
I had slept on shore, and it was rather late before I remembered that it
was Friday (the Moslem Sunday), and that Sultan Mahmoud was to go in
state to mosque at twelve. I hurried down the precipitous street of
Pera, and, as usual, escaping barely with my life from the
Christian-hating dogs of Tophana, embarked in a caique, and made all
speed up the Bosphorus. There is no word in Turkish for faster, but I
was urging on my caikjees by a wave of the hand and the sight of a
bishlik (about the value of a quarter of a dollar), when suddenly a
broadside was fired from the three-decker, “Mahmoudier,” the largest
ship in the world, and to the rigging of every man-of-war in the fleet
through which I was passing, mounted, simultaneously, hundreds of
blood-red flags, filling the air about us like a shower of tulips and
roses. Imagine twenty ships of war, with yards manned, and scarce a line
in their rigging to be seen for the flaunting of colours! The jar of the
guns, thundering in every direction close over us, almost lifted our
light boat out of the water, and the smoke rendered our pilotage between
the ships and among their extending cables rather doubtful. The white
cloud lifted after a few minutes, and, with, the last gun, down went the
flags altogether, announcing that the “Brother of the Sun” had left his
palace.
He had but crossed to the mosque of the small village on the opposite
side of the Bosphorus, and was already at his prayers when I arrived.
His body-guard was drawn up before the door, in their villainous
European dress, and, as their arms were stacked, I presumed it would be
some time before the sultan reappeared, and I improved the interval in
examining the handja-bashes or state-caïques, lying at the landing. I
have arrived at my present notions of equipage by three degrees. The
pope’s carriages at Rome rather astonished me. The emperor of Austria’s
sleighs diminished the pope in my admiration, and the sultan’s caïques,
in their turn, “pale the fires” of the emperor of Austria. The
handja-bash is built something like the ancient galley, very high at the
prow and stem, carries some fifty oars, and has a roof over her poop,
supported by four columns, and loaded with the most sumptuous ornaments,
the whole gilt brilliantly. The prow is curved over, and wreathed into
every possible device that would not affect the necessary lines of the
model; her crew are dressed in the beautiful costume of the country,
rich and flowing, and with the costly and bright-coloured carpets
hanging over her side, and the flashing of the sun on her ornaments of
gold, she is really the most splendid object of state equipage (if I may
be allowed the misnomer) in the world.
I was still examining the principal barge, when the troops stood to
their arms, and preparation was made for the passing out of the sultan.
Thirty or forty of his highest military officers formed themselves into
two lines from the door of the mosque to the landing, and behind them
were drawn up single files of soldiers. I took advantage of the respect
paid to the rank of Commodore Patterson, and obtained an excellent
position, with him, at the side of the caique. First issued from the
door two Georgian slaves, bearing censers, from which they waved the
smoke on either side, and the sultan immediately followed, supported by
the capitan-pacha, the seraskier, and Haleil Pacha (who is to marry the
Sultana Esmeh). He walked slowly down to the landing, smiling and
talking gaily with the seraskier, and, bowing to the commodore in
passing, stepped into his barge, seated himself on a raised sofa, while
his attendants coiled their legs on the carpet below, and turned his
prow across the Bosphorus.
I have perhaps never set my eyes on a handsomer man than Sultan Mahmoud.
His figure is tall, straight, and manly, his air unembarrassed and
dignified, and his step indicative of the well-known firmness of his
character. A superb beard of jetty blackness, with a curling moustache,
conceals all the lower part of his face; the decided and bold lines of
his mouth just marking themselves when he speaks. It is said he both
paints and dyes his beard, but a manlier brown upon a cheek, or a richer
gloss upon a beard, I never saw. His eye is described by writers as
having a _doomed darkness_ of expression, and it is certainly one that
would well become a chief of bandits—large, steady, and overhung with
an eyebrow like a thunder cloud. He looks the monarch. The child of a
seraglio (where mothers are chosen for beauty alone) could scarce escape
being handsome. The blood of Circassian upon Circassian is in his veins,
and the wonder is, not that he is the handsomest man in his empire, but
that he is not the greatest slave. Our “mother’s humour,” they say,
predominates in our mixtures. Sultan Mahmoud, however, was marked by
nature for a throne.
I accompanied Mr. Goodell and Mr. Dwight, American missionaries at
Constantinople, to visit a Lancasterian school established with their
assistance in the Turkish barracks. The building stands on the ascent of
one of the lovely valleys that open into the Bosphorus, some three miles
from the city, on the European side. We were received by the colonel of
the regiment; a young man of fine appearance, with the diamond crescent
and star glittering on the breast of his military frock, and after the
inevitable compliment of pipes and coffee, the drum was beat and the
soldiers called to school.
The Sultan has an army of boys. Nine-tenths of those I have seen are
under twenty. They marched in, in single file, and facing about, held up
their hands at the word of command, while a subaltern looked that each
had performed the morning ablution. They were healthy-looking lads,
mostly from the interior provinces, whence they are driven down likes
cattle to fill the ranks of their sovereign. Duller-looking subjects for
an idea it has not been my fortune to see.
The Turkish alphabet hung over the teacher’s desk (the colonel is the
schoolmaster, and takes the greatest interest in his occupation), and
the front seats are faced with a long box covered with sand, in which
the beginners write with their fingers. It is fitted with a slide that
erases the clumsy imitation when completed, and seemed to me an
ingenious economy of ink and paper. (I would suggest to the mind of the
benevolent, a school on the same principle for beginners in poetry. It
would save the critics much murder, and tend to the suppression of
suicide.) The classes having filed into their seats, the school opened
with a prayer by the colonel. The higher benches then commenced writing,
on slates and paper, sentences dictated from the desk, and I was
somewhat surprised at the neatness and beauty of the characters.
We passed afterward into another room where arithmetic and geography
were taught, and then mounted to an apartment on the second story
occupied by students in military drawing. The proficiency of all was
most creditable, considering the brief period during which the schools
have been in operation—something less than a year. Prejudiced as the
Turks are against European innovation, this advanced step towards
improvement tells well. Our estimable and useful missionaries appear,
from the respect everywhere shown them, to be in high esteem, and with
the Sultan’s energetic disposition for reform, they hope everything in
the way of an enlightened change in the moral condition of the people.
* * * * *
We went to the chapel of the dancing dervishes. It is a beautiful marble
building, with a court-yard ornamented with a small cemetery shaded with
cypresses, and a fountain enclosed in a handsome edifice, and defended
by gilt gratings from the street of the suburb of Pera, in which it
stands. They dance here twice a week. We arrived before the hour, and
were detained at the door by a soldier on guard, who would not permit us
to enter without taking off our boots—a matter about which, between
straps and their very muddy condition, we had some debate. The dervishes
began to arrive before the question was settled, and one of them, a
fine-looking old man, inviting us to enter, Mr. H. explained the
difficulty. “Go in,” said he, “go in!” and turning to the more
scrupulous Mussulman with the musket, as he pushed us within the door,
“Stupid fellow!” said he, “if you had been less obstinate, they would
have given you a _bakshish_” (Turkish for a _fee_). He should have said
less _religious_—for the poor fellow looked horror-struck as our dirty
boots profaned the clean white Persian matting of the sacred floor. One
would think “the nearer the church the farther from God,” were as true
here as it is said to be in some more civilised countries.
It was a pretty, octagonal interior, with a gallery, the _mihrab_ or
niche indicating the direction of the prophet’s tomb, standing obliquely
from the front of the building. Hundreds of small lamps hung in the
area, just out of the reach of the dervishes’ tall caps, and all around
between the gallery; a part of the floor was raised, matted, and divided
from the body of the church by a balustrade. It would have made an
exceedingly pretty ball-room.
None but the dervishes entered within the paling, and they soon began to
enter, each advancing first toward the mihrab, and going through fifteen
or twenty minutes’ prostrations and prayers. Their dress is very humble.
A high, white felt cap, without a rim, like a sugar-loaf enlarged a
little at the smaller end, protects the head, and a long dress of
dirt-coloured cloth, reaching quite to the heels and bound at the waist
with a girdle, completes the costume. They look like men who have made
up their minds to _seem_ religious, and though said to be a set of very
good fellows, they have a Mawworm expression of face generally, which
was very repulsive. I must except the chief of the sect, however, who
entered when all the rest had seated themselves on the floor, and after
a brief genuflexion or two took possession of a rich Angora carpet
placed for him near the mihrab. He was a small old man, distinguished in
his dress only by the addition of a green band to his cap (the sign of
his pilgrimage to Mecca) and the entire absence of the sanctimonious
look. Still he was serious, and there was no mark in his clear,
intelligent eye and amiable features, of any hesitancy or want of
sincerity in his devotion. He is said to be a learned man, and he is
certainly a very prepossessing one, though he would be taken up as a
beggar in any city in the United States. It is a thing one learns in
“dangling about the world,” by the way, to form opinions of men quite
independently of their dress.
After sitting a while in quaker meditation, the brotherhood rose one by
one (there were ten of them I think), and marched round the room with
their toes turned in, to the music of a drum and a Persian flute, played
invisibly in some part of the gallery. As they passed the carpet of the
cross-legged chief, they twisted dexterously and made three salaams, and
then raising their arms, which they held out straight during the whole
dance, they commenced twirling on one foot, using the other after the
manner of a paddle to keep up the motion. I forgot to mention that they
laid aside their outer dresses before commencing the dance. They
remained in dirty white tunics reaching to the floor, and very full at
the bottom, so that with the regular motion of their whirl, the wind
blew them out into a circle, like what the girls in our country call
“making cheeses.” They twisted with surprising exactness and rapidity,
keeping clear of each other, and maintaining their places with the
regularity of machines. I have seen a great deal of waltzing, but I
think the dancing dervishes for precision and spirit, might give a
lesson even to the Germans.
We left them twisting. They had been going for half an hour, and it
began to look very like perpetual motion. Unless their brains are
addled, their devotion, during this dizzy performance at least, must be
quite suspended. A man who could think of his Maker, while revolving so
fast that his nose is indistinct, must have some power of abstraction.
* * * * *
The frigate was visited to-day by the sultan’s cabinet. The _seraskier
pacha_ came alongside first, in his state caique, and embraced the
commodore as he stepped upon the deck, with great cordiality. He is a
short, fat old man, with a snow-white beard, and so bow-legged as to be
quite deformed. He wore the red Fez cap of the army, with a long blue
frock-coat, the collar so tight as nearly to choke him, and the body not
shaped to the figure, but made to fall around him like a sack. The red,
bloated skin of his neck fell over, so as to almost cover the gold with
which the collar was embroidered. He was formerly capitan pacha, or
admiral-in-chief of the fleet, and though a good-humoured, merry-looking
old man, has shown himself, both in his former and present capacity, to
be wily, cold, and a butcher in cruelty. He possesses unlimited
influence over the sultan, and though nominally subordinate to the grand
vizier, is really the second if not the first person in the empire. He
was originally a Georgian slave.
The seraskier was still talking with the commodore in the gangway, when
the present capitan pacha mounted the ladder, and the old man, who is
understood to be at feud with his successor, turned abruptly away and
walked aft. The capitan pacha is a tall, slender man, of precisely that
look and manner which we call gentlemanly. His beard grows untrimmed in
the Turkish fashion, and is slightly touched with gray. His eye is
anxious, but resolute, and he looks like a man of resource and ability.
His history is as singular as that of most other great men in Turkey. He
was a slave of Mohammed Ali, the rebellious Pacha of Egypt. Being
intrusted by his master with a brig and cargo for Leghorn, he sold the
vessel and lading, lived like a gentleman in Italy for some years with
the proceeds, and as the best security against the retribution of his
old master, offered his services to the sultan, with whom Ali was just
commencing hostilities. Naval talent was in request, and he soon arrived
at his present dignity. He is said to be the only officer in the fleet
who knows anything of his profession.
Haleil Pacha arrived last. The sultan’s future son-in-law is a man of
perhaps thirty-five. He is light-complexioned, stout, round-faced, and
looks like a respectable grocer, “well to do in the world.” He has
commanded the artillery long enough to have acquired a certain air of
ease and command, and carries the promise of good fortune in his
confident features. He is to be married almost immediately. He, too, was
a Georgian, sent as a present to the sultan.
The three dignitaries made the rounds of the ship and then entered the
cabin, where the pianoforte (a novelty to the seraskier and Haleil
Pacha, and to most of the attendant officers), and the commodore’s
agreeable society and champagne, promised to detain them the remainder
of the day. They were like children with a holiday. I was engaged to
dine on shore, and left them aboard.
In a country where there is no education and no rank, except in the
possession of present power, it is not surprising that men should rise
from the lowest class to the highest offices, or that they should fill
those offices to the satisfaction of the sultan. Yet it is curious to
hear their histories. An English physician, who is frequently called
into the seraglio, and whose practice among all the families in power
gives him the best means of information, has entertained me not a little
with these secrets. I shall make use of them when I have more leisure,
merely mentioning here, in connexion with the above accounts, that the
present grand vizier was a boatman on the Bosphorus, and the commander
of the sultan’s body-guard, a shoemaker. The latter still employs all
his leisure in making slippers, which he presents to the sultan and his
friends, not at all ashamed of his former vocation. So far, indeed, are
any of these mushroom officers from blushing at their origin, that it is
common to prefix the name of their profession to the title of pacha, and
they are addressed by it as a proper name. This is one respect in which
their European education will refine them to their disadvantage.
* * * * *
* * * * *