Scutari—Tomb of the Sultana Valide—Mosque of the Howling
Dervishes—A Clerical Shoemaker—Visit to a Turkish
Cemetery—Bird’s-Eye View of Stamboul and its
Environs—Seraglio-Point—The Seven Towers.
Pulled over to Scutari in a caique, for a day’s ramble. The Chrysopolis,
the “golden city” of the ancients, forms the Asian side of the bay, and
though reckoned, generally, as a part of Constantinople, is in itself a
large and populous capital. It is built on a hill, very bold upon the
side washed by the sea of Marmora, but leaning toward the seraglio, on
the opposite shore, with the grace of a lady (Asia) bowing to her
partner (Europe). You will find the simile very beautifully elaborated
in the first chapter of “The Armenians.”
We strolled through the bazaar awhile, meeting, occasionally, a caravan
of tired and dusty merchants, coming in from Asia, some with Syrian
horses, and some with dusky Nubian slaves, following barefoot, in their
blankets; and, emerging from the crowded street upon a square, we
stopped a moment to look at the cemetery and gilded fountains of a noble
mosque. Close to the street, defended by a railing of gilt iron, and
planted about closely with cypresses, stands a small temple of airy
architecture, supported on four slender columns, and enclosed by a net
of gilt wire, forming a spacious aviary. Within sleeps the Sultana
Valide. Her costly monument, elaborately inscribed in red and gold,
occupies the area of this poetical sepulchre; small, sweet-scented
shrubs half bury it in their rich flowers, and birds of the gayest
plumage flutter and sing above her in their beautiful prison. If the
soul of the departed Sultana is still susceptible of sentiment, she must
look down with some complacency upon the disposition of her “mortal
coil.” I have not seen so fanciful a grave in my travels.
We ascended the hill to the mosque of the Howling Dervishes. It stands
in the edge of the great cemetery of Scutari, the favourite burial-place
of the Turks. The self-torturing worship of this singular class of
devotees takes place only on a certain day of the week, and we found the
gates closed. A small café stood opposite, sheltered by large
plane-trees, and on a bench at the door sat a dervish, employed in the
unclerical vocation of mending slippers. Calling for a cup of the
fragrant Turkish coffee, we seated ourselves on the matted bench beside
him, and, entering into conversation, my friend and he were soon upon
the most courteous terms. He laid down his last, and accepted a
proffered narghilé, and, between the heavily-drawn puff’s of the
bubbling vase, gave us some information respecting his order, of which
the peculiarity that most struck me was a law compelling them to follow
some secular profession. In this point, at least, they are more
apostolic than the clergy of Christendom. Whatever may be the dervish’s
excellence as a “mender of souls,” thought I, as I took up the last, and
looked at the stitching of the bright new patch, (may I get well out of
this sentence without a pun!) I doubt whether there is a divine within
the Christian pale who could turn out so pretty a piece of work in any
corresponding calling. Our coffee drunk and our chibouques smoked to
ashes, we took leave of our papoosh-mending friend, who laid his hand on
his breast, and said, with the expressive phraseology of the East, “You
shall be welcome again.”
We entered the gloomy shadow of the vast cemetery, and found its cool
and damp air a grateful exchange for the sunshine. The author of
“Anastasius” gives a very graphic description of this place, throwing in
some horrors, however, for which he is indebted to his admirable
imagination. I never was in a more agreeable place for a
summer-morning’s lounge, and, as I sat down on a turbaned headstone,
near the tomb of Mohammed the Second’s horse, and indulged in a train of
reflections arising from the superior distinction of the brute’s ashes
over those of his master, I could remember no place, except Plato’s
Academy at Athens, where I had mused so absolutely at my ease.
We strolled on. A slender and elegantly-carved slab, capped with a small
turban, fretted and gilt, arrested my attention. “It is the tomb,” said
my companion, “of one of the ichoglans or sultan’s pages. The peculiar
turban is distinctive of his rank, and the inscription says, he died at
eighteen, after having seen enough of the world! Similar sentiments are
to be found on almost every stone. Close by stood the ambitious cenotaph
of a former pacha of Widin, with a swollen turban, crossed with folds of
gold, and a footstone painted and carved, only less gorgeously than the
other; and under his name and titles was written, “I enjoyed not the
world.” Farther on, we stopped at the black-banded turban of a cadi, and
read again, underneath, “I took no pleasure in this evil world.” You
would think the Turks a philosophising people, judging by these
posthumous declarations; but one need not travel to learn that
tombstones are sad liars.
The cemetery of Scutari covers as much ground as a city. Its black
cypress pall spreads away over hill and dale, and terminates, at last,
on a long point projecting into Marmora, as if it would pour into the
sea the dead it could no longer cover. From the Armenian village,
immediately above, it forms a dark, and not unpicturesque foreground to
a brilliant picture of the gulf of Nicomedia and the clustering Princes’
Islands. With the economy of room which the Turks practise in their
burying-grounds, laying the dead, literally, side by side, and the
immense extent of this forest of cypresses, it is probable that on no
one spot on the earth are so many of the human race gathered together.
We wandered about among the tombs till we began to desire to see the
cheerful light of day, and crossing toward the height of Bulgurlu,
commenced its ascent, with the design of descending by the other side to
the Bosphorus, and returning, by caique, to the city. Walking leisurely
on between fields of the brightest cultivation, we passed, half way up,
a small and rural serai, the summer residence of Esmeh Sultana, the
younger sister of the sultan, and soon after stood, well breathed, on
the lofty summit of Bulgurlu. The constantly-occurring sairgahs, or
small grass platforms, for spreading the carpet and “taking kaif,” show
how well the Turks appreciate the advantages of a position commanding,
perhaps, views unparalleled in the world for their extraordinary beauty.
But let us take breath and look around us.
We stood some three miles back from the Bosphorus, perhaps a thousand
feet above its level. There lay Constantinople! The “temptation of
Satan” could not have been more sublime. It seemed as if all the
“kingdoms of the earth” were swept confusedly to the borders of the two
continents. From Seraglio Point, seven miles down the coast of Roumelia,
the eye followed a continued wall; and from the same point, twenty miles
up the Bosphorus, on either shore, stretched one crowded and unbroken
city! The star-shaped bay in the midst, crowded with flying boats; the
Golden Horn sweeping out from behind the hills, and pouring through the
city like a broad river, studded with ships; and, in the palace-lined
and hill-sheltered Bosphorus, the sultan’s fleet at anchor, the lofty
men-of-war flaunting their blood-red flags, and thrusting their tapering
spars almost into the balconies of the fairy dwellings, and among the
bright foliage of the terraced gardens above them. Could a scene be more
strangely and beautifully mingled?
But sit down upon this silky grass, and let us listen to my polyglot
friend, while he explains the details of the panorama.
First, clear over the sea of Marmora, you observe a snow-white cloud
resting on the edge of the horizon. That is Olympus. Within sight of his
snowy summit, and along toward the extremity of this long line of
eastern hills, lie Bithynia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, and the
whole scene of the apostles’ travels in Asia Minor; and just at his
feet, if you will condescend to be modern, lies Brusa, famous for its
silks, and one of the most populous and thriving of the sultan’s cities.
Returning over Marmora by the Princes’ Islands, at the western extremity
of Constantinople, stands the Fortress of the Seven Towers, where fell
the Emperor Constantine Palæologus, where Othman the Second was
strangled, where refractory ambassadors are left to come to their senses
and the sultan’s terms, and where, in short, that “zealous public
butcher,” the seraskier, cuts any Gordian knot that may tangle his
political meshes; and here was the famous “Golden Gate,” attended no
more by its “fifty porters with white wands,” and its crowds of
“_ichoglans_ and mutes, turban-keepers, nail-cutters, and
slipper-bearers,” as in the days of the Selims.
Between the Seven Towers and the Golden Horn you may count the “seven
hills” of ancient Stamboul, the towering arches of the aqueduct of
Valens, crossing from one to the other, and the swelling dome and
gold-tipped minarets of a hundred imperial mosques crowning and
surrounding their summits. What an Orient look do those gallery-bound
and sky-piercing shafts give to the varied picture!
There is but one “Seraglio Point” in the world. Look at that tapering
cape, shaped like a lady’s foot, projecting from Stamboul toward the
shore of Asia, and dividing the bay from the sea of Marmora. It is cut
off from the rest of the city, you observe, by a high wall, flanked with
towers, and the circumference of the whole seraglio may be three miles.
But what a gem of beauty it is! In what varied foliage its
unapproachable palaces are buried, and how exquisitely gleam from the
midst of the bright leaves its gilded cupolas, its gay balconies, its
airy belvideres, and its glittering domes! And mark the height of those
dark and arrowy cypresses, shooting from every corner of its imperial
gardens, and throwing their deep shadows on every bright cluster of
foliage, and every gilded lattice of the sacred enclosure. They seem to
remind one, that amid all its splendour, and with all its secluded
retirement, this gorgeous sanctuary of royalty, has been stained, from
its first appropriation by the monarchs of the East till now, with the
blood of victims to the ambition of its changing masters. The cypresses
are still young over the graves of an uncle and a brother, whose cold
murder within those lovely precincts prepared the throne for the present
sultan. The seraglio, no longer the residence of Mahmoud himself, is at
present occupied by his children, two noble boys, of whom one, by the
usual system, must fall a sacrifice to the security of the other.
Keeping on toward the Black Sea, we cross the Golden Horn to Pera, the
European and diplomatic quarter of the city. The high hill on which it
stands overlooks all Constantinople; and along its ridge toward the
beautiful cemetery on the brow, runs the principal street of the Franks,
the promenade of the dragoman exquisites, and the Broadway of shops and
belles. Here meet, on the narrow _pavé_, the veiled Armenian, who would
die with shame to show her chin to a stranger, and the wife of the
European merchant, in a Paris hat and short petticoats, mutually each
other’s sincere horror. Here the street is somewhat cleaner, the dogs
somewhat less anti-Christian, and hat and trowsers somewhat less objects
of contempt. It is a poor abortion of a place, withal, neither Turkish
nor Christian; and nobody who could claim a shelter for his head
elsewhere, would take the whole of its slate-coloured and shingled
palaces as a gift.
Just beyond is the mercantile suburb of Galatan, which your dainty
diplomatist would not write on his card for an embassy, but for which,
as being honestly what it calls itself, I entertain a certain respect,
wanting in my opinion of its mongrel neighbour. Heavy gates divide these
different quarters of the city, and if you would pass after sunset, you
must anoint the hinges with a piastre.
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