Turkish Superstitions—Auguries—The Court Astrologer—The Evil
Eye—Danger of Blue Eyes—Imperial Firman—The Babaluk—The
Ceremony—Sable Pythonesses—Witchcraft.
The Turks are strangely superstitious; they cling resolutely to the
absurd and wild fancies which have been banished from Europe for
centuries; and that too with a blindness of faith, and a tenacity of
purpose, quite in keeping with their firm and somewhat dogged natures.
Many of their superstitions they inherit from the Romans; they extract
auguries of good and evil from the entrails of fresh-slaughtered
animals—they draw inferences from the flight of birds—they have
auspicious and inauspicious hours, which are gravely determined by the
Astrologers; and no Osmanli ever undertakes a journey, builds a house,
marries a wife, or commences any business of importance, without
satisfying himself on this important point. Should evil or
disappointment overtake him, despite the precaution he has used, he
never blames either his own mismanagement or another’s treachery;
neither does he sink beneath the trial: he tells you that it is his
_kismet_—his fate—and he calmly submits to what he considers to have
been inevitable; and should misfortunes accumulate about him, instead of
attributing them to worldly causes, he ascribes them to _felech_—his
constellation—without searching further.
When he is troubled with unpleasant dreams, haunted by melancholy
fancies, or suffering from bodily disease, he tears away a fragment of
his dress, and fastens the rag to the iron-work of a window belonging to
the tomb of a saint, in order to deposit the evil along with it. When he
is sick, he procures from the Priest an earthen bowl, inscribed
throughout its interior with passages from the Koran; and, filling it
with water, sets it aside until the whole of the writing becomes
effaced, when he swallows the liquid, and thus administers to himself a
dose of Holy Writ! The Court Astrologer publishes every year a species
of supernatural almanack, in which he specifies the lucky and unlucky
days of the different moons; foretells wars, deaths, and marriages; and
imparts a vast quantity of multifarious information, which must be both
valuable and curious, if it is to be estimated by the price paid for it,
as the salary of the Seer is a most liberal one.
Another singular superstition common throughout Turkey is the belief
that should a dog chance to pass between two persons who are conversing,
one or the other will fall sick unless the animal be propitiated with
food; and the first care of a Musselmaun to whom this ill-luck has
occurred, is to look about him for the means of averting its effect.
But the predominant weakness of the East is the dread of the Evil Eye.
Should you praise the beauty of a Turkish child to its mother, without
prefacing your admiration with “_Mashallah!_” or, In the name of
God—which is considered sufficient to counteract the power of all
malignant spirits; and, should the child become ill or meet with an
accident, it is at once decided that you have smitten it with the Evil
Eye. The Greeks, when by accident they allude to their own good health
or good fortune, immediately spit upon their breasts to avert the malign
influence; and to such a pitch do they carry their faith in the efficacy
of this inelegant exorcism, that on a recent occasion, when an
acquaintance of my own was introduced to a beautiful Greek girl, and
betrayed into an eulogium on her loveliness, he was earnestly entreated
by her mother to perform the same ceremony in the very face which he had
just been eulogizing, in order to annul the evil effects of his
admiration; and so pressing were her instances that he was compelled to
affect obedience to her wishes, ere she could be re-assured of the
safety of her daughter!
The Turk decorates the roof of his house, the prow of his caïque, the
cap of his child, the neck of his horse, and the cage of his bird, with
charms against the Evil Eye; one of the most powerful of these antidotes
being garlic: and it must be conceded that, here at least, the workers
of woe have shown their taste. Every hovel has its head of garlic
suspended by a string; and bouquets of flowers formed of spices, amid
which this noxious root is nestled, are sent as presents to the mother
of a new-born infant, as a safeguard both to herself and her little one.
A blue eye is super-eminently suspicious, for they have an idea that
such is the legitimate colour of the evil orb; and you seldom see a
horse, or a draught ox, or even a donkey, which has not about its neck a
string of blue beads, to preserve it from the dark deeds of witchcraft.
I was considerably amused on one occasion, when, being about to meet the
carriage of a friend, the horse that drew it, either from idleness or
caprice, suddenly stood still, and the arabajhe exclaimed with vehemence
to his mistress, “You see, madam, you see that the horse is struck—the
new Hanoum has blue eyes!” turning his own on me as he spoke, with a
most unloving expression. I am perfectly convinced that, had the animal
met with any misfortune, or been guilty of any misdemeanour during the
remainder of the day, the whole blame would have inevitably been visited
on my unlucky eyes, which had counteracted the effect of a row of glass
beads, and a crescent of bone!
To protect the reigning Sultan from the power of the Evil Eye during his
state progresses through the streets of the capital, a peculiar
head-dress was invented for the Imperial body-pages, whose ornamented
plumes were of such large dimensions as, collectively, to form a screen
about his sacred person. Even Sultan Mahmoud, who is superior to many of
the popular prejudices, has just caused a Firman to be published,
prohibiting the women from looking earnestly at him as he passes them,
on pain of—what think you, reader?—of subjecting their husbands or
brothers to the bastinado! The Turkish laws are too gallant to condemn
females to suffer this punishment in their own persons, and Mahmoud is
consequently to be protected from the possibly fatal effects of the
ladies’ eyes by their fears for their male relations.
Another singular custom is that of pouring water where any one has
fallen, to prevent a recurrence of the accident on the same spot, which
is religiously observed by the lower orders; as well as flinging stones
at the body of a decapitated criminal, in order to secure the dreams of
the spectator from an intrusion of the ghastly object.
No Turk of the lower ranks of society ever passes a shred of paper which
may chance to lie upon his path; he always gathers it up with the
greatest care; as the popular belief leads him to place implicit faith
in an ancient superstition that all paper thus obtained will be
collected after death, and scattered over the burning soil through which
he is to pass to paradise; and that consequently the more he is enabled
to secure, the less suffering he will have to endure hereafter.
A most extraordinary fact came to my knowledge a short time before I
left the East, relatively to the female Arabs of the harem. They have a
species of society, or institution—I scarcely know how to term it—in
which they are initiated from their girlhood, that they call “Babaluk,”
whose principle of mystery is kept as secret as that of freemasonry;
while the occasional display of its influence is wild and startling
enough to remind the spectator of the Priestesses of Delphi.
Far from affecting any concealment of their participation in the
pretended powers of the society, you cannot, when a guest in the harem,
please an initiated Arab more surely than by inquiring if she be a
Babaluk; and the Turkish ladies frequently amuse themselves and their
visitors by exhibiting their black slaves while under the influence of
their self-excited phrenzy. When a sable Pythoness is informed of the
wish of her mistress, she collects such of her companions as are
Babaluks, for there are sometimes several in the same harem, and a
brazier of burning charcoal is placed in the centre of the saloon in
which the ceremony is to take place. Round this brazier the Arabs squat
down, and commence a low, wild chant, which they take up at intervals
from the lips of each other; and then break into a chorus, that
ultimately dies away in a wail, succeeded by a long silence, during
whose continuance they rock their bodies backwards and forwards, and
never raise their eyes from the earth. From the moment in which the
chant commences, an attendant is constantly employed in feeding the fire
with aloes, incense, musk, and every species of intoxicating perfume.
After a time, they fall on the floor in a state of utter insensibility,
and great exertion is frequently necessary to arouse them from their
trance; but, when once they are awakened, they become furious—they rend
themselves, and each other—they tear their hair and their
clothing—they howl like wild beasts, and they cry earnestly for food,
while they reject all that is offered except brandy and raw meat, both
of which they destroy in great quantities. Having satisfied their
hunger, they renew the warfare that they had discontinued to indulge it,
and finally roll on the floor with bloodshot eyeballs, and foaming at
the mouth.
A second trance ultimately seizes them, from which they are left to
recover alone; fresh perfumes being flung into the brazier to expedite
their restoration, which generally takes place in ten or fifteen
minutes; and then it is that the spell of prophecy is on them. They rise
slowly and majestically from the floor—they wave their hands solemnly
over the aromatic flame—they have become suddenly subdued and gentle;
and, after having made the circuit of the brazier several times in
silence, they gaze coldly round the circle, until, fixing upon some
particular individual, they commence shadowing forth her fate, past,
present, and to come; and I have heard it seriously asserted that they
have thus divulged the most secret events of by-gone years, as well as
prophecying those which subsequently took place.
It is scarcely wonderful—even disgusting as a great portion of the
ceremonial undoubtedly is—that many of the Turkish ladies occasionally
relieve the tedium of the harem by the exhibition of the Babaluk; that
vague yearning to pry into futurity so inherent in our nature, coupled
with the uncertainty on whom the spell of the sybil may be cast, causes
an excitement which forms an agreeable contrast from their customary
_ennui_. No second fate is ever foretold at the same orgies. When the
first Babaluk begins to speak, the others sink down into a sitting
posture, occasionally enforcing her assertions by repeating the last
words of any remarkable sentence in a long, low wail; and, when she
ceases and takes her place among them, they are for the third time
overtaken by a trance: the brazier is then removed, the spectators leave
the room, the door is carefully closed, and the Babaluks are left to
awaken at their leisure. When they finally come forth, they resume their
customary avocations, without making the slightest allusion to the
extraordinary scene in which they have been actors; nor do they like the
subject to be mentioned to them until several days have elapsed.