tomb of fair white marble, erected immediately beneath the windows of
his own private apartments, to the memory of one whom he had loved and
lost—a beautiful Odalisque, who died in the first bloom of her youth and
favour—whom the Imperial Poet immortalized in song—whom the man wept in
the solitude of his chamber—and whose head was laid low where he could at
least see the fresh turf spring about her tomb.
The Reis Effendi, an old gray man, in whom it might have been thought
that the weight of years and the cares of office must have worn out the
sensibilities which lead us to yearn after the departed, and to cling
morbidly to the poor remnant which is shrouded in the grave;—even he,
surrounded by state intrigues, each of which might have cost him both
place and power; hastening to the termination of his earthly pilgrimage,
and accustomed to the sight of death for long and weary years;—even he,
when in the winter of his days he lost one whom he deeply loved, suffered
not the body to be borne away from him, but raised the tomb in his
garden, where, beneath the long shadows of the over-arching trees, he
could sit on the cold marble of the gilded sepulchre, and weep. And yet
it was but upon the grave of a young child that he shed these bitter and
frequent tears—the little son of a dead daughter, who had not yet seen
seven summers: but the boy had clung to him, had never learnt to bow
before his greatness, but had sat upon his knee, and made a plaything of
his gray beard, as he prattled to him in the language of the heart in
which there is no guile: and the hoary statesman loved the child—and lost
him; and he felt bitterly that he had not time enough left on earth to
learn so to love another!
And there stood the little tomb in that shady garden, with its gilded
turban, and its fond record, where the grandsire could look upon it
unobserved.
[Illustration: THE PETIT CHAMP-DES-MORTS, PERA.
_LE PETIT CHAMP-DES-MORTS, VU DESSUS DE PÉRA._ _DER KLEINE TODTENACKER,
OBERHALB PERA._
W. H. Bartlett. J. T. Willmore.
London. Published for the Proprietors, by Geo: Virtue, 26, Ivy Lane,
1839.]
Is there a narrow nook at the corner of a street in the most crowded
thoroughfares of the city,—there you will find a head-stone and a grave.
Like the ancient Romans, from whom they probably imbibed the custom,
the Turks form burial-places by the way side; and, like them, they also
inscribe upon their tombs the most beautiful lessons of resignation and
philosophy.
The Petit Champs, or lesser Necropolis of Pera, offers a singular
spectacle: it is entirely sacred to the Musselmauns, (who never suffer
the ashes of their dead to mingle with Infidel clay,) and fringes with
its dark cypresses the crest and a portion of the declivity of the hill
which dominates the post: it is hemmed in with houses, overlooked by a
hundred casements, grazed by cattle, loud with greetings and gossipry;
and commands from its higher points extensive and noble views of the
harbour and the opposite shore. The ground is very undulating, forming
deep dells where the sunshine never penetrates, and then suddenly and
abruptly rising, as though to fling its funereal grove in contact with
the blue sky above it. There are footpaths among the trees, sunny glades
gleaming out from among the dark shadows, head-stones clustered against
the grassy slopes, and guard-houses with their portals thronged with
lounging soldiers, arousing the echoes of the death-forest by the clash
of steel.
In the bottom of the valley, in the very midst of the cemetery, stands a
small octagonal building, from whose solitary chimney a dense white cloud
of smoke may generally be seen to emerge, wreathe itself for an instant
about the nearest cypresses, and finally lose itself in the atmosphere.
This is the dead-house, to which the body of every deceased Moslem
destined for interment in this burial-place is brought, in order that
the last worldly duties may be performed—the corse carefully washed, the
beard shorn, the nails cut, and the limbs decently composed; and this is
a ceremony never omitted, ere what was so lately a True Believer is laid
to rest in the narrow grave.
On the verge of the cemetery, where it touches on the faubourg of Pera,
the rocky ground rises precipitately, forming a natural division between
the habitations of the dead and the living; but not a hand’s space has
been left waste by either. A narrow road along the side of the descent
alone separates the houses of the Perotes from the graves of the Moslem,
which lean against the base of the ridge. These houses have many of them
terraces overlooking the cemetery,—gay with flowers, loud with laughter,
and bright with smiles: trees have been planted before them; cafés, where
the young and the idle congregate during the summer evenings to enjoy
their ices and cigars, awaken with their light revelry the echoes of the
death-place; and many a fond couple wander away amid the graves, and sit
hand in hand upon some lettered stone, to exchange their vows, and to lay
plans for the future on the very threshold of the past!
Some of the Turkish tombs are very elaborate and beautiful, particularly
in the solemn Necropolis of Scutari: there are none of the prettinesses
of Père-la-Chaise to be found amid its wide solitudes; and it is equally
free from colossal statues of statesmen, looking as though they had
been transplanted from a council-chamber or a cathedral, and appalling
representations of grinning skeletons and eyeless sculls; no fanciful
calembourgs on roses and reine-marguerites are graven into the eternal
stone, which had been better enshrined in some gilded volume:—all is
stern, and still, and solemn: the fatuities of life have no place in that
city of the dead; its very atmosphere is unlike that which is breathed
elsewhere, for the clustering together of the cypresses diffuses a strong
aroma of resin, purifying the air, and counteracting the pernicious
effects of such a mass of perishing mortality as that which lies below;
while its deep shadows, and its occasional gleams of light falling upon
the myriad head-stones scattered around, are like glimpses of an unknown
world.
Those head-stones themselves form a striking and peculiar feature of
the scene; they are extremely picturesque and various in design; and as
the Musselmauns never disturb the ashes of the dead, and never bury and
re-bury on the same spot, as is too commonly the case in the more narrow
and confined grave-yards of Europe, the time-worn, weather-stained, and
leaning column, beneath which the clammy _human_ soil has failed, is
seen in juxta-position with the brightly-gilded, fresh-lettered pillar
of yesterday, against which time has yet had no power, and over which no
storm-cloud has yet burst, standing turban-crowned and erect, telling its
tale of recent bereavement. At the base of many of these columns a small
reservoir for water is hollowed in the stone that marks the dimensions
of the grave, to slake the thirst of the wandering dogs and birds which
may chance to pass through the cemetery; while the sex of the dead may
be at once distinguished by the turban (varying in form according to
the rank of the deceased, and faithfully serving as the index to his
social position) which marks the grave of the man, and the sculptured
rose-branch that indicates the resting-place of the female.
[Illustration: TOMB IN THE CEMETERY OF SCUTARI.
_TOMBE DANS LA CIMETIÈRE DE SCUTARI._ _EIN GRABMAL AUF DEM KIRCHHOFE ZU
SCUTARI._
W. H. Bartlett. W. F. Topham.
London. Published for the Proprietors, by Geo: Virtue, 26, Ivy Lane,
1839.]
Nothing can be more marked than the contrast between the Turkish and the
Christian burial-grounds. The Greek cemetery at Pera is slovenly and ill
kept; the slabs covering the bodies are mutilated and defaced by wanton
violence; the trees, scantily distributed among them, are hacked and
ragged; and were it not that it is on three of its sides overlooked by
houses, it would present the very embodyment of desolation.
The Frank grave-yard is as obnoxious to good taste as that of the Greeks
to good feeling. There are Latin inscriptions, signifying nothing which
can awaken either sympathy or devotion; flourishes of French sentiment
in prose and rhyme; injunctions to pray for the souls of the departed,
coupled with Italian elaborations of eulogy and despair; concise English
records of births, ages, deaths, and diseases; and all the common-places
of an ordinary grave-yard, without a single object which can tend to
deepen a solemn or a pious thought.
But the Armenian necropolis is well worthy the attention of the stranger.
It is a thickly-peopled spot, where the acacia-trees blossom in their
scented beauty, and shed their withered flowers, like a sweet pall
dropped by the hand of nature on the quiet graves. The Armenian tombs are
peculiarly inscribed, giving you a lesson, and reading you a homily as
you wander among them. The noble Armenian character is graven deeply into
the stone; name and date are duly set forth; but that which renders these
slabs (for there is not an upright head-stone in any Eastern cemetery,
save those of the Turks and Jews) peculiarly distinctive, is the singular
custom observed by this people, of graving upon the tomb an emblem of the
profession or trade of the deceased.
Thus the priest is distinguished even beyond the grave by the mitre that
surmounts his name; the diamond-merchant by a group of ornaments; the
money-changer by a pair of scales; the florist by a knot of flowers:
besides many more ignoble hieroglyphics, such as the razor and basin of
the barber, the shears of the tailor, and so on; and when the calling
is one which may have been followed by either sex, a book, placed
immediately above the appropriate emblem, distinguishes the grave of the
man.
Nor is this all; for the victims of a violent death have also their
distinctive mark; and more than one tomb in this extraordinary
burial-place presents the rude representation of a headless trunk,
from whose severed throat the gushing blood is spirting upwards like a
fountain, while the head itself is pillowed on the clasped hands!
Many of the more ancient of the tombs are very richly and intricately
wrought; and the shapes of several of these sarcophagi are eminently
classical; but nearly all the modern ones are mere oblong slabs, mounted
in some cases upon circular pedestals three or four inches in height, and
perfectly simple in design. The situation of the Armenian burial-place
is superb; and it is generally occupied by groups of people of that
nation, seated upon the grave-stones, beneath the cool shadows of the
acacia-trees, talking and smoking, as though no symbol of the dead were
near.
Death has no gloom for the philosophical Orientals!
THE GUZ-COULI, OR MAIDEN’S TOWER.
A fairy-fortress, girdled by the sea,
Rock-seated, and alone; whose single tower
Was mirrored in the waves, and from whose heights
The eye glanced round on two fair cities, spread
Along still fairer shores.
MS.
The popular and poetical traditions attached to this sea-girdled edifice
have already been given, and its peculiar position has rendered it a
very striking object in several of the sketches of Mr. Bartlett; it is,
indeed, so essentially one of the “Beauties of the Bosphorus,” that it
could not fail to create its own interest, even were it without its
peculiar record; but such is far from being the case. The massaldjhes
love to tell the tale of the fair and high-born girl, who died,
Cleopatra-like, from the bite of an adder, within its walls; the poets
love to sing the adventures of the Persian Prince who delivered the
imprisoned beauty on a night of storm, when there was no tell-tale moon
to reveal the enterprise to jealous guards and watchful eunuchs; and when
the wild waves of the Propontis were lashing themselves to foam against
the rocky shores of Asia, while the hoarse gusts which swept down from
the Black Sea, driving the current of the Bosphorus madly before them,
swelled the midnight diapason, and was sweeter than the voice of the
bûlbûl of Nishapor in the ears of the lovers.
[Illustration: THE GUZ-COULI, OR MAIDEN’S TOWER.
_LE GUZ-COULI, OU TOUR DE DEMOISELLE._ _DER GUZ-COULI, ODER MÄDCHEN
THURM._
W. H. Bartlett. R. Brandard.
London. Published for the Proprietors, by Geo: Virtue, 26, Ivy Lane,
1839.]
But neither has the sober historian passed it by; and pretty and fanciful
as may be the fables which we have quoted, we are bound in our turn to
treat the subject more gravely; and to admit that the island-fortress
owed its erection to a more rational impulse than obedience to a wild
dream, or the desire to counteract a still wilder prophecy.
The Square Tower, now known as the Guz-Couli, was, it is stated,
originally built by the Emperor Manuel, for the purpose of communicating
with the point of coast occupied by the Seraï Bournou by means of an iron
chain, which, on the approach of an hostile fleet, was drawn across the
whole mouth of the strait, protecting both the harbour and the channel
from the occupancy of the intruders. No other trace of this ingenious
expedient now remains, however, and the historian is consequently as
traditional as the poet; nor do the Turks appear to be at all aware that
the Guz-Couli was ever appropriated to such an use—to them it is now a
plague-hospital, and nothing more; while many European travellers, full
of old associations, combine the peculiar situation of the castle with
memories of Hero, Leander, and the Hellespont, and, confirmed in their
error by its modern appellation of Guz-Couli, without hesitation christen
it “Leander’s Tower.”
By whatever name it may be called, it is a very pleasing object from both
shores, and stands amid the waves like the guardian of the strait.
BEBEC, ON THE BOSPHORUS.
“Nor oft I’ve seen such sight, nor heard such song,
As woo’d the eye, and thrill’d the Bosphorus along.”
BYRON.
This very pretty village, situated about midway of the Bosphorus, and
stretching for a considerable distance along the European shore, is
chiefly remarkable from the channel for its beautifully-shaded square,
overarched by forest-trees, of gigantic growth, and an Imperial Kiosque,
formerly an object of much mystery and dread, but which has now lost in
romance as much as it has gained in beauty; for having become a favourite
retreat of the Sultan, it has lately been gaily, and, indeed, tastefully
painted.
The Kiosque of Bebec possesses an historical interest from the fact that
it was at one time the appointed rendezvous of those European ambassadors
with whom the Sultan wished to confer without the cognisance of the
other Frank ministers, or of the members of his own government. At that
period it was suffered to remain in a state of partial disrepair, in
order that it might not attract attention; and thither the envoy whose
presence was desired quietly proceeded in his barge, without state or
ceremony of any description; and, having landed, entered the building,
and awaited the arrival of the Moslem monarch; there, with closed
jalousies, through which they could themselves see every thing which
passed along the channel without being visible to any one, sat the Sultan
and the minister weaving the intricate web of diplomacy; and thence,
when the conference was ended, they departed with the same mystery and
caution. Of the present Sultan, however, it may truly be said that _il
a changé tout cela_—he no longer gives audiences stealthily; and the
Kiosque of Bebec has, consequently, become a mere Imperial _pied-à-terre_
for an hour of relaxation.
[Illustration: BEBEC, ON THE BOSPHORUS.
_BEBEC, SUR LE BOSPHORE._ _BEBEC AM BOSPHORUS._
W. H. Bartlett. R. Brandard.
London. Published for the Proprietors, by Geo: Virtue, 26, Ivy Lane,
1839.]
Nor was this the only remarkable feature in the history of this
summer-pavilion; for it was once the chosen lounge of the famous, or
rather celebrated Ali Pasha of Tepeleni, whose tiger heart and bitter
expiation have alike been the theme of story and of song. In this Kiosque
he is affirmed to have spent some hours each day when he was Camaican
to the Vèzir, ere he was removed to his command at Yanina; and to have
amused his idleness by studying the “human face divine” as keenly, and
far more cruelly, than Lavater; as he ever carried his deductions to a
pitch fatal to those on whom he speculated; for he had no sooner suffered
his eye to rest for a moment on some physiognomy which displeased him,
than a motion of his hand arrested the progress of the passing boat; the
obnoxious countenance was brought into immediate contact with that of the
ruthless dignitary, and the unhappy individual by whom it was owned was
sternly greeted with an assurance that he must be a rogue, and the son of
rogues, or that Allah the All-merciful! would never have cursed him with
so ill-looking a face, whereon were written characters of evil, which
the Pasha could read as though they had been inscribed by the pen of a
_khoja_[46] upon a skin of parchment; a man wearing such a countenance
must necessarily be a _karadhan_[47] of the vilest class, and all unfit
to walk at large among the chosen people of Mahomet; and such being the
case, the miserable victim of ugliness was forthwith consigned to the
gallies to expiate his inferred crimes! Expostulation was vain, for the
Camaican was a sophist; and with cat-like cruelty he was ever ready to
sport a moment with the agonies of his victim, in order to congratulate
the trembling wretch who quailed before him, gasping out assurances of
his innocence of all offence, either against his faith or his neighbour,
that the opportunity was taken from him of perpetrating all the misdeeds
which were registered in his face, and from whose dark effects the Pasha
had so fortunately rescued the public: for there they were; and if yet
to do, the greater the blessing which had been vouchsafed to him in an
interference that might prevent them altogether. And upon these premises,
or rather to satisfy this caprice, it is seriously asserted that so many
miserable and guiltless wretches were sent to suffer and to die amid the
filth, and squalor, and toil of the public bagnio, that the Sultan found
it necessary to interfere with the pursuit of his minister, and to compel
a discontinuance of the pastime.
It was possibly from a consciousness of his own great personal beauty
that Ali indulged in so inhuman a hatred towards those who were less
physically gifted; and that his taste for bringing his victim into
immediate contact with himself, grew out of the savage vanity of forcing
upon him a sense of his own ugliness. Be that as it may, he is described
by those who knew him as one of the mildest and most benevolent looking
of men.
On the page of the poet the same record is inscribed; for thus “the
Childe” bears witness to the fidelity of the description at a later
period of the Pasha’s life:—
“In marble-paved pavilion, where a spring
Of living water from the centre rose,
Whose bubbling did a genial freshness fling,
And soft voluptuous couches breathed repose,
ALI reclined, a man of wars and woes;
Yet in his lineaments ye cannot trace,
While gentleness her milder radiance throws
Along that aged venerable face,
The deeds that lurk beneath, and stain him with disgrace.
“It is not that yon hoary lengthening beard
Ill suits the passions which belong to youth;
Love conquers age—so Hafiz hath averr’d,
So sings the Teian, and he sings in sooth—
But crimes that scorn the tender voice of ruth,
Beseeming all men ill, but most the man
In years, have mark’d him with a tiger’s tooth;
Blood follows blood, and through their mortal span,
In bloodier acts conclude those who with blood began.”
On the crest of the hill behind Bebec, there is an oak wood, in whose
depths is a small space covered with short fresh turf, without a single
tree, where the human voice awakens a multiplied echo so singular as
to have become a source of much amusement to its visitors. A horse,
gallopped rapidly round the enclosure, produces precisely the effect
upon the ear of a distant charge of cavalry; and a peal of laughter is so
extraordinarily prolonged, as almost to turn wonder into pain.
The village of Bebec is principally inhabited by Greeks.
A PUBLIC KHAN.
A place where merchants congregate—where wealth
Takes many forms—is bartered, bought, and sold;
Is earned by labour, flung away on chance,
Exchanged, computed, watched with eager eyes,
Weighed, balanced, won, and scattered o’er the globe.
MS.
The Khans, or Caravanseraïs of the East, are as purely oriental in their
character as the Mosques in whose immediate neighbourhood they are
generally situated, or the Bazārs which they supply with merchandise.
The Caravanseraï, or lodging of the caravan, is a large quadrangular
court, surrounded by stone buildings, solidly massed, and presenting much
the appearance of the inner cloisters of a monastery. The apartments on
the basement serve as counting-houses for the merchants, one only being
reserved as a coffee-kiosque, for the accommodation of the tenants of the
Khan, which always has a fine fountain in the centre of its paved court,
and is closed two hours before midnight by a pair of massive gates;
beside one of which is the little hut of the Khanjhi, who is answerable
for all comers and goers after that time, until day-break; a precaution
rendered highly necessary by the immense value of the merchandise which
is frequently contained in these establishments.
The upper story of the building is faced by an open gallery, supported
on arches, which stretches round the entire square, and is reached by
exterior flights of stone steps, situated at two of its angles; and from
this gallery open the store-rooms of the merchants, which are generally
filled with bags of raw silk, European cottons, bales of rich stuffs,
tobaccos, spices, arms—and, in short, all the most precious articles of
Eastern traffic.
It must not, however, be imagined that the articles here described are to
be found promiscuously in every Khan; on the contrary, the silk-merchants
have their own peculiar rendezvous; the hyperbolical Persians pile their
gold and silver stuffs apart; and the gebeli-dealers sort their various
tobaccos in a caravanseraï of their own; while the mere traveller,
pilgrim, and dervish, take up their abode in common in very inferior
Khans, where heat, vermin, and filth are their certain companions; and
where the acquaintanceless European, driven to this resource in towns
where no hotels exist, is initiated into a thousand personal miseries, of
which he could previously have formed no idea.
[Illustration: A PUBLIC KHAN.
_KHAN PUBLIC._ _EINE UNENTGELTLICHE HERBERGE._
W. H. Bartlett. J. C. Bentley.
London. Published for the Proprietors, by Geo: Virtue, 26, Ivy Lane,
1840.]
The Khan of the silk-merchants at Broussa in Asia Minor is a very
beautiful establishment, with a noble gate-way, opening from the bazār
of the city, finely set in a frame-work of mosaiced porcelain; while
its Caravanseraï for pilgrims is wretched in the extreme. And the
same distinction is visible in those of Constantinople itself, where
dervishes, santons, and other wayfarers, who can afford to pay for their
scanty lodging, and yet more scanty fare, leave behind them traces of
disorder and want of cleanliness, which are, indeed, almost enough to
challenge the skill of all the khanjhis of the city to obliterate.
Dr. Walsh, in the first volume of his “Residence in Constantinople,”
gives an account of his arrival in a Turkish hamlet, situated in a
magnificent valley, surrounded by the distant branches of Mount Rhodope,
when on his way overland to Stamboul from the Dardanelles—which, as
it not only gives an admirable picture of one of the inferior village
Caravanseraïs of the East, but also illustrates a virtue universally
practised in Turkey, we shall extract entire:—