THE FESTIVITIES
Recking nothing of State affairs, the Turks, from the highest to
the lowest, rejoice as they have not rejoiced for many a long
year. The scene is the plain outside the walls. There, in the
part farthest from the city, the Grand Signor, the Grand Vizir,
the Mufti, and all the great pashas have pitched their sumptuous
pavilions. Opposite, in the part towards the city, stand poles
and frames for the illuminations. The space between lies open
for the sports. Every day about noon there is an entertainment
of the craftsmen and tradesmen, not only of Adrianople but also
of Constantinople, all of whom have been invited for the sake
of the presents they have to make. Each guild comes out of the
city in procession, with some pageant representing its particular
occupation, and passes before the Sultan, who sits on a lofty
platform, upon a richly-wrought quilt, under an awning of cloth of
gold stretched between two tall elms.
At this time the Hunter is in his prime: a lean, long-visaged,
sparsely-bearded man of thirty-five, with a skin tanned to a
shiny brown, a “beetled” nose, and sparkling black eyes--not
disagreeable to look at, though generally accounted almost as
ugly as his son.[97] He sits with unsmiling gravity, and about
him stand eight or ten handsome youths continually fanning him
by turns. Day after day he takes up that position to receive the
offerings of his subjects--according to rigidly fixed scale:
from him who has much, much being expected; and woe betide him
whose performance disappoints expectation! Thus, the shoe-makers
present shoes adorned with precious stones; the bakers and
butchers velvet cushions and rich Persian stuffs; the jewellers
a garden with begemmed nightingales perched on silver trees; the
farriers horse-shoes of silver; and so on. As Mr. North gazes
upon this great idol of human worship, to which so much gold is
offered up every day, his mind whirls: “What a world of riches
must be gathered from such a vast concourse of people! I say no
more....”[98]
The gifts delivered, all the givers retire to their appointed
places, where they are regaled liberally with mountains of boiled
rice and oceans of cold water.
After the meal, those who have children of a suitable age bring
them to the Grand Signor, and he bestows upon each some garments
and a pension of three _aspers_ (about 2d.) a day for life--quite
a competence for a Turkish artisan of the period. In addition,
there is no dearth of Christian converts to Islam appearing to be
circumcised with the others.
[Illustration: SULTAN MAHOMET THE FOURTH, EMPEROR OF THE TURKS.
From an Engraving by F. H. van den Hove.
_To face p. 106._]
To the solemnities of the day succeed, after about an hour’s
respite, the jollities of the night. They are ushered in by public
prayers held just as the dusk begins to overcast the plain. From
every minaret in the city and every pavilion in the encampment
outside, the muezzins lift their sonorous voices. For a few minutes
the message floats, with a strangely touching sweetness, through
the deepening twilight: a chorus of aerial criers calling upon each
other to worship the Creator of all things. Suddenly the chants die
away; and then the whole multitude from the Grand Signor to the
meanest of his slaves, wherever each happens to be, single or in
groups, begin their prostrations: kneeling, sitting back on their
heels, rising, bowing, kneeling again, and again, and again, in
perfect silence and with the regularity of a perfectly drilled army
on parade. Who, having once witnessed, can ever forget the sight,
so simple and so sublime?
Devotions ended, the music bands strike up: trumpets, hautboys,
great drums, little kettle-drums, brass platters. At the
signal, a broad glare is seen to appear from the Grand Signor’s
stables--a troop of link-men march forth, with lighted grates
in their hands: onward they come chanting; and soon the plain
is ablaze with myriads of lamps arranged in various patterns
in the frames prepared for the purpose. By their light the
sports go on: wrestling-matches, athletic feats, acrobatic
performances, conjuring tricks, puppet shows, dances of young men
disguised as women (like the ancient Romans, the Turks believed
that no man danced unless he was drunk or mad), and theatrical
exhibitions--farces amusing, obscene, or insipid, according to the
spectator’s point of view. These pastimes go on with all alacrity
till about midnight, and conclude with a display of fireworks,
which does credit to the ingenuity of the two renegades--a Venetian
and a Dutchman--responsible for them.
There are monstrous giants, many-headed and stuffed with rockets,
which burst out of their eyes, nostrils, and ears, fly writhing and
hissing up into the night air, leaving a trail of sparks in their
wake, and then break into a rain of stars. There are artificial
trees with all manner of explosive fruit fastened to their
boughs. There are fountains gushing forth jets of fire. There are
hobby-horses which, taking fire, run up and down and encounter one
another most bravely. There are hanging galleys most dexterously
contrived: each with a crew of two or three men who manage the guns
and fireworks on board, and pull the vessels backwards and forwards
to imitate sea-fights against Christian corsairs. There are huge
castles of pasteboard: one of them, the biggest of the lot,
representing the Castle of Candia. After an infinitude of rockets
discharged from its battlements, it catches fire at last and burns
in a most realistic manner, till the whole fabric collapses in one
vast heap of flames and smoke. Besides these and countless other
pyrotechnic devices, there is one that thrills the spectators with
more dread than delight: iron tubes, much like the chambers of
petards, but far larger and longer, fixed into the ground, which
vomit up a continuous stream of fire at least sixty feet high, with
a roar that makes the very earth tremble.
In this fashion the circumcision festival goes on from May 11th
till May 25th, with little variation, the same things being done
over and over again. It culminates in a stupendous cavalcade in
which all the grandees with their guards take part and of which
the young Prince himself, blazing with jewels, forms the central
figure: “an ugly, il-favour’d, and (I guesse) very ill-natured
chit” of about twelve, with a low forehead, a short flat nose
embellished by a little lump at the end, and ears the size of which
even his turban cannot hide.[99] He is mounted on a splendid horse,
smothered from head to tail under precious metals and stones, led
by two richly clad officers of the Janissaries, one on each side,
and fanned by two others with large fans of bustards’ feathers. The
press is immense: men and women of every degree throng the lanes
through which the procession passes; yet the order is perfect, and
the silence almost uncanny.
After an interval of two weeks begin the wedding celebrations
and continue from June 10th till June 25th: the same old sports,
the same old dances, the same old plays and pyrotechnic displays
over again; punctuated by similar processions to and from the
Seraglio, with drum-beating and pipe-blowing enough to sing in
one’s ears for a lifetime. First there is the procession of the
bridegroom’s presents to the bride--strings of mules loaded with
sweet-meats and sugar-works made up in all sorts of fantastic
shapes: elephants, camels, lions--so fashioned that there is no
breach of the commandment which forbids Moslems to counterfeit
the likeness of any living thing; then rows of men loaded with
vests of silk, cloth, velvet, and cloth of gold; then open baskets
exhibiting jewels worth half-a-million dollars. Next comes a
counter-procession of the bride’s dowry: including a dozen
coachfuls of female slaves and three dozen black eunuchs. Lastly,
the world beholds the carrying of the bride to the bridegroom’s
house. She is conveyed hidden in a closely-latticed, gold-plated
coach drawn by six plentifully plumed and bejewelled white horses,
and escorted by troops of black eunuchs, some of whom scatter
handfuls of aspers among the rabble. The pageant is headed by
hundreds of slaves carrying pyramidal candelabra as tall as the
masts of ships (_Naculs_)--perhaps emblems of phallic significance;
and it closes with scores of music-makers perched upon camels,
whose gruntings and gurglings contribute a vocal note to the
instrumental din.
Such, by all first-hand accounts, pruned and trimmed into
legibility, were these famous entertainments--a medley of grandeur
and grotesqueness which could hardly have been matched outside
Turkey. Sir John had postponed his journey in order to witness
this grandeur. But, having received no invitation (only envoys
from tributary States had that expensive honour) he felt compelled
by his dignity to hold aloof, and never saw anything. The other
Englishmen, however, were not so punctilious. They mixed with
the mob which, on foot or on horseback, filled the plain and was
kept in disorder by a body of policemen armed with oil-smeared
sheep-skins. Wherever they saw the crowd pressing most, they rushed
to disperse it by laying about them with their skins. To save their
holiday garments from greasy defilement, the crowd surged this way
and that, in terrible confusion, those on foot treading on each
other’s heels, those on horseback being flung by their stampeding
steeds one over another in a hundred different directions. “There
never was such a dance of brave horses seen as at that place,”
declares our Treasurer; adding, with an engaging candour, “to tell
you the truth, I had small joy in this diversion; and, however we
endeavoured all that was possible to procure horses that were
temperate, yet I could not help making one in the dance, and
that not without much hazard, which not a little retrench’d my
enjoyments, till I found out the way to leave my horse at a good
distance from me.”[100]
Our Chaplain had to pay much more dearly for his insatiable
curiosity: “My horse snorted and trembled, so I suspected no good,
yet I was resolved to stay and see all. Just as the fireworkes
began, he and many other horses by ran mad and rising up fell on
his hams, then, trembling, on his side; [he] fairly layd [me] along
[the ground] and ran away as if the Divel had drove him. I was
getting up, but seeing many, many mad Jades coming, I fell flat on
my face, and committed the event to God.” Thus the Rev. John lay
prostrate on the broad Thracian plain that dreadful night, while
crazy stallions with cocked ears and flying manes dashed about,
snorting, squealing, thundering this way and that. The reverend
gentleman listened to the drumming of their hoofs with a horror
which his dislike of death rendered agonising. His terror grew as
the sound of those irresponsible, irreverent hoofs drew nearer.
He heard the frantic animals as they went by, rocking, leaping,
plunging, slipping, recovering themselves within the ever-narrowing
circle of which he formed the unhappy centre. Their iron shoes
rang in his ears--an odious knell. He could do nothing but
crouch, stupefied, against the Thracian plain. He had just enough
initiative left to pray to God that He might save a future Master
of Christ’s College, Cambridge, from a premature demolition under
infidel hoofs. Never before, and never after, did the Rev. John
Covel feel so paralysed or so pious. But God did not forsake him:
“His name be ever praised! for though I dare sware at least 100
horse and people came over me, I got not the least harm imaginable
in the world.”[101]
After this miraculous escape, our Chaplain hastened to attach
himself to the Ambassador of Ragusa, “a lusty, gallant fellow,”
who, as the representative of a tributary State, had the privilege
of participating in the celebrations and making presents. Under
this minor Excellency’s wing, he was able to go everywhere, to
stare at everybody, to pry into everything, to glut himself on
pomp, without the least danger. They had always a Janissary or two
who looked after them and treated them to sherbet. Thus attended,
they strutted about as they liked, sat on quilts, and lolled on
cushions near the Grand Vizir’s own tent--nay, several times the
Rev. John found himself near to the Grand Signor himself: once
he actually stood within five yards of his Majesty, all the time
his Majesty prayed! How eagerly he noted everything, how glibly
he gossiped afterwards to his companions, how keenly he enjoyed
their envy! And the friends at home--those poor untravelled Fellows
in Cambridge: think of their wonder and awe as they perused his
immense, discursive epistles from Adrianople--messages from
fairyland, sent to reveal to them the existence of a strange,
wondrous world, beyond the humdrum of their drab academic routine.
The Rev. John could hear himself quoted in every Combination Room
as one versed in all the secrets of the mysterious East. Verily our
Chaplain had much to praise God for.
How did the Turks view the intrusion of these unbidden and
inquisitive unbelievers? Covel speaks with rapture of the
“strange prodigious civility all Franks found everywhere at these
festivals.” The Turks, he says, “took the greatest pride that we
should see and (at least seem to) admire everything.” He gives
examples from his own experience. He had been taken twenty times
to see the sights, while the Turks themselves were being “huncht
away.” He had been many times “very, very near the G. Signor
himself (sometimes ½ an hour together, as long as I pleased),
with my hat and in my hair, both which they hate as the Divel.”
He had walked right through the city, once or twice, “al alone,”
in the midst of great Moslem multitudes, and “never met the least
affront in the world, but rather extraordinary kindnesse.”[102]
No one who knows Covel’s writings can doubt that he believed what
he said. Only he failed to make allowance for the privileged
position he occupied in Turkish eyes, first, as the guest of their
Ragusan guest, and, secondly, as a priest; the Turks had unbounded
respect for all religious ministers quite irrespective of their
creed. North’s evidence, as always, is less uncritical. The Turks,
he tells us, incurious themselves, did not suffer curiosity in
others gladly, and were “apt to beat a man that pretends to it.
They look upon those idlenesses and impertinences (as at best they
account them) with a sinister eye; and always suspect mischief at
the bottom, though they do not discern it.”[103] In other words,
strangers were tolerated as long as they did not make themselves
conspicuous. Once our Treasurer had the misfortune to draw
attention to himself; and never forgot the result.
The occasion was an acrobatic performance of extraordinary
interest: a rope-dancer sliding down from a lofty tower. North,
for whom feats of skill possessed a peculiar fascination, thought
to time him by his watch. As he stood counting the seconds, the
rope broke, and down came the dancer. He heard the Turks around
him asking one another how the accident had happened; then he
heard some one say that he believed “that fellow,” pointing to our
Treasurer, was the cause of it: he had seen him hold something
in his hand and mutter over it. North, well acquainted with the
Turkish fear of witchcraft, and also with the summary methods of
Turkish mobs, did not wait to hear more, but slank away as fast
as he could. That was the only way: the Frank who did not like
being beaten should slink away from an excited Turkish crowd. With
many of our merchants this habit of slinking endured after their
return home: the sight of a mere church beadle made them think of
a Turkish chaoush.[104] Modern tourists who fill their books with
scornful comments on the servile attitude of Greeks and Armenians
towards the Turk would do well to remember their own ancestors.
While all this went on, what was Sir John doing?
It would argue a profound misconception of Sir John’s character
to suppose that, because he had been told that no business could
be transacted until the feasts were over, he kept quiet. Much
otherwise was the fact. His Dragomans, at his behest, seized every
opportunity to come to speech with either the Kehayah or the Rais
Effendi and to worry these worthies away from thoughts of mirth and
sprightliness. The Ambassador himself paid several visits to the
Kehayah in person. To quote his own words: “I attempt all wayes I
can thinke of, that since I could not have Audience till the Feasts
were done, in the mean time my Capitulations may goe forward.”[105]
We will look into these activities and try to set them forth as
briefly as we can.
FOOTNOTES:
[97] Covel’s _Diaries_, p. 206; Rycaut’s _Memoirs_, p. 317. Cp.
George Etherege to Joseph Williamson, “R. 8 May. 1670,” _S.P.
Turkey_, 19.
[98] Letter from Adrianople, in _Life of Dudley North_, p. 213.
[99] Covel’s _Diaries_, p. 203.
[100] _Life of Dudley North_, p. 217.
[101] Covel’s _Diaries_, p. 226.
[102] Covel’s _Diaries_, p. 205.
[103] _Life of Dudley North_, p. 116.
[104] _Life of Dudley North_, pp. 124, 197.
[105] Finch to Coventry, Sept. 9, 1675, _Coventry Papers_.