Transcriber’s Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_) and ^{} encloses
superscripted material.
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN A TURKISH HAREM
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
(_In collaboration with_ MELEK HANOUM)
“ABDUL HAMID’S DAUGHTER”
(_In collaboration with_ ZEYNEB HANOUM)
“A TURKISH WOMAN’S EUROPEAN IMPRESSIONS”
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR IN TURKISH COSTUME]
AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN A TURKISH HAREM
BY
GRACE ELLISON
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
EDWARD G. BROWNE, M.A., F.B.A., F.R.C.P.
WITH THIRTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
* * * * *
_First Published in 1915_
* * * * *
I DEDICATE
THESE LETTERS TO ALL THOSE
WHO MADE MY VISIT
SO INTERESTING AND HAPPY,
BUT PARTICULARLY TO MY FRIEND
AND HOSTESS.
PREFACE
These letters do not claim to be a psychological study of Turkish
character, nor are they a political or historical treatise. They are
only an Englishwoman’s impressions of Turkish harem life, written
during a very happy and interesting visit amongst Turkish friends.
Should I not have said in these letters what my Turkish sisters
expected me to say; should I not have understood their civilization as
they hoped I would understand it; I feel sure they will forgive one who
they know has always been, and will always be their sincere friend.
To correct the errors, prejudice, and hatred which have become almost
part of the British national “attitude” towards Turkey is not an easy
task. If these letters have been able in ever so small a way to spread
some of the enthusiasm and love I feel for a nation which Europe has
so severely censured, they will at least have justified the reason of
their existence.
My thanks are due to the editor of the _Daily Telegraph_ for allowing
me to reproduce those letters which have appeared in the columns of
that paper.
GRACE ELLISON
ROUEN, 1915
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xiii
CHAPTER
I. BACK TO THE HAREM 1
II. “TIME’S FOLDED WINGS” 9
III. BACKGROUND AND ATMOSPHERE 19
IV. THE IMPERIAL HAREM--A RECEPTION BY THE SULTAN 33
V. THE ANGEL OF DEATH 50
VI. CHAMPIONS OF WOMEN--THE MEN WHO LEAD 64
VII. PASSIONATE WOMEN PATRIOTS--A MASS MEETING 79
VIII. A TURKISH MOTHER 91
IX. WOMEN WRITERS OF TURKEY 104
X. THE PROPHET AND POLYGAMY 119
XI. THE MAN WITH TWO WIVES 128
XII. FARTHER AFIELD--THE PRIMITIVE PEOPLE 137
XIII. THE PULSE OF THE NATION 151
XIV. FORBIDDEN GROUND--THE HOLY TOMB 162
XV. ON THE SHORES OF THE UPPER BOSPHORUS 170
XVI. MORE ABOUT HAREM LIFE ON THE BOSPHORUS 180
XVII. INCONSISTENCIES ON THE SHORES OF THE BOSPHORUS 187
XVIII. ONLOOKERS ONLY 195
AFTER-WORDS 202
INDEX 213
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE AUTHOR IN TURKISH COSTUME _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
HALIDÉ HANOUM, THE BEST KNOWN OF TURKISH WOMEN
WRITERS AND A LEADER OF THE WOMAN’S MOVEMENT 18
MISS “CHOCOLATE” 24
AN ENGLISHWOMAN WEARING A YASHMAK 34
H. E. GENERAL DJÉMAL PASHA, MARINE MINISTER,
THE FEMINIST MINISTER 82
H. E. TALAAT BEY, MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR,
A SUPPORTER OF THE WOMAN’S MOVEMENT 82
A CONTRIBUTOR TO THE NEW TURKISH WOMAN’S PAPER,
_KADINLAR DUNYASSI_ (“THE WOMEN’S WORLD”) 114
DANCING CLASS AT THE GIRLS’ SCHOOL, BROUSSA 120
THE GREEN MOSQUE AT BROUSSA 124
BROUSSA 140
THE FOOTBALL TEAM OF THE BROUSSA LYCÉE 142
OPENING OF THE BELGIAN SCHOOL OF ARTS AND
CRAFTS, STAMBOUL 160
TURKISH LADIES IN THE COUNTRY WITH THEIR
EUROPEAN GOVERNESSES 166
INTRODUCTION
As one who for nearly forty years has been a friend and admirer of
the Turks and a student of their language and literature, it is a
satisfaction to me, especially in the dark days through which Turkey
has passed and is passing, to find a fresh opportunity of testifying
to my belief in the virtues of that much-maligned and ill-used race.
I have, therefore, willingly acceded to the request of the authoress
of this work that I should add to it, now that it is finished, a few
words of introduction, though such introduction, as it seems to me, is
hardly needed. Miss Ellison enjoyed an opportunity of seeing an aspect
of Turkish life which few English women and no English men have been
privileged to study at first hand, and, as her book abundantly shows,
she has made good use of her opportunity. It will not be her fault
if she fails to “correct the errors, prejudice and hatred which have
become almost part of the British national attitude towards Turkey,”
and “to spread some of the enthusiasm and love” she feels “for a nation
which Europe has so severely censured.”
Before the Revolution of 1908 Turkish family life and the qualities of
the Turkish woman were, in all save the rarest cases, sealed books even
to those Europeans who mixed freely with Turks and spoke Turkish with
fluency; and though since that period a few Turkish ladies, notably
the talented authoress, Hálida Hanoum (to whom Miss Ellison repeatedly
refers in the course of these pages),[1] have visited England, and
even pursued their studies with remarkable success in English women’s
colleges, they are still sufficiently unknown and surrounded with
mystery to give to this present book a real interest and value. On one
occasion, some four years ago, when I was at Constantinople, I was
invited to meet a group of Turkish ladies who were anxious to make
the acquaintance of an Englishman who had studied their language and
literature, edited the most comprehensive and sympathetic history of
their poetry,[2] and was known to them as a sincere friend of their
country and their religion. I was much struck by their eagerness
and intelligence, as well as by the distinction of their manners,
and I am glad to find the impression left on my mind by this single
occasion entirely confirmed by Miss Ellison’s much more extended
experience. Knowing how absurd and baseless are many of the opinions
about the Turks and Islam entertained in Europe (so that, to take one
instance only, people who ought to know better constantly re-assert
the oft-repeated calumny that in the Mohammedan faith the existence
of a soul is denied to women), I was prepared to find Turkish ladies
much more intelligent and better educated than is generally supposed;
but the reality greatly exceeded my expectations. Of their profound
patriotism Miss Ellison gives (on pp. 85-87) a moving example, and Mr.
Morgan Shuster, at pp. 188-9 of his great book, _The Strangling of
Persia_, has shown that in this quality the Persian women do not fall
short of their Turkish sisters.
Nothing has so greatly retarded the evolution of the Muslim nations
as the backwardness of their women, seeing that in the formation of
the children’s characters it is nearly always the mother who plays the
chief part. Polygamy, as Miss Ellison points out, is so much rarer than
is generally supposed in Europe, save in the wealthiest classes and
especially in the royal household, that its evils have probably been
exaggerated; but, for the reasons set forth on p. 96 of this book,
happy and suitable marriages are rarer in the East than in Europe. The
changes in this respect which are now taking place, and with which
this book largely deals, are not the least of the blessings conferred
by the Revolution of 1908, and though it is at present the fashion in
the English press to disparage that revolution, which was at first
hailed with so much apparent enthusiasm, I cannot understand how any
one who knew Turkey both before and after it can deny or ignore the
vast improvement which it has effected not only in the happiness but
in the moral and intellectual condition of the people. In our own
country the contemplation of a Liberalism which takes Tsardom as its
ideal, a Conservatism which coquets with lawlessness and makes two
such reactionary measures as Conscription and Protection, the chief
“constructive features” of its programme, a Cabinet which pays less and
less heed to Parliament, a Parliament which grows ever less and less
in touch with public opinion, and a Press which tends increasingly to
make the selection rather than the collection of news its main object,
has produced a political pessimism, the like of which few living men
can remember, which makes it difficult for us to believe in the reality
of any political enthusiasm, or to understand what emancipation means
to a people who have just emerged from centuries of despotism. The
bright hopes born in Turkey in 1908 and in Persia two years earlier
have, indeed, been sorely dimmed, when not entirely extinguished, less
through the faults or shortcomings of the patriotic elements in these
countries than through the Machiavellian cynicism and materialistic
greed of the Great Powers of Europe, who least of all desired any
real reform in the lands which they had already marked down for their
spoliation. Yet even should Turkey and Persia unhappily perish and
cease to be counted amongst the free and independent nations of the
world, the historians of the future will pay the tribute of admiration
withheld by the politicians and journalists of to-day to their last
splendid struggles for freedom, independence, and reform. For truly
says one of the Arabian poets:
_Kam máta qawm^{un} wa má mátai makárimu-hum,_
_Wa ’asha qawm^{un} wa hum fi’n-nási amwátu!_
“Many a people’s virtues survive when themselves are sped,
And many a people linger who are counted by men as dead!”
It cannot, of course, be denied that the Turkish reformers (much
more, in my opinion, than the Persians) made several frightful
mistakes, the worst of which was the vain and disastrous attempt to
Turkify or Ottomanize the various non-Turkish elements of the Ottoman
Empire, a matter in which their policy contrasted very unfavourably
with that pursued by the late Sultan ‘Abd-ul-Hamíd. This grievous
error, like many lesser ones, was largely due, in my opinion, to the
French influences which played so large a part, both in the political
and the literary field, in the evolution of the “New Turks” (_Yeñi
Turkler_), or, as they are commonly though absurdly styled (now even by
themselves) “Young Turks.” The French are, indeed, more chauvinistic,
more intolerant of languages, customs and ideas other than their own,
in a word more “insular,” than the English; and from the time of Kemál
and Shinásí, the founders of the “Young Turkish” school, until that of
Ahmed Rizá Bey, Dr. Názim, ‘Ali Kemál, and others who took a prominent
part in recent events, French ideas have dominated the Turkish
reformers. So, just as the French discourage the use of the Breton
language in Brittany, and endeavour to impose their own tongue on the
inhabitants of that Celtic province, the “Young Turks” endeavoured to
impose their language on the Arabs and Armenians, and their alphabet on
the Albanians, while at the same time, with a strange inconsistency,
they were ruining the Turkish language by hasty and ill-considered
attempts to “reform” its spelling and to modify or even entirely change
the Arabic characters in which, like all other Muhammadan languages, it
is written.
I agree so entirely with nearly everything that Miss Ellison says
as to the true democracy[3] and hospitality[4] of the Turks, their
kindness to the poor,[5] their sincerity and unceremoniousness, the
humane character of the “slavery,” with the toleration of which they
have been reproached, and the like, that it seems ungracious to dissent
from a statement which she makes on pp. 104-5 as to the New School of
Turkish poetry. She quotes an opinion as to the value of this modern
poetry expressed by my late friend, Mr. E. J. W. Gibb (than whom in all
that concerns Turkish literature no greater authority can be adduced),
for which I also appear to be made responsible, as also, perhaps, for
the preceding implication that the Turks often excelled their earlier
Persian exemplars. This, I feel bound to state, is not my view.
Whatever comparisons may be instituted between the Turks and Persians,
and in whatever points the former may be deemed superior to the latter,
in literary skill and poetic talent there can, in my opinion, be no
comparison whatever. Turkish poetry, whether old or new, is at best
seldom more than pretty and graceful, while often the verses of even
comparatively unknown Persian poets (let alone such masters of the art
as Jalálu’d Dín Rúmí, Sa’dí, Háfiz and Jámí) touch the sublime. The
production of fine poetry may not be the highest aim of man, or the
object for which he was created, but, whatever this distinction may be
worth, some of the finest poetry in the world has been produced by the
Persians, and no one, I think, however great an admirer of the Turks he
may be, could make this assertion about them.
In what concerns the languages and literatures of Western and Central
Asia, I must, I fear, admit that I am what my learned and versatile
Turkish friend, Dr. Rizá Tevfiq, sometime Deputy of Adrianople in the
Ottoman Parliament, and commonly known in Turkey as “_Feylesúf Rizá_”
(“Rizá the Philosopher”), calls Mu’allim Nájí, the last great champion
of the old or classical style in Turkey, “_un réactionnaire décidé_,”
and it is with certain tendencies of the “Young Turks” in this domain
of philology and letters that I find myself least in sympathy. I have
already alluded to certain innovations in spelling which appear to me
deplorable, and to several still more deplorable attempts to modify or
abolish that beautiful Arabian character which is one of the strongest
bonds uniting all Muhammadan nations; and I must add a few words of
disapproval of that fantastic movement, briefly referred to on pp.
67-8 of this book, known as “The New Turanian” (_Yeñi Túrán_). Against
the attempts of this school to revive the use of obsolescent Turkish
words and to displace in their favour the equivalent, and at present
much more familiar, Persian and Arabic vocables, I have nothing
to say; there is no more reason why a Turk should not endeavour to
persuade his countrymen to call God “_Tañri_” instead of “_Alláh_,”
or fire “_üd_” instead of “_átesh_,” than there is why an Englishman
should not strive to oust from his language the words “Preface” and
“Introduction” in favour of “Foreword,” or even “photograph” in favour
of “light-bild” (as some few have done), provided always that he is
not so archaic and Anglo-Saxon as to be totally unintelligible. My
objection to the “Young Turanian” School is their hatred of Arabic
and Persian culture and desire to cut themselves altogether adrift
from them, and their grotesque ideal not merely of a Pan-Turkish but
of a Turanian world-empire, which should exclude Arabs, Persians,
and other non-Turanian Muhammadan elements, but should on the other
hand include not only Tartars and Mongols, but even Bulgarians. To
such strange lengths does the distorted Nationalism of these “New
Turanians” extend that they blame their own great Sultan Báyezíd, “the
Thunder-bolt,” because, not recognizing his “Turanian overlord,” he
strove to arrest the devastating advance of Tamerlane the Tartar, and
perished in the attempt. To me the aims of this school, so far as I
understand them, appear little less insane than those of Marinetti and
the Italian Futurists. Far truer, saner and more reasonable is the
Pan-Islamic ideal of Sayyid Jamálu’d-Dín al-Afghání, whose body rests,
after the storm and stress through which it passed, in the cemetery of
Nishán-Tásh in Constantinople.
These, however, are comparatively small matters, the inevitable
exuberances of a great National Awakening. However we may appraise
the “Committee of Union and Progress” or the “Liberals,” Enver Pasha,
Tal’at, Jávíd and Ahmed Rizá on the one hand, or Kyámil Pasha, Dámád
Feríd Pasha and Isma’íl Kemál on the other, let us render all honour to
the noble and often nameless and fameless Turkish patriots, both men
and women, who by their lives and deaths have during the last eight
years striven so gallantly to save and free their country; and, when we
think of their mistakes, let us remember what the Turkish poet says:--
“_Yár-siz qálir kimesné ‘ayb-siz yár isteyan!_”
“Friendless surely he remaineth who demands a faultless friend!”
EDWARD G. BROWNE
CAMBRIDGE, _May 5, 1914_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Pp. 17, 66, 69, 77, 107.
[2] The late Mr. E. J. W. Gibb’s _History of Ottoman Poetry_. Mr.
Gibb died on December 5, 1901, little more than a year after the
publication of the first volume of this great work. The remaining five
volumes, of which the last (vol. vi) contained the Turkish originals
of the poems translated in vols. i-v, were edited by myself, at the
request of his widow and parents, from the carefully written and
well-arranged manuscript materials which were found amongst his papers.
A seventh volume, dealing with the most modern period, is in course of
preparation.
[3] Pp. 21, 45, 54.
[4] P. 22.
[5] P. 52.
* * * * *
AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN A TURKISH HAREM
* * * * *
AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN A TURKISH HAREM
CHAPTER I BACK TO THE HAREM
It is a landscape of unending and beautiful sadness which surrounds the
Konak where I am now living. In my home away yonder I had imagined that
where the sun shines there must be laughter and merriment, yet here,
face to face with reality, the sun, the bright blue sky, and clear
atmosphere have steeped everything around--the mosques, the minarets,
and mournful cypress trees, which stretch towards heaven like a prayer,
with that inexplicable sadness which is the basis of Oriental life.
How could I have expected to find laughter and merriment in a landscape
like this? Here happiness even is expressed in some form of sadness;
the people’s songs of rejoicing are like funeral hymns; the sweetest
poetry is sad beyond our Western comprehension; the tales the old slave
tells us as we sit cross-legged round the big mangol are of sadness
so great that I often wonder whence they come, and yet, paradox of
paradoxes, I have come back to Stamboul to laugh, for I have never
laughed anywhere as I have in this land of extremes and contradictions
and surprises.
* * * * *
And now, after five years, here I am back again enjoying once more
the calm and peace of an Eastern home, and the interesting society of
my dear friend Fâtima (I change the name). To the Western ear, to be
staying in a Turkish harem sounds alarming, and not a little--yes, let
us confess it--improper. When, before I left my own country, I had the
imprudence to tell a newspaper correspondent that I was longing to
get back to the quiet harem existence, I was accused of “advocating
polygamy,” for to the uninitiated the word “harem” means a collection
of wives, legitimate or otherwise, and even the initiated prefers to
pretend he knows no other meaning.
Worn out with what we in the West call pleasures of society, the
fatigue of writing against time, the rush and bustle of our big Western
capitals, the hideous and continual noise of the traffic, which, like a
great roaring wave, seems gradually to deaden one’s understanding; how
good it is to be here!
The wonderful silence! Sometimes it is almost terrifying! And at nights
when I rise and peep through the lattice windows and see the beautiful
moon bathing with its silver magnificence the silent, sleeping city and
the calm, quiet Marmora beyond, it is difficult to believe that there
are living souls in these dimly lighted streets, and the Bekjih’s tap,
tap, tapping on the cobbled stones sounds, in the stillness, like some
spirit rapping from another world.
Yet much as I am drinking in the beauty of my new surroundings, they
do not in the least force me to write. In this wonderful garden of
God, for here one feels so keenly a divine presence in every living
thing, ideas surge through the brain; every nerve, every sense tingles
with the beauty around; one becomes part and parcel of its grandeur,
but alas! the thoughts vanish before they even come to any precision.
Encircled by such Nature, how can one write? “You in your Western
cities,” once said to me a Dervishe of the contemplative order, “have
you time or place or opportunity for contemplation?” No doubt he was
right, yet, like all those Turks who are privileged to make their
choice, we are dwelling on a height, and, like the Dervishe, we have
time, place, and opportunity for contemplation. But do we ever get
beyond contemplation?
The diary of my existence as a Turkish woman, which in England I
imagined could be written in a very short while, lies day after day
in the form of a pencil and exercise book, untouched, on the little
mother-of-pearl table in the most comfortable corner of my large
bedroom. “To-morrow,” I say, like a true Turkish woman, and alas! in
Turkey it takes a few to-morrows to beget “some day”; “some day” is
soon changed into “never,” and who knows whether the best of my Turkish
impressions will not be given “their local habitation and name” in a
room of some Continental hotel?
Now I understand how weeks and months, years even, may pass without
receiving news from Turkish friends; now I understand that lack of what
we English call “common courtesy.” We have misjudged the Turks. A pen
in the harem! The unnecessary intrusion! The reforming fever which has
swept over the land of Islam ever since the Constitution has not yet
taught the Turkish women the use of a pen as we understand it. When I
reproached my friend and hostess with not having written one letter,
“Why should I write,” she asked; “what have I to say? You know exactly
how every moment of my life is being spent. You know my affection for
you, and when two friends are really sure of one another’s sympathy,
each can feel the thoughts the other is thinking....” And so we took up
the threads of the conversation where we had left them five years ago.
Fâtima did not know I was coming to Constantinople. She was not dead,
of that I was sure, so I should find her, no matter into what part
of Turkey she might have wandered. But the news of my arrival reached
my friend almost as soon as I had found her address. She came at once
to see me at the hotel. A Turkish woman visiting me at an hotel! Was
it possible? Five years ago what would not have been her punishment
for such reckless _licence_? The customs of the country do not yet,
however, allow Turkish women to visit hotels, and in taking every step
forward she has to run the risk of offending the ignorant and fanatical
mob.
Fâtima did not come in by the front entrance. Quite recently a
restaurant for “ladies only” has been opened by the same management
as the hotel where I stayed and is, to some extent, a rendezvous for
Turkish women. It is their first step towards a “fashionable” club,
and to me, the newcomer, another big step towards freedom. Let those
Western critics, who have taken such a deliberate stand against the
present government and declared “the new order of things worse than
the old,” take into consideration such details as the opening of a
restaurant for Turkish women. It is part of a great scheme of reform,
and everything is going on in proportion. In 1908 more than two men
sitting at a café together were “suspect” and reported at headquarters;
in 1913 Turkish _women_ meet in a restaurant and discuss political
subjects--certainly this is not the Turkey I expected to see....
Having some work to finish that day, I had given orders that I would
see no one, and consequently when Fâtima asked for me in the restaurant
she was told that I was ill. I was in my room writing, and at first
hardly heeded a gentle knock at my door. Then came a faint repetition
of the first knock, and a few minutes after followed yet another and
another tap. At last I rose and opened the door to see who was there. A
moment’s pause, then a little black-robed, thickly veiled figure threw
herself in my arms and without saying a word, without even raising
her veil, just clung and clung to me. It was Fâtima, and this was our
meeting after five years without having seen or even heard of one
another.
“Little Fâtima,” I asked, when at last our long embrace had finished,
“how did you get here?”
“I slipped through the side door and came up in the lift,” she
answered, and she nearly laughed her hair down at the thought of her
own daring. Five years ago the zenith of Fâtima’s longing was to be
taken up in a hotel lift. I had begged her father to let her satisfy
her curiosity--he was powerful enough to do so--but he did not say “No”
and he did not say “Yes” either, and she went on wondering and longing
and wondering, and now, when she least expected it, her ambition had
been gratified.
It was arranged that I should go to Fâtima that very afternoon, the
carriage would be sent to fetch me, and the same old coachman would
drive me from the noise, vulgarity, and “patchwork” morality of that
Pera which to me was as obnoxious as Stamboul was delightful.
“I shall be counting the minutes till your arrival,” said Fâtima, as
she rose to go, and all of a sudden for the first time she realized
that she had not only to go back the way she came, but face the crowd.
How delightfully Turkish! Counting the cost of the wares when the bill
is in your hand--such a contrast to our British prudence!
“But tell me, Fâtima,” I said, as together we boldly walked down the
staircase and out at the front door, “how did you like your first
journey in a lift?”
“That you were alone and ill in an hotel,” she answered, “was of more
importance than anything else. I never even thought about it.”
* * * * *
The sun was shining brightly that afternoon--shining as it only shines
in the East. All the long way from Pera to my new home it had darted
its way through the carriage windows, showing so distinctly the thick
coating of dust which had spread itself so comfortably on my black
serge gown, and transfiguring the large white buttons of the carriage
seat into sparkling diamond stars. At every corner I recognized old
nooks--old wisteria-covered houses, my favourite mosques and fountains,
the same slowly moving crowd, the same beggars almost, and I was going
back to the Fâtima who had grown from a girl to a woman--Fâtima
who had so persistently resisted the European civilization at her
very door, if it in any way prevented her remaining faithful to the
traditions of her own civilization and religion.
* * * * *
But at last we are there. Fâtima has come to the door to meet me and
hugs me into the big salon. There are the same tiny cigarettes, the
same coffee cups, the same endless rows of bon-bon boxes filled with
the delicious candies of the East, the same liqueurs, the same array
of cakes, and we walk and talk as though miles and years had never
separated us.
But the sun is now sinking to rest. It is our dinner-hour, the candles
are being lighted, the darlingest little baby girl toddles in to bid
her mother good-night and make the acquaintance of her new “aunt.”
Kissing my hand, she raises it to her forehead with the grace of a
little Empress. Dear little Perihan with the beautiful, wide-awake,
brown eyes! Will your destiny be like that of the great Eastern
Princess whose name you bear?