_Constantinople under the Turks_
Constantinople soon became Stambûl in the mouth of the Turks, a
corruption it may be of the εἰς τὴν πόλιν which they had often heard
in the mouth of the Greeks. The crescent of Byzantium became the
symbol of the Ottoman power. A new city began to be raised on the
ruins of the old.
[Illustration: IN THE CEMETERY AT SCUTARI]
Some privileges were left to the Christians. Galata and Pera were from
the first confirmed in their independence and freedom of trade; yet
step by step the Turkish sway was established over them, and though
the foreign liberties still exist, and are reinforced by the
privileges, from time to time increased, of the ambassadors and their
households and the colonies they protect, the Sultan's rule is
complete on both sides of the Golden Horn. After three days of
plunder, Mohammed set himself to make order. He declared that he would
protect the Greek Church. A new patriarch, George Scholarios or
Gennadios, was installed: his ecclesiastical jurisdiction was
recognized. He was allowed to hallow new churches, and one little
humble oratory remained undefiled by the infidel. On the hill above
the Phanar, hidden away in a side street, by a high wall, stands the
little white-washed sanctuary round which on the fatal day the fight
had surged. The Turks still call it Kan Klissé, the church of blood.
The Greeks know it as S. Mary Mouchliotissa (the Mongolian), in
memory, not only of the B. V. M., but of Mary the daughter of Manuel
Palæologus, who had married the Khan of the Mongols, and after his
death returned to Constantinople and built or restored the little
church. Mohammed gave it to the architect Christodoulos, and by
special firman, preserved it to the Christians.
The patriarchal throne was moved first to the Church of the Apostles,
soon destroyed to make the mosque of the conqueror; thence to the
Pammakaristos (Fetîyeh Djami); thence to the Church of the Wallachian
palace in the Phanar, now the monastery of the Jerusalem patriarchate.
At last, in 1601, it was moved to the ancient Petrion, where it
remains. The palace of the patriarch is close by: the walls still show
remains of the ancient fortifications, and of the stones of the
monastery where the Empress Theodora lived so long in retirement. The
church has a beautiful iconostasis of dark olive wood, and a
patriarchal throne and pulpit, all probably of the seventeenth
century, but which the faithful delight to ascribe to much earlier
days. The throne is called the throne of S. John Chrysostom, the
pulpit his pulpit; but their only claim to the title is that they
belong to his successors, in an unbroken line. In this sheltered spot,
and in the district of Phanar, stretching between the inner bridge
over the Golden Horn and the ultra-Moslem suburb of Eyûb, remain the
last links of Constantinople with the ancient Christian city. Round
the patriarchal church, with the Christian schools and colleges, in
the houses that are still half fortresses, cluster ancient memories
that survive to-day. Gautier wrote fancifully, "Hither ancient
Byzantium has fled. Here in obscurity dwell the descendants of the
Comneni, the Dukai, the Palaiologoi, princes with no lands, but whose
ancestors wore the purple and in whose veins flows imperial blood."
Still in these dark houses, dusty and begrimed without, there survives
some of the ancient Greek society, that has passed through so many
changes, and hopes at least to witness one more.
The conquest of Constantinople had less effect than might have been
expected upon the position of the Greek Church. Gennadios whom
Mohammed made Patriarch, had been the bitter opponent of the reunion
of the churches, and he had even declared that the destruction of the
Empire would be the certain result of the concessions to the Latins.
Mohammed desired that the Church should retain its power. If he
protected it there might grow up some general feeling of acceptance of
the Moslem rule. Thus synods were still allowed to meet, the patriarch
was allowed to hold courts Christian, and to enforce his sentences
with excommunication. But none the less the Church had no means of
resisting the absolute power of the Sultan. At any moment patriarch,
bishop or priest could be deposed, banished, executed, by his sole
will. The Church has never ceased to live in a position of danger, at
the mercy of an alien lord, and amid an infidel people; and at any
moment she is liable to an active persecution, and her members to
martyrdom.
The earlier patriarchs after the conquest seem to have been disturbed
in their office by scandals, intrigues, difficulties of every kind.
Before long the Sultan demanded payment on each new election, and it
is represented that it was only by bribes that the election proceeded
at all. Simony appears to have been rife. It was but slowly and under
persecution that the Church was purged from these sins and became
again fully worthy of the reverence of the whole Greek people. The
encouragement of learning in the present century, the high character
of the patriarchs, the times of danger through which they have passed,
have left the Church the true centre of the national life which still
remains. Nor has the widespread influence of the patriarchate failed
to preserve some relics of the power of the ancient Empire. During the
seventeenth century, while the Morea was in the hands of the
Venetians, the Patriarch of Constantinople still nominated the
bishops, revenues still reached him from the monasteries; and his
excommunications were still valid in the lands which did not own the
Sultan as lord. The Patriarch still claims ecclesiastical jurisdiction
over the Balkan lands, though the Porte has appointed a Bulgarian
exarch, in accord with the wishes of the government, to act as head of
the Orthodox in that principality, and Roumania has also freed
herself; Serbia still struggles to be free: but it can hardly be
doubted that should the lands ever be reunited, they would all gladly
return to the obedience of the Patriarchate.
But this by anticipation: Mohammed set himself to found a new city.
Land was freely granted to rich families from other cities: it is
said that five thousand families, Greeks and Turks, were soon induced
to settle in what had been the richest city in the world. Four
thousand Servians were planted outside the walls to recolonize the
villages that the war had destroyed. As the conquest spread Greeks and
Albanians were forcibly deported to the capital. The Christians of
Constantinople alone were freed from the tribute of their children.
Before he died Mohammed saw the city again populous and in prosperity.
He founded a new city on the ruins of the old: the new population,
half Christians, but predominantly Turks, gave new life; and the new
life was made to centre round the new buildings which Christian art
inspired the Moslems to build. Gradually the city became not only
Oriental, but Mohammedan. It is thus we see it to-day. Of the
buildings let us speak later. Now let us see the work that was done by
Mohammed the Conqueror and his successors.
The Turkish power depended upon the characteristic institution of the
Janissaries. From the time of Orchan it was the law of the Turks to
require from all the Christian subjects of their power a tribute of
their children. These were at once made Mussulmans, brought up very
strictly in their faith, skilfully taught, and trained to hardness. As
time showed their capacity, they were divided into two classes; those
who had no special physical strength were set to work in the offices
of State; the others underwent the strict discipline which produced the
finest military corps in Europe, the Janissaries. Unmarried, without
family ties, connected neither among themselves nor with the people,
these soldiers, it was said by their founder, Khalil-Djendereli, would
belong solely to their sovereign, from whom they would have their sole
reward. It was an original and daring thought, to make each conquest
the basis of future victories. "Let the Christians support the war;
let themselves furnish the soldiers by whose means we shall fight."
The first batch of Christian captives thus set apart in 1328 were
brought before a renowned dervish, Hadji Bektash. Thus he blessed
them. "Let them be called Yeni-Tscheri (new soldiers): they shall be
conquerors in every fight; let their countenance be ever white and
shining, their arm strong, their sword sharp, their arrow swift."
No troops ever more powerfully affected the imagination of friends and
foes. Among the Turks they were always the leaders, the forlorn hope.
Among Christians the terror of their name spread over Europe. In every
war they gained new laurels, and from the moment when they stormed the
walls of Constantinople they began to be, slowly but certainly, the
sole strength of the Ottoman power. At first the absolute servants of
the Sultan, before two centuries were over they became his masters.
Their numbers increased rapidly. Within a few years their numbers
reached twelve thousand, and in the seventeenth century they were more
than three times as numerous. The description of the English traveller
Sandys shows perhaps better than any other record what impression they
made upon Christians at the height of their power.
"The Janissaries," he says,[34] "are those that bear great sway in
Constantinople: in so much that the Sultans themselves have been
sometimes subject to their insolencies. They are divided into severall
companies under severall Captaines; but all commanded by their Aga: a
place of high trust, and the third in repute through the Empire:
howbeit, their too much love is to him an assured destruction. These
are the flower of the Turkish infantery, by whom such wonderfull
victories have been atchieved. They call the Emperour father (for none
other is there for them to depend on), to whose valour and faith in
the time of warre he committeth his person: they having their stations
about the royal pavillion. They serve with harquebushes, armed besides
with cymiters and hatchets. They weare on their heads a bonnet of
white felt, with a flap hanging downe behind to their shoulders;
adorned about the browes with a wreathe of metall, gilt, and set with
stones of small value; having a kind of sheathe or rocket of the same
erected before, wherein such are suffered to sticke plumes of feathers
as have behaved themselves extraordinarie bravely. They tucke up the
skirts of their coates when they fight, or march: and carry certaine
dayes provision of victuals about with them. Nor is it a cumber: it
being no more than a small portion of rice, and a little sugar and
hony. When the Emperor is not in the field, the most of them reside
with him in the Citie: ever at hand upon any occasion to secure his
person, and are as were the Pretorian cohorts with the Romanes. They
are in number about forty thousand: whereof the greater part (I meane
of those that attend on the Court) have their being in three large
Serraglios; where the juniors do reverence their seniors, and all obey
their severall commanders (as they their Aga) with much silence and
humility. Many of them that are married (a breach of their first
institution) have their private dwellings: and those that are busied
in forreine employments, are for the most part placed in such garrison
townes as do greatly concerne the safetie of the Empire. Some are
appointed to attend on Embassadors; others to guard such particular
Christians as will be at the charge, both about the City, and in
their travels, from incivilities and violences, to whom they are in
themselves most faithfull: wary and cruell, in preventing and
revenging their dangers and injuries; and so patient in bearing
abuses, that one of them of late being strucken by an Englishman
(whose humorous swaggering would permit him never to review his
countrey) as they travelled along through Morea, did not onely not
revenge it, nor abandon him to the pillage and outrages of others, in
so unknowne and savage a country; but conducted him unto Zant in
safety, saying, God forbid that the villany of another should make him
betray the charge that was committed to his trust. They are al of one
trade or other. The pay that they have from the Grand Signior is but
five aspers a day: yet their eldest sons as soone as borne are
inrolled, and received into pension; but his bounty extendeth no
further unto his progeny (the rest reputed as natural Turks), nor is a
Janizary capable of other preferments than the command of ten, of
twenty, or of an hundred. They have yeerly given them two gowns
apiece, the one of violet cloth, and the other of stanmell, which they
weare in the City: carrying in their hands a great tough reede, some
seven feet long, and tipped with silver; the weight whereof is not
seldome felt by such as displease them. Who are indeed so awefull,
that Justice dare not proceed publikely against them (they being only
to be judged by their Aga), but being privately attached, are as
privately throwne into the sea in the night time. But then are they
most tumultuous (whereto they do give the name of affection) upon the
dangerous sicknesses of their Emperours; and upon their deaths commit
many outrages. Which is the cause that the great Bassas as well as
they can, do conceale it from them, untill all things be provided for
the presentment of the next for them to salute. Whereupon (besides
the present larges) they have an Asper a day increase of pension: so
that the longer they live, and the more Emperours they outlive, the
greater is their allowance. But it is to be considered, that all these
beforenamed, are not onely of that tribute of children. For not a few
of them are captives taken in their child-hood; with divers Renegados,
that have most wickedly quitted their religion and countrey, to fight
against both: who are to the Christians the most terrible adversaries.
And withall they have of late infringed their ancient customes, by the
admitting of those into these orders, that are neither the sons nor
grandsons of Christians; a naturall Turke borne in Constantinople,
before never knowne, being now a Barsa of the Port."
To the English traveller's record may be added information of the
Venetian ambassador's _relazioni_, which speak of the severe military
training which the lads underwent, the strict asceticism in food,
drill, garb, and tell that at night they all lay in a long room,
lighted, and patrolled all night by a watchman, who walked up and down
that they might learn thus to sleep in the midst of alarms.
Children of every nation, Poles, Bohemians, Russians, Italians,
Germans, as well as tribute slaves from Greece and the Balkan lands,
they knew no home but that narrow court in the Seraglio, no master but
the Sultan, no hope but the hope of plunder and the paradise of Islam.
So great was the power of the training, the comradeship, the
fanaticism, that but one of all the Christians forcibly made Moslem
and brought up among the Janissaries is known to have taken the
opportunity to escape and return to Christendom. The single hero was
Scanderbeg, who alone arrested the triumphant progress of Mohammed II.
One of the most curious memorials of the old Turkish State is that
which is preserved to-day in the museum at the end of the At-meidan.
There a hundred and thirty-six figures, huge painted dolls, represent
the terrible troops in their habits as they lived. On the stairs are
figures in chain armour, in the hall above the representations of the
different ranks, and the officers named after the kitchen duties they
were supposed to perform. It was one great family, in idea, with the
Sultan as father. He gave the food, and their great kettles in which
it was cooked were also their drums, with spoons for drumsticks. A
strange grotesque sight are these bright figures in their long robes,
with here and there, for contrast, an example of the new uniform
introduced by Mohammed II. The museum is almost deserted; but there is
no more characteristic memorial of the great days of the Turks. Let
the visitor not imagine that he may sketch or take notes or look at
the book of drawings which he may find in the room. He will hear the
familiar Turkish word _Yasak!_ and the book will be snatched from his
hands.
But this by the way. When Mohammed II. took Constantinople and settled
the Janissaries in the outer court of the Seraglio, once the
Acropolis, they were only beginning to be the centre of power. Yet
even then they were the most characteristic institution of the
Osmanlis. While Constantinople was assuming the aspect which it was to
bear for centuries, of an entirely eastern town, with minarets
everywhere, khans, shrouded women, the strange solemn social life of
the East, Mohammed the Conqueror was adding everywhere to his empire.
Servia and Bosnia were annexed, Albania and Cyprus subdued; the whole
of Asia Minor was under his rule. He died on May 2, 1481, and left the
name of the greatest of the Turkish rulers. His laws, his organisation
of the judicial and religious class of the Ulemas, the teachers of
the people, were more permanent than his victories. But when he died
the power that he had founded rested securely on the great maxim which
his successors were, from his practice, to develop till it became a
fixed theory of government--that the children of Christians were alone
those who should enjoy the highest dignities of the empire.
The visitor to Constantinople remembers Mohammed most of all by the
magnificent mosque which towers over the city and is seen in such
striking effects of light from the heights of Pera. With the name of
his successor is associated a mosque as beautiful and as famous.
Bayezid succeeded his father in spite of a plot of the Grand Vizier to
give the throne to his younger brother Djem, whose romantic adventures
fill so large a space in the French and papal diplomacy of the end of
the fifteenth century. His reign (1481-1512) was marked like his
father's by great victories, and the once famous Turkish fleet owes
its origin to him. In him first appears the contemplative lethargic
character which was to become marked in some of the later Sultans.
Eastern writers called him a philosopher; and when he had ceased even
to pretend to be a warrior his troops insisted on his giving up the
throne to his son Selim.
Three weeks after his resignation he died. Rarely has he who has once
been Sultan lived long in retirement. Selim, with ferocious zest,
carried out, though he did not inaugurate, another custom of the
Ottoman monarchy. He swept away all possible claimants to his throne,
strangling his two brothers and five of his nephews. He followed the
victorious course of his predecessors; he fought in Persia, he seized
Egypt and occupied Jerusalem, and Mecca, the centre of Mohammedan
reverence, passed under his power. Savage and relentless as he
was--it became a proverb of hatred, "Would that thou wast the Vizier
of Sultan Selim"--he was yet, like so many of his race, a poet, and
the friend and patron of learned men. He died near Adrianople on the
22nd of September 1520, and left the throne to his son Suleiman, one
of the greatest of the Sultans.
Suleiman began with mercy. Justice and benevolence, he declared that
he took for the principles of his government. He freed prisoners, he
declared that he would rule in accordance with the precepts of the
Koran. From the first his reign was a succession of victories. In 1521
Belgrade surrendered; in 1522 he conquered the isle of Rhodes, so long
the gallantly defended outpost of Christendom in the Mediterranean.
For a time after these great successes he turned to pleasure, but
threatened insubordination among the Janissaries awoke the barbarity
which was never far below the surface in the great Turkish Sovereigns,
and Mustafa the aga with several of the officers paid for their
independence with their lives.
It was necessary, Suleiman saw, to continue war, to find employment
for his turbulent force; and in 1526 he marched against Hungary with a
force of a hundred thousand men. At Mohacz the Christian army was
utterly defeated after a gallant fight, in which Suleiman himself was
for a time in great danger, and in which at the end the flower of
Hungarian chivalry with their King at their head perished by the sword
or in the river through which they tried to escape. Buda Pesth fell
into the hands of the conqueror. All the prisoners taken at Mohacz
were massacred, and over a hundred thousand slaves were led back to
Turkey. The spoils were enormous. The library of the old Seraglio and
the treasury still hold some of the choicest manuscripts of the famous
library of Mathias Corvinus. Suleiman returned in triumph to
Constantinople.
To the passage of armies on their way to victory the people of the
great city had now become familiar as in the greatest days of the
Empire. Thirteen times, it is said, did Suleiman pass through the
gates on warlike expeditions and thirteen times did he return a
conqueror. He led his forces to the walls of Vienna, and though he was
at length compelled to withdraw, he inflicted a blow on the Empire
which it took long to recover, and he showed to Europe that a new and
terrible power had come to take part in the affairs of the West. In
Persia, if he was not entirely successful, yet he added new
territories to the Empire. A pirate fleet under his sanction swept the
seas. He defeated the combined fleets of Spain, Italy, and Venice.
During a reign of forty-six years he kept Europe and Asia at war. But
his greatest triumphs were not those of the battlefield. He made the
great Sovereigns of Christendom count him as their equal. Every prince
of the time was anxious to enter into negotiation with him. Their
envoys came to Constantinople, and were treated as suppliants. To
every indignity they submitted for the sake of winning the alliance of
"the grand Turk," the Sultan whom Europe came to call "the
magnificent."
France was the first to make alliance with the infidel; and in spite
of the papal curse the Mohammedan power was introduced as a prominent
actor in the politics of Europe by the most Christian King, Francis I.
The Sultan of sultans, King of kings, giver of crowns to the kings of
the world, the shadow of God upon the earth, Suleiman, the ever
victorious, assured the prostrate King of France that he need not
fear, for that every hour his horse was saddled, his sword girt on,
and he was ready to defend and to overthrow. A solemn treaty in
February 1535 united France and Turkey in bonds of perpetual amity. It
was renewed in 1553; and the alliance remained an important fact in
the politics of Europe for more than two hundred years.
Renowned for his victories in diplomacy and war, Suleiman's fame was
even greater as a patron of art and letters. It was through him first
that the Christendom of the sixteenth century heard of the glories of
Eastern literature, and that Europe began to imitate Asia. It was the
great age of Turkish poets. The court of Suleiman was thronged by
poets who vied with each other in celebrating the glories of their
master. Every bazaar of the East rang with his praises: in far distant
lands the ingenious verse-makers made his victories, his pleasures,
his magnificence, the theme of their elaborate compositions. Trade
poured into Stambûl. All the riches of the East, the wonderful carpets
and embroideries, the exquisite metal-work, the dignified designs of
the pen and the brush, fixed their natural home in the court of the
magnificent Suleiman. Under him the architecture of the Moslems
reached its culmination: the splendid mosque named after him, with the
türbehs around it, represent the great work of his age, worthy of
commemoration as lengthy as that which Procopius gave to the edifices
of his sovereign. Great as conqueror, as builder, and as restorer of
ancient work, Suleiman may well be called, in yet another aspect, the
Turkish Justinian. He was great also as a legislator, and his work
completed that of Mohammed II. He laid down the limits of the
privileges of the Ulemas, the powers of the Sheikh-ul-Islam and the
Grand Vizier. Financial organisation, so essential to the security of
his conquests, was made under his rule into an elaborate system. The
penal code was revised, simplified, and, on the whole, rendered less
severe. Every change, every reform, showed the guiding genius of the
great Sultan; arbitrary as the worst of his race, unrestrained always
in the exercise of his authority, he yet showed an Eastern despotism
at its best, animated by a zeal for justice, for regularity, for the
welfare of the people.
Suleiman, whose name exercised so great a fascination over the
imagination of the West, was the hero, Christian romancers thought, of
a grand passion. The name of Roxelana became famous in the drama and
poetry of Europe. Her story was indeed a striking one. Khurrem, "the
joyous one," was a Russian captive, who, in the later years of the
mighty Sultan, obtained an absolute control over him. From a slave,
placed among hundreds of other captives in the harem, she rose to be
herself Sultan,[35] the wife of the Commander of the Faithful.
It was contrary to all precedent that Suleiman deposed the mother of
his eldest son from her rank and made Roxelana Sultan. The French
Ambassador accounts for the elevation in this way. "Roxelana wished to
found a mosque for the weal of her soul, but the mufti told her that
the pious works of a slave turned only to the advantage of her lord:
upon this special ground Suleiman declared her free. This was
immediately followed by the second step. The free woman would no
longer comply with those desires of Suleiman which the bondswoman had
obeyed, for the fetwa of the mufti declared that this could not be
without sin. Passion on the one side and obstinacy on the other at
last brought it about that Suleiman made her his wife. A treaty of
marriage was ratified, and Roxelana was secured an income of 5000
sultanins."[36]
The extraordinary influence which this remarkable woman exercised over
the great Sultan was new, it seemed, to the Empire; it was not only
new, but destructive to the military system of the Turks that any
special attachment should be formed which should attract the Sultan to
the home rather than the camp. The Sultans, with all their gross
pleasures, had been ever warriors ready to desert everything for their
military duties, and had ruled their Empire as well as their army
solely by their own will. Suleiman seemed to open the way to
influences which would be destructive to the Turkish power; and one of
the greatest of the Viziers a century later said that all his
successors were fools or tyrants.
Be this so or not, Suleiman and Roxelana were unique in Turkish
history. Their devotion to each other appeared to be complete: and the
passionate love which grew rather than diminished with years, marked
the history of the court with the stains of sacrifice and crime.
Mustafa, the Sultan's eldest son, stood in the way of the children of
Khurrem. The Vizier Rustem Pacha was her devoted slave, owing to her
his elevation to the dignity of the Sultan's vicegerent. He brought to
Suleiman reports that Mustafa was allying with the Shah of Persia to
dethrone him, and was winning the Janissaries to his side, a charge to
which his valour and ability, and his great popularity with the
soldiers, might seem to give some colour. Suleiman himself, on his
Syrian campaign, ordered his son to appear before him. On September
21, 1553--the day was long remembered--the gallant Mustafa was brought
with great pomp and ceremony to the tent of the Sultan. When he
entered he found only the seven mutes armed with the fatal bowstring.
He was seized, and before he could utter more than one cry, he was
murdered. The thick tapestry at the back of the tent was drawn aside
and Suleiman entered to gaze upon the body of his son.
Even then the vengeance was not complete. The child of the murdered
Mustafa was stabbed at Brusa in his mother's arms. The horror that was
felt at these crimes became evident when the Janissaries demanded the
punishment of Rustem, and when Djihanghir, the son of Suleiman and
Roxelana, died of grief for the brother to whom he was devoted. The
new grand Vizier was sacrificed also: and not long afterwards the
beautiful Roxelana, Khurrem, passed away. The great Sultan gave her
the most beautiful of tombs. The art of the Mussulmans was centered in
that last home which the love of Suleiman could bestow.
"Without, the scented roses twine,
The Suleymanieh tow'rs o'erhead,
The flagstones, flecked with shade and shine,
Re-echo to the pilgrim's tread,
And soft grey doves their wings outspread
In the blue vault above the shrine."
If Roxelana was the evil genius of Suleiman, his reign was not more
happy after her death. Her two elder sons, Selim and Bayezid broke
into open war. Bayezid attacked Selim, and, betrayed, it would seem by
the basest of intrigues, he was defeated, and fled to Persia. Every
letter that he wrote to his father was suppressed, and the Persians
sold him to his brother by whom he and his four sons were put to
death. A few months later his fifth son, a child of three, was
strangled at Brusa by the Sultan's orders.
To the last, Suleiman led his troops to the field. He died on August
30, 1566, while he was conducting the siege of Szigeth, a small
fortress in Hungary. The grand Vizier concealed his death from the
army and sent messengers at once to Selim, who hastened to
Constantinople.
Suleiman left behind him a name more famous than any of his
predecessors save Mohammed the Conqueror. His lofty and enterprising
genius, his heroic courage, his strict observance of the laws of Islam
tempered at times by a wise tolerance, the order and economy which
were combined with his magnificence and grandeur, his love of
knowledge and the protection he extended to learned men, all mark him
out, says the historian of the Ottomans, among the noblest of his
race.
Selim II. began ill by not paying the largesse which the Janissaries
expected from a new sovereign. They mutinied, and he was obliged to
yield. His father had altered the ancient rule which required the
Janissaries only to go to the war when the Sultan himself took the
field. The Janissaries now compelled him to allow the enrolment of
their children in their ranks. Selim was no warrior, and he was glad
to send his troops without him. He preferred, the ambassadors say,
"the society of eunuchs and of women, and the habits of the serai to
the camp:" he "wore away his days in sensual enjoyments, in
drunkenness and indolence." "Whoever beheld him and saw his face
inflamed with Cyprus wine, and his short figure rendered corpulent by
slothful indulgence, expected in him neither the warrior nor the
leader of warriors. In fact, nature and habit unfitted him to be the
supreme head, that is the life and soul, of that warlike State."[37]
He was the first of the Turkish Sovereigns who was unworthy of the
throne that had been won by hard and incessant work. "I think not of
the future," he himself said, "I live only to enjoy the pleasure of
each day as it passes." A drunkard ruling over the Mussulmans, sworn
to total abstinence from all intoxicating drinks, was a grotesque and
disgusting anomaly. The people mocked while they followed the example.
"Where shall we get our wine to-day," they said, "from the Mufti
(priest) or from the Kadi (judge)?"
But whatever might be the character of the Sultan, it had become a
fixed policy with the Turks that the Empire could only be carried on
by aggressive war. Under Selim, though without his personal
intervention, war was made with Russia, but without success: the
conquests of Suleiman in Arabia were made complete, and Yemen fell
into the hands of the Turks. Then it was determined to complete the
conquest of the Mediterranean: war was declared against Venice, and
Cyprus was captured in August 1571. But this capture, which Selim
described to Barbaro as "cutting off one of the arms of the Republic"
was avenged by the famous naval league against the Turks. On October
7, 1571, Don John of Austria utterly destroyed the Turkish fleet at
Lepanto, capturing 130 galleys, 30,000 prisoners, and 15,000 Christian
slaves. It was the first sign of the long decline of the Ottoman
power. Europe awoke to the belief that the Turks were not invincible.
[Illustration: THE GOLDEN HORN FROM PERA, AFTER SUNSET]
The news was received with consternation in Constantinople. An
outbreak of Mohammedan fanaticism, as so often since, found its
expression in the ferocity of the Sultan. Selim issued orders for the
massacre of all the Christians in the city: happily his Vizier
deferred the execution of the command, and it was revoked. The
incident is characteristic. From 1453 the Christian inhabitants of the
capital have held their lives simply at the pleasure of the Commander
of the Faithful. At any moment the word may be spoken which the loyal
Turk must obey
"For an order has come from the Padishah
I must go and kill the Giaour."
The butchery was countermanded in 1571, but little more than twenty
years later it was again seriously proposed. When the Spaniards in
1595 sacked Patras, the extermination of the Christians in
Constantinople "was discussed in the divan, but the result was
confined to the publication of an order for the expulsion of all
unmarried Greeks from Constantinople within three days."[38] This was
in the reign of Murad III., and when he died, in the same year, "the
Janissaries, in their wonted manner, fell to spoiling Christians and
Jews, and were proceeding to further outrages, when their aga, to
restrain their insolence, hung up a Janissary taken in the act of
murdering a rayah."
The alarm of Mussulman Constantinople was ended by the speedy
reconstruction of a fleet, and by the capture of Tunis. But with none
of these triumphs was it possible to associate the name of Selim. He
died on December 12, 1574, "the victim," in the phrase of the Vicomte
A. de la Jonquière, "de sa passion pour le vin."
Murad III. his son and successor was not without good instincts. He
was a striking contrast to his father. He loved study, he was
temperate, he was a soldier. But the terrible custom, now become
almost a law of state, laid its frightful burden of crime upon him at
the moment of his succession. For eighteen hours he refused to be
proclaimed, he argued with the Muftis and the Ministers, to save the
lives of his brothers. But he yielded, willingly or unwillingly, and
the chief of the mutes was summoned to his presence, shown the body of
the dead Sultan, and given nine handkerchiefs for the nine princes in
the Seraglio. Weeping, Murad gave the order, says the Venetian
ambassador: and men thought when he began his reign that he would be
sober, wise, and just. He did not long retain the reputation. He began
a war with Persia and his troops were engaged on the Hungarian
frontier. But he followed the example of his father. He did not
himself lead his armies in the field. He rarely left the seraglio,
where he gave himself up entirely to the pleasures which appealed so
powerfully to the Moslem. The harem and the treasury became his sole
delights. The ambassadors tell stories that sound fabulous of his
insane desire for gold. He stripped ornaments from ancient works of
art and coined them into money; he collected from every quarter; he
pinched and starved everything but his private pleasures, and year
after year he cast into the great marble well which he had made
beneath his bed "two and a half millions of gold, all in sequins and
sultanins." Under him the sale of offices, which was begun by Rustem,
the vizier to whom Roxelana induced Suleiman to give his favour,
became a settled and almost fundamental rule of the state. Even
judicial and military offices were given for bribes, and the money was
caressed by the insane Murad and cast into the pit over which he
slept. The ambassadors describe in ludicrous language the impression
which Murad made upon them. He sat in state to receive them, he
received their presents, he listened to them with a stupid stare; then
he "went back to his garden, where in deep sequestered spots his women
played before him, danced and sang, or his dwarfs made sport for him,
or his mutes, awkward and mounted on as awkward horses, engaged with
him in ludicrous combats, in which he struck now at the rider now at
the horse, or where certain Jews performed lascivious comedies before
him." In fact the Sultans were becoming ridiculous, without ceasing to
be terrible. As for government, Murad left it to his vizier, a
Bosnian, Mohammed, who held his office in three reigns and far
surpassed any European minister in riches and power. It was he who
peacefully arranged the succession of both Selim and Murad, and so
long as he lived there was order and firmness in the government. But
after his death the chief office was passed from hand to hand,
according to the Sultan's fancy, and always a large sum found its way,
at each change of viziers, into the pit of gold. The elevation of
Ferhat reads like a tale in the Arabian Nights. Murad would wander
like Haroun al-Raschid through the bazaars. One day he heard a cook
bewailing the misgovernment of the city. He questioned him, approved
his replies, and next day summoned him to the palace and appointed him
to the office whose holder he had criticised, from which he rose to be
vizier. It was a perilous rise. Ferhat did not long retain his
position, but at least he escaped with his life. It was different with
others, and the precedent of handing over officers to the vengeance of
the Janissaries was set in 1590, when the soldiers attacked the
Seraglio and demanded the execution of the Beyler bey of Roumelia and
another. The plane tree of the Janissaries began its deadly history.
Murad died on January 6, 1596. His eldest son and successor, whose
mother was a Venetian, marked his accession by the most bloody of all
the murders which inaugurated the reign of the Sultans. He had his
nineteen brothers strangled in his presence, and then proceeded to
govern as though he had no objects but those of the most exalted
virtue. After a few weeks he left all the work to his ministers, and
was himself ruled entirely by his mother. In 1596, however, the
disasters of his army induced him to go himself to the war in
Wallachia. The sacred standard of the Prophet, preserved at Eyûb, was
unfurled, and on the field of Kereskte, Mohammed won a great victory
over the Austrians. He returned in triumph to Constantinople, where
the rest of his reign was marked by rebellions and misfortunes on all
sides. The plague made fearful ravages in the crowded streets of
Stambûl. It penetrated into the Seraglio, and it is said that
seventeen princesses, sisters of Mohammed, died. The sipahis rose and
demanded the heads of the eunuchs who ruled under favour of the
Valideh Sultan. They were given up and strangled. But then the Sultan
determined to take vengeance, he entrusted its execution to the
Janissaries. The sipahis were ordered to lay down their arms; if they
failed to do so they were threatened with the penalties of treason.
The soldiers thereupon delivered up their officers, who were put to
death. The Sultan himself died in 1603. His son Ahmed succeeded him,
an elder son having been put to death on pretence of having shown
independence of character which threatened the throne.
Ahmed I. was but fourteen when he came to the throne. Well served by a
wise Grand Vizier, his reign was marked by some signs of activity,
and, strange to say, by two years of peace. But the treaty of
Sitvakorok (1606) with Austria was another step in the decline of the
Ottomans.
Ahmed did something to redress the corruption that had infected the
government. He administered justice like the chieftains of old; he
received petitions, and saw that grievances were redressed. He began,
as he grew up, to read of the exploits of Suleiman, and to promise
himself that he would surpass them; but he had no stability of
purpose, and his reign passed away in disasters, with the murder of
the one eminent man, Nousouh Pacha, who might have saved the State,
and with the introduction of usages which seemed to the Ulemas to
strike at the very heart of Moslem law. Constantinople was almost
abandoned to mob-rule because the muftis forbade the use of tobacco,
which was introduced by the Dutch. It is impossible now to conceive a
Turk without this solace; and it is strange that it needed the most
ingenious arguments and the most stubborn defiance to procure the
withdrawal of the edict which forbade it to the Moslem. The poets, we
are told, called tobacco, coffee, opium, and wine the four elements in
the world of happiness; the Ulemas replied that they were the four
chief servants of the devil. The people settled the question for
themselves.
With Ahmed the custom of butchering the brothers of the new Sultan had
ceased. He not only spared the life of his brother Mustafa, but left
directions that he should succeed him on the throne. But the custom
which he began was even more fatal to the power of the Turks than that
which he ended. The succession of the oldest male of the royal house
might not itself have been a misfortune. But from the time when the
princes ceased to be strangled they were kept in the Seraglio, with no
knowledge of the work of government, trained only to a voluptuous and
effeminate life. Mustafa had almost lost his wits when he became
Sultan; he had been a prisoner for nearly forty years. Within three
months his violence, his promotion of two pages to be Pashas of Cairo
and of Damascus, his dislike of the female sex, convinced the
ministers that he was incapable of governing; he was again removed to
the Seraglio, and Osman II., the son of his brother Ahmed, was
elevated to the throne.
Of the troubles which beset the ambassadors and how they were
redressed more shall be said hereafter. Osman's six years of rule were
disturbed by sterner men. The Janissaries again showed that their
power was greater than that of the Sultan. Osman decimated them in
war, and executed many who drank wine; but they were too strong for
him, dragged the unhappy Mustafa again from prison, and again declared
him to be the ruling Sultan. The Kafess (cage), the splendid building
in the grounds of the old Seraglio, which even now may not be
approached, which had so long held him prisoner, has memories of no
stranger history than his. When he was dragged forth he trembled
before his nephew, and threw himself at his feet. Osman taunted the
Janissaries with the weakness of the ruler they preferred to himself;
but it was not weakness that the Janissaries feared. Osman was dragged
to the Seven Towers, and there, after a desperate struggle, he was
strangled in a dungeon. Within a few months the idiot Mustafa was
again deposed and sent back to the Kafess, where soon afterwards the
bowstring ended his miserable life. For the few months of his nominal
reign he was entirely in the hands of the soldiery; minister after
minister was given up to them, and ended his life by the bowstring or
on the fatal tree. The Janissaries held Constantinople in terror, and
raised and deposed a Sultan as easily as a minister.
Murad IV., still a child, the surviving son of Ahmed, was made Sultan
in 1623. In him the Turks had again a masterful and determined ruler.
His mother the Valideh, and his Vizier Hafiz, made the first years of
his reign distinguished if not glorious. Till 1632 he trained himself
in all military exercises; he rode, he drew the bow with the best of
the Janissaries. Then came the revolt of the Sipahis and Janissaries,
which gave him his opportunity. Constantinople was for many days in
the hands of the military mob, reinforced by disaffected troops who
had returned from Persia. They assembled in the Atmeidan (the old
Hippodrome); thence they went to the Seraglio and demanded the
"seventeen heads" of the Sultan's chief advisers and friends. For some
days Murad held out. He summoned the Vizier, Hafiz, who rode through
the crowd, past the barracks of the Janissaries, in at the Orta Kapou,
after dismounting, the stones of the mob falling round him as he
disappeared. Murad ordered him to escape to Juntan. Within a few hours
the Sultan was compelled to come forth to the people and hold Divan.
They demanded the seventeen--the "vizier, the aga of the Janissaries,
the deftarder, and even a boy, because he was liked by the Sultan."
"Give us the heads," they cried. "Give the men up to us, or it shall
be the worse for thee."
Murad summoned Hafiz to return to die. The Vizier came back, made the
ablution of the Moslem law before death, went forth calmly to the mob,
and was hewn in pieces outside the gate of the Seraglio. "Infamous
assassins," cried Murad, "who fear neither Allah nor his prophet, some
day if God wills you shall find your victims terribly avenged." "The
sole remedy against abuses is the sword," one said to the Sultan; and
the rest of his life showed how well he understood the lesson. One by
one the leaders of the revolt were secretly assassinated; their bodies
were found floating on the Bosporus. The Janissaries and the sipahis
were ostensibly received into favour again, justice was promised, and
the strict rule of law. But it was a reign of terror that Murad
inaugurated. His first execution had given him a passion for blood.
Sometimes he gratified it in the chase, when he slaughtered thousands
of head, driven together by an army of beaters. More often it was
displayed in the slaughter of men. In the year 1637 it was declared
that he had executed 25,000 men, many of them with his own hand. "He
was now terrific to behold. His savage black eyes glared threateningly
in a countenance half hidden by his dark brown hair and long beard;
but never was its aspect more peculiar than when it showed the
wrinkles between the eyebrows. His skill with the javelin and the bow
was then sure to deal death to some one. He was served with trembling
awe. His mutes were no longer to be distinguished from the other
slaves of the Serai, for all conversed by signs. While the plague was
daily carrying off fifteen hundred victims in Constantinople, he had
the largest cups brought from Pera, and drank half the night through,
while the artillery was discharged by his orders."[39]
Drunken and brutal as he was he had still much of the terrible force
of the early Ottomans. He led his own troops to battle, and when they
flinched--for the old spirit seemed to have deserted even the
Janissaries--he drove them forward with his own sword. He appears in
history as the Conqueror of Bagdad (1638) a conquest marked, it is
said, by a massacre of 25,000 people. He was the last Sultan whom the
people of Constantinople saw return in triumph from a war of which he
himself had been the leader.
He died on February 9, 1640, leaving behind him no child. Only his
mother's craft had prevented the murder of his only brother, the last
of the race of Osman. He left behind him an empire which seemed
entirely subdued to the Sultan's will. But the terror which he had
inspired could not endure; and while it lasted it could only paralyse
the forces which should have given strength and permanence to the
empire. Greedy, avaricious to an extent as enormous but not so
ridiculous as Murad III., the supreme passion of his life was the lust
of blood. It became an insanity; at night he would rush through the
streets, cutting down all whom he met. Yet he died in his bed; the
time had not come when Sultans were murdered as easily as Viziers.
Ibrahim, his successor, had been imprisoned in the Kafess since he was
a child of two. He had lived through the reigns of Mustafa, Osman and
Murad. He had been allowed no offspring. He was utterly ignorant of
politics and war. He cared for nothing but the pleasures of the harem.
When the soldiers went in to announce his accession he would not
believe that they desired anything but his death. He would not be
convinced till the corpse of his brother was brought before him. Then
he screamed with insane delight, "The empire is at last delivered from
its butcher."
His reign of nine years was a horrible mixture of tragedy and farce.
In licentiousness he outdid the worst of his predecessors, in folly
the silliest of them. The capture of the child of a favourite slave
led to the war of Candia: the marriage by his orders of his baby
daughter to a rich Pacha was used as an occasion to strangle the
bridegroom and seize his treasures. At length the shameful crimes of
the sovereign, of which murder seemed the least, caused an organised
insurrection in the city. The chief Mufti, whose daughter had been
shamefully used by the Sultan, assembled all the mollahs, and the
officers of the Janissaries and the sipahis in the Orta djami (a
mosque on the Etmeidan, the old quarter of the Janissaries, now
destroyed). They first demanded the execution of the Vizier. When that
was refused, the Janissaries secured the gates, surrounded the
Seraglio, caught and slew the Vizier. In S. Sophia, the Mufti, the
Sheik-ul-Islam, proclaimed to a vast multitude the iniquities of the
Sultan, and demanded his deposition. Solemnly the Osmanlis declared
Ibrahim, the padishah, the king of kings, the commander of the
faithful, unworthy to reign. His little child, Mohammed, only seven
years old, was fetched from the charge of his mother, the famous
Valideh Sultan, and invested with the ensigns of sovereignty. Ibrahim
was again carried to the Kafess. Ten days later appeared the mutes,
with the Vizier and the Sheik-ul-Islam; and the bowstring ended the
life of Ibrahim.
Mohammed IV. reigned for nearly forty years, 1649-1687, and he filled
a great space in the history of his time. Foreign observers--notably
that most entertaining writer Paul Ricaut, Esquire, "late secretary to
his Excellency the Earl of Winchelsea, Embassador Extraordinary for
His Majesty Charles II., to Sultan Mahomet Han the Fourth Emperor of
the Turks, now Consul of Smyrna, and Fellow of the Royal Society," in
his "History of the present state of the Ottoman Empire," and a
certain escaped slave (unless indeed it be an ingenious gentleman of
Grub Street) who wrote in 1663 "A new survey of the Turkish Empire and
Government"--made Europe well acquainted with the customs of the
Turks, and the manners, especially the least pleasing manners, of
their rulers. The Turk become better known, yet hardly less terrible;
and our knowledge of the revolutions of Constantinople now comes to
us, for the first time, largely from English observers. The story must
be briefly sketched. In the first year of the child-Sultan's reign
tragedies of the palace succeeded each other with fearful rapidity.
There was a contest between the Valideh, the mother, and Kiosem (as
Ricaut calls her), the grandmother of Mohammed. The aga of the
Janissaries took part against Sinan the Vizier, who, with the old
queen, determined to put a young child, Suleiman, on the throne. Sinan
took prompt measures. He entered the Seraglio, had the Valideh aroused
and sent to the bedside of her son. The household was armed. Suspected
traitors were slain before Mohammed's eyes, and their blood
bespattered his dress as he sat on his throne. While within the
Seraglio there was this confusion, without the whole city was in
disturbance, and the people were all aroused to defend their Sultan.
Ricaut's description is worth quoting. He derived his knowledge from
some persons intimately concerned, and the way he tells the tale, from
which a short passage is here given, shows how Eastern doings struck
the Westerns of his day.
"These preparations," he says,[40] "were not only in the Seraglio, but
likewise without; for the Visier had given order to all the Pashaws
and Beglerbegs, and other his Friends, that without delay they should
repair to the Seraglio with all the force they could make, bringing
with them three days Provision, obliging them under pain of Death to
this Duty. In a short space so great was this concourse, that all the
Gardens of the Seraglio, the outward Courts and all the adjoining
Streets were filled with armed Men: from Galata and Tophana came boats
and barges loaden with Powder and Ammunition and other necessaries; so
that in the morning by break of day appeared such an Army of Horse and
Foot in the Streets, and Ships and Gallies on the Sea, as administered
no small terrour to the Janizaries; of which being advised, and seeing
the concourse of the people run to the assistance of the King, they
thought it high time to bestir themselves; and therefore armed a great
company of Albaneses, Greeks and other Christians to whom they offered
Money, and the Title and Priviledges of Janizaries, promising to free
them from Harach, or Impositions paid by the Christians; which
Arguments were so prevalent, that most taking Arms, you might see the
Court and City divided, and ready to enter into a most dread confusion
of a Civil War."
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN IN THE COURT OF THE MOSQUE OF VALIDEH]
The end of the matter was that "the old queen" was dragged naked from
the Seraglio, a horror unknown in Turkish history, and bowstrung
outside the Orta Kapou. The banner of the Prophet was unfurled. The
Janissaries rallied to it. Their aga was deserted and slain, with his
accomplices, and (by retributive justice) the Vizier was stabbed in
the streets. Tranquillity was re-established, and the government was
carried on from the harem. From 1649 to 1656 six Viziers were deposed
or strangled, Pacha after Pacha broke into open revolt, the
Janissaries and sipahis fought against each other as if there had been
no Christians to conquer, and in turn demanded from the Sultan the
heads of those whom they chose to proscribe. The Valideh Sultan was
wisely and carefully educating her son. In 1656 she gave him the best
of teachers and viziers in Kuprili Mohammed. With him began the age of
the great Viziers who for a time revived the glory of the Turks. He
showed with severity that he intended to rule; and the Turks have
always submitted to one who knows how to command. The sipahis were
sent away from Constantinople and settled in the provinces. A rising
was sternly checked, and four thousand corpses were thrown into the
sea. Thus began the rule of the Kuprilian Viziers, which lasted from
1659 to 1702, a half century of varying fortunes, but never
wholly unfavourable to the Turks. The interminable war with
Candia went on, and the Austrian and Hungarian campaigns succeeded
each other with undeviating regularity. The Turks met Montecuculi, and
Sobieski, in the field; and when they were defeated they were at least
not disgraced. In 1683 Kara Mustafa, the Vizier, was defeated before
Vienna and the Turks were driven back to Belgrade. Though he was the
Sultan's son-in-law an order was sent to the camp for him to die; he
placed the cord with his own hands round his neck. In the year of
continuous warfare, when the forces of the empire bore the Turkish
banners against Venice, as well as the Empire, the vices and neglect
of the Sultan passed for a time almost unheeded. But in 1687 the
defeat of the army led to a demand for the punishment of the general,
Suleiman Pacha. Mohammed saw that this was but a step towards his own
deposition. He sacrificed his minister, and ordered the execution of
his own brother Suleiman, that there might be no one to replace him.
But it was too late. The army, in rebellion, marched on
Constantinople, released Suleiman and invested him as Sultan. Mohammed
was imprisoned till his death in 1693.
Suleiman II. reigned but four years, but he showed an unexpected
ability. His accession was marked by what had now become a custom, an
insurrection of the Janissaries. The house of the Grand Vizier was
sacked, his harem was violated, and the most shameful atrocities were
committed in the streets. Constantinople seemed to be given over to
pillage; the bazaars were attacked, and some private houses were
pillaged. The Sheik-ul-Islam was obliged to arouse the Ulemas and
display the standard of the Prophet over the gate of the Seraglio, and
when the Janissaries, like spoilt children, returned to their
allegiance, their leaders were executed and peace was restored. In
Suleiman the people had again a sovereign who lived according to the
precepts of the Koran. His wisdom and impartiality, extended even to
allowing the Christians of Constantinople to rebuild some of their
ancient churches, were recognised even by fanatics and he was counted
a saint. His wars were carried on by Kuprili Mustafa, to whom also his
brother Ahmed II. (1691-1695) abandoned all the power of government,
at the death of that wise statesman at the head of the defeated army
of the Turks at Salankanem. Mustafa II. (1695-1703) was the son of
Mohammed IV. His first proclamation to his people was a strange
document to issue from the arbitrary sovereign of the Osmanlis. He
attributed all the defeats and misfortunes of the last reigns to the
vices of the Sultans. "While the Padishahs who have ruled since our
sublime father Mohammed have heeded nought but their fondness for
pleasure and for ease, the unbelievers, the unclean beings, have
invaded with their armies the four quarters of Islam." In any other
monarchy it would have been dangerous indeed to criticise after this
fashion. At Constantinople neither the pen nor the voice was of much
importance. It was the sword that ruled.
And the sword of the Sultan had ceased to be victorious. In 1697
Mustafa was utterly defeated by Prince Eugene at Zenta. Again a
Kuprili was called to command, but by the treaty of Carlowitz, 1699,
by which Hungary and Transylvania were given up, the dismemberment of
the Empire had begun.
For the last two years of his reign Mustafa abandoned his capital and
lived in a palace at Adrianople. An intrigue deposed him in 1703, and
his brother Ahmed reigned in his stead. He began his reign by
executing all those who had taken part in his elevation, an act which
he followed by appointing another Kuprili Vizier. The next year was
marked by the beginning of serious wars with Russia, the bizarre
sojourn of Charles XII. at Bender, and the treaty of Passarowitz
(1718). The wars in which Turkey was now year by year involved
continued the slow process of the dismemberment of Turkey; but
Constantinople hardly felt the blows which struck the Empire at its
extremities. The description which English travellers give of the city
shows that strangers passed freely about in it, and that in many
respects it was superior to other European capitals as they were then,
and particularly in the condition of its streets, to what it became a
hundred years later, and remains to-day. A passage from Pococke's
travels (published in 1745) is worth quoting here. His description of
the four "royal" mosques he saw, those of Ahmed, Suleiman, Selim, and
Mohammed the Conqueror, shows that they were much as they are to-day,
but on the other hand S. Sophia and the Church of the Studium are
manifestly worse now than then; the latter indeed, now a mere ruin,
was then "the finest mosque next after Saint Sophia." Of the city he
writes thus[41]:--
"Great part of the houses of Constantinople are built with wooden
frames, mostly filled up with unburnt brick; and a great number of
houses are made only of such frames covered with boards. They have
notwithstanding very good rooms in them; and the streets are
tolerable, with a raised footway on each side. The street of
Adrianople is broad, and adorned with many public buildings; to the
south of it there is a vale which is to the north of the seventh hill.
The bazestans or shops of rich goods are such as have been described
in other places; and many of the shops for other trades are adorned
with pillars, and the streets in which they are, covered over in order
to shelter from the sun and rain. There are also several large kanes,
where many merchants live, and most of these have apartments in them,
where they spend the day, and retire at night to their families in
their houses. The bagnios also are to be reckoned another part of the
magnificence of Constantinople, some of them being very finely adorned
within. The fountains, likewise, are extremely magnificent, being
buildings about twenty feet square, with pipes of water on every side;
and within at each corner there is an apartment, with an iron gate
before it, where cups of water are always ready for the people to
drink, a person attending to fill them; these buildings are of marble,
the fronts are carved with bas-reliefs of trees and flowers and the
eaves projecting six or seven feet; the soffit of them is finely
adorned with carved works of flowers, in alto relievo, gilt with gold
in a very good taste, so that these buildings make a very fine
appearance."
Dr Pococke was certainly a somewhat dull person, and as certainly a
thorough Englishman. One feels that he never quite got over his
surprise that S. Sophia was not like Westminster Abbey or the Golden
Gate like Temple Bar. Happily we have a contrast to him in the
literature of his time.
Certainly the most charming, perhaps the most characteristic, account
of the city of the Sultan that the eighteenth century has left us, is
that of the Lady Mary Wortley Montague.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF MOSQUE OF AHMED I.]
Her husband was appointed ambassador to the Sublime Porte in 1716, and
she accompanied him. The letters which form the records of her journey
out, of her life in Constantinople and of her return, serve to show,
as the "Lady" who wrote a preface to them when they were published
says she is 'malicious enough to desire,' "to how much better
purpose the ladies travel than their lords." The skill and point with
which she tells the most ordinary incidents of her travels, no less
than fixes on the contrasts that are so striking between what she sees
and what her correspondents are accustomed to, gives the letter an
imperishable charm. But not a little also is due to the position of
the writer. Merchants, and ordinary travellers, as she says, had told
the world long before a great deal about the marvels of the Turkish
Empire; but Lady Mary was a woman, a very clever woman, and an
ambassador's wife. She had the entrée where few others could go, and
she knew as very few others did how to describe what she had seen.