_The Mosques, Türbehs and Fountains_
The mosques of Constantinople, as has already been shown, are very
largely buildings which had been churches in past days. The
inspiration felt so overpoweringly in the Church of the Divine Wisdom
still abides in the buildings erected by the Emperors of past days.
More open and evident still is the fact that the architects of the
mosques, built for Mohammedan worship since the Turks have ruled in
the city of the Cæsars, have done little more than copy the people
whom they have conquered. In most of the great mosques of Stambûl, S.
Sophia is simply and directly imitated. In others the leading idea is
developed with a variation or two. Of genuine originality the Turkish
architects have shown not a trace.
[Illustration: "MOHAMMED, THE APOSTLE OF GOD." EMBROIDERY FROM CURTAIN
OVER THE DOOR OF S. SOPHIA.]
The innumerable mosques of Constantinople are of two kinds, those
founded by members of the reigning dynasty, and those built by humbler
persons. Most of the mosques have a court with a fountain in the
midst. Many have houses, round kitchens, schools for children and for
students of the Koran, hospitals, and the dwelling of the imam. Nearly
all have türbehs, tombs of the royal family and of persons of great
distinction. All have of course the minaret, which to the traveller is
the most characteristic feature of the vast city. The ordinary mosques
have but one minaret, from which five times a day the voice of the
muezzin calls the faithful to pray. The royal mosques have more than
one minaret, S. Sophia and the mosque of Suleiman have four, the
mosque of Ahmed has six.
[Illustration: MOSQUE OF MOHAMMED II. FROM ENGLISH EMBASSY]
The first and most sacred of the mosques is that of Eyûb, with the
türbeh of that great warrior by its side. It is the one mosque which
no Christian may enter or even approach. On the accession of each new
sultan he "must be girded with the sabre of the great Osman by the
hands of the general of the Mevlevi Dervishes, who comes across Asia
Minor from distant Konieh for the proud purpose. Only two Sultans
since Mohammed II. have omitted the ceremonial, or have performed it
elsewhere, and the reign of each was brief and calamitous."
Both mosque and türbeh, the most sacred buildings in all Stambûl to
the Moslem, are kept, it is said, with ceaseless care, and redecorated
again and again with increased splendour. Near them is a great street
of tombs, where sleep the long line of sheikhs-ul-Islam.
In that crowded suburb, still fanatically Mohammedan, the stranger
lingers but few moments. He seeks the characteristic expression of
Moslem reverence in the great buildings that crown the hills. In the
heat of the afternoon he climbs the hill to where once the great
church of the Holy Apostles stood. Lingering on the terrace he looks
over the Golden Horn and the vast city, a city of gardens and
minarets, stretching as far as the eye can see. As the hour for prayer
draws near, men pour from every street, across through the market, or
by the open arid space that extends westwards till the narrow streets
close round, stretching down to the harbour. Hundreds and hundreds
they seem, of all ages, in every kind of attire, of every race, some
light-haired and fresh-coloured, as of more than half European blood;
some, negroes from Africa, but all males and all Moslems. They enter
the great mosque; the Christian must stand back, even from the court;
a few minutes and the stream pours out again and leaves but a few
pious lingerers still at their prayers or some children sitting before
their teacher and reciting to him the Koran.
It is the great mosque of Mohammed II., built in 1463-69 for the
Conqueror by a Greek Christian, Christodoulos. It covers a great
extent of ground, with its schools, its türbehs, and its great court.
The court is cloistered, and it has eighteen splendid columns, which
came, there can be little doubt, from the Church of the Apostles. Six
are of red granite, twelve of verde antico; the simple carving of the
capitals belongs to a period when Byzantine art was at its best. In
the midst of the court is a fountain shaded by cypresses. It is almost
always deserted, save for a few children here and there at play.
[Illustration: MOSQUE OF SULEIMAN FROM THE GOLDEN HORN]
We enter the mosque itself by the great door at the south. Its size is
its most impressive feature. The decoration is simple; great black
arabesques on a white ground: dignified, but, in the full sunlight
which pours through the great windows, too dazzling. At the right
above the entrance is the blue tablet on which is inscribed that
traditional prophecy of the prophet: "They shall conquer
Constantinople; happy the prince, happy the army, which shall achieve
the conquest."
Outside, to the East, is the plain octagon in which is laid, alone,
the Conqueror Mohammed. The great turban hangs over the head, a heavy
velvet pall over the chest which contains the coffin. Two big brass
candlesticks, a Koran copied by the hand of the Conqueror himself, in
a reliquary a tooth of the prophet: that is all the türbeh contains.
But the simplicity is, for this generation at least, spoilt by the
"thorough restoration" the whole has received, and its brightness of
new paint. Mohammed, of all the sultans, remains alone in his glory.
There are other türbehs round his, his mother, his wife, the wife of
Abdul Hamid I., who is said to have been a Creole from Martinique, and
the schoolfellow of the Empress Josephine--she was the mother of
Mahmûd II.--these and others throng the enclosure. But the memory of
Mohammed is still unchallenged among all his successors, and still
pilgrims, hour by hour, stand on the broad marble step and look
reverently within on his last resting-place.
If Mohammed's mosque has the greatest historic interest, by far the
most splendid of all in Stambûl is the great Suleimaniyeh, the mosque
of Suleiman the Magnificent. It crowns the third hill as Mohammed's
crowns the fourth. It was built by Sinan; but it would seem that he
was throughout ordered to copy S. Sophia. Justinian, when he entered
his great church, had said, "Solomon, I have surpassed thee": Suleiman
was determined that he would surpass the Christian Emperor.
His mosque owes not only its design but its details to Christian
sources. Much of the marble, and most notably the great marble
pillars, came from the Church of S. Euphemia at Chalcedon.
Westwards is the large fore-court, surrounded by cloisters, covered by
twenty-four small domes. It is much larger than most of the
mosque-courts. In the midst is a fountain, with a dome above. There
are four minarets at the corners of the cloisters. The mosque itself,
like S. Sophia, is nearly square--225 by 205 feet. The central dome
rests on four piers, and four great shafts support the side arches of
the dome. The great dome is not so large as that of S. Sophia; but the
effect from the outside is far more beautiful owing to the skilful
grouping of the masses of smaller domes, with the four minarets rising
from among the trees. Architects have praised the exquisite adjustment
of all the parts of the building; and, indeed, its combination of
grace with vastness is apparent to the dullest eye. But its general
effect is spoilt, like that of all the greater mosques, by paint. The
colour confuses; the four tints are a meaningless disturbance; the eye
finds it hard to distinguish the real splendour of marble, in mihrab,
minber, and the Sultan's chamber. The brightness of the windows, fine
though the glass is, distracts. Most of all the endless wires and
cords stretched across and from above prevent any clear view of the
whole. But, none the less, it is a splendid building, very solemn and
noble, expressive of the best that Islam can give, in its consecration
of strength and riches to the highest ends.
Outside are the two splendid türbehs of the most dramatic figures in
Turkish history since the Conquest. Suleiman himself lies in a
beautiful domed octagon, the walls covered with intricate arabesques,
the roof, especially, beautiful in brown. A blue inscription on the
white tiles that run round the walls is in exquisite taste. At the
head of his catafalque is Suleiman's white turban with double tufts of
heron's feathers. Over it are splendid and elaborate shawls, which he
once wore.
The same türbeh contains the tombs of Suleiman II. and Ahmed II. But a
stone's throw from it is the beautiful tomb of Roxelana, in which a
Western poet of our time has found inspiration.
Where rarely sunbeam of the morn,
Or ev'ning moonbeam ever stray'd,
Above the ground she trod in scorn,
Here, draped in samite and brocade,
Behold the great Sultana laid,
Of all her fleeting greatness shorn!
The walls are covered with exquisite blue tiles, with beautiful
designs of almond and tulip. Happily this türbeh has not been restored
as have so many of them. It remains a gem of the best Moslem art. The
group of buildings seen as one descends from the hill on which the
Seraskierat stands, or from the tower, has a charming effect. The
cypresses mingling with the domes and minarets make the most peaceful
scene that Stambûl can show. In the city of trees and gardens, of
domes and minarets, this seems the picture typical of the whole as the
Moslems have made it. Here is, one feels, the true poetic East, the
home of the poets we have read. We might be in the Arabian Nights,
Whilst there o'er mosque and minaret
That rise against the sunset glow,
broods the great calm of a nation of fatalists. It is not the "purple
East" we see, but the soft, somnolent, sensuous splendour of a great
repose, or may be a great decay.
Third of the great mosques I should place that of Ahmed, which, with
its large enclosures, encroaches on the old Hippodrome. It may well be
considered the most truly oriental of them all. "The masterpiece of
Asiatic art" some call it, the highest achievement of Mussulman
architecture. Something it owes to its position, fronted by the long,
broad, open space; something, certainly, to those who know, to its
historic associations. But undoubtedly in its general plan and in the
detail of its decoration it is more clearly than the others a work of
the genius of the East.
[Illustration: COURT OF THE MOSQUE OF AHMED I.]
[Illustration: AN ENTRANCE TO THE MOSQUE OF AHMED]
It covers a vast space. The great court which surrounds it seems
constantly to be filled with a great market. It is in the heart of
life: crowds are constantly passing through, pilgrims from S. Sophia,
travellers who have turned in from the Hippodrome. The air of the
buyers and sellers is more _dilettante_ than that of the serious folk
who make their homely purchases among the stalls outside the great
mosque of Mohammed II. This seems an oriental scene decked out for
your amusement. But the place has a long and tragic history. Part of
the area covered by the buildings of the mosque was once occupied by
the great palace of the Emperors; part was the Hippodrome; here too,
probably, was the Augustæum. It was not for more than a hundred years
after the conquest that the Turks built upon this site. Then (1608-14)
Ahmed I. determined to raise a memorial of his piety finer than any of
his predecessors had achieved, and if it might be, by a propitiatory
offering, to stay the decline which had already begun to fall upon the
Empire. He worked himself at the building, it is said, and paid the
workmen with his own hands. The fore-court has a beautiful fountain.
The interior of the mosque itself is larger than the Suleimaniyeh. Its
fault is sameness. Fergusson, whose judgment is not always to be
quoted, may here speak without contradiction. "If the plan were
divided into quarters, each of the four quarters would be found to be
identical, and the effect is consequently painfully mechanical and
prosaic. The design of each wall is also nearly the same; they have
the same number of windows spaced in the same manner, and the side of
the Kibleh[64] is scarcely more richly decorated than the others." The
prevailing blue of the whole becomes oppressive. There are some
exquisite tiles; but the effect of the whole mosque is spoilt, like
that of Suleiman, by the paint. Yet with all its defects the size
makes the mosque magnificent. "A hall nearly two hundred feet square,
with a stone roof supported by only four great fluted piers, is a
grand and imposing object." Fergusson's judgment must be accepted.
At the same time there are many points that no one who has seen them
will ever forget. One is the view as you stand under the great columns
of the arched court and look up at the almost innumerable domes,
rising dome upon dome to the great central cupola that dominates them
all, the one minaret that you see breaking the monotonous gradation of
the domes by its sheer, sharp ascent into the sky. Another is the
colossal strength of the four great piers from which spring the arches
of the central cupola, immense in their solidity, yet hardly so clumsy
as you think at first when you gaze from under them at the more
graceful pillars of the outer arcade.
Of details that repay attention, the chief door into the mosque,
typically eastern, stands out. The six minarets, seen from far, are
the most graceful of all in the city. Ahmed in building six encroached
on the unique dignity of Mecca. The sherif protested, and the Sultan
added a seventh to the sacred shrine. His own mosque remains the only
one with six.
Within, the later history of the Turks invests the scene with a new
interest. It was from the splendid marble pulpit that the _fetva_
decreeing the abolition of the Janissaries was read, while Mahmûd
stood in his box. It was round the mosque that much of the fiercest
fighting took place that day. Bodies were heaped up before the gate of
the court, and from the great sycamore, still standing, and called
"the tree of groans," hung corpses "like the black fruit of a tree in
hell."
These three are the most splendid of the mosques. Next to them ranks
the mosque of Bayezid II. It was built between 1489 and 1497, and the
architect was the son of Christodoulos, who built the mosque named
after the Conqueror, Bayezid's father. The two sons designed to
surpass their father. It cannot be said that they succeeded. The
mosque itself has little interest. The fountain in the court does not
equal those of Ahmed and Suleiman. But the place will always be
visited for the name, which the travellers give it, of the Pigeons'
Mosque. A poor widow, says the legend, offered a pair of pigeons to
Bayezid for the mosque. These hundreds are their offspring, and they
have always been held sacred. They fly about, settle everywhere on the
roofs, walk over the floor, and surround in an instant everyone who
takes up a handful of grain. They divide the honours of the court with
the sellers of trivial ornaments, and the professional letter-writers,
whom one may spend a merry half hour in watching, as they formally
express the feelings which the lover, or the applicant for a post
under government, is rightly supposed to possess, and is anxious to
have set forth for him.
The mosque of Bayezid owes something of its attraction to its
position, looking on two sides upon a wide open space, with the wall
and gate of the Seraskierat only a few yards away. To the east is the
great garden, which contains the türbeh of Bayezid himself, with a
catafalque thirteen feet long.
Of the hundreds of mosques, each with its own characteristic design or
adornment or history, stand out for a word of admiration, those of the
Shahzadeh, of Selim I., of the Yeni Valideh, and that called the Tulip
Mosque.
The mosque of the Shahzadeh, built like that of Suleiman, by the
Moslem architect Sinan, was erected by the Sultan and Roxelana,
between 1543 and 1547, to commemorate their eldest son, whose türbeh
stands beside it, decorated with the most exquisite Persian tiles. The
mosque is on the great central street that runs through Stambûl. Four
semi-domes culminate in a great central dome, and four great
octagonal pillars support it. It is one of the most beautiful of the
Ottoman mosques. It may be added that the mosque which the sorrowing
parents built to their youngest son Djanghir (see above p. 170), at
Galata, above Top-haneh, was burnt in 1764, and as it now stands is
the result of "restoration" by the present Sultan. It is the most
prominent object on the shore as one draws near to landing at the
Galata bridge.
On the fifth hill, and perhaps the most prominent object in the view
from the hill of Pera, above the _petit champ des morts_, is the
mosque of Selim I. The style is simple, one vast dome resting on a
drum lighted by many windows, and supported by flying buttresses.
The Tulip Mosque, Laleli Djami, stands in a prominent position in a
crowded street, the Koska Sokaki. It is an example of the more modern
style. It was built by Mustapha III. in 1760-63, and shows the Turkish
expression of the Strawberry-Hill interest in antiquity. It contains
columns from the palace of Boucoleon and the forum of Theodosius.
Beside it is the türbeh of Mustafa III. and of Selim III. Perhaps the
most pleasant part of a visit here is to stand on the terrace and look
over the houses on to the Sea of Marmora and the distant snow-covered
hills.
The last mosque I shall mention is that which the traveller probably
first visits. It attracts him as soon as he has crossed the Galata
bridge, and most likely turns him aside from his way to S. Sophia. It
is the mosque of Yeni Valideh Sultan, the wife of Ahmed I. Begun by
her orders in 1615, it was completed by the mother of Mohammed IV. in
1665.
[Illustration: MURAL TILES FROM THE MOSQUE OF VALIDEH]
This, of all others, aroused the admiration of Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu. "The most prodigious, and I think, the most imposing,
structure I ever saw," she called it; perhaps because she regarded it
as a tribute to her sex. Unhappily, as in most of the other mosques,
paint and whitewash have done their disfiguring work; but the beauty
of its tiles, most of them blue and white, is perhaps superior to any
other collection in the city. The exquisite carving of the doorways,
too, enriched with mother-of-pearl, attracts one as one passes
through. In no other mosque can the excellence of the minute Turkish
work be better studied. The delicacy of the lattice work at the
fountain, too, is admirable.
So much may I say of the mosques. But a word more is needed for their
inseparable attendants. By the Valideh mosque, begun by one sultan's
mother, after whose murder it was completed by her rival, is the great
türbeh which contains, in two chambers, a host of princes and
princesses, and five sultans--Mohammed IV., deposed in 1687, who died
in 1693; Mustafa II., deposed in 1703; Ahmed III., deposed in 1730;
Mahmûd I., 1754; and Osman III., 1757. Of these, the last two alone
died peaceably in possession of the throne.
One other türbeh besides those I have named claims especial mention.
It is that of Mahmûd II., the Reformer, and it stands by itself near
the Column of Constantine. It is the most modern in date and style, a
domed octagon of white marble lighted by seven windows, an atrocious
example of the style which our grandfathers thought rich and
dignified. At the right as one enters lies the mother of Mahmûd. In
the midst is the Reformer himself, a black pall, elaborately worked,
thrown over the catafalque. At the head is, for the first time, the
fez, the symbol of the reform, but it has attached, as of old, the
great tuft of heron's feathers. At the left is the resting-place of
Abdul Aziz, again with a splendid covering, and at the head a simple
fez. The last of the dead sultans--for Murad cannot be counted--who
entered as none of his predecessors had done into the social life as
well as the politics of European courts, yet was deposed and died a
violent death, fitly ends the list. As you stand by his coffin you see
the lesson of Turkish history for to-day. Outwardly, save for the fez,
all is as with the sultans five centuries ago: and the spirit of
Turkish life has not changed, and will not change.
[Illustration: IN A TÜRBEH]
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE TÜRBEH OF SELIM II. AT S. SOPHIA]
Its worst expression is recalled in the blood and luxury which are
linked with the names of these two sultans. Its best is attached to
the one other architectural feature of the city which I must mention
in this place. One of the most beautiful and most characteristic
sights that strikes the western traveller as he wanders through
Stambûl is the fountain outside every mosque and at almost every
street corner. Hundreds of them are worth lingering over. Here I will
only mention one. Outside the Bâb-i-Humayûn, the gate upon which the
heads of so many disgraced officials have been placed, and under the
shadow of S. Sophia, is the most beautiful of all, designed by Ahmed
I. himself. White marble it is, with beautiful arabesques and
elaborate inscriptions in those graceful elaborations of kaligraphy in
which the Turks have always excelled. It is the most elaborate of all
the fountains, but the little ones at the street corners, with an
arched or domical pent-house above them and some small decorative
inscription above the marble founts, have a simple charm of their own.
As one turns away from the Turkish buildings and tries to sum up the
impressions which the architecture represented by the mosques of
Constantinople leaves on the student of other styles, there are
criticisms which are natural and inevitable. How little variety, we
say; how tiresome, this similarity of design! The Turks indeed have
felt it themselves, but they have been unable to set themselves free.
For indeed the lack is the hopeless one, the sheer absence of
originality, in every feature. We may call one mosque more eastern
than another, but it would puzzle us to find a single feature in any
of them, except the Mihrab, which is not ultimately Christian. The
feeling, it is true, differs; but that will be felt, by Westerns at
least, to be a conspicuous defect. There is no sense of the mystery
that lies behind all life, the solemn awe in which alone man may fitly
draw nigh to God. All is clear, complete, satisfied, protestant of its
completeness and satisfaction. Is there anything, one feels, beyond
man and this world? Certainly here there is nothing to raise thought
to heaven, to help to pierce behind the veil. Is it fanciful to say
that something of this it is that makes the difference between the
windows of a Christian church and those of a mosque? The mosques have
windows of the plainest, ugliest, most staring. Can anything be more
pitiable than the windows of Ahmed's, the characteristic Turkish
mosque? No tracery, no stained glass, nothing that uplifts or
separates from the outer world.
Yet to all this there must be a corresponding gain. From this
absorption in the things of the present, this satisfaction with the
work of men's hands, comes often a real perfection of detail. How
often the fore-court is an admirable piece of building, worth
examination and imitation at every point! Yet even here there is the
exception that detracts from the merit of all Southern "pointed" work:
the arches will not remain firm of themselves, they must needs be tied
together with cross beams. How sordid and untidy this looks one sees
in a moment as one stands in the court of the Valideh mosque. But the
detail, we must insist, is often good, the niches notably so in the
"stalactite pattern," which also appears in the capitals of late date
of sixteenth and seventeenth century building, as in the courts of
Ahmed and Valideh. Yet when all this is said, the chief glory of the
mosques, the best and most original feature of the Moslem art as we
see it in Constantinople, is the exquisite tile-work everywhere and of
every date. It brings us back again, as we end this chapter, to the
magnificent Sultan and his proud wife. The choicest art surrounds the
tomb of the Circassian, and there
The walls that shut thee from the sun,
The potter's art made bright with blue,
Where leaf and tendril overrun
The Persian porcelain's ivory hue,
And blazon'd letters, twisting thro'
Proclaim there is no God but One.
[Illustration: EMBROIDERY FROM CURTAIN OVER ENTRANCE TO S. SOPHIA]
FOOTNOTES:
[64] _I.e._ where the Mihrab shows the direction of Mecca.