SALONICA AND THE JEWS
When ‘the voyager descends upon’ the Grand Hôtel d’Angleterre at
Salonica, his attention is first drawn to the regulations as to the
manner in which he shall conduct himself during his sojourn at the
grand hotel. These regulations are printed in gaudy letters in Turkish,
in Greek, and in French, and hang in gilded frames on the walls of each
bedroom in the most conspicuous place. A literal translation from the
French is in part as follows:
1. Messieurs the voyagers who descend upon the hotel are requested to
hand over to the management any money or articles of value they may
have.
2. Those who have no baggage must pay every day, whereas those who
have it may only do so once a week.
3. Political discussion and playing musical instruments are
forbidden, also all noisy conversations.
4. It is permitted neither to play at cards nor at any other game of
hazard.
5. Children of families and their servants should not walk about the
rooms.
6. It is prohibited to present oneself outside one’s room in a
dressing-gown or other negligent costume.
9. Coffee, tea, and other culinary preparations may not be prepared
in the rooms or procured from outside, as the hotel furnishes
everything one wants.
10. Voyagers to take their repast descend to the dining-room, with
the exception of invalids, who may do so in their rooms.
11. A double-bedded room pays double for itself, save the case where
the voyager declares that one bed may be let to another person. It
is, however, forbidden to sleep on the floor.
I should explain that no insult is meant to the French on the part
of the hotel management by employing their language as one of the
mediums of instructing its many-tongued guests in proper deportment.
The management realises that of all Europeans Germans are most in need
of lessons in deportment; but the hotel, for some reason, is rarely
afflicted with Germans, and French is understood by all the people
of the Near East of the class that patronise a hostelry like the
d’Angleterre.
There are several hotels in Salonica which will not permit guests to
sleep on the floor.
Salonica is the metropolis of Macedonia, and an important commercial
centre. It is the Thessalonica of old, built by Cassander on the
site of ancient Therma, and named by him after his wife, a sister of
Alexander the Great. It is older than Constantinople, and has a history
which just falls short of being great. Xerxes and his hosts camped on
the plains between Therma and the Axius, now the Vardar, and the view
of Mount Olympus across the bay inspired him to explore the course
of the Peneus; and a short time before the Peloponnesian War the
Athenians occupied Therma.
Thessalonica fell into the hands of the Romans, became the chief city
on the Via Egnatia, and disseminated Christianity among many of the
Slavs, Bulgarians, and other peoples who came down from the north and
the east.
It became a free city and then a part of the Byzantine Empire, and was
finally sold by a Greek emperor to the Venetians, from whom it was
captured in 1430 by the Turks.
High up in the Turkish quarter of Salonica--which rises in a long slope
and then in steps from the sea--is a queer little Greek monastery
dating back unknown centuries. It was there when the Turks came; for
history records that the monks within its walls were treacherous to
their fellow-Christians and sold the city to the Mohamedans. Under the
courtyard of the monastery runs the aqueduct which supplies Salonica
with water from the mountains, and supplied Thessalonica five hundred
years ago. It was access to this, a certain means of reducing the city,
that the monks of Chaoush (such is the name of the monastery) bartered
when the Mohamedans besieged Thessalonica, for certain privileges to
be granted after the conquest. The Turks have kept their bargain to
this day, but Chaoush has not flourished. Time has moved the Christian
quarter down to the sea, and the monastery is surrounded to-day by
houses with latticed windows.
Once, when searching for this monastery with a fellow-countryman who
conducted the mission at Salonica, I happened to open by mistake the
gate of a Turkish yard. There was a rapid covering of faces by an
amazed assembly of females. Discovering our error, we closed the gate
and moved off; but veiled women, stones, and innuendoes were soon upon
our heels, and our retreat in order shortly became an utter rout.
Happily the unfortunate error occurred at an hour of the day when there
were no husbands at home, and the women themselves were not in attire
to follow us far.
I loved to ramble up through the Turkish quarter of Salonica where
the native ‘infidel’ fears to tread. There is a charm about using
the liberty one’s country commands. I generally stopped at a Turkish
café on the route, and sat out in the narrow street on a stool with
a cup of coffee on another before me, the subject of curious regard
by mollahs and hojas in their long cloaks, and other Mohamedans of
little work. Once at one of these cafés, with an English boy whom I
picked up at Salonica for interpreter, I got into conversation with
a harmless-looking Turk on the subject of wars and the Powers; and I
learned from him that the Moslems are going to rise again, and will not
stop in their conquests until they have subdued the world.
‘Abdul Hamid is a great prophet, infallible and invincible,’ said the
Turk.
He pointed to three old warships in the harbour (whose machinery had
been sold to a second-hand junk dealer years ago) as specimens of the
means with which the work was to be accomplished; and it was useless to
tell him that even the British navy was superior to that of his Sultan.
He pitied me for my exceeding ignorance of history, because I thought
the Turks had been defeated in the field several times; they had never
been defeated!
His culminating remark had a touch of pathos in it. He was a
hungry-looking individual himself, and was glad to get the two
piastres we gave him for showing us the way to the wall. ‘The hosts of
the Padisha,’ he said, quoting, I judge, some mollah, ‘are the most
powerful force in the world; but unfortunately they have not enough to
eat.’
This ignorance is due to the teachings of the mollahs, from whom the
young Turks derive, directly or indirectly, all of their knowledge.
While I was in Salonica an order came from Constantinople to purge the
library in the military school, and as a result all reading books,
including modern histories which dealt with the decline of the Turkish
Empire, were destroyed.
[Illustration: THE WALL AND BEYOND, SALONICA.]
We often went up to the Turkish quarter, but never learned the road to
the gate. But with a few words of Turkish, which one must naturally
pick up, and many signs, we could generally manage to get coffee and
directions. We always halted at the gates, and, supplied with stools
by the _café-ji_ there, sat and rested for half an hour, watching
the children come to the fountain with jugs for water, the women
slip noiselessly by, covering their faces with special care at spying
us, and the men pass through the eye of the needle hunched up on
under-sized asses. Truly a Biblical scene, though the characters were
Mohamedans.
There is a great dignity about the ruling race, the man for whom all
others step aside, who drinks first at the fountain and removes his fez
nowhere. He is not loud or voluble, and seldom loses his temper. When
he is provoked he does not squabble, but strikes.
The Christian natives of Salonica are generous in warning one of
dangers outside the walls, of brigands and revolutionists; but we
often strolled through the gates and over to the barren hills beyond,
encountering Turks, Albanians, and Bulgarians, perhaps insurgents,
without mishap.
The hills were especially attractive in the afternoon, cooler than the
closed-in bay below, and pervaded with a quiet in delightful relief
from the ceaseless babble of swarming Levantine tradesmen down in the
town. At sunset hour we found a favourite spot on the edge of a steep
declivity with only a broad expanse of plain between us and the purple
mountains of Thessaly. The sun dropped into a dip in these and left the
sky for an hour rich in Oriental colouring flaming from behind. To the
south a stern bit of the old wall on the precipitous corner of a rock
was silhouetted, and we could never tell whether we preferred this in
or out of the picture. That is a true test of quality, when either
of two things is preferred as it happens to be at hand; generally the
unpossessed is the desired.
Tourists do not come to Macedonia, but if they did they would find
a show that no other part of Europe can produce. Not only is the
comic-opera stage outdone in characters, in costumes, and in complexity
of plot, but the scene is set in alpine mountains on a vaster scale
than Switzerland affords. But to pass all these--for the play comes
in in the course of the book, and scenery baffles description--there
are relics of the ages that would interest many a man who has already
travelled far. Salonica is said to be richer than any city in Greece in
ecclesiastical remains, and its ancient structures, for the most part,
have borne well the ravages of time. There are many great edifices,
built by the Romans during their occupation and by the Greeks in their
time, and a minaret at the corner of each denotes the purpose it serves
to-day.
There is a mosque of St. Sophia at Salonica, built, like its great
sister at Constantinople, during the reign of Justinian, and with a
history also marked by the wars of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
But a fire of four years ago and an earthquake more recently have
wrecked the place, so that it is no longer used. The Rotunda, now the
Eski Metropoli Mosque, was built by Trajan, after the model, though
on a smaller scale, of the Pantheon at Rome, and was dedicated by
him to the rites of the mysterious Cabiri. It is circular, the dome
unsupported by columns. The whole of the interior is richly ornamented
with mosaics which seem to have belonged to the original temple, as
nothing about them divulges adjustment at Christian hands.
One of the best preserved models of ancient Greek architecture
extant is said to be the Eski Djuma Mosque. In the porch are several
Doric columns, and within the building is a double row of massive
columns with Corinthian capitals. There are ‘The Church of the Twelve
Apostles,’ and the mosque of St. Demetrius, whose shrine within is
revered by Moslems and Christians alike.
Between the Rotunda and the sea is the site of the Hippodrome, where
Theodosius, the last of the Emperors who were sole masters of the
whole Roman Empire, caused to be committed one of the bloodiest of
massacres for which Salonica is famous. Although a zealous follower
of Christianity, and commended by ancient writers as a prince blessed
with every virtue, his moderation and clemency failed signally on this
occasion. In order to chastise the people for a movement in favour
of a charioteer very popular among them, and who had been arrested
at his order, the inhabitants were assembled at the Hippodrome under
the pretext of witnessing the races, and then barbarously massacred,
without distinction of age or sex, to the number of seven thousand.
At the end of the main street, which once formed part of the Egnatian
Way, stands a triumphal arch generally supposed to have been raised
in honour of Constantine, to celebrate the return from his victory
over the Sarmatians. The supports are faced with white marble highly
wrought, representing a battle between Roman troops and barbarians, and
a triumphal entry into a city. The arch was repaired and plastered over
some years ago in a painful manner, with no regard to conformity with
the supports.
The doubt which encompasses the history of every ancient place in
Salonica finds its climax in the spot where St. Paul preached. There
are no fewer than seven of these, and the Christian who would stand
where the Apostle stood has to make a long pilgrimage of mosques and
synagogues. The main street of Salonica, which once formed part of the
Via Egnatia, is lined to-day with curious little shops like boxes, ten
or twelve feet square, and often smaller. The floors are all up off
the ground from two to three feet, and the keepers need no chairs. The
customer stands on the narrow pavement, and the man within reaches
for what is wanted from where he sits on crossed legs. He is a most
indifferent salesman, and one may take or leave his wares without
drawing a word from him. A large percentage of these little places
are weapon shops, where belt-knives from six to eighteen inches in
length are made on the premises, and also gaudy pistols of tremendous
bores. Second-hand English revolvers are in the collection, strung
across the opening, and brand-new Spanish models. The prices of the
foreign weapons are high, and when one asks the reason, the explanation
is given that they are all contraband, and the Customs officers
have to be paid large sums for passing them. These arms dealers will
sell to anyone who will buy, Turk, Jew, and Christian alike. The
Government places no restriction on the sale of arms to non-Moslems:
the regulation is that they shall not possess them.
[Illustration: THE ANCIENT ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, SALONICA.]
This is also the street for native shoes, which are manufactured on the
premises. The most common foot-gear, worn by every Balkan people, is
the ‘charruk.’ It is something more than a sandal, for it has a cover
for the toes; it is a slipper pointed like a canoe bow, and closely
resembles an American Indian’s moccasin. It is made of skin with hide
lacings, which are wound high up a pair of thick woollen stockings,
worn like leggings over the trousers. The Turk often wears these, but
seldom do his women. The Turkish woman’s favourite footwear is a cross
between a sandal and a clog. It is simply a wooden block the shape of
the sole of a shoe, and an inch or more thick, with nothing to hold it
on the foot but a strap across the toes. A European cannot keep them
on his feet, but the Turk manipulates them with marvellous dexterity.
Their great convenience is the rapidity with which they can be shed, as
this has to be done on so many occasions throughout the Turkish day:
at the hours of prayer, and on entering the presence of superiors,
and, obviously, whenever it is desired to sit comfortably, for a Turk
is most uncomfortable if he is not sitting on his feet. These clogs
are hacked with a hatchet out of solid blocks of wood, and even the
shoe in high favour with the Consular kavass, a red thing with a huge
black _pompon_ on a turned-up toe, is manufactured by the squatting
shopkeeper.
In this street one is not shouted at, or dragged bodily into the shops
if he stops to look at a display of wares, as he is in Greek and Jewish
quarters. This is the business street of the man who opens his shop and
sits still till Allah provides the trade.
Certain classes of shops in Salonica perambulate.
The cart has to be largely dispensed with in most Turkish towns,
chiefly because the streets are paved. This is not the case in
Salonica; the paving is comparatively good there; but the Macedonian
has got into the habit of providing for roads paved with cobble stones.
Over the backs of asses and sure-footed mountain ponies the butcher
has an arrangement of carving boards, and cuts off a lamb chop or a
roast at his customer’s door. One has to rise early to see the heads
still on the lambs, for they are great delicacies, and go first, and
when roasted the unbounded joy of the native cracking the skull and
picking out the tasty bits is nauseating in the extreme. The entrails
of animals are also relished; they are eaten as the Italian eats his
macaroni.
[Illustration: THE TURKISH BUTCHER.]
The milkman, generally a Tzigane, does not drive the cow through the
streets, but brings the milk slung over an ass, in a skin, one end of
which he milks at order. A small Jew, with a huge fez and a man’s coat
which reached almost to the skirt of his dress, was a daily nuisance
on Consul Avenue. I suppose he dragged his four-footed draper’s shop
down the aristocratic foreign thoroughfares to show off his father, who
dressed in ‘Franks,’ but whose bellow was distinctly Levantine.
In summer months the two-footed lemonade stand would be a pleasant
encounter were it not so numerous. But as it is generally an Albanian,
it does not pester one to buy: it simply requires one to get out
of its road. It carries a shelf in front with half a dozen glasses
stuck in holes, a copper pitcher in its hand with water for rinsing
glasses after Christians have used them, and a curious reservoir of an
over-sweet drink on its back. If this receptacle has not many little
metal pieces to jingle upon it, the gaily garbed Albanian keeps up a
tapping with two glasses as he advances down the street.
Most of the men of Macedonia wear a form of skirt, but especially in
Salonica does the new arrival feel that he has landed among a race of
bearded women. The most picturesque dress to be seen in Salonica is
that of the Southern Albanian. It is a sort of ballet skirt, like that
of the Greek ‘Evzones,’ a white, pleated thing about the length of a
Highlander’s kilt. But the Albanian is more modest than the Scot, and
wears his stockings to a proper height.
The skirted man most in evidence, however, is the Jew, and his skirt
is indeed a marvellous garment. It resembles a dressing-gown made of
some bed-curtain or sofa-cover material. It is plain in cut, dropping
straight from the shoulders to the heels, but of the most wonderful
designs in cotton prints. On the Sabbath day, which the Jew observes
devoutly, he adds to his costume a long Turkish sash, and also,
regardless of the weather, a greatcoat of a good black cloth lined with
ermine. One would hardly suspect these thrifty Israelites of undue
vanity, and yet for no other reason than to enhance their personal
beauty do they suffer this oppressive garment on the hot Saturdays of a
Salonica summer.
The Jewish girl dresses in ‘Franks’ until she is married, but at her
wedding she receives as a dowry an outfit of clothes fashioned after
those her mothers have worn for countless generations. This is an
expensive trousseau, and is calculated to last all her life, for she
is not to be a burden to her husband in the matter of dress. The most
costly garments in the wardrobe are a fur-lined greatcoat--almost
a duplicate of her husband’s--and the covering for her hair. This
latter is in the nature of a tight-fitting green cap, with a border of
probably red and a chin-strap of still another colour. The cap extends
to a long bag behind, in which her braid of hair is stuffed. On the end
of this bag a square of several inches is worked in pearls, wherein
lies the value of the cap. In skirts the women, like their husbands,
go in for gaudy cotton prints. Their waists are cut exceedingly high.
In the back the skirt falls from somewhere between the shoulders, but
in front a short white blouse is visible, which is cut for street
wear (and worn winter as well as summer) almost as low as a European
lady’s ball-dress. It becomes difficult for me to give further details
of this feminine attire, so I respectfully refer curious ladies to the
accompanying photograph, which, though snapped for the character it
presents, also portrays a specimen of these curious gowns.
I believe that formerly the Hebrew religion required the women to hide
their hair and the men to wear dresses, but to-day these customs are
continued by them from habit, for economy, and with a purpose. Their
purpose in dressing alike is to look alike, as it is dangerous in
Turkey for a non-Moslem--or even a Moslem--to rise above his fellows in
either wealth or position. The Sultan considers it a danger to himself
for one of his subjects to grow powerful, and he maintains a staff of
levellers who have various means of reducing the man who dares to rise.
The successful Turk is exiled; other subjects are dealt with in other
ways.
I once had occasion to send a report to London that a number of
dynamite bombs had been discovered by the police in the office of a
Bulgarian merchant just opposite the British post office in Salonica.
The Turkish authorities took care to let the foreign correspondents
hear this news. It was some weeks later that I learned how the bombs
got so near the British post office. The business of the Bulgarian
merchant, whose name was Surndjieff, had been prospering noticeably.
The merchant received notice one day that a certain sum--say, one
hundred liras--was required of him by the police. He had paid all his
legal taxes, and, being a stubborn Bulgar, he refused to subscribe the
blackmail. A second demand, in the form of a warning, was sent to him,
and still he took no heed. One morning he arrived at his office and
found his door unlocked. Everything within seemed undisturbed, however,
so he set about his duties. In about an hour a detachment of gendarmes
arrived with an order to search the premises, and the very first drawer
opened by the officer in command contained a dozen ‘infernal machines.’
Of course the Bulgar was arrested at once and incarcerated in the White
Tower, to escape from which cost him several hundred liras in bribes to
gaolers and others.
Now, the Jew’s property is no safer at the hands of the Turkish
officials than is that of the Christian, and yet the Jew is a loyal
supporter of the Turkish Government. But there are reasons for this
loyalty. The Jews of Salonica, like most of those of Constantinople,
found a refuge in Turkey from the Spanish Inquisition, and if they
have not liberty in the Sultan’s dominions, they have at least equal
rights with Christians. Their position is even, perhaps, better than
that of the Turk, who indeed is one of the greatest sufferers from
the oppression of the Turkish Government. The Turk is the ruler of
the land and the privileged person, and the Jew has learned never to
defy his authority. But what cares the Jew who makes the laws so
he may make the money? He has learned to outwit the Turk and to take
care to let the Turk take unto himself that credit. This would not
satisfy one of the Christian races, who all have scores to pay and
ambitions to realise; their gratification at defeating the Turk would
only be complete if the Turk suffered the knowledge of the fact. The
coveting of Macedonia by the Christian races in and about Turkey is
another cause for the Jews’ support of the present administration; for
under Greek, Serb, Bulgar, and Rumanian the Jews would not occupy the
position of most favoured subjects.
[Illustration: JEWS.]
[Illustration: JEWISH WOMEN.]
Most of the Jews of Salonica wear the fez, but some of the wealthy
ones, who would enjoy their wealth, have acquired the protection of
foreign Powers, and dress in European clothes. Viennese and Parisian
styles and makes of clothes are not too good for them, and they travel
to Austria and to France regularly in the warm months of the year.
The Hebrew boy is generally educated in his father’s shop, but the girl
is often given a good schooling, which raises her in mind and morals
far above the man she marries--which is sad. Among the various large
foreign schools at Salonica there is one for girls conducted by the
British Mission to the Jews. It affords a means of learning English,
which makes it a most popular institution; and it is within the reach
of all classes, because pupils are taken at whatever they can afford
to pay. But while the school has been conducted for many years, and
an old Scottish missionary (who has recently died) preached to the
scholars for half a century, there is yet to be recorded a single
convert to Christianity. The old Scotchman once told me that he thought
a good share of the blame for his failure was due to the example his
own countrymen set. He said he hated to go into the street when the
British fleet was in the harbour because he was invariably asked by
some Israelite if he wanted to convert them to ‘that’--pointing at a
drunken sailor. A drunken man is rarely seen in the streets of Salonica
except when a foreign fleet is in the bay, and the ‘drunks’ are most
numerous when that fleet is British.
The hundred and one bootblacks (all Jews) who infest the cafés of
Salonica, and swarm about the hotels to pester the unfortunate inmates
as they emerge, are in great glee when an Englishman appears. They
mistook me for an Englishman, but whenever I sought to disillusion a
native on this score, I was told ‘England, America--all the same.’ The
Jews all speak a few words of English, learned, no doubt, from their
sisters.
‘When comes the English fleet?’ is the first question a bootblack puts
to an Englishman.
‘Do you want the English fleet to come to Salonica?’ I asked.
‘You bet!’ They must have acquired this from the American missionaries.
‘Why?’
‘English sailor get much bootshines; pay very well. Ten shillin’ me
make one day--English sailor very much drunk always.’
Jews are always very fond of music, and they fill the cafés-chantants
of Salonica on Saturday evenings. Extracts from ‘Carmen,’ ‘Traviata,’
‘Faust,’ and like operas were being rendered by a small troupe of
Italians at one of these places, to which the entrance fee was two
piastres--about fourpence. But this was beyond the price of the
populace, and the masses flocked to another place of amusement a little
further down the quay, where no entrance fee was charged, and by
purchasing one cup of coffee you could sit and hear the music the whole
evening. Here there was a French artist whose répertoire was known by
the whole town, and the audience made it a rule to shout for the songs
they desired to hear. A certain duet about dogs and cats, in which the
lady meowed and a sickly looking male partner barked, was the Jews’
favourite recital. Late one Saturday evening, when the singers stopped
for a cue, the Jews in the audience began to bark, which was the
recognised signal for the dog song. But there were a number of Greeks
in the audience who wanted the lady to sing alone, and they set up a
call for one of her solos. The respective parties attempted to shout
each other down, which raised an unearthly din in the neighbourhood,
and soon resulted in a pitched battle. But the cry of ‘Soldiers’
brought the conflict to an abrupt termination, and before the gendarmes
arrived both the Jews and the Greeks were scurrying for their homes as
fast as their legs could carry them.
The Jews are rigorous observers of the fourth commandment in so far as
they themselves are concerned. Under no circumstances will one of them
do a stroke of work on their Sabbath day. But they have no scruples
against enjoying themselves by the labour of others. The small boats in
the bay are owned entirely by the Jews, and all the week they hustle
for Christian and Turkish patronage. But on Saturday evenings in summer
they indulge in the hire of Christians and Turks to row them up and
down the city front on the smooth water of the bay.
The various Sabbaths in Turkey are somewhat annoying to the traveller.
On Fridays the Turkish officials will not _visé_ passports or issue
_teskerés_; on Saturdays the Jews refuse to shine your boots; on
Sundays the Christian shops are closed. But neither the Turks nor the
Christians observe their days of rest with the same rigour as the Jews
do. Though it is impossible to get a _teskeré_ from the Turkish Konak
on the Turkish Sabbath, a note waiving the necessity of the document
can be had for a consideration. We all know the Christian is not an
over-strict observer of Sunday.
Salonica is unfortunate in possessing a colony of each of the
Macedonian races. Besides Turks and Jews, there are many Greeks and
Albanians, some Bulgarians and Servians, and a few Kutzo-Vlachs
(Wallachians) and Tziganes, and still another people peculiar to the
town. One is struck in Salonica by the beautiful Mohamedan ladies who
walk along the streets with their veils thrown back; and it impels one
to think that the woman who pulls her veil down when she sights a man
must necessarily lack beauty. Not so; one is a Turk and one is not a
Turk.
The handsome females who wear the Turkish garb, but do not always
cover their faces, are a peculiar sect of Jews alleged to be converted
to Mohamedanism. They live, like all the other peoples, distinctly
to themselves, not even associating with the Turks; and while they
are too few to have a national entity, they carry on, nevertheless,
their little feuds with the Jews. Their story is this: Some centuries
ago a Jew of Salonica, by name Sebatai Sevi, declared himself to his
people as their long-promised redeemer, and won a certain following.
He is an example of power making jealous his monarch. At the Sultan’s
order he was conveyed to Constantinople and taken into the Padisha’s
presence. His plea was heard, but found no credence at the Palace,
and the false prophet was given the alternative of death for himself
or conversion to Mohamedanism with his entire flock. The Government,
no doubt, granted all the assistance Sebatai needed to ‘persuade’ his
followers to make the change, and it was soon accomplished. But, unlike
Christians converted by pressure or force to the religion of the Turk,
these Jews have not become fanatics. Indeed, they are quite luke-warm
about the religion, and it is supposed they profess Mohamedanism simply
for safety, and practise Sebatai’s religion in secret. They never marry
outside their own sect, not even with the Turks. There is a story of
long standing to the effect that the little circle of Dunmehs (for this
they are called) once subscribed a purse of 4,000_l._ to purchase the
pretensions of a Turkish pasha to the hand of a fair maiden of their
colony.
The Dunmehs are the richest people, on the whole, in Salonica. With
their Hebrew instincts for business and their position as Mohamedans,
they have a decided advantage over the other peoples. They fill
largely the _rôle_ of Government contractors, and secure many of
the plums in the gift of the administration, which it is impossible
for non-Moslems to get, and for which the Turks are too indifferent
to trouble themselves. The Dunmehs make a speciality of purchasing
the rights to gather tithes, for which they often pay more than the
legal value thereof. These rights they divide into small sections and
dispose of at a profit to the actual collectors of taxes. The tithe is
legally one-tenth of the crop, but as it is measured by the collectors,
supported by a guard of Turkish soldiers, it generally assumes larger
proportions, sometimes attaining to a quarter, and even a half, of the
peasant’s harvest. And there is no resource for the peasant against
this unjust confiscation, as the first law of the Turkish court is the
Koran, which, as interpreted, provides that the word of a Christian
shall not offset that of a Mohamedan.
But army and other contracts, for which the payment is forthcoming from
the Turkish Government, are not often sought by the Dunmehs. These are
left to Turks with influence at the Palace; for influence at the Palace
or at the Porte is necessary in order to secure any payment from the
Turkish Government. Ismail Pasha, an Albanian in the high esteem of
Abdul Hamid, and with many friends among the Palace clique, is the only
man in Salonica with courage enough to undertake Government contracts.
And his daring is proportionately rewarded.
This man’s history is worthy of recital; it reads like that of a
self-made millionaire. He was born of poor but dishonest parents, and
educated himself--dispensing with the arts of reading and writing. He
began life as a _khanji’s_ boy, learned there how to rob the wayfarer,
and attained, at the age of eighteen, a competency in a brigand band.
Step by step, as the men above him died off (sometimes by indigestible
pills, and sometimes by falling backward on the knife of an ambitious
subaltern), Ismail became a leader. In this capacity he did his work
so well, striking terror to the heart of both Turk and Christian, that
his ability was recognised by no less a person than Abdul Hamid, who
saw in him a man of exceptional ability. This self-made man was invited
by the Sultan to Constantinople, there decorated, given the title of
Pasha, and sent to Salonica with the high commission of first-class
spy, assigned to the task of reporting to his Padisha the doings of the
governor of the vilayet.
Now, an official in Turkey always knows his spy, and the spy always
knows that his man knows him. The spy and his man, of course, are
always together, and they become the most intimate friends. Naturally,
the man seeks ever to please his spy, which in this case makes Ismail
Pasha virtual Vali of the vilayet. He dictates the names of the police
who shall be employed--and naturally has a preference for outlaws;
kaimakams and other officers of districts hold their places at his
pleasure; and Government contracts are awarded to Ismail Pasha, be his
bid high or low. Ismail is the trusted ally of Abdul Hamid, and is
permitted, therefore, to grow rich and powerful.