CONSTANTINOPLE OLD AND NEW
[Illustration: Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror
From the portrait by Gentile Bellini in the Layard Collection
Photograph by Alinari Brothers, Florence]
CONSTANTINOPLE
OLD AND NEW
BY
H. G. DWIGHT
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published September, 1915
[Illustration]
OF HIS BOOK
A number of years ago it happened to the writer of this book to live in
Venice. He accordingly read, as every good English-speaking Venetian
does, Mr. Howells’s “Venetian Life.” And after the first heat of his
admiration he ingenuously said to himself: “I know Constantinople
quite as well as Mr. Howells knew Venice. Why shouldn’t I write a
‘Constantinople Life’?” He neglected to consider the fact that dozens
of other people knew Venice even better than Mr. Howells, perhaps, but
could never have written “Venetian Life.” Nevertheless, he took himself
and his project seriously. He went back, in the course of time, to
Constantinople, with no other intent than to produce his imitation of
Mr. Howells. And the reader will doubtless smile at the remoteness of
resemblance between that perfect little book and this big one.
Aside, however, from the primary difference between two pens,
circumstances further intervened to deflect this book from its original
aspiration. As the writer made acquaintance with his predecessors in
the field, he was struck by the fact that Constantinople, in comparison
with Venice and I know not how many other cities, and particularly that
Turkish Constantinople, has been wonderfully little “exploited”—at least
in our generation and by users of our language. He therefore turned much
of his attention to its commoner aspects—which Mr. Howells in Venice
felt, very happily, under no obligation to do. Then the present writer
found himself more and more irritated by the patronising or contemptuous
tone of the West toward the East, and he made it rather a point—since
in art one may choose a point of view—to dwell on the picturesque and
admirable side of Constantinople. And soon after his return there took
place the revolution of 1908, whose various consequences have attracted
so much of international notice during the last five years. It was but
natural that events so moving should find some reflection in the pages
of an avowed impressionist. Incidentally, however, it has come about
that the Constantinople of this book is a Constantinople in transition.
The first chapter to be written was the one called “A Turkish Village.”
Since it was originally put on paper, a few weeks before the revolution,
the village it describes has been so ravaged by a well-meaning but
unilluminated desire of “progress” that I now find it impossible to
bring the chapter up to date without rewriting it in a very different
key. I therefore leave it practically untouched, as a record of the
old Constantinople of which I happened to see the last. And as years
go by much of the rest of the book can only have a similar documentary
reference.
At the same time I have tried to catch an atmosphere of Constantinople
that change does not affect and to point out certain things of permanent
interest—as in the chapters on mosque yards, gardens, and fountains, as
well as in numerous references to the old Turkish house. Being neither
a Byzantinist nor an Orientalist, and, withal, no expert in questions
of art, I realise that the true expert will find much to take exception
to. While in matters of fact I have tried to be as accurate as possible,
I have mainly followed the not infallible Von Hammer, and most of my
Turkish translations are borrowed from him or otherwise acquired at
second hand. Moreover, I have unexpectedly been obliged to correct my
proofs in another country, far from books and from the friends who
might have helped to save my face before the critic. I shall welcome
his attacks, however, if a little more interest be thereby awakened in
a place and a people of which the outside world entertains the vaguest
ideas. In this book, as in the list of books at its end, I have attempted
to do no more than to suggest. Of the list in question I am the first
to acknowledge that it is in no proper sense a bibliography. I hardly
need say that it does not begin to be complete. If it did it would fill
more pages than the volume it belongs to. It contains almost no original
sources and it gives none of the detailed and classified information
which a bibliography should. It is merely what I call it, a list of
books, of more popular interest, in the languages more commonly read
by Anglo-Saxons, relating to the two great periods of Constantinople
and various phases of the history and art of each, together with a few
better-known works of general literature.
I must add a word with regard to the spelling of the Turkish names and
words which occur in these pages. The great difficulty of rendering in
English the sound of foreign words is that English, like Turkish, does
not spell itself. For that reason, and because whatever interest this
book may have will be of a general rather than of a specialised kind, I
have ventured to deviate a little from the logical system of the Royal
Geographical Society. I have not done so with regard to consonants,
which have the same value as in English, with the exception that _g_ is
always hard and _s_ is never pronounced like _z_. The gutturals _gh_
and _kh_ have been so softened by the Constantinople dialect that I
generally avoid them, merely suggesting them by an _h_. _Y_, as I use
it, is half a consonant, as in _yes_. As for the other vowels, they are
to be pronounced in general as in the Continental languages. But many
newspaper readers might be surprised to learn that the town where the
Bulgarians gained their initial success during the Balkan war was not
Kîrk Kiliss, and that the second syllable of the first name of the late
Mahmud Shefket Pasha did not rhyme with bud. I therefore weakly pander
to the Anglo-Saxon eye by tagging a final _e_ with an admonitory _h_,
and I illogically fall back on the French _ou_—or that of our own word
_through_. There is another vowel sound in Turkish which the general
reader will probably give up in despair. This is uttered with the teeth
close together and the tongue near the roof of the mouth, and is very
much like the pronunciation we give to the last syllable of words ending
in _tion_ or to the _n’t_ in _needn’t_. It is generally rendered in
foreign languages by _i_ and sometimes in English by the _u_ of _sun_.
Neither really expresses it, however, nor does any other letter in the
Roman alphabet. I have therefore chosen to indicate it by _î_, chiefly
because the circumflex suggests a difference. For the reader’s further
guidance in pronunciation I will give him the rough-and-ready rule that
all Turkish words are accented on the last syllable. But this does not
invariably hold, particularly with double vowels—as in the name Hüsséïn,
or the word _seráï_, palace. Our common _a_ and _i_, as in _lake_ and
_like_, are really similar double vowel sounds, similarly accented on the
first. The same rules of pronunciation, though not of accent, apply to
the few Greek words I have had occasion to use. I have made no attempt to
transliterate them. Neither have I attempted to subject well-known words
or names of either language to my somewhat arbitrary rules. Stamboul
I continue so to call, though to the Turks it is something more like
Îstambol; and words like _bey_, _caïque_, and _sultan_ have long since
been naturalised in the West. I have made an exception, however, with
regard to Turkish personal names, and in mentioning the reigning Sultan
or his great ancestor, the Conqueror, I have followed not the European
but the Turkish usage, which reserves the form Mohammed for the Prophet
alone.
This is not a book of learning, but I have required a great deal of
help in putting it together, and I cannot close this prefatory note
without acknowledging my indebtedness to more kind friends than I
have space to name. Most of all I owe to Mr. E. L. Burlingame, of
_Scribner’s Magazine_, and to my father, Dr. H. O. Dwight, without whose
encouragement, moral and material, during many months, I could never have
afforded the luxury of writing a book. I am also under obligation to
their Excellencies, J. G. A. Leishman, O. S. Straus, and W. W. Rockhill,
American ambassadors to the Porte, and especially to the last, for
cards of admission, letters of introduction, and other facilities for
collecting material. Among many others who have taken the trouble to give
me assistance of one kind or another I particularly wish to express my
acknowledgments to Arthur Baker, Esq.; to Mgr. Christophoros, Bishop of
Pera; to F. Mortimer Clapp, Esq.; to Feridoun Bey, Professor of Turkish
in Robert College; to H. E. Halil Edhem Bey, Director of the Imperial
Museum; to Hüsseïn Danish Bey, of the Ottoman Public Debt; to H. E.
Ismaïl Jenani Bey, Grand Master of Ceremonies of the Imperial Court; to
H. E. Ismet Bey, _Préfet adjoint_ of Constantinople; to Kemaleddin Bey,
Architect in Chief of the Ministry of Pious Foundations; to Mahmoud
Bey, Sheikh of the Bektash Dervishes of Roumeli Hissar; to Professor
Alexander van Millingen; to Frederick Moore, Esq.; to Mr. Panayotti
D. Nicolopoulos, Secretary of the Mixed Council of the Œcumenical
Patriarchate; to Haji Orhan Selaheddin Dedeh, of the Mevlevi Dervishes
of Pera; to A. L. Otterson, Esq.; to Sir Edwin Pears; to Refik Bey,
Curator of the Palace and Treasury of Top Kapou; to E. D. Roth, Esq.;
to Mr. Arshag Schmavonian, Legal Adviser of the American Embassy; to
William Thompson, Esq.; to Ernest Weakley, Esq.; and to Zia Bey, of the
Ministry of Pious Foundations. My thanks are also due to the editors of
the _Atlantic Monthly_, of _Scribner’s Magazine_, and of the _Spectator_,
for allowing me to republish those chapters which originally came out
in their periodicals. And I am not least grateful to the publishers for
permitting me to change the scheme of my book while in preparation, and
to substitute new illustrations for a large number that had already been
made.
HAMADAN, 6th Sefer, 1332.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
STAMBOUL 1