On that one night of the year the Sultan goes to prayer outside of his

palace. The state with which he does so is a sight to be seen, being

a survival of a curious corollary of the tradition of the day. An old

custom made it obligatory upon the Sultan to take a new wife on the Night

of Power, in the hope that, as the divine gift of the Koran had come down

on that night to Mohammed, so to his Caliph would heaven send an heir.

Despite the solemnity of the occasion, therefore, the imperial progress

to the mosque partakes of the nature of a gala procession. This was

particularly so in the time of Abd ül Hamid, who devoutly maintained the

customs of his fathers. I happened to see the last of the processions

with which he went out on the Night of Power. The short avenue leading

from Yîldîz Palace to the Hamidieh mosque was lined with arches and loops

of light, the mosque itself was outlined with little oil-lamps, and the

dip beyond was illuminated by Arabic texts and architectural designs. The

effect was fairylike against the dark background of the harbour and the

city, twinkling with the dim gold of far-away masts and minarets. While

the crowd was smaller than at the ordinary Friday _selamlîk_, the police

precautions were even stricter. But Turkish police have their own way of

enforcing regulations. I remember a young man in a fez who approached the

mosque too closely. A gorgeous officer went up to him: “My bey, stand

a little down the hill, I pray you.” The young man made an inaudible

reply, evidently an objection. The gorgeous officer: “My brother, I do

not reprimand you. I pray you to stand a little down the hill. It is

the order. What can I do, my child?” The young man stood a little down

the hill. Presently other young men came, to the sound of music, their

bayonets glittering in the lamplight. Some of them were on horseback, and

they carried long lances with red pennons. They lined the avenue. They

blocked up the cross streets. They surrounded the mosque. Before the last

of them were in place the Palace ladies, spectators of all pageants in

which their lord takes part, drove down and waited in their carriages in

the mosque yard. For some of them too, possibly, this was an anniversary.

Finally, the voice of the _müezin_ sounded from the ghostly minaret. In

his shrill sweet minor he began to chant the _ezan_—the call to prayer.

Then bands broke into the Hamidieh march, fireworks filled the sky with

coloured stars and comets’ tails, and the imperial cortège poured from

the palace gate—a mob of uniforms and caparisons and big white wedding

lanterns, scintillating about a victoria drawn by two superb white

horses. The man on the box, magnificent in scarlet and gold, was a more

striking figure than the pale, bent, hook-nosed, grey-bearded man in a

military overcoat behind him, who saluted in response to the soldiers’

“_Padisha’m chok yasha!_” The procession wheeled into the mosque yard,

and majesty entered the mosque. For an hour fireworks exploded, horses

pranced, and the crowd circulated very much at its will, while a high

sweet chanting sounded at intervals from within. Then majesty reappeared,

mob and wedding lanterns and all, the soldiers shouted again, and the

tall white archway once more received the Caliph of Islam.

[Illustration: The imperial cortège poured from the palace gate

Drawn by E. M. Ashe]

What takes place within the mosque, and, I suppose, within all mosques

on the Night of Power, Christians are generally allowed to watch from

the gallery of St. Sophia. The sight is most impressive when the

spectators are most limited in number—as was the case the first time I

went, ostensibly as a secretary of embassy. But I must add that I was

considerably impressed by the fact that another spectator was pointed out

to me as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle! Of course the place itself contributes

chiefly to the effect. Its hugeness, its openness, its perfect

proportion, its reaching of pillar into arch, of arch into vault, of

vault into dome, make an interior that predisposes to solemnity. The gold

mosaic that was once its splendour is now largely hidden under the colour

wash of the modern restorer, but the Night of Power brings out another

gold. The cornices of the three galleries, the arches of the first, the

vast space of the nave, are illuminated by thousands of wicks whose

soft clear burning in glass cups of oil is reflected by the precious

marbles of the walls. You look down from the gallery through a haze of

light diffused by the chandeliers swinging below. These, irregularly

hung about three central chandeliers, are scalloped like flowers of six

petals. They symbolise the macrocosm, I believe, but they might be great

water-lilies, floating in their medium of dusky gold. Under them the

nave is striated by lines of worshippers, their darkness varied by the

white of turban or robe, men all, all shoeless, standing one close to

the next with hands folded and heads down. There is not an exception to

the universal attitude of devotion—save among the chattering spectators.

The _imam_, from his high hooded pulpit with the sword and the banners

of conquest, recites the prayers of the evening. Choirs, sitting

cross-legged on raised platforms, chant responses from the Koran in a

soaring minor that sounds like the very cry of the spirit. Every now and

then a passionate “_Allah!_” breaks out or a deep “_amin_” reverberates

from the standing thousands. The long lines bow, hands on knees, and

straighten again. Once more they bow, drop to their knees, bend forward

and touch their foreheads to the ground, with a long low thunder that

rolls up into the dome. The Temple of the Divine Wisdom can rarely have

witnessed a more moving spectacle of reverence and faith.

IX

MOHAMMEDAN HOLIDAYS

In nothing is the natural soberness of the Turk more manifest than in

his holidays. He keeps fewer of them than his Christian compatriot, and

most of them he celebrates in such a way that an outsider would scarcely

suspect the fact. This is partly, perhaps, a matter of temperament, and

partly because Islam has not yet passed a certain stage of evolution. A

holiday, that is, is still a holy day. Secular and patriotic festivals

are everywhere of comparatively recent origin. In Turkey, where church

and state are one to a degree now unknown in Western countries, there was

no real national holiday until 1909. Then the first anniversary of the

re-establishment of the constitution was celebrated on the 23d of July

(July 10, old style). A highly picturesque celebration it was, too, in

Constantinople at least, with its magnificent array of rugs and mediæval

tents on the Hill of Liberty, its review of troops by the Sultan, its

procession of the guilds of the city, and its evening illuminations.

Illuminations, however, were not invented by the constitution. Long

before a 23d or a 4th of July were, the splendour-loving Sultan Ahmed

III discovered how unparalleled a theatre for such displays were the

steep shores of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. The accession day of

the reigning sovereign made an annual occasion for great families to set

their houses and gardens on fire with an infinity of little oil-lamps

and, in all literalness, to keep open house. This was the one purely

secular holiday of the year—unless I except the day of Hîd’r Eless. I

have already pronounced the name of this mysterious divinity, who is also

called Hîzîr, and whom Mohammedan legend associates with the Fountain of

Life and with the change of the seasons. He is a distant relative of the

prophet Elijah, of the god Apollo, and I suspect of personages still more

antique. His day coincides with that of the Greek St. George, namely,

April 23d, old style, or May 6th according to our mode of reckoning.

I must add that he is frowned upon in orthodox circles, and feasted

only in Constantinople or other localities subject to Greek influence.

Nevertheless, many men who scorn the authenticity of his claims to

reverence scorn not to go forth into the fields on his day, where they

roast a lamb on a spit, eat _pilaf_, and otherwise rejoice over the

return of the sun. And you should follow them to Kiat Haneh, if you wish

to see a sight—so great and so characteristic is the press of those who

celebrate the day. Perhaps they do so the more willingly because their

coreligionaries the Persians keep in that way, a few weeks earlier, their

own feast of _No-rouz_. _No-rouz_, New Day, is the most sensible New

Year’s I know, falling as it does at the vernal equinox. The Turks also

observe _No-rouz_, to the degree of sending each other pots of sweetmeat

and poetical wishes that life may be as free from bitterness.

Having made these exceptions to the rule that holidays are holy days in

Turkey, I now perceive I must make one more. It is almost as trifling

as the last, however, for New Year’s is scarcely a holiday at all

with the Turks. It is not a day of feasting, of visit-paying, or of

present-giving. Persons of sufficiently exalted rank go to the palace

to felicitate the Sultan or to inscribe their names in his register,

and each receives a new gold piece—of no great denomination in these

economical days. Ordinary mortals content themselves with exchanging good

wishes and small change—lucky pennies, as it were. A penny is the luckier

if it is obtained on some pretext, without mentioning the day. About this

day is none of the monotonous invariability which distinguishes our own

calendar. It is, indeed, the first day of the first month, Mouharrem,

but of the old lunar year of Arabia. It therefore falls eleven days

earlier every year, making the backward round of the seasons in a cycle

of thirty-three years. A further element of latitude enters into its

determination, and that of other strictly Mohammedan holidays, by the

fact that the month is not supposed to begin until the new moon has been

discovered by the naked eye. In the good old times this verification of

the calendar gave rise to most refreshing divergences of opinion. New

Year’s might be celebrated in different towns on a number of different

days, according to the cloudiness of the sky; or, in case of a conflict

of authorities, two days might even be celebrated in the same town. But

the advent of the telegraph and a growing laxity in interpretations have

brought it about that some one in the empire is pretty sure to see the

new moon at the right hour. The day of the ascertaining of the new moon

has a name of its own, _arifeh_. And mark that a Mohammedan, like a

Hebrew day, begins and ends at sunset. The celebration of the eve of a

holiday in Western countries is doubtless due to the old prevalence of

the same usage.

The true holidays of Islam are connected with the life and teachings of

its founder. These are seven in number. They commemorate the birth of

the Prophet (12th of the third moon, Rebi ül Evvel); his conception

(6th of the seventh moon, Rejeb); his ascension—accomplished, be it

remembered, during his lifetime—(27th Rejeb); the revelation and

completion of his mission (15th of the eighth moon, Shaban, and 27th of

the ninth, Ramazan); the close of the fast of Ramazan (1st Shevval); and

the sacrifice of Abraham (10th of the last moon, Zilhijeh). This is not

the place to discourse of comparative religions, but it is interesting

to note in passing the relation between these observances and those of

the two other great religions which had their origin so near Arabia.

This relation is further indicated by the lenten month of Ramazan and

by the paschal week of _Kourban Baïram_. It is characteristic, however,

of the puritanism of Islam and of the Prophet’s desire to put from him

every pretence of divinity that his own anniversaries are celebrated the

most simply. They have never been an occasion, like the great Christian

festivals, for general feasting. On Mohammed’s birthday, to be sure—known

as _Mevloud_, from a celebrated panegyric of the Prophet read in the

mosques on that day—the hours of prayer are announced by cannon, and

sweets are distributed, particularly to the poor and to orphan children.

On that day, also, the Sultan goes in state to mosque. But otherwise

the outsider knows of these anniversaries only by the illumination of

the galleries of minarets. Whence the seven holy nights have come to be

called the Nights of Lamps.

Equally characteristic, in a different way, are the two general holidays

of the Mohammedan calendar. They are both known as _Baïram_—feast—and

the outsider has no difficulty in being aware of them. Indeed, it would

be rather difficult to remain unaware of so much cannon firing and flag

flying. The month of Ramazan has certain festal features, but they are

largely discounted by the total fast which every good Moslem observes

during the daylight hours. The close of Ramazan is marked by three days

of unlimited festivity. This, the lesser _Baïram_, is called _Sheker_,

or sometimes _Mendil Baïram_—Sugar or Handkerchief Feast. Then people

exchange sweets and handkerchiefs, if nothing else. It is, however, the

time to tip servants and dependants, to make presents, to discharge

debts, and in general to fulfil the law of the Prophet by dispensing

_zekyaat_, the surplus of one’s goods. I was once presented with an

interesting little leaflet, printed in silver, which was less a discreet

advertisement than a tract as to the true Moslem’s duty in this regard.

It represented half a fruit of the tree _touba_, under which in paradise

all true believers will gather on the resurrection day, and the seeds

of this fruit were circles in which were printed the exact quantity of

certain comestibles to be given away at _Baïram_. Preparations for this

generosity may be seen during the afternoons of Ramazan, when the bazaars

and the fashionable street of Shah-zadeh-Bashi are crowded with shoppers.

The courtyard of the mosque of Baïezid is also turned into a fair during

Ramazan. There the _beau monde_ of Stamboul resorts, that is to say the

masculine part of it, two or three hours before sunset. Sweetmeats are by

no means all that you may buy. Eatables of all sorts, perfumes, tobacco,

cigarette-holders, and beads of amber and other materials are also sold,

besides silks and rugs. In Abd ül Hamid’s time there was always a booth

for the sale of porcelain from his little factory at Yîldîz. And every

year the ancient pottery works of Kütahya send up a consignment of their

decorative blue ware.

[Illustration: Baïram sweets]

Both _Baïrams_ are an occasion for paying visits. Everybody calls on

everybody else, so that it is a wonder if anybody is found at home. In

the case of the Sultan, however, there is no uncertainty. On the first

morning of each _Baïram_ he holds a great levee, which is attended by

every one of a certain rank. The ceremony has taken place every year

since the time of Baïezid the Thunderbolt, who held his court in Broussa

in the fourteenth century. Foreigners take no part in this _mouayedeh_

(exchange of feast-day wishes), or _baise-main_, as they prefer to call

it, but the diplomatic corps and other notables of the European colony

are invited to watch it from the gallery of the throne-room. Or sometimes

a humbler individual may be introduced in the suite of his embassy,

as was the fortune of the present scribe on the occasion of the first

_baise-main_ of Sultan Mehmed V.

It rather reminded me of youthful operatic days to march through the

endless corridors and to climb the immeasurable stairs of Dolma Ba’hcheh

Palace and to look down at last from the high east gallery of the

throne-room. The top galleries of my youthful days, however, did not

contain gilt chairs upholstered in blue and white satin or buffets set

out with gold plate and presided over by lackeys in red and gold. The

lackeys, though, did look a little like the stage. While a Turk makes a

magnificent soldier or horseman, he never attains, impassive though he

be, the sublime superiority of a European footman. Is it that his livery

is unnatural, or is the human in him too strong to be quite purged away?

The operatic impression was further carried out by a crystal chandelier,

swinging from the dome exactly where it would cut off somebody’s

view, and by the rococo arches surrounding the central square of the

throne-room. This huge space was empty save for a crystal candelabrum

standing at each corner and a covered throne in the middle of the west

side. The throne was a small red-and-gold sofa, as we presently saw when

an old gentleman removed the cover. He also looked carefully under the

throne, as might a queen apprehensive of burglars or mice; but I suppose

it was to make sure no bomb was there.

In the meantime the courtiers began to assemble: the cabinet at the left

of the throne, the army and navy—in much gold lace—at right angles to

the cabinet, the church under the east gallery. On the south side of the

hall, facing the military, stood for the first time the new parliament.

The senators, who have all been official personages in their day, wore

their various uniforms of state. The deputies looked very European in

evening dress and white gloves, but capped, of course, with the fez of

rigour. Last to come in, taking their stand at the right of the throne,

were the imperial princes. They had been waiting with the Sultan in an

adjoining room, where they had paid homage to him in private. Then,

preceded by the grand master of ceremonies, the Sultan himself entered.

Every one made a _temenna_ to the ground, that graceful triple sweep of

the hand which is the Turkish form of salutation, while a choir hidden

under one of the galleries chanted: “Thou wilt live long with thy glory,

O Sultan, if God wills. Great art thou, but forget not that One is

greater.” For those who had made obeisance the year before and many other

years to Abd ül Hamid II there must have been something strangely moving

in the spectacle of the kindly faced old man, after all not very majestic

in person, who walked a little as if his shoes were too tight, yet who

took his place at the head of that great company with the natural dignity

of his house and race. He wore a stubby new beard, acquired since his

accession; for it is not meet that the Commander of the Faithful should

go shorn.

The ceremony was opened by a little old man in green, the _Nakib ül

Eshraf_, whose business it is to keep the pedigrees of the descendants of

the Prophet. He appeared from behind one of the crystal candelabra, bowed

low in front of majesty, made a deep _temenna_, stepped backward, and

offered a prayer. The Sultan and all the other Moslems present listened

to it with their hands held up in front of them, palms inward. Then

the first chamberlain of the court, holding a red velvet scarf fringed

with gold, took his place at the left of the throne, the band in the

north gallery—and a very good one—began to play, and the _baise-main_

commenced. It was not a literal _baise-main_. I suppose the Sultan could

hardly be expected to hold out his hand long enough for several hundred

people to kiss. It was a _baise-écharpe_ rather, as the Grand Vizier was

the first to prove. He made the _temenna_—or salaamed, as we put it in

English—stepped in front of the Sultan and salaamed a second time, kissed

the chamberlain’s scarf and touched it to his forehead, salaamed a third

time, and backed to his place. Hilmi Pasha was followed by his colleagues

in order. When the last of them had paid homage, the chamberlain passed

behind the throne to the right, and it was the turn of parliament. The

senators, for most of whom the _baise-main_ was no novelty, followed the

example of the cabinet. But when it came to the deputies, they emphasised

a new order of things by merely saluting, without kissing the scarf. To

their speaker, the ex-exile Ahmed Riza Bey, the Sultan paid the honour

of offering his hand. Ahmed Riza Bey started to kiss it, but the Sultan

prevented him, at the same time drawing him forward past the throne and

giving him a place at the left beyond the Grand Vizier.

The most picturesque part of the ceremony was when the _ülema_, the

dignitaries of the cult, in their gold-collared robes and white turbans

ornamented by a band of gold, paid homage. They did not come singly, as

had their predecessors, but in a long flowing line of colour. At their

head marched the _Sheï’h ül Islam_, the highest religious official in

the empire, who is also a minister of state. He wears white, like the

Pope. He was followed by the _Sherif_ Ali Haïdar Bey, Minister of Pious

Foundations. This handsome green-robed Arab is one of the greatest

aristocrats in Islam, being an authentic descendant of the Prophet.

And he has, if you please, an English wife. After him came a brilliant

company of lesser green robes, followed by a succession of fawn-coloured

and purple ones. Four dark blues and one sombre greybeard in black made

a period to the procession. The long double line had, to the detached

gallery-god view, the appearance of a particularly effective ballet as

it advanced parallel to the diplomatic gallery, turned half-way across

the hall at right angles, moved forward to the throne, and backed out

as it came. And the band did not a little to forward the detachment of

the gallery-god view by irreverently playing a potpourri from “Carmen”

as the fathers of the cult made obeisance before the throne. The _ülema_

were followed by the heads of the non-Moslem religions of the empire.

This also was an innovation, and the Greek Patriarch made a brief

address in honour of it. Last of all the army, the navy, and the civil

dignitaries took their turn. This time the band played the march from

“Tannhäuser”; and with real courtiers paying homage to a real ruler in a

real throne-room, to that music, illusion became fantastic. When the last

member of the official hierarchy had made his last _temenna_ the Sultan

withdrew, followed by the court, while the visitors in the gallery were

invited to refresh themselves at the buffet. Then the chiefs of missions

and their wives—but not humble individuals in their suites—were invited,

by way of further innovation, to have audience of his majesty.

The unofficial side of _Baïram_ is quite as full of colour in its more

scattered way. Then every man who can afford it, or whose master can,

puts on a new suit of clothes. He at least dons something new, if only

a gay handkerchief about his fez or neck. It is interesting to stand

at some busy corner in a Turkish quarter and watch the crowd in its

party-coloured holiday finery. Friends meeting each other stop, seize a

hand between their two, and solemnly rub cheeks. Inferiors try to kiss

the hand of superiors, who try in turn to snatch the hand away, their

success depending on the degree of their superiority. And everybody

wishes everybody else a blessed _Baïram_. The _bekjis_—watchmen who have

beaten drums during the nights of Ramazan in order to get people up in

time for their last meal—march about collecting tips. They announce

themselves by their drums, to which they often add a pipe or a small

violin, and they carry a pole that is gaudy with the handkerchiefs people

give them. The sound of music, however, often means that dancing is on.

There is sure to be something of the sort wherever Kürds or Laz gather

together. Your true Turk is too dignified for such frivolities. And be it

well understood that the only women who dance in the open at _Baïram_ are

gipsies, hussies who love to deck themselves out in yellow and who blush

not to reveal their faces or their ankles. I regret that I am too little

of an expert in matters terpsichorean to enter into the fine points of

these performances. I can no more than sketch out an impression of a

big green tent in some vacant lot, of the high lights of brass that go

with tea and coffee drinking in its shadow, and of fiercely moustachioed

persons in tall felt caps, in hooded or haply goatskin jackets, and in

wide trousers, if they be Kürds, or of slighter Laz with tight black legs

that bulge out at the top and hoods picturesquely knotted about their

heads, who join hands and begin very slowly a swaying step that grows

wilder and wilder with the throbbing of a demon drum.

[Illustration: The open spaces of the Mohammedan quarters are utilised

for fairs]

It is the children, however, to whom _Baïram_ chiefly belongs. In their

honour all the open spaces of the Mohammedan quarters are utilised for

fairs and playgrounds. The principal resort of the kind is the yard

surrounding the mosque of the Conqueror—or it used to be before gardens

were planted there. I discovered it quite by accident one day when I went

to Stamboul to see how _Baïram_ was being celebrated and saw a quantity

of carts, dressed out with flags and greens, full of children. I followed

the carts until I came upon the most festive confusion of voices, of

tents, of music, of horses, of donkeys, of itinerant venders, of fezzed

papas, of _charshafed_ mammas, of small girls in wonderful silks and

satins, and small boys as often as not in the uniform of generals. Amidst

them I remarked with particular pleasure a decorative Arab in white, who

strode about with a collection of divinatory green birds. A countryman

of his had a funny little peep-show, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, into

which I was dying to look but considered myself too dignified to do so.

Neither did I go into the tent which bore this ingratiating sign: “Ici

on expose animaux vivans et la demoiselle laquelle à la poitrine une

cavité.” In other tents the physical man was more particularly catered

to. Indeed, stuffing seems to be the great affair of _Baïram_. I must not

omit, however, the numerous contrivances for inducing motion more or less

violent. Merry-go-rounds propelled by hand, swings in the form of boats,

milder swings for girls, where one could sit under an awning like a lady

and run no risk of being dashed to death, and a selection of miniature

vehicles for the very little person, were so many arguments against Mr.

Kipling and the East-is-East theory. Another argument was put forward by

the discreet gambler, with his quick eye for the police, who in various

familiar ways tempted youth to flirt with destiny.

It was with some misgiving that I first entered this assemblage, mine

being the only hat and camera visible. But during the several _Baïrams_

that I returned there no one ever seemed to resent my presence except

one young and zealous police officer who made up his mind that I had no

other purpose in visiting the fair of Fatih than to take photographs of

ladies. At a tent where wrestling was going on they once demanded a pound

of me for admission, supposing that I was a post-card man and would make

vast gains out of their entertainment. But at another, where I paid the

customary ten cents or less, I was invited into the place of honour; and

there, no seats being left, a naval officer insisted on my occupying

his—because, as he said, I was an amateur of the great Turkish sport and

a guest, _i. e._, a foreigner. Occidental hospitality does not often take

that particular form. Another trait struck my transatlantic eye when I

happened once to be at Fatih on the last day of _Baïram_. The barkers had

all been shouting: “Come, children! Come! To-morrow is not _Baïram_!”

Presently cannon banged to announce _ikindi_, the afternoon hour of

prayer, which is both the beginning and the end of _Baïram_. All about me

I heard people saying: “_Baïram_ is finished.” And _Baïram_ was finished.

It was only the middle of a sunny afternoon, and in any other country the

merrymaking would have gone on till night. But the children went away,

and men began taking down the swings and tents in the most philosophical

manner. In 1911 and 1912 Baïram was hardly celebrated at all, as a mark

of mourning for the Italian and Balkan wars.

The greater _Baïram_, called _Kourban Baïram_, or the Feast of Sacrifice,

is more of a religious observance. It lasts one day longer than the

other. It commemorates, as I have said, the sacrifice of Abraham.

According to Mohammedan tradition, however, Ishmael and not Isaac was

the hero of that occasion. In memory of the miracle of his escape every

household that can afford to do so sacrifices at least one ram on the

10th Zilhijeh. Among the rich a ram is provided for each member of the

family, and those who have recently died are not forgotten. It is also

the custom to make presents of rams, as between friends, engaged couples,

and masters and dependants. The Sultan is naturally distinguished among

these donors by the scale of his generosity. He gives a sacrificial ram

to each of the imperial mosques and theological schools, as well as to

those whom he delights to honour. These huge creatures belong to a very

aristocratic race. They are bred by a semi-religious, semi-agricultural

community called the _Saïeh Ojaghî_, established since the early days

of the conquest in the inner valley of the Golden Horn. The members of

this community still maintain their mediæval customs and costumes and

enjoy certain traditional privileges. In return for these they rear

the imperial rams, which they bring in procession to the Palace every

year about a week before _Kourban Baïram_. There the rams are bathed,

their horns and hoofs are gilded, and they are further adorned by velvet

muzzles a-glitter with gold fringe and mirror glass. It is not an

uncommon sight, although in the already mythic days of Abd ül Hamid it

was far more common, to see an immaculate aide-de-camp driving in an open

victoria with one of these gaudy companions.

It naturally requires a great many rams to supply the demand of _Kourban

Baïram_. Consequently the open spaces of the Mohammedan quarters are full

of baa-ing and bargaining for a week or ten days before the sacrifice.

The landing-stages of Scutari and Beshiktash are headquarters of this

traffic, Top Haneh, and the vicinity of the mosques of Yeni Jami, St.

Sophia, Mohammed II, and Baïezid II. The last is perhaps the largest and

most characteristic of these markets. Single rams that have been grown

for the occasion stand picketed near the mosque awaiting a well-to-do

purchaser. They are sometimes as large and as gaily dressed as the

Sultan’s rams. They wear a necklace of blue beads to keep off the Evil

Eye, and bits of their uncut fleece will be tied up with tinsel or

ribbon. I remember one which had a red silk sash on which was printed

his name in gold letters—_Arslan_, lion. Such a _kourban_ represents a

sacrifice of five to fifteen pounds. Most buyers prefer to patronise

the shepherds who bring their flocks into the city for the occasion.

These shepherds, usually Albanians, make a very picturesque addition to

the scene with their huge square-shouldered cloaks of felt, fancifully

painted in red and blue. The sheep, too, are daubed with colour, to

distinguish one flock from another. They sell for rather less than a

pound apiece, growing cheaper as the day of sacrifice approaches. It is

amusing to watch and to listen to the bargaining that goes on between

shepherd and householder until their demands come within sight of each

other. Most amusing, though, is it to see the ram—which, I suspect, is

not seldom a sheep—when the bargain is made, carried away pickaback by

one of the innumerable _hamals_ who hang around for such an opportunity.

These strange couples are the characteristic harbinger of _Kourban

Baïram_, the ram staring over the man’s shoulder with vast apparent

interest in the sights he sees, his hind quarters making the roundest and

most comfortable curve in the small of the _hamal’s_ back.

[Illustration: Sheep-market at Yeni Jami]

The actual sacrifice I have never seen, and I hope I never may. I once

witnessed a cinematographic representation of what takes place at the

Palace, and that was enough for me. The moving pictures represented his

majesty returning from early morning prayer, alighting at the great

door of Dolma Ba’hcheh, and greeting the dignitaries there assembled to

receive him. He then read a brief prayer, took a knife from a platter

handed him by an attendant, and passed it to the actual executioner. In

theory, the head of each house is supposed to perform the sacrifice. The

flesh must be given away, and the fleece, or its proceeds, is used for

some charitable purpose.

X

TWO PROCESSIONS

I had been in and out of Constantinople a good many years before I even

heard of the Sacred Caravan. The first I heard of it then was on the

Bridge one day, when I became aware of a drum beating out a curious slow

rhythm: _one_, two, _three_, _four_, five, six; _one_, two, _three_,

_four_, five, six. I waited to see what would happen, and presently from

the direction of Stamboul straggled a procession that, of course, I had

no camera to photograph, against the grey dome and springing minarets

of Yeni Jami. It was led by two men with tom-toms beating in unison the

rhythm I had heard. I later learned that those tom-toms have a special

name, _kyöz_. After the drummers marched a number of boys in pairs,

carrying small furled flags of red silk embroidered with gold. Behind the

boys strode a serious-looking person who held a small round shield and

a drawn sword. He was followed by a man bearing a big green standard,

embroidered and fringed with gold, on a white staff tipped by a sort of

brass lyre in which were Arabic letters. Next came a palanquin of white

wood slung between mules. It had glass windows and wooden shutters, and

looked very cosy with its red silk cushions; but nobody was there to

enjoy them. In the rear of the palanquin were men carrying staves with

bunches of dyed ostrich feathers at their tips, like enormous dusters.

And then slouched along a magnificent camel. He wore a green silk

saddle-cloth embroidered in white, and above that a tall green silk

hoodah with gold embroidery; and ostrich plumes nodded from him in tufts,

and at his knees he wore caps of coloured beads. Behind him trotted a lot

of mules in pairs, all loaded with small hair trunks. I did not know that

the trunks were full of presents for the good people of Mecca and Medina.

So lamentable a state of ignorance would not be possible, I suppose, in

Cairo, where the annual departure of the _Mahmal_ is one of the stock

sights. But if the Constantinople caravan attracts less attention in

the larger city, it is the more important of the two. The Sultan Bibars

Boundoukdari, founder of the Mameluke dynasty of Egypt in the seventh

century, was the first to send every year to Mecca a richly caparisoned

camel with a new cover for the Kaaba. In the process of time other gifts

were sent by the Sacred Caravan to both the holy cities. The first of

the Turkish sultans to imitate this pious custom was Mehmed I, builder

of the beautiful Green Mosque in Broussa. His great-great-grandson Selim

I conquered Egypt in 1517, and with Egypt the relics of the Prophet and

the insignia of the caliphate, which were removed to Constantinople.

Having become by virtue of his conquest Protector and Servitor of the

Holy Cities, Selim largely increased the generosity of his fathers. His

descendants of to-day are unable to display the same munificence, but the

annual _sourreh_ still forms the strongest material bond between Turkey

and Arabia. It consists of money in bags, of robes, of uncut cloth, of

shoes, and even of a certain kind of biscuit. The total value of these

and other articles, which are all minutely prescribed by tradition and

which are the perquisite of particular families or dignitaries, now

amounts to some £ T. 30,000. As for the covering of the Kaaba, it is

still made in Egypt and sent from there. The old coverings afford quite

a revenue to the eunuchs in charge of the temple. The smallest shred is

a relic of price, while a waistcoat of the precious fabric is supposed

to make the wearer invulnerable and is a fit present for princes. The

hangings for the Prophet’s tomb at Medina, changed less frequently, are

woven in Constantinople. The work is a species of rite in itself, being

performed in a room of the old palace, near the depository of the relics

of the Prophet, by men who must be ceremonially pure, dressed in white.

The arrival of the imperial presents in Mecca is planned to coincide with

the ceremonies of the greater pilgrimage. These take place at the Feast

of Sacrifice, which with the two days preceding constitutes the holy

week of Islam. Pilgrimage is a cardinal duty of every Moslem, expressly

enjoined in the twenty-second Soura of the Koran. The first _Haj_ took

place during the lifetime of the Prophet, and every year since then

has seen the faithful gather in Mecca from the four quarters of the

Mohammedan world. Constantinople is one of their chief rallying places,

as being the seat of the Caliph and the natural point of departure for

the pilgrims of northern Asia. These holy palmers add a note of their

own to the streets of the capital during their seasons of migration,

with their quilted coats of many colours, their big turbans, and their

Mongol cast of feature. The day for the departure of the Sacred Caravan

is the eve of _Berat Gejesi_, or the night when Gabriel revealed his

mission to the Prophet. This is nearly four months before the great day

of _Kourban Baïram_. In the times when the caravan marched overland from

Scutari to Mecca, four months was none too much. But the pilgrimage has

been vastly shortened in these days of steam, and will be shorter still

when the last links of rail are laid between Constantinople and Mecca.

For the time being, however, the Sacred Caravan still makes its official

departure on the traditional day, going over to Scutari and waiting there

until it is ready to embark for Beyrout. It makes a stop of twenty-five

days in Damascus, where the imperial benevolence begins, and thence it

proceeds by the new Hejaz railway to Medina. There is also a traditional

day for the return of the pilgrims. Part of the ceremony of the Prophet’s

birthday is the delivery to the Sultan of a letter from the _Sherif_ of

Mecca, sent back by the leader of the Sacred Caravan in response to the

Sultan’s own, together with a cluster of dates from the Holy City.

[Illustration: Church fathers in the Sacred Caravan]

[Illustration: Housings in the Sacred Caravan]

The ceremonial attending the departure of the Sacred Caravan is one of

the last bits of Oriental colour left in Constantinople. I have now seen

it several times, however, and every year it seems to lose something. My

best procession was my first, which also happened to be the last under a

Caliph of absolute power to draw upon the public funds. And although I

had a camera with me that time, I was not allowed to use it. The convoy

I had encountered on the bridge was merely a preliminary of the true

pageant, escorting the _sourreh_ from the Ministry of Pious Foundations

to Yîldîz Palace. There the presents, installed for two days under rich

tents, were inspected by Abd ül Hamid and given into the custody of the

_Sourreh Emini_. Then after an imposing religious ceremony the Sacred

Caravan commenced its march. For a spectator without the palace walls

the first intimation of its approach was given by several carriages of

Palace ladies, who take an unofficial part in most public spectacles.

Religious and military dignitaries also began sauntering down the road,

which was bordered by soldiers, with an air of dispersing after some

important function. Presently a double line of cavalrymen came into

sight, preceding more religious and military dignitaries on horseback.

One of them was the _Emir ül Haj_, the official head of the caravan,

with much gold embroidery on his long coat. His post, still an important

one, was far more so in the days when the caravan was less certain

to escape attack on the way. Some of the horses, particularly of the

_ülema_, were led by grooms; others were followed by orderlies carrying

big cloth bundles. The body of the procession was made up of an irregular

crowd of priests, officers, eunuchs, Palace servants, and nondescripts

of various sorts, chanting at the top of their voices, followed by the

big camel I had already seen, and the palanquin. But there were eight

other camels this time, of all sizes, down to a fluffy little white one

that everybody wanted to pat; and two children were immensely enjoying

a ride in the palanquin. Behind that rode an official holding out on a

red satin cushion an autograph letter from the Sultan to the _Sherif_ of

Mecca, confirming him in his office for the coming year. Another bore a

huge parcel in his arms, done up in white tissue-paper. This was a robe

of honour sent by the Sultan to the _Sherif_. Others still carried silver

vessels in which sweet savours burned—“in honour of the angels,” as a

dervish once expressed it to me. Next marched a second irregular crowd,

louder and more amazing than the first. In front of it were two rows

of black men in scarlet robes, beating on tom-toms the rhythm I knew,

which they alternated with a quicker one. And midway of the crowd a ring

of excited persons brandished swords and challenged the enemies of the

Prophet to mortal combat. They were an unaccustomed reminder, in tolerant

Constantinople, of the early days of the faith. And then, tied with very

new rope to the backs of some thirty mules walking two and two, each gay

with flags and ostrich feathers and led by a solemn artilleryman, were

the quaint little hair trunks in which the Commander of the Faithful sent

his gifts to the far-away people of the Prophet.

[Illustration: The sacred camel]

[Illustration: The palanquin]

There is another annual procession to be seen in Constantinople which

recalls to Western eyes even more strangely than that of the _sourreh_

an older day of faith. Turks take no part in it, however, although

they also observe the 10th of Mouharrem, on which it falls, as the

anniversary of Joseph’s deliverance from prison in Egypt and of Noah’s

exit from the ark. They make in honour of the occasion and present to

their friends a sweet pudding to which they have given the name of the

anniversary—_ashoureh_, or tenth day. The basis of it is boiled wheat,

to which are added all manner of grains, nuts, and dried fruits; and

the legend is that Noah and his people made a similar pudding on Mount

Ararat out of what was left in the bins of the ark.

[Illustration: Tied with very new rope to the backs of some thirty mules

... were the quaint little hair trunks]

It is for the Persians that the day is peculiarly sacred. They also make

a special dish for it, called _zerdeh_, of rice, sugar, and saffron.

But that is a mere detail of what is for them the holiest season in the

year. The Persians and the Turks belong to two different sects that

have divided the Mohammedan world since the death of the Prophet. It is

not for an unlettered unbeliever lightly to declare that so serious a

matter was in the beginning a question of _cherchez la femme_. Still,

it is a fact that the enmity of Aïsheh, the youngest wife of Mohammed,

toward Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, did much to embitter

those early differences of opinion. This lady, while on a journey, once

caused tongues to wag by disappearing from her litter at a compromising

hour and being brought back by a man considerably younger than her

distinguished husband. Mohammed was finally forced to silence the voice

of scandal by the twenty-fourth _Soura_ of the Koran, entitled Light.

In the meantime, however, consulting with his four closest friends and

followers as to what should be done, he was assured by three of them

that there could be no doubt as to the innocence of the Mother of the

Moslems. The fourth, Ali, ventured to suggest that the matter would bear

investigation. Aïsheh never forgave the doubt of her step son-in-law,

and her enmity was a potent factor in keeping Ali from the caliphate. He

eventually did succeed, the fourth to do so, twenty-four years after the

Prophet’s death. But the Sunnites regard him as the least of the first

four Caliphs. The Shiïtes, on the other hand, do not recognise the first

three Caliphs at all. They even fête the anniversary of the death of the

second one, Omar. Ali is for them the vicar of God, and they hold his

descendants to the ninth generation in peculiar reverence. The twelfth

of these _Imams_, as they are called, the _Mehdi_, is supposed never to

have died. It is believed that he will reappear before the last judgment

in order, curiously enough, to overthrow antichrist. As for Ali, the

hatred of Aïsheh pursued him even after he became Caliph, and stirred up

disaffection against him. He was finally stabbed. His two sons, Hassan

and Hüsseïn, also met violent deaths, the former being poisoned and the

latter falling under thirty-three wounds on the heroic field of Kerbela.

These tragic events are what the Shiïtes commemorate on the 10th of

Mouharrem.

[Illustration: A Persian miniature representing the death of Ali]

In Persia the entire month is a time of mourning. During the first ten

days public passion-plays represent with bloody realism the lives and

deaths of the first _Imams_. In Sunnite Constantinople, where there are

some six thousand Persians, the commemoration is naturally less public,

although the two sects no longer come to blows over it. Most of the

Persian colony are from the region of Tabriz, where a Turkish dialect is

spoken. Their headquarters are in a number of old stone _hans_ near the

bazaars and the War Department. Large tents are put up in the courts of

these _hans_ during Mouharrem, and there every evening _mollahs_ recite

the story of the tragedy of Kerbela. It took place more than a thousand

years ago, and religious feeling has cooled much in those thousand years,

but the story still has a strange power to draw tears from the crowding

Persians who listen to it. After the third night men with banners and

torches give a greater semblance of reality to the recitation. On the

tenth night, or on the night of the tenth day, which is the anniversary

of the martyrdom of Hüsseïn, the torches and banners march about to the

various _hans_ where Persians live.

The last time I saw this ceremony it included picturesque features new

to me; and, by way of marking a dramatic contrast between century and

century, an aeroplane suddenly whirred across the square of sky visible

from the Valideh court. But I shall always remember the first of the

processions that I saw. It was in the same paved courtyard of Valideh

Han, surrounded by half-ruined cloisters. The central mosque, the

temporary shed in one corner, the sparse trees, the silently waiting

spectators, made so many vague shapes in the February dusk; and snow was

falling. A strange clamour of pipes and drums and shouting began to make

itself heard in the distance. Suddenly the archway giving entrance to the

_han_ lighted up with a smoky glare, and the procession surged slowly

into the court. It was led by men carrying flaming cressets of iron

basketwork and three enigmatic steel emblems on long staves. The central

one was a sort of sword-blade above a spindle-shaped fretting of Arabic

letters, while the other two were tridents springing from a similar

base; and from all three floated streamers of crape. Next came two files

of standard-bearers, dressed in black, with black caps on their heads.

The flags they bore were black or dark-coloured, triangular in shape,

with the names of the _Imams_ and other holy inscriptions embroidered on

them in silver. On top of some of the staves was an open hand of brass.

I was told that it commemorated the mutilation of Hüsseïn. Behind the

standard-bearers marched more men in black, chanting in a rhythm of six

beats and striking their bare breasts on the fifth. Even a foreigner

could distinguish the frequent names of Ali and Hüsseïn. Others held in

both hands a chain at the end of which was a bunch of smaller chains.

With this, first over one shoulder and then over the other, they beat

their backs. The thud kept time with the chanting, and vigorously enough

to leave visible, sometimes sickening signs, under the torn black of the

single garment they wore. Two white horses followed. The first, with

rich saddle-cloth and head-stall, carried a little boy on his back. On

the saddle of the second, caparisoned in blood-streaked white, were two

doves. Then came a band of musicians, singing, playing pipes, beating

drums, and clashing cymbals. And last of all, slowly advancing sidewise

in two long lines, appeared a gruesome company of men in white, who

chanted hoarsely and slashed their shaven heads with bloody swords. The

blood-stained figures in white, the black flagellants, the symbolic

horses, the mourning banners, the points of steel answering the flare of

the torches, made strange matter indeed for the imagination, moving with

desperate music through that veil of driving snow.

[Illustration: Valideh Han]

The procession marched round the courtyard three times and then went into

the tent, where a dirge was chanted in honour of the martyrs of Kerbela.

At different moments of the ceremony, and particularly at sight of the

child and the doves on horseback—symbolic of Hüsseïn’s son, who was

killed in his arms, and of the souls of the martyrs—many a Persian among

the spectators sobbed uncontrolledly. Other spectators smiled at the

tears streaming down bearded cheeks and at the frenzy of the flagellants.

For myself, I can never help feeling respect for any real emotion,

however far I may be from sharing it. People say, indeed, that these

processions are not what they used to be and that much of the slashing

is feigned. That may well enough be. Still, I found myself compelled to

turn aside when the men in white passed in front of me. More than one of

them, too, had to be helped staggering away before the procession came

to an end. It is not every one who takes part in these ceremonies. The

participants are men who fulfil a vow of their own or of their parents,

usually in gratitude for some deliverance. Their zeal is so great that

it is necessary to draw up a preliminary schedule for the processions,

so that no two shall meet and dispute the right of way. Each forms in

its own courtyard, but the men in white do not begin their cutting

till they are in the street. When the marchers finally return to their

own _han_—having, in the meantime, visited the public bath—they spread

rugs on the floor of the tent and spend the evening drinking tea and

entertaining their friends.

This ceremony is repeated in a milder form in Scutari, on the day

after _ashoureh_. Early in the morning the Persians flock to a valley

of cypresses called Seïd Ahmed Deresi, which is a corner of the great

cemetery reserved for their use. There they rejoice over such as have

by their own blood atoned for that of Hüsseïn. I have followed them

thither only once, but I am happy to say that no interment took place.

Tents were set up on the edge of the cemetery, of a faded green that

admirably set off the darker cypresses, and close-packed Persians

squatted in them, drinking tea or smoking their terrible _toumbeki_.

More Persians, recognisable by their black caps if not by their cast

of feature, roamed among the trees. Most of them were of the humbler

sort, in skirted coats of dull colours. Here and there was one in a

long stiff fuzzy black cloak, with a touch of gold at the throat. Many

had beards decoratively reddened with henna, and wore their hair shaved

high about the neck and off the middle of the forehead. There was much

embracing between hairy monsters who had not met, perhaps, since last

Mouharrem; and much patronising was there of ambulatory venders of good

things to eat. Finally, at what signal I know not, a company of men in

black marched out among the graves, bearing triangular flags of the sort

I have already described. At some distance they joined forces with a

company of coloured flags, headed by the strange ornaments of steel.

Two of the coloured flags should have been in a museum rather than in

Scutari cemetery on a wet winter day. They were unusually fine examples

of the Persian wood-block printing, and in the centre of each smiled an

inimitable lion with a curly tail. These two companies marched chanting

together to the end of the cemetery, where they met a third made up of

flagellants. But this time there were no men in white and no bloody

blades. Then they all proceeded down the long road to the water, the

steel emblems and the coloured flags first, the black banners next, and

the flagellants last, chanting, beating their breasts, and swinging their

heavy chains. Every few steps they stopped and went through their rite

with greater zeal. The stops were longest in front of institutions and

great houses, where a _mollah_ would intone from a parchment manuscript

he carried. And in the picturesque little square of Top Tashi, where some

fallen Greek pillars lie in front of the madhouse attached to the mosque

of the Valideh Atik, a Roufaï dervish, whom I remembered to have seen

in the _tekkeh_ of Karaja Ahmed, sang a long threnody in honour of the

martyred Hüsseïn. The procession was followed by hundreds of Persians who

joined in the chanting and breast beating. Their number, and the many

stops, made an opportunity for street vendors and for beggars. Cripples

sat on either side of the narrow street with a handkerchief spread out

in front of them on which lay a few suggestive coins. Gaudy gipsy girls

were not ashamed to show themselves on so solemn an occasion. I saw two

women of a race strange to me, with coppery faces and a perpendicular

mark painted in ochre on their foreheads. Strangest of all was a holy

man who stood humbly by the wayside. Yet, after all, he was of one

brotherhood with the mourners for Hüsseïn. He did not raise his eyes

as the procession passed him, nor did he hold out his hand. What first

attracted my attention to the goodness of his face were two small round

reddish things between which I saw it. Then I made out the reddish things

to be onions, spitted on either end of a steel skewer that pierced both

his cheeks.

XI

GREEK FEASTS

One of the most characteristic things about Constantinople is that while

it has become Turkish it has not ceased to be Greek. The same is true

of Thrace, Macedonia, and the fringe of Asia Minor, which contain large

Turkish and other populations, but which still form a part of the Greek

world to which they always belonged. The two races have indisputably

influenced each other, as their languages and certain of their customs

prove. A good deal of Greek blood now flows, too, in Turkish veins.

Nevertheless there has been remarkably little assimilation, after five

hundred years, of one element by the other. They coexist, each perfectly

distinct and each claiming with perfect reason the land as his own.

This is perhaps one cause why religious festivals are so common among the

Greeks of Turkey. It is as a religious community that they have remained

separate since the conquest. Through their religious observances they

live what is left them of a national life and assert their claim to the

great tradition of their race. The fact doubtless has something to do

with the persistence of observances that elsewhere tend to disappear.

At all events, those observances are extremely interesting. They have a

local colour, for one thing, of a kind that has become rare in Europe

and that scarcely ever existed in America. Then they are reckoned by the

Julian calendar, now thirteen days behind our own, and that puts them

into a certain perspective. Their true perspective, however, reaches much

farther back. Nor is it merely that they compose a body of tradition from

which we of the West have diverged or separated. Our religious customs

and beliefs did not spring out of our own soil. We transplanted them in

full flower from Rome, and she in turn had already borrowed largely from

Greece and the East. But in the Levant such beliefs and customs represent

a native growth, whose roots run far deeper than Christianity.

In the Eastern as in the Western church the essence of the religious

year is that cycle of observances that begin with Advent and culminate

at Easter. It is rather curious that Protestantism should have disturbed

the symbolism of this drama by transposing its climax. Christmas with the

Greeks is not the greater feast. One of their names for it, in fact, is

Little Easter. It is preceded, however, by a fast of forty days nearly as

strict as Lent. The day itself is purely a religious festival. A midnight

mass, or rather an early mass, is celebrated at one or two o’clock on

Christmas morning, after which the fast is broken and people make each

other good wishes. They do not exchange presents or follow the usage

of the Christmas tree, that invention of Northern barbarism, except in

places that have been largely influenced by the West.

The real holiday of the season is New Year’s Day. This is called _Aï

Vassíli_, or St. Basil, whose name-day it is. There is an old ballad

relating to this venerable Bishop of Cappadocia—too long, I regret, to

translate here—which men and boys go about singing on St. Basil’s eve.

The musicians are rewarded with money, theoretically for the poor of

the community. If it happens to stick in the pockets of the performers,

they doubtless regard themselves as representative of the brotherhood

for whose benefit they sing. This custom is imitated by small boys who

go among the coffee-houses after dark, begging. They make themselves

known by lanterns that are oftenest wicker bird-cages lined with coloured

paper. I have also seen ships, castles, and aeroplanes of quite elaborate

design. These curious lanterns are used as well on Christmas and Epiphany

eves of both calendars. The principal feature of St. Basil’s eve is the

_vassilópita_, a kind of flat round cake or sweet bread something like

the Tuscan _schiacciata_. At midnight the head of the house cuts the

_pita_ into as many pieces as there are members of the family. A true

_pita_ should contain a coin, and whoever gets it is sure to have luck

during the new year. The next day people pay visits, exchange presents,

tip servants, and make merry as they will. They also go, at a more

convenient hour than on Christmas morning, to church, where the ancient

liturgy of St. Basil is read.

[Illustration: Blessing the Bosphorus]

Epiphany, or the old English Twelfth-Night, has retained in the East

a significance that it has lost in the West. The day is supposed to

commemorate the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. Hence it is the day of

the blessing of waters, whether of springs, wells, reservoirs, rivers, or

the sea. Holy water plays a particular rôle in the Greek Church—although

the Roman custom of moistening the fingers with it, before making the

sign of the cross on entering a church, is not followed. On the first

of every month except January a ceremony called the Little Blessing

takes place in the churches, when water is blessed; and this ceremony

may be repeated by request in private houses. In January the Little

Blessing takes place on Epiphany eve, the fifth. But on Epiphany itself,

as early in the morning as local custom may dictate, takes place the

Great Blessing. It is performed in the middle of the church, on a dais

decorated with garlands of bay, and the important feature of the long

ceremony is the dipping of a cross into a silver basin of water. The

water is carefully kept in bottles throughout the next year and used

as occasion may require. It is sometimes administered, for instance,

to those who are not thought fit to take the full communion. The

outdoor ceremony which follows this one is extremely picturesque. In

Constantinople it may be seen in any of the numerous Greek waterside

communities—by those who care to get up early enough of a January

morning. One of the best places is Arnaout-kyöi, a large Greek village on

the European shore of the Bosphorus, where the ceremony is obligingly

postponed till ten or eleven o’clock. At the conclusion of the service

in the church a procession, headed by clergy in gala vestments and

accompanied by candles, incense, banners, and lanterns on staves of the

sort one sees in Italy, marches to the waterside. There it is added

to by shivering mortals in bathing trunks. They behave in a highly

unecclesiastical manner in their anxiety to get the most advantageous

post on the quay. The banners and lanterns make a screen of colour on

either side of the priests, incense rises, choristers chant, a bishop

in brocade and cloth of gold, with a domed gilt mitre, holds up a small

cross; he makes the holy sign with it, and tosses it into the Bosphorus.

There is a terrific splash as the rivals for its recovery dive after it.

In days gone by there used to be fights no less terrific in the water

over the precious object. The last time I saw the ceremony, however,

there was nothing of the kind. The cross was even made of wood, so that

there was no trouble in finding it. The first man who reached it piously

put it to his lips and allowed the fellow nearest him to do the same.

Then the half dozen of them paddled back to shore and hurried off to get

warm. The finder of the cross is a lucky man in this world and the world

to come. He goes from house to house with the holy emblem he has rescued

from the deep, and people give him tips. In this way he collects enough

to restore his circulation and to pass a convivial Epiphany. The cross is

his to keep, but he must provide a new one for the coming year.

The blessing of the waters is firmly believed by many good people to

have one effect not claimed by mother church. It is supposed, that

is, to exorcise for another year certain redoubtable beings known as

_kallikántzari_. The name, according to one of the latest authorities

on the subject,[2] means the good centaurs. Goodness, however, is not

their distinguishing trait. They are quarrelsome, mischievous, and

destructive monsters, half man, half beast, who haunt the twelve nights

of the Christmas season. One of the most efficacious means of scaring

them off is by firebrands, and I have wondered if the coloured lanterns

to which I have alluded might owe their origin to the same idea. Many

pious sailors will not venture to sea during the twelve days, for fear

of these creatures. The unfurling of the sails is one of the ceremonies

of Epiphany in some seaside communities. Similarly, no one—of a certain

class—would dream of marrying during the twelve days, while a child

so unfortunate as to be born then is regarded as likely to become a

_kallikántzaros_ himself. Here a teaching of the church perhaps mingles

with the popular belief. But that belief is far older than the church,

going back to Dionysus and the fauns, satyrs, and sileni who accompanied

him. In many parts of the Greek world it is still the custom for men and

boys to masquerade in furs during the twelve days. If no trace of the

custom seems to survive in Constantinople it may be because the early

fathers of the church thundered there against this continuance of the

antique Dionysiac revels, which became the Brumalia and Saturnalia of the

Romans.

[2] J. C. Lawson: “Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek

Religion.”

I should not say that no trace survives, because Carnival is, of course,

a lineal descendant of those ancient winter celebrations. As it exists

in Constantinople, however, Carnival is for the most part but a pale

copy of an Italian original, imported perhaps by the Venetians and

Genoese. It affords none the less pleasure to those who participate in

it, and curiosity of various colours to the members of the ruling race. I

remember one night in Pera overhearing two venerable fezzes with regard

to a troop of maskers that ran noisily by. “What is this play?” inquired

one old gentleman, who evidently had never seen it before and who as

evidently looked upon it with disapproval. “Eh,” replied the other, the

initiated and the more indulgent old gentleman, “they pass the time!”

The time they pass is divided differently than with us of the West. The

second Sunday before Lent is called _Apokreá_ and is the day of farewell

to meat. Which for the religious it actually is, although the gaieties of

Carnival are then at their height. The ensuing Sunday is called Cheese

Sunday, because that amount of indulgence is permitted during the week

preceding it. After Cheese Sunday, however, no man should touch cheese,

milk, butter, oil, eggs, or even fish—though an exception is made in

favour of caviar, out of which a delicious Lenten savoury is made. Lent

begins not on the Wednesday but on the Monday, which is called Clean

Monday. In fact the first week of Lent is called Clean Week. Houses are

then swept and garnished and the fast is stricter than at any time save

Holy Week. The very pious eat nothing at all during the first three days

of Lent.

[Illustration: The dancing Epirotes]

Clean Monday, nevertheless, is a great holiday. In Constantinople it is

also called Tatavla Day, because every one goes out to Tatavla, a quarter

bordering on open country between Shishli and Hass-kyöi. A somewhat

similar custom prevails in Venice, where every one goes on Ash Wednesday

to promenade on the ordinarily deserted quay of the Zattere. But no masks

are seen on the Zattere on Ash Wednesday, whereas masks are the order of

the day at Tatavla on Clean Monday. They are not so much the order of

the day, however, as the progress of a traditional camel, each of whose

legs is a man. It carries a load of charcoal and garlic, which are

powerful talismans against evil, and it is led about by a picturesquely

dressed camel driver whose face is daubed with blue. This simple form

of masquerading, a common one at Tatavla, descends directly from the

pagan Dionysia. Another picturesque feature of the day is the dancing

by Epirotes—Greeks or Christian Albanians. Masquerading with these

exiles consists in twisting a handkerchief about their heads in guise

of a fillet and in putting on the black or white _fustanella_—with its

accompanying accoutrements—of their native hills. They form rings in the

middle of the crowd, which is kept back by one of their number called

the Shepherd. Like the Christmas mummers of the Greek islands, he wears

skins and has a big bronze sheep or camel bell fastened to some part of

him. He also carries a staff to which is attached a bunch of garlic for

good luck. He often wears a mask as well, or is otherwise disguised, and

his clowneries give great amusement. In the meantime his companions join

hands and dance around the ring to the tune of a pipe or a violin. The

first two hold the ends of a handkerchief instead of joining hands, which

enables the leader to go through more complicated evolutions. Sometimes

he is preceded by one or two sword dancers, who know how to make the most

of their hanging sleeves and pleated kilts. Some of these romantic young

gentlemen are singularly handsome, which does not prepare one to learn

that they are butchers’ boys.

The Greeks keep no _mi-carême_, as the Latins do. Their longer and

severer fast continues unbroken till Easter morning—unless Annunciation

Day happens to fall in Lent. Then they are allowed the indulgence of

fish. Holy Week is with them Great Week. Services take place in the

churches every night except Wednesday, and commemorate the events of

Jerusalem in a more dramatic way than even in the Roman Church. The

symbolic washing of the disciples’ feet, however, which takes place in

Jerusalem on Holy Thursday, is not performed in Constantinople except

by the Armenians. On Good, or Great, Friday a cenotaph is erected in

the nave of each church, on which is laid an embroidery or some other

representation of the crucifixion. Sculpture is not permitted in the

Greek Church, although on this one occasion a statue has sometimes been

seen. The faithful flock during the day to the cenotaph, where they kiss

the embroidery and make some small donation. Each one receives from

the acolyte in charge a jonquil or a hyacinth. This graceful custom is

perhaps a relic of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which Easter superseded and

with whose symbolism, celebrating as they did the myth of Demeter and

Persephone, it has so much in common. Spring flowers, at all events,

play a part at Easter quite different from our merely decorative use

of them. Flower stands are almost as common at church doors as candle

stands. For people also make the round of the icons in the churches, on

Good Friday, lighting votive tapers here and there. The true use of the

tapers, however, is after dark. Then a procession figuring the entombment

of Christ issues from the church with the image of the cenotaph and

makes the circuit of the court or, in purely Greek communities, of the

surrounding streets, accompanied by a crowd of lighted candles. The image

is finally taken to the holy table, where it remains for forty days.

An even more striking ceremony takes place on Saturday night. About

midnight people begin to gather in the churches, which are aromatic

with the flowering bay strewn on the floor. Every one carries a candle

but none are lighted—not even before the icons. The service begins with

antiphonal chanting. The ancient Byzantine music sounds stranger than

ever in the dim light, sung by the black-robed priests with black veils

over their tall black caps. Finally, the celebrant, in a purple cope

of mourning, withdraws behind the _iconostásion_, the screen that in

a Greek church divides the holy table from the chancel. As the chant

proceeds candles are lighted in certain chandeliers. Then the door of

the sanctuary is thrown open, revealing a blaze of light and colour

within. The celebrant comes out in magnificent vestments, holding a

lighted candle and saying: “Come to the light.” Those nearest him

reach out their own tapers to take the sacred fire, and from them it

is propagated in an incredibly short time through the entire church.

In the meantime the priests march in procession out-of-doors, headed

by a banner emblematic of the resurrection. And there, surrounded by

the flickering lights of the congregation, the celebrant chants the

triumphant resurrection hymn. At this point tradition demands that the

populace should express their own sentiments by a volley of pistol-shots.

But since the reactionary uprising of 1909, when soldiers took advantage

of the Greek Easter to make such tragic use of their own arms, an attempt

has been made in Constantinople to suppress this detail. I have been told

that each shot is aimed at Judas. The unfaithful apostle, at all events,

used to be burned in effigy on Good Friday at Therapia. And I have heard

of other customs of a similar bearing.

The patriarchal church at Phanar is the most interesting place to see

the ceremonies of Easter morning. They are not for every one to see, by

reason of the smallness of the church. One must have a friend at court in

order to obtain a ticket of admission. Even then one may miss, as I once

did through ignorance, and perhaps through a lack of that persistence

which should be the portion of the true tourist, certain characteristic

scenes of the day. Thus I failed to witness the robing of the Patriarch

by the prelates of his court. Neither did I get a photograph of them

all marching in procession to the church, though I had moved heaven

and earth—_i. e._, a bishop and an ambassador—for permission to do so.

Nevertheless, I had an excellent view of the ceremony of the second

resurrection, as the Easter morning vespers are called. The procession

entered the church led by small boys in white and gold who carried a

tall cross, two gilt _exeptérigha_ on staves, symbolic of the six-winged

cherubim, and lighted candles. After them came choristers singing. The

men wore a species of fez entirely covered by its spread-out tassel. One

carried an immense yellow candle in front of the officiating clergy, who

marched two and two in rich brocaded chasubles. Their long beards gave

them a dignity which is sometimes lacking to their Western brothers,

while the tall black _kalymáfhion_, brimmed slightly at the top with a

true Greek sense of outline, is certainly a more imposing head-dress than

the biretta. The Patriarch came next, preceded and followed by a pair

of acolytes carrying two and three lighted candles tied together with

white rosettes. These candles symbolise the two natures of Christ and the

Trinity; with them His Holiness is supposed to dispense his blessing.

He wore magnificent vestments of white satin embroidered with blue and

green and gold. A large diamond cross and other glittering objects hung

about his neck. In his hand he carried a crosier of silver and gold and

on his head he wore a domed crown-like mitre. It was surmounted by a

cross of gold, around it were ornaments of enamel and seed pearls, and

in the gold circlet of its base were set immense sapphires and other

precious stones. The Patriarch was followed by members of the Russian

embassy, of the Greek, Montenegrin, Roumanian, and Servian legations,

and by the lay dignitaries of his own entourage, whose uniforms and

decorations added what they could to the splendour of the occasion. These

personages took their places in the body of the nave—standing, as is

always the custom in the Greek Church—while the clergy went behind the

screen of the sanctuary. The Patriarch, after swinging a silver censer

through the church, took his place at the right of the chancel on a high

canopied throne of carved wood inlaid with ivory. He made a wonderful

picture there with his fine profile and long white beard and gorgeous

vestments. On a lower and smaller throne at his right sat the Grand

Logothete. The Grand Logothete happens at present to be a preternaturally

small man, and time has greatly diminished his dignities. The glitter of

his decorations, however, and the antiquity of his office make him what

compensation they can. His office is an inheritance of Byzantine times,

when he was a minister of state. Now he is the official representative of

the Patriarch at the Sublime Porte and accompanies him to the Palace when

His Holiness has audience of the Sultan.

No rite, I suppose, surpasses that of the Greek Church in splendour.

The carved and gilded iconostasis, the icons set about with gold,

the multitude of candles, precious lamps, and chandeliers, the rich

vestments, the clouds of incense, make an overpowering appeal to the

senses. To the Western eye, however, there is too much gilt and blaze

for perfect taste, there are too many objects in proportion to the space

they fill. And certainly to the Western ear the Byzantine chant, however

interesting on account of its descent from the antique Greek modes, lacks

the charm of the Gregorian or of the beautiful Russian choral. At a point

of the service the Gospels were read by different voices in a number of

different languages. I recognised Latin and Slavic among them. Finally,

the Patriarch withdrew in the same state as he entered. On his way to

his own apartments he paused on an open gallery and made an address to

the crowd in the court that had been unable to get into the church.

Then he held in the great saloon of his palace a levee of those who had

been in the church, and each of them was presented with gaily decorated

Easter eggs and with a cake called, curiously enough, by the Persian

name of _chörek_—except that the Greeks mispronounce it _tsouréki_. These

dainties are the universal evidence of the Greek Easter—these and the

salutation “Christ is risen,” to which answer is made by lips the least

sanctimonious: “In truth he is risen.” Holy Thursday is the traditional

day for dyeing eggs. On Holy Saturday the Patriarch sends an ornamental

basket of eggs and _chörek_ to the Sultan. _Chörek_ is like the Easter

cake of northern Italy. It is a sort of big brioche made in three strands

braided together.

Easter Monday is in some ways a greater feast than Easter itself. In

Constantinople the Christian population is so large that when the Greeks

and Armenians stop work their fellow citizens find it easy to follow

suit. The Phanar is a favourite place of resort throughout the Easter

holidays, an open space between the patriarchate and the Golden Horn

being turned into a large and lively fair. The traditional place for the

celebration of the day, however, is in the open spaces of the Taxim, on

the heights of Pera. The old travellers all have a chapter about the

festivities which used to take place there, and remnants of them may

still be seen. The Armenians gather chiefly in a disused cemetery of

their cult, where the tomb of a certain St. Kevork is honoured at this

season and where peasants from Asia Minor may sometimes be seen dancing

among the graves. A larger and noisier congregation assembles at the

upper edge of the parade-ground across the street. Not a little colour is

given to it by Greeks from the region of Trebizond, who sometimes are not

Greeks at all, but Laz, and who often wear the hood of that mysterious

people knotted around their heads. They have a strange dance which they

continue hour after hour to the tune of a little violin hanging from

the player’s hand. They hold each other’s fingers in the air, and as

they dance they keep up a quivering in their thighs, which they vary by

crouching to their heels and throwing out first one leg and then the

other with a shout. An even more positive touch of colour is given to

the scene by the Kürds. They set up a tent in front of which a space is

partially enclosed by screens of the same material. I remember seeing one

such canvas that was lined with a vivid yellow pattern on a red ground.

There swarthy Kürds in gaily embroidered jackets or waistcoats gather to

smoke, to drink tea, and to dance in their own more sedate way, while

gipsies pipe unto them and pound a big drum. I once asked one of the

dancers how it was that he, being no Christian, made merry at Easter

time. “Eh,” he answered, “there is no work. Also, since the constitution

we are all one, and if one nation rejoices, the others rejoice with it.

Now all that remains,” he went on, “is that there should be no rich and

no poor, and that we should all have money together.” Interesting as I

found this socialistic opinion in the mouth of a Kürdish _hamal_, I could

not help remembering how it had been put into execution in 1896, when the

Kürds massacred the Armenian _hamals_ and wrested from the survivors the

profitable guild of the street porters. It was then that the Easter glory

departed from the Taxim. But the place had already been overtaken by the

growing city, while increasing facilities of communication now daily

lengthen the radius of the holiday maker.

One assembly of Easter week which still is to be seen in something of its

pristine glory is the fair of Balîklî. This takes place on the Friday

and lasts through Sunday. The scene of it is the monastery of Balîklî,

outside the land walls of Stamboul. It is rather curious that the Turkish

name of so ancient a place should have superseded even among the Greeks

its original appellation. The Byzantine emperors had a villa there

and several of them built churches in the vicinity. The name Balîklî,

however, which might be translated as the Fishy Place, comes from the

legend every one knows of the Greek monk who was frying fish when news

was brought him that the Turks had taken the city. He refused to believe

it, saying he would do so if his fish jumped out of the frying-pan—not

into the fire, but into the spring beside him. Which they promptly did.

Since when the life-giving spring, as it is called, has been populated by

fish that look as if they were half fried. The thing on Balîklî day is to

make a pilgrimage to the pool of these miraculous fish, to drink of the

water in which they swim, to wash one’s hands and face and hair in it,

and to take some of it away in a bottle. The spring is at one end of a

dark chapel, half underground, into which the crowd squeezes in batches.

After receiving the benefits of the holy water you kiss the icons in the

chapel. A priest in an embroidered stole, who holds a small cross in his

hand, will then make the holy sign with it upon your person and offer you

the cross and his hand as well to kiss, in return for which you drop a

coin into the slot of a big box beside him. Candles are also to be had

for burning at the various icons. The greater number of these, however,

are in the monastery church hard by. And so many candles burn before

them that attendants go about every few minutes, blow out the candles,

and throw them into a box, to make room for new candles. There are also

priests to whom you tell your name, which they add to a long list, and in

return for the coin you leave behind you they pray for blessing upon the

name. All this is interesting to watch, by reason of the great variety of

the pilgrims and the unconscious lingering of paganism in their faith.

And, while there is a hard commercial side to it all, you must remember

that a hospital and other charitable institutions largely profit thereby.

There are also interesting things to watch outside the monastery gate.

Temporary coffee-houses and eating places are established there in

abundance, and the hum of festivity that arises from them may be heard

afar among the cypresses of the surrounding Turkish cemetery. I must add

that spirituous liquors are dispensed with some freedom; for the Greek

does not share the hesitation of his Turkish brother in such matters,

and he considers it well-nigh a Christian duty to imbibe at Easter. To

imbibe too much at that season, as at New Year’s and one or two other

great feasts, is by no means held to impair a man’s reputation for

sobriety. It is surprising, however, how soberly the pleasures of the day

are in general taken. As you sit at a table, absorbing your own modest

refreshment, you are even struck by a certain stolidity in those about

you. Perhaps it is partly due to the fact that the crowd is not purely

Greek. Armenians are there, Bulgarians, Albanians, Turks too. Then many

of the pilgrims are peasants, come in ox-carts from outlying villages

and dazzled a little by this urban press. They listen in pure delight

to the music that pours from a hundred instruments. The crowning glory

of such an occasion is to have a musician sit at the table with you,

preferably a hand-organ man or a gipsy with his pipe. Gipsy women go

about telling fortunes. “You are going to have great calamities,” utters

one darkly when you refuse to hear your fate. “Is that the way to get a

piastre out of me?” you ask. “But afterward you will become very rich,”

she condescends to add. Other gipsies carry miniature marionette shows on

their backs in glass cases. Wandering musicians tempt you to employ their

arts. Vendors of unimaginable sweets pick their way among the tables.

Beggars exhibit horrible deformities and make artful speeches. “May you

enjoy your youth!” is one. “May you know no bitternesses!” exclaims

another with meaning emphasis. “May God forgive your dead,” utters a

third. “The world I hear, but the world I do not see,” cries a blind man

melodramatically: “Little eyes I have none.” Diminutives are much in

favour among this gentry. And every two minutes some one comes with a

platter or with a brass casket sealed with a big red seal and says, “Your

assistance,” adding, “for the church,” or “for the school,” or “for the

hospital,” if you seem to fail to take in what is expected of you. Your

assistance need not be very heavy, however, and you feel that you owe

something in return for the pleasures of the occasion.

Beyond the circle of eating places stretches an open field which is the

scene of the more active enjoyment of the day. There the boat-swings

beloved of Constantinople children are installed, together with

merry-go-rounds, weights which one sends to the top of a pole by means of

a hammer blow, and many another world-old device for parting the holiday

maker and his money. One novel variant is an inclined wire, down which

boys slide hanging from a pulley. Dancing is the favourite recreation of

the men. When they happen to be Bulgars of Macedonia they join hands and

circle about one of their number who plays the bagpipe. Every few steps

the leader stops and, steadied by the man who holds the other end of his

handkerchief, indulges in posturings expressive of supreme enjoyment. The

_pas’haliático_ of the Greeks is less curious but more graceful. After

watching the other dances, picturesque as they are, one seems to come

back with it to the old Greek sense of measure. And it is danced with a

lightsomeness which is less evident with other races. The men put their

hands on each other’s shoulders and circle in a sort of barn-dance step

to the strains of a _lanterna_. Of which more anon.

[Illustration: Bulgarians dancing]

[Illustration: Greeks dancing to the strains of a _lanterna_]

The feast of Our Lady of the Fishes is one of the greatest popular

festivals in Constantinople. By no means, however, is it the only one

of its kind. The cult of holy wells forms a chapter by itself in the

observances of the Greek Church. This cult has an exceptional interest

for those who have been touched by the classic influence, as offering

one of the most visible points at which Christianity turned to its own

use the customs of paganism. An ἁγίασμα, an _áyazma_ as the Greeks

colloquially call it, is nothing more or less than the sacred fount of

antiquity. Did not Horace celebrate such a one in his ode to the _Fons

Bandusiæ_? As a matter of fact, a belief in naiads still persists among

Greek peasants. And you can pay a lady no greater compliment than to tell

her that she looks, or even that she cooks, like a nereid. For under

that comprehensive style the nymphs are now known. But as guardians

of sacred founts they, like some of the greater divinities, have been

baptised with Christian names. There is an infinity of such springs in

and about Constantinople. Comparatively few of them are so well housed as

the _áyazma_ of Balîklî. Some of them are scarcely to be recognised from

any profane rill in the open country, while others are in Turkish hands

and accessible only on the day of the saint to which they are dedicated.

On that day, and in the case of an _áyazma_ of some repute on the days

before and after—unless the nearest Sunday determine otherwise—is

celebrated the _paniyíri_ of the patron of the spring. _Paniyíri_, or

_panayíri_ as perhaps it is more commonly known, has the same origin as

our word panegyric. For the reading of the saint’s panegyric is one of

the religious exercises of the day. Which, like the early Christian agape

and the contemporary Italian _festa_, is another survival of an older

faith. During the Byzantine period the annual pilgrimage in state of an

emperor to one of the shrines of the city was a πανήγυρις. But religious

exercises are not the essential part of a _panayíri_ to most of those who

take part in one. Nor need a _panayíri_ necessarily take place at a holy

well. The number of them that do take place is quite fabulous. Still, as

the joy of life was discovered in Greece, who shall blame the Greeks of

to-day for finding so many occasions to manifest it? And it is natural

that these occasions should oftenest arise during the clement half of the

year, when the greater feasts of the church are done.

One of the earliest “panegyrics” of the season is that of _Aï Saránda_,

which is held on the 9th/22d of March. _Aï Saránda_ means St. Forty to

many good people, although others designate thereby the Forty Martyrs of

Sebaste—now the Turkish city of Sîvas. There is a spring dedicated to

these worthies on the outskirts of Pera, between the place called The

Stones and the Palace of Dolma Ba’hcheh. I find it difficult to share

the popular belief that the forty martyrs of Sîvas ever had anything

to do with this site. It is true that the pious Empress Pulcheria dug

them up in the fifth century and transported them with great pomp to the

church she built for them on the farther side of the Golden Horn. It is

also true that their church was demolished shortly before the Turkish

conquest, and its marbles used in fortifying the Golden Gate. But why

should a Turkish tomb on the hillside above the _áyazma_ be venerated by

the Greeks as the last resting-place of “St. Forty”? Has it anything to

do with the fact that the forty martyrs are commemorated at the vernal

equinox, which happens to be the New Year of the Persians and which the

Turks also observe?

Being ignorant of all these matters, my attention was drawn quite by

accident to the tomb in question by some women who were tying rags to

the grille of a window. The act is common enough in the Levant, among

Christians and Mohammedans alike. It signifies a wish on the part of the

person who ties the rag, which should be torn from his own clothing.

More specifically, it is sometimes supposed to bind to the bar any

malady with which he may happen to be afflicted. Near this grille was a

doorway through which I saw people coming and going. I therefore decided

to investigate. Having paid ten _paras_ for that privilege to a little

old Turk with a long white beard, I found myself in a typical Turkish

_türbeh_. In the centre stood a ridged and turbaned catafalque, while

Arabic inscriptions adorned the walls. I asked the _hoja_ in attendance

who might be buried there. He told me that the Greeks consider the tomb

to be that of St. Forty, while the Turks honour there the memory of a

certain holy Ahmed. I would willingly have known more about this Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of a saint; but others pressed behind me, and the

_hoja_ asked if I were not going to “circulate.” He also indicated the

left side of the catafalque as the place for me to begin. I accordingly

walked somewhat leisurely around the room. When I came back to the

_hoja_ he surprised me not a little by throwing a huge string of wooden

beads over my head, obliging me to step clear of them. He then directed

me to circulate twice more, which I did with more intelligence, he

muttering some manner of invocation the while. The third time I was

considerably delayed by a Greek lady with two little boys who carried toy

balloons. The little boys and their balloon strings got tangled in the

string of the big wooden beads, and one of the balloons broke away to the

ceiling, occasioning fearful sounds of lamentation in the holy place.

The _hoja_ kept his temper admirably, however. He was not too put out to

inform me that I owed him a piastre for the service he had rendered me.

I begged his pardon for troubling him to remind me, saying that I was a

stranger. He politely answered that one must always learn a first time,

adding that a piastre would not make me poor nor him rich. I reserved my

opinion on the latter point when I saw how many of them he took in. At

the foot of the catafalque a Turkish boy was selling tapers. I bought

one, as it were an Athenian sacrificing to the unknown god, lighted it,

and stuck it into the basin of sand set for the purpose. That done, I

considered myself free to admire the more profane part of the _panaïr_—as

the Turks say.

Part of it covered the adjoining slopes, where peaceably inclined

spectators, including Turkish women not a few, might also contemplate

the blossoming peach-trees that added their colour to the occasion,

and the farther panorama of Bosphorus and Marmora. But the crux of the

proceedings was in a small hollow below the tomb. I must confess that I

shrank from joining the press of the faithful about the grotto of the

sacred fount. I contented myself with hovering on their outskirts. A

black group of priestly cylinders marked the densest part of the crowd,

and near them a sheaf of candles burned strangely in the clear spring

sunlight. A big refreshment tent was pitched not too far away to receive

the overflow of devotion, reaching out canvas arms to make further space

for tables and chairs. The faded green common to Turkish tents was lined

with dark red, appliquéd to which were panels of white flower-pots and

flowers. I wondered if the tent-man wittingly repeated this note of the

day. For flowers were everywhere in evidence. Lilacs, tulips, hyacinths,

jonquils, violets, and narcissi were on sale under big green canvas

umbrellas at the edge of the hollow, while every other pilgrim who came

away from the _áyazma_ carried a bottle of holy water in one hand and a

spring flower in the other.

Interesting as is the _panayíri_ of the forty martyrs, it does not rank

with the later and greater spring festival of St. George. This also has

Turkish affiliations—at least in Constantinople and Macedonia. Both races

count St. George’s Day, April 23d/May 6th, the official beginning of

summer—of the good time, as modern Greek pleasantly puts it. The Turks,

however, dedicate the day to Hîd’r Eless. But it is not too difficult to

relate this somewhat vague personage to our more familiar friend Elijah,

who in his character of St. Elias shares with St. George the mantle of

Apollo. Nor is the heavenly charioteer the only one of the Olympians

whose cult survives to-day among their faithful people. The Hebrew

prophet would doubtless have been much astonished to learn that he was to

be the heir of a Greek god. He owes it partly to the similarity of his

name to the Greek word for sun and partly to the chariot of fire that

carried him out of the world. As for “the infamous George of Cappadocia,”

as Gibbon denominates the patron saint of our ancestral island, his part

in the heritage of Apollo is due to his dragon, cousin german to the

python of the Far Darter. The sanctuaries of these two Christian legatees

of Olympus have replaced those of Apollo on all hilltops, while their

name-days are those when men feasted of old the return and the midsummer

splendour of the sun.

The place among places to celebrate St. George’s Day is Prinkipo. That

delicious island deserves a book to itself. Indeed, I believe several

have been written about it. One of them is by a political luminary of our

own firmament who flamed for a moment across the Byzantine horizon and

whose counterfeit presentment, in a bronze happily less enduring than

might be, hails the motor men of Astor Place, New York. Sunset Cox’s

work bears the ingratiating title of “The Pleasures of Prinkipo; or, The

Diversions of a Diplomat”—if that be the order of the alternatives. The

pleasures of Prinkipo are many as its red and white sage roses, but none

of them is more characteristic than to climb the Sacred Way through olive

and cypress and pine to the little monastery crowning the higher hill

of the island, and to take part in the ceremonies of rejoicing over the

return of the sun. This is a _panayíri_ much frequented by the people of

the Marmora, who come in their fishing-boats from distant villages of the

Marble Sea. Their costumes become annually more corrupt, I am pained to

state; but there are still visible among them ladies in print, sometimes

even in rich velvet, trousers of a fulness, wearing no hat but a painted

muslin handkerchief over the hair, and adorned with dowries in the form

of strung gold coins. They do not all come to make merry. Among them are

not a few ill or deformed, who hope a miracle from good St. George. You

may see them lying pale and full of faith on the strewn bay of the little

church. They are allowed to pass the night there, in order to absorb the

virtue of the holy place. I have even known of a sick child’s clothes

being left in the church a year in hope of saving its life.

But these are only incidents in the general tide of merrymaking. Eating

and drinking, music and dance, go on without interruption for three days

and three nights. The music is made in many ways, of which the least

popular is certainly not the way of the _lanterna_. The _lanterna_ is

a kind of hand-organ, a hand-piano rather, of Italian origin but with

an accent and an interspersing of bells peculiar to Constantinople.

It should attract the eye as well as the ear, usually by means of the

portrait of some beauteous being set about with a garland of artificial

flowers. And it is engineered by two young gentlemen in fezzes of an

extremely dark red, in short black jackets or in bouffant shirt-sleeves

of some magnificent print, with a waistcoat more double-breasted than you

ever saw and preferably worn unbuttoned; also in red or white girdles,

in trousers that flare toward the bottom like a sailor’s, and in shoes

or slippers that should have no counter. Otherwise the rules demand that

the counter be turned under the wearer’s heel. Thus accoutred he bears

his _lanterna_ on his back from patron to patron and from one _panayíri_

to another. His companion carries a camp-stool, whereon to rest his

instrument while turning the handle hour in and hour out. I happen,

myself, to be not a little subject to the spell of music. I have trembled

before Fitzner, Kneisel, and Sevčik quartettes and I have touched

infinity under the subtlest bows and batons of my time. Yet I must

confess that I am able to listen to a _lanterna_ without displeasure. On

one occasion I listened to many of them, accompanied by pipes, drums,

gramophones, and wandering violins, for the whole of a May night on

St. George’s hilltop in Prinkipo. What is more, I understood in myself

how the Dionysiac frenzy was fed by the cymbals of the mænads, and I

resented all the inhibitions of a New England origin that kept me from

joining the dancers. Some of them were the Laz porters of the island,

whose exhausting measure was more appropriate to such an orgy than to

Easter Monday. Others were women, for once; but they kept demurely to

themselves, apparently untouched by any corybantic fury. The same could

not be said of their men, whose dancing was not always decent. They

were bareheaded, or wore a handkerchief twisted about their hair like a

fillet, and among them were faces that might have looked out of an Attic

frieze. It gave one the strangest sense of the continuity of things.

In the lower darkness a few faint lights were scattered. One wondered

how, to them, must seem the glare and clangour of this island hilltop,

ordinarily so silent and deserted. The music went up to the quiet stars,

the revellers danced unwearying, a half-eaten moon slowly lighted the

dark sea, a spring air moved among the pines, and then a greyness came

into the east, near the Bithynian Olympus, and at last the god of

hilltops rode into a cloud-barred sky.

The second feast of Apollo takes place at midsummer, namely on St.

Elias’s Day (July 20/August 2). Arnaout-kyöi is where it may be most

profitably admired. Arnaout-kyöi—Albanian Village—is the Turkish name of

a thriving suburb which the Greeks call Great Current, from the race of

the Bosphorus past its long point. It perhaps requires a fanatical eye

to discover anything Apollonic in that lively settlement. No one will

gainsay, however, that the joy of life is visible and audible enough

in Arnaout-kyöi during the first three days of August. There also is

a sacred way, leading out of an odoriferous ravine to a high place

and a grove, whither all men gather in the heat of the day to partake

of the water of a holy well. But waters less sanctified begin to flow

more freely as night draws on, along the cool quay and in the purlieus

thereof. Fringes of coloured paper are strung from house to house, flags

hang out of windows or across the street, wine-shops are splendid with

banners, rugs, and garlands of bay, and you may be sure that the sound of

the _lanterna_ is not unheard in the land. The perfection of festivity

is to attach one of these inspiriting instruments to your person for the

night. The thing may be done for a dollar or two. You then take a table

at a café and order with your refreshments a candle, which you light and

cause to stand with a little of its own grease. In the meantime perhaps

you buy as many numbers as your means will allow out of a bag offered

you by a young gentleman with a watermelon under his arm, hoping to find

among them the mystic number that will make the melon your own. But you

never do. When your candle has burned out—or even before, if you be so

prodigal—you move on with your _lanterna_ to another café. And so wears

the short summer night away.

To the sorrow of those who employ Greek labour, but to the joy of him

who dabbles in Greek folklore, _panayíria_ increase in frequency as

summer draws to a close. The picturesque village of Kandilli, opposite

Arnaout-kyöi—and any church dedicated to the _Metamorphosis_—is the scene

of an interesting one on Transfiguration Day (August 6/19). No good

Greek eats grapes till after the Transfiguration. At the mass of that

morning baskets of grapes are blessed by the priests and afterward passed

around the church. I know not whether some remnant of a bacchic rite be

in this solemnity. It so happens that the delicious _chaoush_ grapes

of Constantinople, which have spoiled me for all others that I know,

ripen about that time. But as the blessing of the waters drives away the

_kallikántzari_, so the blessing of the grapes puts an end to the evil

influence of the _thrímes_. The _thrímes_ are probably descended from

the dryads of old. Only they now haunt the water, instead of the trees,

and their influence is baleful during the first days of August. Clothes

washed then are sure to rot, while the fate of him so bold as to bathe

during those days is to break out into sores.

The next great feast is that of the Assumption, which is preceded by a

fortnight’s fast. Those who would see its panegyric celebrated with due

circumstance should row on the 28th of August to Yeni-kyöi and admire

the plane-shaded avenue of that fashionable village, decorated in honour

of the occasion and musical with mastic glasses and other instruments

of sound. A greater _panayíri_, however, takes place a month later in

the pleasant meadows of Gyök Sou, known to Europe as the Sweet Waters of

Asia. Two feasts indeed, the Nativity of the Virgin and the Exaltation

of the Cross (September 8/21 and 14/27), then combine to make a week

of rejoicing. There is nothing to be seen at Gyök Sou that may not be

seen at other fêtes of the same kind. I do recollect, though, a dance of

Anatolian peasants in a ring, who held each other first by the little

finger, then by the hand, then by the elbow, and lastly by the shoulder.

And the amphoræ of the local pottery works in which people carry away

their holy water give the rites of the _áyazma_ a classic air. But this

_panayíri_ has an ampler setting than the others, in its green river

valley dotted with great trees, and it enjoys an added importance because

it is to all practical purposes the last of the season. No one can count

on being able to make merry out-of-doors on St. Demetrius’s Day (October

26 / November 8). St. Demetrius is as interesting a personality as St.

George. He also is an heir of divinity, for on him, curiously enough,

have devolved the responsibilities of the goddess Demeter. He is the

patron of husbandmen, who discharge labourers and lease fields on his

day. Among working people his is a favourite season for matrimony. I know

not how it is that some sailors will not go to sea after _Aï Thimítri_,

until the waters have been blessed at Epiphany. Perhaps it is that he

marks for Greeks and Turks alike the beginning of winter, being known to

the latter as Kassîm. This division of the seasons is clearly connected

with the Pelasgian myth of Demeter.

The feast of her successor I have never found particularly interesting,

though I must say I have seen it only at Kourou Cheshmeh. Kourou

Cheshmeh, or Dry Fountain, as the Turks call it, is where Medea, during

her somewhat stormy honeymoon in the Argo, planted a laurel, and where a

very different notability of a later day, St. Daniel the Stylite, stood

for many years on a pillar. No sign of laurel or pillar are there to-day,

or of the famous Byzantine church of the Archangel Michael, which existed

somewhere in the vicinity and which Sultan Mehmed II pulled down to build

into Cut-Throat Castle. But there is a remnant of antiquity in Kourou

Cheshmeh which goes very well with feasts of Demeter. This is an old

altar, half buried in the earth near the mosque of the village, festooned

about with garlands between battered rams’ heads—a curiously vivid symbol

of the contrasts and survivals that are so much of the interest of

Constantinople.

[Illustration: The mosque and the Greek altar of Kourou Cheshmeh]

I never saw any one lay a sacrifice to the Goddess of Plenty on that

ancient marble. A real rite of sacrifice may be seen, however, at

the last _panayíri_ of the year, in the village of San Stefano. The

_panayíri_, as you might suppose, is that of St. Stephen. In the Greek

calendar St. Stephen’s Day falls on the 27th of December (January 9th),

instead of the 26th. The most characteristic part of the _panayíri_ is a

church procession which takes place on the afternoon before the feast,

when priests and choir-boys march through the village with banners and

incense and a small flock of sheep. The sheep are gaily decorated, like

those of _Kourban Baïram_, and they come to the same end. In fact,

the Greeks apply to their own sacrifice the Turkish name of _kourban_.

The main difference is that each animal represents some special votive

offering. And the offering may take different forms, according to the

means of the giver. One rainy winter afternoon I was watching the sheep,

daubed with paint and decorated with ribbons and artificial flowers,

gather in the yard of the church, when an old crone came into the porch.

She had pulled two or three of her many skirts over her head to protect

herself from the rain, and when she dropped them into place there

appeared in her arms a big rooster. “My _kourban_,” she said, showing him

to a neighbour who greeted her, and she made no bones about taking him

with her into the church. Holding him tightly under one arm she proceeded

to buy, at the stall inside the door, three big candles, one of which she

lighted at the shrine of St. Stephen, another at that of the Virgin, and

a third in front of an icon which I did not recognise. That done, she

made the round of all the icons in the church, twice over, kissing each

one and piously crossing herself before it. Then she sat down in a stall

at the back of the church, her rooster blinking around as if determined

to pass his last hour with credit. The old woman encouraged him with pats

and with remarks which I was sorry not to catch. In the meantime candles

multiplied before the icons, a sharp sweet odour added itself to that of

the strewn bay on the floor, a brisk business was done by a choir-boy

who sold, wrapped up in gay tissue-paper, dried leaves supposed to be of

the plant which sprang from St. Stephen’s crown of martyrdom, and a big

frosted cake was brought in with ceremony and put between two candles on

a table opposite the bishop’s throne. At last the Bishop himself arrived,

rather wet and out of breath, and was inducted into his vestments beside

the stove at the back of the church, not far from where the old woman was

sitting with her cock. At that point the latter, unable to contain his

emotions any longer, suddenly filled the holy place with a loud and pagan

crow.

These _panayíria_ are only a few of an inexhaustible list, for every

church and spring has its own. I have not even mentioned certain famous

ones that are not easily visited. Of this category, though less famous

than the fairs of Darîja, Pyrgos, or Silivri, is the feast of the

_Panayía Mavromolítissa_. This madonna in the church of Arnaout-kyöi is a

black icon reputed to have been found in the fields at the mouth of the

Black Sea. Every year on the 5th of September she is carried back in a

cortège of fishing-boats—weeping, it is said—by priests and well-wishers

who hold a picnic _panayíri_ in the vicinity of the Cyanean Rocks. I have

not spoken, either, of Ascension Day, which it is proper to celebrate by

taking your first sea bath. Or of St. John’s Day, known by its bonfires

and divinations. The Greeks often burn in the fires of St. John one or

two effigies which are said to represent Judas, though Herod and Salome

should rather perish on that occasion. Then there is May Day, when young

men and maidens get up early in the morning, as they do in Italy, and go

out into the fields to sing, to dance, to drink milk, to pick flowers,

and to make wreaths which the swain hangs up on the door-post of the lady

of his heart. And equally characteristic, in a different way, are the

days when men eat and drink in honour of their dead.

No one, I suppose, tries any longer to prove that the modern Greek is

one with his classic ancestor. Yet he remains curiously faithful to the

customs of ancient Greece. Whereby he affords us an interesting glimpse

into the processes of evolution. In him the antique and the modern world

come together, and we see for ourselves, more clearly than on the alien

soil of the West, how strangely habit is rooted in the heart of man, and

how the forms of Christianity are those of the paganism that preceded it.

XII

FOUNTAINS

An anonymous American traveller who visited Turkey something less than

a hundred years ago wrote, in comparing the water facilities of New

York and Constantinople, that “the emporium of the United States is

some centuries behind the metropolis of Turkey.” I doubt whether the

comparison would still hold, since the building of Croton and other dams.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that water—fresh water, at all events—is

an element less native to the Anglo-Saxon than to the Turk. We have our

proverb about cleanliness and godliness, and we have our morning tubs,

and we have our unrivalled systems of plumbing; but we also have our

Great Unwashed. In Turkey, however, there is no Great Unwashed—save among

those who are not Turks. The reason is that for a follower of the Prophet

godliness is next to cleanliness. His religion obliges him to wash his

face, hands, and feet before each of his five daily prayers, while

innumerable public baths exist for the completer ablutions required of

him. Add to that the temperance enjoined upon him, whence is derived his

appreciation of good drinking water, and you will begin to understand why

there are so many fountains in Stamboul.

The fountains of Constantinople are very little like those of Rome and

Paris. There are no figures about them, and not many of them spout or

splash. In fact, I recently saw the most famous of them referred to in

an architectural handbook as a kiosk, so little resemblance does it

bear to the customary fountain. Fountains are, none the less, one of the

chief ornaments of Constantinople. If they are intended more strictly

for use than Western fountains, they also take the place—and often

most happily—of commemorative sculpture in Western countries. And so

faithfully have they followed all the vicissitudes of the art of building

in Turkey, have they reflected changes of taste and successive foreign

influences, that a study of them would yield valuable material toward a

history of Ottoman architecture.

I do not propose to make any such study of them now. The variety of these

small monuments is so great, however, that I must be academic enough

to divide them into four or five categories. Of which the first would

include the private fountains alluded to in earlier chapters. Numerous

and interesting as private fountains are, a foreigner naturally has

little opportunity to become acquainted with them. Their commonest form

is that seen in all Turkish houses—of a niche in the wall containing a

tap set over a marble basin. This arrangement, of course, amounts to

nothing more or less than a wash-stand. But mark that the hole in the

bottom of the basin contains no stopper. A Mohammedan would consider

that we wash our hands in dirty water, preferring, himself, to use

only the stream running from the faucet. Turkish houses—real Turkish

houses—are like Japanese ones in that they contain very little furniture

or bric-à-brac. The old architects, therefore, made the most of the

opportunity afforded by the ritual use of water, and found nothing

incongruous in treating a sanitary fixture architecturally, or even

in making it an important feature of decoration. This they oftenest

accomplished by setting the tap in the lower part of a tall marble

tablet, called the _aïna tashi_, or mirror stone, which they shaped to

suit the niche in which it stood and ornamented more or less elaborately

with carving and sometimes with painting too.

[Illustration: Wall fountain in the Seraglio

Photograph by Abdullah Frères]

Not many early examples can remain, on account of the unfortunate

propensity of Turkish houses to burn up. A number, however, are to be

seen in the old palace of Top Kapou. Perfectly simple but characteristic

and charming of their kind are the tiny wall fountains of a room in the

“Cage,” at each end of the window-seat in front of each of the four

windows. The same principle is used for more ornamental purposes by

putting one basin below another in such a way that the second will catch

the overflow of the first. There is a big wall fountain of this sort

in the splendid hall of Süleïman the Magnificent. In a private house

of much later date I have seen three graduated basins projecting from

their niche, rounded and scalloped like shells. There is also a pretty

_selsebil_ of a new kind in one of the baths of the Seraglio, where the

surface of the mirror stone is notched into a series of overlapping

scales so as to multiply the ripple of the water. But the prettiest

dripping fountain I know is in an old house in Bebek, on the European

shore of the Bosphorus. It stands in the entrance hall, at an odd little

angle where it will best catch the light, and it combines the miniature

basins of an ordinary _selsebil_ with a lower surface of marble scales.

What is least ordinary about it, however, are the spaces of marble lace

work bordering the shallow arched niche where the water trickles. There

is a free space behind them in order to give the proper relief to the

design. And there is an irregularity about the intertwined whorls which

a Western artist would have thought beneath him, but which only adds

interest to the work.

[Illustration: _Selsebil_ in Bebek]

[Illustration: The goose fountain at Kazlî]

This original _selsebil_ partakes also of the nature of a _fîskieh_, as

the Turks onomatopoetically call a spurting fountain. In the stalactites

bordering the two shallow basins at the bottom are jets which used to

add to the complicated tinkle of the fountain. Spurting fountains seem to

be rarer indoors than out, though I have already mentioned the beautiful

one in the Kyöprülü kiosk. They are not uncommon in the outer hall of

public baths. One that contravenes the canons of orthodox Mohammedan art

is to be admired in the handsome bath of St. Sophia—a work of Sinan—where

three dolphins, their tails in the air, spout water into a fluted basin.

I have wondered if these unorthodox creatures, like the lions of so many

gardens, may not perpetuate a Byzantine tradition if not actual Byzantine

workmanship. I have already referred to the pigeons on a _selsebil_ in

Candilli. I have not yet referred to, though I have been considerably

intrigued by, a fat goose that is the pride of a street fountain outside

the Golden Gate. But on another fountain in Stamboul there is to be seen

another unorthodox creature, that is of unimpeachable Mohammedan descent.

The fountain is of the bubbling kind which sometimes very pleasantly

adorns the centre of a room. In this case it was put into a niche in

the Tile Pavilion which the Conqueror built in the Seraglio grounds.

The fountain, however, would seem to date from Sultan Mourad III, who

restored the kiosk in 1590. On either side of the deep rectangular

recess are poetical inscriptions of that Sultan, gold on green, with a

quaint little climbing border picked out of the marble in gold, and a

surmounting shell. That shell, dear to the Renaissance designers and how

many before them, is supposed to have made its entrance into Mohammedan

architecture from this very niche. At the back of the niche is another

shell, and under it the unorthodox creature, a peacock, spreads his fan.

It was perhaps to diminish the importance of this unorthodox, of this

probably heretical Shiïte peacock, that the artist coloured him more

soberly than the flowers that bloom on either side of him, and made him

combine with the shell to form the outline of a symbolic egg.

[Illustration: The wall fountain of Chinili-Kyöshk]

A few interesting interior fountains are to be seen in mosques, though

Constantinople cannot equal Broussa in this respect. St. Sophia contains

two such fountains, put there by Sultan Mourad III, which are big

alabaster jars fitted with taps. Two more typical ones are in Sultan

Ahmed, their graceful mirror stones set against two of the enormous piers

that hold up the dome. The real mosque fountains, however, are those

which exist for purposes of ritual ablution outside of the smallest

_mesjid_. There you will always see a row of small taps, set near the

ground against the wall of the mosque or its yard, with stepping-stones

in front of them. They are rarely treated with much elaboration except

in later mosques like Nouri Osmanieh, but they agreeably break up a

flat wall surface. And at Eyoub they really form one element of the

picturesqueness of the outer court, with the bracketed roof that protects

them from the weather and their clambering vine.

[Illustration: _Shadrîvan_ of Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha]

Most mosques, as well as _medressehs_ and other pious institutions,

also have a larger and more decorative fountain which usually stands

in the middle of the court. The technical name of such a fountain is

_shadrîvan_, or _shadîravan_, really meaning “for the peace of souls.”

The fountain, that is, not only aids the faithful in their religious

exercises, but adds so much to the celestial credit of the builder or

of the person whom he commemorates. For many _shadrîvans_ were built,

after the mosque to which they are attached, by another person. Those in

the courts of Baïezid and Selim, for instance, are the work of Mourad

IV, whose soul needed what peace it could find, while so late a sultan

as Mahmoud I built the fanciful _shadrîvan_ in the somewhat stern court

of the Conqueror as well as that in the court of St. Sophia. The last

two are charming examples of the Turkish rococo. The commonest form of

_shadrîvan_ is a basin or reservoir, encircled about the bottom by

taps and protected by a roof from sun and rain. The simplest type is

to be seen in the _medresseh_ yard of Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha, with a

perfectly plain reservoir and a pointed roof held up by wooden pillars.

A similar one which lies more on the track of sightseers is in front

of the mosque known as Little St. Sophia, anciently the church of Sts.

Sergius and Bacchus. Here the reservoir is an octagon terminating in a

cone, while the roof is tiled and ornamented at the apex with a bronze

_alem_—a lyre or crescent containing a cobweb of Arabic letters. There

are also seats between the posts for the greater convenience of those

who use the fountain. Some _shadrîvans_ are partially enclosed and made

into pavilions, where it is very pleasant to rest. An excellent example

exists in the yard of the mosque of Ramazan Effendi, in Issa Kapou.

The perforated marble enclosing the upper part of the reservoir of this

_shadrîvan_ is a thing that is seen in many such fountains. Sometimes a

handsome grille work protects the water, as at St. Sophia and Sokollî

Mehmed Pasha. The latter fountain is uncommon in that the large round

reservoir is the whole _shadrîvan_, with projecting eaves to shelter

the people at the taps. But not all _shadrîvans_ are for purposes of

ablution. At the Süleïmanieh and at Yeni Jami they are merely covered

tanks without taps. The _shadrîvan_ of the Valideh Jedid in Scutari is of

the same kind, except that the water falls invisibly from the roof of the

tank, filling the court with a mysterious sense of sound and coolness.

[Illustration: _Shadrîvan_ of Ramazan Effendi]

[Illustration: _Shadrîvan_ of Sokollî Mehmed Pasha]

I do not suppose that street fountains are actually more numerous than

private ones, but they naturally seem so to a foreigner wandering through

Stamboul. It is not easy to classify them clearly, so many are the forms

they take. They affect, however, two principal types, known in Turkish

as _cheshmeh_ and _sebil_, either of which may be attached to a wall or

may exist as an independent structure. The original form is the applied

_cheshmeh_, which is merely a wall fountain put outside the house, and

enlarged in scale accordingly. These fountains are a very characteristic

feature of Constantinople streets. There are literally thousands of

them, and they offer so great a variety of interest that it is a wonder

no one has taken the trouble to give them the study they deserve. They

are a wide-spread example, for one thing, of Turkish philanthropy—and

incidentally of a passing conception of public utilities. Every one of

those fountains was originally a public benefaction, often made by a

Sultan, it is true, and on an imperial scale, but oftener by a private

citizen who wished to commemorate some member of his family, to ornament

the street in which he lived, or to confer a benefit upon his neighbours.

He therefore endowed his fountain, in many instances. Such endowments

form an appreciable fraction of the property administered by the

Department of Pious Foundations. Sometimes the benefactor stipulated that

water-carriers or other persons were or were not to have the right of

selling the water of his fountain. The water-carrier, the _saka_, belongs

to a race by no means yet extinct in Constantinople, though I doubt if

his guilds are quite what they were. There used to be two such guilds,

of the horse _sakas_ and of the hand _sakas_. The patron of both was the

hero who attempted to carry water to Hüsseïn in the battle of Kerbela.

The members of both may be recognised by the dripping goatskins in which

they carry water from house to house. In these degenerate days, however,

a hand _saka_ is more likely to carry a couple of kerosene tins, slung

over his shoulder from either end of a pole. But if he has the right to

be paid for carrying water, every man has the right to go himself to the

fountain and draw water without money and without price.

Until a few years ago Constantinople possessed no other water-system.

Now modern water companies operate in their more invisible ways. But the

Ministry of Pious Foundations is still the greatest water company of

them all. That it was a fairly adequate one our American traveller of a

hundred years ago is witness. Only recently, however, has the department

attempted to make some sort of order out of the chaos of systems which

it administers—some larger, like the water-supplies of the Sultans, some

limited to the capacity of one small spring, and all based on the idea of

a charity rather than that of a self-paying utility. Even now I doubt if

any exact and complete map exists of the water-supply of Constantinople.

The knowledge necessary to make such a map is distributed between an

infinity of individuals known as _souyoljîs_, waterway men, who alone

can tell, often, just where the pipes lie and how they are fed. And very

useful, if occasionally very trying, gentlemen are these to know. This

is sometimes amusingly illustrated on the outskirts of the city, where a

house or a group of houses may be supplied from some small independent

source of water. As time has passed and property has changed hands,

the tradition of the waterway has been preserved only in some humble

family that has profited by its knowledge, perhaps, to cultivate a tidy

vegetable garden. And every now and then the water runs low or stops

altogether in the quarter for whose benefit it was originally made to

flow, until on payment of a tip to the _souyoljî_ it miraculously begins

to flow again.

This system is probably the one the Turks found in use when they entered

the city. Water still runs in the aqueducts of Valens and Justinian, and

until the present generation Stamboul had no other water-supply than

that first collected by Hadrian and Constantine. The Sultans restored

and improved it, but I have no doubt that the conduits of many a Turkish

fountain were laid by a Roman emperor. Of Byzantine fountains remaining

to this day, I am not sure that any can positively be identified as

such. Many of the fountains of Stamboul, however, must occupy the place

of Byzantine fountains, whose materials may have been used in their

construction. And it would not have been strange if the new masters of

the city adapted to their own use models which they saw about them. The

great quadruple fountain of Kîrk Cheshmeh—Forty Fountains—is a case in

point. The Turks connect with it the name of Sultan Süleïman I, who is

said to have left forty fountains in the city. But its original level

was considerably below the existing street, and one of the four niches

is ornamented with a Byzantine relief of peacocks, while other Byzantine

fragments are built into the structure. The arches of two of the niches,

moreover, are round, which was not characteristic of Süleïman’s period.

So we are not without reasons for thinking that the fountain may have

been a Byzantine one restored by Süleïman—who also restored the aqueduct

that feeds it. The same is likely of others of his forty fountains. No

others of them bear Byzantine sculptures. In fact, the only other street

fountain on which I have seen any such decoration—unless the goose of

Kazlî be Byzantine—is that of the small Koumrülü Mesjid, between Fatih

and the Adrianople Gate. But the large Horhor Cheshmeh near Ak Seraï,

and another farther up the hill toward the old Forum Amastrianon, have a

distinct Byzantine air. At the same time, their general form is that of

the Turkish wall fountain—an arched niche, containing a faucet above a

stone or marble trough.

This form, in its simplest state, without any ornament or even a

“mirror stone,” is found in what may be the oldest Turkish fountain in

Constantinople. It lies within the enclosure of the castle of Roumeli

Hissar. The niche is deeper than in later fountains, and the bricks used

in its construction are the large flat ones which the Turks borrowed

from their predecessors. If truth compels me further to record that the

arch is not the pointed one preferred by the Turks until the eighteenth

century, I am able to add that neither are the arches of the castle

itself.

[Illustration: The Byzantine fountain of Kîrk Cheshmeh]

I suppose it is natural that few fountains of that early period remain to

us. The newcomers probably found the city well enough supplied already,

and five hundred years is a long time for such small structures to last

in the open. The oldest inscribed wall fountain I know is that of Daoud

Pasha, outside the mosque of the same personage, who was Grand Vizier to

the Conqueror’s son Baïezid II (A. H. 890/A. D. 1485). There is little

about the pointed arch or fairly deep niche to attract attention, save

the bold inscription above a small mirror stone of palpably later date:

“The author of charity deceased, the Grand Vizier Daoud Pasha.” This is

the earliest form of ornament that appears on Turkish fountains—though

I fancy the broad eaves that protect many of them did not wait long

to be invented. I have already dwelt on the importance of writing in

all Turkish decoration. I therefore need not add that the simplest

inscription on a fountain has for the Turks an importance of a kind we

do not appreciate. Some fountains are famous merely for the lettering

on them—as in its day was that of Feïzoullah Effendi, outside his

_medresseh_, whose inscription was designed by the celebrated calligraph

Dourmoush-zadeh Ahmed Effendi.

It must not be inferred that the matter of the inscription is

comparatively of less importance—though here again the Western critic

is not quite competent to judge. The commonest of all inscriptions is

a verse from the Koran: “By water all things have life.” Other verses,

mentioning the four fountains of Paradise and the pool Kevser into which

they flow, are also frequent, together with references to the sacred

well Zemzem, which Gabriel opened for Hagar in Mecca, to Hîzîr and the

Spring of Life, and to the battle of Kerbela, in which Hüsseïn and his

companions were cut off from water. Or the central tenet of Islam, “There

is no God but God and Mohammed is the Prophet of God,” may be carved

above the niche—sometimes without any indication of the name or epoch

of the founder. The majority, however, are not so modest. They are more

likely to give ampler information than he who runs may read. And after

the time of Süleïman the Magnificent it became increasingly the fashion

for celebrated poets to compose the verses which celebrated calligraphs

designed. Thus the historian Chelibi-zadeh records the end of the

inscription on a reservoir of Ahmed III: “Seïd Vehbi Effendi, the most

distinguished among the word-wizards of the time, strung these pearls

on the thread of his verse and joined together the two lines of the

following chronographic distich, like two sweet almonds breast to breast:

‘With what a wall has Ahmed dammed the waters! For of astonishment stops

the flood in the midst of its course.’”

Chronograms are as common on fountains as they are on other monuments.

The earliest I have happened to come across is an Arabic one on a

fountain near the Studion, which points the reader’s attention as

follows—“The date fell: We gave thee the fountain of Paradise.” The

latter phrase is from the Koran. Its numerical value is 970, or 1563 of

our era, which is twenty years later than the chronogram on the tomb of

the Prince. The ideal chronogram should contain the name of the builder

of the fountain and that of the writer of the verse—though I must

confess I never found one that attained that height of ingenuity. Most

of them mention the founder’s name alone, as “Sultan Mourad’s fountain

is a gift” (994/1586), or “O God, grant Paradise to Moustafa Pasha!”

(1095/1684). But the exigencies of arithmetic may relegate the names

to the earlier part of the inscription—as on one of two neighbouring

fountains in the quarter of Ak Bîyîk (_anglice_, White Whisker): “When

the mother of Ali Pasha, Vizier in the reign of Sultan Mahmoud, quenched

the thirst of the people with the clear and pure water of her charity,

Riza of Beshiktash, the _Nakshibendi_”—an order of dervishes—“uttered

the following epigraph: Come and drink water of eternal life from this

joyful fountain.” The value of the last phrase is 1148, or 1735. Even

in so general a sentiment, however, it is not always easy to get the

required figure. Various ingenious devices are resorted to, of which a

handsome Renaissance fountain in Kassîm Pasha is an excellent example:

“The famous Vizier, the victorious warrior Hassan Pasha, made this

fountain as a trophy for Mohammedans. His aims were always philanthropic

and he provided this fountain with water like Zemzem. This fountain is so

well situated and built in so pleasant a place that one would take it as

the site where flows the water of eternal life. Those who look upon it

drive away all sorrow from their hearts.” The numerical value of the last

sentence is 2080, a date even farther from the Mohammedan calendar than

from ours. But the value of the single word “sorrow” is 1040. Drive it

away, or in other words subtract 1040 from 2080, and you get 1040 again,

which is evidently the date of the construction (1631). The light values

of this inscription are as enigmatic as its numerical values, so that I

have never been able to photograph it properly. It also states that the

water rights are free, meaning that no one _saka_ may sell the water. The

builder of this interesting fountain was in his day a saddler, a cook,

and a sergeant, which did not prevent him from eventually becoming high

admiral of the fleet, inflicting a memorable defeat upon the Russians in

the Black Sea, and marrying the sister of Sultan Mourad IV.

[Illustration: The two fountains of Ak Bîyîk]

The taste for chronograms has continued to this day, but in time

the arithmetic of the reader was helped out by an incidental date.

The earliest numerals I have found are of the time of Süleïman the

Magnificent, on a fountain built by a Jew in the suburb of Hass-kyöi

(931, 1525). The same fountain is also decorated with the earliest

reliefs I have noted, consisting merely of a little tracery on the mirror

stone. Altogether this period was an important one for fountains as it

was for all Turkish architecture. But while a few of them are admirably

proportioned, like the little fountain in Avret Bazaar at the gate of the

soup-kitchen of the _Hasseki_—she was Hourrem, the Joyous One, who bore

to Süleïman his ill-fated son Moustafa—many of them are disappointingly

heavy. It may be that the great Sinan did not consider such small

monuments worth his while, or that they have suffered by restoration.

At all events, the lesser sultans who followed Süleïman left fountains

generally more graceful. Ahmed I is said to have built not less than a

hundred of them. In the meantime they gradually developed in detail.

The tracery, less floral than geometrical, covered more and more of the

marble. Conventionalised cypresses, with tops mysteriously bent, sprang

up on either side of the taps. Conventionalised roses, often having a

mystic symbolism, became a favourite ornament for the apex of the arch.

The occult pentagram or hexagram, symbolic of microcosm and macrocosm

and talismanic against evil, were sometimes carved at the corners. And

the top, when it was not shaded by broad eaves, was finished in various

decorative ways.

The golden age of street fountains was in the first half of the

eighteenth century, during the reigns of those notable builders Ahmed

III and his nephew Mahmoud I. The change which they introduced into the

architecture of their country was in many ways an unhappy one. It led

the Turks out of their own order of tradition, which is rarely a safe

or useful thing to do, into strange byways of bad taste where they lost

themselves for two hundred years. Still, an architecture that tries

experiments is an architecture that lives, and at its beginning the

Turkish rococo has an inimitable grace and spirit. The fountains of the

period are decorated, as no fountains had been decorated before, with

floral reliefs a little like those of the Renaissance tombs and with

fruits and flowers in various quaint receptacles. The earlier of the

garden _selsebils_ I have already mentioned is an example, and a more

typical one is the wall fountain of the Valideh Jedid in Scutari. The

sculptures also began to be touched up with colour and gilding, as in the

larger of the two fountains of Ak Bîyîk. So must have been the charming

fountain, now most lamentably neglected, on the street that drops from

Galata Tower to Pershembeh Bazaar.

[Illustration: Street fountain at Et Yemez]

Until this time the old pointed arch had been preferred, though, as we

have seen, the rounded shell of the Renaissance had already made its

appearance. But now round or broken arches began to be the order of

the day; and so great richness of detail could only degenerate into

the baroque. Yet I have bad taste enough to like, sometimes, even the

out-and-out baroque. There is a little fountain, for instance, in the

Asiatic suburb of Kanlîja, with a florid arch and rather heavy traceries

and four very Dutch-looking tiles set into the wall above them, which I

think is delightful. Long after photographing it I came across some more

of those tiles in the imperial tribune of the mosque built in Scutari

by Moustafa III, which gave me a clew to the date of the fountain.

And after that I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of the

gentleman whose summer _valî_ lies across the road from the fountain, and

he told me that the fountain was built by the Sheï’h ül Islam of Moustafa

III. There is, too, a fountain at Emirgyan, in front of the Khedival

garden, which, for all its baroque lines, seems to me to terminate a

vista very happily. But I do not hesitate to add that few wall fountains

built since the middle of the eighteenth century are worth any attention.