Ancient Constantinople.
But think what this city must have been in the great days of the Ottoman glory! I kept thinking of that all the time. How it must have looked when not a single cloud of smoke arose from the Bosphorus, all white with sails, to make ugly, black marks against the blue of sky and water! In the port and the inlets of the Sea of Marmora, among the picturesque battle-ships of that period with their lofty carved prows, silver crescents, violet standards, and gilded lanterns, floated the battered and blood-stained hulks of Spanish, Genoese, and Venetian galleys. No bridges spanned the Golden Horn, which was covered with myriads of gayly-decorated boats plying constantly from one shore to the other, among which could be distinguished afar off the snowy-white launches of the Seraglio, covered with gold-fringed scarlet hangings and propelled by rowers dressed in silk. Skutari was then no more than a village: seen from Galata, she only appeared to have a few houses scattered about on the hillside; no lofty palaces as yet reared their heads above the hilltops of Pera; the appearance of the city was doubtless less impressive than now, but far more Oriental in character: the law prescribing the use of colors being then in full force, one could determine accurately the religion of the occupant from the color of each house. Except for its public and sacred edifices, which were white as snow, Stambul was entirely red and yellow; the Armenian quarters were light, and the Greek quarters dark gray; the Hebrew quarter, purple. As in Holland, the passion for flowers was universal, so that the gardens were like huge bouquets of hyacinths, tulips, and roses. The exuberant vegetation not having been as yet checked on the surrounding hillsides by the growth of new suburbs, Constantinople presented the appearance of a city built in a forest. The public thoroughfares were nothing but lanes and alleys, but they were rendered picturesque by the varied and brilliant crowds which thronged them. The huge turbans worn by the men lent them all an air of dignity and importance. The women, with the single exception of the Sultan’s mother, were so rigorously veiled as to show nothing but the eyes, and so formed a population apart, anonymous, enigmatical, which lent to the entire city a certain air of secresy and mystery. Severe laws controlled the dress of every individual, so that from the shape of his turban or color of his caftan one could tell the precise rank, occupation, office, or condition of every one he met, as though the city had been one great court. The horse being as yet almost “man’s only coach,” thousands of cavaliers filled the crowded streets, while long files of camels and dromedaries belonging to the army traversed the city in all directions, giving it something of the savage and imposing air of an ancient Asiatic metropolis. Gilded arabas, drawn by oxen, passed carriages hung with the green cloth of the ulemi or scarlet cloth of the kâdi-aschieri, and light talike hung with satin and fantastically painted. Troops of slaves marched along, representing every country from Polonia to Ethiopia, clanking the chains riveted on them in the field of battle. On the street-corners, in the squares and the courtyards of the mosques, groups of soldiers collected, clad in glorious rags, displaying their battered arms and scars still fresh from wounds received at Vienna, Belgrade, Rodi, and Damascus. Hundreds of orators recounted to rapt and enthusiastic audiences the heroic deeds and brilliant victories achieved by the army fighting at a distance of three months’ march from Stambul. Pasha, bey, agha, musselim, numberless dignitaries and personages of high rank, clad with theatrical display and accompanied by throngs of attendants, made their way through the crowds, who bowed before them like grain before the wind. Ambassadors representing every court in Europe, accompanied by princely retinues, who had come to Stambul to sue for peace or arrange an alliance, swept by. Caravans laden with propitiatory gifts from Asiatic and African kings filed slowly along the principal thoroughfares. Companies of silidars and spahis, haughty and insolent, swaggered by, their sabres stained with the blood of twenty different nations, while the handsome Greek and Hungarian Seraglio pages, dressed like little kings, pushed haughtily through the obsequious multitude, who, recognizing in them the unnatural caprices of their lord, respected them accordingly. Here and there a trophy of knotted clubs before some doorway indicated the presence of a corps of Janissaries, who at that time acted as police in the interior of the city. Parties of Hebrews would be seen hurrying to the Bosphorus with the dead bodies of the victims of justice. Every morning a body would be found in the Baluk Bazâr, lying with the head under the right armpit, a stone holding in place the sentence affixed to the breast. Law-breakers to whom summary justice had been meted out would dangle from a beam or hook in the public highway, while after nightfall one was liable to stumble over the body of some unfortunate who, after having his hands and feet pounded with clubs, had been thrown from the window of the torture-chamber. In the broad light of day merchants, caught in the act of cheating, would be nailed through the ear to their own shop-doors, and, there being no law controlling the free right of sepulture, the work of digging graves and burying the dead was carried on at all hours and in all places—in the gardens, in the lanes and open squares, and before the doors of dwellings. The cries of lambs and sheep could be heard from the courtyards where they were being slaughtered in sacrifice to Allah on the occasion of a circumcision or a birth. From time to time a troop of eunuchs, galloping by with warning cries, would be the signal for a general stampede; the streets would become deserted; doors and windows fly to, blinds be drawn down, and an entire neighborhood suddenly assume the look and air of a city of the dead. Then in long procession files of gorgeously-decorated coaches filled with the ladies of the imperial harem would pass by, scattering around them an atmosphere of perfume and laughter. Sometimes it would happen that an official of the court, making his way through some thoroughfare, would suddenly encounter six quite ordinary-looking individuals about to enter a shop, and at that sight grow unaccountably pale. These six, however, would be the Sultan, four officers of his court, and an executioner making their rounds from shop to shop in order to verify the weights and measures.
Interior of Mosque of Ahmed.
Throughout the whole of the city’s huge body there coursed an exuberant and feverish life; the treasury overflowed with jewels, the arsenal with arms, the barracks with soldiers, the caravanseries with strangers; the slave-market was thronged with merchants and lofty personages come to inspect the crowds of beautiful slaves. Scholars pressed to examine the archives of the great mosques; long-winded viziers prepared for the delectation of future generations the interminable annals of the Empire; poets, pensioned by the Seraglio, assembled in the baths, where they sang the imperial loves and wars; swarms of Bulgarian and Armenian workmen toiled at the erection of mighty mosques, employing huge blocks of granite and Paros marble, while by sea, columns from the temples of the Archipelago, and by land, spoils from the churches of Pesth and Ofen, were brought to contribute to their splendor. In the harbor a fleet of three hundred sail made ready to carry terror and dismay to every coast in the Mediterranean; between Stambul and Adrianapolis companies of falconers and gamekeepers, to the number of seven thousand, were stationed; and in the intervals between military uprisings at home, foreign wars, and conflagrations which would reduce twenty thousand houses to ashes in a single night, revels would be celebrated, lasting thirty days, in honor of the representatives of every court in Asia, Africa, and Europe. On these occasions the glorifications of the Mussulmans degenerated into folly: sham battles were fought by the Janissaries in the presence of the Sultan and the court, amid huge palme di nozze laden with birds, mirrors, and fruits of various kinds, in order to make room for which walls and houses were ruthlessly destroyed; and processions of lions and sugar mermaids, borne on horses whose trappings were of silver damask, and mountains of royal gifts sent from every part of the Empire and every court in the world; dervishes executed their furious dances, and bloody massacres of Christian prisoners were followed by public banquets where ten thousand dishes of cuscussù were served to the populace; trained elephants and giraffes danced in the Hippodrome, while bears and wolves, with fireworks tied to their tails, were let loose among the people; allegorical pantomimes, grotesque masquerades, wanton dances, fantastic processions, games, comedies, symbolic cars, rustic dances, followed each other in rapid succession. Little by little as night descended the festival degenerated into a mad orgy, and then the lights from five hundred brilliantly illuminated mosques spread a great aureole of fire over the entire city and announced to the watching shepherds on the mountain-heights of Asia and the wayfarers on the Propontis the revels of this new Babylon.
Such was once Stambul, a haughty sultaness, voluptuous, formidable, wanton, as compared with which the city of to-day is little more than some weary old queen, peevish and hypochondriacal.