Ok-Meidan.
Mounting the hill to the west of Piale Pasha, we reached a vast open plain from which there is a view of Stambul and the entire length of the Golden Horn from Eyûb to Seraglio Point, four miles of mosque and garden—a scene so overpoweringly beautiful that one is tempted to fall upon his knees as before some heavenly vision. On the Ok-Meidan (Place of Arrows) the sultans used formerly to practise shooting with the bow and arrow, after the custom of the Persian kings. A number of small stone obelisks and pillars scattered about irregularly bear inscriptions each to the effect that upon that spot some imperial arrow has fallen. The beautiful kiosk is still standing from whose tribune the sultan was wont to draw his bow; on the right were drawn up a long line of pashas and beys, living exclamation-points indicative of the admiration excited by their lord’s dexterity; to the left stood a group of twelve pages belonging to the imperial family, whose duty it was to run after and pick up the arrows, marking the spots on which they fell; hidden behind the surrounding trees and shrubbery a few venturesome Turks peeped out who had stolen thither to gaze fearfully upon the sublime countenance of the vicar of God; while in the tribune, in the attitude of some haughty athlete, stood the sultan Mahmûd, the mightiest archer of the empire, his flashing eye compelling the bystanders to avert their gaze, and that famous beard, black as the raven’s feathers of Mt. Taurus, gleaming afar against the white tunic all spotted with the blood of the Janissaries. All this has now changed and become utterly commonplace. The Sultan practises with a revolver in the courtyard of his palace, while Ok-Meidan is used by the infantry for target-practice. On one side stands a dervish monastery, on the other a solitary café, and the whole place is as melancholy and deserted as a steppe.