There were no women in the mosques. The men supply the souls and the religion for the Turkish household. A woman has no use for a soul in Turkey. She wouldn't know what to do with it, and it would only make her trouble. She is allowed to pretend she has one, however, and to go to mosque now and then, just as we allow children to play "store" or "keeping-house." But it's make believe. She really hasn't any soul—everybody knows that.
Constantinople is full of landmarks that perpetuate some memory—usually a bloody one—of the Janizaries. Every little while our guide would say, "This is where the Janizaries conquered the forces of Abdullah VI."; or "This is where the Janizaries overthrew and assassinated Mahmoud I."; or "This is where the Janizaries attacked the forces of His Sacred Majesty Bismillah II.," and everybody would say, "Oh, yes, of course," and we would go on.
I said, "Oh yes, of course," with the others, which made it hard, later on, when I had worked up some curiosity on the subject, to ask who in the deuce the Janizaries were, anyway, and why they had been allowed to do all these bloody things unreproved.
By and by we came to a place where the guide said that eight thousand of them had perished in the flames, and added that fifteen thousand more had been executed and twenty thousand banished. And we all said, "Oh yes, of course," again, and this time I meant it, for I thought that was about what would be likely to happen to persons with Janizary habits. Then I made a memorandum to look up that tribe when I got back to the ship.
I have done so, now. The Janizaries were a body of military police, organized about 1330, originally of young Christians compelled to become Moslems. They became a powerful and terrible body, by and by, and conducted matters with a high hand. They were a wild, impetuous horde, and five hundred years of their history is full of assassinations of sultans and general ravage and bloodshed. In time they became a great deal more dangerous to Turkey than her enemies, but it was not until 1826 that a sultan, Mahmoud II., managed to arouse other portions of his army to that pitch of fanatical zeal which has made Janizaries exceedingly scarce ever since. I think our guide is a Janizary—he has the look—but I have decided not to mention the matter.
We skated through mosques and the tombs of sultans and their wives most of the day, appraising the rugs and shawls and general bric-à-brac, and dropped into a museum—the best one, so far, in my opinion. They have a sarcophagus of Alexander there—that is, it was made for Alexander, though it is said he never slept in it, which is too bad, if true, for it is the most beautiful thing in the world—regarded by experts as the finest existing specimen of Greek art. We lingered a long time about that exquisite gem—long for us—and bought photographs of it when we came away. Then we set out for the Long Street of Smells, crossed the Galata bridge, and were at the ship—home.
We have only made a beginning of Constantinople, for we are to be here several days. But if it is all like to-day I could do with less of it. I have got enough of that smell to last a good while, and of the pandemonium that reigns in this disordered aggregation of thoroughfares, humanity and buildings—this weird phantasmagoria miscalled a city. Through my port-hole, now—I am on the street side—there comes the most devilish concatenation of sounds: dogs barking and yelping, barbaric singing, wild mandolin music, all mingled with the cries of the hawkers and street arabs, and when I reflect that this is the real inwardness of that wonder dream we saw at sunrise, I am filled with a far regret that we could not have satisfied ourselves with that vision of paradise and sailed away.