Another visitor about the same time saw the picturesque side. He mentions the robbers, chiefs from Smyrna, stalking about the enclosure, the voluble Greeks and Armenians, the secretive Jews, and an Irishman or two, mingling with the stolid Turks. Inmates were sipping coffee, smoking, playing cards, disputing, fighting, while a furtive pickpocket made his rounds. In a corner a fever patient was stretched out oblivious to his surroundings, though the clamour sometimes was deafening. He goes on to say:
“Yet physically the wretches were not ill-treated; they need not ever work unless they like. The court is small and so is the two-storied stable where they sleep upon the earth; but then these are men who perhaps never got between sheets nor lay on a bed in their lives. They may talk what they like, and when they like. They have a Mosque, a Greek chapel and a Roman Catholic chapel. They can have coffee and tobacco, and if they work they are supposed to be paid for it. There is no treadmill, no crank, there are no solitary cells.”
The same observer describes the Zaptie or House of Detention as it then existed, and though the building as it exists to-day is improved, conditions are not essentially different. Then there were two communicating courts, where pickpockets, ordinary thieves, participants in affrays, and even murderers were confined. At night they were locked in rooms. One of these sleeping rooms, eleven by seventeen feet, was occupied at night by twelve men. In such places prisoners were kept an indefinite time awaiting trial, and perhaps then discharged without trial and without explanation.
A large number of Turkish prisoners have been confined either for conspiracy against the government, or for daring to exhibit a certain amount of independence. An officer apparently high in favour to-day might be degraded on the next without warning. An interesting case of this kind is the case of Midhat Pasha, one of the best known men in Turkey thirty or forty years ago.
He was one of the little group of Turks who adopted European ideas after the Crimean war. He was a friend of England as opposed to Russia and the influence of the latter state was thrown against him. He was one of the ministers by whom the sultan, Abdul Aziz, was dethroned. This prince soon afterward died, possibly by suicide, though ugly rumours were heard. When Murad, the incompetent, was also deposed Midhat had a hand in the affair. On the accession of Abdul Hamid he was again made Grand Vizier, and secured the promulgation of the famous Turkish constitution of 1876, against the will of the sultan.
When Abdul Hamid felt himself firm in his seat in 1877, he banished Midhat, but recalled him the next year, and made him governor-general, first of Syria and then of Smyrna. The constitution was practically abrogated by this time. Then without warning he was arrested in May, 1881, charged with being concerned in the murder of Abdul Aziz. He with others was quickly tried by a special court, was found guilty and condemned to death.
The sentence was changed to imprisonment for life, and the place of confinement was fixed at Taïf, in Arabia, a small place south of Mecca. There he and his companions who had received similar sentence, including a former Sheikh-ul-Islam, Hassan Haïroullah, were at first allowed the freedom of the castle. Their servants bought and cooked their food, and though the rude accommodations were somewhat trying to the old men, conditions were endurable.
A change in treatment was foreshadowed by a change in gaolers. The privilege of buying food was taken away, and they were expected to eat the coarse fare of the common soldier. They were forbidden to communicate with one another. For a time the faithful servant was refused access to Midhat’s person, though this order was afterward revoked. Poison was discovered in the milk, and in a pot of food. The servant was offered large sums to poison him, but the faithful attendant only redoubled his vigilance. Finally when hardship, separation from family and friends, and dread of the future, seemed unable to destroy his life more primitive measures were taken. After enduring two years of such treatment he was strangled one morning while still in bed, together with two of his friends. Such was the dread inspired by the sultan, that no one dared to inquire or to make public his fate. A letter from his friend, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, to the family of Midhat was, however, published a few years ago and then the whole truth became known.
The case of Midhat was not exceptional, except for his prominence in European circles. The same fate has overtaken many others. Fishermen in the Bosporus, every now and then, pulled up a sack in which a body was sewn, and those who reasoned might remember that it had been announced that a one time favourite at the Court had set out on a journey to London or Paris, though somehow he had mysteriously failed to arrive.
But though Midhat Pasha and others who struggled to introduce Western institutions into the borders of the East died their work lived. One by one, those suspected of having advanced ideas were degraded. A man might be Grand Vizier for a month or a week, or even for a day, and then without warning, be dismissed in disgrace. The suspicious sultan trusted no one. He set brother to watch brother, father to spy upon son, and then believed none of them, though he always guarded himself lest they might be telling the truth.