“After waiting one morning for a weary time with an order at the ‘Selamlik,’ we saw the Sultan go to the Yildis mosque. The coachman was gorgeous in his golden livery, but the ‘Sultan of Sultans, the King of Kings,’ was a piteous sight, a mixture of boredom and terror. Cringing cowardice prevents his going to Stamboul more than one day in the year, and this occurred lately. It is a great day for the court ladies, who are all allowed to accompany him in three hundred carriages, and avenge themselves for veiled faces by exhibiting their bare arms covered with bracelets and as much else as they dare. Mahomet says, ‘He who espouses only one wife is praiseworthy,’ and now it is considered indiscreet to have more than four legitimate wives, who are all equal, and who have each their own dowry and servants. Women are generally well treated here now, a divorce is easy, and each wife has a right to a separate room, and may even exact a separate house, if she cannot get on with the other wives.
“Almost every night through the streets there is a rush of the Talumbodgi or firemen—half-naked savages with primitive engines, who scurry to save the valuables of burning houses, not for the owners, but for themselves, so that they are far more dreaded than the flames. In recent conflagrations in Galata and Pera it is certain that the fire began in three or four places at the same moment; for when a street in Constantinople is wholly bad or unsafe, the authorities do not scruple to set fire to it, regardless of the consequences, though the people are such fatalists that they will not leave their dwellings till the last moment, and then fly, leaving everything behind them.”
“May 22.—I write during a quiet day with George at the Embassy, after my return from Broussa, where I have been spending a week.... It was a voyage of five hours in a steamer crowded with Turks on their carpets, sleeping, praying, or reciting the Koran, and at the ends of the vessel knots, lumps, and clusters of women. Outside Seraglio Point the view of Stamboul is very fine, St. Sophia and the Achmet mosque rising above the old sea-walls, and the gardens lovely with rich green and pink Judas bloom. We passed the islands—Antigone, where Sir H. Bulwer lived with the Greek princess, and Prinkapo, to which the Empress Irene was banished, and where she is buried. After two hours it became very rough, and all were sick, especially a number of Turkish officers, who up to that time had been eating voraciously. So it was indeed a relief when we entered the comparatively calm bay of Mudania, with its glorious leaping ‘multitudinous seas’ of sapphire and chrysoprase waves, amid which endless dolphins—true clowns of the sea—were tumbling and sporting.
“At Mudania a horde of half-naked savages leaped on board to seize our luggage, and a hand-to-hand fight ensued, during which we had to scale the bulwarks of the vessel to reach the pier. Then came a scramble and a bargaining for carriages, but at last we were off and up the hills, where boys were selling piles of cherries for half a piastre (1¼ d.) on the ascent. In the valley beyond, we came up with a knot of carriages in a desolate place, the inmates standing in the road round one whose wheel was coming off. It had contained two ladies, and I took up one of them, who turned out to be Miss Holmes, sister of the librarian at Windsor. Very lovely was the ascent to Broussa, through the rich green walnut-woods and by rushing streams, to the exquisite chain of mosques and minarets under the lower slopes of Olympus. At the table-d’hôte we had the British Consul, who stated that he ‘was not at all gone on mosques;’ he had been seventeen years in Constantinople and had seen nothing but St. Sophia—‘what on earth was the good?’ The hotel was delightful, and nothing could be more exquisite than the view from my window, whence I watched the long lines of camels following the inevitable donkey, and the handsome population, arrayed in every colour of the rainbow as to male turbans and girdles and the loose robes women are arrayed in. Thence also, I constantly heard, from the mosque of Murad, the shrill voice ‘La Ilah il Allah vè Mohammed resoul Allah,’ calling the people to prayer.
“On the first day I joined Miss Holmes and her friend Miss Bacon on a long excursion through the town, going first to the famous Green Mosque (Yéchil-Djami), which stands on a platform with old trees and a glorious view over the plain. We were not allowed to enter at once; it was the service for women, who are permitted this mosque only. ‘Priest very old and well covered up: it must be so,’ said the dragoman; ‘it is necessary to guard their moralities: just let them a little loose, and it is a very bad job.’
“Close by is a beautiful turbé with an entrance worthy of the Alhambra, and lovely tiles and jewelled glass within. Beneath the dome lies the sarcophagus of Mahomet I., with those of his son, his six daughters, and their nurse—the last very plain, but close to the royal coffins. In the centre of the mosque itself is a beautiful fountain, which freshens the air with a rush of falling waters: around are inscriptions—‘God is love,’ ‘Mahomet is the prophet of God,’ and the names of the six caliphs who were the companions of Mahomet. The mimber here is only ascended by the Sheik el Islam himself, when he gives the blessing with the Koran. As an interior, Oulou-Djami, the great mosque in the centre of the town, has even more perfect proportions—a perfection of interlacing architecture inclining to gothic, forming twenty-four cupolas, and centering in the great dome above a splashing fountain. Outside this mosque, facing the street, a bay-tree overshadows the tomb of a sainted dervish: sick people hang bits of their clothes around it, and think that, with them, they leave their ailments there. Oulou-Djami stands on the edge of the vast bazaar, where splendid Eastern dresses are seen in perfection: the perfectly fitting jackets and breeches of the men, of richest embroidered stuff, never costing less than from £3 to £10, so that one wondered at their not minding the frequent torrents of rain; but it is all ‘kismet.’ When at home these glorious-looking Turks do nothing, for there is nothing to do: if a house takes fire, they do not care—there is nothing to burn but a few divans: perhaps the owner takes his clothes with him when he escapes—there is nothing else to take. They rise early and have a cup of coffee, at ten they breakfast, at six is dinner, at eight they go to bed: a few possible visits are the only variety of the day.
“It was a delightful drive to the Citadel, where all the space not occupied by wonderful old buildings is shaded by the most magnificent planes and cypresses, watered by crystal streams, which have their source here. The tombs of the first Osmanli princes, Osman and Orchan, are here, restored after an earthquake. On the tomb of Osman lies the order of the Osmanlieh: two of his sons and fourteen of his daughters surround him. A more curious family burial-place is that of Mouradié, a green enclosure, bright with fountains and roses, and containing a whole succession of venerable turbé of the family of Murad I. and Mehemet II., chiefly murdered victims. Amongst the latter, the tomb of the hero-prince Djem is especially rich and striking. The grave of Murad, by his own desire, is left open to the rain of heaven, and is covered with sickly grass. Of the early Broussa Sultans, several—being sons of fathers of eighteen and mothers of sixteen—were generals of armies and governors of provinces at fourteen, and their enormous families were due to the fact that they continued to have children from sixteen to seventy.
