White palaces and ivied towers.”
Mohammed after having admired the grandeur of the edifice, the elevation of the dome—a second temple upheld in air by one hundred columns of porphyry, of rose-colored marble or serpentine, mounted the altar and offered a Mussulman prayer: then ordered that this church, the most magnificent and majestic which Christianity had yet constructed should become the first Mosque of the Conquerors of Constantinople. The cross was torn down, the pictures of the saints destroyed, and Muezzins mounting to the dome chanted for the first time to the desert streets of the Metropolis of Christianity in the East, the well-known call: “God is God; God is great; Come to prayer.”
As the architects in his presence began to remove the mosaics of colored glass which formed the pictures in the ceiling we are told that Mohammed cried out: “Stop, confine yourselves to covering over these mosaics with a coat of lime so that they may not scandalize the believers but do not tear from the ceilings these marvelous incrustations. Who knows but that they may be uncovered at some future day in another change of fortune and of destination of this temple.”
That hour of Destiny has not yet struck the hour of deliverance, and the lime still covers the walls and the Muezzins still call the faithful to prayer above the noise and din of the busy streets of a fallen city once the glory of a Christian Empire.
From St. Sophia Mohammed proceeded to the august but desolate palace of a hundred successors of the great Constantine but which in a few hours had been stripped of its pomp of royalty. A passing reflection on the vanity and vicissitudes of human greatness caused him to repeat an elegant distich of Persian poetry:—
“The spider has woven his net in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab.”
The fifth day after the conquest he consecrated by a formal act the liberty of conscience accorded by the Koran to the vanquished. He claimed for the Mussulmans only half the churches leaving the rest to the Christians. The patriarch Gennadius led in pomp to the palace clothed in his pontifical robes and in the midst of a cortége of priests, received from him the investiture of the patriarchate. “It is my wish,” said the Sultan, “to give the Christians and their pontiffs the same rights and the same protection that they enjoyed under your emperors.” He even attended in person the pomps and ceremonies of the Christians, as an impartial of the two religions which henceforth were to divide his people.
Before the death of Mohammed in 1459, by his many conquests of the neighboring states and peoples he had consolidated his empire: and it stood forth a fearless conqueror until in 1571 the battle of Lepanto marked the turning point in the history of the Ottoman power.
We here turn aside for a brief hour from the stream of historical narrative to consider some of the results of Ottoman misrule which has for more than four centuries controlled an empire in Eastern Europe almost as large as France, in one of the most delightful and beautifully varied regions on the continent and which yet holds its peoples in the relentless grip of the Dark Ages.