High above this little church towers the massive Mosque of Ahmedyeh, Achmet, considered chief of all the mosques in Stamboul, its six minarets pointing like warning fingers to the sky where Allah reigns inscrutable. The founder, Achmet, was a pious soul, and at the same time a good sportsman; he gave evidence of the former quality by building this mosque, in the latter capacity he was great at falconry and in hunting with those strong hounds whose degenerate descendants until recently roamed the streets of Constantinople and acted as rather unsatisfactory scavengers.
Achmet was rather worried about the dogs, which, in those days of the early seventeenth century, were already rather a nuisance in the crowded City, and thought it wise to consult the Mufti about the matter, for the lives of dogs, unclean animals though they be, were deemed a matter of some importance. The mufti consulted with others learned in the law of the Prophet, and this enlightened committee came to the conclusion that it was unlawful to kill the dogs, seeing each one had a soul. Christians you may kill, they are the enemies of Allah, whereas dogs are not, or at least do not worry about the matter either way. Women you may kill too, they have no soul at all. It is all beautifully simple, and appeals to the meanest intellect. Anyway, the dogs continued to be a nuisance, so, as they might not be killed, they were banished first to Scutari, where they seemed quite happy, and then to an island some sixteen miles out in the Sea of Marmora, where they might die of starvation. However, if the story be true, the dogs knew a trick worth two of that, and simply swam back to their old haunts, and, incidentally, to their ladies, who had not been exiled. I can quite imagine the all-night howlings of welcome with which the ladies greeted the wanderers on their return, and the flight of slippers, smaller articles of furniture, etc., accompanied by clouds of curses, hurtling through the night, to check the exuberance of this frohes Wiedersehen.
A couple of years ago the authorities, inspired by the enlightened members of the new regime, decided to get rid of the dogs, and they were banished again. This time they were rounded up in all parts of the city, and even from the villages on either bank of the Bosphorus. I remember well a friendly little white lady who lived in a corner on the steps leading up from the sea towards the higher part of the Candilli; here on a heap of melon skins, which served both as food and as bedding, she was wont to bring up one litter of promising little pariah pups after another, and she loved variety, for her children were a most variegated assortment. They were as happy as those bright, sunny days were long, and would tumble in bunches down the uneven steps, or struggle up towards the high road which leads along the Asiatic bank and connects Candilli by land with the great world. Here the pups, after strenuous mountaineering, would get their outlook on life, with all its excitements and possible dangers; here Turkish cavalry from Scutari would come dashing past, galloping furiously when there were people to watch this feat and stones to lame their clever little horses, subsiding to a walk when beyond the sight of admirers and when the roads were soft with dust some inches deep, or grass by the wayside. Other sights presented themselves to the round, wondering eyes of these offspring of the little white lady: of a morning lithe young Englishmen would tear down those steps several at a time, to the great wonderment of the lodgers in the corner on the bed of melon skins. These Englishmen would be hurrying to the “Scala” to catch a boat—never punctual unless you were late—a boat that took them to their work in Pera and Galata. On their return they would ascend with startling rapidity those stony precipices which to the puppies seemed to take a lifetime to negotiate; and in the gardens between the high road and the sea you might hear the gentle voices of fair, fragrant Englishwomen, and the puppies would wag sympathetic tails. Yes, they were pleasant, very pleasant, those summer days at Candilli. The solemn cypresses, in their attitude of constant warning, stood unheeded, for the sun was shining on the waters, and made them gleam in gold and blue and many colours, and the sun drew fragrance from flowering shrubs, and ripened the swelling figs that nestled among the broad leaves which, in their turn, mirrored the life-giver in their bright, smooth surface. But one day the little white lady and her family vanished, for men had been busy during the night, and had carried them and all their friends into exile, had carried them away over the waters where the moon drew a sparkling silvery path, to a barren island. Here they were left to perish, for long ago the wise men, learned in the laws of the Prophet, had decided that every dog, even the smallest pup, has a soul, and that it is evil to kill them, but not to let them starve to death. And these same wise men would not have allowed the possession of a soul to those fair Englishwomen whose blue eyes smiled kindly on the little white lady and her offspring’s wondering interest in the doings of the great world.
Many of the dogs had a presentiment of danger, and evaded capture by fleeing to the “hinterland,” whence came alarming rumours of packs of wild dogs rendering insecure the country-side. Of these, one or the other found his way back to his old sociable haunts, and Constantinople and environments have not quite got rid of the dogs which, according to the accounts of all travellers in this country, form one of its most remarkable features.
There are other mosques, many of them, rising up from among squalor, or groups of picturesque wooden houses, and these mosques seem to be the only indication of any permanence of Turkish rule. The little wooden houses vanish from time to time, whole districts in one fell swoop, by fire, which has spread with alarming rapidity long before the watchman, tapping the irregular pavement with the iron-shod staff, has given the alarm. Then firemen, with much noise but little expedition, arrive on the scene, and find little left to do but to gather up the fragments, the property of the sufferers. But the mosques remain towering above charred ruins, and the call to prayer sounds from the graceful minaret over deserted homesteads.
Thus the life of this strange people, the Turks, goes on from day to day, leisurely business transacted with all dignity of inherent idleness, endless gossip under the vines and awnings of small cafés, talk which begins nowhere and arrives nowhere. Squalor, dirt, picturesque decay, and over all the sense that a migratory race has settled here for a while, is not disposed to move until turned out, and has just put up a leader or two with sufficient enterprise to make others build him a place of worship to glorify himself above his fellows.