The ends of the streets are furnished with immense gates, which are closed every evening about an hour before sunset, and are opened again in the morning about eight.
The whole effect is very interesting; the fanciful wares, the great number and proximity of the stalls or shops, and the varied costumes of the venders and purchasers, combine to create rare and beautiful groups for the pencil of the artist. Carriages, horses, and foot-passengers, are continually passing and re-passing in crowds.
Occasionally the owners of the shops are obliged to leave their merchandise for a short time, and during their absence, a covering of net-work suspended across the front of the stall, is sufficient to indicate the absence of the proprietor, and also to protect the property from all depredation.
These bazaars are the favorite resort of the Turkish ladies of all ranks, and there is no little coquetry displayed by the fair purchasers, when the unusually handsome appearance of the merchant tempts them literally to ransack his whole establishment for the most trifling article. These occasions are also made available for the purposes of flirtation, assignation, and all other romantic amusements. It is amusing to observe the ladies as they fit themselves with their peculiarly colored and shaped chaussure, for they make no scruple of displaying their beautiful ankles, which are generally divested of every semblance of hosiery.
The method of buying and selling is peculiar to the country, and doubtless very entertaining to strangers. The system of Prix-Fix, is unknown in Turkey, for, as they go on the principle “each one for himself,” no one is content with any price except his own valuation. Besides, the people are so conceited that any concession on the part of the merchant is flattering to their vanity. He, therefore enjoys the privilege of being beaten down, merely as complimentary to his customers. So the merchant always demands an exorbitant price, which he has no idea of receiving, in order to give his customer a fair chance to gratify his vanity, and also to exercise his judgment.
As London has its “Whitechapel Road,” Paris its “Temple,” and New York its “Chatham street,” so Constantinople has its “Bit-Bazaar,” emphatically so denominated from the vermin which infest old clothing.
Infinite diversity pervades the garments here displayed, and as people’s clothes always look something like themselves, so the empty garments seem to tell tales of their good or bad fortunes, whether the former owners died of plague or small pox, were solitary occupants of the robes, or shared them with other animalculæ.
At the auction, which occurs every day in these purlieus, poverty may find a momentary relief by the disposal of its surplus wardrobe, or may even don the cast off rags of some less fortunate victim of misery.
There is a more respectable auction at the Bezesten every day except Friday, until noon, where jewelry, embroideries, carpets, arms, and all sorts of superior second-hand garments are disposed of. Here the humblest citizen may at least enjoy the semblance of grandeur, as he invests himself in the same setry which the Efendi discarded the day before; or an ambitious mother may procure the same toilette de noces as graced the form of a beautiful Hanum.
The Bezesten is a large quadrangular stone building, surmounted by a cupola, in the centre of the bazaars, and serves not only as a place of public auction, but for the safe deposit of valuable property, either money, shawls, or jewelry.