It may be supposed, that in such a royal establishment, the rising generation is well represented; but on the contrary, few of them are allowed to prolong their lives, while many more never see the light.
This premature destruction of life, though strictly prohibited in the Koran, is very prevalent in Turkey. In some cases from State-Policy, lest the heirs to the crown should become too numerous, and in others, from a false desire in the ladies to preserve their beauty and freshness from the toils and trial of maternity.
But very often the better feelings of their natures are sorely tried, and two of the sisters of the present sultan pined away in sorrow, and at last died, because their infant sons were sacrificed upon the altar of state-policy!
Abd-ul-Medjid himself, in his younger days, was not exempt from trials of this sort. For just before coming to the throne, he had a favorite odaluk, to whom he was much attached. But as the princes are not permitted to become fathers, she fell a victim in the attempt to frustrate the probable birth of an heir, when a single week’s delay would have elevated her to the rank of first kadun to the reigning monarch; for sultan Mahmoud died a few days after she was sacrificed.
Whenever a child is born to the sultan, or any other Oriental father, the tidings are immediately communicated to him and the family relatives, and the messenger handsomely rewarded. Among the Mussulmans the father himself pronounces the future name of his offspring at the moment of its birth.
A certain man, having scarce passed the honeymoon, for he had only been married three months, one day, while he was in the bath, was suddenly apprised of the birth of a son and heir. As soon as he recovered from his surprise at such an unexpected event, he ordered him to be named Tchapgun or racer, because, said he, he has accomplished in three months, the customary labor of nine.
They have a singular notion that the reason a child cries as soon as it is born is, because his satanic majesty being of course present, cruelly pinches the tender offshoot of humanity; the only exception on record, being the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, who were protected from the touch of the devil by a veil, so placed by Allah himself; thus, doubtless, accounting for the Immaculacy of the Holy Virgin.
The children, at their birth, are rubbed down with salt, and nicely bandaged. They are placed in a cradle and secured there. The hands and feet are bound in, so that the child cannot move. The poor little victim becomes black and blue under this treatment, and is occasionally relieved from its fetters to be re-enveloped in swaddling clothes; and when the toilet is completed, it very much resembles a little Egyptian mummy.
The child is nursed while lying down, the mother bending over it, and tilting the cradle, until she attains the requisite position.
Owing to the bandages in which the infants are constantly enveloped, the circulation of the blood is impeded, and they are obliged to be relieved by occasional scarifications, and the writer still wears the honorable scars of this traditional practice.