I cannot say much about the harem quarters of princely palaces. It is well known, however, that the happy family life enjoyed in the harems of private gentlemen cannot be found in the overcrowded harem of a palace. But I can emphasise the fact that the numerous inmates are not all the wives of the lord of the palace. The vastness of domestic arrangements in such an establishment must necessitate the employment of many women as attendants. A sultan or prince, if he resorts to the old rules of polygamy, may marry two, three, and perhaps four wives, but no more, as four is the highest number allowed.
The wives of many well-to-do Ottomans and all the inmates of the royal palaces of Turkey are of Circassian origin. It may be asked why Circassian women find so much favour, and how it is these daughters of the Caucasus adorn the family circle of Turkey? I will give a brief account of them, which may explain these points.
The Circassians, the fine, alert, and powerfully built mountaineers who inhabit the most picturesque regions of the Caucasus, have a world-wide reputation for personal good looks, and especially for feminine beauty. Those, however, who have had any considerable experience of this famous race might hesitate to say that its women have really a larger share of beauty as a whole than other branches of the human race. What the Circassian women do possess in distinction from those of other races of Eastern Europe and Western Asia is a greater animation of face, to which may be added a figure uniformly handsome and a bolder demeanour. They are for the most part slender; a fat woman is quite uncommon among Circassians of unmixed blood. Their complexions are usually fair; and it is more on account of her fair skin that the Circassian woman is so much admired by the comparatively dark people of Western Asia and Egypt than for her other physical qualities. She is also very readily taught, and adapts herself quickly to her new surroundings; so that, rustic and clumsy in her manners to begin with, she picks up refined and elegant ways in a remarkably short time. I knew of a wealthy and kind lady who once obtained a young Circassian girl from her relations. Though of sympathetic appearance, this girl, whom I saw at the time, looked an untamed creature in her miserable ragged native dress. When I saw her on another occasion after a few years' interval, I found that the rough diamond had been charmingly polished, and now shone with refined beauty.
The Circassians are mostly Mohammedans. A small number of them have been made to accept the Russian religion, but these converts have always a strong tendency towards the faith of the Arabian Prophet; and it is only the fear of the wrath of their conquerors that prevents them from denouncing the doctrine of Holy Synod. This tendency is attributable either to the hatred burned into their hearts towards the Muscovite on account of the destruction of their national independence and the loss of their primitive happiness, which has resulted from the sanguinary and fiercely resisted Russian conquest, or to the reason that the precepts of Islam may perhaps suit their native simplicity better.
There is Circassian blood in the veins of almost all the members of the existing dynasties of the Mohammedan Orient. For many generations past the mothers of the Ottoman Sultans have been Circassians; just as in the bygone centuries, when the power and influence of Turkey were so great in Eastern Europe, the Sultanas were women mostly belonging to one or other of the Christian States which were tributary to the Ottoman empire. Many of the Mameluke rulers of Egypt were, as well as their wives, Circassians. The female members of the Khedivial harem have always been and are still of Circassian origin, and there are said to be Circassian ladies in the household of the Persian sovereign.
The Nizam of Hyderabad was at one time anxious to marry a Circassian woman. I heard this from a man whose name is widely known throughout India, and who, I believe, has been introduced to English readers in a well known novel under the fictitious name of 'Mr Isaacs.' This gentleman is a native of Diarbekir, in Asiatic Turkey. After living over thirty years in British India, he paid a visit to Constantinople some nine years ago. There, one day, he asked my advice as to how he might procure Circassian slave-girls, saying that he wished to buy one or two to be admitted to the household of His Highness the Nizam. This anglicised gentleman imagined, as many Englishmen do, that there is still a public market for slave traffic in Constantinople, and that anyone can go and purchase as many slave-women as he pleases.
It is true that some destitute parents among the refugees from the Caucasus are willing to part with their young girls for a reasonable sum of money, but only on obtaining a sufficient guarantee beforehand that these young girls will be adopted by the buyers (well-to-do families without daughters often adopt orphans and other poor girls), or else that the girls sold in this fashion will be married either by the buyers themselves or by some relation of theirs.
From the moment of the final conquest of their country by Russia up to the present time, thousands of these natives of the Caucasus have immigrated into the Sultan's dominions. A short time ago there appeared a piece of news in the papers, stating that an arrangement had been made between Russian and Ottoman authorities for the settlement in Turkey of about sixty thousand more Circassians who desired to leave the Caucasus en masse. Russia does not object to their emigration nowadays, as she wishes to colonise their land with peasants of the Russian race. On the other hand, the Turkish Government grants them facilities for settling in the thinly inhabited portions of Asia Minor. The Circassians are a healthy and hardy people, and they improve the physical constitution of races with whom they intermingle.
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An English reader will naturally want to know how, in a state of affairs in which boys and girls never meet after about their thirteenth year, the matter of marriage is managed; I will therefore explain the system of matrimony.