Constantinople, v. 2 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

The principal entrance then, as now, was the Bâb-i-Humayûn, or Imperial Gate, opening on the little square in which stands the fountain of Sultan Ahmed, back of St. Sophia. It is a lofty portal of white and black marble, richly adorned with arabesques and crowned by a high superstructure with eight windows and a spreading roof, the architecture being that mixture of the Arabian and Persian styles by which almost everything erected by the Turks in the years immediately following the conquest can be so readily distinguished, before they began to copy the Byzantine architecture around them. Above the entrance, on a marble scroll, are the inscriptions of Muhammad II.: “May Allah preserve the glory of its possessor for ever! May Allah strengthen its buildings! May Allah establish its foundations!”[F] Before this gate the populace of Stambul used to assemble in the morning to see which of the great men of the court or state might have been decapitated during the previous night, it being customary in such cases to either suspend the heads in the niches which may still be seen almost intact to right and left of the entrance, or else place them in a silver basin, with the accusation and sentence exhibited alongside, the bodies of those victims who were sentenced to be strangled being thrown out into the square. Here detachments of troops from far-off armies awaited the necessary permission to enter the outer court bearing their victorious trophies and heaping on the imperial threshold arms, flags, the skulls of vanquished enemies, and magnificent uniforms stained with blood.

[F] The present gate is built upon the site of (but is not) the original gate of Muhammad II.—Trans.

The entrance was guarded by a powerful band of kapuji, the sons of beys and pashas, gorgeously arrayed, who, from the windows and summits of the towers overlooked the continual procession of people coming and going below, or held back with their great cimeters the silent curious throng collected without in the hope of catching, through some crack, a fleeting glimpse of the courtyard, a brief view of the second gateway, a suggestion at least of that enormous and mysterious abode which was the object of so much conjecture and dread. Passing by, the devout Mussulman would pause to murmur a prayer for his sublime lord; the poor and ambitious youth picture to himself the day when he too might possibly cross that threshold to receive the horse-tail; the pretty ragged little maid of the street dream gorgeous dreams, not unmixed with hope, of the splendid existence of a kadyn; and the relatives of state victims avert their heads and shudder; while throughout the entire square a strict silence was observed, broken only three times a day by the muezzin’s voice on St. Sophia.

From the Humayûn Gate one enters the so-called Court of the Janissaries, which was the first enclosure of the Seraglio. This large courtyard is still surrounded by various long, irregular buildings and shaded by groups of trees, among the latter of which the huge plane tree of the Janissaries is conspicuous with its mighty trunk, which the outstretched arms of ten men cannot span. On the left as you enter stands the church of St. Irene, founded by Constantine the Great, and converted into an armory by the Turks; all around stood the Seraglio hospital, the treasury, the orange storehouses, imperial stables, kitchens, the barracks of the kapuji, the mint, and the residences of high officials of the court. Beneath the plane tree may still be seen the two small stone pillars which mark the spot where public executions took place. Through this enclosure every one had to pass on his way either to the Divân or the presence of the Pâdishah: it was like a great open anteroom, always crowded with people and filled with bustle and confusion. In the enormous kitchens two hundred cooks with their assistants presided over a hundred and fifty ovens, preparing all the food consumed by that vast family “who ate the bread and salt of the Grand Seignior,” while opposite crowds of guards and attendants, feigning illness, tried to gain admission to the luxurious and sumptuous hospital, in which twenty physicians and an army of slaves were kept constantly employed. Long files of mules and camels brought provisions for the kitchens, or arms taken from victorious battlefields to the church of St. Irene, where, with the sword of Muhammad II., was that of Skanderbeg and the armlet of Tamerlane. Tax-collectors went by, followed by slaves laden with gold for that treasury which already, according to Sokolli, grand vizier under Suleiman the Magnificent, contained money enough to pay for the construction of an entire fleet of vessels, with silken rigging and anchors of silver; and handsome Bulgarian grooms led up and down the nine hundred horses of Murad IV., which fed out of mangers of solid silver. All day long there was a never-ceasing flash and glitter of gorgeous uniforms. Here towered the high white turbans of the Janissaries, and there the heron-quills of the solaks or silver helmets of the peiks; members of the sultan’s guard lounged about in their golden tunics fastened about the waist with jewelled belts; the zuluftu-baltagé, employed under the officials of the bed-chamber, could be distinguished by the tuft of wool hanging from their caps; the kasseki carried their wands of office, and the balta-gi their axes; while the grand vizier’s pages were furnished with whips ornamented with silver chains. Then there were members of the bostangi, or guards of the gardens, in big purple caps—the courageous guard, the impetuous guard, archers, lancers, treasury guards, a countless variety of colors and devices; white eunuchs and black, esquires, and sciaus; tall, ponderous men, whose haughty bearing savored of the atmosphere of the court, while their scented garments filled the air with heavy perfume. Confused and disorganized as this vast throng may have appeared to the onlooker, it was, in reality, governed by a strict and minute schedule. Every individual who came and went through that courtyard was something like an automaton, moved about on a board by an unseen but powerful mechanism. At daybreak there arrived the thirty muezzins of the court, selected from among the sweetest singers in Stambul, who on their way to announce the sunrise from the minarets of the Seraglio mosques would encounter parties of astronomers and astrologers descending from lofty terraces where they had passed the night in studying the heavenly bodies with a view to determining what hours would be most propitious for the Sultan’s various undertakings. Next to arrive would be the head physician of the Seraglio to inquire touching the health of his lord, and after him a member of the ulema charged with the religious instruction of his illustrious pupil. Next the private secretary would come to read all the petitions received in the course of the preceding day. Professors of the arts and sciences passed through on their way to instruct the imperial pages, and one after another, each at his appointed hour, every individual in the personal service of the Grand Seignior presented himself to receive the orders for the day. The bostangi-basci, general of the imperial guard and governor of the Seraglio and of all the Sultan’s villas scattered along the shores of the Bosphorus and Propontis, came to inquire if his mighty lord proposed to make an expedition by water, as in that case to him belonged the honor of steering, and to his bostangi that of rowing, the boat. The master of the hunt, head falconer, and chiefs of the vulture, white falcon, and hawk-hunt came to inquire the Pâdishah’s will. Then all the superintendents of the kitchens, storehouses, mint, and treasury, and the superintendent-general of the city, arrived, each one in his appointed order, with his memoranda, his set speech, his train of servants, and his distinctive style of dress. Later, the viziers of the cupola, followed by a crowd of secretaries and hangers-on, would be seen on their way to the Divân, while every grade of official, up to the very highest, would alight from horse or chair or carriage at the second gate, beyond which no one was permitted to go except on foot. In some way the position, rank, or office of every individual in all that great crowd was so plainly indicated as to be instantly distinguishable. The shape of the turban, fashion of the sleeves, quality of the furs, color of the facings, ornamentation of the saddle, the wearing of moustaches only or of a beard in addition,—each and all gave the clue, and there was not the smallest room for confusion or mistake. The mufti were dressed in white, the viziers in pale green, the chamberlains in scarlet; dark blue indicated one of the six chief justices, the chief of the emirs, and the judges of Mecca, Medina, and Constantinople; the head ulema wore violet, the murdâs and sheikhs light blue, while pale sky-blue denoted a feudal sciaù or vizier’s agha; deep green was reserved for the aghas of the imperial staff and sacred standard-bearers; Nile green was the uniform of the imperial stables; generals of the army wore red shoes, officials of the Porte yellow, members of the ulema turquoise-blue. To all this careful scale of color exactly corresponded the degree of reverence shown in the obeisances. The bostangi-basci, chief of the Seraglio police force and commander of an army of jailors and executioners, the mere sound of whose name or echo of whose footfall spread terror and consternation, strode across the courtyard between two ranks of heads bowed to the very earth; the chief eunuch and grand marshal of the court, both internal and external, approached, and down went all those turbans, plumes, and helmets as though struck by a hundred invisible hands. The grand almoner made his progress amid a flutter of obsequious bows. Every one in personal attendance upon the Sultan—such as the master of the stirrup, who assisted him to mount; master of the bed-chamber, who brought him his sandals; the silidar agha, who cleaned his armor; the white eunuch, who licked the pavement before spreading out his lord’s rug; the page, who poured out the water for his ablutions; he who handed him his arquebuse during the hunt; and those who had charge of his turbans and robes of black fox skin and dusted off his jewelled plumes—were the objects of special curiosity and veneration. A subdued murmur of voices preceded and followed the passage of the imâm of the court, and the grand master of the wardrobe, who was charged with the distribution of money among the people during the imperial fêtes; while envious glances followed that fortunate Mussulman to whose lot it fell every ten days to shave the head of the Sultan of sultans. The crowd fell back with marked alacrity before the head surgeon, who circumcised the imperial princes; the chief oculist, who prepared washes and unguents for the eyelids of the kadynas and odalisques; and the grand master of the flowers, whose life was passed in carrying out the capricious fancies of a hundred spoiled beauties, and who carried beneath his caftan his diploma of poetry ornamented with gilded roses. The head cook received his adulatory greetings, while smiles and salutations were showered upon the keeper of the nightingales and parrots, to whom the doors of the most secret kiosks were thrown open.

It was a vast hierarchy, composed of thousands of persons, subject to a ceremonial filling fifty volumes, and clad in an endless variety of picturesque costume, which thronged the great courtyard, intermingling and separating every moment. From time to time all the heads would turn to look after the hurrying form of a special emissary: now it was the vizier khara khulak, despatched by the Sultan to hold a secret consultation with the grand vizier; now a kapuji, hastening to the palace of a pasha fallen under suspicion to acquire his instant attendance before the Divân; or the bearer of good tidings on his way to announce to the Pâdishah the safe arrival of the great caravan at Mecca. Other special messengers employed between the Sultan and chief officials of the state, each one distinguished by a title and some peculiarity of attire, would traverse the space cleared before him by the crowd at a run, and disappear through one or other of the two gateways. Files of kahveji (coffee-bearers) passed through to the kitchens; troops of imperial huntsmen bending beneath the weight of their gilded gamebags; porters laden with rich stuffs preceded by the Grand Merchant, purchaser for the Sultan; and bands of galley-slaves led by other slaves to perform the heavier kinds of work in the Seraglio,—all could be seen intent upon their several duties. Twice daily the doors of the kitchens opened to emit processions of scullions bearing huge pyramids of rice, and sheep roasted whole, which they distributed among the guards and attendants scattered about beneath the plane trees, under the arcades, and all along the walls, so that the great courtyard presently assumed the festive appearance of an encampment of the army holding a revel. By and by the scene would change, and now it was a foreign ambassador who would make his stately progress between two walls of gold and silk to that presence to which, as Suleiman the Magnificent wrote to the Shah of Persia, “flowed the entire universe.” Side by side with ambassadors from Charles V. were those of Francis I.; envoys from Hungary, Servia, and Poland entered with representatives of the Genoese and Venetian republics. The peskesdgi-basci, who received all the gifts, would go as far as the Bâb-i-Humayûn to meet the foreign caravans, and return, amidst the curious gaze of thousands of spectators, accompanied by elephants with gold thrones on their backs, enormous gazelles, lions in cages, Tartary horses, and steeds of the desert laden with tiger-skins or shields made out of elephants’ ears; envoys from Persia brought vases of costly porcelain, and those from the sultans of India golden boxes filled with jewels; African kings sent rugs made out of the skins of young camels torn from their mothers’ bodies, and pieces of silver brocade which the backs of ten slaves could barely carry; and ambassadors from northern kingdoms brought gifts of rare furs and valuable weapons. After a successful campaign conquered generals, laden with chains, would be led through for exhibition before the Pâdishah, and captive princesses veiled and followed by their mournful little company of disarmed and helpless attendants; eunuchs of all colors and ranks, seized as spoils of war or offered as gifts to the victorious princes; and in the mean time officers of the conquering army crowded to the treasury doors to deposit rich booty in the shape of sabres studded with pearls and magnificent brocades taken in the sack of some Persian city, the gold and jewels of the vanquished Mamelukes of Egypt, cups of gold found among the treasures of the chevaliers of Rhodes, statues of Diana and Apollo brought from Greece and Hungary, and the keys of conquered cities and strongholds; and others still, led the youths and maidens stolen from the isle of Lesbos into the inner court. All the enormous quantities of stores of every description brought to the Seraglio from the various ports of Africa, Morea, Caramania, and the Ægean Sea were either received between those walls or flowed through them to the inner courts, and an army of majordomos and clerks were kept constantly occupied in registering what was brought, giving receipts, paying out money, and arranging audiences. Merchants from the slave-markets of Brusa and Trebizond would await their turn to enter with poets come from Bagdad to recite their verses in the presence of the Sultan. Governors fallen into disgrace, bearing basins full of gold coins wherewith to purchase pardon, stood side by side with the messenger of a pasha bringing a beautiful girl of thirteen, found, after months of careful search, in a cabin in Anatolia, as a present to the Grand Seignior, and with them emissaries returned from the farthermost confines of the empire, tired little family groups just arrived from some far-off province to seek justice at the hands of their lord, and women and children of the lowest orders in Stambul come to present their grievances before the Divân. On those days when the Divân was to hold its sessions ambassadors from rebel provinces would be seen passing slowly through the curious and mocking crowd, mounted upon asses, with shaven faces and women’s caps upon their heads, or the too insolent envoys of some Asiatic prince with their noses split open by the cimeters of the sciaùs. Sometimes state officials would pass out bearing a magnificent shawl which they were to take to a distant governor as a present from the grand vizier, quite unconscious that their own death-sentence was concealed within its folds. Now the radiant face of some ambitious schemer showed that his plots had been so far successful, and a sanjak was his, while the pallid countenance of another proved all too plainly that he had heard in the Divân the first dark rumors of approaching disgrace. Messengers went by with those inexorable hattiscerifs which they were to carry in their saddle-croups three hundred miles for the purpose of spreading ruin and death through the palace of a viceroy, and those terrible court-mutes sent to strangle illustrious prisoners in the subterranean dungeons of the Castle of Seven Towers. Crowds of beys, mollahs, and emirs passed back and forth, to and from audiences, with bent heads, eyes on the ground, and hands hidden in their big sleeves; viziers who made it a habit to carry a copy of the Koran about with them, so as to be prepared at a moment’s notice to read the office of the dead; the despotic grand vizier, constantly shadowed by an executioner, who never went abroad without a copy of his will concealed somewhere about his person, so as to be ready to face death at any moment.

And all of them maintained the most perfect decorum, passing by with measured steps and serious mien, either silent or else conversing only in undertones and in such circumspect and correct language as was suitable to the sacred precincts of the Seraglio. There was a constant interchange of grave, scrutinizing looks; hands were laid on the forehead or breast, and momentary breaks occurred in the murmured conversations—a discreet rustling and patter of slippers and long cloaks, a subdued clanking of cimeters, a something monastic and mournful, which contrasted strangely with the haughty, warlike faces, pompous coloring, and splendid armor seen on all sides. In every eye could be read the reflection of the same ruling idea, on every brow was written the awe and dread of a single man, high above them all, wielding an absolute power over each and every one of them, and before whom all were ready to bow down, cringe, crawl, efface themselves; it seemed as though every object bore the imprint of his image, every sound carried the echo of his name.

From this court the Bâb-el-Selam,[G] Gate of Health, gives access to the second court. It is still standing intact, flanked by two massive towers, and can only be passed even now on presenting a firman or order from the Sultan. Formerly the great doors which shut it on either side enclosed a space between them which was used as a chamber of execution, where persons could be detained and secretly despatched. The cell of the executioner was just below, and communicated by secret passage-ways with the hall of the Divân. Persons of rank who had incurred the displeasure of the Divân would be detained there while awaiting their sentence, which not infrequently was first made known to them by being carried out. At other times a suspected governor or vizier, summoned to the Seraglio on some pretext or other, came, passed unsuspiciously beneath that sinister roof, entered the council hall, and, being received with benevolent smiles or such mitigated severity as laid his fears to rest, would pass tranquilly forth again, to suddenly feel a knife beneath his shoulders or a cord about his neck, and sink to the ground without seeing any one or being able so much as to make one effort at resistance. At the sound of his dying cry a hundred heads in the outer court would turn quickly, but in an instant every one would have resumed his occupation in perfect silence. Presently the head would be carried out to the Bâb-i-Humayûn, the body thrown to the ravens on the shore near St. Stephen’s, the news sent to the Sultan, and the whole matter be finished.

[G] The name of this gate is the Orta Kapu, or Middle Gate.—Trans.

To the right and under the roof can be seen the small iron doorway of the chamber into which those victims were cast whose death-sentence had been recalled just in time, or others whose agony it was wished to prolong or who were to be sent into exile instead.

Passing beneath the gateway, you enter the second court, and begin to breathe more unmistakably the sacred atmosphere which surrounded the lord “of the two seas and two worlds.” Entering there for the first time, one pauses involuntarily on the threshold, held back by feelings of awe and veneration and fear. It was a huge, irregular courtyard, a sort of enormous open hall, surrounded by graceful buildings with gold and silver domes: here and there were groups of tall trees, while two avenues crossed each other, flanked by great cypresses. All around it ran a low gallery, supported on graceful marble columns and protected by a spreading roof covered with lead. To the left as you enter was the hall of the Divân, surmounted by a glittering dome, and beyond it the reception chamber, before which stood six huge columns of Marmora marble supporting a wide roof with undulating border. Bases and capitals, walls, roofs, doorways, arches, all were embossed, carved, chiselled, painted, and gilded, and as light and graceful as pavilions made of lace and encrusted with gems, while a group of superb plane trees cast their shadows over it all. On the other side were the apartments where the robes of state were kept, the archives, the tents, the residence of the chief of the black eunuchs, and the kitchens of the court. Here was to be found that intendant on whom far more devolved than on one of the ministers of state, under whom were employed fifty sub-lieutenants and a whole army of cooks, supplemented on great occasions by chefs collected from every corner of the empire. On the days of the Divân, dinner was served here for all the viziers, and, when such functions as imperial weddings or circumcisions were in progress, were prepared those far-famed pastry gardens, sugar swans, giraffes, falcons, and camels; and roasted sheep from which flocks of birds issued, to be carried later on in great pomp to the Hippodrome square; here too were manufactured those sweetmeats of every conceivable form and flavor designed to melt away in the thousand greedy little mouths of the harem. On fête-days eight hundred workmen swarmed close by the kitchens, occupied in getting out the Sultan’s tents and those of the harem, which they were to erect all about the Seraglio gardens and on the hillsides overlooking the Bosphorus; and when even these apparently inexhaustible storehouses gave out, pavilions were constructed from the sails of the fleet, and cypress trees taken up by the roots from the gardens of the imperial villas.