Twenty Years' Residence among the People of Turkey: Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, Turks, and Armenians

by Fanny Janet Sandison Blunt

The last stronghold of this description I visited was the property of a British subject in the district of Salonika. It was solidly constructed, with massive iron doors and shutters, and some years ago resisted the assault of a band of brigands who besieged it for three days, till the arrival of a corps of Zaptiehs occasioned their hasty disappearance. The marks of their bullets may still be seen on the doors and shutters, but no further damage was done.

There is no very marked difference between the quarters of the town occupied by Christians and those occupied by Turks. The Christians’ houses are built very much in the same style, though they are not so large, and open directly on the street, with shops in their lower stories in the principal thoroughfares. The windows are free from the lattices invariably seen in a Turkish haremlik. There is much more life and animation in a Christian or Jewish quarter, partly in consequence of one house being occupied by several families. This is especially the case among the lower orders of Jews, where one may count as many families as there are rooms in a house.

In most Eastern towns the Jewish quarters, containing the fish, meat, and vegetable markets, are the most unclean, and consequently the most unhealthy. Few sanitary regulations exist, and little attention is paid to them or to the laws of hygiene. The streets are frequently nearly impassable, and some of the dwellings of the poor are pestilential, the hotbeds of every epidemic that visits the country.

Most of the ancient khans, warehouses, and bazars at Stamboul, and in large provincial towns, are fine solidly constructed edifices. The bazars are of a peculiarly Oriental style of architecture, and appear well adapted to the use for which they were designed—the display and sale of goods. In the interior, however, many of these bazars are neglected, and some left to decay have been by degrees abandoned by the tenants of the innumerable shops they once contained.

The charshi, or market-place, consists of an incongruous assemblage of shops, huddled together without any attempt at architecture or regard to appearances; for the most part protected only by large shutters that are raised in the morning and lowered at night. A low platform of boards occupies the greater part of the interior, in the front corner of which the shopkeeper sits on a little carpet, cross-legged, with a wooden safe by his side and his account-book and pipe within easy reach, ever ready to attend to the wants of his customers. Rows of shelves, constructed in recesses in the walls, serve as receptacles for his goods.

The khans, or warehouses, in towns are used as deposits for merchandise and for the transaction of business by merchants and bankers who have offices in them. A series of hostelries of all descriptions and dimensions, also called khans, some built of stone and others of timber, exist in large numbers in all parts of the country, serving as hotels to travellers and store-rooms for merchandise during transit. The ruins of the most ancient of these, built by the Turks at the time of the conquest, and used by them as blockhouses, still exist on the main roads and in some of the principal towns. By the side of these substantial stone buildings have arisen a number of miserable edifices dignified with the name of khan, with whose discomforts the weary traveller too often makes sad acquaintance.

The furniture of wealthy Greek houses in Constantinople is European; in those of Jews and Armenians of high position it is a compromise between European and Turkish. All Orientals are fond of display; they like to build large houses and ornament their reception rooms in a gaudy manner; but the ensemble lacks finish and comfort. At A⸺ I had fixed upon an old Turkish konak as my residence; but on coming to inhabit it I discovered that extensive alterations and improvements must be made before it approached in the remotest degree to my idea of an English home. Some officious person, at a loss to understand the object of these changes, gave notice to the proprietor that his tenant was fast demolishing his house, upon which the good old Turk asked if she were building it up again, and being answered in the affirmative, quietly said, “Brak yupsen!” (laissez faire!)

The furniture found in the dwellings of all the lower classes is much the same throughout the country; a Turkish sofa, a few deal chairs, and a table serving for every purpose. The bedding is placed on the floor at night and removed in the morning. But if furniture is scanty, there is no lack of carpets and copper kitchen utensils, both being considered good investments by the poor.

Before concluding this chapter I must not forget to describe one of the most necessary adjuncts to a Turkish house—the bath. In a large house, or konak, this is by far the best fitted and most useful part of the whole establishment. A Turkish bath comprises a suite of three rooms; the first—the hammam—is a square apartment chiefly constructed of marble, and terminating in a kind of cupola studded with a number of glass bells, through which the light enters. A deep reservoir, attached to the outer wall, with an opening into the bath, contains the water, half of which is heated by a furnace built under it. A number of pipes, attached to the furnace, circulate through the walls of the bath and throw great heat into it. One or two graceful fountains conduct the water from the reservoir, and on each side of the fountain is a low wooden platform which serves as a seat for the bather, who sits cross-legged, and undergoes a long and complicated process of washing and scrubbing, with a variety of other toilet arrangements too numerous to mention.

The second room, called the saouklouk, is constructed very much in the same style as the first, but is smaller, and has no furniture but a marble platform upon which mattresses and cushions are placed for the use of those who wish to repose between intervals of bathing, or do not wish to face the cooler temperature of the hammam oda. This room is furnished with sofas, on which the bathers rest and dress after quitting the bath.