After the meal, those who have children of a suitable age bring them to the Grand Signor, and he bestows upon each some garments and a pension of three aspers (about 2d.) a day for life—quite a competence for a Turkish artisan of the period. In addition, there is no dearth of Christian converts to Islam appearing to be circumcised with the others.
SULTAN MAHOMET THE FOURTH, EMPEROR OF THE TURKS.
From an Engraving by F. H. van den Hove.
To face p. 106.
To the solemnities of the day succeed, after about an hour’s respite, the jollities of the night. They are ushered in by public prayers held just as the dusk begins to overcast the plain. From every minaret in the city and every pavilion in the encampment outside, the muezzins lift their sonorous voices. For a few minutes the message floats, with a strangely touching sweetness, through the deepening twilight: a chorus of aerial criers calling upon each other to worship the Creator of all things. Suddenly the chants die away; and then the whole multitude from the Grand Signor to the meanest of his slaves, wherever each happens to be, single or in groups, begin their prostrations: kneeling, sitting back on their heels, rising, bowing, kneeling again, and again, and again, in perfect silence and with the regularity of a perfectly drilled army on parade. Who, having once witnessed, can ever forget the sight, so simple and so sublime?
Devotions ended, the music bands strike up: trumpets, hautboys, great drums, little kettle-drums, brass platters. At the signal, a broad glare is seen to appear from the Grand Signor’s stables—a troop of link-men march forth, with lighted grates in their hands: onward they come chanting; and soon the plain is ablaze with myriads of lamps arranged in various patterns in the frames prepared for the purpose. By their light the sports go on: wrestling-matches, athletic feats, acrobatic performances, conjuring tricks, puppet shows, dances of young men disguised as women (like the ancient Romans, the Turks believed that no man danced unless he was drunk or mad), and theatrical exhibitions—farces amusing, obscene, or insipid, according to the spectator’s point of view. These pastimes go on with all alacrity till about midnight, and conclude with a display of fireworks, which does credit to the ingenuity of the two renegades—a Venetian and a Dutchman—responsible for them.
There are monstrous giants, many-headed and stuffed with rockets, which burst out of their eyes, nostrils, and ears, fly writhing and hissing up into the night air, leaving a trail of sparks in their wake, and then break into a rain of stars. There are artificial trees with all manner of explosive fruit fastened to their boughs. There are fountains gushing forth jets of fire. There are hobby-horses which, taking fire, run up and down and encounter one another most bravely. There are hanging galleys most dexterously contrived: each with a crew of two or three men who manage the guns and fireworks on board, and pull the vessels backwards and forwards to imitate sea-fights against Christian corsairs. There are huge castles of pasteboard: one of them, the biggest of the lot, representing the Castle of Candia. After an infinitude of rockets discharged from its battlements, it catches fire at last and burns in a most realistic manner, till the whole fabric collapses in one vast heap of flames and smoke. Besides these and countless other pyrotechnic devices, there is one that thrills the spectators with more dread than delight: iron tubes, much like the chambers of petards, but far larger and longer, fixed into the ground, which vomit up a continuous stream of fire at least sixty feet high, with a roar that makes the very earth tremble.
In this fashion the circumcision festival goes on from May 11th till May 25th, with little variation, the same things being done over and over again. It culminates in a stupendous cavalcade in which all the grandees with their guards take part and of which the young Prince himself, blazing with jewels, forms the central figure: “an ugly, il-favour’d, and (I guesse) very ill-natured chit” of about twelve, with a low forehead, a short flat nose embellished by a little lump at the end, and ears the size of which even his turban cannot hide.[99] He is mounted on a splendid horse, smothered from head to tail under precious metals and stones, led by two richly clad officers of the Janissaries, one on each side, and fanned by two others with large fans of bustards’ feathers. The press is immense: men and women of every degree throng the lanes through which the procession passes; yet the order is perfect, and the silence almost uncanny.
After an interval of two weeks begin the wedding celebrations and continue from June 10th till June 25th: the same old sports, the same old dances, the same old plays and pyrotechnic displays over again; punctuated by similar processions to and from the Seraglio, with drum-beating and pipe-blowing enough to sing in one’s ears for a lifetime. First there is the procession of the bridegroom’s presents to the bride—strings of mules loaded with sweet-meats and sugar-works made up in all sorts of fantastic shapes: elephants, camels, lions—so fashioned that there is no breach of the commandment which forbids Moslems to counterfeit the likeness of any living thing; then rows of men loaded with vests of silk, cloth, velvet, and cloth of gold; then open baskets exhibiting jewels worth half-a-million dollars. Next comes a counter-procession of the bride’s dowry: including a dozen coachfuls of female slaves and three dozen black eunuchs. Lastly, the world beholds the carrying of the bride to the bridegroom’s house. She is conveyed hidden in a closely-latticed, gold-plated coach drawn by six plentifully plumed and bejewelled white horses, and escorted by troops of black eunuchs, some of whom scatter handfuls of aspers among the rabble. The pageant is headed by hundreds of slaves carrying pyramidal candelabra as tall as the masts of ships (Naculs)—perhaps emblems of phallic significance; and it closes with scores of music-makers perched upon camels, whose gruntings and gurglings contribute a vocal note to the instrumental din.