OF HIS BOOK
A number of years ago it happened to the writer of this book to live in Venice. He accordingly read, as every good English-speaking Venetian does, Mr. Howells’s “Venetian Life.” And after the first heat of his admiration he ingenuously said to himself: “I know Constantinople quite as well as Mr. Howells knew Venice. Why shouldn’t I write a ‘Constantinople Life’?” He neglected to consider the fact that dozens of other people knew Venice even better than Mr. Howells, perhaps, but could never have written “Venetian Life.” Nevertheless, he took himself and his project seriously. He went back, in the course of time, to Constantinople, with no other intent than to produce his imitation of Mr. Howells. And the reader will doubtless smile at the remoteness of resemblance between that perfect little book and this big one.
Aside, however, from the primary difference between two pens, circumstances further intervened to deflect this book from its original aspiration. As the writer made acquaintance with his predecessors in the field, he was struck by the fact that Constantinople, in comparison with Venice and I know not how many other cities, and particularly that Turkish Constantinople, has been wonderfully little “exploited”—at least in our generation and by users of our language. He therefore turned much of his attention to its commoner aspects—which Mr. Howells in Venice felt, very happily, under no obligation to do. Then the present writer found himself more and more irritated by the patronising or contemptuous tone of the West toward the East, and he made it rather a point—since in art one may choose a point of view—to dwell on the picturesque and admirable side of Constantinople. And soon after his return there took place the revolution of 1908, whose various consequences have attracted so much of international notice during the last five years. It was but natural that events so moving should find some reflection in the pages of an avowed impressionist. Incidentally, however, it has come about that the Constantinople of this book is a Constantinople in transition. The first chapter to be written was the one called “A Turkish Village.” Since it was originally put on paper, a few weeks before the revolution, the village it describes has been so ravaged by a well-meaning but unilluminated desire of “progress” that I now find it impossible to bring the chapter up to date without rewriting it in a very different key. I therefore leave it practically untouched, as a record of the old Constantinople of which I happened to see the last. And as years go by much of the rest of the book can only have a similar documentary reference.
At the same time I have tried to catch an atmosphere of Constantinople that change does not affect and to point out certain things of permanent interest—as in the chapters on mosque yards, gardens, and fountains, as well as in numerous references to the old Turkish house. Being neither a Byzantinist nor an Orientalist, and, withal, no expert in questions of art, I realise that the true expert will find much to take exception to. While in matters of fact I have tried to be as accurate as possible, I have mainly followed the not infallible Von Hammer, and most of my Turkish translations are borrowed from him or otherwise acquired at second hand. Moreover, I have unexpectedly been obliged to correct my proofs in another country, far from books and from the friends who might have helped to save my face before the critic. I shall welcome his attacks, however, if a little more interest be thereby awakened in a place and a people of which the outside world entertains the vaguest ideas. In this book, as in the list of books at its end, I have attempted to do no more than to suggest. Of the list in question I am the first to acknowledge that it is in no proper sense a bibliography. I hardly need say that it does not begin to be complete. If it did it would fill more pages than the volume it belongs to. It contains almost no original sources and it gives none of the detailed and classified information which a bibliography should. It is merely what I call it, a list of books, of more popular interest, in the languages more commonly read by Anglo-Saxons, relating to the two great periods of Constantinople and various phases of the history and art of each, together with a few better-known works of general literature.
I must add a word with regard to the spelling of the Turkish names and words which occur in these pages. The great difficulty of rendering in English the sound of foreign words is that English, like Turkish, does not spell itself. For that reason, and because whatever interest this book may have will be of a general rather than of a specialised kind, I have ventured to deviate a little from the logical system of the Royal Geographical Society. I have not done so with regard to consonants, which have the same value as in English, with the exception that g is always hard and s is never pronounced like z. The gutturals gh and kh have been so softened by the Constantinople dialect that I generally avoid them, merely suggesting them by an h. Y, as I use it, is half a consonant, as in yes. As for the other vowels, they are to be pronounced in general as in the Continental languages. But many newspaper readers might be surprised to learn that the town where the Bulgarians gained their initial success during the Balkan war was not Kîrk Kiliss, and that the second syllable of the first name of the late Mahmud Shefket Pasha did not rhyme with bud. I therefore weakly pander to the Anglo-Saxon eye by tagging a final e with an admonitory h, and I illogically fall back on the French ou—or that of our own word through. There is another vowel sound in Turkish which the general reader will probably give up in despair. This is uttered with the teeth close together and the tongue near the roof of the mouth, and is very much like the pronunciation we give to the last syllable of words ending in tion or to the n’t in needn’t. It is generally rendered in foreign languages by i and sometimes in English by the u of sun. Neither really expresses it, however, nor does any other letter in the Roman alphabet. I have therefore chosen to indicate it by î, chiefly because the circumflex suggests a difference. For the reader’s further guidance in pronunciation I will give him the rough-and-ready rule that all Turkish words are accented on the last syllable. But this does not invariably hold, particularly with double vowels—as in the name Hüsséïn, or the word seráï, palace. Our common a and i, as in lake and like, are really similar double vowel sounds, similarly accented on the first. The same rules of pronunciation, though not of accent, apply to the few Greek words I have had occasion to use. I have made no attempt to transliterate them. Neither have I attempted to subject well-known words or names of either language to my somewhat arbitrary rules. Stamboul I continue so to call, though to the Turks it is something more like Îstambol; and words like bey, caïque, and sultan have long since been naturalised in the West. I have made an exception, however, with regard to Turkish personal names, and in mentioning the reigning Sultan or his great ancestor, the Conqueror, I have followed not the European but the Turkish usage, which reserves the form Mohammed for the Prophet alone.
This is not a book of learning, but I have required a great deal of help in putting it together, and I cannot close this prefatory note without acknowledging my indebtedness to more kind friends than I have space to name. Most of all I owe to Mr. E. L. Burlingame, of Scribner’s Magazine, and to my father, Dr. H. O. Dwight, without whose encouragement, moral and material, during many months, I could never have afforded the luxury of writing a book. I am also under obligation to their Excellencies, J. G. A. Leishman, O. S. Straus, and W. W. Rockhill, American ambassadors to the Porte, and especially to the last, for cards of admission, letters of introduction, and other facilities for collecting material. Among many others who have taken the trouble to give me assistance of one kind or another I particularly wish to express my acknowledgments to Arthur Baker, Esq.; to Mgr. Christophoros, Bishop of Pera; to F. Mortimer Clapp, Esq.; to Feridoun Bey, Professor of Turkish in Robert College; to H. E. Halil Edhem Bey, Director of the Imperial Museum; to Hüsseïn Danish Bey, of the Ottoman Public Debt; to H. E. Ismaïl Jenani Bey, Grand Master of Ceremonies of the Imperial Court; to H. E. Ismet Bey, Préfet adjoint of Constantinople; to Kemaleddin Bey, Architect in Chief of the Ministry of Pious Foundations; to Mahmoud Bey, Sheikh of the Bektash Dervishes of Roumeli Hissar; to Professor Alexander van Millingen; to Frederick Moore, Esq.; to Mr. Panayotti D. Nicolopoulos, Secretary of the Mixed Council of the Œcumenical Patriarchate; to Haji Orhan Selaheddin Dedeh, of the Mevlevi Dervishes of Pera; to A. L. Otterson, Esq.; to Sir Edwin Pears; to Refik Bey, Curator of the Palace and Treasury of Top Kapou; to E. D. Roth, Esq.; to Mr. Arshag Schmavonian, Legal Adviser of the American Embassy; to William Thompson, Esq.; to Ernest Weakley, Esq.; and to Zia Bey, of the Ministry of Pious Foundations. My thanks are also due to the editors of the Atlantic Monthly, of Scribner’s Magazine, and of the Spectator, for allowing me to republish those chapters which originally came out in their periodicals. And I am not least grateful to the publishers for permitting me to change the scheme of my book while in preparation, and to substitute new illustrations for a large number that had already been made.
Hamadan, 6th Sefer, 1332.
