Of that oldest Scutari I did not set out to write an account, but it is convenient that the visitor should be aware of how ancient and honourable a town he is treading the streets. I find it a little difficult to write coherently, however, for two ancient and honourable towns are there. The second one, lying next to the south and facing the Marmora instead of the Bosphorus, is the more ancient, and I suppose in the eyes of the world the more honourable. Chalcedon was its name—derived, by one report, from the Homeric soothsayer Chalkas—and it is represented to-day by the suburbs of Haïdar Pasha, Kadi Kyöi, and Moda. The history of these adjoining quarters is so intertwined that it is sometimes hard to distinguish between Chalcedon and Chrysopolis. Chalcedon, like Byzantium, was founded by colonists from Megara, but a few years earlier. Its greater accessibility and hospitality to ships and the flatness of its site gave it advantages which Chrysopolis did not possess. Chrysopolis, on the other hand, nearer Byzantium and commanding the mouth of the Bosphorus, occupied the more strategic position with regard to the traffic of the strait. Both cities suffered greatly during the Persian wars, and were for a time ruled by the satraps of Darius. The Athenians seized them early in the history of their league, in order to levy tolls on passing ships. So early arose the vexed question of the straits. Philip of Macedon included the two cities in his siege of Byzantium, but was driven away by the Athenians. Xenophon stopped a week in Chrysopolis on his way back from Persia. Hannibal ended his troubled days in a suburb of Chalcedon. Nicomedes III of Bithynia left that town in his will to the Romans, who fought over it with Mithridates of Pontus. The Goths ravaged it on the occasion of their first raid into Asia Minor. The fate of the Roman world was settled on the heights of Chrysopolis in 324, when that other man without a country, Constantine of York, vanquished his last rival, Licinius, and took him prisoner. The experiences and associations of that victory must have had much to do with the transfer of the capital from the Tiber to the Bosphorus. From that time onward the two Asiatic cities lost something in importance but gained in peace—though Persians, Saracens, and Turks later troubled them again. The fourth Ecumenical Council sat in Chalcedon in 451, in that church of St. Euphemia which had been a temple of Venus. The famous oracle of Apollo Constantine destroyed, using its marbles for his own constructions on the opposite side of the strait. From Chrysopolis he also took a celebrated statue of Alexander the Great. His example was followed by the emperor Valens, who utilised the walls of Chalcedon as a quarry for the aqueduct that still strides across a valley of Stamboul. And even Süleïman the Magnificent was able to find materials for his greatest mosque in the ruins of the church of St. Euphemia and of the palace of Belisarius.
The Street of the Falconers
To-day a few sculptured capitals remain above ground in Scutari, and every now and then some one in Kadi Kyöi digs up in his garden a terra-cotta figurine. Otherwise there is nothing left to remind you of the antique cities that sat in front of Byzantium. They have disappeared as completely as the quaint little Scutari of my youth. But two settlements still remain there, and still different, although so long united under one destiny. When projected trolley-cars and motor roads come into being, as they are destined shortly to do, I fancy that this separation will become less and less marked. For the time being, however, Scutari and Kadi Kyöi might be on opposite sides of the Bosphorus. Kadi Kyöi, with its warmer winds, its smoother lands, its better harbours, its trim yachts, its affluent-looking villas, its international Bagdadbahn, has acquired a good deal of the outward appearance of Europe. Whereas Scutari remains Asiatic and old-fashioned. It is very much what it was before Bagdad railways, when the caravans of the East marched through its narrow streets, when the Janissaries pounded their kettledrums in the square of Doghanjiler—the Falconers. And it contains almost all that is to be seen in the two towns of interest to the comer from afar.
The great sight of Scutari, after all, is Scutari itself—which very few people ever seem to have noticed. In front of it opens, somewhat north of west, a nick in the shore known as the Great Harbour. As a matter of fact it is very little of a harbour, whose inner waters are barely safe from the swirl of the Bosphorus as it begins to squeeze past Seraglio Point. The front door of Scutari is here, however, and one altogether worthy of the City of Gold. Seen from the water it is admirably bordered with boats and boat-houses, being no less admirably overlooked by minarets and hanging gardens and climbing roofs and the dark overtopping wall of the great cemetery, while nearer acquaintance proves it to be amply provided with local colour in the way of plane-trees, fountains, and coffee-houses galore. The heart of the town lies in an irregular amphitheatre which twists back from the Great Harbour. Into the floor of the amphitheatre project half a dozen buttresses of an upper gallery, and through the long narrow corridors between them streets climb, sometimes by steps, to the cypresses and their amply sweeping terrace. In this scene, if you like, a lesser Stamboul is set. It has its old houses, its vines, its fountains, its windows of grille work, its mosque yards, its markets, its covered bazaar, even its own edition of the Sacred Caravan and the Persian solemnity of Mouharrem. But it has an air of its own, as the storks will tell you who nest near the flower market. It does not imitate, it complements Stamboul. And it contains monuments so remarkable that I am constantly amazed and scandalised to find out how little people know about them.
Four mosques in particular are the pride and jewels of my native town. They were all erected by princesses—the two oldest after the designs of Sinan. The earliest one, dating from 1547, is the first you see when you come to Scutari. It stands, like the mosque of Rüstem Pasha, on a terrace above the hum of the landing stage. As a matter of fact it was built by the wife of Rüstem Pasha, who was also the daughter of Süleïman the Magnificent and Roxelana. Mihrîmah, this lady was called, which means Moon and Sun. Her mosque is named after her, though it is also called the Great Mosque and the Mosque of the Pitcher—for what reason I have yet to penetrate. It is a little stiff and severe, to my way of thinking. The minarets have not the spring that Sinan afterward learned to evoke, and the interior is rather bare. Perhaps it has been pillaged. But the courtyard, looking out through trees to the Bosphorus, is a delightful spot, and it contains one of the most admirable mosque fountains I know. There are also other fountains in the court, and an old sun-dial, too overgrown by leaves to do its work, and a mouvakît haneh. When I was speaking of mosque yards in general I did not mention this institution. It may seem to us that people who count twelve o’clock at sunset cannot pay much attention to the science of time keeping. But the exact hours of prayer, like the exact direction of Mecca, are very important matters for Mohammedans. The Arabs, I believe, were the first inventors of clocks. At all events, the first clock seen in Europe was a present to Charlemagne from Haroun al Rashid. A clock is an essential part of the furniture of every mosque. Haroun al Rashid is a long time dead, however, and most of the clocks seen to-day were made in England. Mosques of any size, nevertheless, have their own corps of timekeepers, who do their work in a pavilion called the mouvakît haneh—the house of time—and incidentally repair the watches of the neighbourhood. Some of them also take solar observations with instruments that were made for a museum.
Fountain in the mosque yard of Mihrîmah
Next in chronological order is the mosque of the Valideh Atik—which might be translated as the Old or, more politely, as the Wise Mother. It is more popularly known as Top Tashi, or Cannon Stone. In a steep street near the mosque lies a big stone cannon-ball from which the quarter may take its name. However, the Wise Mother was a certain Nour Banou, Lady of Light, who lies buried beside her husband, Sultan Selim II, in the courtyard of St. Sophia. Her mosque stands on the second story of Scutari, and its two minarets and contrasting cypresses, with their encompassing arcade and massive-walled dependencies, make the most imposing architectural group in the town. The mosque has recently undergone a thorough restoration, which is rarely a very happy proceeding. Luckily the restorers left the painted wooden ceilings that decorate the under-side of the gallery—or so much of them as had not been painted out before. There is also an elaborately perforated marble mimber, whose two flags would seem to indicate that a church once stood here. But what is best is the tiled recess of the mihrab. The tile makers of Nicæa had evidently not begun to lose their cunning in the day of the Lady of Light—unless she borrowed from some other place. In any case, the two panels at right angles to the mihrab are so high an ornament of my native town that Scutari deserves to be celebrated for them alone. They seem to me to rank among the finest tiles in Constantinople, though Murray passes them by without a word. In Turkish eyes this mosque has a further interest as being one of the spots known to have been visited by Hîdîr or Hîzîr, lord of the Fountain of Life. In the porch of the mosque hangs an illuminated manuscript commemorating this illustrious visit, and near it are three holes by which Hîzîr is supposed to have moved the mosque in token of his presence.