Constantinople old and new

by H. G. Dwight

It is for the Persians that the day is peculiarly sacred. They also make a special dish for it, called zerdeh, of rice, sugar, and saffron. But that is a mere detail of what is for them the holiest season in the year. The Persians and the Turks belong to two different sects that have divided the Mohammedan world since the death of the Prophet. It is not for an unlettered unbeliever lightly to declare that so serious a matter was in the beginning a question of cherchez la femme. Still, it is a fact that the enmity of Aïsheh, the youngest wife of Mohammed, toward Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, did much to embitter those early differences of opinion. This lady, while on a journey, once caused tongues to wag by disappearing from her litter at a compromising hour and being brought back by a man considerably younger than her distinguished husband. Mohammed was finally forced to silence the voice of scandal by the twenty-fourth Soura of the Koran, entitled Light. In the meantime, however, consulting with his four closest friends and followers as to what should be done, he was assured by three of them that there could be no doubt as to the innocence of the Mother of the Moslems. The fourth, Ali, ventured to suggest that the matter would bear investigation. Aïsheh never forgave the doubt of her step son-in-law, and her enmity was a potent factor in keeping Ali from the caliphate. He eventually did succeed, the fourth to do so, twenty-four years after the Prophet’s death. But the Sunnites regard him as the least of the first four Caliphs. The Shiïtes, on the other hand, do not recognise the first three Caliphs at all. They even fête the anniversary of the death of the second one, Omar. Ali is for them the vicar of God, and they hold his descendants to the ninth generation in peculiar reverence. The twelfth of these Imams, as they are called, the Mehdi, is supposed never to have died. It is believed that he will reappear before the last judgment in order, curiously enough, to overthrow antichrist. As for Ali, the hatred of Aïsheh pursued him even after he became Caliph, and stirred up disaffection against him. He was finally stabbed. His two sons, Hassan and Hüsseïn, also met violent deaths, the former being poisoned and the latter falling under thirty-three wounds on the heroic field of Kerbela. These tragic events are what the Shiïtes commemorate on the 10th of Mouharrem.

A Persian miniature representing the death of Ali

In Persia the entire month is a time of mourning. During the first ten days public passion-plays represent with bloody realism the lives and deaths of the first Imams. In Sunnite Constantinople, where there are some six thousand Persians, the commemoration is naturally less public, although the two sects no longer come to blows over it. Most of the Persian colony are from the region of Tabriz, where a Turkish dialect is spoken. Their headquarters are in a number of old stone hans near the bazaars and the War Department. Large tents are put up in the courts of these hans during Mouharrem, and there every evening mollahs recite the story of the tragedy of Kerbela. It took place more than a thousand years ago, and religious feeling has cooled much in those thousand years, but the story still has a strange power to draw tears from the crowding Persians who listen to it. After the third night men with banners and torches give a greater semblance of reality to the recitation. On the tenth night, or on the night of the tenth day, which is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Hüsseïn, the torches and banners march about to the various hans where Persians live.

The last time I saw this ceremony it included picturesque features new to me; and, by way of marking a dramatic contrast between century and century, an aeroplane suddenly whirred across the square of sky visible from the Valideh court. But I shall always remember the first of the processions that I saw. It was in the same paved courtyard of Valideh Han, surrounded by half-ruined cloisters. The central mosque, the temporary shed in one corner, the sparse trees, the silently waiting spectators, made so many vague shapes in the February dusk; and snow was falling. A strange clamour of pipes and drums and shouting began to make itself heard in the distance. Suddenly the archway giving entrance to the han lighted up with a smoky glare, and the procession surged slowly into the court. It was led by men carrying flaming cressets of iron basketwork and three enigmatic steel emblems on long staves. The central one was a sort of sword-blade above a spindle-shaped fretting of Arabic letters, while the other two were tridents springing from a similar base; and from all three floated streamers of crape. Next came two files of standard-bearers, dressed in black, with black caps on their heads. The flags they bore were black or dark-coloured, triangular in shape, with the names of the Imams and other holy inscriptions embroidered on them in silver. On top of some of the staves was an open hand of brass. I was told that it commemorated the mutilation of Hüsseïn. Behind the standard-bearers marched more men in black, chanting in a rhythm of six beats and striking their bare breasts on the fifth. Even a foreigner could distinguish the frequent names of Ali and Hüsseïn. Others held in both hands a chain at the end of which was a bunch of smaller chains. With this, first over one shoulder and then over the other, they beat their backs. The thud kept time with the chanting, and vigorously enough to leave visible, sometimes sickening signs, under the torn black of the single garment they wore. Two white horses followed. The first, with rich saddle-cloth and head-stall, carried a little boy on his back. On the saddle of the second, caparisoned in blood-streaked white, were two doves. Then came a band of musicians, singing, playing pipes, beating drums, and clashing cymbals. And last of all, slowly advancing sidewise in two long lines, appeared a gruesome company of men in white, who chanted hoarsely and slashed their shaven heads with bloody swords. The blood-stained figures in white, the black flagellants, the symbolic horses, the mourning banners, the points of steel answering the flare of the torches, made strange matter indeed for the imagination, moving with desperate music through that veil of driving snow.

Valideh Han

The procession marched round the courtyard three times and then went into the tent, where a dirge was chanted in honour of the martyrs of Kerbela. At different moments of the ceremony, and particularly at sight of the child and the doves on horseback—symbolic of Hüsseïn’s son, who was killed in his arms, and of the souls of the martyrs—many a Persian among the spectators sobbed uncontrolledly. Other spectators smiled at the tears streaming down bearded cheeks and at the frenzy of the flagellants. For myself, I can never help feeling respect for any real emotion, however far I may be from sharing it. People say, indeed, that these processions are not what they used to be and that much of the slashing is feigned. That may well enough be. Still, I found myself compelled to turn aside when the men in white passed in front of me. More than one of them, too, had to be helped staggering away before the procession came to an end. It is not every one who takes part in these ceremonies. The participants are men who fulfil a vow of their own or of their parents, usually in gratitude for some deliverance. Their zeal is so great that it is necessary to draw up a preliminary schedule for the processions, so that no two shall meet and dispute the right of way. Each forms in its own courtyard, but the men in white do not begin their cutting till they are in the street. When the marchers finally return to their own han—having, in the meantime, visited the public bath—they spread rugs on the floor of the tent and spend the evening drinking tea and entertaining their friends.

This ceremony is repeated in a milder form in Scutari, on the day after ashoureh. Early in the morning the Persians flock to a valley of cypresses called Seïd Ahmed Deresi, which is a corner of the great cemetery reserved for their use. There they rejoice over such as have by their own blood atoned for that of Hüsseïn. I have followed them thither only once, but I am happy to say that no interment took place. Tents were set up on the edge of the cemetery, of a faded green that admirably set off the darker cypresses, and close-packed Persians squatted in them, drinking tea or smoking their terrible toumbeki. More Persians, recognisable by their black caps if not by their cast of feature, roamed among the trees. Most of them were of the humbler sort, in skirted coats of dull colours. Here and there was one in a long stiff fuzzy black cloak, with a touch of gold at the throat. Many had beards decoratively reddened with henna, and wore their hair shaved high about the neck and off the middle of the forehead. There was much embracing between hairy monsters who had not met, perhaps, since last Mouharrem; and much patronising was there of ambulatory venders of good things to eat. Finally, at what signal I know not, a company of men in black marched out among the graves, bearing triangular flags of the sort I have already described. At some distance they joined forces with a company of coloured flags, headed by the strange ornaments of steel. Two of the coloured flags should have been in a museum rather than in Scutari cemetery on a wet winter day. They were unusually fine examples of the Persian wood-block printing, and in the centre of each smiled an inimitable lion with a curly tail. These two companies marched chanting together to the end of the cemetery, where they met a third made up of flagellants. But this time there were no men in white and no bloody blades. Then they all proceeded down the long road to the water, the steel emblems and the coloured flags first, the black banners next, and the flagellants last, chanting, beating their breasts, and swinging their heavy chains. Every few steps they stopped and went through their rite with greater zeal. The stops were longest in front of institutions and great houses, where a mollah would intone from a parchment manuscript he carried. And in the picturesque little square of Top Tashi, where some fallen Greek pillars lie in front of the madhouse attached to the mosque of the Valideh Atik, a Roufaï dervish, whom I remembered to have seen in the tekkeh of Karaja Ahmed, sang a long threnody in honour of the martyred Hüsseïn. The procession was followed by hundreds of Persians who joined in the chanting and breast beating. Their number, and the many stops, made an opportunity for street vendors and for beggars. Cripples sat on either side of the narrow street with a handkerchief spread out in front of them on which lay a few suggestive coins. Gaudy gipsy girls were not ashamed to show themselves on so solemn an occasion. I saw two women of a race strange to me, with coppery faces and a perpendicular mark painted in ochre on their foreheads. Strangest of all was a holy man who stood humbly by the wayside. Yet, after all, he was of one brotherhood with the mourners for Hüsseïn. He did not raise his eyes as the procession passed him, nor did he hold out his hand. What first attracted my attention to the goodness of his face were two small round reddish things between which I saw it. Then I made out the reddish things to be onions, spitted on either end of a steel skewer that pierced both his cheeks.