Constantinople old and new

by H. G. Dwight

This system is probably the one the Turks found in use when they entered the city. Water still runs in the aqueducts of Valens and Justinian, and until the present generation Stamboul had no other water-supply than that first collected by Hadrian and Constantine. The Sultans restored and improved it, but I have no doubt that the conduits of many a Turkish fountain were laid by a Roman emperor. Of Byzantine fountains remaining to this day, I am not sure that any can positively be identified as such. Many of the fountains of Stamboul, however, must occupy the place of Byzantine fountains, whose materials may have been used in their construction. And it would not have been strange if the new masters of the city adapted to their own use models which they saw about them. The great quadruple fountain of Kîrk Cheshmeh—Forty Fountains—is a case in point. The Turks connect with it the name of Sultan Süleïman I, who is said to have left forty fountains in the city. But its original level was considerably below the existing street, and one of the four niches is ornamented with a Byzantine relief of peacocks, while other Byzantine fragments are built into the structure. The arches of two of the niches, moreover, are round, which was not characteristic of Süleïman’s period. So we are not without reasons for thinking that the fountain may have been a Byzantine one restored by Süleïman—who also restored the aqueduct that feeds it. The same is likely of others of his forty fountains. No others of them bear Byzantine sculptures. In fact, the only other street fountain on which I have seen any such decoration—unless the goose of Kazlî be Byzantine—is that of the small Koumrülü Mesjid, between Fatih and the Adrianople Gate. But the large Horhor Cheshmeh near Ak Seraï, and another farther up the hill toward the old Forum Amastrianon, have a distinct Byzantine air. At the same time, their general form is that of the Turkish wall fountain—an arched niche, containing a faucet above a stone or marble trough.

This form, in its simplest state, without any ornament or even a “mirror stone,” is found in what may be the oldest Turkish fountain in Constantinople. It lies within the enclosure of the castle of Roumeli Hissar. The niche is deeper than in later fountains, and the bricks used in its construction are the large flat ones which the Turks borrowed from their predecessors. If truth compels me further to record that the arch is not the pointed one preferred by the Turks until the eighteenth century, I am able to add that neither are the arches of the castle itself.

The Byzantine fountain of Kîrk Cheshmeh

I suppose it is natural that few fountains of that early period remain to us. The newcomers probably found the city well enough supplied already, and five hundred years is a long time for such small structures to last in the open. The oldest inscribed wall fountain I know is that of Daoud Pasha, outside the mosque of the same personage, who was Grand Vizier to the Conqueror’s son Baïezid II (A. H. 890/A. D. 1485). There is little about the pointed arch or fairly deep niche to attract attention, save the bold inscription above a small mirror stone of palpably later date: “The author of charity deceased, the Grand Vizier Daoud Pasha.” This is the earliest form of ornament that appears on Turkish fountains—though I fancy the broad eaves that protect many of them did not wait long to be invented. I have already dwelt on the importance of writing in all Turkish decoration. I therefore need not add that the simplest inscription on a fountain has for the Turks an importance of a kind we do not appreciate. Some fountains are famous merely for the lettering on them—as in its day was that of Feïzoullah Effendi, outside his medresseh, whose inscription was designed by the celebrated calligraph Dourmoush-zadeh Ahmed Effendi.

It must not be inferred that the matter of the inscription is comparatively of less importance—though here again the Western critic is not quite competent to judge. The commonest of all inscriptions is a verse from the Koran: “By water all things have life.” Other verses, mentioning the four fountains of Paradise and the pool Kevser into which they flow, are also frequent, together with references to the sacred well Zemzem, which Gabriel opened for Hagar in Mecca, to Hîzîr and the Spring of Life, and to the battle of Kerbela, in which Hüsseïn and his companions were cut off from water. Or the central tenet of Islam, “There is no God but God and Mohammed is the Prophet of God,” may be carved above the niche—sometimes without any indication of the name or epoch of the founder. The majority, however, are not so modest. They are more likely to give ampler information than he who runs may read. And after the time of Süleïman the Magnificent it became increasingly the fashion for celebrated poets to compose the verses which celebrated calligraphs designed. Thus the historian Chelibi-zadeh records the end of the inscription on a reservoir of Ahmed III: “Seïd Vehbi Effendi, the most distinguished among the word-wizards of the time, strung these pearls on the thread of his verse and joined together the two lines of the following chronographic distich, like two sweet almonds breast to breast: ‘With what a wall has Ahmed dammed the waters! For of astonishment stops the flood in the midst of its course.’”

Chronograms are as common on fountains as they are on other monuments. The earliest I have happened to come across is an Arabic one on a fountain near the Studion, which points the reader’s attention as follows—“The date fell: We gave thee the fountain of Paradise.” The latter phrase is from the Koran. Its numerical value is 970, or 1563 of our era, which is twenty years later than the chronogram on the tomb of the Prince. The ideal chronogram should contain the name of the builder of the fountain and that of the writer of the verse—though I must confess I never found one that attained that height of ingenuity. Most of them mention the founder’s name alone, as “Sultan Mourad’s fountain is a gift” (994/1586), or “O God, grant Paradise to Moustafa Pasha!” (1095/1684). But the exigencies of arithmetic may relegate the names to the earlier part of the inscription—as on one of two neighbouring fountains in the quarter of Ak Bîyîk (anglice, White Whisker): “When the mother of Ali Pasha, Vizier in the reign of Sultan Mahmoud, quenched the thirst of the people with the clear and pure water of her charity, Riza of Beshiktash, the Nakshibendi”—an order of dervishes—“uttered the following epigraph: Come and drink water of eternal life from this joyful fountain.” The value of the last phrase is 1148, or 1735. Even in so general a sentiment, however, it is not always easy to get the required figure. Various ingenious devices are resorted to, of which a handsome Renaissance fountain in Kassîm Pasha is an excellent example: “The famous Vizier, the victorious warrior Hassan Pasha, made this fountain as a trophy for Mohammedans. His aims were always philanthropic and he provided this fountain with water like Zemzem. This fountain is so well situated and built in so pleasant a place that one would take it as the site where flows the water of eternal life. Those who look upon it drive away all sorrow from their hearts.” The numerical value of the last sentence is 2080, a date even farther from the Mohammedan calendar than from ours. But the value of the single word “sorrow” is 1040. Drive it away, or in other words subtract 1040 from 2080, and you get 1040 again, which is evidently the date of the construction (1631). The light values of this inscription are as enigmatic as its numerical values, so that I have never been able to photograph it properly. It also states that the water rights are free, meaning that no one saka may sell the water. The builder of this interesting fountain was in his day a saddler, a cook, and a sergeant, which did not prevent him from eventually becoming high admiral of the fleet, inflicting a memorable defeat upon the Russians in the Black Sea, and marrying the sister of Sultan Mourad IV.

The two fountains of Ak Bîyîk

The taste for chronograms has continued to this day, but in time the arithmetic of the reader was helped out by an incidental date. The earliest numerals I have found are of the time of Süleïman the Magnificent, on a fountain built by a Jew in the suburb of Hass-kyöi (931, 1525). The same fountain is also decorated with the earliest reliefs I have noted, consisting merely of a little tracery on the mirror stone. Altogether this period was an important one for fountains as it was for all Turkish architecture. But while a few of them are admirably proportioned, like the little fountain in Avret Bazaar at the gate of the soup-kitchen of the Hasseki—she was Hourrem, the Joyous One, who bore to Süleïman his ill-fated son Moustafa—many of them are disappointingly heavy. It may be that the great Sinan did not consider such small monuments worth his while, or that they have suffered by restoration. At all events, the lesser sultans who followed Süleïman left fountains generally more graceful. Ahmed I is said to have built not less than a hundred of them. In the meantime they gradually developed in detail. The tracery, less floral than geometrical, covered more and more of the marble. Conventionalised cypresses, with tops mysteriously bent, sprang up on either side of the taps. Conventionalised roses, often having a mystic symbolism, became a favourite ornament for the apex of the arch. The occult pentagram or hexagram, symbolic of microcosm and macrocosm and talismanic against evil, were sometimes carved at the corners. And the top, when it was not shaded by broad eaves, was finished in various decorative ways.