Our next side trip, after visiting Troy, was a short excursion to Brusa which—partly by steamer and partly by rail—is easily accessible from Constantinople. I was especially eager to see this famous place, for its historic associations are numerous and varied. It was to Brusa—anciently Prusa—that Hannibal fled after his defeat by the Romans. There are indeed, some authorities who maintain that the great Carthaginian general was the founder of Brusa. It was from this city, which was once large and prosperous, that Pliny the Younger, while governor of Bithynia, wrote his celebrated letter to Trajan, in which he asked for instructions concerning the policy to be pursued regarding “the stubborn sect of Christians” who were then rapidly increasing in numbers and who, by refusing to offer sacrifices to the gods and by persistently avoiding all pagan rites and observances, had made themselves specially obnoxious to Roman officialdom. This letter[82] is remarkable as being one of the first notices in Roman writers respecting the members of that incipient Church which was eventually to become mistress of the capital of Cæsars.
In Ottoman history Brusa is notable for having been the capital of Orkhan, the second ruler of the Osmanlis and for having long been the favorite resort of Moslem scholars, artists, poets, and dervishes who enjoyed a great reputation among their coreligionists for their reputed sanctity. And even after the transfer of the Ottoman capital to Adrianople and subsequently to Constantinople, Brusa continued to be one of the sacred cities of the Mohammedans. For here were buried the first six Osmanli sovereigns besides more than a score of Ottoman princes and here “more than five hundred pashas, theologians, teachers, and poets sleep their last sleep around their first Padishas.” Among the turbehs which particularly impressed me was that of the Serbian princess who, although the wife of a Sultan, was able to preserve untainted the religion of her Christian parents. Here were erected numerous medresses—colleges—mosques and public buildings whose size and grandeur were for centuries a favorite theme of Moslem poets and historians. In beauty of design, richness of material, and exquisite finish some of the mosques—especially the renowned Green Mosque—are even to-day regarded as the most perfect specimens of Osmanli architecture.
Our visit to Brusa was most enjoyable and was an ideal introduction to our long journey through the Ottoman possessions in Asia. For in this old capital of the sultans we find more strikingly exhibited than in noisy, metropolitan Constantinople those dominant characteristics of most Asiatic cities—apathetic immobility, undisturbed quietude, and dreamy repose.
But before taking the train at Haidar Pasha we spent a day in wandering through Scutari and Kadi Keui which are just across the Bosphorus from Stamboul. Like Brusa both of these places—especially Scutari—are distinctively Oriental in character and are well worthy of a visit. Both of them, too, have played prominent roles in the long, historic past and, although they are now so overshadowed by the great city of Constantine, they, nevertheless, offer many attractions that are well worthy of the attention of the student and the historian.
Scutari was formerly known as Chrysopolis—the Golden City. Its special attractions for tourists are the Howling Dervishes, whose peculiar devotional exercises take place every Thursday, and the Great Cemetery which is celebrated as the largest and most beautiful Moslem of burying places. It is a great forest of cypress trees, more than three miles in length. Each grave has its tombstone, usually a very modest one. Some of the epitaphs I observed were very touching, especially those that terminated with a prayer that a Fatihah—the first chapter of the Koran—might be said for the soul of the deceased.
This chapter [writes Sale, the learned translator of the Koran] is a prayer and held in great veneration by the Mohammedans.... They esteem it as the quintessence of the whole Koran, and often repeat it in their devotions, both public and private, as the Christians do the Lord’s Prayer.[83]
It is an integral part of each of the five daily prayers which are said by every good Mussulman. It is, moreover, recited over the sick, at the conclusion of an action of importance, but it is, above all, the favorite prayer for the repose of the soul of the departed taking, in this respect, the place of the Catholic requiescat. As translated by Rodwell it reads:
Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds!
The compassionate, the merciful!
King on the day of reckoning!