Many writers have endeavored to account for the exceptional courtesy and cleanliness of the Osmanlis, but the reasons usually advanced are far from satisfactory. “Their religion,” writes Sir Edwin Pears, “inculcates cleanliness and sobriety; ... it has helped to diffuse courtesy and self-respect among its adherents.”[128]
If this were true it should hold good for the Moslems of Egypt and Morocco which, as all travelers in these countries know, is very often far from the case. When we shall be able to assign a reason for the matchless courtesy of the Castilian hidalgo or for the Dutch hausfrau’s singular love of cleanliness, we shall probably find an acceptable explanation of the seemingly innate courtesy and cleanliness of the Osmanlis of Anatolia.
And contrary to almost universal belief, the Osmanlis, both men and women are a people of very industrious habits. This is particularly true of those who make their living by tilling the soil and by tending their flocks and herds. So far as the men are concerned the traveler has ample evidence of their toilsome lives from the time he leaves the swift-flowing Bosphorus until he arrives at the foothills of the picturesque Taurus. As to the women they are, according to those who know them best, as laborious as the men. A competent witness, one who is himself an Ottoman, who was born and bred in Anatolia and whose testimony regarding the domestic life of his countrymen bears the clearest impress of truth, is the clever and entertaining Halil Halid who, having spent many years in England, writes English as a native.
Speaking of his countrywomen he declares:
No qualities are so much sought after in average marriageable women as the domestic ones. In the provinces the peasant women, besides managing their humble domestic affairs, have to work in the fields, more especially when their brothers and husbands are away discharging their compulsory military service. The daughters of well-to-do people, besides attending to the business of their households, are indefatigable with their needles and are always busy with needle work or embroidery.[129]
It will be understood from the details I have given [he continues], that the popular notion prevailing in this country of the harem and the life of the harem is much mistaken. Women in Turkish harems do not really pass their time in lying on sofas or couches eating sweetmeats and smoking water-pipes all the day long. Of course, they are as fond of sweet-stuffs as most ladies of this country. But to lie down on a couch in the presence of others is considered by Turkish women vulgarity of the most disgraceful kind.
The representations of harem life given in books and on the stage or shown in exhibitions, is either the work of Turkey’s detractors or simply the work of imaginative persons who know nothing about it and whose object is to attract the curiosity of English people by exhibiting grotesque sights and thus to make money.
Many Europeans [writes the same author] who pay a flying visit to the Levant and hasten to sit down and write a book about their experiences, derive all their information from their cicerones and interpreters [worthless and unscrupulous fellows whom our author justly denounces as ignorant and shameless cheats] who are, as a class, of the worst products of non-Mussulman natives of the Levant. Probably it is on account of this that a countryman of mine once remarked: “When we read such books, especially those written in English, about ourselves, we always learn something from them which we never knew or heard of before.”[130]
“But,” it will be asked, “what about the morality of the Turks”? This is a question that is continually asked and about which as many erroneous notions prevail as about the harem. One might answer by saying that, where passion is given free rein, poor human nature is about the same in all parts of the world. I shall, however, reply in the words of the witty and vivacious Lady Mary Montague who, writing from Constantinople where her husband was ambassador, to a friend in England, declares:
As to their morality or good conduct, I can say, like Harlequin, that it is just as it is with you; and the Turkish ladies don’t commit one sin the less for not being Christians. Now that I am a little acquainted with their ways, I cannot forbear admiring, either the exemplary discretion, or extreme stupidity of all the writers that have given accounts of them.[131]