The proof of it is that it is to him they confide the care of their property. There are English families that have existed in Turkey for generations, and generations of Turks have served them in positions of trust. These are invariably Turks of the old school, good Mussulmans and simple in their thoughts and lives. A finer type of men no land can show, and happily they are not yet rare.[133]
Nor does one find elsewhere such humane treatment of dumb animals. “Fear God with regard to animals,” enjoined Mohammed, “ride them when they are fit to be ridden and get off when they are tired. Verily there are rewards for our doing good to dumb animals and giving them water to drink.” No Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is needed among the Osmanlis for so strong a sympathy exists between this gentle and tender-hearted people and all domestic animals that anything like cruel treatment would be impossible. Even the dog, which is considered as an unclean animal, is always treated with kindness. An Osmanli will gather together the folds of his garments to prevent his coming in contact with the impure brute but will at the same time gladly divide with it his last morsel of food.
There are few writers who are more familiar with the real Ottomans than the distinguished Academician, Pierre Loti. And this is what he says of them:
Nowhere, so much as among the Turks—the real Turks—does one find solicitude for the poor, the helpless, the aged and for children; such respect for parents, such tender veneration for the mother. If a man, even of mature years, should be seated in one of those innocent little cafés, where alcohol has always been unknown, and his father should unexpectedly enter, he rises, lowers his voice, extinguishes his cigarette, and humbly takes a seat behind him.[134]
Elsewhere the same sympathetic and magnanimous author writes:
Their little towns located in the interior, their villages, their country homes, are the last refuges not only of the calm but also of the patriarchal virtues which are more and more disappearing from our modern world: loyalty and honesty without blemish; veneration of children for parents of a kind that is not longer known to us; inexhaustible hospitality and chivalrous respect for guests; moral elegance and native delicacy, even among the most humble; kindness towards all—even towards animals; unbounded religious tolerance for whomsoever is not their enemy; serene faith and prayer. When arriving among them after leaving our Occident of doubt and cynicism, of noise and scrap-iron, one feels as if suffused with peace and confidence and believes he has remounted the course of time towards some indeterminate epoch, near, perhaps, to the Golden Age.[135]
In Anatolia particularly are applicable the words of the English traveler, Walpole, who, when speaking of the hospitability of the people of Turkey, tells us that “in the East alone now do we find in the Oda Nessafer of the village the guest-chamber of Plato. A sum is set apart by the government for supplying these; though usually the more wealthy traveler repays what he receives, adding a small gratuity.”[136]
In hospitality the Osmanlis of to-day are heirs of the best traditions of the Greeks of old who, as Homer informs us, were wont to say:
For Jove unfolds our hospitable door:
’Tis Jove that sends the stranger and the poor.[137]