Peeps at Many Lands: Turkey

by Julius R. Van Millingen

In dress Pomaks differ but little from the ordinary Turk; in habits they are perhaps more industrious, and it may be put down to their credit that they introduced into Constantinople and elsewhere a new and light form of carriage which is now extensively used for picnics and excursions into the country.

In addition to the half-caste Tartars of Macedonia there are the pure Tartars who for several centuries past have inhabited the highlands of Asia Minor, and who are credited with great trustworthiness. This quality, in addition to their capacity for long and rapid riding, has obtained for them the practical monopoly of the postal service in the interior of Turkey, and the word tartar has come to be synonymous with postillion, or mounted postman. There are relays of horses at stated intervals, but the same rider travels over the whole distance. His saddle is capacious, with broad stirrups in the form of an open shoe. The saddle has, moreover, a hump on which the rider can support his arms, and an arrangement for fixing a short rod, with a crescent-shaped top or cushion, on which the rider rests his chin and sleeps during night travelling. Letters and parcels are placed in saddle-bags, which are thrown astride the saddle in the same way as paniers are with us. They are made of leather, of carpet, or camel's-hair, and the opening is closed through a series of loops running into each other. There is usually great excitement at the arrival of the Tartar, and the letters, where no post office exists, are strewn on the floor of a room of the conak, or Governor's house, and applicants asked to pick out any addressed to them.

Money is also conveyed from province to province by these Tartars, when, if the amount is large, several horses are strung together, and are escorted by mounted police. The currency in the interior being silver coins of the size of our five-shilling pieces, the jolting and friction occasioned by the drive are likely to tear ordinary bags, so the latter are enclosed in a special rope-bag, which is neatly and compactly knitted over them. Gold coin is put up in leather, which is puckered up to form a bag, and tied and sealed on the top.

The Christian Bulgarians of Macedonia, having been brought up more or less under servitude, are of a much meeker character than the Pomaks, but, judging from the strides which have been made by the other Bulgarian races in Turkey since their independence from Turkish rule, we may infer that their Macedonian brethren are also capable of great development. On the whole they are poor, and live in thatched hovels, plastered both within and without with a mixture of clay, cow-dung, and straw. The interior is divided into three rooms—a public room, a family bedroom, and one for keeping provisions. The floor is of clay, beaten hard, and is covered with coarse rugs and cushions large enough to serve as beds. A small oil-lamp burns in a corner under the icon, or picture, of some grim patron saint. Outside the house is an oven, resembling an ant-hill, and accommodation for hens, pigs, and cattle, and the whole is enclosed with a wall and guarded by dogs.

The Bulgarians are frugal in their habits, and live principally on beans seasoned with vinegar and red pepper, and they have a great partiality for garlic. Their principal occupation is agriculture and sheep-farming.

The men's dress somewhat resembles the Albanian, but their vests and jackets are generally made from sheepskins, with the wool turned inwards, and they wear on their heads the calpak, or low cap, made from black lamb-skins, with the wool turned outwards. This calpak is as much the national characteristic of the Bulgarian as the fez is of the Turk. The women's dress is pleasing—green and red being very conspicuous—and when in gala dress their persons are weighted down with ponderous silver ornaments worn on the head, round the neck, waist, and wrists.

Their national music is the bagpipe, but the music is very primitive, and does not soar to the heights of the pibrochs of Scotland, and their dance is heavy and uncouth, and apparently modelled from the bear. Indeed, in one of these dances the principal dancer puts on a real bearskin, and, led about by a young girl, performs all sorts of antics, much to the enjoyment of the spectators, who at the close of the performance all join in hooting and pursuing the dancer.

Formerly large bands of Bulgarian dancers used to come to Constantinople during the Easter festivities, and march through the streets with inflated bagpipes, or resort to the field of sports. Their bear-dance ended, they would fling their caps heavily to the ground, then pick them up, and walk round with them to the crowd for the collection of coppers.

But the Bulgar is no longer popular, either with the Turk or the Greek, and they now seldom grace the festivals in the capital with their presence and their antics.

The Greek population of Macedonia is not large, but is inimical to the Bulgarian, both from feeling of racial antipathy and from religious discord. Both, it is true, belong to what is called the Greek or Orthodox Church, but a few years ago a dispute arose regarding the language in which services should be conducted in Bulgarian churches. The Patriarch and heads of the Greek Church insisted that it should be Greek, whereas the Bulgarians, who do not understand Greek, claimed that it should be Bulgarian, the language of the people. The dispute led to a disruption, and now the Bulgarian Church is governed by a Bulgarian Exarch, and the priests and language are Bulgarian, but the Greek Church considers them schismatics, and will have no ecclesiastical dealings with them.