The interior of the edifice was a perfect picture, of which the soberly-clad Dervishes occupied the centre; while the exterior circle was peopled with groups of soldiers in their coarse wrapping coats and red caps—venerable Turks in claret-coloured pelisses, richly furred—descendants of Mahomet, with their green turbans and portly beards—and peasants in their rude suits of dusky brown; all equally intent, and all equally orderly.
The Turks are extremely tolerant with regard to religious opinions; their creed being split into as many sects as that of the Church of England; and each individual being left equally free to follow, as he sees fit, the dictates of his conscience. The Dervishes are of several different orders. The Mivlavies are materialists in their faith; the Zerrins worship the Virgin Mary; and the Bektachis believe in the Saviour and the twelve apostles; every order has its peculiar constitution, differing from the dogmas of simple Islamism; but they are universally venerated by Musselmauns, despite their sectarian prejudices. They are generally versed in astrology and music; exorcise sufferers from witchcraft and the evil eye; and are always of quiet and submissive manners, never mingling either in the intrigues of the court, or the cabals of the Ulémas.
It is not surprising that the Turks should venerate their own Dervishes, when they not only tolerate but even respect the Christian monks, and regard their monasteries as holy places, bearing the names of saints, and inhabited by men wholly devoted to God. To such a height, indeed, do they carry this reverence, that they permit the communities of several convents built on the charming little group of islands, called “Princes’ Islands,” situated in the Propontis, not more than two leagues from Constantinople, to be summoned to their chapel to prayer by the ringing of bells; a privilege which is not accorded to any Christian church devoted to a general congregation; but perhaps the greatest proof that can be adduced of their veneration for religious societies exists in the fact that in the mausoleum of the principal Tekiè at Iconium lies one of the most celebrated of Musselmaun saints, Mollah Hunkiar, and beside him a Christian monk, to whom he had been so tenderly attached during his life, that he desired in his will that they should not be separated after death. The two tombs still exist, and what renders the anecdote still more worthy of record, is the circumstance that it is the Chèïk or Abbot of this very monastery, who has the privilege of girding on the sword of the Sultan in the Mosque of Eyoub, on his accession to the Ottoman throne.
The Turks do not consider their women worthy to become Dervishes, but they, nevertheless, respect the Christian nuns; and a somewhat curious proof of this fact was given in 1818, on the receipt by the Sultan and his favourite minister, Halet Effendi, of two petitions drawn up by a sisterhood at Genoa, in which were set forth the injuries done to their convent by the French Republicans, terminating with a prayer to “his very pious Highness,” to send to them, as a present, three Turkey carpets to cover the floor of their chapel, one of which was to be crimson, a second purple, and the third green; and in return they promised to pray for the health, prosperity, and glory of the august head of the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan gallantly acceded to their request, and the compatriotes of Roxalana received with the least possible delay the magnificent donation by which a Musselmaun Emperor contributed to the adornment of a temple dedicated to Christian worship.
In the cemetery of the Tekiè at Pera lies the body of the Marquis de Bonneval, a French renegade who died a pasha; and the stone slab yet remains there that once covered the head of Halet Effendi, the founder of the convent, which, I have omitted to mention, is built entirely of marble. The head of the Effendi has, however, been removed to a less sacred place of burial, and has found a traitor’s grave.
Halet Effendi, once the favourite of the Sultan, was the cause of the Greek insurrection, which he brought about to conceal his own disloyal views. Having, by his intrigues, caused the appointment of Michel Suzzo to the principality of Moldavia, and having been reproached with the disaffection of Suzzo towards his Imperial master, the minister, who was responsible for the conduct and loyalty of his Greek protégé, boldly replied that the disaffection towards the Sultan was not that of Suzzo individually, but of his whole nation; an assertion which he immediately proceeded to bear out by exciting the Greeks covertly to rebellion; and he was so well seconded by his creature that, when Ypsalanti reared his standard in the provinces, Suzzo joined his banner, and the insurrection in the Morea, and the revolt of the Greeks in Constantinople, with the murder of the Patriarch, were the fearful consequences of the rebellious coalition; a treason which Mahmoud visited on his favourite with a sentence of exile to Iconia, giving him, at the same time, an autograph letter, in which he pledged himself to respect both his life and property; but, after the lapse of a few years, repenting an act of clemency so misplaced, the Sultan dispatched a Capedjee-basha, furnished with a Firman of recall, to his banished courtier, who found Halet Effendi at Iconia, and presented his credentials. The exile, overjoyed at so sudden and unlooked-for a change in his fortunes, lost no time in preparing for his return to Constantinople; but he had not long confided himself to the keeping of the Capedjee-basha when the bowstring terminated his existence, and the executioner hastened back to Stamboul, carrying along with him the head of his victim.
This ghastly memorial of their benefactor was consigned, at their urgent request, to the Dervishes of Pera, who buried it in their grave-yard, beneath the small slab of stone, which, in a Turkish cemetery, indicates to the initiated that the deceased above whom it is placed has perished by violence; but it had not lain there more than a few days, when the Sultan chanced to inquire how it had been disposed of; and, hearing that it had received burial at this Tekiè, of whose order, entitled Mevlavies, he is himself a member, (and whose chapel in which he formerly performed his evolutions he still frequents, although in private, occupying, on his visits, one of the latticed closets,) he ordered that it should be immediately disinterred and carried to Balata, where the common sewers of the city empty themselves into the Bosphorus. This was accordingly done; and the turban-crested pillar that surmounts the slab now only serves to indicate the spot where rested for a few brief days the dishonoured head of Halet Effendi.