At an early hour on the following morning we started, accompanied by a guide, and our own servant who acted as Dragoman, to visit such objects of interest as might exist in the immediate vicinity of the city; and after climbing the hill on which the ancient wall is based, and passing through a fine old gate, in whose neighbourhood we remarked several Greek inscriptions that had apparently been displaced at the capture of the city, as one or two of them are inverted, we found ourselves in front of the Mausoleum of Sultan Orcan.
This sovereign, who was the son of Othman, the first Turkish Emperor, took Broussa, (which was at the time the capital of Bithinia) in the year 1350; and, according to an old monkish chronicle which I consulted on the spot, “He found three towers filled with the treasures of these kings, which they had been amassing from the first building of the city; gold and silver in ingots and in coins; pearls and jewels, among which were twelve precious stones unique in value; furniture and dresses wrought in gold and silver; crowns of great price filled with gold and pearls; saddles, pantaloons, and swords worked with gold, and pearls, and jewels—forming altogether the lading of seven hundred camels, all of which he despatched to his native country. This done, he collected together all the young children: some he caused to lie on their stomachs upon the earth, where he trampled them beneath the feet of horses; others he flung into the river; and others again he exposed naked to the sun, where they died of thirst. Many mothers stifled their children, rather than deliver them over to the barbarian. It would be difficult to describe the torments inflicted on the Bishops, the Priesthood, and the monks; some were drowned, some burnt, some dragged by horses, &c. &c.”
“This monarch,” pursues the historian, “was brave, luxurious, and generous; and was the husband of Kilikia, the Princess of Caramania; he was wounded at the taking of Broussa, and died in consequence a few days afterwards, having reigned twenty-two years.”
It was the tomb of this “generous” conqueror which we were about to invade; and, while the guide was absent in search of the Turbedar Hanoum, or Holy Woman, who had charge of the keys, I amused myself by examining the exterior entrance of the building, or rather of that portion of it now converted into an Imperial Mausoleum.
The open porch, with its deeply projecting roof painted in fresco, is supported by two pillars of coarse old Byzantine architecture, and composed of delicately-veined white marble. This porch gives admittance only to the Court of the Tomb-house, and presents a spectacle probably unique, and so characteristic of the progress of the fine arts in this country, that it deserves especial mention. The pillars to which I have alluded as supporting the porch are reversed; the sculptured capitals rest on the earth, and a plaistered summit has been supplied, gaudily painted in blue and yellow; while the pillars themselves are only just beginning, thanks to time and weather, to reveal the material of which they are composed, through their decaying coat of whitewash!
When a frightful old woman, huddled up in a scarf of coarse white cotton, at length made her appearance, key in hand, and admitted us to the Inner Court, a second anomaly nearly as startling as the first presented itself. The enclosure was thickly planted with young trees, among which a pomegranate, gorgeous in its livery of green and scarlet, was the most conspicuous; and a sparkling fountain was pouring forth its copious stream of clear cool water into a marble reservoir; while the long flexile branches of a wild vine were gracefully wreathed across the entrance of the Mausoleum. But here again the hand of barbarism had been at work; and the four slender Ionic columns of gray marble which support the porch, had undergone the same melancholy process of painting, and their capitals were decorated with a wreath of many-coloured foliage!
Little did such an exhibition of modern Vandalism prepare me for the splendid coup-d’œil that awaited me within. The Mausoleum is a portion of an ancient Greek monastery, dismantled by Sultan Orcan at the capture of the city; and is supposed to have been a private chapel in which the Emperor was accustomed to perform his devotions. It is of an oval form; and, previously to a fire which partially destroyed it a few years since, was entirely lined with rich marbles. Those now deficient have been replaced by paint and stucco, in precisely the same taste as that which operated on the exterior; but, as their number is comparatively small, the general effect is not greatly marred.
Sultan Orcan, with his wife Kilikia, two of his Odaliques, and seventeen of his children, occupy the centre of the floor; whose fine mosaic pavement has been covered throughout the whole space thus appropriated with a mass of coarse plaister, raised about a foot from the floor, and supporting the Sarcophagi. That of the Sultan himself is overlaid with a costly cachemire shawl, above which are spread two richly embroidered handkerchiefs in crimson and green, worked with gold; while the turban at its head is decorated with a third, wrought in beautiful arabesques, and by far the most splendid thing of the kind that I ever saw, Those of the Sultanas and their children are simply painted of the sacred green, and totally unornamented; the first instance of such a marked distinction that I had yet met with in the country.
At the upper end of the chapel, three rows of marble seats, arranged amphitheatrically, occupy the extremity of the oval immediately opposite to the altar, and are surmounted by a centre seat, supposed to have been that from which the monarch was accustomed to hear the mass, while his nobles placed themselves on the benches at his feet. The lofty dome is supported by six gigantic square pillars of masonry, and the marbles that line the walls are inserted with considerable taste. In one of the side arches a cross still remains, which was introduced among the mosaics by the Greeks; but a second, of much larger dimensions, which surmounted their altar, has been destroyed, and the space that it occupied coarsely covered with plaister.
On the left-hand side of the Imperial Sarcophagus hangs a small wooden case, shaped like a bird-cage, and covered with green silk, containing the Sultan’s beard!—the precious relic of five centuries!