Turkish Madhouses—Surveillance of Sultan Mahmoud—Self-Elected Saints—Lunatic Establishment of Solimaniè—The Mad Father—The Apostate—The Sultan’s Juggler—The Slave Market—Charshee.
No traveller who can string his nerves to the trial; or rather who will not suffer himself to be scared by the idea of a Turkish madhouse, should fail while at Constantinople, to visit the Timerhazè, or Lunatic Establishment, dependent on the mosque of Solimaniè. He will encounter nothing to disgust, and comparatively little to distress him; for all is cleanly, quiet, and almost cheerful. For myself, morbidly sensitive on such occasions, I shrank from the task which I was nevertheless resolved to achieve, until the eleventh hour; and my only feeling when I looked around me
“Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,
Nor words a language, nor even men mankind,”
in the Madhouse of Solimaniè, was one of intense relief, on finding that my own diseased fancy had so far outrun the reality.
It is, however, to the universal surveillance of Sultan Mahmoud that the unfortunates who tenant the building are indebted for the only comforts which they are still capable of enjoying; for but a few years ago they were unapproachable to the stranger, from the filthy and neglected state of both their cells and their persons. By an Imperial order, cleanliness and care have been secured to them; and the calm, and in many instances, affectionate manner, in which they conversed with their keepers, was a convincing proof that they were kindly treated. The Turks have, moreover, a superstitious reverence for the insane. They believe that the spirit has been recalled by its God, and the hallucinated being is regarded as almost saintly; a beatification, however, of which filth appears to be almost a concomitant part in the East; for whenever you encounter in the streets a wild-looking wretch, half Dervish, and half mendicant; so wretchedly filthy, that you dare not suffer him to come in contact with you as you pass him—with a beard matted with dirt, and elf-locks hanging about his shoulders, of which the colour is undistinguishable; ragged, swarming with vermin, and apparently half stupified with opium; should you, amid your disgust, make any inquiry as to his identity, you are told that he is a saint!
This extraordinary race of men (for there are numbers of them about the streets of Constantinople) are self-elected in their holiness; and take up the trade as less ambitious individuals establish themselves in commerce. They affect absence of thought, concentration of mind, and having progressed gradually to a certain point, they finish with partial aberration of intellect; and this last may, in truth, be often real, for the years of unwashed and uncombed misery to which they condemn themselves are enough to produce madness. Ragged and wretched as I have described them, these miserable men are, nevertheless, objects of great veneration to the mass of the people; and the poorest calmac, or porter, will seldom refuse his para to one of these saintly mendicants.
The Lunatic Establishment of Solimaniè occupies an inner court of the mosque, whose centre is overshadowed by several magnificent plane trees, planted round a spacious fountain. Three sides of the court are furnished with arches, through which the apartments of the lunatics are entered, while each is ventilated by a couple or more of large grated windows; the number of patients in each cell never exceeding that of the windows. The most painful object connected with the scene, was the heavy chain and collar of iron worn by each of the lunatics, which kept up a perpetual clanking as the unfortunate moved in his restlessness from place to place within his narrow limits. The bedding was cleanly, comfortable, and profuse; and many of the tenants of the cells were eating melons, or smoking their chibouks, as tranquilly and as methodically as though they had been under a very different roof.
Among the whole number there was not one furiously mad, as is so frequently the case in Europe; and I was assured that such patients were extremely rare. Melancholy appeared to be the prevailing symptom of the disease among these hallucinated Osmanlis; a deep, but by no means sullen, melancholy; for very few of them refused to reply to an expression of interest or commiseration; and the feeling of social courtesy, so strong among the Turks, had in no one instance been destroyed, even by the total aberration of intellect which had prostrated every other bond of union between them and their fellow-men.
I have mentioned elsewhere the surpassing love of the Turks for their children; and I never saw a more beautiful illustration of parental affection than was exhibited by the first unfortunate before whose cell we paused. Several Greek ladies accompanied us; and the madman, whose head was pillowed upon his knees as we approached him, turned his dim, stony eyes upon each with a cold unconsciousness that was thrilling, until he met the soft, tearful gaze of a pale, delicate girl who was leaning upon my arm. When he caught sight of her he started from his recumbent posture, and almost shrieked out his gladness as he exclaimed—“My child! my child! they told me that you had abandoned me, but I let them say on without a murmur, for I knew that you only tarried; and you are come at last—Why do you weep? I see you, and I am happy. I have not been alone—look here—” and he thrust his hand into his breast, and drew forth a dove which was nestling there; “I have held this upon my heart, and, as I slept, I dreamt that it was you.”