Returning by the harbour along the water’s edge, the various objects of the city come in view. The Yeni Djami, close on the shore, erected by the piety of the Sultana Valadi, mother of the reigning sovereign, from the dower settled on her, not to purchase pins as in Europe, but paponches or sandals, and hence the edifice is called the “Mosque of the Slipper.” Next the district called “Istambol dichare,” or exterior quarter, comes in view. This is the alluvial portion, lying between the walls and the water, and formed by the deposits of charcoal, ashes, and various heaps of dirt brought from the higher grounds by the many little rills which trickle down. It is a black, muddy stratum, seldom exceeding forty or fifty yards in breadth, but extending the length of a quarter of a mile. The streets formed on it are narrow, wet, and dirty, but far more populous than any other part of the city. Various iskelli, or slips, project into the water, whence passengers pass from side to side. It is the inlet for all foreign merchandise brought by Frank ships to the harbour. Tobacco, oil, wood, flour, green and dried fruits, are stored in various warehouses. Here, too, is the great depôt for gunpowder, which lies among wooden houses, with oil, charcoal, and other inflammable substances, where the crowded population are all smoking, and casting about the red embers of their chiboques, originating some of those tremendous conflagrations, which have at different times devastated the city.
It is here the Emirs reside, who are supposed to be the descendants of Fatimah, the daughter of Mahomet. They are endued by the Prophet with the faculty of healing all diseases by praying, breathing, and touching, but particularly erysipelas and eruptive distempers. They are allowed by the Porte a tahim, or a certain quantity of provisions for their maintenance, on the condition of dispensing their gift of the healing art to the people; and the patient is enjoined to give them for every cure a fee of five paras, something less than a farthing. They are distinguished by green turbans and a tebsib, or “chaplet of beads,” on which they count their prayers for the recovery of their patients. Their mode of cure is simple. They are found standing in the streets; and when a diseased man distinguishes the green turban among the crowd, he approaches with reverence. The emir lays his thumb on the side of his nose, breathes upon his forehead, utters a short prayer, and the cure is effected in five minutes. A belief in the efficacy of touch and prayer, in healing disease, is universal among the Christian and Jewish, as well as the Islam population of Constantinople, and constantly resorted to.
The Fanal, or celebrated Greek quarter, now succeeds. It is so called from a “phanar,” or light-house, which illumined the gate, and was assigned exclusively to the Christians, on the capture of Constantinople. Here is the residence of the patriarch, and here the venerable head of the Oriental church was hanged over his own gate-way, when the Greek insurrection commenced in the province, and hence his lifeless body was dragged through filth and mud with gratuitous insult by the Jews, and cast into the water. Here also is the metropolitan church, conferred by Mahomet II. on the Christians, when the Moslem took possession of Santa Sophia. Among the reliques which confer interest and
value to this edifice, is the actual pillar to which our Saviour was bound when he was scourged, and the chair inlaid with mother-of-pearl, from which Chrysostom, with “the golden mouth,” delivered those eloquent homilies, which have been handed down to us in fourteen folio volumes. Here reside the seven princes of the Greek nation, which formerly filled the office of hospodars of Wallachia and Moldavia, once the proud and the powerful, but now steeped in misery and humiliation. The streets of this celebrated district are dark and dirty; the houses, mean and neglected. During the tempest of the revolution they were entirely sacked by the Turkish mob, the property of their inhabitants confiscated by the government, the princely population strangled or exiled; and the Fanariots, once composing a noble and opulent community of 40,000 persons, are now confined to half the number, and that half reduced to the most abject poverty.
After the Fanal succeeds the district of Blachernæ, where the wall, which runs from sea to sea, meets the harbour, and impends over it with its lofty battlements. From hence it reaches to Eyoub, and that singular factory is seen on the water’s edge, so peculiar to the present state of Turkey. A distinguishing characteristic of the turban was a small red cap, called a fez, which covered the crown, and round which the turban was wound. When this ponderous head-dress was laid aside by the sultan, the fez was retained, as a remnant of Orientalism, but as its circumference was less than that of a saucer, its border was enlarged till it reached the ears, and it became the adopted and distinguishing covering of the head under the new regime. It was originally manufactured at Tunis, and cost the government such immense sums, that the sultan resolved to establish a manufactory of it at home, and extensive edifices were erected for the purpose. A number of African workmen were invited, and they succeeded in every thing except the vivid colour, the preparation of which was kept a profound secret at Tunis. At length the process was discovered by an intelligent and enterprising Armenian; and the establishment, now complete in all its parts, exceeds, perhaps, that of any in Europe. Nearly one thousand females, of all persuasions, Raya as well as Turk, assemble here, and receive the wool weighed out to them. This they knit into caps of the prescribed form, and then return them. They are next subject to a process of fulling, and teazel heads, to raise the knap, then to clipping with shears, and finally pressed under a screw, till at length the texture becomes so dense as to obliterate all trace of knitting, and appears like the finest broad cloth. When it has attained this state, it is dyed by the newly-discovered process, and assumes a hue of rich dark scarlet or crimson. The altered shape of the cap is now a cylinder with a flat top, from the centre of which a thrum of purple silk-thread depends, encircled by a piece of crumpled white paper, which is always suffered to remain as part of the ornament. This, which resembles the undignified red night-cap of Europe, drawn down about the ears, is the regulation cap, which the sultan presented to all his subjects as the first reformation in Oriental dress, and which he wore himself as an example to others: but it is a miserable substitute for his splendid turban. The demand for it, however, is so great, that 180,000 are here annually manufactured, and sent to all parts of the empire. They impress it with the sultan’s cipher, and thus designate it as of imperial manufacture.
