Visits to Monasteries in the Levant

by Robert Curzon

The Pasha offered to give me an escort, as he said that the country at that moment was particularly unsafe; but at length it was settled that he should give me a letter to the commander of the troops at Mezzovo, who would supply me with soldiers to see me safely to the monasteries of Meteora. When I arose to take my leave, he sent for more pipes and coffee, as a signal for me to remain; in short, we became great friends. Whilst I was with him a pasha of inferior rank came in, and sat on the divan for half an hour without saying a single word or doing anything except looking at me unceasingly. After he had taken his departure we had some sherbet; and at last I got away, leaving the Pasha in great wonderment at the English government paying large sums of money for the transportation of criminals, when cutting off their heads would have been so much more economical and expeditious. Incurring any expense to keep rogues and vagabonds in prison, or to send them away from our own country to be the plague of other lands, appeared to him to be an extraordinary act of folly; and that thieves should be fed and clothed and lodged, while poor and honest people were left to starve, he considered to be contrary to common sense and justice. I laughed at the time at what I thought the curious opinions of the Vizir of Yanina; I have since come to the conclusion that there was some sense in his notions of criminal jurisprudence.

In the afternoon, as I was looking out of the window of my lodging, I saw the Vizir going by with a great number of armed people, and I was told that in the present disturbed state of the country he never went out to take a ride without all these attendants. First came a hundred lancers on horseback, dressed in a kind of European uniform; then two horsemen, each with a pair of small kettle-drums attached to the front of his saddle. They kept up an unceasing pattering upon these drums as they rode along. This is a Tartar or Persian custom; and in some parts of Tartary the dignity of khan is conferred by strapping these two little drums on the back of the person whom the king delighteth to honour; and then the king beats the drums as the new khan walks slowly round the court. Thus a thing is reckoned a great honour in one part of the world which in another is accounted a disgrace; for when a soldier is incorrigible, we drum him out of the regiment, whilst the Tartar khan is drummed into his dignity. After the drummers came a brilliantly dressed company of kawasses, with silver pistols and yataghans; then several trumpeters; and after them the Vizir himself on a fine tall horse; he was dressed in the new Turkish Frank style, with the usual red cap on his head; but he had an immense red cloth cloak sumptuously embroidered with gold, which quite covered him, so that no part of the great man was visible, except his two eyes, his nose, and one of his hands, upon which was a splendid diamond ring. Two grooms walked by the sides of his horse, each with one hand on the back of the saddle. Every one bowed as the Vizir went by; and I became a distinguished person from the moment that he gave me a condescending nod. The procession was closed by a crowd of officers and attendants on horseback in gorgeous Albanian dresses, with silver bridles and embroidered housings. They carried what I thought at first were spears, but I soon discovered that they were long pipes; there was quite a forest of them, of all lengths and sizes. When the Vizir was gone and the dust subsided, I strolled out of the town on foot, when I came upon the troops, who were learning the new European exercise. Seeing a man sitting on a carpet in the middle of the plain, I went up to him and found that he was the colonel and commander of this army; so I smoked a pipe with him, and discovered that he knew about as much of tactics and military manœuvres as I did, only he did not take so much interest in the subject. We therefore continued to smoke the pipe of peace on the carpet of reflection, while the soldiers entangled themselves in all sorts of incomprehensible doublings and counter-marches, till at last the whole body was so much puzzled, that they stood still all of a heap, like a cluster of bees. The captains shouted, and the poor men turned round and round, trod on each other's heels, kicked each other's shins, and did all they could to get out of the scrape, but they only got more into confusion. At last a bright thought struck the colonel, who took his pipe out of his mouth, and gave orders, in the name of the Prophet, that every man should go home in the best way he could. This they accomplished like a party of schoolboys, running and jumping and walking off in small parties towards the town. The officers wiped the perspiration from their foreheads, and strolled off too, some to smoke a pipe under a tree, and some to repose on their divans and swear at the Franks who had invented such extraordinary evolutions.

In the evening, among the other news of the day, I was told that three men had been walking together in the afternoon; one of them bought a melon, and his two companions, who were very thirsty, but had no money, asked him to give them some of it. He would not do so; and, as they worried him about it, he ran into an empty house, and, bolting the door, sat down inside to discuss his purchase in quiet. The other two were determined not to be jockeyed in that manner, and, finding a hole in the door, they peeped through, and were enraged at seeing him eating the melon inside. He jeered them, and said that the melon was excellent; until at last one of them swore he should not eat it all, and, putting his pistol through the hole in the door, shot his friend dead; they then walked away, laughing at their own cleverness in shooting him so neatly through the hole.

November 5th.—The next day I went again to the citadel to see the Vizir, but he could not receive me, as news had arrived that the insurgents or robbers—they had entitled themselves to either denomination—had gathered together in force and laid siege to the town of Berat. There had been a good deal of confusion in Yanina before this, but now it appeared to have arrived at a climax. The courtyard of the citadel was full of horses picketed by their head-and-heel ropes, in long rows; parties of men were, according to their different habits, talking over the events of the day,—the Albanians chattering and putting themselves in attitudes; the Arnaouts or Mahometans of Greek blood boasting of the chivalric feats which they intended to perform; and the grave Turks sitting quietly on the ground, smoking their eternal pipes, and taking it all as easily as if they had nothing to do with it. Both before and since these days I have seen a great deal of the Turks; and though, for many reasons, I do not respect them as a nation, still I cannot help admiring their calmness and self-possession in moments of difficulty and danger. There is something noble and dignified in their quietness on these occasions: I have very rarely seen a Turk discomposed; stately and collected, he sits down and bides his time; but when the moment of action comes, he will rouse himself on a sudden, and become full of fire, animation, and activity. It is then that you see the descendant of those conquerors of the East, whose strong will and fierce courage have given them the command over all the nations of Islam.

Although I could not obtain an audience with the vizir, one of the people who were with me managed to send a message to him that I should be glad of the letter, or firman, which he had promised me, and by which I might command the services of an escort, if I thought fit to do so. This man had influence at court; for he had a friend who was chiboukji to the vizir's secretary, or prime minister—a sly Greek, whose acquaintance I had made two days before. The pipe-bearer, propitiated by a trifling bribe, spoke to his master, and he spoke to the vizir, who promised I should have the letter; and it came accordingly in the evening, properly signed and sealed, and all in heathen Greek, of which I could make out a word here and there; but what it was about was entirely beyond my comprehension.

Whilst waiting the result of these negotiations I had leisure to notice the warlike movements which were going on around me. I saw a train of two or three hundred men on horseback issuing out from the citadel, and riding slowly along the plain in the direction of Berat. They were sent to raise the siege; and other troops were preparing to follow them. As I watched these horsemen winding across the plain in a long line, with the sun glancing upon their arms, they seemed like a great serpent, with its glittering scales, gliding along to seek for its prey; and in some respects the simile would hold good, for this detachment would be the terror of the inhabitants of every district through which it passed. Rapine, violence, and oppression would mark its course; friend and foe would alike be plundered; and the villages which had not been burned by the insurgent klephti would be sacked and ruined by the soldiers of the government.

As I descended from the citadel I passed numerous parties of armed men, all full of excitement about the plunder they would get, and the mighty deeds they would perform; for the danger was a good way off, and they were all brim-full of valour. In the bazaar all was business and bustle: everybody was buying arms. Long guns and silver pistols, all ready loaded, I believe, with fiery-looking flints as big as sandwiches, wrapped up first in a bit of red cloth, and then in a sort of open work of lead or tin, were being handed about; and the spirit of commerce was in full activity. Great was the haggling among the dealers. One man walked off with a mace; another, expecting to perform as mighty deeds as Richard Cœur de Lion, bought an old battle-axe, and swung it about to show how he would cut heads off with it before long. Another champion had included among his warlike accoutrements a curious, ancient-looking silver clock, which dangled by his side from a multitude of chains. It was square in shape, and must have been provided with a strong constitution inside if it could go while it was banged about at every step the man took. This worthy, I imagine, intended to kill time, for his purchase did not seem calculated to cope with any other enemy. He had, however, two or three pistols and daggers in addition to his clock. An oldish, hard-featured man was buying a quantity of that abominably sour, white cheese which is the pride of Albania, and a quantity of black olives, which he was cramming into a pair of old saddle-bags, whilst his horse beside him was quietly munching his corn in a sack tied over his nose. There was a look of calm efficiency about this man, which contrasted strongly with the swaggering air of the crowd around him. He was evidently an old hand; and I observed that he had laid in a stock of ball-cartridges—an article in which but little money was spent by the buyers of yataghans in silver sheaths and silver cartridge-boxes.

"Hallo! sir Frank," cried one or two of these gay warriors, "come out with us to Berat: come and see us fight, and you will see something worth travelling for."

"Ay," said I, "it's all up with the enemy: that's quite certain. They will be in a pretty scrape, to be sure, when you arrive. I would not be one of them for a good deal!"