Visits to Monasteries in the Levant

by Robert Curzon

Armed with this valuable document, one day in the spring of the year 1837 I started in a caïque with some gentlemen of the embassy, and proceeded to the palace of the Patriarch in the Fanar—a part of Constantinople situated between the ancient city wall and the port so well known by its name of the Golden Horn. The Fanar does not derive its appellation from the word fanar, a lantern or lighthouse, but from the two words fena yer, a bad place; for it is in a low, dirty situation, where only the conquered Greeks were permitted to reside immediately after the conquest of their metropolis by the Sultan Mahommed II. The palace is a large, dilapidated, shabby-looking building, chiefly of wood painted black; it stands in an open court or yard on a steep slope, and looks out over some lower houses to the Golden Horn and the hills of Pera and Galata beyond.[12]

After waiting a little while in a large, dirty ante-room, during which time there was a scuffling and running up and down of priests and deacons, who were surprised and perhaps a little alarmed at a visit from so numerous a company of gentlemen belonging to the British embassy, we were introduced into a large square room furnished with a divan under the windows and down two sides of the chamber. This divan was covered with a rough sacking of grey goats' hair—a stuff which is said not to be susceptible of the plague; and people sitting on it, or on the bare boards, are not considered to be "compromised"—a word of fearful import when that awful pestilence is raging in this neglected city. When any person is compromised, he is obliged to separate from all society, and to place himself in strict quarantine for forty days, at the end of which period, if the fright and anxiety have not brought on the plague, he is received again by his acquaintances. Dealers in oil, and persons who have an open issue on their bodies, are considered secure from the plague as far as they themselves are concerned; but as their clothes will convey the infection, they are as dangerous as others to their neighbours.

There was an old Armenian, who, whether he considered himself invulnerable, or whether poverty and misfortune made him reckless, I do not know; but he set up as a plague-doctor, and visited and touched those who were stricken with the pestilence. Whenever he came down the street, every one would start aside and give him three or four yards' space at least. Sometimes he had men who walked before him and cried to the people to get out of the way. As the old man moved on in his long, dark robes, shunned with such horror by all, the mind was awfully impressed with the fearful nature of the disease; for if the Prince of Darkness himself had made his appearance in the face of day, no one could have shown greater alarm at his approach than they did when the men cried out that the Armenian plague-doctor was coming down the street.

One peculiarity of the disease is the disinclination which is always shown by those who are plague-stricken to confess that they are so, or even to own that they are ill. They invariably conceal it as long as possible; and even when burning with fever and in an agony of pain, they will pretend that they are well, and try to walk about. But this attempt at deception continues for a very short period, for they soon become either delirious or insensible, and generally are unable to move. There is a look about the eye and an expression of anxiety and horror in the face of one who has got the plague which is not to be mistaken nor forgotten by those who have once seen them. One day at Galata I nearly ran against a man who was sitting on the ground on a hand-bier, upon which some Turks were about to carry him away; and the look of the unfortunate man's face haunted me for days. The expression of hopeless despair and agony was indeed but too applicable to his case; they were going to carry him to the plague hospital, from whence I never heard of any one returning. It would have been far more merciful to have shot him at once.

There are many curious superstitions and circumstances connected with the plague. One is, that when the destroying angel enters into a house the dogs of the quarter assemble in the night and howl before the door; and the Greeks firmly believe that the dogs can see the evil spirit of the plague, although it is invisible to human eyes. Some people, however, are said to have seen the plague, its appearance being that of an old woman, tall, thin, and ghastly, and dressed sometimes in black, sometimes in white: she stalks along the streets—glides through the doors of the habitations of the condemned—and walks once round the room of her victim, who is from that moment death-smitten. It is also asserted that, when three small spots make their appearance upon the knee, the patient is doomed—he has got the plague, and his fate is sealed. They are called the pilotti—the pilots and harbingers of death. Some, however, have recovered after these spots have shown themselves.

I had at this time a lodging in a house at Pera, which I occupied when anything brought me to Constantinople from Therapia. On one occasion I was sitting with a gentleman whose filial piety did him much honour, for he had attended his father through the horrors of this illness, and he had died of the plague in his arms, when we heard the dogs baying in an unusual way.[13] On looking out of the window there they were all of a row, seated against the opposite wall, howling mournfully, and looking up at the houses in the moonlight. One dog looked very hard at me, I thought: I did not like it at all, and began to investigate whether I had not some pain or other about me; and this comfortable feeling was not diminished when my friend's Arab servant came into the room and said that another person who lodged in the house was very unwell; it was said that he had had a fall from his horse that morning. The dogs, though we escaped the plague ourselves, were right; the plague had got into one of the houses close to us in the same street; but how many died of it I did not learn.

It was about this time that two Jews—extortioners, poor men, whom consequently nobody cared about—were walking together in a narrow street at Galata, when they both dropped down stricken with the plague: there they lay upon the ground; no one would touch them; and, as the street was extremely narrow, no one could pass that way; it was in effect blocked up by the two unhappy men. They did not die quickly. "The devil was sure of them," the charitable people said, "so he was in no hurry." There they lay a long time—many days; and people called to them, and put their heads round the corner of the street to look at them. Some, tenderer-hearted than the rest, got a long pole from a dyer's shop hard by, and pushed a tub of water to them, and threw them some bread, for no one dared approach them. One Jew was quiet: he ate a little bread and drank some water, and lay still. The other was violent: the pain of his livid swellings drove him wild, and he shouted and raved and twisted about upon the ground. The people looked at him from the corner, and shuddered as they quickly drew back their heads. He died; and the other Jew still lay there, quiet as he was before, close to the quiet corpse of his poor friend. For some time they did not know whether he was dead or not; but at last they found he drank no more water and ate no more bread; so they knew that he had died also. There lay the two bodies in the way, till some one paid a hamal—a Turkish porter—who, being a stanch predestinarian, caring neither for plague, nor Jew, nor Gentile, dead or alive, carried off the two bodies on his back; and then the street was passable again.

The Turks have a touching custom when the plague rages very greatly, and a thousand corpses are carried out daily from Stamboul through the Adrianople gate to the great groves of cypress which rise over the burial-grounds beyond the walls. At times of terror and grief, such as these, the Sheikh Ul Islam causes all the little children to be assembled on a beautiful green hill called the Oc Maidan—the Place of Arrows—and there they bow down upon the ground, and raise their innocent voices in supplication to the Father of Mercy, and implore his compassion on the afflicted city!

But the grey goats' hair divan of the Patriarch's hall of audience has led me a long way from the Patriarch himself, who entered the chamber shortly after our arrival. He appeared to be rather a young man, certainly not more than thirty-five years of age, with a reddish beard, which is uncommon in this country. He was dressed in purple silk robes, like a Greek bishop, and took his seat in the corner of the divan, and said nothing, and stroked his beard as a pasha might have done.

When we had made our "téménahs," that is, salutations, and little bows, &c., and were still again, the curtain over the doorway was pushed aside, and various priestly servants, all without shoes, came in, one of them bearing a richly embossed silver tray, on which were disposed small spoons filled with a preserve of lemon-peel; each of us took a spoonful, and returned the spoon to the dish. Then came various servants—as many servants as guests—and one presented to each of us a cut-glass cup with a lid, full of fresh spring-water. Then these disappeared; and others came in bearing pipes to each of us—a separate servant always coming in for each person of the company. After we had smoked our pipes for a short time, a mighty crowd of attendants again entered at the bottom of the room, among whom was one with a tray, which was covered over with a satin shawl or cover as richly embroidered with gold as was possible for its size, and with a deep gold fringe. Another servant took off this covering, and placed it over the left shoulder of the tray-bearer, who stood like a statue all the while. Now appeared a man with a silver censer suspended by three silver chains, and having a coffee-pot standing upon the burning coals within it. Another man took off the cups which were upon the tray, filled them with coffee; and then various servants, each armed with a coffee-cup placed on its silver zarf or saucer, which he held in his left hand with his thumb and forefinger only, strode forward with one accord, and we all at the same moment were presented with our diminutive cup of coffee; the attendants received the empty cups with both hands, and, walking backwards, disappeared as silently as they came. All this is a scene of every-day occurrence in the East, and, with more or less of display, takes place in the house of every person of consideration.