In Santa Sophia intricacy, by some magical process of genius, results in simplicity. Everything seems gently but irresistibly compelled to become a minister to the beauty and the calmness of the whole: the arcades of gray marble and gold; the sacred mosaics of Holy Mary, and of the six-winged Seraphim, which still testify to another age and another religion; the red columns of porphyry from Baalbec's Temple of the Sun; the Ephesus columns of verde antico; the carved capitals and the bases of shining brass; the gold and gray pulpit, with its long staircase of marble closed by a gold and green curtain, and its two miraculously beautiful flags of pearly green and faint gold, by age made more wonderful than when they first flew on the battle-field, or were carried in sacred processions; the ancient prayer-rugs fixed to the walls; the Sultan's box, a sort of long gallery, ending in a kiosk with a gilded grille, and raised upon marble pillars; the great doors and the curtains of dull red wool; the piled carpets that are ready against the winter, when the cool yellow matting is covered up; the great green shields in the pendentives, bearing their golden names of God and his prophet, of Ali, Osman, Omar, and Abu-Bekr. Everything slips into the heart of the great harmony, however precious, however simple, even however crude. There are a few ugly things in Santa Sophia: whitewash covering mosaics, stains of fierce yellow, blotches of plaster which should be removed. They do not really matter; one cannot heed them when one is immersed in such almost mysterious beauty.
THE MOSQUE OF SANTA SOPHIA
Men and birds are at ease in Santa Sophia. Doves have made their home in the holy place. They fly under the long arcades, they circle above the galleries, they rest against blocks of cool marble the color of which their plumage resembles. And all day long men pass in through the gateways, and become at once little, yet strangely significant in the vastness which incloses and liberates them. They take off their shoes and carry them, or lay them down in the wooden trays at the edges of those wide, railed-in platforms covered with matting, called mastaba, which are characteristic of mosques, and which are supposed to be for the use of readers of the Koran. Then they are free of the mosque. Some of them wander from place to place silently gazing; others kneel and pray in some quiet corner; others study, or sing, or gossip, or sink into reverie or slumber. Many go up to the mastaba, take off their outer garments and hang them over the rails, hang their handkerchiefs beside them, tuck their legs under their bodies, and remain thus for hours, staring straight before them with solemn eyes as if hypnotized. Children, too, go to the mastaba, settle cozily down and read the Koran aloud, interspersing their study with gay conversation. On one of them I found my singing boy. Small, fanatical, with head thrown back and the fez upon it, he defiantly poured forth his tune, while an older companion, opposite to him and looking not unlike an idol in its shrine, stared impassively as if at the voice.
Santa Sophia is mystical in its twilight beauty. Its vastness, its shape, its arrangement, its beautifully blended colors, the effects of light and of sound within it, unite in creating an atmosphere that disposes the mind to reverie and inclines the soul to prayer. Along the exquisite marble walls, in the mellow dimness, while Stamboul just outside is buying and selling, is giving itself to love and to crime, the murmur of Islam's devotion steals almost perpetually, mysterious as some faint and wide-spread sound of Nature. The great mosque seems to be breathing out its message to the Almighty, and another message—to man. The echoes are not clear, but dim as the twilight under the arches of marble and beneath the ceilings of gold. They mingle without confusion in a touching harmony, as all things mingle in this mosque of the great repose.
IN THE CEMETERY OF EYUB, ON THE GOLDEN HORN