The schooner was captured and brought back to Constantinople; the property was returned to the mosque, and the enterprising gentlemen who removed it without authority received the polite attentions of a Turkish headsman. Not only they, but the entire crew of the schooner down to the cook and cabin boy—also a cat and two kittens—were decapitated, without fear or favor.
“Bismillah!” (in the name of God) shouted the executioner each time he swung his sword. “Inshallah!” (God is willing) responded the attendant, as he gathered up the heads one by one and stowed them away in a sack.
The mosques of Constantinople are the finest in all Islam; they crown the summits of the hills of Stamboul, and are the most prominent objects in the picture, as one regards the city from the Bosphorus. To visit them, one must be provided with a “firman” or passport, and to obtain this document the article of “backsheesh” is required.
A request must come from the embassy or consulate of the visitor’s nation, and with this request and the payment of a sum equal to two dollars for each person of the party, there is no further trouble. Our polite Consul-general, Mr. Goodenow, greatly facilitated our efforts by sending his dragoman with ours to obtain the “firman;” the consular dragoman is a personage of great importance, all through the East, and often advances the transaction of business with the government bureaux. The passport thus obtained is good, not for one alone, but for all the principal mosques.
The most interesting and best known of the mosques is that of Saint Sophia, as it is erroneously called. It was not called so after any canonized woman named Sophia, but in honor of divine wisdom, Aya Sofia. It was thus consecrated by its founder, Constantine, in the early part of the fourth century, and when the Turks captured it a thousand years later, they retained the title, and call it Aya Sofia at the present day.
The Turks have endeavored to remove the evidences of its former Christian character, but have not altogether succeeded. In many places one can see the cross and other emblems of the western religion, and in some instances the faces of men and angels have not been entirely obliterated. Mohammedanism forbids the making of any graven or pictorial image, and for this reason, it is very difficult to induce an orthodox believer, uncorrupted by occidental heresies, to sit for his portrait.
The belief is that the person who makes a representation of any living thing, will be confronted with it at the day of judgment, and ordered to endow it with life. Failing to do this, he will be condemned to a locality I need not mention.
I once endeavored to induce an Arab to stand in a certain position while I made a sketch of him.
