As is the case with all Turkish cities, the beautiful picture vanishes the moment you enter Brussa. The smallest German town surpasses Constantinople, Adrianople, or Brussa in the charm of its buildings and still more in comfort. Only the mosques and the Hanns, or caravansaries, the fountains and public baths are magnificent. In the earlier times of the Ottoman monarchy no ruler was permitted to build a mosque before he had won a battle against the infidels. The mosques in Brussa are smaller and less beautiful than those which were built later, but they possess the added interest of historical memories. There you find such names as Orchan, Suliman, Murad, in short, all the heroes of the victorious period of Islam.
The mosque of Bajasid attracted me most because of its excellent architecture. Bajasid is the man whom the Turks call Ilderim, or the Lightning. The monument of the mighty conqueror, who himself was conquered and died in a cage according to the legend, stands alone in the shadow of mighty cypress trees. The largest of the mosques used to be a Christian cathedral. It is lighted from above, the middle vault having been left open. The beautiful Asiatic starry sky itself has become its vault. The opening is covered with a wire screen, and below it in a wide basin a fountain is playing.
I will not say that even the largest mosques, the Sultan Selim, for instance, in Adrianople, or Sulamanich in Constantinople, make the same impression or inspire the same reverence as St. Stephan's in Vienna, or the cathedrals of Freiburg and Strassburg. But every mosque, even the smallest, is beautiful. There is nothing more picturesque than the semi-circular, lead-covered domes and the slender, white minarets rising above the mighty planes and cypresses. When the Ottomans conquered the provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire they preserved the Greek Church architecture, but they added the minarets, which are of Arabian origin.
[Illustration: COUNT MOLTKE]
The Hanns are the only stone dwelling-houses to be found. They are built in the shape of rectangles with an open court. Here, at least in the larger ones, you will find a mosque, a fountain, a small kiosk for noble travelers, and a few mulberry trees or plane trees. All about the court there is a colonnade with pointed arches; and, beyond that, rows of cells, each one with its individual vault. A mattress of straw is the only furniture for the traveler, who finds neither service nor food in these Hanns.
We dined in thoroughly Turkish fashion at the Kiebabtshi. After our hands had been washed we sat down, not at but on the table, where my legs were terribly in the way. Then the Kiebab, or small piece of mutton, broiled on the spit and rolled in dough, was served on a wooden platter. It is very good and tasty. It was followed by salted olives, which are wonderful, by the helva, i. e., the favorite sweet dish, and by a bowl of sherbet. This consists of water poured over grapes and thoroughly iced. The whole dinner for two hearty eaters cost one hundred and twenty paras, or five shillings.
The comforts of the Turkish baths I have described to you in an earlier letter. The baths of Brussa are distinguished, because they are not artificially but naturally heated, and so much so that you would not think it possible, at first, to enter the great basin of clear water without being parboiled before you could leave it again. From the terrace of our bath we had a beautiful view, and it was so comfortable there that we hated to leave.
On the thirteenth we rode to Kemlik, at the end of the Bay of Mudania, where there is a dockyard. This is the most beautiful spot I have seen. The clear surface of the sea is lost here between the high and steep mountains, which leave just enough space for the little town and the olive woods. Twilight is very brief in this country, and night had come when we reached the town gate, but what a night! Although the moon happened to be new, objects were distinguishable at a considerable distance, while the evening star shines here so brightly that shadows are cast by its light.
At three o'clock in the morning we were again in the saddle, riding toward the East through a valley and between high mountains, along the same road which Walther von Habenichts once followed with his twelve thousand crusaders. The hills were covered with olive trees and flowering bushes filled with nightingales. At sunset we reached the extensive lake of Isnik. The gigantic walls and towers on the opposite shore used to protect a powerful city, for which the crusaders often fought. Today they surround the few miserable huts and rubbish heaps which centuries ago were Nicea. It was here that an assembly of one hundred learned bishops expounded the mystery of the Trinity, and decided to burn all who held a different view. What would these proud prelates have said if a man had prophesied to them that the time would come when their rich and mighty city would be a rubbish heap, and their cathedral the ruins of a Turkish mosque; when the empire of the Greek emperors would be destroyed, and their own exegesis, yes, even their entire religion, would have disappeared from these parts, and when for hundreds of miles and through hundreds of years the name of the camel-driver of Medina would be the only one in the mouths of the people.
The Moslems, who abhor all pictures, have covered with whitewash the paintings in the Greek churches. In the Cathedral of Nicea, where the famous council was held, there glistens even today through the white coating of the wall, where the high altar used to be, the proud promise, I.H.S. (in hoc signo, i. e., under this sign, the cross, you will win). But directly over it is written the first dogma of Islam, "There is no God but God." There is a lesson of tolerance in these faded inscriptions, and it seems as if Heaven itself wished to listen as well to the Credo as to the Allah il allah. One of the chief pursuits of the honest Turks is what they call Kief etmek, literally "creating a mood." It consists of drinking coffee in a comfortable place and smoking. Such a place par excellence I found in the village where we made a stop. Imagine a plane which extends its colossal branches horizontally for almost one hundred feet, burying in its deep shadow the nearest houses. The trunk of the tree is surrounded by a small terrace of stone, below which water is gushing from twenty-seven pipes in streams as thick as your arm, and rushing off as a lively brook. Here, with their legs crossed, the Turks sit, practising—silence.