The chief other thing a Turk does in times of peace is to pray. From the gallery of a minaret the muezzin calls him to prayer five times a day. Do you know what a minaret is? It is the tower of the Turkish church, or mosque. Mosques built by royalty may have two minarets, others only one. These minarets are slender, very tall, with a gracefully pointed top that draws the eye right up to the sky. There is a Turkish proverb that says, "Never steal a minaret unless you have a place to hide it in." Two thirds of the way up, there is a carved gallery, very light and beautiful, where the priest stands and chants down through the air the call to prayer, which in English prose is this: "There is no God but Allah; Mohammed is His Prophet; let us go and pray; let us go save our souls; God is great; there is no god but God." A pious Turk either goes to the mosque, or prays wherever he may happen to be. I once saw a soldier praying on a ferry-boat. Inside the mosques the cooing of many pigeons adds to the rhythmic murmur of the prayers. There are pigeons inside and outside of all the mosques; one, of which a picture is here shown, is called the Pigeon Mosque.
The most famous mosque of all is Santa Sophia, once a Christian church as you can tell by its name, built by the Byzantine Greeks about 300 A. D. It is yellow, weathered by time, is very big and on top of a hill. Inside, it is a dark golden-brown, and the pigeons flying around under the roof seem to be far, far above you. The rugs on the floor are all on a slant because the church was built originally with the altar toward the east; later the Moslems made it face toward Mecca, southeast of Constantinople. No Turk ever walks on those rugs with his shoes on,—he leaves them at the door or carries them in his hand,—and before he comes in to pray, he washes his feet and hands at the fountain outside, no matter how cold the water or the weather. Fountains are everywhere in Constantinople, made of white marble and exquisitely carved.
Constantinople has been famous in history ever since the legend that Leander died in swimming the Hellespont, the old name of the Dardanelles. Nations have quarreled over it, because it is one of the most wonderfully situated cities in the world, and Constantine the Great made it the capital of his huge empire. You will study all that in Roman history if you have not studied it already, and will read also of its capture by the Turks, under Mohammed the Conqueror, nearly five hundred years ago.
The history of the Ottoman Empire makes the most exciting fairy tale seem colorless. Perhaps you do not know that, when Henry the Eighth of England and Francis the First of France were forming a mutual-admiration society of their two kingdoms on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, there was another king, as great as either of them, in the southeast of Europe, carving great pieces out of other countries for his empire. This sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, was a great lawgiver. His reign was the height of Turkey's power. Soon after its close the rest of Europe became interested in Turkey, especially Russia and England. Recently, German influence has been stronger than any other at the Turkish court. That is why Turkey fought on the side of Germany, and why England and France determined to storm the forts and brave the mines in the water entrances to Constantinople and so open up a way to the Mediterranean for their great ally, Russia.
THE GIANT AND THE GENIE
BY GEORGE FREDERIC STRATTON
Far up on the slopes of Mt. Rainier, in Washington, is a waterfall which, according to the legend, was inhabited by a giant of enormous strength—Menuhkesen by name. From out of the East there came a genie possessed of such courage and audacity that when he was warned against the terrible powers of Menuhkesen he laughed lustily and said that he would call forth the surly giant and make him do his bidding. Summoning his afrits, he gave them orders, and they immediately surrounded the falls, some of them peering through strange instruments and making mysterious signs with their hands, while others measured distances and drove stakes, bearing weird symbols, into the river banks.
Then the genie stood on the bank overlooking the falls and shouted: "Ho, afrits! Dig me here a deep hole!" And immediately they went to work with great activity. When they had dug down a hundred feet, the genie commanded them to tunnel under the falls. "We will unearth this giant and prove his strength!" he cried defiantly.
So they dug a tunnel until they reached a great mass of rock underneath the brink of the falls; and here they hewed out a huge cavern, and carried into it strange machines and many wheels, fastening them all strongly. And they hung wires from those machines, stringing them a long distance through dense woods and across ghostly ravines to where many men lived and worked. When all was ready the genie grasped a great lever and shouted, "Ho, Menuhkesen! Come forth now, and get busy!"