“I do not know that I ever heard that they did,” he replied, “but the Americans are just the same as the English, and most of them live in England, because they can make more money there. All the Americans want is money. They don’t care for art, or science, or religion. I have heard that they dig up the bones of their ancestors from the cemeteries and sell them to the farmers for fertilizers, they are so greedy to get money, but I never saw any of them do it. I never saw an American to know him, but I suppose they look like other people.”
We assured him that we were Americans and that he had been misinformed about their persecuting Mohammedans. I asked him if he knew how much American money had been expended to educate Mohammedans and to give them hospitals, and how much had been devoted to the relief of people of the Turkish Empire who had suffered in droughts and epidemics and massacres. He confessed that he did not know; he was not aware that the Americans had ever contributed any money for such purposes, and admitted, reluctantly, that he did not read the newspapers, for the reason that he did not consider them reliable. He had known so many cases where people had been deceived by newspaper publications, and he had never read anything about American contributions for the benefit of Turkey. I told him about the recent Kennedy legacy of $2,500,000 to Robert College and of the Red Cross fund that had been sent to the relief of sufferers by massacre, by flood, and by epidemics. He had never heard anything of the kind. He never had anything to do with Christians.
“We are not Christians,” he said, “because we cannot understand how they can have two or three Gods (referring to the doctrine of the trinity). Such a thing is impossible. There is but one God. There can be no division of spiritual responsibility. It is impossible to believe that a man can become a God, and I cannot understand why you Christians have three Gods when the first commandment of Moses forbids you to have more than one.”
I didn’t try to explain the doctrine of the trinity to him, because our time was short, and endeavoured to get him back to his books. After a little further discussion he showed us two ancient volumes in Sanscrit script on parchment which he said were more than three thousand years old and were also presented to Mahomet the Great by the shah of Persia.
“Nobody can read these books,” he said, “because the language in which they are written has been forgotten by all mankind. It is a language that was spoken by millions of people once, but they are all dead and it has been forgotten.”
He showed us a gorgeous volume called “Nargai,” which, he said, contained the observations of Mohammed “the champion,” the first Turkish sultan of that name, whose reign, beginning in 1314, is noted as the period when a taste for literature and art and a fondness for poetry and the drama first prevailed among the Osmanlis. Each parchment leaf is stained a different tint, including various shades of the primary colours, and they are ornamented with gold tracery in the corners and at the tops and bottoms of the pages. On many pages are broad borders of exquisite design and workmanship.
Another beautiful volume in Persian script on parchment about fourteen inches square, the old gentleman said, is the third book ever written about the stars. The author was a very learned Egyptian who lived about three thousand years ago. The name was on the title page, but he could not read it—nevertheless, he was certain that there had never been any such book on astronomy written since that time. It contained everything that was ever known about the stars, and all other astronomies could be destroyed without doing any damage so long as this one existed. The covers are exquisite pieces of leather enamel inlaid with pearl, and the work is as fine as that of a watchmaker.
All of the 2,000 books in the collection, he said, had been written by hand. He does not believe much in printed books, because they are full of mistakes and wear out in a very short time, while manuscripts are more accurate and parchment lasts much longer than paper. Many of the books in the collection had belonged to Moorish princes in Spain and were taken from them at the time of their expulsion from the peninsula. “The most learned men in the world are Persians. There are very few scholars in Europe,” he said, and the wisest of them had studied in this library, which he declared was founded by the Sultan Mahmoud, who reigned from 1142 to 1158.
The most remarkable volume he showed us was a heavy folio, perhaps 15 by 20 inches in size, of the thickest kind of parchment, covered with beautiful script. It is a work of world-wide fame, but doubtless there are few such beautiful copies. It is known in the medical world as the “Avicenna,” and is a treatise on botany and medicine by a famous physician and philosopher and the most learned man of his time.
The librarian insisted that it was the most important book on medicine ever written and that medical men from every part of the world came to Constantinople to consult it. “It tells,” he said, “about every kind of disease that afflicts human beings, and about every plant that grows, and what diseases each plant will cure.” There is no finer specimen of penmanship in the world than this volume, and although he was certainly mistaken when he said that it was written by the hand of Dr. Avicenna himself, he did not wander very far from the truth in his assertions concerning the value and importance of the treatise. Although many of its theories have long since been exploded, and human knowledge on the subjects of which it treats has been expanded, it is undoubtedly the most famous and remarkable medical work that was ever written, and is well known to every educated physician.