To-day as one goes along the great triumphal way, still retaining fragments at least of its solid pavement that was laid by Justinian, the way along which countless armies of emperors and of invaders have passed on their march of triumph or retreat, we are reminded of the past not only by shattered walls, and by the goats that feed and scramble where once the soldiers of the empire kept watch, but by the immemorial cemetery, with its groups of cypress, which stands beside us as we walk.
It is a perpetual memorial of the vanity of human power. There, where thousands of Turks are now laid to rest, where the stones gape above the coffins placed a few feet below, and the strange lozenge-shapes with their gaudy inscriptions lean and totter on every side; there once crusading armies camped to sack a Christian city; and there the soldiers of Mohammed mustered for the last fight which was to give them the crown of their centuries of war. Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Goths, men of Italy and Russia and Greece, all have passed; and the men who have conquered where they fought and failed lie buried where once they camped. On one side of the great imperial way stretches this vast gloomy silent graveyard; on the other stand is the shattered wall.
In that long, broken, deserted wall the history of the great city seems summed up. "Débris colossal du passé, elle nous diminue et nous écrase, nous et nos existences courtes, et nos souffrances d'une heure, et tout le rien instable que nous sommes."
CHAPTER V
The Mosques, Türbehs and Fountains
The mosques of Constantinople, as has already been shown, are very largely buildings which had been churches in past days. The inspiration felt so overpoweringly in the Church of the Divine Wisdom still abides in the buildings erected by the Emperors of past days. More open and evident still is the fact that the architects of the mosques, built for Mohammedan worship since the Turks have ruled in the city of the Cæsars, have done little more than copy the people whom they have conquered. In most of the great mosques of Stambûl, S. Sophia is simply and directly imitated. In others the leading idea is developed with a variation or two. Of genuine originality the Turkish architects have shown not a trace.
"MOHAMMED, THE APOSTLE OF GOD." EMBROIDERY FROM CURTAIN OVER THE DOOR OF S. SOPHIA.
The innumerable mosques of Constantinople are of two kinds, those founded by members of the reigning dynasty, and those built by humbler persons. Most of the mosques have a court with a fountain in the midst. Many have houses, round kitchens, schools for children and for students of the Koran, hospitals, and the dwelling of the imam. Nearly all have türbehs, tombs of the royal family and of persons of great distinction. All have of course the minaret, which to the traveller is the most characteristic feature of the vast city. The ordinary mosques have but one minaret, from which five times a day the voice of the muezzin calls the faithful to pray. The royal mosques have more than one minaret, S. Sophia and the mosque of Suleiman have four, the mosque of Ahmed has six.