THE END
Constantinople
“BLESSED SHALL HE be who shall take Constantinople,” said the Prophet. Many desperate fights were fought and many valiant blows were struck in the endeavor to earn that promised blessing. Eyub, Mohammed’s brave companion in arms, perished in the first attempt made by the Arabs to win the capital of the East. The Crusaders took it and got scant blessings, and did more destruction in one week than all other conquerors in twelve centuries or thereabouts; and at last came a successor and namesake of the Prophet himself, Mehemet the Fateh, he who of all others is called by the Turks the Conqueror, to this day. Though the whole great empire of the first Constantine had dwindled, in the days of the last of the name, to the narrow limits comprised within the walls of the city, a war of several years’ duration was the price paid by Mehemet for the few miles of land that lie between Rumeli Hissar and St. Sophia. Impregnable castles had to be built, vast intrenchments had to be dug, and the invading fleet had to be hauled up high and dry upon the shores of the Bosphorus and taken overland upon wheels to be launched again upon the waters of the Golden Horn. And then, at the very end, the last struggle was the fiercest of all, the last of the emperors fell fighting desperately on foot at the gate of his own capital, and the conqueror, riding high upon the heaps of slain in the south aisle of St. Sophia, smote the pillar nearest to him with his reeking hand and left there his bloody sign manual, to be a token of his victory even to this day. So says tradition, at least; but in these latter days it is even denied that there was any massacre at all within the walls of the church, and we are confidently told that the Christians assembled therein were taken captive without bloodshed. Yet we who live in this age of light and progress, when armies are destroyed by machinery and empires spring up in a night, like mushrooms, bloom for a day like cabbage-roses, and vanish on the morrow like smoke, far too unstable to fall under one simile, we cling with an unconscious love of romance to the short, sharp, cruel deeds done in those days of faith and passion. We would rather stand in the dim aisle of the great mosque and believe for a moment that the savage warrior marked it for his own with Christian blood, than pore for hours over the elaborate schemes of mobilization which are to open the chess-play of the next nineteenth century conquest. In that one impress, if it be genuine, or in the story of it, if it be but a story, all the romance and history of the East seem to find one common centre. At the moment when that mark was made the West met the East and fell before it; in that instant, what had been sank back into the deep perspective of past dreamland and the future began to be present. The last stronghold of the old empire was stormed by the red-handed founders of the new, and the Constantinople of Constantine, of Justinian, and of the Greek emperors, had ceased to be. The rich jewel of gold and precious stones, set, as it were at the joining of three silver waters, was wrested by strong hands from Europe’s neck to be the chief light in Asia’s crown. The shadows of the great actors of the past, the ghost of Justinian, the passionate wraith of Theodora, the melancholy spectre of blind Belisarius, shrank out of sight into those vast halls and pillared galleries which spread beneath Stamboul, and the corse of their slaughtered descendant was still bleeding from a hundred wounds when the master of their inheritance invoked upon himself and his race the blessing promised by the Prophet of Allah, nearly eight hundred years before that day.
It has not often happened in history that a city which has been the capital of an empire during more than a thousand years has, within twenty-four hours, become the capital of another, founded and developed by a race having a totally different language, a hostile religion and traditions opposed at every point to those of the vanquished. The change after Mehemet’s conquest must have been as prodigious as it was sudden, and, on the whole, what took place is greatly to the credit of the conqueror. From that day to this there has never, I believe, been anything like a persecution of Christians or Jews in Constantinople. Taking Stamboul, Pera, and Scutari together, there are probably more Christians in the capital to-day than Mussulmans, a fact which can only be attributed to principles of toleration for which the Turks have not generally received credit. The principal churches were indeed converted into mosques, and the cross was everywhere replaced by the crescent, while the innumerable paintings and mosaics representing sacred personages, saints, and angels were immediately, and in most cases permanently, hidden from view by a thick coating of whitewash. The rigid simplicity of the Mohammedan faith substituted in their place a few names — Allah, Mohammed, Abu Bekr, Hassan, Hossein, Omar, Osman, and Ali, and every mosque in Stamboul, and perhaps throughout the Mohammedan world, is decorated with those eight names magnificently written in Arabic characters upon eight shields which are hung around the interior. But the Turk was not destructive. On the contrary, he took the Christian Church as his model for his own place of worship, and almost all the Turkish mosques are more or less direct imitations of St. Sophia.
Much of the romance which clings to Constantinople is founded, I believe, upon this and like facts; in other words, upon the immense body of widely varying traditions inherent in every building and object which has survived the revolutions of ages. The church of St. Sophia is the type of one class, the headless Delphic serpent which stands in the Hippodrome represents another. It was a strange fatality which brought by Constantine’s hand the pedestal of the Delphic Tripod to the spot which originally had been settled in obedience to the command of the Delphic oracle; there is an air of fatality also about the tradition that the conqueror who came to give a third name to the capital of the East, struck off the third head of the serpent with his battle-axe on the day he entered the city. Certainly but few objects now known to exist have been more intimately connected with the history of the world’s earliest civilization than this relic of the Pythoness. It is headless, but otherwise intact. There it stands in the midst of the Hippodrome, under the blazing Eastern sun, seeming to await some new destiny yet to be. Who knows but that, before another century has run out, strong hands may take it from its place and set it up and build a temple over it, and restore its three-fanged heads, even as they were in the days when Phoebus Apollo was master before the great Pan died? Who knows but that another conqueror may be already born, who shall tear down the shields of Allah, Mohammed, and the six Imams, and set up his golden eikons in their place. For my own part, I would rather not think of that day if so be that it is already marked upon the future’s calendar. And yet, even though the Osmanli may sink again some day into the Asiatic darkness from which he came, Constantinople, under a new name, perhaps, will still and ever be the capital of the East, the golden key to Asia, the jewel coveted for many crowns, in strife for which the greedy nations will contend to the very end of time.
The most striking peculiarity of Constantinople is the immense vitality which has carried it through so many deaths. It is common to speak of Turkey as the “sick man,” and to associate ideas of ruin and decay with one of the most intensely living cities in the world. But no one who has spent even twenty-four hours on either side of the Golden Horn could ever conceive of anything even distantly approaching to stagnation in the streets of Stamboul, or on Galata Bridge, or in the busy quarters of Galata itself, or of Pera above. Coming from Europe, whether from Italy or Austria, one is forcibly struck by the universal life, liveliness, and activity of the capital. There is no city in the world where so many different types of humanity meet and jostle each other and the stranger at every turn. Every nation in Europe is represented, and every nation of Asia as well. The highest and lowest types of living humanity pay their penny to the men in white who take the tolls on Galata Bridge. There is not even, as there is in so many cosmopolitan capitals, any general predominant type of feature or color. Of the Turks themselves it may be doubted whether they should be called a nation, or an agglomeration of individuals of many races who find one common bond in Islam. In the first mosque you enter at haphazard, you may see the pure Turk, often as fair and flaxen as any Norwegian, prostrating
himself and repeating his prayers beside the blackest of black Africans. And as you enter the sacred place, both, at the self-same moment, will instinctively glance at your feet to see whether you have taken off your shoes or have slipped on a dusty pair of the “babuj” which will generally be offered you at the door. Among Mohammedans, as among Roman Catholics, the universality of common practices has something imposing in it, and you instinctively respect the Mohammedan for requiring you to reverence the spot on which he prays. And here at the very outset let me say, that after many visits and some residence in the East I am strongly inclined to believe in the original Turk — when he is to be found. Greeks, Armenians, Persians, and Africans have given him a bad name by calling themselves Turks and sometimes by misgoverning his country, but he himself is a fine fellow and belongs to the superior, dominant races of the world.
He is naturally a fair man with blue eyes and of fresh complexion, well grown, uncommonly strong, and very enduring. He is sober; he is clean; and he is honest even to his own disadvantage, being by no means a match for the wily Greeks and Armenians who are perpetually fattening on his heart. There is a common proverb in the East to the effect that it takes ten Jews to cheat an Armenian, and ten Armenians to cheat one Persian. The pure Turk has no chance against such people — as little chance as they themselves would have, perhaps, against an average Hindu. That fact of itself explains the extraordinary mixture of races to be found in Constantinople. The Turk is easily cheated, and people congregate from all places in the world to profit by his simplicity. Anyone who will take the trouble to watch the streets and bazaars for any length of time, carefully bearing this point of view in mind, will be convinced of the truth of the assertion. The country produces little; its imports are not large; it is but a way-station on the sea-road between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. If the swarms of Greeks and Armenians, who infest almost every quarter, from the highest point of Pera to the remotest corners of Stamboul in the neighborhood of the Seven Towers and the Adrianople Gate, do not rob the Turk, upon what then do they live and fatten and grow rich?
Have you ever met and known one of them who was not in pursuit of a “concession,” a “grant,” or the ragged end of a monopoly, and does not the Turk ultimately pay for all these things? Where are the foundries and the manufactories, the grain markets and the railways to support such an enormous number of men engaged in business?
There is more on Galata Bridge than appears at first sight. It is a sort of combination in itself of the Venetian Rialto and of the Florentine Ponte Vecchio. It is built on floating pontoons, having a draw in the middle which is only opened in the night, and it consists practically of three parts — a highway for foot-passengers and carriages, a narrow street of little shops and coffee-houses, and a series of steamboat piers. I have computed roughly that, taking the average of the year, twenty-eight thousand persons cross Galata Bridge every day, a calculation which includes, of course, all the passengers for the Scutari and the Bosphorus ferries who pay toll in order to reach the steamers. There is a quiet spot unknown to most Europeans, where one may sit for hours in undisturbed enjoyment of coffee and cigarettes, and watch the passengers on the bridge and the arrivals and departures at one of the piers, besides observing the manners and customs of the Galata Kaikjis and the Hamals who congregate at the landing east of the bridge on the Galata side. This delightful spot is the corner of the first coffee-house on the left going toward Stamboul. It has a large, airy, and perfectly clean room, with windows on three sides through which the wind blows perpetually even on the hottest days. Take your seat in the corner nearest the bridge and nearest to Galata, order your cup of coffee—” shekerli,” with sugar, or “sade” without — light your cigarette, and begin your observations. The scene is dazzling and kaleidoscopic in its variety of color and quick motion.
The eye is first struck by the predominance of the fez. Hundreds of little truncated cones of vivid scarlet dart hither and thither, passing and repassing each other like a swarm of vermilion insects, all exactly alike and all at very nearly the same level. The fez was introduced as the official head-dress of Turkey by Mahmud II. known as the Reformer, who took it from the Greeks, and substituted it for the ponderous turban formerly worn in the army, and by all Government officials. It is in itself ugly except for its bright color, but it is neat, uniform, and clean, and with its long black silk tassel lends a sort of “dashing” look to the bronzed faces of officers and soldiers. But there are turbans, too, and, plenty of them, both white and green, and many of the poorer sort, such as porters, water-carriers, and sweetmeat sellers, twist a white or red rag round the fez to emphasize the fact that they are Mussulmans. The white and green turbans are distinctive of the Mollahs — men who have received the education of Mohammedan priests, though they may not necessarily exercise priestly functions. They, too, wear the Turkish dress, the flowing, tight-sleeved, scanty-cut gown of almost any color except red, open in front and disclosing the spotless shirt, the embroidered vest, the wide trousers, and the voluminous waistband. But European dress is the rule and not the exception. The military uniforms are close imitations of those in use in the German army, and the garments of the civilians are less perfect copies of what is considered fashionable in western Europe. The Mollah strides along with dignified step and graceful movement, conscious, no doubt, of the artistic superiority of his own clothes. cases, too, the claim to such high descent is genuine, the green badge being handed down from father to son without much possibility of its being assumed by one who has no claim to it, unless he be an emigrant from his own birthplace.
The women of the family also wear some bit of green silk or other stuff in their own homes, though rarely in the street, unless it be hidden beneath the yashmak or the ferajeh — the clumsily cut overgarment which covers all women in the street from the throat to the inevitable patent leather shoes. But the yashmak is not what it was ten years ago, and has almost ceased to hide the face at all. Strict as the Sultan’s ordinance is, there is not the slightest pretence of obeying it, and in the great majority of cases a thin white veil barely covers the forehead, and is but loosely drawn together under the chin. The cross-band which used to cover the nose above the eyes has entirely disappeared, or is worn only when ladies appear in public at such places as the Sweet Waters, or in their kaiks on the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. It must be admitted that with the disuse of that old-fashioned veil, a great illusion has disappeared from the streets of Constantinople. There was something very mysterious about it. Black eyes never looked so black and deep and liquid as when seen by themselves, as it were, between two broad bands of opaque white. In those days every yashmak veiled an ideal beauty, very different from the ugliness of the pale and flaccid features which its absence now generally discloses. One is inclined to doubt whether the mirror is in common use in the harem of to-day.
But as you sit by the open window of the coffee-house, you have little time for analyzing the features or the dress of the hurrying crowd.
What you see is a magnificent, inextricable confusion of moving light and sun and shade and color, a wild and almost dreamlike confusion of Eastern and Western life, a startling and almost horrible contrast of magnificence and squalor; the splendid, gold - lace - bediened adjutant on his Arab mare and the almost inconceivably wretched beggar, maimed and blind, perhaps, holding out his hand with his perpetual feeble cry, “On para,” a penny; the solemn scion of the Prophet’s race, green-turbaned, stately, calm; the deadly pale indifferent Turkish woman all in white and black, and closely followed by a bright-eyed African girl even less closely veiled than her mistress; the sanctimonious Dervish in soft brown, or softer green, or steely gray, his bent head and downcast eyes surmounted by his tall cylindrical felt cap; the little strutting military cadet in smart uniform and brand-new fez, not more than twelve years old, perhaps, and closely followed by a scowling African servant who cuffs him sharply, without the slightest sign of respect, if he wanders to the right or to the left. Then
, suddenly, the rumble and clatter of a splendid equipage rolling fast through the dividing crowd, bearing, it may be, some solemn, frock-coated, white-bearded, scarlet-fezzed minister of state, on his way to Selamlik, or from Yildiz Kiosk to the Sublime Porte — or else, if the carriage be a closed brougham, and if there be outriders, some delicate, pale-faced, half-consumptive prince, one of the innumerable offshoots of the Imperial family. And it all surges back and forth, gleaming, glistening, and flashing, under the broad white sun against the background of blue water and pale sky and faintly outlined hills, poured out as a stream of liquid metal when the furnace is opened, and rushing, iridescent and sparkling, toward the mould, fascinating, inthralling, almost hypnotic in its effect upon the senses.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1353