B. Granville Baker

Religious institutions of old Byzant—The rise of monasticism—The conversion of the Bulgarians by Cyril—The spread of Islam towards Constantinople—The attacks of the Saracens and their conquests elsewhere—The decline of the Arab Caliphate and the rise of the House of Othman—The Mosque of Eyub and the sword of Othman—The Turk and his habits—The Mosque of Mohammed—Little St. Sophia—Achmet and the dogs of Constantinople, and the new regime’s dealings with the same problem.

AS was only natural in a community so devoted to all manner of religious observances, such as the Greeks of Byzantium, monasticism made great headway and filled Constantinople with religious institutions of that order. Probably the idea first came to Europe from Africa, via the city of many churches, not long after the days of Anthony of Thebais, in the fourth century. Anthony was an illiterate youth who, suddenly seized with a desire to do penance for some wickedness (let us hope real rather than fancied), distributed his patrimony, left his kith and kin, and retired to a ruined tower among the tombs on the banks of the Nile. Perhaps he found this spot too sociable, for he wandered away into the desert east of the Nile, some three days’ march, and commenced his seclusion in a lonely spot which offered him shade and water. But Anthony’s repose was soon disturbed by numbers of others to whom had spread the fame of his sanctity, and they joined him as disciples in the wilderness, and no doubt in the beauty of holiness. Anthony lived long enough, one hundred and five years it is said, to start a considerable body of anchorites. The notion soon spread to Europe, and Constantinople took it up with enthusiasm; monasteries and convents sprang up in all directions, and soon became either popular resorts of penitent princes, statesmen, or others who wished to obtain some reputation for holiness to enable them to restart their old life with a clean sheet, or else the enforced retreat of emperors and empresses, patriarchs, and courtiers who had fallen from favour and were removed with more or less ceremony from the scene of their former activities. There was a monastery of St. George of Mangane near Seraglio Point, where John Cantacuzene took up his abode after abdication. I have told you of Empress Irene who went into the seclusion of a convent she had built on Prince’s Island.

Holy men went from their monastic institutions into the countries of the Empire’s heathen neighbours and made many converts. Cyril and Methodius were called to Bulgaria and converted Boris, the King, who sent his son Simeon to be educated at Constantinople. Many more Bulgarian youths followed, and it became customary to go to Constantinople in search of learning and the refinements of life. This practice continues to-day, and Robert College, an American foundation, standing high on the European bank of the Bosphorus above Roumeli Hissar, has trained many young Bulgars to a useful life. Among these was M. Gueshof, the present Prime Minister of Bulgaria, whose skill assists Tsar Ferdinand in piloting the fortunes of his kingdom through the troubled political waters of these days.

While the religious life of Constantinople was working out its destiny, while members of various monastic orders forgot the first precepts of their Master and plunged into all manner of political intrigue, a new and powerful creed had arisen in Asia and was drawing thousands out of darkness to the red glare of a militant faith. Islam was spreading ever nearer the coasts of Europe in a solid, devoted body, while Christians of the East were frittering away their strength in political discussions, thus paving the way for the conquest of a large part of Europe by the hosts of Othman inspired by a simple faith, and Constantinople fell. In vain the crusade organized by Pope Urban, the Eastern bulwark of Christianity was doomed. To-day the sons of Othman are in like case as were the Christians of the Greek Empire before 1453. They have assumed, but not assimilated, Western ideas, and in so doing have departed from the faith wherein lay their strength, have undermined the religious pre-eminence of their Lord the Sultan, and have brought a misunderstood version of advanced Western philosophy to a people inherently incapable of understanding anything but the fundamental facts that Allah is great, that Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah, and that his word is a law from which no man dare depart if he would enter into happiness after death.

The first to bring the Crescent up to the walls of Constantinople were swarms of fiery Saracens, who came up under clouds of lateen sails over the blue waters of the Sea of Marmora and laid fierce siege to the City. They came first in the seventh century and forty-six years after the flight of the Prophet from Mecca. Urged by their warlike faith, the Arabs had found conquest rapid and easy of achievement since they issued from the desert; they carried their triumphant ensigns to the banks of the Indus and the snow-capped peaks of the Pyrenees and thought themselves invincible. By the middle of the seventh century they had conquered Phoenicia, the countries watered by the Euphrates, JudÆa, Syria, and all Egypt, Cyprus, and Rhodes, and had overrun the Iberian Peninsula from Africa. The richest prize they coveted was Constantinople, but they tried its strength in vain, and had to retire baffled. The Arabs transmitted their creed to a young race which had come out of Tartary, and laid thereby the foundation of the Ottoman Empire when Arab dominion was declining. The fortunes of the young race, the Turks, were very varied, but they were at last able to assist Caliph Motassem, who was no longer able to find among his own people those martial qualities which had led to Arab conquests. Fifty thousand Turks entered the military service of the Caliph, and they in time came to assume power and a decisive voice in the Government, like the PrÆtorian Guard before them, and the Janissaries of Constantinople and Mamelukes of Egypt since.

The Arab Caliphate dwindled into decay, making way for a Turkish dynasty, and so when Alexius Comnenus was Emperor of the East he was forced to acknowledge Suleiman as master of Asia Minor.

Othman, Osman, son of Erthogrul, succeeded in 1288, and to him is due the rise of the Ottoman Power. He roused the enthusiasm of his followers by proclaiming that a Divine Mission inspired him to carry the Crescent out to westward, and so he moved victorious over the last Asiatic possessions of the Eastern Empire. Where he came he conquered, and by the beginning of the fourteenth century nearly all Asia Minor was held by the Osmanli, and the Christians of Constantinople were becoming aware of the danger that threatened their religious and political existence. The sword of Othman and his victorious banner passed to Orchan, his son, and with them these words of advice: “Be just, love goodness, and show mercy. Give the same protection to all thy subjects, and extend the faith of thy fathers.” This advice was followed by Orchan, and he too carried the Crescent victorious nearer and nearer to the Eastern bulwark of Christianity, Constantinople. Here at Eyub, in the mosque by the Sweet Waters of Europe, the sword of Othman and his banner are kept in reverent state and serve religious purpose, for every succeeding Sultan is girt with this sword, an act corresponding to the crowning of a Christian king, amid the prayers of his people: “May he be as good as Othman.”

The Mosque of Suleiman Built by this Sultan to commemorate his many victories. Flights of white pigeons hover round this shrine, and pious Moslems seldom pass by without buying some food for them from hawkers who have pitched their business here.
The Mosque of Suleiman
Built by this Sultan to commemorate his many victories. Flights of white pigeons hover round this shrine, and pious Moslems seldom pass by without buying some food for them from hawkers who have pitched their business here.

To-day grey threatening clouds are passing over the Mosque of Eyub, where these sacred relics of a warrior race are kept; the brightness that sparkles on the Sweet Waters of Europe which flow into the Golden Horn at this place has vanished under the dull pall of a saddened sky, against which the dark cypresses stand like mourners among the graves of the faithful who are buried round this sacred spot. The gilt crescent on dome and minaret no longer sends answering flashes to the sun that has shone for centuries over the shrine that holds these relics of a fighting race of sovereigns. To many here in this City the sky is overcast, the prospect dark and cloudy, for the Crescent has been waning where it was once supreme, in the countries of Eastern Europe, and the crusade called by the kings of former subject people has reached the outer defences of Stamboul, but fifty miles from the Mosque of Eyub the favourite disciple of the Prophet. The fate of the City is yet undecided, for the arms of Othman have met with reverse after reverse, and no one can say whether recent attempts at implanting Western philosophy on an Eastern creed has left enough of Islam’s virility to defend the last foothold of the Turks on Europe. Here in Stamboul, where stand so many mosques of conquerors, where the Christian churches of the Eastern Empire have been converted into mosques, there is among some a dread uncertainty as to the future. In the bazaars and the narrow streets Turks and Greeks, Armenians and Kurds, Arabs, Georgians, full-blooded negroes, go about their business with the utmost unconcern, as if Europe were not face to face with epoch-making changes which affect the Ottoman Empire in Europe, and especially this City, its heart. Yet here in Constantinople, so full of memories of the great Christian Empire which shielded Europe’s development against the Pagan armies of the East for so many centuries, there is a feeling, subconscious but ever present, that the Turk is only in temporary possession. In all his ways, in all his views, he differs from those with whom he comes in contact in his Empire’s European possessions. He has few belongings and seldom desires more, and these can easily be stowed and transported elsewhere, whereas the races he has conquered and which have wrenched themselves free again are ambitious and greedy of gain. They have been carefully collecting for this final blow; while the Turk has been squandering his goods, they have constructed; whereas the Turk, if he has not destroyed what he found, has at last let it fall in ruins. Those other nations give of their best, put all their strength into the pursuit of one ideal, a great and prosperous Fatherland; the Turk knows only that “Allah is” and orders all things wherever the believer may be, and the ideal of Fatherland is quite beyond his comprehension. The very word, “vatan,” had to be explained to the Turkish people by the enthusiasts who broke the power of Abdul Hamid; but all explanation was useless, the Turk has not found his “vatan” in Europe, and those who broke the power of the Sultan were unable to replace it by anything which the Turk could understand. Devoid of art or science, incapable of political life, the Turk’s energies have been directed solely to works of destruction. Only in one direction has he shown constructive capacity and a desire to leave a lasting record, and that is in the mosques and turbehs, and almost all of these are monuments to men before whom nations went under in seas of blood, who trampled down all signs of prosperity, strangled growing civilization, and levelled homesteads and palaces, churches and strongholds with the ground, on their ruthless march to victory.

Towering over the wooden houses of Stamboul, overshadowing the broken walls of Byzantine defence, which proved vain against the might of Othman, these mosques make Constantinople what it is. Massive masonry, with clinging turrets, crowned by a mighty dome surrounded by the Crescent, and round about the building the bulbous roofs of the medresseh,[1] tetinune,[2] darul ziafet,[3] and darul shifa,[4] emblems of the sycophantic East living on the bounty of the great; thus rises the Mosque of Mohammed the Conqueror, out of the eternal squalor, filth, misery, and unconcern of an Oriental city. And other mosques are much the same, and stand as the only evidence of the Turk’s capacity for construction, and the finest, most imposing of these buildings are due to the most ruthless destroyers among the sons of Othman. Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror built his mosque on the spot where once stood the Church of the Holy Apostles; not a trace remains of that former sacred fane, where in the “HerÖon” the rulers of ancient Byzant were laid to rest in coffins of porphyry, granite, serpentine, green, red, or white marble, from Thessaly, Paros, and the Proconessus. Indeed, these tombs were not destroyed by the Osmanli. Latin Christians, during their short tenor of the Imperial City, from 1204-1260, desecrated the shrine and plundered the tombs of the Emperors, but they left at least the building standing, and all traces of that are buried under the massive pile of the Mosque of Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror.

I have already mentioned the Mosque of Achmet. It is the most pronounced feature of Stamboul, rising in wonderful symmetry above the clustering houses that seem to tumble down to the sea-walls and are only arrested in their fall by the KÜtshÜk (little) Agia Sofia, formerly the Church of St. Sergius and Bacchus. This little building stands stoutly by the sea, resting on the walls that for many centuries kept the foes of Christianity at bay, its flat cupola framed on one side by sturdy minaret, on the other by a weather-beaten poplar. Neither of the saints to whom the Greeks dedicated this church are familiar to me; of St. Sergius I know nothing, and the name of St. Bacchus came as a surprise to me when first I heard it, for Bacchus I had known for many years as an obsolete Pagan deity who made no pretence at sanctity, and was only a god because mortals chose to worship him. It is therefore strange to find him associated with St. Sergius, whose name has a somewhat severe sound to it, on this particular post, for, mind you, the men of the Middle Ages allowed their saints very little leisure, but assigned to each his duty. So, I take it, St. Sergius was entrusted with the defence of this section of the sea-wall, and he requisitioned the other gentleman to take over the social duties of the post and to make things merry and bright. However, as I say, I know very little about saints, so cannot give the real reason why these two gentlemen clubbed together to have a church to themselves, and therefore give the above explanation under reservation.

High above this little church towers the massive Mosque of Ahmedyeh, Achmet, considered chief of all the mosques in Stamboul, its six minarets pointing like warning fingers to the sky where Allah reigns inscrutable. The founder, Achmet, was a pious soul, and at the same time a good sportsman; he gave evidence of the former quality by building this mosque, in the latter capacity he was great at falconry and in hunting with those strong hounds whose degenerate descendants until recently roamed the streets of Constantinople and acted as rather unsatisfactory scavengers.

Achmet was rather worried about the dogs, which, in those days of the early seventeenth century, were already rather a nuisance in the crowded City, and thought it wise to consult the Mufti about the matter, for the lives of dogs, unclean animals though they be, were deemed a matter of some importance. The mufti consulted with others learned in the law of the Prophet, and this enlightened committee came to the conclusion that it was unlawful to kill the dogs, seeing each one had a soul. Christians you may kill, they are the enemies of Allah, whereas dogs are not, or at least do not worry about the matter either way. Women you may kill too, they have no soul at all. It is all beautifully simple, and appeals to the meanest intellect. Anyway, the dogs continued to be a nuisance, so, as they might not be killed, they were banished first to Scutari, where they seemed quite happy, and then to an island some sixteen miles out in the Sea of Marmora, where they might die of starvation. However, if the story be true, the dogs knew a trick worth two of that, and simply swam back to their old haunts, and, incidentally, to their ladies, who had not been exiled. I can quite imagine the all-night howlings of welcome with which the ladies greeted the wanderers on their return, and the flight of slippers, smaller articles of furniture, etc., accompanied by clouds of curses, hurtling through the night, to check the exuberance of this frohes Wiedersehen.

A couple of years ago the authorities, inspired by the enlightened members of the new regime, decided to get rid of the dogs, and they were banished again. This time they were rounded up in all parts of the city, and even from the villages on either bank of the Bosphorus. I remember well a friendly little white lady who lived in a corner on the steps leading up from the sea towards the higher part of the Candilli; here on a heap of melon skins, which served both as food and as bedding, she was wont to bring up one litter of promising little pariah pups after another, and she loved variety, for her children were a most variegated assortment. They were as happy as those bright, sunny days were long, and would tumble in bunches down the uneven steps, or struggle up towards the high road which leads along the Asiatic bank and connects Candilli by land with the great world. Here the pups, after strenuous mountaineering, would get their outlook on life, with all its excitements and possible dangers; here Turkish cavalry from Scutari would come dashing past, galloping furiously when there were people to watch this feat and stones to lame their clever little horses, subsiding to a walk when beyond the sight of admirers and when the roads were soft with dust some inches deep, or grass by the wayside. Other sights presented themselves to the round, wondering eyes of these offspring of the little white lady: of a morning lithe young Englishmen would tear down those steps several at a time, to the great wonderment of the lodgers in the corner on the bed of melon skins. These Englishmen would be hurrying to the “Scala” to catch a boat—never punctual unless you were late—a boat that took them to their work in Pera and Galata. On their return they would ascend with startling rapidity those stony precipices which to the puppies seemed to take a lifetime to negotiate; and in the gardens between the high road and the sea you might hear the gentle voices of fair, fragrant Englishwomen, and the puppies would wag sympathetic tails. Yes, they were pleasant, very pleasant, those summer days at Candilli. The solemn cypresses, in their attitude of constant warning, stood unheeded, for the sun was shining on the waters, and made them gleam in gold and blue and many colours, and the sun drew fragrance from flowering shrubs, and ripened the swelling figs that nestled among the broad leaves which, in their turn, mirrored the life-giver in their bright, smooth surface. But one day the little white lady and her family vanished, for men had been busy during the night, and had carried them and all their friends into exile, had carried them away over the waters where the moon drew a sparkling silvery path, to a barren island. Here they were left to perish, for long ago the wise men, learned in the laws of the Prophet, had decided that every dog, even the smallest pup, has a soul, and that it is evil to kill them, but not to let them starve to death. And these same wise men would not have allowed the possession of a soul to those fair Englishwomen whose blue eyes smiled kindly on the little white lady and her offspring’s wondering interest in the doings of the great world.

Many of the dogs had a presentiment of danger, and evaded capture by fleeing to the “hinterland,” whence came alarming rumours of packs of wild dogs rendering insecure the country-side. Of these, one or the other found his way back to his old sociable haunts, and Constantinople and environments have not quite got rid of the dogs which, according to the accounts of all travellers in this country, form one of its most remarkable features.

There are other mosques, many of them, rising up from among squalor, or groups of picturesque wooden houses, and these mosques seem to be the only indication of any permanence of Turkish rule. The little wooden houses vanish from time to time, whole districts in one fell swoop, by fire, which has spread with alarming rapidity long before the watchman, tapping the irregular pavement with the iron-shod staff, has given the alarm. Then firemen, with much noise but little expedition, arrive on the scene, and find little left to do but to gather up the fragments, the property of the sufferers. But the mosques remain towering above charred ruins, and the call to prayer sounds from the graceful minaret over deserted homesteads.

A Disused Monastery Near the Golf-links on the heights overlooking the upper reaches of the Golden Horn. Here also refugees cluster around the dilapidated walls waiting patiently for transport to Asia Minor.
A Disused Monastery
Near the Golf-links on the heights overlooking the upper reaches of the Golden Horn. Here also refugees cluster around the dilapidated walls waiting patiently for transport to Asia Minor.

Thus the life of this strange people, the Turks, goes on from day to day, leisurely business transacted with all dignity of inherent idleness, endless gossip under the vines and awnings of small cafÉs, talk which begins nowhere and arrives nowhere. Squalor, dirt, picturesque decay, and over all the sense that a migratory race has settled here for a while, is not disposed to move until turned out, and has just put up a leader or two with sufficient enterprise to make others build him a place of worship to glorify himself above his fellows.

But strong young nations have closed in upon Constantinople and threaten it from the West. They came strong in their faith, armed and equipped and prepared to carry all before them, to make vast sacrifices, and their strongest weapon is an ideal. They have not forgotten the history of past centuries; the memory of nameless indignities, of crushing shame, has fed the spirit that informs them, that bids them hurl their young strength against the vis inertiÆ of the Turks and march over heaps of slain, over a country peopled by their kinsmen, fellow Christians, now devastated by the foe they have driven back. Now they are hammering at the gates, at the defences of Constantinople, and all the remaining strength of the dying Ottoman Empire in Europe is massed on the narrow strip of ground between the Bosphorus and the lines of Chatalja.

Uncertainty still reigns there as I write these lines; vain hopes are raised by rumours, some so improbable that they suggest the incoherent rambling of one but half-awakened out of a long drugged sleep. But certain it is that efficiency, concentration, and high purpose have met sloth and corruption, and have conquered. Though the lines of Chatalja may prove equal to the task of defending this last strip of Turkish territory, yet the fact remains that those young nations have brought about an epoch-making catastrophe—the passing of Ottoman rule in Europe.