The conditions of life under an autocracy naturally tend towards a sense of loyalty degenerating into adulation and servility on the part of public servants, as well as towards greed and corruption on the part of those whose high position places endless opportunities for dishonesty within their reach.

To estimate the character of the Turk, therefore, by the corruption at the Palace would not be fair to him. As well might we ourselves be judged by the wiles of the company promoter or the outside broker in the City of London. For despotism, however well intentioned, offers a similar field of operations for the dishonest; only the thousands who are annually robbed and ruined in the City of London, and the doings of the vultures who rob them, are not nearly so much in the public eye as the rogueries of the influential parasites in Turkey.

Strange it is that side by side with despotic authority and its narrowing effect on the development of character there should still exist an extraordinary appreciation of personal worth, intellectual and moral. You will never hear a Turk refer to a man as being rich, or as being “worth so much.” All the time I spent among them I never once knew a Turk single out such qualifications as worthy of remark. A man’s value lies in his character. Thus he is “instruit, fidÈle, un homme qui a rendu de grands services et en rendra encore.” Neghib Bey, a dark-eyed Syrian, exclaims: “Speak not to me of politicians, nor of men of wealth. I am ready to make use of them, but they do not otherwise attract me. Rather let me meet those of high thought, of talent, of genius, men with ideals. To obtain such as friends and to resemble them would be my ambition.”

The greatest stress is laid upon the fidelity of those who have shown themselves to be true. When a deserving person received a reward a common remark would be: “Yes, he has received a favour of His Majesty, but he well deserves it.” Instead of being envious when he sees a friend distinguished above him, the Turk rejoices in the exaltation of that friend. It has come under my notice more than once that when somebody received a distinction from the Sultan his friends were pleased, and said even exultingly to him: “You will obtain yet higher recognition, because you deserve it (parce que vous l’avez mÉritÉ).” It is ever a recurring reference to what you have done and for which you should be richly rewarded.

Great is the gratitude of the Turk for sympathy shown to him. Partisanship he does not look for. The most that he hopes for is freedom from prejudice and fairness towards his race and his religion. Should the stranger go so far as to betray a partiality for his country, a liking free from the suspicion of its being quickened by an expectation of baksheesh, his satisfaction is as genuine as it is spontaneous. A Frenchman is astonished if the stranger does not admire everything French; the Englishman is apt to be disdainful if the foreigner does not immediately admit the superiority of everything English. The Turk is more modest and self-restrained, and he is thankful if his feelings are not hurt by the “Frank.”

His appreciation is apt to show itself in the smallest matters. One day, as I was about to go to the bazaar to buy a present, Ahmed Midhat offered to let one of his uniformed officials accompany me. This, said he, would ensure my being treated fairly by the Mohammedan traders. On going round that part of the bazaar known as “Bezestan,” mostly tenanted by Mohammedans, I stopped before a stall belonging to a magnificent type of Turk. He might have been an Assyrian king as far as appearance and dignity of manner went. He sat, with legs crossed, perched up on high, immediately behind his show-case of curios—old watches and silver and gold bric-À-brac of all sorts. I pointed to a riding whip made of rhinoceros horn, mounted in gold, and asked the price. The answer my companion got was, “Tell your friend that it is the work of the Frank” (European workmanship), implying thereby inferiority in quality. He had been informed by the official accompanying me that, as I was a friend of the Osmanli, he was to treat me as one of themselves. Thus he did not want me to purchase an inferior article, even though he would have made a profit by selling it to me.

The Turk holds in grateful memory the names of those foreigners who have rendered Turkey unselfish service, even though it be generations ago. Of Englishmen, Hobart Pasha is still remembered; of Germans, Moltke. More remarkable still, a Vienna doctor, Professor Riedler, who organized the School of Medicine at Constantinople as far back as the reign of Sultan Mahmoud, more than eighty years ago, is to this day held in honour by the Turks, and this in an age of kaleidoscopic changes and short memories!

The genuine spirit of hospitality of the Turks, the noble traditions of which have come down to us through the Arabs, together with their chivalry, has long been recognized, in spite of the fanaticism of Christian detractors. The lavish hospitality to be found in Spain is perhaps traceable to a common Arabian origin; for it is significantly absent as a distinctive trait among all the other branches of the so-called Latin races. Its most remarkable feature is the custom, when a visitor expresses admiration for an object belonging to his host, of immediately offering it to him. This still obtains in Spain, and is to be met with, as I have myself experienced, in distant Kurdistan.

But it is not among those who have gold and silver to dispose of that Turkish hospitality or other Turkish qualities can be tested. What really constitutes the most interesting feature of Turkish character is that these virtues are to be seen practised among the humblest classes. Thus, whereas Emerson’s renowned treatise on “English Traits” deals almost exclusively with types of character observed among the well-born, no study of Turkish character could be complete, or, in fact, of any value, which did not deal with the characteristics which are to be found throughout the broad strata of the Mussulman population. Writers of Emerson’s spirit deal with the apex of a pyramid; he who deals with the Turks must treat of its broad base—the great mass of the Turkish population, which alone adequately reflects the many excellent qualities of the Mohammedan world.

There is ample evidence that the Turks in their prime, notably when they became the conquerors of Constantinople and overthrew the corrupt Byzantine Empire, felt contempt for the Christians they came across. Thus, when the arrival of the Ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire was signalled at the Sublime Porte, the answer came, “Let the giaour be admitted”; and when, after his audience, the illustrious person was dismissed by the Grand Vizier, it might even happen that he would be pelted with eggs by the crowd. But there was more of good-natured contempt than of animosity in this treatment. Of intolerance to the Christian faith there was none at this period. Not only the Christian but the Jewish population lived free and unmolested in Constantinople.

The tolerance which the Jews have always enjoyed in Turkey is well known. At the time when they were being burnt at the stake in the public square in the town of Valladolid in Spain, Jewish overseers were deputed by the Jewish community in Constantinople to sit in the public bakehouses and see that the bread which was baked for Jewish consumption was prepared according to Jewish rites. Individual Jews were even permitted by the authorities to exercise a kind of police supervision over the Turks themselves at a time when their co-religionists were being exterminated like vermin in some Christian countries. Under Sultan Suleyman, one of the most influential of Turkish Ministers of Foreign Affairs was a Christian, Ludovico Gritti, a son of Andrea Gritti, the Doge of Venice. Sultan Suleyman even went so far as to have his portrait painted by a Christian, Melchior Lorenz, an inhabitant of Flensburg. One of the men most honoured by Sultan Mohammed FatÈ, the conqueror of Constantinople, was again a Christian, an Italian of the name of Gentil Gellini, who was treated by the Turkish monarch with the greatest distinction. When subsequently war broke out between Venice and Turkey, the Sultan commissioned Gellini to take back to Venice the body of Enrico Dandolo, a former Doge, the first conqueror of Constantinople, during the Fourth Crusade, whose sarcophagus was found in the Church of Saint Sophia. Even the outbreak of war and all the supposed fanaticism of the Turks did not prevent a Turkish Sultan from pursuing a course of conduct which, even after five centuries, would be looked upon as an exceptionally chivalrous action among Christians.

When I was in Salonica there was no virulent Turkish Press to hound on the Turks against the Greeks, although a large proportion of the inhabitants in Salonica, albeit Turkish subjects, were Greeks in open sympathy with the Greek cause, even joining Greek committees, an act of high treason—in every country but Turkey. Nor did the Greeks take any trouble to hide this feeling, poring over the Greek newspapers in public as they arrived day by day. Yet no signs of popular resentment were visible during my stay on the part either of the populace or of the soldiery. The same passive toleration was to be observed in Constantinople, where the narrow streets leading to the French Consulate in Pera were crowded with Greeks seeking to obtain the protection of the French Embassy. They were not molested in any way. This might, perhaps, seem to be a matter of course, if we were not reminded of what happened to the Germans in Paris at the outbreak of the war in 1870.

How little is known of the record of the Turks in offering shelter to the oppressed of other races! Who was it that sheltered the Hungarian revolutionists who, when captured, were hanged or imprisoned? Is it not an historical fact established beyond question that a Sultan of Turkey risked war with Austria and Russia combined rather than break the sacred laws of hospitality of Mohammed, and surrender the Hungarian leaders Kossuth, GÖrgey, and many others? How do these facts, I ask, tally with the slander heaped upon the Turkish people and their rulers?

In no country in Europe are there so many foreigners, both as regards nationality and religion, as in Turkey, and nowhere else would aliens have a chance of such careers as some of them have made there. And yet I never came across any signs of Turkish jealousy. I have heard Turks speak with the highest respect of individual foreigners whom the Sultan had loaded with favours, but who at least had shown gratitude and attachment to the interests of their adopted country. We have only to think of the Dutch crew of adventurers who came over with William III from Holland to find an analogy, and compare the sentiments of the English towards them with those of the Turks towards foreigners in high place and pay in Turkey to illustrate even more closely the generosity of the Turks, and how far they can go in their tolerance of an alien element. Such favouring of the foreigner, even if it could exist in other countries, would inevitably evoke intense jealousy and intrigue on the part of the natives.

Speaking of a foreign pasha noted for his bumptious arrogance, and referring to some of his countrymen, a high-placed Turk said to me: “Que voulez-vous, mon cher? On les tolÈre.” But whatever the Turks may feel, they have never shown it by malevolence towards foreigners who were in the employ of their Government.

Many Turkish Ambassadors abroad have at different times been Christians. The Turkish Ambassador in Berlin some years ago was a Greek, who, mainly through his position as Ambassador, was enabled to make a rich marriage. Far from feeling any gratitude to the Turkish Government for his career, he left his private fortune to some Greek institution at Athens, although at that particular moment Greece was meditating war against Turkey.

We have had of late years only too many instances of Christian ministers lending themselves to denunciation and depreciation of the Moslem. I have gleaned from the lips of missionaries, and their wives more rabid than themselves, both in Macedonia and in Asia, how ignorant prejudice can blind the understanding. A pathetic instance of this, verging on imbecility, is to be found in a book written by an Englishwoman which circulates in the Tauchnitz Collection of British authors, entitled “Diary of an Idle Woman in Constantinople.”^[27] In relating that she had seen a eunuch at the Selamlik with the Sultan’s ladies, she exclaims: “He was a fat giant, a wretch.” Why a poor devil who has been deprived of manhood should be a “wretch” the ingenuous authoress does not explain. Yet, so far as my experience goes, a good deal of what has been written in disparagement of the Turks has no better logical foundation than this exclamation. For all that, there can be no doubt that this eunuch abomination is a feature of Turkish life which has always created a strong prejudice in the Christian world against the Mohammedans. Hence it is not without interest to emphasize once for all that this unnatural institution is not of Mohammedan origin at all, but, as well as every other kind of human mutilation, is strictly forbidden by the Koran. Eunuchs were a common feature in antiquity, and in spite of the efforts of both Constantine the Great and the Emperor Justinian to do away with them they were quite common among the “good” Christians of the Byzantine Empire. Even at the present day the eunuchs in Constantinople—who, by the way, are only to be found in the household of the Sultan and of a few wealthy pashas—are supplied from the Christian monasteries of the East, notably those of Abyssinia.

Is it to be wondered at that people nurtured on misleading data can scarcely be brought to believe that there is less crime in Turkey than in almost any other country; that the punishment for crime is far more lenient than in most countries; that the deposed Sultan was never known to sign a death-warrant; and that the Mohammedan Turks, as distinct from the Christian inhabitants of the Levant, are so kind to animals of every variety, beast or bird, that a Society for the Protection of Animals, however vigilant, would find its occupation gone in Turkey?

The Turk’s kindness to the dogs of the capital, since exterminated, is well known, as is also his kind treatment of horses. The beneficent results of this can be witnessed by the visitor to Constantinople when he sees saddled horses standing, free and unfettered, for hours by the kerbstone waiting to be hired, as docile as dogs, without anybody looking after or controlling them.

One of the favourite sports of the Christian Levantine population in Turkey is to shoot all kinds of singing birds, which are served up in restaurants in the Turkish national dish, pilaf. Any day in the autumn one can see crowds of doughty Christian Nimrods, armed with guns, going out in quest of the lark and the throstle, but never a Mohammedan Turk. This sight is a disgusting one to all lovers of nature, and when I was last in Constantinople the wife of the German Ambassador availed herself of the opportunity of an audience with the Sultan to intercede for the little songsters, asking His Majesty to issue an IradÈ that they should not be exterminated.

If procrastination and dilatory methods of business are sometimes calculated to bring a highly strung European or American to despair in Turkey, patience and forbearance and long-suffering, on the other hand, rise with the Turks to the dignity of virtues. Rarely are these virtues more striking than in connexion with the calumny to which the Turk is continually subjected. Mehmet Izzet said to me, in the midst of a storm of invective let loose by the English Press upon the Turks: “Mon cher, nous sommes un peuple taciturne, nous ne pouvons pas nous dÉfendre.”

One day I was present at the Palace when an elderly man was engaged in earnest conversation with Izzet Pasha, the Second Secretary of the Sultan, supposed to be the most influential, as well as the most unscrupulous, man in Turkey. As the conversation was in Turkish I could not follow it, but the tone of supplication of the visitor was so marked that it made me think it must be a question of imploring mercy for some serious delinquency. So I ventured to say: “My dear Pasha, I hope you will be merciful to that poor fellow.” “Mon cher,” he replied, “the fact of the matter is that he is Governor of Jerusalem, and he wants me to get him a better appointment. We are old school-fellows, and I would like to oblige him, but it is quite beyond my power to do so in this instance.”

Ample contact with the Turks in all manner of positions in life has convinced me that many of the wicked stories circulated about them have no better foundation in fact than the supposition involved in the above incident, of which I was an eye-witness.

Those who are acquainted with the character of Turkish women cannot speak too highly of their kindness of heart and their devotion to their children. During the Armenian massacres there were many instances of Armenians who sought refuge in the harem, and were saved by the interposition of Turkish women. This is all the more noteworthy since in other countries, notably those of Latin race, in times of great political excitement the women—as was the case with the Paris Commune in 1871—are often far more ferocious than the men. But here, among the Mohammedan women, mercy was to be met with—

The stranger, whatever his opportunities, only comes into contact with one-half of the Mohammedan population; the other is barred from his observation, from his very sight. In the course of all my visits to Turkey I never had an opportunity of approaching a Turkish woman within speaking distance. Even when I visited Ahmed Midhat, at his patriarchal residence at Beikos on the Bosphorus, in spite of our intimacy I saw no woman, though it was a large family gathering.

Avellis was my principal source of information regarding Turkish women, as he now and again was admitted to the harem in connexion with his calling. He often spoke to me of the distinction and the kindliness of the Turkish lady. But their graceful bearing was easily observable as they alighted from their carriages to shop in the Grande Rue de Pera. Their costumes—the quality of the rich silks of dark hues of blue or purple—were all noticeable, and indicative of good taste. Never have I seen a gaudily attired Turkish lady.

Only once was I privileged to obtain an idea of the impulsive kindness of their hearts. It was one afternoon at Scutari, when I went with Avellis and two ladies to visit the English cemetery. A closed carriage passed us, which, to judge by the richly gilt harness and the striking uniform of the menservants, evidently belonged to some high-placed Turk. Not until the third time it passed us did it attract our attention, when our two ladies had separated from us and had gone a little ahead. Then we saw all on a sudden two veiled faces lean out of the carriage and kiss their hands to the beautiful English-woman with auburn hair and angel face. Never am I likely to forget this incident, since she who was thus distinguished by high-bred Turkish ladies was the mother of my children.

A feeling of clannish affection for their family is said to be especially strong among Turkish women. It shows itself in their lasting attachment to their family long after they have left their homes and been separated from their kith and kin. For many of the women of the Imperial harem and of those of the great dignitaries of State come from the interior of Asia Minor, and are of lowly origin. Yet they keep up a regular communication with their relations in distant parts of the Empire, and are often the means of bringing these relations to Constantinople, where they are now and then given good appointments. Hassan Bey, the Circassian who assassinated Hussein Avni Pasha, the Minister of War, in open Council (June 15, 1876), was a brother of the favourite mistress of Sultan Abdul Aziz, whose death he wanted to avenge.

A certain primitive simplicity in the Mohammedan character—not the least of its attractions—is pointedly illustrated by the following incidents drawn from Mohammed’s life, for which, as for so much else in these pages, I am indebted to my deceased friend Ahmed Midhat.

In his early days Mohammed belonged to a humble sphere of life. At the age of twenty-four he married the widow of a rich merchant in whose employ he had been in a subordinate capacity. He remained devotedly attached to her, although she was sixteen years his senior. Only after her death did he marry again; but his thoughts would still revert to the one he had lost and to whom he owed his rise in the world. This excited the jealousy of his second wife, with whom otherwise he lived most happily. One day she pressed him to assure her that she was as dear to him as his first wife had been. “I love you dearly,” Mohammed replied, “but do not ask me to say that I love you as much as Chadidja, for she was the first human being to believe in me.” It was only after his first wife’s death that Mohammed, at the age of forty, really came forward and proclaimed himself a leader of men with a divine mission.

It is related of Mohammed that when he felt his end approaching he summoned his followers around him, and, being still possessed of sufficient strength to address them, told them that he knew his days were numbered, and he wished to ask whether there was anyone present who could say that he had done him a wrong; if so, he was ready to crave his forgiveness. They replied with one voice that Mohammed had been their friend and benefactor and that he had wronged no man. Then someone got up and said he had a claim against him. On a certain occasion he had been present when a beggar had solicited alms of Mohammed, who, apparently having no money with him, had borrowed a drachma of the speaker to give to the beggar. This drachma Mohammed had omitted to return to him. Such, we are told, was the slight record of wrong and indebtedness of the founder of a religion which hundreds, aye thousands, of millions of human beings have professed in life and have adhered to until their last breath.