Narrative of a journey from Constantinople to England

Preface

. I went to Constantinople in the suite of His Excellency Lord Sfrangford as Chap lain, and during a residence there of several years I corresponded with different persons, detailing, at their request, the interesting events which -frere then passing. By the par tiality of the friends to whom they were ad dressed, the letters were preserved ; and on my return, they were collected and sent to me for publication. The want of some memo randa left behind me at Constantinople, and other causes not necessary to mention, have hitherto prevented me from comply ing with their wishes ; but in the mean time I have been requested to print the

PREFACE.

. communications contained in the present volume, on the presumption that it might just now convey some local information likely to interest the public. In complying with the wishes of my friends, I have rather con sulted their judgment than my own. With the exception of a very few particulars, I give the journey exactly as it was written, — a familiar communication to a friend never intended for the public, and which I am conscious can have no claims on its attention beyond the interest which present cir cumstances may give it. NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO ENGLAND. You request of me to keep a journal, and transmit to you a narrative of my expedition, as you say, through the most desolate countries, and at the most dreary season of the year. I comply with your wishes, not because the countries are at this time nearly as you describe them, but because they present some highly interesting recollections, not only of ancient but of modern times.

You will remember, that the route I am about to describe is that which Darius pursued in his memorable expedition against the Scythians 2300 years ago ; and it is that which the Russians have already taken, B and will again take, in our own day perhaps, against Constantinople. Add to this, that the country, though occasionally travelled over by Europeans, is as yet but little known ; and any person passing through it may still glean some scattered grains of knowledge, which have escaped or been neglected by his predecessors. Should you find any such among the chaff in my narrative, my end will be answered. The ideas of travelling which you have formed from experience, are associated closely with smooth roads, easy carriages, neat inns, comfortable suppers, and warm beds ; and where these are to be found, all seasons ofthe year are pretty much alike to the traveller : but conceive travelling through a country in winter, where, generally speaking, there are no roads, no carriages, no inns, no suppers, and no beds !

The only roads are beaten pathways, made by one horseman and followed by another, and every man may make one for himself if he pleases. The only carriages are wooden planks, laid upon rough wheels, called arubas, drawn with cords by buffaloes' which are seldom used except for burthens. The only inns are large stables, where nothing is to be had but chopped straw. The only suppers are what you may pick up on the road, if you are so for tunate, and bring it to where you stop for the night; and the only beds are the chopped straw in the stable, or a deal board in a cock-loft over it ; and even this, in many places, is not to be had. There are, doubtless, exceptions to this general picture, as I myself experienced ; but, in the main, it is true : and such is the actual state of travelling at this day, in most parts of the Turkish empire through which I have passed, both in Asia and Europe.

The companion I proposed to take with me was my old friend Mustapha, a Tartar janissary attached to the English palace. He had been originally a native of Switzerland, and was placed in the service of a merchant at Leghorn when very young. In making a voyage with him in the Mediterranean, he was taken by an African cor sair, and sold at Cairo. After passing through the hands of several masters, he turned Turk ; and so was redeemed from a state of slavery, and enjoyed all the immunities and privileges of a fol lower of the Prophet. Unlike the usual character of renegadoes, he was not a hater and persecutor of his former sect ; on the contrary, he was more attached to them than ever, and well pleased with every opportunity of serving them. He spoke some English, and was the medium through which I have obtained much local information.

I put _2 myself entirely in his hands, and found him, on all occasions, not only an essentially useful but an attached and faithful fellow. As he had traversed Turkey in all directions as a Tartar courier, he was quite expert at every arrangement necessary for our journey ; and on the morning we set out I found the following preparations : — A janissary cloak, which was to serve for every thing. This most useful of all coverings is made of goat's and camel's hair, and is of a texture as thick and rigid as a deal board. When you get into it, it stands about you like a centry box, and protects you against wind and weather. The Tartar janissaries, in passing the chains of moun tains in Asia, covered with snow, are frequently out with dispatches for fifteen or twenty days, travelling with all their speed day and night on horseback.

Nature cannot endure so long a suspension from sleep, so they acquire the habit of sleeping as they ride. Covered under this stiff cloak, as in a canopy bed, they jog on at night in profound repose, trusting to the instinct of the horse that carries them. Next a canister of Mocha coffee. The greater part of the coffee used in Turkey is sent from our West India plantations, and Mocha coffee is as great a rarity in Constantinople as in London. A cargo had been accidentally brought just before from Arabia by an English ship, and so I obtained an unexpected luxury. But, above all, he produced a bag of Schiras tobacco. I do not wonder at the general use of this most indispensable of Turkish luxuries ; it is always the companion of coffee, and there is something so exceedingly congenial in the proper ties of both, that nature seems to have intended them for inseparable associates.

We do not know how to use tobacco in this country, but defile and deteriorate it with malt liquor. When used with coffee, and after the Turkish fashion, it is singularly grateful to the taste, and refreshing to the spirits; counteracting the effects of fatigue and cold, and appeasing the cravings of hunger, as I have often experienced. Hearne, I think, in his journey to the mouth of the Coppermine River, mentions his experience of similar effects of tobacco. He had been frequently wandering without food for five or six days, in the most inclement weather, and supported it all, he says, in good health and spirits, by smoking tobacco and wetting his mouth with a little snow. Had he taken with him a little coffee, the effect would have been still more decided. It is always used in the East without cream or sugar.

A small saucepan, about the size of an egg-cup, is placed on the fire till the water boils, a tea spoonful of powdered coffee is put into it, and it is suffered to make a few ebullitions ; it is then poured, grounds and all, into a cup just as large as the saucepan, and in this state, as black, as thick, and as bitter as soot, it is taken with tobacco. It is certainly not easy to conceive how man was first induced to use substances so exceedingly bitter and nauseous as coffee and tobacco in their simple state ; yet there are no two substances that are in more universal use among mankind, and they have come from the opposite extremities of the earth to meet each other. The people of the East had no tobacco till aster the discovery of America, nor the Americans coffee till it was introduced from Turkey.

As I had not learned, however, to take coffee altogether in the Turkish fashion, I begged of Mustapha to add a bag of sugar to his stock of good things. I found, beside, at the gate four horses, one for a surrogee, or armed guide, another for luggage, the other two for Mustapha and myself. For these I paid four piasters an hour ; that is, as an hour is three miles, about two pence per mile for each horse. I for tunately procured an old English saddle which was lying in the palace, and so avoided the into lerable uneasiness of a Turkish one, which I had experienced in Asia ; and set out at nine in the morning, on the 2Sth of October. Our direct road was to cross the harbour, and pass through Constantinople, and out at the Selyvria gate ; but as we took horses from Pera, we were compelled to go a round of several miles and cross the Kyat-khana Sou, at the head of the harbour.

Our way lay through the suburb in which the Jews reside; and perhaps you would wish to know, en passant, something of the remnant of that extraordinary people, settled at Constantinople, who have lately distinguished themselves in the Greek insurrection by their inveterate hostility to the Greeks. You would naturally suppose, as I did, that these people came to Constantinople from some part ofthe East, and brought with them their oriental language ; but this is not the case. After the extinction of the Waldenses, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the rage of the Inquisition was turned against the Jews of Spain ; and having inflicted on them various persecutions and sufferings, an edict was at length issued for expelling them altogether from that country ; and they set out, to the amount of 800,000 persons, from this land of Egypt, not spoiling their enemies, but spoiled of all they possessed them selves.

As the same prejudices existed against them in every Christian country at the time, they could find no asylum in the West, so they set their faces to the East, and returned to the place from whence they originally came. They were kindly received in different parts of the Ottoman empire, and the Turks afforded them that protection which Christians had denied them. They settled at Salonichi, Smyrna, Rodosto, and other large towns, where they, at this day, form an important part of the population. At Salonichi they have no less than thirty synagogues. But the principal division of them came to Constantinople, and were assigned a large district, called Hassa Kui, to inhabit, where they form a community of 50,000 persons. The Turks call the different people who reside under them by names indicative of the estimation in which they hold them.

The Greeks Yeshir, or slaves, as they were considered to have forfeited their life at the taking of Constantinople, and hold it ever since on sufferance ; the Arme nians Rayas, or subjects, as they were never a conquered people, but merged insensibly into the population of the empire ; but the Jews they call Mousaphir, or visitors, because they sought an asylum among them. They treat them, therefore, as visitors, with kindness and hospitality. I give you this as the original and accurate distinction, though all the subjects of Turkey, who are not Turks, are loosely called Rayas. As a further motive for good will, they mutually approach to an assimilation, much more nearly than any of the rest, in their religious opinions and observances. Their strict theism ; their practice of circumcision ; their abhorrence of swine's flesh ; their language read from right to left; — are all coincidences, which, to a certain degree, give them an identity of feeling which does not take place with the others.

The Jews, therefore, are a favoured people, and held by the Turks in a degree of con sideration which is very different from that which they receive in any Christian country at the present day. In many towns in Germany which I have visited, they are prohibited by law from passing a night within the walls; and the law is strictly enforced, unless evaded by the payment of an exorbitant tax : in others, the)T are obliged to submit to degrading conditions and suspicious precautions, which are as frivolous as they are humiliating. They cannot travel from town to town, or exercise particular trades, without paying an extraordinary toll or tax, which is not exacted from other people. Even in England, there is a strong line of demarcation still drawn; and in London they cannot practice particular callings without paying to the Corpora tion exorbitant fines, which are demanded from nobody else.

The prejudice which led to cruelty and persecution, is softened with the growing libe rality of tbe age; but it still exists under a milder form, and is a wall of separation between them and Christian community. In Turkey it forms no such barrier; the Jews freely exercise the most lucrative callings — they are generally the brokers who transact business for merchants, and the Sarafs, or bankers, with whom the Turks deposit their property. They enter, particularly the women, into the harams with merchandize, and so are agents of intrigue, and acquire extraordinary influ ence in Turkish houses. On a hill behind the quarter of Hassa Kui, where they reside, they have a large cemetery ornamented with marble tombs, some of them exceedingly well sculptured in high relief; and the houses of the opulent are furnished and fitted up in a style of oriental magnificence.

The lower orders, how ever, are marked by that peculiarity which distinguishes them in every other country; squalor and raggedness in their persons, filth and nastiness in their houses, their morals very lax, and ready to engage in any base business which the less vile would have a repugnance to. They are distinguished, like all classes in Turkey, by a particular dress; they wear a turban like a Turkish gentleman, but lower; and instead of being encircled with a rich shawl, it is generally bound with a mean cross-barred handkerchief; and their slippers, the colour of which is particularly prescribed to all Turkish subjects, are blue. The front of their houses is lead colour. They are inflexibly attached to their own religion, though many of them have apparently conformed to Mahomedanism: such as have done so, still practise, in their own way, the rites common to both people.

The Turk circumcises his child at the age of five or six, and makes it a gay public ceremony. The Jewish proselyte always performs it on the eighth day, and in private. Their Rabbins also visit them secretly, and keep up all their former observances. Should a Jew be made a convert to Christianity, he becomes the immediate object of the most relentless persecution to his own people, so that his life is not safe. A very respectable man of that persuasion applied to me to be received into Christian communion, and in due time 1 baptized him in the chapel of the British embassy ; but he earnestly requested that I should keep it a profound secret, and the day after the ceremony he left Constantinople for Poland. Indeed, their repug nance to Christians, particularly to the Greeks, displays itself on all occasions.

When the vene rable patriarch was hanged by the Turks, the Jews volunteered their services to cast his body into the sea: some fellows of the lowest description were brought from Hassa Km for the purpose, and they dragged his corps, by the cord by which he was hanged, through the streets with gratuitous insult. This circumstance, with others of a similar nature, so increased the former antipathy of the Greeks, that they revenged themselves on every Jew that fell in their way, at the commencement of the insurrection, with the most dreadful retalia tion. The mutual prejudice is so strong, that it gives rise, as you may suppose, to a number of accusa tions ; and they charge each other with the most atrocious practices. The Jews, you will recollect, in the early ages of Christianity, denounced the Christians as eaters of their own children — an ac cusation sanctioned by the impure and secret practices of some ofthe Gnostic sects.

The Chris tians of Constantinople charge the Jews with purloining their children, and sacrificing them as paschal lambs, at their passover. I was one day at Galata, a suburb of Pera, where a great commo tion was just excited. The child of a Greek merchant had disappeared, and no one could give any account of it. It was a beautiful boy, and it was imagined it had been taken by a Turk for a slave : aster some time, however, the body was found in the Bosphorus ; its legs and arms were bound, and cer tain wounds on its side indicated that it had been put to death in some extraordinary manner, and for some extraordinary purpose. Suspicion immediately fell upon the Jews ; and as it was just after their paschal feast, suspicion, people said, was confirmed to cer tainty. Nothing could be discovered to give a clue to the perpetrators, but the story was universally talked of, and generally believed, all over Pera.

The prejudice has also been greatly increased by a book written by a Jewish rabbi converted to Christianity, which is a great curiosity. It is en titled "A Confutation ofthe Religion ofthe Jews," by Neophytus, a Greek monk, formerly a Jewish rabbi. The original work was in the Moldavian language, and was printed in the year 1803; but it is said that the Jews, at that time, gave a large sum of money to the Hospodar, and the book was suppressed and destroyed. A copy, however, escaped, which was translated into modern Greek, and printed at Yasi in 1818, of which I had a copy at Constantinople. The first chapter is entitled puffrijpioi KtKpvppevoi vvv St dtToiciKaXvppivoi. — " The Concealed Mysteries now made Public." The subject is " the blood which the Jews take from Christians, and the purposes to which they apply it."

After detailing a number of the most extraordinary particulars, he concludes in the following words : — " When I was thirteen years old, my father revealed to me the mystery of the blood, and cursed me by all the elements of heaven and earth, if ever I should divulge the secret, even to my bre thren ; and when I was married, and should even have ten sons, I should not discover it to all, but only to one, who should be the most prudent and learned, and, at the same time, firm and unmoved in the faith : but to a female I should never disclose it on any account. May the earth," said he, " never receive thee, if thou revealest these secrets !" So said my father ; but I, since I have taken as my father the Lord Jesus Christ, will proclaim the truth in every place ; and, as the wise Sirac says, " even unto death strive for the truth."

Much of these and similar representations are to be attributed to prejudice, and great deductions are to be made from them ; but certainly the Jews of Con stantinople are a fierce and fanatic race ; persecution and suffering have not taught them moderation, and they pursue, even to death, any apostate from their own doctrines. They have a language and character peculiar to themselves ; the first is Spanish, debased by Hebrew and foreign words into a lingua franca ; and the second in which it is written is rabbinical, disguised by an alteration of some of the letters. I annex a passage of Scripture, taken from one of their books, as a specimen of both.* Having passed this Hebrew colony, where every sight, and sound, and smell, was exceedingly disagreeable, we arrived at the bridge which crosses the head of the harbour at Kyat-khana.

This name, which literally means " the house of paper," is rendered interesting by the circumstances con nected with it. It was originally an imperial kiosk, and used as a summer residence by the family of the Sultans ; but the excellent and amiable Selim, the relation and predecessor of the present monarch, gave it up, with others, to be appro priated to manufactories ; by which he intended gradually to introduce into tbe Turkish empire the arts and sciences of western Europe. Among those which he considered most important, was printing and the circulation of books ; and for this purpose he established a magnificent printing-office at Scutari, on the other side of the Bosphorus, and gave this kiosk, and another opposite Buyukdertf , for manufactories to supply his printing-office with paper.

It was supposed that the Sultan Selim was the first person who introduced printing into Turkey, * See Appendix, No. 1. but this is not the case ; Greek and Armenian presses were long at work in the respective patriarchal residences at Constantinople ; the first so early as 1530, and the second in 1697 ; and the printing establishment for Turkish books, and a paper manufactory at Kyat-khana, were formed by a renegado named Ibrahim, in the reign of Achmed III, in the year J 727- He was encouraged by the Grand Vizir and the Mufti Abdulla Effendi ; and even a fetva was issued by the Mufti, declaring the undertaking highly useful, and a hatta sheriff by the Sultan, felicitating himself that Providence had reserved so great a blessing for his reign. The Ulema also concurred, but expressly excepted the Koran, and books containing the doctrines of Mahomet, from being subject to the process of printing.

The reason they assigned was characteristic of the people ; — they said it would be an impiety if the word of God should be squeezed and pressed together : but the true cause was, that great numbers of themselves earned a considerable income by transcribing those books, which would be at once destroyed if they were suffered to be printed. As the Turks, in general, have no kind of relish for any other literature, the printing-office was soon discontinued when it was prohibited from publishing the only books the Turks ever read ; and the thing seemed altogether forgotten, when it was revived by Selim. On my first arrival at Constantinople, in 1821, I visited his establishments, and they were worthy of their munificent founder. The paper manufac tories were arranged in a beautiful style. The reservoirs of water were marble basins, and the whole was what you would expect where a Sultan had fitted up his palace for a factory.

The printing-office at Scutari was on a correspondent plan. It was a very spacious edifice. The cases and presses were at opposite ends of a very large apartment, and seven of the first and four of the last were in operation. The cases were so placed in a semicircular form, that the compositor sat cross-legged, on a cushion, to work at his case ; and the presses were so constructed, that when the handle was detached the machines worked of themselves, with the least possible effort on the part of the workmen. I purchased some books as specimens of the execution, which seemed very neat and correct. This, however, in common with other establishments, languished and declined on the death of their patron ; and, before I left Con stantinople, there were no remains of printing-office or paper-mills, except the name of Kyat-khana, to indicate the place where one had been established. c I could detail to you some interesting particulars of the death of Selim, who fell a victim to the rage of the janissaries for attempting to innovate upon their ancient and venerable ignorance ; but I had rather refer you to an excellent work on the subject, written by a M. Jucherau, a Frenchman, who was in Constantinople at the time, and has already anticipated all I could say, in his minute and accurate account.

The present Sultan has partly succeeded in an attempt in which Selim failed ; and the reason isj that he has a fierce and relentless energy of character, which the milder and weaker Selim wanted. His efforts, however, are all directed to improve the arts of war, and not of peace. Had Selim succeeded, he would have polished and enlightened the Turks, and rendered Constantinople more like an European city. His successor seems to have no taste for such a thing : his firmans are directed to rouse the ancient feelings and military habits of the Turks, and to make them more Turks than ever. The bridge over which we passed is near the junction of two small streams, which unite at this place, and fall into the head of the harbour, called by the ancients, from the accumulation of filth always deposited there, the Marcidum Mare, or Putrid Sea.

These streams were anciently named the Cydaris and Rarbyses ; the first now called the Ali Bey Sou, and the last the Kyat-khana Sou, because it supplied the paper-mill. As these are the only rivulets which flow near the city, and supply a very scanty current of water at any time, but in summer are nearly or altogether dry, and as the soil of the city affords but little water from springs, — it would have been quite impossible for a large city to exist in this spot, if some artificial means had not been devised to supply the deficiencies of nature. The first of these means are cisterns and wells, constructed at the bottoms of houses, as reservoirs, to save the rain-water that falls in winter ; but to a people like the Turks, to whom water is a religious as well as a natural want, and who use it for ablution as well as drinking, it was necessary to have a much more abundant source of supply ; and this is found in the bendts or tanks which they have constructed in the mountains, near the shores of the Black Sea.

These mountains are the regions of streams and showers ; and wherever a small rill is found running into a valley on any elevation, a mound is raised across the lower end, and the water thus obstructed is thrown back and accumulated, till it forms a large, deep, triangular lake. This mound is generally faced with marble, covered with sculptures c2 of oriental device, and has a very grand and magnificent appearance. Pipes formed of tiles, moulded into tubes, convey the water along the hills, and when a valley interposes, it is crossed by an aqueduct, some of which are very striking and noble in perspective. They have latterly, however, had a glimmering of hydrostatics : and instead of expensive bridges, to convey the water on a summit level, they erect Sou-terasi, that is, square detached pillars on this construction, — several tile pipes are attached to the surface and rise to the top, on which there is a small square reservoir ; the water ascends on one side, is received into the reservoir, and descends by the pipes on the other : the next pillar is six inches lower, and so there is an inclined plane formed for the water on the tops of these pillars, from the mountains to the city, where it sometimes ascends with such force, that it forms a strong jet dfau, which scatters it to a considerable distance.

These pillars are very curious-looking and unaccountable objects, till you are apprised of their use ; and they are scattered all over the country, from near the Black Sea to Constantinople. In a century more, the Turks will find out that even these can be dispensed with, and water will find its own level in tubes across a valley, without their assistance. The bendts, or reservoirs of water in the mountains, were originally constructed by the Greek emperors, when the capital of the Roman empire was transferred to Byzantium, and the great in crease of population required a more abundant supply of water. They were called v$pa\ia, and their preservation was deemed of such im portance, that several edicts on the subject were issued by different emperors, many of which are yet extant ; some regulating the planting of trees, others prohibiting the abstraction of water for private use, and one, issued in the year 404, fixes the penalty of a pound of gold for every ounce of water !

These laws have been re-enacted even with more rigour by the Turks, as water is more necessary to them than to the Greeks. The em bankments are planted with trees, to make them more firm and secure ; and they prohibit, under the severest penalties, any person, not only from taking water from a bendt, but from cutting or digging up a tree on its borders. The necessity for this strictness, you will judge of from the following fact. I passed the autumn of 1822 at Belgrade, in the vicinity of which is situated one of the largest and most important of these reservoirs. The summer had been remark ably dry, and it appeared, from a meteorological table which I kept, that it had not rained from the 4th of April to the 2d of November, with the exception of a few passing showers. The water in the bendts became low and muddy, and the Turks took the alarm.