Essays on eastern questions

Front matter

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Introduction

To expect that the collection of a few Essays from the scattered periodicals in which they originally appeared, and their republication in a more condensed form, can have any material effect towards removing erroneous ideas, or substituting exacter ones, about the Mahometan East of our own times, would be presumptuous indeed. Yet even these writings may in a measure contribute to so desirable a result ; for correct appreciations are, like incorrect ones, formed not at once but little by little : true knowledge is a construction, not a monolith.

These Essays, taken together, form a sketch, mostly outline, part filled in, of the living East, as included within the Asiatic limits of the Ottoman Empire. Now, as for centuries past, the central figure of that picture is Islam, based on the energies of Arabia and the institutions of Mahomet, propped up by the memories of Chaliphs, and the power of Sultans; and, though somewhat disguised by the later incrustations of Turanian superstition, still retaining the chief lineaments, and not little of the stability and strength, of its former days. Round it cluster the motley phantoms of Eastern Christianity, indigenous or adventitious ; and by its

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INTRODUCTION.

side rises the threatening Eussian colossus, with its triple aspect of Byzantine bigotry. Western centralization, and Eastern despotism. This group, in its whole and in some of its details, I have at different times endeavoured to delineate ; and if the pencil be an unskilful one, its tracings, so far as they go, have the recommendation, not perhaps of artistic gracefulness, but at least of realistic truth.

The first, second, and third of these Essays have for their object the portraiture of Mahometanism, as it now exists among its followers throughout the greater part of the East-Turkish Empire. A fourth assigns its special attitude at the present day ; and a fifth gives the details of a local development of the same force in a remote corner of its demesnes.

In the sixth Essay the most prevalent forms of Eastern Christianity are passed in review; while its ‘ Greek’ or Byzantine modification is more minutely illustrated in the seventh. The eighth describes one of the many struggles between the Christianity of Russia on one side, and the Islam of the Caucasus on the other.

The ninth and tenth supply the background of Arab life and vigour in the times wliich immediately preceded or followed the birth of Mahometanism.

Contents

PAGE

II. Mahometanism in the Levant — Continued . 43

III. Mahometanism in the Levant — Concluded . . 81

I. Mahometanism In The Levant

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Dead and buried had they seen me, so their ready tale they spread ;

Yet I lived to see the tellers buried all themselves and dead.

Arab Poet.

(Published in “ Fkasee’s Magazine,” August, 1870.) NOTICE.

This and the two following were written at Trebizond, in Asia Minor, after several years of residence or travel. In these three Essays I have endeavoured to classify, so far as possible, the Mahometan population of the East Ottoman Empire, according to its princijial social divisions ; with a separate sketch of the characteristic features of each. Those of official rank, civil and military, come first ; the landowners and peasants next ; then the mercantile classes ; the learned professions follow ; while the pastoral tribes, Koorde or Arab, the maritime classes, and the ‘mixed multitude’ of the Mahometan Levant bring up the rear. Why I have marshalled them in this order will sufficiently appear in the treatment of the subject itself.

Like the other writings in this volume, these particular Essays have no pretensions to being exhaustive ; they supply samples, suggest general efiects, and no more. But the samples are all facts ; and the general effects the results of actual and long-continued observation.

The only objection I anticipate from some, is that my view of human and Islamitic nature in the East is over-favourable ; more so, at least, than that taken by many other European travellers and writers, modern ones especially. But, after all, as we see and hear, so we judge ; and ‘ to speak of a man as we find him,’ is just judgment. Perhaps, then, I have been more fortunate in my Eastern experiences ; perhaps less prejudiced. Besides, a disciple in this

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MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.

matter of Chrysostom, himself a native of Syria, I hold with him, that man has naturally more good in him than evil, is of himself more prone to vii'tue than to vice ; and I find, or seem to find, that Mahometanism, — the nearest approach made by any set creed to what is called ‘ natural religion,’ — has perhaps, on the whole, less tendency than any other system I am yet acquainted with, to cramp and thwart the innate excellence of human nature. Hence I am not surprised to meet with much that deserves esteem, much that attracts sympathy, among the followers of Islam; though much also is wanting, much positively awry. Yet the earth is, as Clough says, ‘very tolerably beautiful ; ’ and so are the men on it too, even though Mahometans.

The East, the Levant East especially, abounds in sights charming at a distance, and in general effect, but of which the details will not always bear too near an inspection. Constantinople when viewed from the Bosporus, Damascus from the heights of Anti-Lebanon, are instances in point.

But there are other sights in the Levant, beautiful alike from far or near, partly on their own account, partly from association and suggestion, the perspectives of the mind. And to this class belongs one that our Western friends may at their pleasure share with us, if they will join in a saunter this evening across the busy Meidan or open space — square we cannot call it, though it answers the purposes of one, for it is the most irregular of polygons — that lies in the eastern quarter of our pro tempore home, the town of Trebizond, on the Black Sea coast. Bound the verge of this Meidan, and visible from it further off at intervals through the town, rises a forest of tall thin minarets, ghostly white against the slaty star-sprinkled sky. But now each minaret is gorgeous with circlets of light, some more, some fewer, formed by rows of lamps, three, four, and five deep, threaded at intervals on the slender half-seen stem. And even now, before we are well across the Meidan, bursts forth from every turret, from eveiy crowned gallery of rays, the loud modulated cry that asserts the Unity of God and the veracity of the Prophet.

Some commemoration of more than ordinary sanctity, some night of note, is evidently on hand; but as we do not happen to be at the moment aware of the precise date in the Mahometan calendar, we stop a turbaned passer-by, who has just saluted us on his way mosque-wards, and enquire of him what mean all these extra lamps and accompanying signs of extra solemnity. His reply reminds us that this is ‘ Leyletul-Paghey’ib,’ or ‘ Night of Desires ; ’ the night namely preceding the first Friday in Eegeb, sacred month, and prelude of Ramadan ; whence follow many supernatural excellences and privileges ; not much better known, mayhap, to the Western world in general than are those of St. .John’s or of Hallowmas Eve at Trebixond itself.

A few minutes more, and beneath the festooned lamps that illuminate the interior of every mosque, line after line of turbans, reaching back from the ‘ Mihrab ’ or sanctuary (an analogous but not an exact translation), where stands the prayer-reciting ‘ Imam,’ to the outermost door, will at one ‘ Allaho-Akbar,’ ‘ God alone is great,’ bow prostrate to the dust ; and the head of the Pasha will touch the floor-mat side by side with that of the poorest day-labourer of the town in one act of adoration, one without more or less in each and all ; the act that, while it acknowledges the divine mission of Islam, rejects every other creed, every other system.

That Mahometanism is fast declining, fading, waning away ; that the day is not distant, may already be

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MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.

calculated, when the mosques of the Turkish Empire from Galatz to Basrah will convert or re-convert themselves into churches (though in favour of what particular form of Christianity may not be so easy to conjecture — the choice is a large one!); that pigs will soon lose their prescriptive immunity from Turkish knives, and beer and wine wash excellent Anatolian hams down once Islamitic throats ; that Mecca will only be knovni as a railroad terminus, and the Koran be registered by some Constantinopolitan Disraeli among Curiosities of Literature, are pleasing speculations, more pleasing as hopes, and fit to cheer the drooping spirits of those who mourn over the consecration of a heretic, or tlie disestabhshment of a Church. Nay, even the cool-blooded Gallio of Pall Mall has been found among the predictors of the fall of Islam ; and the verdict of a Mill or a Lefevre might be on this subject not dissimilar in the main from that of a Spurgeon or a Manning.

For ourselves, neither prophets nor sons of prophets, but mere lookers-on, by business of the State or otherwise, in Turkey, we must sadly confess that some sixteen years or so of Levant residence have as yet opened to us no glimpse of a so ‘devoutly to be wished’ consummation ; nor do the converging lines of the Mahometan prospect indicate to our optics any vanishing point, however distant. On the contrary, if the future be, as runs the rule, foreshadowed in the present, and if sight and hearing avail anything to discern the ‘ signs of the times,’ these readily lighted lamps, these answering cries ‘ No god but God,’ ‘ Mahomet is the Prophet of God,’ these long lines of Mecca-turned worshippers, among whom every rank and degree is merged in the brotherhood of Islam, tell a very different tale.

MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.

The ostrich was believed to hide its head in the sand on the approach of danger ; and when it had thus insured the disappearance of the hunter from its own field of vision, to infer illogically that the said hunter had ceased to exist. Ostriches of this kind are numerous, not in Africa only, but even in Europe ; minds that, when their own horizon, often a very limited one, does not include a given object, are prone to conclude that there is no such object at all. Add the paternity of wish to thought, add a fair amount of prejudice, add misinformation, and we shall cease to wonder at certain statements and opinions current enough about numerous topics, where facts would, we might naturally have thought, have warranted conclusions precisely opposite. Islam, in its present and in its future, may stand for an example.

Take misrepresentation only. Thus, we have heard, not once, but repeatedly, and on seemingly good authority, that the fast of Eamadan can now scarce lay a claim to even a decent pretext of observance ; that the veil is already dropping from the faces of Mahometan women, the harem opening its jealous gates ; that the mosque is habitually deserted for the theatre, the ‘ medreseh ’ for the ‘ cafe chantant ; ’ in a word, that European customs, dresses, inventions, organisations, literature, and so forth, will have soon rendered the Asia of the Muslims a thing of the past.

Let us endeavour to determine first how far all this is true ; and next, if more or less true, what it portends.

And here, at the very outset, we may be met by a plausible objection, the objection of those who say, ‘ What need of further research in so beaten a field ? and how should Europe, how should England in particular, not know the East, whether Mahometan or Christian, land, and people, and all 1 Is not all that lies from the

^gean to the Tigris, from the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf, pictured in the pages of Keith, and written in the book, the red-bound book, of Murray ? Have not a Lane and a St. John given us the entree of houses and harems '? has not a Slade passed the armies and the navies of the East in review before us \ has not a Strangford unveiled, evening by evening, the Isis of its politics, a Sale the Cybele of its religion \ Who can err with such guides or complain of darkness with so many and so brilliant lights around ? ’

True, the guides are faithful, the lights brilhant, and the authorities first-rate, each in his kind. But a handful of gold-dust would not be more surely lost if scattered over a Sahara of sand than are the opinions and facts conveyed by informants like these, when diluted beyond all recognition among the far greater number of errors, prejudices, and misstatements that, having once found cm-rency, still abound on every side. Witness the giant misconceptions so often reflected from European opinion upon European statesmanship and diplomacy, regarding the relative positions of ‘ Christians ’ and ‘ Turks ; ’ witness the popular portraits of either worthy to mnk with Shakespeare’s Joan of Arc or Dryden’s Aurungzebe ; witness nine-tenths at least of our leading newspaper articles on the Sultan’s visit in 1867 ; witness the surprise evinced when anv truer view of Mahomet and Mahometanism, as Mr. Deutsch’s admirable, though somewhat onesided, Essay in a late Quarterly, for instance, is given to the world ; surprise which avows pre-existent ideas of a very different colour. It wmuld not be too much to say that the vulgarly received idea of Mahometanism as it was, is, and may be, bears scarce a closer resemblance to the reality than do Luther’s Reformation in the pages of Baronins or the French Revolution in those of Alison to their historical counterparts. Nor is the reason far to seek.

When false has to be sifted from true, it often becomes no less necessary to enquire who was the sayer than what was the said ; more especially when rehgions, parties, public characters, and the like, are under discussion.

Now, excepting the few already noticed, and setting aside those whom evident interest or national sympathy excludes from the impartial witness-box, we find our usual masters in the Eastern school to be three : the Tourist, the Resident, and the Levantine. Let us call them up each in his turn.

The average Tourist need not detain us long. He who has studied Turks in Pera or in the Frank quarter of Smyrna, and Arabs at Alexandria or Beyrout ; he who has never conversed save through the medium of a Greek or Maltese dragoman ; he who with time limited by a travelling ticket, and with a stock in hand of knowledge regarding Mahometan history, literature, and customs, equal about to that of ‘ Tancred ’ setting out for Mount Lebanon and the Queen of the ‘ Ansarey,’ as it pleases him to call them ; such a one has all the right to speak and to be listened to regarding Mahometan Turkey, present or future, that a Japanese or a Spaniard would have on Irish Church Disestablishment or the Landlord and Tenant question after an equal time passed on the quays of Portsmouth, or in the precincts of Leicester Square. And even should his random guesses and hazardous assertions ever happen to be right, small merit of his, — ‘ a hit, but no archer,’ says the Arab proverb.

Nor can the resident Europeans, forty-nine out of fifty, show a better title to their magisterial diploma. Cigarette-smoking for four or five hours in an office or chancery, lounging for two or three more along a European-frequented road, or boating it on the Bosporus ; the rest of their time passed in society exclusively European and mostly national, amid European cards and billiards, or reading the latest arrived European periodicals ; unless the knowledge of Islam and the solution of its problems be imparted like the wisdom of Solomon diming the hours of sleep, it is hard to conjecture when or where our European friends whom diplomatic, consular, or commercial interests detain in the East, can possibly acquire them. The truth is, that far the greater number neither possess such knowledge, nor care to possess it.

But if the Kesident, whatever his real or acquired nationality, Latin or Teutonic, be not a genuine European, but a Levantine, that is, one born in the Levant, and with a moiety of Greek or Armenian blood in his veins to dilute the other half, French, English, or Italian, as luck may have it, then, ‘oh thou, whomsoever thou mayst be,’ desirous of solving the Asian mystery, pass on, nor hope in that office, in that parlour, at that table, to read the riddle of the East. No man would seem by birth and circumstance better entitled to cosmopolitanism than the Levantine ; no one in fact passes through and out of this world in completer ignorance of all except its Levantine aspect even as regards that little corner where he has vegetated. To a more than European non-acquaintance with the spirit and often with the very letter of the institutions around him, the Levantine adds a more than Greek or any other ‘native Christian’ prejudice against the Prophet and his followers. ‘ Bakee ’ his ordinary, sometimes his hourly, drink, cards his chief pastime, dogs his pet companions, swine-flesh, where attainable, his favourite food ; all four objects as repulsive to any true Muslim as the first could be to a teetotaler, the second to a Quaker, the third to a Goethe, and the fourth to a Jew ; no wonder that his house is rarely visited by a disciple of Islam, and then only under the compulsion of some immediate necessity, some affair to be quickly and exclusively despatched. Nor is the Levantine himself more frequently found within the doors of his Mahometan neighbours. A band apart, he and his colleagues pass their hours in the tattle and scandle-mongering of their tribe, aping, but never imitating, European fashion, ‘ aUa Franga,’ as they call it ; of Europe itself, its politics and its jbendencies, its feelings and customs, they may possibly have what imported knowledge Galignani or Charivari can give at a distance; with the Asiatic, the Mahometan world around them, they have no communion whatever. The nearest, the only point at which the circle touches the Islamitic is in words of command or abuse to some Mahometan out-of-door servant, whom poverty has induced to accept the pay of the ‘ Giaour ’ he despises — ah, Byron, Byron ! how came you ever to make the ‘ Giaour ’ into a hero 1 — or in the fellowship of some ne’er-do-weel ‘ Be-iniah,’ i.e. scapegrace of a young Turk, in whom strong drink and its accompaniments have effaced all of Islam except the name.

Besides, if we look over to the other side of the hedge, we shall find that the genume turban-wearer, be he Turk or Arab (of Persians we advisedly say nothing), is on many grounds averse from too much intercourse with the hat-wearer, Levantine or European even. National pride, the pride of a conquering though now a declining race, the haughty memories of great Caliphs and Sultans, the sack of Constantinople, the siege of Vienna, the conquest of half a world keep him at a distance from those whose every gesture is an assumption, not of equality merely, but of superiority ; rehgious pride, the pride of him who bows to one God only, the Unchanging, the All-powerful, the Eternal, estranges him from the polytheist, the idolater, the unbeliever ; personal pride contrasts his own ceremonial purity with the uncleanness of the unablutioned swine-eater ; family pride places a hairier between the ‘ Beg,’ the descendant of so many noble chiefs, so many lords, and those of whose fathers he knows nothing, except that they may have been, and probably were, shopkeepers or spirit-seUers.

Injurious and blameable such feelings in ay be, but they exist ; nor are we now occupied on a diatribe or a panegyric ; we only state simple facts.

But no such sentiments intervene to hold aloof the ‘ native Christian ’ from welcoming in the European resident or visitant, if not a man and a brother, at least a tool and a gain. He fastens on the stranger as natmally, I once heard a Turk say, as a flea on a dog ; and is not more easily to be shaken off'. His tongue is ready for any ffattery, however gross ; his hand for any service, however base ; while his eye is steadily fixed on the lodestar of the European’s pocket, whither hand and tongue tortuously but surely direct his course. He is the first to greet the new-comer on the steps of the Custom-house, and the last to quit him on the quarter-deck of the steamer ; the Alpha and the Omega of the profits are his also. Thus repelled on the one side, and attracted on the other, what wonder if the traveller, ignorant of those he foregathers with no less than of those from whom he turns away, hears and sees only through Greek, Maltese, or Armenian ears and eyes ; if the Levantine lierds with his kind, or, lower still, with the storehouse keepers and retail-job dealers of the native Christian population ; while the resident gentleman, diplomatic, consular, or- business, strives to preserve his own national mind and tone, by excluding the contact of every other; and returns, after few years or many, to Florence, Paris, or England, almost as Italian, French, or English, as when he first arrived in the East, and also almost as ignorant "? Nor can he be much blamed for so doing ; better, in general, no companionship at all than the companionship of such as hang on the European’s foot-track in the Levant.

Enough of these and theirs. Let us now cast aside (in imagination only, of course) the hat, don the turban, and survey the Islamitic world around us from an Islamitic point of view. And, hey presto ! the supposed unit ‘ Mahometan ’ disentangles itself into a round dozen of figures, each different from the other, and each holding a distinct and separate place in the gradations of Islam, as in those of nationality and patriotism.

It is a very trite observation, yet one to be carefully borne in mind, that in the Levantine East — that is, throughout the entire tract of country included really or nominally in the existing Asiatic Turkish Empire — nationality and religion are almost convertible terms, so much that not the specific difierences only, but even the intensitive degrees of the latter, go far on investigation to trace out the limits of the former ; which is itself again, historically considered, the groundwork and often the ultimate cause of the latter. Among Mahometans, however, the essential simplicity of whose creed hardly admits of other dogmatic variations than shadings too faint almost for the eye of an outsider, the correctness of this rule is at times

MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.

less evident than it is among the adherents of the more modifiable, because more complicated, Cliristian formula ; though it may in general be exemplified not ambiguously in varieties of practice, even amid apparent uniformity of theory. But these varieties, which arrest at once the eye of an Eastern, might prove unnoticeable, or, at least, rmintelligible, to a European.

Hence, while not forgetful of the general rule, we will on this occasion assume a ditferent classification, and review our Levantine Mahometans according to their social rather than their national distribution. To the CivO. Service, so important in a country where self-government is not even an aspiration, we will assign the first place ; the military must content themselves with the second ; land-owners and peasants, merchants and townsmen, lawyers and divines, shall follow in due order. Shepherds, sailors, dervishes, and such like odds and ends of society will find their place as occasion offers ; whoUy anomalous classes, Koordes and Bedouins for instance, require to be treated of apart. Nor will we minutely distinguish in each class between its component Turks and Arabs ; though, as our actual residence lies — much to our regret — among the former, we will give their nationality the precedence throughout.

‘’Tis known, at least it should be known,’ that orthodox Mahometanism admits four doctrinal schools, slightly differing each from each in theory and in practice ; those, namely, of Mohammed Ebn Idreesesh-Shafey’ee ; of Malek Ebn Ins ; of Ahmed Ebn Hanbal ; and of No’oman Aboo-Haneefah. Now while the three former have found favour among Arabs and other Semitic or African races, the Turks on their first conversion to Islam adopted and have ever since adhered to the fourth, or Hanefee school. It was well said by the shrewd and learned Mohee-ed-Deen (of Hamah, in Syria), that ‘ in the circle of orthodoxy, the teaching of Ebn Hanbal ’ (the strictest among the four great masters) ‘ might stand for the centre, and that of Aboo-Haneefah for the circumference.’ More indulgent than any of his brother doctors, Aboo-Haneefah stretched the rigid lines of Islam almost to breaking ; the doubtful concessions of a moderate indulgence in fermented liquors, of non-Mahometan alliance, and of considerable facilitations in the laborious ceremonies of prayer and pilgrimage, with a general tendency, not unlike that of the Eoman Catholic Liguori, to relax whatever was severe, and soften whatever was harsh in theory as in practice, all characterise his teaching. At the same time, in obedience to a well-known psychological law, the easiest-going of divines was — Liguorilike again — the most superstitious. Omens and auguries, dreams and amulets, the observance of lucky days, and the annual visitation of tombs, these and more of their kind found favour in the eyes of Aboo-Haneefah ; while his dervish-like austerity of life, and his avowed claim to no less than a hundred visionary admittances within the celestial regions, revealed the great Doctor’s personal leanings, and encouraged that fanciful asceticism which in Islam no less than in Christianity has proved an outgrowth from, if not a corruption of, its original simplicity.

Naturally enough the double trunk bore in due time double fruit, and the Turkish Hanefee, even while holding fast enough, in Cameronian phrase, ‘the root of the matter,’ has been of all times notorious for his proclivity now to the too much, and now to the too little ; sometimes lax, sometimes observant in excess. Specimens of either kind abound in all professions and modes of life throughout the Empire ; but in some categories the olie, in some the other, is more frequent. However, the former, or lax type, is most often to be met with in the Civil Service, our first field of inspection, and which has had the honour, more than all the rest, of producing that peculiar being commonly designated by the epithet of ‘ Stamboollee,’ or ‘ Constantinopolitan,’ to which derivative the title ‘ Effendee,’ a word equivalent in meaning to our ‘ Mr.,’ but now-a-days of a semi-official character, is liberally added. Let him come forward and speak for himself.

He is easily recognised ; for besides his individual frequency, especially since the publication of the last new ‘ Tashkeelat,’ or Eegulations, he is the first, and not rarely the only, Mahometan whose acquaintance is made by the European traveller or lesident. Whether our ‘ Stamboollee ’ bears the rank of Efiendee, of Beg, or of Pasha, matters little. The same loose black frock-coat, black trousers, generally unbuttoned just where European ideas would most rigorously exact buttoning, the same padded underclothes, shiny boots, and slight red cap, the same sallow pufiy features, indicative of an unhealthy regimen, the same shuffling gait and lack-lustre eye, characterise every man of the tribe : —

Nec diversa tamen.

Let us follov/ our Effendee’s career from the day when his father first held him up, a swathed infant, with his face towards the ‘Kibleh,’ and thrice pronounced the Mehemet, Osman, or Ahmed, by which our hero is to be known in after life. We may, however, omit the gutter-playing period of existence, that almost indispensable preface to every Eastern biogra-

MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT.

phy, be it gentle or simple ; and pass lightly over the four, five, or six years at the Mekteb, or Grammar School, where, however, the young idea learns, not grammar, but the first rudiments of reading minus spelling, and of writing minus cahgraphy, besides a certain number of the shorter ‘ Soorahs,’ or chapteis of the Koran, consigned to sheer mechanical memory, without so much as an attempt to form any notion of the meaning. Issuing with these acquirements from the ‘ Mekteb,’ he passes another half-dozen years chiefly under his father s roof, alternatmg between the ‘ Salamlik ’ of hourly visitors, and the secluded apartments of the Harem ; while day by day the spoilt child grows gradually up into a spoilt boy ; humoured in every whim by a fond and foolish mother, a fond and not overwise father, and servants whose intimacy supplies timely lessons of vice and roguery, while their obsequiousness promotes not less efficaciously his growth in insolence and self-will. Of general knowledge, of moral and mental discipline, of self-restraint and self-respect, of the dignity of work, the bond of duty, the life of honourable deed, he learns nothing ; these are growths all too strange to the chmate of his rearing. Besides the parents and servants already mentioned is some poorlypaid, salary-snatching ‘Khojah,’ or private tutor, under whose instruction he attains a fairly good handwriting, a parrot-knowledge of ‘ Nahoo,’ or grammar, that is, of Arab grammar, wholly alien in its principles, and mostly alien in its application, from whatever is Turkish, Tatar, or Turanian, Mr. Ferguson might say, in the vernacular language. To this he may, perhaps, add a no less parrot-smattering of Arab and Persian literature. Occasional attendance at a ‘ Mekteb Hushdee,’ or ‘ School of guidance,’ by which name the higherclass establishments of public education are designated.