Constantinople old and newDwight, H. G. (Harrison Griswold)
History
Constantinople old and new
Dwight, H. G. (Harrison Griswold)
Istanbul (Turkey) -- Description and travel; Istanbul (Turkey) -- History
titles and numbers are written on the edges of the leaves. They are all
manuscripts, and some of them are illuminated or beautifully bound. I
also saw a finely bound catalogue to which nothing has been added for
two hundred years. For that matter the library does not look as if any
one had consulted it for two hundred years, though the librarian is
supposed to be there every day except Tuesday and Friday. He accordingly
spends most of his time in his book-shop in the mosque yard of the
Conqueror.
[Illustration: Entrance to the _medresseh_ of Kyöprülü Hüsseïn Pasha]
The other _medresseh_, separated from this one by a straight easterly
stretch of the new boulevard, is that of the Grand Vizier Amouja-zadeh
Hüsseïn Pasha—the Son of the Uncle. I need hardly point out that Hüsseïn
Pasha was not the son of his own uncle, but of that of a famous cousin of
his. For he belonged to the great family of the Kyöprülü, who gave Turkey
five of her best grand viziers. The head of the house, that iron old
man who stopped for a time the decadence of the empire—and put to death
thirty-six thousand people in five years—lies in the skeleton _türbeh_
of marble and bronze on Divan Yolou, near the Burnt Column. Hüsseïn
Pasha’s tomb is also open to the street and to the rains of heaven. Its
tall stones and taller trees stand behind a cobweb grille to the left
of his _sebil_, where an attendant gives cups of cold water to thirsty
passers-by. Between the _sebil_ and the gate are two grilles of bronze,
set in two great windows of delicately chiselled marble, that do much to
make this _medresseh_ one of the most notable corners of Stamboul. There
is a big L-shaped courtyard within, pleasant with trees and a central
pagoda of a fountain, looked upon by white cloisters for students, by
a library containing no books, by a ruined primary school, and by an
octagonal mosque charmingly set in a square ambulatory of pillars.
[Illustration: The _medresseh_ of Hassan Pasha
Note the bird-house with minarets]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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