Constantinople: The Story of the Old Capital of the EmpireHutton, William Holden
History
Constantinople: The Story of the Old Capital of the Empire
Hutton, William Holden
Istanbul (Turkey)
But you cross the bridge, or you take a caique, and land under the old
walls; you pass through some gateway, scarcely recognisable; and in a
moment you are in a new life. It is the East. The hundreds of solemn
figures climbing the hill to the daily afternoon prayers at the mosque
of Mohammed the Conqueror; the busy market that goes on outside the
walls, the stalls displaying everything that man needs to buy, the
carpets, the great earthenware vessels, marked in white wax with
delicate arabesques, the fresh fruits, the strange liquors, the
stranger cates. A few yards off and you are among the streets that
belong to particular trades, the workers in brass, the cobblers, the
blacksmiths, the horse-dealers, the sellers of every conceivable
object under the sun, all in their windowless shops, laughing,
talking, selling, with that stately mien which makes a ceremonial of
the simplest act. There is no vulgar European haste here, no
chattering impatience to serve or to bargain; the ages as they have
passed over the place seem to have left their solemn impress on the
people. Let the story-teller come and amuse them; for themselves they
will not hurry or fret or speed. All is dignified, stately,
restrained. This is a Turkish quarter, but the Turks are rarely indeed
of pure blood. Almost every Asiatic race, and many European
nationalities, have gone to make the Turks of Stambûl--pilgrims from
the far East, Christian slaves, converts to Islam from every quarter
of the globe. Negroes are constantly to be met with, eunuchs, slaves,
and free trading folk. Pass further on and you are among the Jews, who
remain as large a proportion of the population as in the fifteenth
century, when some forty thousand of them were to be found in Stambûl.
It was they who first opened regular shops for the sale of
manufactured goods, and the greatest shops in the Bazaar to-day are
the property of Jews. In the great Bazaar with its intricate streets
and quarters, a great desolation reigns. The Jews and the Europeans
have invaded its recesses, and the pictures that the old books draw of
the haggling and the humour and the riches, have no meaning to-day. In
the enclosure of the Ahmediyeh you may see characteristic Eastern
sights. There a man sits being shaved. There are stalls heaped with
fruit. There are sellers pressing rich stuffs and linen on Turkish
ladies as they pass. And indeed it is not all stateliness even among
the Turks. Desert the streets of the leather-sellers and the
brass-workers, come down to the markets by the mosques, and there is
enough vigorous and vivacious life. In the harbour among the shipping,
where the rowers of caiques clamour for employment, in the Greek
quarter, or in the Psamatia among the poorer Armenians, there is
plenty of stir and movement. For a succession of pictures, there is no
city like Constantinople. Pilgrims from the far East, Mongolians,
Persians, men of Bokhara and Khiva, negroes from the heart of Africa,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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