The City of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of the Turks, in 1836, Vol. 2 (of 2)Pardoe, Miss (Julia)
History
The City of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of the Turks, in 1836, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Pardoe, Miss (Julia)
Turkey -- Social life and customs
As you approach Therapia, you come upon a long stretch of wall, pierced
in one regular line with small square windows, and looking exactly like
an ill-kept manufactory; while the fine stone terrace that runs along
its whole façade, and the thickly-planted shrubberies which clothe the
hill behind it, have something so lordly and imposing in their aspect,
that your attention is irresistibly attracted, and your curiosity
awakened. Should your caïquejhes be Greeks, they will scarcely answer
your inquiry without muttering an imprecation through their clenched
teeth. It is the sorry remain of the palace of Prince Calimachi, seized
by the Sultan in a fit of despotic jealousy, and converted into a stable
for the Imperial stud, but so entirely disproportioned to its new office
as to be perfectly useless—the extent being immense, and the number of
the Sultan’s horses extremely limited; it has consequently been
abandoned to premature decay, and a noble object is thus blotted from
the landscape, and degraded into a deformity.
The son of the Prince was Dragoman to the Porte when the seizure was
made; but being a Greek, his court interest availed him nothing; his
ideas were too magnificent, and he paid the forfeit of his luxury.
But the misfortunes of Prince Calimachi did not end here. Exiled to
Broussa, he endeavoured in the bosom of his family to lose the memory of
his departed splendour; when he was one day invited to the palace of the
Pasha to encounter him at chess, of which game both were passionately
fond. Calimachi accepted the defiance with alacrity, for he knew not how
dearly he was to pay the gratification. While he was deliberating on a
move, the Pasha waved his hand, and in an instant the fatal cord was
about the throat of his victim. The bereaved wife was next summoned; and
though the dark ring of extravasated blood betrayed the deed which had
been done, she was told that the Prince had expired from an attack of
paralysis; nor did she dare to gainsay the falsehood; and thus she bore
away the body of her murdered husband in the silence of despair.
The Sultan has a kiosk on the one hand, and a summer palace on the
other, of this melancholy memorial of despotic power; but I was in no
mood to admire either with such an object before me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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