Constantinople old and new

I had been in and out of Constantinople a good many years before I even heard of the Sacred Caravan. The first I heard of it then was on the Bridge one day, when I became aware of a drum beating out a curious slow rhythm: one, two, three, four, five, six; one, two, three, four, five, six. I waited to see what would happen, and presently from the direction of Stamboul straggled a procession that, of course, I had no camera to photograph, against the grey dome and springing minarets of Yeni Jami. It was led by two men with tom-toms beating in unison the rhythm I had heard. I later learned that those tom-toms have a special name, kyöz. After the drummers marched a number of boys in pairs, carrying small furled flags of red silk embroidered with gold. Behind the boys strode a serious-looking person who held a small round shield and a drawn sword. He was followed by a man bearing a big green standard, embroidered and fringed with gold, on a white staff tipped by a sort of brass lyre in which were Arabic letters. Next came a palanquin of white wood slung between mules. It had glass windows and wooden shutters, and looked very cosy with its red silk cushions; but nobody was there to enjoy them. In the rear of the palanquin were men carrying staves with bunches of dyed ostrich feathers at their tips, like enormous dusters. And then slouched along a magnificent camel. He wore a green silk saddle-cloth embroidered in white, and above that a tall green silk hoodah with gold embroidery; and ostrich plumes nodded from him in tufts, and at his knees he wore caps of coloured beads. Behind him trotted a lot of mules in pairs, all loaded with small hair trunks. I did not know that the trunks were full of presents for the good people of Mecca and Medina.

So lamentable a state of ignorance would not be possible, I suppose, in Cairo, where the annual departure of the Mahmal is one of the stock sights. But if the Constantinople caravan attracts less attention in the larger city, it is the more important of the two. The Sultan Bibars Boundoukdari, founder of the Mameluke dynasty of Egypt in the seventh century, was the first to send every year to Mecca a richly caparisoned camel with a new cover for the Kaaba. In the process of time other gifts were sent by the Sacred Caravan to both the holy cities. The first of the Turkish sultans to imitate this pious custom was Mehmed I, builder of the beautiful Green Mosque in Broussa. His great-great-grandson Selim I conquered Egypt in 1517, and with Egypt the relics of the Prophet and the insignia of the caliphate, which were removed to Constantinople. Having become by virtue of his conquest Protector and Servitor of the Holy Cities, Selim largely increased the generosity of his fathers. His descendants of to-day are unable to display the same munificence, but the annual sourreh still forms the strongest material bond between Turkey and Arabia. It consists of money in bags, of robes, of uncut cloth, of shoes, and even of a certain kind of biscuit. The total value of these and other articles, which are all minutely prescribed by tradition and which are the perquisite of particular families or dignitaries, now amounts to some £ T. 30,000. As for the covering of the Kaaba, it is still made in Egypt and sent from there. The old coverings afford quite a revenue to the eunuchs in charge of the temple. The smallest shred is a relic of price, while a waistcoat of the precious fabric is supposed to make the wearer invulnerable and is a fit present for princes. The hangings for the Prophet’s tomb at Medina, changed less frequently, are woven in Constantinople. The work is a species of rite in itself, being performed in a room of the old palace, near the depository of the relics of the Prophet, by men who must be ceremonially pure, dressed in white.

The arrival of the imperial presents in Mecca is planned to coincide with the ceremonies of the greater pilgrimage. These take place at the Feast of Sacrifice, which with the two days preceding constitutes the holy week of Islam. Pilgrimage is a cardinal duty of every Moslem, expressly enjoined in the twenty-second Soura of the Koran. The first Haj took place during the lifetime of the Prophet, and every year since then has seen the faithful gather in Mecca from the four quarters of the Mohammedan world. Constantinople is one of their chief rallying places, as being the seat of the Caliph and the natural point of departure for the pilgrims of northern Asia. These holy palmers add a note of their own to the streets of the capital during their seasons of migration, with their quilted coats of many colours, their big turbans, and their Mongol cast of feature. The day for the departure of the Sacred Caravan is the eve of Berat Gejesi, or the night when Gabriel revealed his mission to the Prophet. This is nearly four months before the great day of Kourban Baïram. In the times when the caravan marched overland from Scutari to Mecca, four months was none too much. But the pilgrimage has been vastly shortened in these days of steam, and will be shorter still when the last links of rail are laid between Constantinople and Mecca. For the time being, however, the Sacred Caravan still makes its official departure on the traditional day, going over to Scutari and waiting there until it is ready to embark for Beyrout. It makes a stop of twenty-five days in Damascus, where the imperial benevolence begins, and thence it proceeds by the new Hejaz railway to Medina. There is also a traditional day for the return of the pilgrims. Part of the ceremony of the Prophet’s birthday is the delivery to the Sultan of a letter from the Sherif of Mecca, sent back by the leader of the Sacred Caravan in response to the Sultan’s own, together with a cluster of dates from the Holy City.

The ceremonial attending the departure of the Sacred Caravan is one of the last bits of Oriental colour left in Constantinople. I have now seen it several times, however, and every year it seems to lose something. My best procession was my first, which also happened to be the last under a Caliph of absolute power to draw upon the public funds. And although I had a camera with me that time, I was not allowed to use it. The convoy I had encountered on the bridge was merely a preliminary of the true pageant, escorting the sourreh from the Ministry of Pious Foundations to Yîldîz Palace. There the presents, installed for two days under rich tents, were inspected by Abd ül Hamid and given into the custody of the Sourreh Emini. Then after an imposing religious ceremony the Sacred Caravan commenced its march. For a spectator without the palace walls the first intimation of its approach was given by several carriages of Palace ladies, who take an unofficial part in most public spectacles. Religious and military dignitaries also began sauntering down the road, which was bordered by soldiers, with an air of dispersing after some important function. Presently a double line of cavalrymen came into sight, preceding more religious and military dignitaries on horseback. One of them was the Emir ül Haj, the official head of the caravan, with much gold embroidery on his long coat. His post, still an important one, was far more so in the days when the caravan was less certain to escape attack on the way. Some of the horses, particularly of the ülema, were led by grooms; others were followed by orderlies carrying big cloth bundles. The body of the procession was made up of an irregular crowd of priests, officers, eunuchs, Palace servants, and nondescripts of various sorts, chanting at the top of their voices, followed by the big camel I had already seen, and the palanquin. But there were eight other camels this time, of all sizes, down to a fluffy little white one that everybody wanted to pat; and two children were immensely enjoying a ride in the palanquin. Behind that rode an official holding out on a red satin cushion an autograph letter from the Sultan to the Sherif of Mecca, confirming him in his office for the coming year. Another bore a huge parcel in his arms, done up in white tissue-paper. This was a robe of honour sent by the Sultan to the Sherif. Others still carried silver vessels in which sweet savours burned—“in honour of the angels,” as a dervish once expressed it to me. Next marched a second irregular crowd, louder and more amazing than the first. In front of it were two rows of black men in scarlet robes, beating on tom-toms the rhythm I knew, which they alternated with a quicker one. And midway of the crowd a ring of excited persons brandished swords and challenged the enemies of the Prophet to mortal combat. They were an unaccustomed reminder, in tolerant Constantinople, of the early days of the faith. And then, tied with very new rope to the backs of some thirty mules walking two and two, each gay with flags and ostrich feathers and led by a solemn artilleryman, were the quaint little hair trunks in which the Commander of the Faithful sent his gifts to the far-away people of the Prophet.

There is another annual procession to be seen in Constantinople which recalls to Western eyes even more strangely than that of the sourreh an older day of faith. Turks take no part in it, however, although they also observe the 10th of Mouharrem, on which it falls, as the anniversary of Joseph’s deliverance from prison in Egypt and of Noah’s exit from the ark. They make in honour of the occasion and present to their friends a sweet pudding to which they have given the name of the anniversary—ashoureh, or tenth day. The basis of it is boiled wheat, to which are added all manner of grains, nuts, and dried fruits; and the legend is that Noah and his people made a similar pudding on Mount Ararat out of what was left in the bins of the ark.

It is for the Persians that the day is peculiarly sacred. They also make a special dish for it, called zerdeh, of rice, sugar, and saffron. But that is a mere detail of what is for them the holiest season in the year. The Persians and the Turks belong to two different sects that have divided the Mohammedan world since the death of the Prophet. It is not for an unlettered unbeliever lightly to declare that so serious a matter was in the beginning a question of cherchez la femme. Still, it is a fact that the enmity of Aïsheh, the youngest wife of Mohammed, toward Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, did much to embitter those early differences of opinion. This lady, while on a journey, once caused tongues to wag by disappearing from her litter at a compromising hour and being brought back by a man considerably younger than her distinguished husband. Mohammed was finally forced to silence the voice of scandal by the twenty-fourth Soura of the Koran, entitled Light. In the meantime, however, consulting with his four closest friends and followers as to what should be done, he was assured by three of them that there could be no doubt as to the innocence of the Mother of the Moslems. The fourth, Ali, ventured to suggest that the matter would bear investigation. Aïsheh never forgave the doubt of her step son-in-law, and her enmity was a potent factor in keeping Ali from the caliphate. He eventually did succeed, the fourth to do so, twenty-four years after the Prophet’s death. But the Sunnites regard him as the least of the first four Caliphs. The Shiïtes, on the other hand, do not recognise the first three Caliphs at all. They even fête the anniversary of the death of the second one, Omar. Ali is for them the vicar of God, and they hold his descendants to the ninth generation in peculiar reverence. The twelfth of these Imams, as they are called, the Mehdi, is supposed never to have died. It is believed that he will reappear before the last judgment in order, curiously enough, to overthrow antichrist. As for Ali, the hatred of Aïsheh pursued him even after he became Caliph, and stirred up disaffection against him. He was finally stabbed. His two sons, Hassan and Hüsseïn, also met violent deaths, the former being poisoned and the latter falling under thirty-three wounds on the heroic field of Kerbela. These tragic events are what the Shiïtes commemorate on the 10th of Mouharrem.

In Persia the entire month is a time of mourning. During the first ten days public passion-plays represent with bloody realism the lives and deaths of the first Imams. In Sunnite Constantinople, where there are some six thousand Persians, the commemoration is naturally less public, although the two sects no longer come to blows over it. Most of the Persian colony are from the region of Tabriz, where a Turkish dialect is spoken. Their headquarters are in a number of old stone hans near the bazaars and the War Department. Large tents are put up in the courts of these hans during Mouharrem, and there every evening mollahs recite the story of the tragedy of Kerbela. It took place more than a thousand years ago, and religious feeling has cooled much in those thousand years, but the story still has a strange power to draw tears from the crowding Persians who listen to it. After the third night men with banners and torches give a greater semblance of reality to the recitation. On the tenth night, or on the night of the tenth day, which is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Hüsseïn, the torches and banners march about to the various hans where Persians live.

The last time I saw this ceremony it included picturesque features new to me; and, by way of marking a dramatic contrast between century and century, an aeroplane suddenly whirred across the square of sky visible from the Valideh court. But I shall always remember the first of the processions that I saw. It was in the same paved courtyard of Valideh Han, surrounded by half-ruined cloisters. The central mosque, the temporary shed in one corner, the sparse trees, the silently waiting spectators, made so many vague shapes in the February dusk; and snow was falling. A strange clamour of pipes and drums and shouting began to make itself heard in the distance. Suddenly the archway giving entrance to the han lighted up with a smoky glare, and the procession surged slowly into the court. It was led by men carrying flaming cressets of iron basketwork and three enigmatic steel emblems on long staves. The central one was a sort of sword-blade above a spindle-shaped fretting of Arabic letters, while the other two were tridents springing from a similar base; and from all three floated streamers of crape. Next came two files of standard-bearers, dressed in black, with black caps on their heads. The flags they bore were black or dark-coloured, triangular in shape, with the names of the Imams and other holy inscriptions embroidered on them in silver. On top of some of the staves was an open hand of brass. I was told that it commemorated the mutilation of Hüsseïn. Behind the standard-bearers marched more men in black, chanting in a rhythm of six beats and striking their bare breasts on the fifth. Even a foreigner could distinguish the frequent names of Ali and Hüsseïn. Others held in both hands a chain at the end of which was a bunch of smaller chains. With this, first over one shoulder and then over the other, they beat their backs. The thud kept time with the chanting, and vigorously enough to leave visible, sometimes sickening signs, under the torn black of the single garment they wore. Two white horses followed. The first, with rich saddle-cloth and head-stall, carried a little boy on his back. On the saddle of the second, caparisoned in blood-streaked white, were two doves. Then came a band of musicians, singing, playing pipes, beating drums, and clashing cymbals. And last of all, slowly advancing sidewise in two long lines, appeared a gruesome company of men in white, who chanted hoarsely and slashed their shaven heads with bloody swords. The blood-stained figures in white, the black flagellants, the symbolic horses, the mourning banners, the points of steel answering the flare of the torches, made strange matter indeed for the imagination, moving with desperate music through that veil of driving snow.

The procession marched round the courtyard three times and then went into the tent, where a dirge was chanted in honour of the martyrs of Kerbela. At different moments of the ceremony, and particularly at sight of the child and the doves on horseback—symbolic of Hüsseïn’s son, who was killed in his arms, and of the souls of the martyrs—many a Persian among the spectators sobbed uncontrolledly. Other spectators smiled at the tears streaming down bearded cheeks and at the frenzy of the flagellants. For myself, I can never help feeling respect for any real emotion, however far I may be from sharing it. People say, indeed, that these processions are not what they used to be and that much of the slashing is feigned. That may well enough be. Still, I found myself compelled to turn aside when the men in white passed in front of me. More than one of them, too, had to be helped staggering away before the procession came to an end. It is not every one who takes part in these ceremonies. The participants are men who fulfil a vow of their own or of their parents, usually in gratitude for some deliverance. Their zeal is so great that it is necessary to draw up a preliminary schedule for the processions, so that no two shall meet and dispute the right of way. Each forms in its own courtyard, but the men in white do not begin their cutting till they are in the street. When the marchers finally return to their own han—having, in the meantime, visited the public bath—they spread rugs on the floor of the tent and spend the evening drinking tea and entertaining their friends.

This ceremony is repeated in a milder form in Scutari, on the day after ashoureh. Early in the morning the Persians flock to a valley of cypresses called Seïd Ahmed Deresi, which is a corner of the great cemetery reserved for their use. There they rejoice over such as have by their own blood atoned for that of Hüsseïn. I have followed them thither only once, but I am happy to say that no interment took place. Tents were set up on the edge of the cemetery, of a faded green that admirably set off the darker cypresses, and close-packed Persians squatted in them, drinking tea or smoking their terrible toumbeki. More Persians, recognisable by their black caps if not by their cast of feature, roamed among the trees. Most of them were of the humbler sort, in skirted coats of dull colours. Here and there was one in a long stiff fuzzy black cloak, with a touch of gold at the throat. Many had beards decoratively reddened with henna, and wore their hair shaved high about the neck and off the middle of the forehead. There was much embracing between hairy monsters who had not met, perhaps, since last Mouharrem; and much patronising was there of ambulatory venders of good things to eat. Finally, at what signal I know not, a company of men in black marched out among the graves, bearing triangular flags of the sort I have already described. At some distance they joined forces with a company of coloured flags, headed by the strange ornaments of steel. Two of the coloured flags should have been in a museum rather than in Scutari cemetery on a wet winter day. They were unusually fine examples of the Persian wood-block printing, and in the centre of each smiled an inimitable lion with a curly tail. These two companies marched chanting together to the end of the cemetery, where they met a third made up of flagellants. But this time there were no men in white and no bloody blades. Then they all proceeded down the long road to the water, the steel emblems and the coloured flags first, the black banners next, and the flagellants last, chanting, beating their breasts, and swinging their heavy chains. Every few steps they stopped and went through their rite with greater zeal. The stops were longest in front of institutions and great houses, where a mollah would intone from a parchment manuscript he carried. And in the picturesque little square of Top Tashi, where some fallen Greek pillars lie in front of the madhouse attached to the mosque of the Valideh Atik, a Roufaï dervish, whom I remembered to have seen in the tekkeh of Karaja Ahmed, sang a long threnody in honour of the martyred Hüsseïn. The procession was followed by hundreds of Persians who joined in the chanting and breast beating. Their number, and the many stops, made an opportunity for street vendors and for beggars. Cripples sat on either side of the narrow street with a handkerchief spread out in front of them on which lay a few suggestive coins. Gaudy gipsy girls were not ashamed to show themselves on so solemn an occasion. I saw two women of a race strange to me, with coppery faces and a perpendicular mark painted in ochre on their foreheads. Strangest of all was a holy man who stood humbly by the wayside. Yet, after all, he was of one brotherhood with the mourners for Hüsseïn. He did not raise his eyes as the procession passed him, nor did he hold out his hand. What first attracted my attention to the goodness of his face were two small round reddish things between which I saw it. Then I made out the reddish things to be onions, spitted on either end of a steel skewer that pierced both his cheeks.