While Ramazan is the sole month of the Mohammedan calendar generally known to the infidel world, the infidel world has never been very sure whether to spell its last syllable with a d or with a z. Let the infidel world accordingly know that either is right in its own domain. The Arabs say Ramadan, the Persians and the Turks say Ramazan. And they all observe throughout the month a species of fast that has no precise counterpart in the West. So long as the sun is in the sky, food or drink of any kind may not pass the true believer’s lips. He is not even allowed the sweet solace of a cigarette. But from the firing of the sunset gun until it is light enough to distinguish a white hair from a black he may feast to surfeiting.

Nothing is more characteristic of late afternoons in Ramazan than the preparations for the evening meal which preoccupy all Moslems, particularly those who work with their hands. As the sun nears the horizon, fires are lighted, tables are spread, bread is broken, water is poured out, cigarettes are rolled, and hands are lifted half-way to the mouth, in expectation of the signal that gives liberty to eat. This breaking of the daytime fast is called iftar, which means feast or rejoicing, and is an institution in itself. The true iftar begins with hors-d’œuvres of various sorts—olives, cheese, and preserves, with sweet simits, which are rings of hard pastry, and round flaps of hot unleavened bread, called pideh. Then should come a vegetable soup, and eggs cooked with cheese or pastîrma—the sausage of the country—and I know not how many other dainties peculiar to the season, served in bewildering variety and washed down, it may be, with water from the sacred well Zemzem in Mecca. Any Turkish dinner is colossal, but iftar in a great house is well nigh fatal to a foreigner. Foreigners have the better opportunity to become acquainted with them because Ramazan is the proverbial time for dinner-parties. The rich keep open house throughout the month, while the poorest make it a point to entertain their particular friends at iftar. The last meal of the night also has a name of its own, sohour, which is derived from the word for dawn. Watchmen patrol the streets with drums to wake people up in time for it, while another cannon announces when the fast begins again.

In a primitive community like that of the Prophet’s Arabia and in a climate where people anyway sleep during much of the day, Ramazan might be comparatively easy to keep. Under modern conditions, and especially in a town containing so large an alien population as Constantinople, it is not surprising that the fast is somewhat intermittently observed. The more Europeanised Turks make no pretence of fasting, to the no small scandal of their servants. Others strengthen their resolution by an occasional bite in private or a secret cigarette. Every now and then some such person is arrested and fined, for church and state are still officially one in Turkey, and the Sheriat is a system of Blue Laws that would leave very little room for individual judgment if it succeeded in altogether having its way. Those who are most conscientious are those upon whom the fast falls most heavily—peasants and workmen who cannot turn day and night about. So complete a derangement of all the habits of life naturally has its effect. No one who employs Turks or does business with them can get anything done, and tempers habitually mild grow strained as the month proceeds. Thus in one way or another does Ramazan continue to colour the whole life of the cosmopolitan city.

Stamboul, always solemn under her centuries and proud even in decay, is never prouder or more solemn than when illuminated for the holy month of Islam. It is one of the sights of the world to see the dark city under the moon of Ramazan, constellated with circlets of light that bead the galleries of numberless minarets. The imperial mosques that cut out so superb a silhouette above the climbing roofs have two, four, or six minarets to illuminate, some of them with three galleries apiece. And they use a yet more magical device. Lines are slung between minaret and minaret, and from them are suspended small glass mosque lamps in some decorative order. During the first half of the month they spell, as if in sparks of gold, a simple phrase like “O Allah!” or “O Mohammed!” After the fifteenth they often trace in the dark sky the outline of a flower or a ship. There is something starlike about these graceful illuminations, but they are called mahieh—moonlight.

Théophile Gautier called Ramazan a Lent lined with a Carnival. The phrase is a happy one if it does not lead the reader into attributing a Latin vivacity to Turkish merrymakings. The streets of Stamboul, ordinarily so deserted at night, are full of life during the nights of Ramazan. But their gaiety is little enough like the uproar of a European Carnival. Even in the busiest centres of amusement, where a carriage or even a man often finds difficulty in passing, there is none of the wild hilarity whereby an Occidental must express his sense of the joy of life. The people stroll quietly up and down or sit quietly in the coffee-houses, making their kef in a way that reveals Turkish character on its most sympathetic side. They are practically all men. Early in the evening veiled women in their loose street costume may sometimes be seen, accompanied by a servant with a lantern. But as the hours wear on they disappear, leaving only fezzes and turbans in the streets. Even the Christian women, who also inhabit their quarters of Stamboul, observe the custom. It is the rarest thing in the world for an Armenian or a Greek of the poorer classes to take his wife out with him at night.

The coffee-houses are, perhaps, the most characteristic feature of Stamboul streets during the nights of Ramazan. In the daytime they are closed, or the purely Turkish ones are, as there is then no scope for their activities. They are open all night long, however. And few be they that do not attempt to add in some way to their customary attractions. This is often accomplished in a simple manner with the aid of an instrument that we do not associate with the East—I mean the gramophone, which enjoys an enormous popularity in Constantinople. There, however, it has been taught to utter sounds which might prevent many from recognising an old friend. I confess that I prefer myself the living executant to his mechanical echo. One never has to go far during Ramazan to find him. Itinerant gipsies, masters of pipe and tom-tom, are then much in evidence in the humbler coffee-houses. There they go, two and two, a man and a boy, in the wide black trousers, the dark-red girdle, and the almost black fez which they affect. In larger coffee-houses there will be a whole orchestra, so called, of the fine lute, if one may so translate its Turkish title—a company of singers who also play on instruments of strange names and curves that suit the music they make. One such instrument, the out, is ancestor to the European lute. There are those, indeed, who find no music in the broken rhythms, the mounting minor, of a harmony which the Russian composers have only recently begun to make comprehensible to Western ears. For myself, I know too little of music to tell what relation it may bear to the antique modes. But I can listen, as long as musicians will perform, to those infinite repetitions, that insistent sounding of the minor key. It pleases me to hear in them a music come from far away—from unknown river gorges, from camp-fires glimmering on great plains. There are flashes, too, of light, of song, the playing of shepherds’ pipes, the swoop of horsemen, and sudden outcries of savagery. But the note to which it all comes back is the monotone of a primitive life, like the day-long beat of camel bells. And more than all, it is the mood of Asia, elsewhere so rarely understood, which is neither lightness nor despair.

Dancing is not uncommon in the coffee-houses of the people during Ramazan. Sometimes it is performed by the gipsy girls, dressed in vivid cotton prints and jingling with sequins, who alone of their sex are immodest enough to enter a coffee-house. Dancing boys are oftener the performers—gipsies, Greeks, or Turks—who perpetuate a custom older than the satyr dances of India or the Phrygian dances of Cybele. Alimeh, whence the French almée, and köchek are the technical names of these not too respectable entertainers. Sometimes the habitués of the coffee-house indulge in the dancing themselves, if they are not pure Turks, forming a ring and keeping time to the sound of pipe and drum. Of recent years, however, all this sort of thing has grown rare. What has become rarer still is a form of amusement provided by the itinerant story-teller, the mettagh, who still carries on in the East the tradition of the troubadours. The stories he tells are more or less on the order of the Arabian Nights, and not very suitable for mixed companies—which for the rest are never found in coffee-shops. These men are often wonderfully clever at character monologue or dialogue. They collect their pay at a crucial moment of the action, refusing to continue until the audience has testified to the sincerity of its interest by some substantial token.

A more elaborate form of entertainment is provided by coffee-houses fortunate enough to possess a garden or some large back room. This is the marionette theatre, and it is to be seen at no other time of the year. The Turkish marionettes, known by the name of their star performer, Kara-gyöz, are a national institution. In fact, their repertory includes almost all there is of a national theatre. In common with other Asiatic marionettes, they do not appear in person. The proscenium arch of their miniature stage is filled with a sheet of lighted paper. The tiny actors, cleverly jointed together of transparent materials, move between the light and the paper, so that their coloured shadows are all that the public sees. It is enough, however, to offer an amusement worth seeing. The theatre of Kara-gyöz would make an interesting study in itself, reflecting as it does the manners of the country. Sometimes, indeed, it has reflected them so faithfully as to require the intervention of the censor. But Kara-gyöz himself, otherwise Black-eye, is always amusing, whatever may be his lapses from propriety. This truculent individual must be a relative of Punch, although he is said to be a caricature of a veritable person, one of Saladin’s viziers. He is a humpback with a black beard and a raucous voice, to whom no enterprise is too difficult or too absurd. He is accompanied by a right-hand man who points his repartee and is alternately his dupe and his deceiver. The adventures of this amorous pair and those of the crack-voiced ladies, the brilliantly costumed gentlemen, the wonderful dogs, cats, mice, and other creatures that go to make up the company, create a scene that a spectator of simple tastes willingly revisits. Among the elements of his pleasure must be counted the ill-lighted barrack or tent in which the representation takes place, the gaily dressed children composing the better part of the audience—here, for once, ladies are allowed!—the loquacious venders of sweets and drinks, and the music of pipe and drum to the accompaniment of which the little coloured shadows play on their lighted paper.

The shadow shows are by no means the only species of the dramatic art to tempt the audiences of Ramazan. There are full-grown theatres that take themselves, the drama—everything except the lives of their patrons—more seriously. They are perfect fire-traps wherein the play’s the thing, innocent as they in great part are of those devices of upholstery which are the chief pride of the modern stage. The pit is aligned with rush-bottomed stools and chairs, above which rise, in the European fashion, tiers of not too Sybaritic boxes. A particularity of them is that, like the cafés and the streets, they contain no ladies. While there are Turkish theatres which ladies attend in the daytime, it is contrary to custom for ladies to take part in public entertainments at night. Consequently the European ladies who sometimes penetrate Stamboul during the nights of Ramazan make themselves more conspicuous than is likely to be pleasant and the objects of comment which it is well that they do not understand. Women do appear on the stage, but they are never Turks. They are usually Armenians, occasionally Syrians or Greeks, whose murder of the language is condoned by the exigencies of the case.

The performances last the better part of the night. They begin at three o’clock Turkish, or three hours after sunset at any season of the year, and close in time for the last meal of the night. There is a curtain-raiser, which is not seldom drawn from the manners of the people. The piece of resistance, however, is a comedy or melodrama adapted from the European stage. The first is more likely to be interesting to an outsider, for the Turks are capital comedians. But the more serious pieces are characteristic, too, in their mixture of East and West. Madam Contess, as she is flatly pronounced, will be attended by servants in fez and shalvars, and two gentlemen in top hats will salute each other with earth-sweeping salaams.

Between the two plays intervene a couple of hours or so of singing and dancing that are to many the meat in the sandwich. These entertainments are also highly characteristic of the city that straddles two continents. The costume of the performers is supposably European, although no Western almée would consent to be encumbered with the skirts and sleeves of her Armenian sister, or let her locks hang so ingenuously down her back. She would also be more scrupulous with regard to her colour schemes. Whatever the tint of their costume, the ballerine of Stamboul cherish an ineradicable partiality for pink stockings. As feminine charm increases, to the eye of an Oriental admirer, in direct proportion to the avoirdupois of the charmer, the effect is sometimes startling.

The entertainment offered by these ladies is more of the East than of the West. It is a combination of song and dance, accompanied by strings and the clapping of the castanet. The music is even more monotonous, in the literal sense of the word, than that of the fine lute. To the tyro one song sounds exactly like another, each beginning on the same high note and each glissando to the same low one. And you are inclined to protest that a lady suffering from so cruel a cold should never be permitted to leave her room, much less appear in pink stockings at midnight on a ramshackle wooden stage. But there is a melancholy passion in those endless love-songs that haunts the memory—at least of most of those present, who listen in the silence of perfect appreciation. The dancing into which each song dies away has been a little more tampered with by the West. While the basis of it is the Arab danse du ventre, it is a danse du ventre chastened by the cult of the toe. What there may be of grossness about it is pleasantly tempered for an occasional spectator by the personal equation. I remember watching, once, an almée who must have been in her prime before many of her public were in their cradles. But they had grown up in her tradition, and cries of “One more!” greeted each effort of her poor old cracked voice. There was nothing pitiable about it. The audience had a frank affection for her, independent of her overripe enchantments, and she danced terrible dances for them, eyes half shut, with a grandmotherly indulgence that entirely took away from the nature of what she was doing.

So popular is this form of entertainment that it is thrown in as a sop to sweeten most of the variety performances with which Ramazan abounds. The street of Stamboul where the theatres cluster is a perfect Bowery of cinematographs, music-halls, shooting-galleries, acrobatic exhibitions, and side-shows of a country circus. But it is a Bowery with the reputation of Broadway, and a picturesqueness that neither can boast. Part of the picturesqueness it had when I first knew it has gone—in the shape of the quaint arcades that lined one stretch of it. But the succession of bright little coffee-houses remains, and the white mosque, ethereal at night among its dark trees, that Süleïman the Magnificent built in memory of his dead son. Crowds and carriages abound in Shah-zadeh-Bashi until two o’clock in the morning, itinerant peddlers of good things to eat and drink call their wares, tom-toms beat, and pipes cry their wild invitation to various smoky interiors.

One interior to which they invite is the open space, enclosed by green tent-cloth and not too brilliantly lighted, where may be seen the great Turkish sport of wrestling. Spectators of distinction are accommodated with chairs under an awning; the others squat on their heels around the ring. The wrestlers, sometimes several pairs at a time, appear barefooted, in leather breeches reaching just below the knee. Their first act, if you please, is to anoint themselves from head to foot with oil. That done, each couple stand side by side, join right hands, and bend with the right foot forward, while an old man recites over them some incomprehensible rubric, giving their names and recommending them to the suffrage of the public. They then prance forward to the tent of honour, alternately clapping their hands and their leather legs. There they kneel on one knee and salaam three times. Finally, after more prancing and slapping, during the course of which they hastily shake hands once as they run past each other, they are ready to begin. They do so by facing each other at arm’s length, putting their hands on each other’s shoulders and bending forward till their heads touch. They make no attempt at clinching. That is apparently the one hold forbidden. The game is to throw their opponent by pushing his head down till they can get him around the body or by catching at his legs. Slippery as the wrestlers are with oil, it is no easy matter. Time after time one will seem to have his man, only to let him wriggle away. Then they go at each other again with a defiant “Ho-ho!” The trick is generally done in the end by getting hold of the breeches. When, at last, one of the two is thrown, the oily opponents tenderly embrace and then make a round of the ring collecting tips. Celebrated wrestlers, however, collect their money first. The scene is picturesque enough under the moon of Ramazan, with the nude figures glistening in the lamplight, the dimmer ring of faces encircling them, and the troubled music of pipe and drum mounting into the night.

I must beware of giving the impression that Ramazan is merely a holiday season. It is a holy month, and during its term religious zeal rises higher than at any other time. It is enjoined upon the faithful to read the Koran through during Ramazan, and to perform other meritorious deeds. The last prayer of the day, which occurs two hours after sunset, takes on a special significance. Ordinarily known as yassî, it is then called teravi—repose—and in place of the usual five prostrations twenty-two are performed. The ungodly say that this is to aid the digestion of those who have just eaten a heavy iftar. Preaching also takes place every night in the mosques, and many of the services are attended by women. This custom was utilised during the Ramazan of 1326, otherwise 1908, for enlightening the provinces on the subject of the constitution, as it was in the capital for various attempts to subvert the same.

Two dates in the month have a particular importance. On the earlier of these, the fifteenth, takes place the ceremony of kissing the Prophet’s mantle. It used to be one of the most picturesque spectacles of the city. It still must be for those fortunate enough to enter the Chamber of the Noble Robe in the Seraglio. I have never done so, nor has any other Christian unless in disguise. This is the place where the relics of the Prophet are kept—his cloak, his banner, his sword, his bow, his staff, one of his teeth, and several hairs of his beard. One of the last has occasionally been given away as a mark of the highest possible honour. The swords and other relics of the first three caliphs and of the companions of the Prophet are also preserved there, together with a silver key of the Kaaba. The most important are the Sacred Standard, which used to lead the Sultan’s armies to war, and the Sacred Mantle. This was given by Mohammed to a poet of his day, who composed the celebrated ode in honour of the Prophet entitled Al Borda—The Mantle. When, reciting it for the first time, he came to the verse, “For the Prophet is a sword, drawn from the scabbard of God,” Mohammed threw his own cloak over his shoulders. The poet religiously preserved the gift and handed it down to his descendants, who performed miracles with the water into which they dipped it.

To house these treasures Sultan Selim I, who captured them among the spoils of Cairo, built a pavilion in the grounds of the Seraglio, which was restored and enlarged at immense cost by Mahmoud I. Those who have seen it say that the Chamber of the Noble Robe is a great domed room lined with magnificent tiles, and that the sacred relics, under a sort of silver baldacchino, are kept behind a wrought-silver screen in a chest of beaten gold. The ceremony of opening them is performed by the Sultan in person, who is supposed to oversee the necessary preparations on the fourteenth, and who, on the morning of the fifteenth, goes in state to the Seraglio accompanied by the members of his family and the grandees of the empire. The mantle is said to be wrapped in forty silk covers. Whether all of them or any of them are removed for the ceremony I cannot say. At all events, those who attend it are given the privilege of kissing the relic, in order of rank. Each time the spot is wiped with a silk handkerchief inscribed with verses from the Koran, which is then presented to the person whose kiss it removed. At the end of the ceremony the part of the mantle or of its cover which received the homage of those present is washed in a silver basin, and the water is preserved in ornamental bottles for the Sultan and a few other privileged persons. A drop of this water is considered highly efficacious against all manner of ills, or is a much-prized addition to the drinking water of iftar. The ceremony is repeated for the benefit of the ladies of the palace and other great ladies. And a sort of replica of it takes place in the mosque of Hekim-zadeh Ali Pasha, in the back of Stamboul, where a second mantle of the Prophet is preserved.

Mohammedan doctors have greatly disagreed as to the most important date of Ramazan. The Turks, at all events, now celebrate it on the twenty-seventh. They then commemorate the night when the Koran was sent down from the highest heaven to the lowest and when Gabriel began to make revelation of it to the Prophet. Mohammedans also believe that on that night are issued the divine decrees for the following year. They call it the Night of Power, after the ninety-seventh chapter of the Koran, and keep it as one of the seven holy nights of the year. Consequently, there is little to be seen in the pleasure resorts of Stamboul on the Night of Power—which, as foreigners are inclined to forget, is the eve of the anniversary. Most people spend the evening in the mosques. A special service takes the place of the usual prayer, and after it the larger congregations break up into a series of groups around mollahs, who expound the events of the sacred day.

On that one night of the year the Sultan goes to prayer outside of his palace. The state with which he does so is a sight to be seen, being a survival of a curious corollary of the tradition of the day. An old custom made it obligatory upon the Sultan to take a new wife on the Night of Power, in the hope that, as the divine gift of the Koran had come down on that night to Mohammed, so to his Caliph would heaven send an heir. Despite the solemnity of the occasion, therefore, the imperial progress to the mosque partakes of the nature of a gala procession. This was particularly so in the time of Abd ül Hamid, who devoutly maintained the customs of his fathers. I happened to see the last of the processions with which he went out on the Night of Power. The short avenue leading from Yîldîz Palace to the Hamidieh mosque was lined with arches and loops of light, the mosque itself was outlined with little oil-lamps, and the dip beyond was illuminated by Arabic texts and architectural designs. The effect was fairylike against the dark background of the harbour and the city, twinkling with the dim gold of far-away masts and minarets. While the crowd was smaller than at the ordinary Friday selamlîk, the police precautions were even stricter. But Turkish police have their own way of enforcing regulations. I remember a young man in a fez who approached the mosque too closely. A gorgeous officer went up to him: “My bey, stand a little down the hill, I pray you.” The young man made an inaudible reply, evidently an objection. The gorgeous officer: “My brother, I do not reprimand you. I pray you to stand a little down the hill. It is the order. What can I do, my child?” The young man stood a little down the hill. Presently other young men came, to the sound of music, their bayonets glittering in the lamplight. Some of them were on horseback, and they carried long lances with red pennons. They lined the avenue. They blocked up the cross streets. They surrounded the mosque. Before the last of them were in place the Palace ladies, spectators of all pageants in which their lord takes part, drove down and waited in their carriages in the mosque yard. For some of them too, possibly, this was an anniversary. Finally, the voice of the müezin sounded from the ghostly minaret. In his shrill sweet minor he began to chant the ezan—the call to prayer. Then bands broke into the Hamidieh march, fireworks filled the sky with coloured stars and comets’ tails, and the imperial cortège poured from the palace gate—a mob of uniforms and caparisons and big white wedding lanterns, scintillating about a victoria drawn by two superb white horses. The man on the box, magnificent in scarlet and gold, was a more striking figure than the pale, bent, hook-nosed, grey-bearded man in a military overcoat behind him, who saluted in response to the soldiers’ “Padisha’m chok yasha!” The procession wheeled into the mosque yard, and majesty entered the mosque. For an hour fireworks exploded, horses pranced, and the crowd circulated very much at its will, while a high sweet chanting sounded at intervals from within. Then majesty reappeared, mob and wedding lanterns and all, the soldiers shouted again, and the tall white archway once more received the Caliph of Islam.

What takes place within the mosque, and, I suppose, within all mosques on the Night of Power, Christians are generally allowed to watch from the gallery of St. Sophia. The sight is most impressive when the spectators are most limited in number—as was the case the first time I went, ostensibly as a secretary of embassy. But I must add that I was considerably impressed by the fact that another spectator was pointed out to me as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle! Of course the place itself contributes chiefly to the effect. Its hugeness, its openness, its perfect proportion, its reaching of pillar into arch, of arch into vault, of vault into dome, make an interior that predisposes to solemnity. The gold mosaic that was once its splendour is now largely hidden under the colour wash of the modern restorer, but the Night of Power brings out another gold. The cornices of the three galleries, the arches of the first, the vast space of the nave, are illuminated by thousands of wicks whose soft clear burning in glass cups of oil is reflected by the precious marbles of the walls. You look down from the gallery through a haze of light diffused by the chandeliers swinging below. These, irregularly hung about three central chandeliers, are scalloped like flowers of six petals. They symbolise the macrocosm, I believe, but they might be great water-lilies, floating in their medium of dusky gold. Under them the nave is striated by lines of worshippers, their darkness varied by the white of turban or robe, men all, all shoeless, standing one close to the next with hands folded and heads down. There is not an exception to the universal attitude of devotion—save among the chattering spectators. The imam, from his high hooded pulpit with the sword and the banners of conquest, recites the prayers of the evening. Choirs, sitting cross-legged on raised platforms, chant responses from the Koran in a soaring minor that sounds like the very cry of the spirit. Every now and then a passionate “Allah!” breaks out or a deep “amin” reverberates from the standing thousands. The long lines bow, hands on knees, and straighten again. Once more they bow, drop to their knees, bend forward and touch their foreheads to the ground, with a long low thunder that rolls up into the dome. The Temple of the Divine Wisdom can rarely have witnessed a more moving spectacle of reverence and faith.