Konya

“ Nearly the entire garrison of Constantinople, numbering 12,000 or 15,000 of the picked soldiers of the Turkish army, appear every Friday in brilliant and peculiar uniforms, line the roadway over which the Sultan passes, surround the mosque in which he worships and are packed into the grounds until their red fezzes and glistening bayonets light up the entire park. There are regiments of Nubians, Soudanese, Albanians, Arabs, Syrians, Kurds, Turkestanese, Bokharans, Georgians, Circassians and other races unknown to us, which cannot be seen elsewhere. ”

“ The Turkish population in this bit of the Balkan peninsula is numerous, owing to the attraction exerted by the capital. Reliable census figures are unavailable. Thanks to the presence of a strong garrison and a host of civil-service officials the Turkish population of Constantinople, added to the Turks remaining in the strip of European Turkey still owned by the Sultan after the treaty of Bucarest of 1913, probably musters as many individuals as those to whom Greek is vernacular. An important Armenian colony is centered at Constantinople and radiates in settlements without the capital. ”

“ The ruins of the most ancient of these, built by the Turks at the time of the conquest, and used by them as blockhouses, still exist on the main roads and in some of the principal towns. By the side of these substantial stone buildings have arisen a number of miserable edifices dignified with the name of khan, with whose discomforts the weary traveller too often makes sad acquaintance.
The furniture of wealthy Greek houses in Constantinople is European; in those of Jews and Armenians of high position it is a compromise between European and Turkish. All Orientals are fond of display ”

“ The Sultan honestly believes that Constantinople is one of the best-kept cities in Europe, and often boasts of that fact to foreign visitors. As he dare not go through the streets to see for himself, and is surrounded by men whose interests and safety require them to maintain the deception, he will probably never discover how he has been deceived. The two great bridges across the Golden Horn, which connect Stamboul, the Turkish town, with Galata, the foreign settlement, produce not less than $2,000 a day in tolls. ”

“ Kondjé-Gul is a Circassian by race. Her name in Turkish signifies a variety of rose which we are not acquainted with in France; she was brought when quite a child to Constantinople by her mother, attached to the service of a cadine of the Sultan. She is now eighteen. Imagine the Caucasian type in the flower of its beauty, tall, with the figure of a young goddess, an expression of natural indolence which appears to indicate a consciousness of her sovereign beauty, and a fine head crowned with thick chestnut hair falling down to her waist. ”

“ It can only be in Constantinople that old men indulge in such fancies, and it is wondrous strange how they are received and reciprocated at times. In a beautifully appointed konak on the hill there dwells a haughty beauty, one of the loveliest women in the Empire. She sails into the room and tosses her empty little thoroughbred head in lofty disdain as she passes her Greek servant. ”

“ The only place where Turkish beggars are seen is the area or vicinity of a mosque, and even here very few obtrude themselves; forming a strong contrast to the multitudes that beset houses of Christian worship. Those who with us are disabled by age or sickness, are in Turkey supported by their masters, either because they are slaves, or because the charity of the Osmanli will not suffer his brother to want. The few who ask alms are idiots, a respected and privileged class ”

“ One party of 4,000 arrived from Central Asia via Odessa upon special steamers, which carried them to Jiddah on the Red Sea, the nearest port to Mecca. Hundreds of Persians, Kurds, Mongols, men from Turkestan, Afghanistan, Bokhara, Cashmere and other far-off countries had ridden thousands of miles over the desert on this religious mission, and had come to Constantinople for the purpose of paying homage to the Sultan, who is the head of their church. The bazaars and mosques and the streets and public places were crowded with them. ”

“ No resident of Constantinople except the families of the diplomatic corps, no Turk and no person who understands the Turkish language can be admitted, for fear they might give information concerning the millions of dollars’ worth of precious stones and other valuables which would tempt robbers or cause discontent among the poverty-stricken people. When the Sultan tells suppliants that he has no money they might ask him to sell some of the diamonds and pearls and emeralds or melt up some of the gold in his treasury. Very few Turks know what is there. ”

“ Growing rapidly, it almost exterminated the Geougen in a great battle, and became dominant over the clans. Thus first came into history the great tribe of the Turks, whose later history was destined to be so momentous. The dominion of the Khan of the Turks grew so enormously that in time it extended from Central Siberia on the north to Persia on the south, while he made his power felt by China on the east and by Rome on the west. Ambassadors from the Khan reached Constantinople, [Pg 231] and Roman envoys were received in return in his tent at the foot of the Altai range. ”

“ Foreign women will probably never again play so large a rôle in Turkish affairs. The present sultan is said, however, to be fond of the social attractions of European women. He is probably the first Turkish sultan who has invited a European lady to dine with him.
The Turkish sultans have long lived in much magnificence. The old seraglio, or imperial residence (from the word seray, a palace) , was beautifully situated "among the groves of plane and cypress that clothe the apex of the triangle upon which the ancient city of Constantinople is built." ”

“ There is the college of Sultán Ala-ud-dín and sixty abecedarian schools. When I visited this town, the inhabitants boasted, that there were two thousand boys and girls who had learned reading and knew the Korán by heart. There is an Imaret, a house for lectures on Tradition, and three for reading the Korán, and one thousand shops, full of valuable goods; provisions, the white bread especially, and beverages are good. The harbour is excellent, affording shelter for ships against all quarters of the wind; there is no better port in the Black sea unless it be that of Báliklava ”

“ Masūd fell, probably about 1295, a victim to the vengeance of one of the amirs, whose father he had ordered to be put to death. After him Kaikobād, son of his brother Farāmarz, entered Konia as sultan in 1298, but his reign is so obscure that nothing can be said of it; some authors assert that he governed only till 1300, others till 1315. With him ended the dynasty of the Seljūks; but the Turkish empire founded by them continued to exist under the rising dynasty of the Ottomans. ”

“ It is no wonder that the example set by many officers of the Sultan’s army had discouraged the troops, who, seeing everything going against them, starving, diseased, turned their weary eyes homeward to the East, to Asia, the Turk’s real home, and dragged their tired, wounded limbs over the incredibly bad roads till the soaring minarets and their rivals the cypresses, the domes of mosques built to commemorate the conquests of former warrior Osmanli, gladdened their sight. ”

“ Hindustanis of all classes; in Turkey alone it has been reserved for the Sultan. Ḳaán, again, appears to be a form of Kháḳán, the Χαγάνος of the Byzantine historians, and was the peculiar title of the supreme sovereign of the Mongols; the Mongol princes of Persia, Chaghatai, etc., were entitled only to the former affix (Khán) , though Ḳaán and Ḳhaḳán are sometimes applied to them in adulation. Polo always writes Kaan as applied to the Great Khan, and does not, I think, use Khan in any form, styling the subordinate princes by their name only, as Argon, Alau, etc. ”

“ People escape from the burning atmosphere, and an exposed unsheltered street, to this retreat. It then resembles a subterranean city, crowded with a busy population of many thousand persons, bustling, buying, and selling in the cool and dim twilight. But the fair sex form by far the majority. It seems a privileged place, where the ordinary distinction of sect or caste is laid aside, and the Turk, Frank, and Raya, all mix and chat and bargain together without restraint; and it seems the only place where the pride and taciturnity of the Osmanli is laid aside. ”

“ I do not know Turkish enough to appreciate his literature, and his religion forbids him—or he imagines it does—to engage in the plastic arts. But in architecture and certain forms of decoration he has created a school of his own. It is not only that the Turkish quarter of any Ottoman town is more picturesque than the others. The old Palace of the sultans in Constantinople, certain old houses I have seen, the mosques, the medressehs, the hans, the tombs, the fountains, of the Turks are an achievement that deserves more serious study than has been given [537] them. ”

“ During the decade after the conquest, the Mongols overran western Asia Minor. We read that Sultan Rokneddin went with the Mongol general, Baïchu, into winter quarters in Bithynia, [700] and that Baïchu received orders from Khulagu Khan in 1257 to pillage the entire Seljuk dominions. In 1264, Abulfeda gives Rum, with its capital as Konia, among the provinces ruled by Khulagu. [701] Bibars, Sultan of Egypt, succeeded in occupying Konia for a brief time in 1276. [702] In 1278, Abaka Khan opened negotiations with Haython, king of Little Armenia, with the view of making him Sultan of Rum. ”

“ These centuries were the Age of the Mongolian peoples. Nomadism from Central Asia dominated the known world. At the crest of this period there were rulers of Mongol or the kindred Turkish race and nomadic tradition in China, India, Persia, Egypt, North Africa, the Balkan Peninsula, Hungary, and Russia. The Ottoman Turk had even taken to the sea, and fought the Venetian upon his own Mediterranean{v2-140} waters. In 1529 the Turks besieged Vienna, and were defeated rather by the weather than by the defenders. The Habsburg empire of Charles V paid the Sultan tribute. ”

“ Everyone is so busy and there are so many people here that it is hardly possible to walk leisurely in the streets during the rush hours of the day. One is taken up and carried by the crowd. And the crowd is the most diversified and picturesque that one can see in any place, not even barring the proverbial bridge in Constantinople. You see, volunteers of all kinds have rushed here not only from Anatolia, but from every Turkish country, every Turkish village of the world and even from the most diversified Muslim countries of Asia and Africa. ”

“ During the reign of Murad I, the Egyptians called Cilicia up to the Taurus Bab-el-Mulk, the Royal Gateway. Konia was entered{301} by an Egyptian Sultan in 1418. The Karamanians of that day, who, according to the Ottoman historians, were vassals of the Osmanlis, had no interest in or fear of Mohammed I. They were engaged in a civil war which led to Egyptian intervention. [797] If Konia and the rest of Karamania was under the Osmanlis, why was there not Ottoman intervention in the quarrel between Mohammed and Ali for the Karamanian throne? ”

“ If there were enough men like Ghalib Pasha in Turkey to fill all the provincial administrations, Turkey would be a model country. But men like Ghalib Pasha are not appointed chiefs of police in highly delicate places like Konia.
Damad Ferid Pasha did not cease his efforts to regain a foothold in Anatolia, after his brief counter-revolution in Konia. With the Greek advance in the spring and summer of 1921, his agents renewed their activities along the coasts. In Smyrna the Greeks welcomed them and in Mersina, the port of Cilicia, the French and Armenians welcomed them. ”

“ Turkey is aware that the Canal of the two Seas is destined to add to her power and prosperity, by bringing Constantinople nearer by 4300 leagues to the Indian Ocean, and by facilitating the communication with the Holy Places of Arabia, the source of the authority the Sultan possesses over his Mussulman population.
Turkey can rise from her present languor only by borrowing capital and intelligence from Europe. ”

“ Like all previous Turkish immigrations, they came not in any overwhelming horde, with sword in one hand and Koran in the other, but as a small compact body with a genius for military organisation, and the gift, which they retain to this day, of stalwart fighting. The policy to which they owed their growth was absorption, and the people whom they first began to absorb were Greeks and other Christians, and it was to a Christian girl, Nilufer, that Osman married his son Orkhan. ”

“ Surrounded by a barren and desolate country, Konia, when seen from afar, looks like an oasis in the desert. It is situated on an elevated plateau well-watered by mountain streams and blessed with a salubrious climate. It was these attractive features that led the Seljukian Turks to choose it for their capital. Its luxuriant gardens and orchards have long been famous and add much to the city’s picturesqueness—especially when viewed from a distance. For when one enters the old Seljukian capital there is little to attract attention except a few mosques. ”