CHAPTER V The Mosques, Türbehs and Fountains

The mosques of Constantinople, as has already been shown, are very largely buildings which had been churches in past days. The inspiration felt so overpoweringly in the Church of the Divine Wisdom still abides in the buildings erected by the Emperors of past days. More open and evident still is the fact that the architects of the mosques, built for Mohammedan worship since the Turks have ruled in the city of the Cæsars, have done little more than copy the people whom they have conquered. In most of the great mosques of Stambûl, S. Sophia is simply and directly imitated. In others the leading idea is developed with a variation or two. Of genuine originality the Turkish architects have shown not a trace.

"MOHAMMED, THE APOSTLE OF GOD." EMBROIDERY FROM CURTAIN OVER THE DOOR OF S. SOPHIA.

The innumerable mosques of Constantinople are of two kinds, those founded by members of the reigning dynasty, and those built by humbler persons. Most of the mosques have a court with a fountain in the midst. Many have houses, round kitchens, schools for children and for students of the Koran, hospitals, and the dwelling of the imam. Nearly all have türbehs, tombs of the royal family and of persons of great distinction. All have of course the minaret, which to the traveller is the most characteristic feature of the vast city. The ordinary mosques have but one minaret, from which five times a day the voice of the muezzin calls the faithful to pray. The royal mosques have more than one minaret, S. Sophia and the mosque of Suleiman have four, the mosque of Ahmed has six.

Mosque of Mohammed II. from English Embassy

The first and most sacred of the mosques is that of Eyûb, with the türbeh of that great warrior by its side. It is the one mosque which no Christian may enter or even approach. On the accession of each new sultan he "must be girded with the sabre of the great Osman by the hands of the general of the Mevlevi Dervishes, who comes across Asia Minor from distant Konieh for the proud purpose. Only two Sultans since Mohammed II. have omitted the ceremonial, or have performed it elsewhere, and the reign of each was brief and calamitous."

Both mosque and türbeh, the most sacred buildings in all Stambûl to the Moslem, are kept, it is said, with ceaseless care, and redecorated again and again with increased splendour. Near them is a great street of tombs, where sleep the long line of sheikhs-ul-Islam.

In that crowded suburb, still fanatically Mohammedan, the stranger lingers but few moments. He seeks the characteristic expression of Moslem reverence in the great buildings that crown the hills. In the heat of the afternoon he climbs the hill to where once the great church of the Holy Apostles stood. Lingering on the terrace he looks over the Golden Horn and the vast city, a city of gardens and minarets, stretching as far as the eye can see. As the hour for prayer draws near, men pour from every street, across through the market, or by the open arid space that extends westwards till the narrow streets close round, stretching down to the harbour. Hundreds and hundreds they seem, of all ages, in every kind of attire, of every race, some light-haired and fresh-coloured, as of more than half European blood; some, negroes from Africa, but all males and all Moslems. They enter the great mosque; the Christian must stand back, even from the court; a few minutes and the stream pours out again and leaves but a few pious lingerers still at their prayers or some children sitting before their teacher and reciting to him the Koran.

It is the great mosque of Mohammed II., built in 1463-69 for the Conqueror by a Greek Christian, Christodoulos. It covers a great extent of ground, with its schools, its türbehs, and its great court. The court is cloistered, and it has eighteen splendid columns, which came, there can be little doubt, from the Church of the Apostles. Six are of red granite, twelve of verde antico; the simple carving of the capitals belongs to a period when Byzantine art was at its best. In the midst of the court is a fountain shaded by cypresses. It is almost always deserted, save for a few children here and there at play.

MOSQUE OF SULEIMAN FROM THE GOLDEN HORN

We enter the mosque itself by the great door at the south. Its size is its most impressive feature. The decoration is simple; great black arabesques on a white ground: dignified, but, in the full sunlight which pours through the great windows, too dazzling. At the right above the entrance is the blue tablet on which is inscribed that traditional prophecy of the prophet: "They shall conquer Constantinople; happy the prince, happy the army, which shall achieve the conquest."

Outside, to the East, is the plain octagon in which is laid, alone, the Conqueror Mohammed. The great turban hangs over the head, a heavy velvet pall over the chest which contains the coffin. Two big brass candlesticks, a Koran copied by the hand of the Conqueror himself, in a reliquary a tooth of the prophet: that is all the türbeh contains. But the simplicity is, for this generation at least, spoilt by the "thorough restoration" the whole has received, and its brightness of new paint. Mohammed, of all the sultans, remains alone in his glory. There are other türbehs round his, his mother, his wife, the wife of Abdul Hamid I., who is said to have been a Creole from Martinique, and the schoolfellow of the Empress Josephine—she was the mother of Mahmûd II.—these and others throng the enclosure. But the memory of Mohammed is still unchallenged among all his successors, and still pilgrims, hour by hour, stand on the broad marble step and look reverently within on his last resting-place.

If Mohammed's mosque has the greatest historic interest, by far the most splendid of all in Stambûl is the great Suleimaniyeh, the mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent. It crowns the third hill as Mohammed's crowns the fourth. It was built by Sinan; but it would seem that he was throughout ordered to copy S. Sophia. Justinian, when he entered his great church, had said, "Solomon, I have surpassed thee": Suleiman was determined that he would surpass the Christian Emperor.

His mosque owes not only its design but its details to Christian sources. Much of the marble, and most notably the great marble pillars, came from the Church of S. Euphemia at Chalcedon.

Westwards is the large fore-court, surrounded by cloisters, covered by twenty-four small domes. It is much larger than most of the mosque-courts. In the midst is a fountain, with a dome above. There are four minarets at the corners of the cloisters. The mosque itself, like S. Sophia, is nearly square—225 by 205 feet. The central dome rests on four piers, and four great shafts support the side arches of the dome. The great dome is not so large as that of S. Sophia; but the effect from the outside is far more beautiful owing to the skilful grouping of the masses of smaller domes, with the four minarets rising from among the trees. Architects have praised the exquisite adjustment of all the parts of the building; and, indeed, its combination of grace with vastness is apparent to the dullest eye. But its general effect is spoilt, like that of all the greater mosques, by paint. The colour confuses; the four tints are a meaningless disturbance; the eye finds it hard to distinguish the real splendour of marble, in mihrab, minber, and the Sultan's chamber. The brightness of the windows, fine though the glass is, distracts. Most of all the endless wires and cords stretched across and from above prevent any clear view of the whole. But, none the less, it is a splendid building, very solemn and noble, expressive of the best that Islam can give, in its consecration of strength and riches to the highest ends.

Outside are the two splendid türbehs of the most dramatic figures in Turkish history since the Conquest. Suleiman himself lies in a beautiful domed octagon, the walls covered with intricate arabesques, the roof, especially, beautiful in brown. A blue inscription on the white tiles that run round the walls is in exquisite taste. At the head of his catafalque is Suleiman's white turban with double tufts of heron's feathers. Over it are splendid and elaborate shawls, which he once wore.

The same türbeh contains the tombs of Suleiman II. and Ahmed II. But a stone's throw from it is the beautiful tomb of Roxelana, in which a Western poet of our time has found inspiration.

Where rarely sunbeam of the morn,

Or ev'ning moonbeam ever stray'd,

Above the ground she trod in scorn,

Here, draped in samite and brocade,

Behold the great Sultana laid,

Of all her fleeting greatness shorn!

The walls are covered with exquisite blue tiles, with beautiful designs of almond and tulip. Happily this türbeh has not been restored as have so many of them. It remains a gem of the best Moslem art. The group of buildings seen as one descends from the hill on which the Seraskierat stands, or from the tower, has a charming effect. The cypresses mingling with the domes and minarets make the most peaceful scene that Stambûl can show. In the city of trees and gardens, of domes and minarets, this seems the picture typical of the whole as the Moslems have made it. Here is, one feels, the true poetic East, the home of the poets we have read. We might be in the Arabian Nights,

Whilst there o'er mosque and minaret

That rise against the sunset glow,

broods the great calm of a nation of fatalists. It is not the "purple East" we see, but the soft, somnolent, sensuous splendour of a great repose, or may be a great decay.

Third of the great mosques I should place that of Ahmed, which, with its large enclosures, encroaches on the old Hippodrome. It may well be considered the most truly oriental of them all. "The masterpiece of Asiatic art" some call it, the highest achievement of Mussulman architecture. Something it owes to its position, fronted by the long, broad, open space; something, certainly, to those who know, to its historic associations. But undoubtedly in its general plan and in the detail of its decoration it is more clearly than the others a work of the genius of the East.

COURT OF THE MOSQUE OF AHMED I.

AN ENTRANCE TO THE MOSQUE OF AHMED

It covers a vast space. The great court which surrounds it seems constantly to be filled with a great market. It is in the heart of life: crowds are constantly passing through, pilgrims from S. Sophia, travellers who have turned in from the Hippodrome. The air of the buyers and sellers is more dilettante than that of the serious folk who make their homely purchases among the stalls outside the great mosque of Mohammed II. This seems an oriental scene decked out for your amusement. But the place has a long and tragic history. Part of the area covered by the buildings of the mosque was once occupied by the great palace of the Emperors; part was the Hippodrome; here too, probably, was the Augustæum. It was not for more than a hundred years after the conquest that the Turks built upon this site. Then (1608-14) Ahmed I. determined to raise a memorial of his piety finer than any of his predecessors had achieved, and if it might be, by a propitiatory offering, to stay the decline which had already begun to fall upon the Empire. He worked himself at the building, it is said, and paid the workmen with his own hands. The fore-court has a beautiful fountain. The interior of the mosque itself is larger than the Suleimaniyeh. Its fault is sameness. Fergusson, whose judgment is not always to be quoted, may here speak without contradiction. "If the plan were divided into quarters, each of the four quarters would be found to be identical, and the effect is consequently painfully mechanical and prosaic. The design of each wall is also nearly the same; they have the same number of windows spaced in the same manner, and the side of the Kibleh[64] is scarcely more richly decorated than the others." The prevailing blue of the whole becomes oppressive. There are some exquisite tiles; but the effect of the whole mosque is spoilt, like that of Suleiman, by the paint. Yet with all its defects the size makes the mosque magnificent. "A hall nearly two hundred feet square, with a stone roof supported by only four great fluted piers, is a grand and imposing object." Fergusson's judgment must be accepted.

At the same time there are many points that no one who has seen them will ever forget. One is the view as you stand under the great columns of the arched court and look up at the almost innumerable domes, rising dome upon dome to the great central cupola that dominates them all, the one minaret that you see breaking the monotonous gradation of the domes by its sheer, sharp ascent into the sky. Another is the colossal strength of the four great piers from which spring the arches of the central cupola, immense in their solidity, yet hardly so clumsy as you think at first when you gaze from under them at the more graceful pillars of the outer arcade.

Of details that repay attention, the chief door into the mosque, typically eastern, stands out. The six minarets, seen from far, are the most graceful of all in the city. Ahmed in building six encroached on the unique dignity of Mecca. The sherif protested, and the Sultan added a seventh to the sacred shrine. His own mosque remains the only one with six.

Within, the later history of the Turks invests the scene with a new interest. It was from the splendid marble pulpit that the fetva decreeing the abolition of the Janissaries was read, while Mahmûd stood in his box. It was round the mosque that much of the fiercest fighting took place that day. Bodies were heaped up before the gate of the court, and from the great sycamore, still standing, and called "the tree of groans," hung corpses "like the black fruit of a tree in hell."

These three are the most splendid of the mosques. Next to them ranks the mosque of Bayezid II. It was built between 1489 and 1497, and the architect was the son of Christodoulos, who built the mosque named after the Conqueror, Bayezid's father. The two sons designed to surpass their father. It cannot be said that they succeeded. The mosque itself has little interest. The fountain in the court does not equal those of Ahmed and Suleiman. But the place will always be visited for the name, which the travellers give it, of the Pigeons' Mosque. A poor widow, says the legend, offered a pair of pigeons to Bayezid for the mosque. These hundreds are their offspring, and they have always been held sacred. They fly about, settle everywhere on the roofs, walk over the floor, and surround in an instant everyone who takes up a handful of grain. They divide the honours of the court with the sellers of trivial ornaments, and the professional letter-writers, whom one may spend a merry half hour in watching, as they formally express the feelings which the lover, or the applicant for a post under government, is rightly supposed to possess, and is anxious to have set forth for him.

The mosque of Bayezid owes something of its attraction to its position, looking on two sides upon a wide open space, with the wall and gate of the Seraskierat only a few yards away. To the east is the great garden, which contains the türbeh of Bayezid himself, with a catafalque thirteen feet long.

Of the hundreds of mosques, each with its own characteristic design or adornment or history, stand out for a word of admiration, those of the Shahzadeh, of Selim I., of the Yeni Valideh, and that called the Tulip Mosque.

The mosque of the Shahzadeh, built like that of Suleiman, by the Moslem architect Sinan, was erected by the Sultan and Roxelana, between 1543 and 1547, to commemorate their eldest son, whose türbeh stands beside it, decorated with the most exquisite Persian tiles. The mosque is on the great central street that runs through Stambûl. Four semi-domes culminate in a great central dome, and four great octagonal pillars support it. It is one of the most beautiful of the Ottoman mosques. It may be added that the mosque which the sorrowing parents built to their youngest son Djanghir (see above p. 170), at Galata, above Top-haneh, was burnt in 1764, and as it now stands is the result of "restoration" by the present Sultan. It is the most prominent object on the shore as one draws near to landing at the Galata bridge.

On the fifth hill, and perhaps the most prominent object in the view from the hill of Pera, above the petit champ des morts, is the mosque of Selim I. The style is simple, one vast dome resting on a drum lighted by many windows, and supported by flying buttresses.

The Tulip Mosque, Laleli Djami, stands in a prominent position in a crowded street, the Koska Sokaki. It is an example of the more modern style. It was built by Mustapha III. in 1760-63, and shows the Turkish expression of the Strawberry-Hill interest in antiquity. It contains columns from the palace of Boucoleon and the forum of Theodosius. Beside it is the türbeh of Mustafa III. and of Selim III. Perhaps the most pleasant part of a visit here is to stand on the terrace and look over the houses on to the Sea of Marmora and the distant snow-covered hills.

The last mosque I shall mention is that which the traveller probably first visits. It attracts him as soon as he has crossed the Galata bridge, and most likely turns him aside from his way to S. Sophia. It is the mosque of Yeni Valideh Sultan, the wife of Ahmed I. Begun by her orders in 1615, it was completed by the mother of Mohammed IV. in 1665.

MURAL TILES FROM THE MOSQUE OF VALIDEH

This, of all others, aroused the admiration of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. "The most prodigious, and I think, the most imposing, structure I ever saw," she called it; perhaps because she regarded it as a tribute to her sex. Unhappily, as in most of the other mosques, paint and whitewash have done their disfiguring work; but the beauty of its tiles, most of them blue and white, is perhaps superior to any other collection in the city. The exquisite carving of the doorways, too, enriched with mother-of-pearl, attracts one as one passes through. In no other mosque can the excellence of the minute Turkish work be better studied. The delicacy of the lattice work at the fountain, too, is admirable.

So much may I say of the mosques. But a word more is needed for their inseparable attendants. By the Valideh mosque, begun by one sultan's mother, after whose murder it was completed by her rival, is the great türbeh which contains, in two chambers, a host of princes and princesses, and five sultans—Mohammed IV., deposed in 1687, who died in 1693; Mustafa II., deposed in 1703; Ahmed III., deposed in 1730; Mahmûd I., 1754; and Osman III., 1757. Of these, the last two alone died peaceably in possession of the throne.

One other türbeh besides those I have named claims especial mention. It is that of Mahmûd II., the Reformer, and it stands by itself near the Column of Constantine. It is the most modern in date and style, a domed octagon of white marble lighted by seven windows, an atrocious example of the style which our grandfathers thought rich and dignified. At the right as one enters lies the mother of Mahmûd. In the midst is the Reformer himself, a black pall, elaborately worked, thrown over the catafalque. At the head is, for the first time, the fez, the symbol of the reform, but it has attached, as of old, the great tuft of heron's feathers. At the left is the resting-place of Abdul Aziz, again with a splendid covering, and at the head a simple fez. The last of the dead sultans—for Murad cannot be counted—who entered as none of his predecessors had done into the social life as well as the politics of European courts, yet was deposed and died a violent death, fitly ends the list. As you stand by his coffin you see the lesson of Turkish history for to-day. Outwardly, save for the fez, all is as with the sultans five centuries ago: and the spirit of Turkish life has not changed, and will not change.

IN A TÜRBEH

ENTRANCE TO THE TÜRBEH OF SELIM II. AT S. SOPHIA

Its worst expression is recalled in the blood and luxury which are linked with the names of these two sultans. Its best is attached to the one other architectural feature of the city which I must mention in this place. One of the most beautiful and most characteristic sights that strikes the western traveller as he wanders through Stambûl is the fountain outside every mosque and at almost every street corner. Hundreds of them are worth lingering over. Here I will only mention one. Outside the Bâb-i-Humayûn, the gate upon which the heads of so many disgraced officials have been placed, and under the shadow of S. Sophia, is the most beautiful of all, designed by Ahmed I. himself. White marble it is, with beautiful arabesques and elaborate inscriptions in those graceful elaborations of kaligraphy in which the Turks have always excelled. It is the most elaborate of all the fountains, but the little ones at the street corners, with an arched or domical pent-house above them and some small decorative inscription above the marble founts, have a simple charm of their own.

As one turns away from the Turkish buildings and tries to sum up the impressions which the architecture represented by the mosques of Constantinople leaves on the student of other styles, there are criticisms which are natural and inevitable. How little variety, we say; how tiresome, this similarity of design! The Turks indeed have felt it themselves, but they have been unable to set themselves free. For indeed the lack is the hopeless one, the sheer absence of originality, in every feature. We may call one mosque more eastern than another, but it would puzzle us to find a single feature in any of them, except the Mihrab, which is not ultimately Christian. The feeling, it is true, differs; but that will be felt, by Westerns at least, to be a conspicuous defect. There is no sense of the mystery that lies behind all life, the solemn awe in which alone man may fitly draw nigh to God. All is clear, complete, satisfied, protestant of its completeness and satisfaction. Is there anything, one feels, beyond man and this world? Certainly here there is nothing to raise thought to heaven, to help to pierce behind the veil. Is it fanciful to say that something of this it is that makes the difference between the windows of a Christian church and those of a mosque? The mosques have windows of the plainest, ugliest, most staring. Can anything be more pitiable than the windows of Ahmed's, the characteristic Turkish mosque? No tracery, no stained glass, nothing that uplifts or separates from the outer world.

Yet to all this there must be a corresponding gain. From this absorption in the things of the present, this satisfaction with the work of men's hands, comes often a real perfection of detail. How often the fore-court is an admirable piece of building, worth examination and imitation at every point! Yet even here there is the exception that detracts from the merit of all Southern "pointed" work: the arches will not remain firm of themselves, they must needs be tied together with cross beams. How sordid and untidy this looks one sees in a moment as one stands in the court of the Valideh mosque. But the detail, we must insist, is often good, the niches notably so in the "stalactite pattern," which also appears in the capitals of late date of sixteenth and seventeenth century building, as in the courts of Ahmed and Valideh. Yet when all this is said, the chief glory of the mosques, the best and most original feature of the Moslem art as we see it in Constantinople, is the exquisite tile-work everywhere and of every date. It brings us back again, as we end this chapter, to the magnificent Sultan and his proud wife. The choicest art surrounds the tomb of the Circassian, and there

The walls that shut thee from the sun,

The potter's art made bright with blue,

Where leaf and tendril overrun

The Persian porcelain's ivory hue,

And blazon'd letters, twisting thro'

Proclaim there is no God but One.

EMBROIDERY FROM CURTAIN OVER ENTRANCE TO S. SOPHIA