Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIV, May 1852, Vol. IV

Watching and waiting, in the midst of this internal prosperity and foreign success and amazement, while Egyptian youth were thronging to the Parisian Universities, and the Parisian youth looked to Egypt as the career of fame and fortune – as the young Spaniards of a certain period looked to the diamond-dusted Americas – in the midst of all the web Mohammad Alee sat nursing his ambition and biding his time.

Across the intervening desert, Syria wooed him to take her for his slave. Who was there to make him afraid? Leaning on Lebanon, and laving her beautiful feet in the sea, she fascinated him with love. He should taste boundless sway. Eastward lay Bagdad and Persia, thrones of Caliphs who once sat in his seat – why should not he sit in theirs? Then with softer whispers she pointed to the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, and looked what she dared not speak.

I do not wonder that he was enchanted. I do not wonder that he burned to be master of the superb slave that lay so lovely and fair in the sun, dreaming, as now we see her dream, under the vines and olives. His peer, Napoleon Bonaparte, against whom, in Egypt, his maiden sword was fleshed, whom he loved to name and to hear that they were born in the same year, had thus seen from Elba the gorgeous Fata-Morgana of European empire. How could Mohammad Alee reflect that sallying forth to grasp it, that peer had bitten the dust? That fate deterred the Pacha, as the experience of others always deters ourselves – as a blade of grass stays the wind. Shall not you and I, my reader, swim to our Heros, though a thousand Leanders never came to shore?

It was this Syria through which we plod, this brilliant morning, that seduced Mohammad Alee.

A land of glorious resources and without a population. Here grow wheat, rye, barley, beans and the cotton plant. Oats are rare; but Palestine produces sesame and dourra, a kind of pulse like lentils. Baalbec grows maize. Sugar and rice are not unknown at Beyrout. Lebanon is wreathed with vines. Indigo flourishes without cultivation on the banks of the Jordan. The Druses cultivate the white mulberry. Gaza has dates like those of Mecca, and pomegranates as fine as those of Algiers. Figs and bananas make the gardens of Antioch tropical. From Aleppo come pistachio-nuts. The almond, the olive and the orange thrive in the kindly air; and Damascus revels in twenty kinds of apricot, with all the best fruits of France.

Many of the inhabitants pass us, and we can see what they are. They are repulsive in appearance, the dregs of refuse races. They look mean and treacherous, and would offer small resistance to determination and skill. Mohammad Alee had little fear of the Syrians.

He could not resist the song of the Siren; and suddenly "the Eastern Question" agitated political Europe, and the diplomatic genius of the three greatest states – England, France and Russia – was abruptly challenged by the alarming aspect of the Syrian war, which threatened, with a leader despising the political stagnation and military imbecility of the vast realm of "the Shadow of God on Earth," to issue in a new empire.

Mohammad Alee having subdued Abdallah, Pacha of Acre, and saved his life and throne by intercession with the Porte, was surprised that Abdallah harbored all fugitives from Egypt. He observed that, following his own example, Abdallah was introducing the European discipline into his army, and was enticing into his service many young officers who had been Europeanly instructed at his own expense. He expostulated with Abdallah, and appealed to the Porte. The Sublime Porte, like other political Sublimities, hesitated, meditated —

"Then idly twirled his golden chain,

And smiling, put the question by."

Mohammad Alee, with expectant eyes fixed upon Syria, sat silent, his hand trembling with eagerness and ready to grasp the splendid prize. "The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces" of a new oriental empire rose, possible in the light of hope.

His army was carefully disciplined. The fame of its tried officers had been won upon the battle-fields of the Empire. He had a fleet and all the resources of the latest military and marine science. Over all, he had his son Ibrahim, already proved in Arabia and Greece, of a military genius peculiarly Oriental, swift and stern, rude in thought, but irresistible in action – the slave of his father's ambition, the iron right-hand of his will. Internal prosperity and external prestige sealed Mohammad Alee's hope and determination.

Against him was arrayed the worldly magnificence of the Ottoman Porte. But the bannered Muslim lance that had thundered at the gates of Constantinople, and entering, had planted itself upon the earliest Christian church, and flapped barbaric defiance at civilization, was rusty and worm-eaten. Its crimson drapery fluttering, rent, upon an idle wind, would be inevitably shivered by the first rough blow of modern steel.

And the great Powers? —

Their action was, of course, doubtful. There was a chance of opposition, a probability of interference. But the grandeur of the stroke was its safety. From the universal chaos what new combinations might not be educed!

No sooner, therefore, had the Porte "put the question by," than Mohammad Alee proceeded to answer it. The Egyptian army, headed by Ibrahim Pacha, advanced into Syria, and sat down before Acre. Cherishing the old grudge against Abdallah, the Porte, now that a decided part had been taken, smiled faintly in approval. But the conduct of the war betrayed resources of ability and means which kindled terrible suspicions. The firman came from Stamboul, commanding the Pacha of Egypt to withdraw into his own province. He declined, and was declared a rebel.

The bridge thus fell behind him, and only victory or death lay before.

For six months Ibrahim Pacha lay before Acre, and on the 27th May, 1832, he entered by bloody assault the city which Richard Cœur de Lion and Philip Augustus had conquered before him, and from which Napoleon Bonaparte had retired foiled. The Syrian war began.

The victorious army advanced, triumphing. The Syrian cities fell before it. The stream of conquest swept northward, overflowing Damascus as it passed. The war was no longer a quarrel of two Pachas, it was a question of life or death for the Turkish Empire. Vainly the Sultan's choicest generals struggled to stem the torrent. The proud walls along the Golden Horn trembled, lest their pride should be for the third time humbled, and this time, as the last, from the Asian shore.

Northern and Western Europe stared amazed at the wonderful spectacle, listening across the hushed Mediterranean to the clang of arms resounding in the effete East, as the appalled Romans heard the gusty roar of the battle of the Huns high over them, and invisible in the air.

Surely it was only the interference of the three Powers that saved the Sultan's throne. That alone deprived us of the pageant of another oriental military romance, so rapid in inception, so entire in execution, that we should have better comprehended those sudden, barbaric descents of the middle ages, which changed in a moment the political aspect of the invaded land: – in a moment, because the mighty appearance of life and power was but a mummy, which a blow would pulverize.

One man, however strong and skillful, could not withstand the force of Europe, and Mohammad Alee retired, baffled, before the leaders of the political Trinity that a few years before had dethroned Napoleon.

The crisis of his life was passed, and unfavorably for his hopes and aims. At the age of sixty-five he relinquished the struggle with Fate, and still one of the great men of a century, rich in great men, with no hope before him, and none behind – for since kingly genius is not hereditary, your divine right is a disastrous fiction – he sank slowly away into dotage.

Before the end, however, both he and his son Ibrahim showed themselves to the Europeans who had watched with such astonished interest the culmination and decay of their power. Ibrahim Pacha, with his fangs removed, shook his harmless rattle, for the last time in the world's hearing, at a dinner given him by young Englishmen, at the Reform Club in Pall Mall, and the wreck of Mohammad Alee, driveling and dozing, took a hand at whist with young Americans in a hotel at Naples.

Father and son returned to Egypt and died there. A vast mosque of alabaster, commenced by Mohammad Alee, and now finished, crowns Cairo, "the delight of the imagination." He wished to be 'buried there; but he lies without the city walls, in that suburb of tombs, upon the cracked sides of one of which a Persian poet has written – "Each crevice of this ancient edifice is a half-opened mouth, that laughs at the fleeting pomp of royal abodes."

All the winds that blow upon Cairo, laugh that mocking laughter, and in any thoughtful mood, as you listen to them and look over the city, you will mark the two alabaster minarets of Mohammad Alee's mosque, shafts of snow in the rich blue air, if you will, but yet pointing upward.

Leaning on Lebanon, and laving her beautiful feet in the sea, the superb slave he burned to possess, still dreams in the sun. We look from the tent door and see her sleeping, and the remembrance of this last, momentary interest which disturbed the slumber, reminds us that it will one day be broken. So fair is the prize, that, knowing all others desire her as ardently, no single hand feels strong enough to grasp it, and the conflict of many ambitions secures her peace.

Yet it is clear that nerve and skill could do what they have done, and so spare is the population, so imbecile the government, and so rich the soil, that a few thousand determined men could march unresisted through Syria, and possess the fair and fertile land.

BAZAARS

Christians and Saracens agree in reprobating the black hat. But the Damascenes declare open war against it. In 1432, Bertrandon de la Brocquière entered the city with a "broad beaver hat," which was incontinently knocked off his head. Naturally his first movement was "to lift my fist," but wisdom held his hand, and he desisted, content to revenge himself by the questionable inference that it was "a wicked race."

But if it be "wicked" to malign the black hat, who shall be justified?

This was only a gentle illustration of the bitter hatred of Christians and all infidels, cherished by the Damascenes, who are the most orthodox of Muslim. Indeed, it is only within twenty years that an accredited English representative could reside in Damascus, and he maintains an imposing state. At present, some hundred European tourists visit the city yearly, and the devout faithful find reasons for toleration in infidel gold, which they never found in argument.

Here, too, as every where in Syria, Ibrahim Pacha has been our ally. He permitted infidels to ride horses through the streets. "O, Allah!" exclaimed the religious Damascenes, who are termed by the Turks Shami-Shoumi, cursed rascals. "Your Highness suffers Christians to sit as high as the faithful."

"No, my friends," responded Ibrahim, "you shall ride dromedaries, which will put you much above them."

We went into the bazaars to encounter these enemies of the black hat, and ex-officio riders of dromedaries. We had a glimpse of their beauty as we entered the city. But Eastern life is delightful in detail. It is a mosaic to be closely studied.

You enter, and the murmurous silence blends pleasantly with the luminous dimness of the place. The matting overhead, torn and hanging in strips along which, gilding them in passing, the sun slides into the interior, is a heavy tapestry. The scene is a perpetual fair, not precisely like Greenwich Fair, or that of the American Institute, but such as you frequent in Arabian stories.

Bedoueen glide spectrally along, with wild, roving eyes, like startled deer. Insane Dervishes and Santons meditate the propriety of braining the infidel Howadji. Shekhs from distant Asia, pompous Effendi from Constantinople, Bagdad traders, cunning-eyed Armenian merchants meet and mingle, and many of our old friends, the grizzly-bearded, red-eyed fire-worshipers, somnolently curled among their goods, eye us, through the smoke they emit, as perfect specimens of the proper sacrifice they owe their Deity. All strange forms jostle and crowd in passing, except those which are familiar; and children more beautiful than any in the East, play in the living mazes of the crowd.

Shopping goes actively on. The merchant without uncrossing his legs, exhibits his silks and coarse cottons to the long draped and vailed figures that group picturesquely about his niche. Your eye seizes the bright effect of all the gay goods as you saunter on. Here a merchant lays by his chibouque and drinks, from a carved glass, sweet liquorice water, cooled with snow from Lebanon. Here one closes his niche and shuffles off to the mosque, followed by his boy-slave with the chibouque. Here another rises, and bows, and falls, kissing the floor, and muttering the noon prayer. Every where there is intense but languid life.

The bazaars are separated into kinds. That of the jewelers is inclosed, and you see the Jews, swarthy and keen-eyed servants of Mammon, busily at work. Precious stones miserably set, and handfuls of pearls, opals, and turquoises are quietly presented to your inspection. There is no eagerness of traffic. A boy tranquilly hands you a ring, and another, when you have looked at the first. You say "la," no, and he retires.

Or you pause over a clumsy silver ring, with an Arabic inscription upon the flint set in it. Golden Sleeve ascertains that it is the cipher of Hafiz. You reflect that it is silver, which is the orthodox metal, the Prophet having forbidden gold. You place it upon your finger, with the stone upon the inside, for so the Prophet wore his upon the fore-finger, that he might avoid ostentation. It is a quaint, characteristic, oriental signet-ring. Hafiz is a common name, it is probably that of the jeweler who owns the ring. But you have other associations with the name, and as you remember the Persian poet, you suffer it to remain upon your finger, and pay the jeweler a few piastres. You do not dream that it is enchanted. You do not know that you have bought Ala-ed-deen's lamp, and as a rub of that evoked omnipotent spirits, so a glance at your ring, when Damascus has become a dream, will restore you again to the dim bazaar, and the soft eyes of the children that watch you curiously as you hesitate, and to the sweet inspiration of Syria.

You pass on into the quarter where the pattens are made, inlaid with pearl, such as you remarked upon the feet of the kohl-eyebrowed houris. Into the shoemakers, where the brilliant leathers justify better poetry than Hans Sach's interminable rhymes, though here is only their music, not their moral. You climb crumbling steps, and emerge from darkness upon the top of the bazaar, on a ledge of a Roman ruin, and look down into the sunny greenness of the great mosque, which you can not more nearly approach. Then down, and by all the beautiful fabrics of the land, hung with the tin-foiled letters that surround pieces of English prints, and which the color-loving eye of the Oriental seizes as an ornament for his own wares, you pass into the region of drugs and apothecaries, and feel that you are about visiting that Persian Doctor in Mecca who dealt in nothing but miraculous balsams and infallible elixirs, whose potions were all sweet and agreeable, and the musk and aloe wood which he burned, diffused a delicious odor through the shop. Surely he was court-physician to Zobeide.

Golden Sleeve pauses before an old figure curled among the bottles and lost in reverie, saturated, it seems, with opium, and dreaming its dreams. This is Zobeide's doctor. He had evidently the elixir of life among those sweet potions, and has deeply drunk. Life he has preserved; but little else that is human remains, except the love that is stronger than life. For as he opens his vague eyes and beholds us, they kindle with an inward fire, as if they looked upon the Philosopher's Stone. That stone is in our purses; the old magician knows it, and he knows the charm to educe it. He opens a jar, and a dreamy odor penetrates our brains. It is distilled of flowers culled from the gardens of the Ganges: or is this delicate perfume preferable – this zatta, loved of poets and houris, which came to the doctor's grandfather from Bagdad?

Attar of roses did Golden Sleeve suggest? Here is the essence of that divinest distillation of the very heart of summer. But, O opulent Howadji! no thin, pale, Constantinople perfume is this, but the viscous richness of Indian roses. As many wide acres of bloom went to this jar as to any lyric of Hafiz. It lies as molten gold in the quaint glass vase. The magician holds it toward the Syrian sun, and the shadow of a smile darkens over his withered features. Then, drop by drop, as if he poured the last honey that should ever be hived from Hymettus, he suffers it to exude into the little vials. They are closely stopped, and sealed, and wrapped in cotton. And some wintry Christmas in the West the Howadji shall offer to a fairer than Zobeide those more than drops of diamond.

Nor this alone – but the cunning of Arabian art has sucked the secret of their sweetness from tea and coffee, from all the wild herbs of Syria, and from amber. In those small jars is stored the rich result of endless series of that summer luxuriance you saw in the vale of Zabulon. Sandal-wood to burn upon your nargileh, mystic bits to lay upon your tongue, so that the startled Bedoueen, as you pass into the bazaar, and breathe upon him in passing, dreams that you came from Paradise, and have been kissed by houris.

Was it not the magic to draw from your purse the Philosopher's Stone? The court-physician of Zobeide, relapsing into reverie, smiles vaguely as he says salaam; as if the advantage were his – as if you were not bearing away with you in those odors the triumphs of the rarest alchemy.

Breathing fragrance, you enter a khan opening upon the bazaar, that of Assad Pacha, a stately and beautiful building, consisting of a lofty domed court, the dome supported by piers, with a gallery running quite around it. Private rooms for the choicest goods open out of the gallery. The court is full of various merchandise, and merchants from every region sit by their goods, and smoke placidly as they negotiate.

But we have received visits in our hotel from an Armenian merchant, young and comely – why not Khadra's cousin? – and he brought with him silks and stuffs at which all that was feminine in our nature swelled with delight. Tempted by his odors, we have come to his garden. The room is small and square, and rough-plastered. Upon the floor are strewn long deep boxes, and the comely young Armenian, in a flowing dark dress, reveals his treasures.

Scarfs, shawls, stuffs for dresses, morning gowns and vests, handkerchiefs, sashes, purses, and tobacco-bags are heaped in rich profusion. They are of the true Eastern richness, and in the true Eastern manner they rely upon that richness for their effect, and not upon their intrinsic tastefulness. The figures of the embroideries, for instance, are not gracefully designed, but the superb material suffices. They imply that there are none but beautiful women in the world, and that all women are brunettes. As the quiet merchant unfolds them, they have the mysterious charm of recalling all the beautiful brunettes who have reigned Zenobias, and Queens of Sheba, and Cleopatras, in the ruined realm of your past life.

But, Northerners and Westerners, we remember another beauty. We remember Palma Vecchio's golden-haired daughter, and the Venetian pictures, and the stories of angels with sunny locks, and the radiant Preziosa. The astute Armenian knows our thoughts. From the beginning was not the Oriental merchant a magician?

For while we sit smoking and delighted, the merchant, no less wily than the court-physician of Zobeide, opens the last box of all, and gradually unfolds the most beautiful garment the Howadji have ever seen. The coronation robes of emperors and kings, the most sumptuous costumes at court-festivals, all the elaboration of Western genius in the material and in the making of dresses, pale and disappear before the simple magnificence of this robe.

It is a bournouse or Oriental cloak, made of camel's hair and cloth of gold. The material secures that rich stiffness essential in a superb mantle, and the color is an azure turquoise, exquisite beyond words. The sleeves are cloth of gold, and the edges are wrought in gold, but with the most regal taste. It is the only object purely tasteful that we have seen. Nor is it of that negative safety of taste, which loves dark carriages and neutral tints in dress; but magnificent and imperial, like that of Rachel when she plays Thisbe, and nets her head with Venetian sequins. If the rest imply that all women are beautiful and brunettes, this proclaims the one superb Blonde, Queen of them all.

"Take that, Leisurlie, it was intended from the beginning of the world for an English beauty."

"Oh! Kooltooluk! there is not a woman in England who could wear it."

Through the dewy distances of memory, as you muse in the dim chamber upon all who might worthily wear the garment, passes a figure perfect as morning, crowned with youth, and robed in grace, for whose image Alpine snows were purer and Italian skies more soft. But even while you muse, it passes slowly away out of the golden gates of possibility into the wide impossible.

As we stroll leisurely homeward, it is early afternoon. But the shops are closed – strange silence and desertion reign in the Bazaars – a few dark turbaned Christians and Jews yet linger, and a few children play.

"They are gone to the cafés and gardens," says Golden Sleeve.

– And we follow them.

TIGER ROCHE. – AN IRISH CHARACTER

Among the characters distinguished for unbridled indulgence and fierce passions, who were, unfortunately, too frequently to be met with in Ireland in the last century, was one whose name attained so much celebrity as to become a proverb. "Tiger Roche," as he was called, was a native of Dublin, where he was born in the year 1729. He received the best education the metropolis could afford, and was instructed in all the accomplishments then deemed essential to the rank and character of a gentleman. So expert was he in the various acquirements of polite life, that at the age of sixteen he recommended himself to Lord Chesterfield, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who offered him, gratuitously, a commission in the army; but his friends having other views for him, they declined it. This seems to have been a serious misfortune to the young man, whose disposition and education strongly inclined him to a military life. His hopes were raised, and his vanity flattered, by the notice and offer of the viceroy; and in sullen resentment he absolutely refused to embark in any other profession his friends designed for him. He continued, therefore, for several years among the dissipated idlers of the metropolis, having no laudable pursuit to occupy his time, and led into all the outrages and excesses which then disgraced Dublin.

One night, in patrolling the city with his drunken associates, they attacked and killed a watch-man, who, with others, had attempted to quell a riot they had excited. He was, therefore, compelled to fly from Dublin. He made his way to Cork, where he lay concealed for some time, and from thence escaped to the plantations in North America. When the war broke out between France and England, he entered as a volunteer in one of the provincial regiments, and distinguished himself in several engagements with the Indians in the interest of the French, during which he seems to have acquired those fierce and cruel qualities by which those tribes are distinguished.

He was now particularly noticed by his officers for the intrepidity and spirit he displayed, and was high in favor with Colonel Massy, his commander; but an accident occurred of so humiliating and degrading a nature, as to extinguish at once all his hopes of advancement. An officer of Massy's regiment was possessed of a very valuable fowling-piece which he highly prized. He missed it from his tent, and made diligent inquiry after it, but it was nowhere to be found. It was, however, reported that it was seen in the possession of Roche, and an order was made to examine his baggage. On searching among it the lost article was found. Roche declared that he had bought it from one Bourke, a countryman of his own, and a corporal in his regiment. Bourke was sent for and examined. He solemnly declared on oath that the statement of Roche was altogether false, and that he himself knew nothing at all of the transaction. Roche was now brought to a court-martial, and little appearing in his favor, he was convicted of the theft, and, as a lenient punishment, ordered to quit the service with every mark of disgrace and ignominy. Irritated with this treatment, Roche immediately challenged the officer who had prosecuted him. He refused, however, to meet him, on the pretext that he was a degraded man, and no longer entitled to the rank and consideration of a gentleman. Stung to madness, and no longer master of himself, he rushed to the parade, insulted the officer in the grossest terms, and then flew to the picket-guard, where he attacked the corporal with his naked sword, declaring his intention to kill him on the spot. The man with difficulty defended his life, till his companions sprung upon Roche and disarmed him. Though deprived of his weapon, he did not desist from his intention; crouching down like an Indian foe, he suddenly sprung, like Roderick Dhu, at his antagonist, and fastened on his throat with his teeth, and before he could be disengaged nearly strangled him, dragging away a mouthful of flesh, which, in the true Indian spirit, he afterward said was "the sweetest morsel he had ever tasted." From the fierce and savage character he displayed on this occasion, he obtained the appellation of "Tiger," an affix which was ever after joined to his name.