The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 10

The Ottoman monarchy needs above everything else a well ordered administration, for under present conditions it will scarcely be able to support even this weak army of seventy thousand men.

The impoverished condition of the country shows only too clearly in the lessened income of the State. In vain a number of indirect taxes have been introduced. A kind of tax on meat and meal is levied in a very primitive way on the street corners of the capital. The fishermen pay 20 per cent, of the catch in their nets. Weights and measures must be stamped anew every year; and all products of industry, from silverware and shawls to shoes and shirts, are stamped with the imperial seal. But the proceeds from these taxes are enriching only those who collect them. The riches melt before the avaricious eye of the administration, and the ruler of the most beautiful lands in three continents is drawing water with the leaky pots of the daughters of Danaus.

For the payment of its necessities the government must rely on the confiscation of property, as it passes to new heirs or outright, on the sale of offices, and finally on presents and the miserable means of adulterating the currency.

In regard to the confiscation of money inherited by State officials, the present Sultan has declared that he will do without it. This edict, however, instead of abolishing the practice, acknowledges the correctness of the principle. Formerly the edicts of confiscation were accompanied by the death warrants of those who were to be robbed. Today there are gentler means in use for relieving people of the surplus of their wealth.

The sale of offices continues to be the chief source of income of the State. The candidates borrow the money at a high rate of interest from some Armenian business house, while the government permits these "lease-holders" to recoup themselves by the exploitation of their provinces to whatever extent they wish. Withal, they must fear either a higher bidder, who leaves them no time to get rich, or the State, if they happen to have grown rich. The provinces know beforehand that the new pasha has come to rob them. They, therefore, prepare themselves. Interviews are held, and if no agreement is reached, war is waged, or if an agreement is broken a revolution takes place. As soon as the pasha has settled with the Agas, he stands in fear of the Porte. He, therefore, combines with other pashas for mutual protection, and the Sultan must negotiate with the future neighbors of a new pasha before he can appoint him. In a very few pashaliks, to be sure, the beginning of a better order of things has been made, the administrative and military powers have been separated, and the taxpayers themselves have agreed to higher taxes, provided they are permitted to pay them directly into the State treasury.

Presents are as customary here as everywhere in the Orient. Without a present the man of lower station is not permitted to approach his superior. If you ask justice of a judge you must take him a gift. Officials and officers in the army are given tips, but the man who receives most presents is the Sultan himself. The expedient of adulterating the currency has been used to the point of exhaustion. Twelve years ago the Spanish dollar was worth seven piasters; today it is bought for twenty-one. The man who then possessed one hundred thousand dollars has discovered that today he has only thirty-three thousand. This calamity has hit Turkey worse than it would have affected any other country, because very little money is here invested in land, and most fortunes consist of cash capital. In the civilized countries of Europe a fortune is the result of having created something of real worth. The man who wins his wealth in this way is increasing at the same time the wealth of his State. His money merely represents the abundance of goods at his disposal. In Turkey the coin itself is the thing of value, and wealth is nothing but the accidental accumulation of money within the possession of an individual. The very high rate of interest, which is here legally 20 per cent, is far from indicating any great activity of capital. It only indicates the great danger of letting money out of one's immediate possession. The criterion of wealth is the ease of its removal. The Rajah will probably buy jewelry for one hundred thousand piasters in preference to investing his money in a factory, a mill, or a farm. Nowhere is jewelry better liked than here, and the jewels which, in rich families, even children of tender years are wearing are a glaring proof of the poverty of the country.

If it is one of the first duties of every government to create confidence, the Turkish administration leaves this task entirely unperformed. Its treatment of the Greeks, its unjust and cruel persecution of the Armenians, those faithful and rich subjects of the Porte, and other violent measures, are so fresh in everyone's memory that no one is willing to invest his money where it will pay interest only after many years. In a country where industry is without the element on which it thrives, commerce also must largely consist of the exchange of foreign merchandise for raw home products. The Turk actually gives ten occas of his raw silk for one occa of fabricated silk, the material for which is produced on his own soil.

Agriculture is even in a worse state. One often hears the complaint that the cost of all the necessities of life has increased in Constantinople fourfold since the annihilation of the Janizaries, as if heaven had decreed this punishment on those who exterminated the "soldiers of Islam." The fact, while true, should probably be explained differently, for, since the events referred to, the great granaries of the capital, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Egypt, which formerly had to send half of their harvests to the Bosphorus, have been closed. In the interior nobody will undertake the growing of grain on a large scale, because the government makes its purchases according to prices of its own choosing. The forced purchases by the government are a greater evil for Turkey than her losses by fire and the plague combined. They not only undermine prosperity, but they also cause its springs to dry up. As a result the government must buy its grain in Odessa, while endless stretches of fertile land, under a most benignant sky and at only an hour's distance from a city of eight hundred thousand people, lie untilled.

The outer members of this once powerful political body have died, and the heart alone has life. A riot in the streets of the capital may be the funeral procession of the Ottoman Empire. The future will show whether it is possible for a State to pause in the middle of its fall and to reorganize itself, or whether fate has decreed that the Mohammedan-Byzantine Empire shall die, like the Christian-Byzantine Empire, of its fiscal administration. The peace of Europe, however, is apparently less menaced by the danger of a foreign conquest of Turkey than by the extreme weakness of this empire, and its threatened collapse within itself.

A TRIP TO BRUSSA

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND VON MACH, PH.D

[This is the fourteenth of the Letters Concerning Conditions and Events in Turkey. It is dated from Pera, June 16, 1836.]

Yesterday I returned from a short excursion to Asia, which I really should describe for you in poetry, because I ascended Mount Olympus. But since I did not reach the summit, and did not climb farther than the foot, or more properly speaking the toe, of the giant you will get off with prose.

I embarked on the eleventh, in the afternoon, in a small Turkish vessel, and a fresh north wind carried us in four hours to the rocky promontory of Posidonium (today Bosburun, the point of ice), a distance of eight miles. Here the sea was running very high, and our reis, or helmsman, who was squatting on the high and delicately carved stern of the ship, was beginning to chant his Allah ekber—God is merciful—when the wind died down so completely toward dusk that we did not reach Mudania before eight o'clock next morning.

The horses were soon ready, and up to Brussa I passed through a country that was doubly charming after the lonesomeness of Roumelia, which had been all I had seen for six months. Everything is under cultivation, planted less with corn than with vines and mulberry trees. The latter, which serve as food for the silkworms, are trimmed low like bushes, with the crowns cut off, as we do with willows. Their large bright green leaves cover the fields far and wide. The olive trees grow here in groves of no mean size, but they have to be planted. The whole richly cultivated country reminds one of Lombardy, especially of the hilly landscape near Verona The distant view is as magnificent as the foreground is lovely. On one side you see the Sea of Marmora and the Princess Islands, and on the other the glorious Mount Olympus, whose snow-clad peak rises above a broad girdle of clouds. The flowering vineyards filled the air with rich scent, assisted by caprifolium blossoms in luxuriant growth, and a yellow flower the name of which I do not know.

When we had crossed a ridge of low hills, we saw Brussa stretched out before us in a green plain at the foot of Mt. Olympus. It is indeed difficult to decide which one of the two capitals of the Ottoman rulers is more beautifully situated, the oldest or the newest, Brussa or Constantinople. Here the sea and there the land bewitches you. One landscape is executed in blue, the other in green. Relieved against the steep and wooded slopes of Mt. Olympus, you see more than one hundred white minarets and vaulted domes.

The mountain rises to the regions of almost perpetual snow, and supplies the inhabitants of Brussa with wood to warm themselves in winter and with ice for their sherbet in summer. A river, called Lotos, winds its course through rich meadows and fields of mulberry trees, where giant nut trees with dark foliage and light green planes, white minarets and dark cypress trees rise to the sky. Vines climb up the mighty trunks and attach themselves to the branches, whence they droop again to earth, while Caprifolium plants and thriving creepers superimpose themselves on the vines. Nowhere have I seen such a wide and thoroughly green landscape, except from the tower of Lübbenau, overlooking the woods along the Spree. But here you have in addition the richer vegetation and the glorious mountains which surround the plain. The abundance of water is surprising; everywhere brooks are rushing along and springs are gushing from the rocks, ice cold and boiling hot, side by side. In every part of the city, even in the mosques, water is bubbling from countless fountains.

As is the case with all Turkish cities, the beautiful picture vanishes the moment you enter Brussa. The smallest German town surpasses Constantinople, Adrianople, or Brussa in the charm of its buildings and still more in comfort. Only the mosques and the Hanns, or caravansaries, the fountains and public baths are magnificent. In the earlier times of the Ottoman monarchy no ruler was permitted to build a mosque before he had won a battle against the infidels. The mosques in Brussa are smaller and less beautiful than those which were built later, but they possess the added interest of historical memories. There you find such names as Orchan, Suliman, Murad, in short, all the heroes of the victorious period of Islam.

The mosque of Bajasid attracted me most because of its excellent architecture. Bajasid is the man whom the Turks call Ilderim, or the Lightning. The monument of the mighty conqueror, who himself was conquered and died in a cage according to the legend, stands alone in the shadow of mighty cypress trees. The largest of the mosques used to be a Christian cathedral. It is lighted from above, the middle vault having been left open. The beautiful Asiatic starry sky itself has become its vault. The opening is covered with a wire screen, and below it in a wide basin a fountain is playing.

I will not say that even the largest mosques, the Sultan Selim, for instance, in Adrianople, or Sulamanich in Constantinople, make the same impression or inspire the same reverence as St. Stephan's in Vienna, or the cathedrals of Freiburg and Strassburg. But every mosque, even the smallest, is beautiful. There is nothing more picturesque than the semi-circular, lead-covered domes and the slender, white minarets rising above the mighty planes and cypresses. When the Ottomans conquered the provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire they preserved the Greek Church architecture, but they added the minarets, which are of Arabian origin.

The Hanns are the only stone dwelling-houses to be found. They are built in the shape of rectangles with an open court. Here, at least in the larger ones, you will find a mosque, a fountain, a small kiosk for noble travelers, and a few mulberry trees or plane trees. All about the court there is a colonnade with pointed arches; and, beyond that, rows of cells, each one with its individual vault. A mattress of straw is the only furniture for the traveler, who finds neither service nor food in these Hanns.

We dined in thoroughly Turkish fashion at the Kiebabtshi. After our hands had been washed we sat down, not at but on the table, where my legs were terribly in the way. Then the Kiebab, or small piece of mutton, broiled on the spit and rolled in dough, was served on a wooden platter. It is very good and tasty. It was followed by salted olives, which are wonderful, by the helva, i. e., the favorite sweet dish, and by a bowl of sherbet. This consists of water poured over grapes and thoroughly iced. The whole dinner for two hearty eaters cost one hundred and twenty paras, or five shillings.

The comforts of the Turkish baths I have described to you in an earlier letter. The baths of Brussa are distinguished, because they are not artificially but naturally heated, and so much so that you would not think it possible, at first, to enter the great basin of clear water without being parboiled before you could leave it again. From the terrace of our bath we had a beautiful view, and it was so comfortable there that we hated to leave.

On the thirteenth we rode to Kemlik, at the end of the Bay of Mudania, where there is a dockyard. This is the most beautiful spot I have seen. The clear surface of the sea is lost here between the high and steep mountains, which leave just enough space for the little town and the olive woods. Twilight is very brief in this country, and night had come when we reached the town gate, but what a night! Although the moon happened to be new, objects were distinguishable at a considerable distance, while the evening star shines here so brightly that shadows are cast by its light.

At three o'clock in the morning we were again in the saddle, riding toward the East through a valley and between high mountains, along the same road which Walther von Habenichts once followed with his twelve thousand crusaders. The hills were covered with olive trees and flowering bushes filled with nightingales. At sunset we reached the extensive lake of Isnik. The gigantic walls and towers on the opposite shore used to protect a powerful city, for which the crusaders often fought. Today they surround the few miserable huts and rubbish heaps which centuries ago were Nicea. It was here that an assembly of one hundred learned bishops expounded the mystery of the Trinity, and decided to burn all who held a different view. What would these proud prelates have said if a man had prophesied to them that the time would come when their rich and mighty city would be a rubbish heap, and their cathedral the ruins of a Turkish mosque; when the empire of the Greek emperors would be destroyed, and their own exegesis, yes, even their entire religion, would have disappeared from these parts, and when for hundreds of miles and through hundreds of years the name of the camel-driver of Medina would be the only one in the mouths of the people.

The Moslems, who abhor all pictures, have covered with whitewash the paintings in the Greek churches. In the Cathedral of Nicea, where the famous council was held, there glistens even today through the white coating of the wall, where the high altar used to be, the proud promise, I.H.S. (in hoc signo, i. e., under this sign, the cross, you will win). But directly over it is written the first dogma of Islam, "There is no God but God." There is a lesson of tolerance in these faded inscriptions, and it seems as if Heaven itself wished to listen as well to the Credo as to the Allah il allah. One of the chief pursuits of the honest Turks is what they call Kief etmek, literally "creating a mood." It consists of drinking coffee in a comfortable place and smoking. Such a place par excellence I found in the village where we made a stop. Imagine a plane which extends its colossal branches horizontally for almost one hundred feet, burying in its deep shadow the nearest houses. The trunk of the tree is surrounded by a small terrace of stone, below which water is gushing from twenty-seven pipes in streams as thick as your arm, and rushing off as a lively brook. Here, with their legs crossed, the Turks sit, practising—silence.

A JOURNEY TO MOSSUL

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND VON MACH, PH.D

[This is the forty-third letter of Moltke's Letters from Turkey, and is dated from Dshesireh on the Tigris, May 1, 1838.]

I told you in my last letter that we should be going on an expedition against the Arabs. This did not materialize. Nevertheless, I had the opportunity of making the acquaintance of a very interesting part of the country. On April 15, von Mühlbach, I, and two fully armed agas of the pasha, together with our servants and dragomans, embarked on a vessel built in a style well known even in the times of Cyrus, a raft supported by inflated sheep-skins. The Turks look upon hunting as a sin, they despise venison and beef, but eat an enormous quantity of sheep and goats. The skins of these animals are cut in front as little as possible and removed from the carcass with great care. Then they are sewed up and the extremities tied up. When the skin is inflated (which is done quickly and without touching the skin to the mouth) it is exceedingly buoyant and can hardly be made to sink. From forty to sixty such bags are tied together in four or five rows under a light framework of branches. There generally are eight skins in front and eighteen in the back. The whole is covered with a litter of leaves over which rugs and carpets are spread. Taking your seat on these you glide downstream with utmost comfort. Because the current is swift, oars are not needed for progress, but only for steering the raft, keeping it in the middle of the course, and avoiding the dangerous rapids. On account of these rapids we had to tie up every night until the moon was up, but in spite of this we covered the distance, which by land would have taken us eighty-eight hours, in three and one-half days. The river, therefore, must flow with an average velocity of almost four miles per hour. In places it is much swifter, and in others decidedly slower.

The Tigris leaves the mountains near Argana-Maaden, and flows past the walls of Diarbekir, where it is apt to cause slight inundations in summer time. It then receives the Battman river flowing in a southerly direction from the high Karsann-Mountains and carrying more water into the Tigris than this river contained before. Immediately after the union of these two rivers the Tigris enters another mountainous territory formed of sandstone. The gentle curves of the broad and shallow river are transformed into the sharp criss-cross angles of a ravine. The banks are abrupt, often vertical on both sides; and on top of some steep, rocky slopes your eye may discover groves of dark-green palms, and in their shadows the settlements of tribes of Kurds, who in this region are mostly cave-dwellers.

The town of Hassn-Kejfa (Hossu-Keifa), situated on a high rock whence a narrow staircase descends to the river, offers a most unusual aspect. The old city below has been destroyed, and only a few minarets still pointing to the sky indicate that mosques and houses once stood here. The inhabitants were obliged to retreat to the top of the cliff, where they built a wall of defence on the only accessible side. In the narrow ravine I discovered huge blocks which had rolled down from above. People have hollowed them and are using them as dwelling places. These "huts" today make up a small, very irregular town, which, however, possesses even a bazaar. By far the most noteworthy remains are the ruins of a bridge which used to cross the Tigris. There was one gigantic arch with a span of between eighty and one hundred feet. I do not know whether the credit for such a daring structure should be given to the Armenian kings or the Greek emperors, or perhaps even to the califs.

It is impossible to travel more comfortably than we did. Stretched out on downy pillows, and provided with victuals wine, tea, and a charcoal basin, we moved down the stream with the rapidity of an express coach and without the least exertion. But the element which propelled us persecuted us in another form. Rain poured from the sky incessantly after our departure from Diarbekir. Our umbrellas no longer protected us, and our cloaks, garments and carpets were soaked. On Easter day, just as we were leaving Dshesireh, the sun broke through the clouds, warming our stiffened limbs. About two miles below the city the ruins of another bridge across the Tigris are still in existence, and one of its piers creates a fierce whirlpool whenever the water is high. The exertions of the men at the oars were of no avail, and irresistibly our small ark was attracted by this charybdis. With the speed of an arrow we were sucked down below the surface, and a big comber broke over our heads. The water was icy cold, and when in the next moment our raft, which had not capsized, continued its way downstream as innocently as if nothing had happened we could not help laughing at one another, for we were a sad looking sight, everyone of us. The charcoal basins had gone overboard, a boot swam alongside, while each one of us hastened to fish out some little object. We made a landing on a small island, and since our bags were as thoroughly soaked as we were ourselves, we had to disrobe and spread our entire toilet in the sun to dry as well as possible. At some distance a flock of pelicans were taking their rest on a sandbank and sunning their white plumage as if in derision of our plight. Suddenly we saw that our raft had got loose and was floating off. One of the agas immediately jumped after it and fortunately reached it. If he had failed we should have been left on a desert island in nothing but nature's own garb.

When we were tolerably dry we continued our journey, but renewed downpours spoiled the moderate results of our previous efforts. The night was so dark that we had to tie up, for fear of being drawn into other whirlpools. In spite of the biting cold, and although we were wet to the skin, we did not dare to light a fire which might have attracted the Arabs. We silently pulled our raft into the shelter of a willow tree and waited longingly for the sun to appear from behind the Persian frontier mountains and to give us warmth.

Not far from Dshesireh the Tigris enters another plain and leaves behind the high and magnificent Dshudid mountains on whose bright and snow-clad peaks Noah and his mixed company are said to have disembarked. From here on the scenery is very monotonous; you rarely see a village, and most of those you see are uninhabited and in ruins. It is apparent that you have entered the country of the Arabs. There are no trees, and where a small bush has survived it is a siareth or sanctuary, and is covered with countless small rags. The sick people here, you must know, believe they will recover when they sacrifice to the saint a small part of their garments.

On the top of an isolated mountain of considerable height we could see at a great distance the ruins of an old city. When we approached it we actually passed along three sides of this mountain, on the north, east and south. The city was, I suppose, the ancient Bezabde of which the records say that it was situated in the desert and surrounded on three sides by the Tigris. Sapor laid siege to it after he had taken Amida and, when he had captured its three legions, gave it a Persian garrison.

Gliding past the ruins of the so-called old Mossul we discovered toward evening the minarets of Mossul. This is the most easterly point which I have visited, and my Turkish companions had to face west when they offered their evening prayer, while in Constantinople the moslems are looking for the Kibla in the southeast.