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Exploring the House of Islam: Perceptions of Islam in the Period of Western Ascendancy 1800-1945 6 Series Editors Mark Beaumont Douglas Pratt David Thomas

This is a series of re-publications of writings by Europeans, Americans and other non-Muslims on Islam from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up to the end of the Second World War. This period of Western political, economic, cultural and religious impact on the Islamic world is shown through the eyes of mainly European and American Scholars, Travellers, Missionaries and others who perceived Muslim culture in a variety of ways. The series is devoted to three kinds of perception: of Islamic History and Institutions; of Islamic Religion and Culture; and of Islam in comparison with Christianity. Making these works available again will enable renewed understanding of the attitudes and actions of non-Muslims in their engagement with Islam.

Eothen

By

Alexander Kinglake Introduction by

Alison Dingle

1 gorgias press 2009

Gorgias Press LLC, 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2009 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2009 • ^

1 ISBN 978-1-60724-664-0

L i b r a r y of Congress Data

Cataloging-in-Publication

Kinglake, Alexander William,

1809-1891.

Eothen / by Alexander Kinglake ; with new introduction by Alison Dingle. p. cm. --

(Exploring the house of Islam:

perceptions of Islam in the period of Western ascendancy 1800-1945 ; 6) Includes bibliographical 1.

Kinglake, Alexander, East.

references.

Middle East--Description and travel. 2. 1809-1891—Travel—Middle

I. Dingle, Alison. II. Title.

DS48.K5 2009 915.604'15--dc22 2009042081 Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Series Foreword Exploring the House of Islam: Perceptions of Islam in the Period of Western Ascendancy 1800—1945 vii 1. Perceptions of Islamic History and Institutions viii 2. Perceptions of Islamic Religion and Culture xi 3. Perceptions of Islam in Comparison with Christianity xv 4. The Scope of the Series, Exploring the House of Islam: Perceptions of Islam in the Period of Western Ascendancy 1800-1945 xx References xxii Alexander Kinglake, Eothen

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SERIES FOREWORD EXPLORING THE HOUSE OF ISLAM: PERCEPTIONS OF ISLAM IN THE PERIOD OF WESTERN ASCENDANCY 1 8 0 0 - 1 9 4 5

Contemporary debate about the way non-Muslims in the colonial era wrote about Islam has been centred on the accusation that Europeans and others were often more engaged in constructing a picture suited to their own imaginations than passing on to their Western readers a portrait of Islamic realities. Edward Said, one of the strongest proponents of this view, argues that 'the language of Orientalism.. .ascribes reality and reference to objects of its own making... "Arabs" are presented in the imagery of static, almost ideal types, and neither as creatures with a potential in the process of being realized nor as history being made' (Said: 1985, 321). Ziauddin Sardar, while criticising Said's secularism as failing to represent Islam adequately, agrees with his thesis concerning Western writing about Islam and claims that many in the West are still perpetuating the same old ideas today. 'Unless the limitations of representation masquerading as reality are perceived and understood, a plural future founded on mutual respect and enhanced mutual understanding is impossible. We will continue to live out the consequences of conflict, mistrust, denigration, and marginalisation that are the all too real legacy of Orientalism' (Sardar: 1999, 118). To what extent such criticisms can be weighed depends on familiarity with the writing of those from outside the House of Islam who ventured to depict those who lived in the house. This series of re-publications of non-Muslim writings about Islam aims to provide resources for contemporary readers to investigate the attitudes and actions of mainly American and European scholars, travvii

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ellers, and missionaries in their engagement with Muslims during the period of Western ascendency, 1800-1945. The series is grouped around three forms of perception of Islam: of Islamic History and Institutions; of Islamic Religion and Culture; and of Islam in comparison with Christianity. 1. PERCEPTIONS OF ISLAMIC HISTORY AND INSTITUTIONS

The beginning of the Nineteenth century saw the arrival of Napoleon in Egypt and new development of French interest in Islam typified by the work of Silvestre de Sacy at the licole de luingues Orientales Vivantes, established in 1795 in the wake of the revolution. He was the father of many European scholars of Islam, particularly emphasising an objective, scientific study of texts. His promotion of solid research was reflected in the founding of several scholarly societies; The Paris Asiatic Society in 1821, the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 1823, the American Oriental Society in 1842, and the German Oriental Society in 1847. His Chrestomathie arabe in three volumes was published in 1826 and contained extracts from a wide range of Arabic writing in prose and poetry, destined to become a staple source for Europeans seeking an entry into the unknown world of Islamic thought. However, this attempt to investigate Muslims by means of a very long history of literature in Arabic was made more complex by the onset of colonial control of Muslim peoples in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although the Dutch and British East Indies Companies had interacted with Muslims in their respective areas of trade before the nineteenth century, French annexation of Algeria in 1848 and British and French dual control of Egypt in 1879 brought more Europeans into direct contact with Muslims, not just as travellers, traders, and missionaries, but as rulers. The upshot of this exercise of power was likely to result in the objectification of those being governed as "inferior" in order to control rather than to appreciate. The complaint of Said and Sardar, rooted in this reality, is echoed by Máxime Rodinson, 'All this, inevitably, could only encourage a natural European self-centredness, which had always existed, but which now took on a very markedly contemptuous tinge' (Rodinson: 1979, 9-62, 51). Nevertheless, interest in Islam as a subject of intellectual pursuit developed considerably in the second half of the nineteenth century. Several new posts for the study of Islam were created in

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European universities and editions and translations of Muslim writings were published. One example of this academic development is William Muir who became an administrator at the University of Edinburgh after being a civil servant in British India. Muir produced a four volume The Ufe of Mahomet in 1861, transmitting for English readers traditions concerning the Prophet from Muslim sources. His German contemporary, Gustav Weil, published his five volume Geschichte der Chalifen in 1862, which similarly interpreted Muslim accounts of the early centuries of Islamic rule for European readers. On the basis of such editing and translating arose a variety of interpretations of Islamic history in the subsequent generation. Foremost among these interpreters was Ignaz Goldziher, a Hungarian Jew, whose erudition in Judaism and Islam was remarkable. Beginning with studies in his own religion, he gradually displayed such a mastery of Muslim traditions, jurisprudence, theology, mysticism, and philosophy, in publications from 1872 to 1919, that Goldziher has been credited with establishing 'Islamology as a historical science' (Waardenburg: 1963, 244). Much of this academic study of Islam was based on manuscripts lodged in European museums such as The British Museum in London or in University libraries such as Leiden in the Netherlands. Thus the history of Islam was told in a dialectical conversation between Muslim writers, mainly from the classical period of the ninth to twelfth centuries, and the elite group of European specialists who could engage with them. Waardenburg has shown how five different Western scholars from the late nineteenth through to the early twentieth century crafted their distinctive portraits of Islam on different presuppositions. Goldziher saw the development of Islamic orthodoxy from the spiritual seeds sown in the earliest sources (Waardenburg, 244). Dutch scholar, Snouck Hurgronje, whose writing on Islam ranged from 1882 to 1928, emphasised the system of organising society set up by Muhammad and expanded in a variety of settings on the history of Islam (ibid, 248—9). C. H. Becker's writing, from 1899 to 1932 in Germany, painted a very different picture in his belief that Islam was a product, not so much of the original sources in Arabia, but rather of the cultures into which it expanded. The context created the history (ibid, 252). D. B. MacDonald, writing in the USA between 1895 and 1936, understood the diversity of Islam to have a central core of authentic religious experience, the soul encountering God (ibid, 256). Frenchman

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Louis Massignon published from 1909 to 1959 significant studies of Islamic mysticism, which he regarded as the centre of Muslim life (ibid, 263-4). Such considerable divergence of views might support Said's opinion that so called 'scholarly objectivity' was actually a mask for the exercise of control over Muslims. In his own review of these five orientalists Said sweeps aside all but Massignon as 'hostile' to Islam (Said, 209). He notes how even the latter willingly accepted the call from colonial administrators to offer advice in managing their Muslim charges (ibid, 210). He concludes that collusion in colonial rule had become the norm for European scholars of Islam in the early decades of the twentieth century. Waardenburg accepts the heart of this critique. He recognises that the scholars of Islam who supported colonial administration shared a common assumption that Europeans knew best what their Muslim subjects should believe and practise in terms of Islam. 'Consequently, not only the colonial administration but also the scholars connected with it mostly had a negative view of any Muslim movement that opposed the Western mother country, and indeed all forms of Islam that implied a threat to the colonial power's rule' (Waardenburg: 2002, 103). He concedes that 'disinterested' study of Islam was 'extremely difficult' in the period before independence from European domination after World War Two (ibid, 105). It seems clear then that since Western scholars in the universities were concentrating on the study of ancient Muslim texts it was likely that interest in current Islamic life would be relegated to illustrating the contents of the established tradition. So when actual Muslim life seemed to diverge from what was prescribed in the texts it was necessary to call it popular, folk or animistic Islam and to decry the fact that real, authentic or pure Islam was not being followed as it should by many who claimed to be Muslims. The overall importance of the academic research into Islamic texts especially from the ninth to twelfth centuries lay in making non-Muslims aware of the rich heritage of the formative period of Islamic history that established norms for proper Muslim belief and conduct, and that passed on the intellectual inheritance of Greek civilisation to an intellectually impoverished medieval Europe. Thus while Islam sometimes was attractive to nineteenth century European intellectuals such as Thomas Carlyle, in his On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History of 1841, for the sheer mono-

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theism of the message of Muhammad, the main reaction to the discovery of the vast literary output being surveyed by the academics was gratitude for the assimilation and development of Aristotle, Galen, and Euclid by leading Muslims in the 'classical' period of Middle Eastern Islam, and the subsequent passage of such Greek thought to Europe through Muslims in Spain. Attitudes of the educated public who paid attention to the actual content of the scholarly outpouring were rather more critical, continuing the longstanding antipathy of Europeans to the anti-Christian character of Islam which had in the past represented a political threat to them. The fact that the Ottoman Empire was the 'sick man of Europe' enabled intellectuals in Europe to treat Islam with condescension, and to suppress to some extent the old fears of invasion that arose from the strength of Islam in the past. If there were limits to the value of relating Islamic history and describing long-standing Muslim institutions, then the observations of travellers and missionaries restored some balance to the perceptions of Islam as it was actually lived out, since, unlike many of the university academics, they spent time living among Muslims, observing and analysing them. In addition, by the end of the nineteenth century the academic discipline of Anthropology was becoming established, with the result that serious investigation of Muslim societies began in earnest, providing scholarly respectability to writing about Muslim religion and culture as contemporary phenomena. The re-publication of writing about the religion and culture of Muslims is the rationale of the second section of the series. 2. PERCEPTIONS OF ISLAMIC RELIGION AND CULTURE French interest in Egypt grew out of Napoleon's initiative to establish French dominance there. This led to French managers who could relate to Egyptian cultural concerns, illustrated in a multivolume Description de l'Egypte produced between 1809 and 1828. Travel writing by François-René Chateaubriand, Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, et de Jérusalem à Paris, 1810—11, and Alphonse de Lamartine, Voyage en Orient, 1835, though focused on the Holy Land, gave readers a glimpse of Muslims in the Middle East. British visitors to Egypt included Edward Lane who, unlike the French travellers, stayed long enough to offer much more than a glance at Muslim life. His detailed observations in An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 1836, were backed by fluency in Arabic

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demonstrated in his Arabic-English Lexicon. He also published Lhe Englishwoman in Egypt: Letters from Cairo written during a residence there in 1842, which included descriptions of Egyptian female life by his sister Sophia Lane who learned enough Arabic to spend time visiting local women in their homes. Publication of such observations of Muslim culture led to further interest in exploration of little known Muslim societies. Special attention to Arabia, the origin of the Islamic faith, was given by the English translator of the Arabian Nights, Richard Burton, whose Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Mecca, published in 1893, included a minutely observed account of the Muslim LLajj, achieved as a result of passing himself as a Muslim doctor from India in 1855—6. Another Englishman, Charles Doughty, spent two years among the Bedouin in Arabia in the 1870's practising Western medicine. His description of several different tribes as well as townspeople of the Hejaz was published in two volumes in 1888 as Travels in Arabia Deserta. Fluent like Burton in Arabic, Doughty was able to relate the attitudes of those who gave him hospitality in their tents and houses. Unlike Burton, he challenged their religious and cultural assumptions. While attempting to make a living dispensing medicine he encountered Bedouins who held out their hands to have them read by him. 'They esteem the great skill in medicine to bind and cast out the jan. They could hardly tell what to think when, despising their resentment, I openly derided the imposture of the exorcists; I must well nigh seem to them to cast a stone at their religion' (Doughty: 1921, vol 1, 548). Doughty was more typical of European travellers than Burton. Not content to describe and analyse, he ventured to denigrate by generalising from particular experiences. For instance, he noticed that children were never checked for lying although he heard it said that lying was shameful. 'Nature we see to be herself most full of all guile, and this lying mouth is indulged by the Arabian religion' (ibid, volt, 241). By the end of the nineteenth century the sciences of anthropology and sociology had become established in European universities and the documenting of how ethnic groups lived gathered pace as a proper academic pursuit. For example, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in 1871 to provide a showcase for field work among the world's peoples. There was now a new opportunity for social scientific investi-

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gation of contemporary Muslim societies to supplement the knowledge of texts from Islamic history. The criticism that 'disinterested' study of Muslim peoples was next to impossible since European ethnologists held that Muslims were inferior to them in social development has to be balanced by the care with which data were gathered and interpreted by leading field workers. While some of these worked for colonial governments such as Hurgronje in the Dutch East Indies, others were independent, such as the Finnish Edward Westermarck, whose studies of Moroccan Muslims were outstanding in thoroughness and impartiality. Westermarck visited Morocco on a travelling scholarship from the University of Helsinfors in 1898 and returned another twenty times up to 1926 when he published his two volume 'Ritual and Belief in Morocco, having spent seven years in total visiting all the regions of the nation. The fruit of a career of listening to Moroccans speak about their beliefs and practices is unfolded in an analysis of baraka, 'a mysterious wonder-working force which is looked upon as a blessing from God' (Westermarck: 1926, vol 1, 35); ofjinn, 'a special race of spiritual beings that were created before man' (ibid, 262); of martin, 'a person who has an evil eye' (ibid, 414); of categorical and conditional curses; of dreams; and of rites connected with the Muslim calendar, childbirth, and death. He had already elaborated on marriage rites in his 1914, Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco. An instance of his reliance on evidence-based conclusions comes at the end of his exposition of beliefs and practices concerning the dead. The belief widespread among sub-Saharan African peoples that dead relatives can have a malevolent impact on the living was not evident in Morocco. 'The people are in close and permanent contact with their dead saints, who are looked upon as friendly beings by whose assistance misfortune may be averted or positive benefits secured. On the other hand, the souls of the ordinary dead rarely exercise any influence at all upon the fate of the living, either for good or for evil' (Westermarck: 1926, vol 2, 552). The fact that the Muslim world stretched from Morocco to the Philippines meant that local versions of Islam were being described in quite diverse settings during the first half of the twentieth century. The more social scientists spent time engaging with specific Muslim peoples the more complex the house of Islam seemed to be, with a much larger number of rooms occupied by different sorts of Muslims than the historical texts might have im-

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plied. ShTi Muslims in Iran shared core beliefs and practices with SunnI Muslims elsewhere but significant divergences of belief and practice were observed by Bess Donaldson in Mashhad in the province of Khorasan in her 1938 depiction of the religious life of the average person, The Wild Rue: A. Study of Muhammadan Magic and Folklore in Iran. Much of her information came from women, and her chapter topics are similar to Westermarck's. In her treatment of beliefs concerning the evil eye, Donaldson reported an incantation used to avert the danger of the evil eye. Incense made of wild rue, myrtle, and frankincense was burned at sunset and the following incantation repeated; 'Wild rue, who planted it? Muhammad. Who gathered it? Ali. Who burned it? Fatima. For whom? For Hasan and Husain'. She commented that the names of the 'Five' combined 'their power with that of the incense', and that Iranian women called the incantation 'atil wa batil'offensive and defensive' (Donaldson: 1938, 20-1). S h f i devotion to the family of "Ali coloured the whole of life for the people of Mashhad such that spiritual power was believed to emanate from these five to overcome everyday problems. Mashhad was the site of the martyrdom of "Ali Rida, the eighth Imam, and his tomb had been a very popular destination for Twelver ShTi's. Donaldson reported that around a hundred thousand made the pilgrimage each year, many to make a vow by tying a piece of cloth to the railings of the tomb or to collect water poured over the lock of the gates to the tomb to take home for the healing of the sick (ibid, 66—8). Academic social scientists strove for as much objectivity as possible, and their ability to refrain from value judgments based on 'enlightened' Western attitudes marked them out from those who wanted to see change in the societies they were observing. Christian missionaries tended to be in the latter group. Even the more dispassionate among them were living among Muslims so that they could pass on the benefits of Christian civilisation. An example of more thoughtful descriptive writing from the missionary community comes from the husband and wife team, V. R. and L. Bevan Jones, who taught at the Henry Martyn School of Islamic Studies in Aligarh, India. Their Woman in Islam, 1941, was designed as an introduction to Muslim women for female missionaries in India. Their treatment of the seclusion of women was presented in a dialectical style to show the kinds of change that were taking place for a few. The ninety five percent of Muslim women who were pardan-

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ishin could be seen by no man with whom they could be married and when outside the home wore the burqa. 'That simple statement may seem at first empty of content, but consider how the rule operates. Here is a university student, newly married, who insists that he is going to take his bride for a drive. What a thrill! But as the elder women dress the girl for the occasion they murmur disapproval of these new ways. The bridegroom goes eagerly to take his bride out and finds in the carriage the girl's mother, three little girls, and a small brother—all crowded in, with the windows closed and curtained. And yet even that was a step forward' (Bevan Jones: 1941, 49). The impact of non-Muslim beliefs on Indian Muslims is described in relation to fear of the spirits of the dead, particularly the ghosts of the sweeper caste who were 'believed to be notoriously malignant' (ibid, 339). These Churels could possess Muslim women when they were ceremonially unclean, particularly 'those who have failed to win their husband's love or are themselves of bad character' (ibid). The Bevan Jones' approach to detailing the everyday lives of Indian Muslim women combined study of the Qur'an, the Sunna, and subsequent interpretations of the roles of women in the various Indian Muslim communities in a careful way. However, their presence in India represented the missionary force that had been engaged in persuading Muslims to change in the direction of Christian faith. The republication of writing by missionaries is the aim of the third section of the series. 3 . PERCEPTIONS OF ISLAM IN COMPARISON WITH CHRISTIANITY

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Muslims in India were already known to Europeans through Catholic mission and the administration of the British East India Company. Henry Martyn worked for the latter as a chaplain but also set up schools for Muslims in which portions of the Bible were studied. Martyn completed the translation of the New Testament in Urdu in 1810, and his Persian version was published after his early death in 1812. Education for Muslims was the role of various mission agencies in the period of formal British rule. Within this approach were ideas concerning the relative truth of Islam and Christianity and the enlightenment thought to follow from an embracing of Christian values. Martyn found that Muslims were more than willing to debate with him about the rationality of the oneness of God over against the Trin-

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ity, and future mission to Muslims in India became marked by such polemical encounter (Vander Werff: 1977, 30—36). The best known example of debate was Karl Pfander, a German member of the Basel Mission who published The balance of Truth in Urdu in 1843 after having produced an Armenian version in 1831 and a Persian one in 1835. As a result of engagement with Muslims in India, he rewrote the work in the late 1840's using Muslim writing on Muhammad and the early history of Islam provided by Muir and Weil as well as the Hadith collection of Majlisi published in Teheran in 1831 (Powell: 1993,147-8). This knowledge of Muslim tradition enabled Pfander to compare Jesus and Muhammad from the perspective of Islamic sources. Rather than denigrate the latter in the style of his European predecessors, Pfander quoted sayings of Muhammad concerning the sinlessness of Jesus and contrasted these with his own admission of sin, and concluded, 'If Muhammad himself claimed to have needed forgiveness and yet taught that Jesus was without fault then the Christian case is made by the Prophet of Islam' (see Beaumont: 2005,118). The tradition of answering Muslim questions about the validity of Christian beliefs continued through the remainder of the nineteeth century. Englishman William St Clair Tisdall of the Church Missionary Society represented the best of this approach as publisher of literature in Persian from the Henry Martyn Press at Julfa in Isfahan. His Sources of Islam, 1901, in Persian and his additions to Pfander's The Balance of Truth, 1910, in English, used European scholarship to argue that the Qur'an was influenced by previous religious traditions, not least Jewish and Christian, thus conveying to a Muslim audience the virtually unanimous convictions of non-Muslim students of Islam. His A Manual of the Teading Muhammadan Objections to Christianity, 1904, written to assist missionaries in answering Muslim questions about Christianity, advised care with the use of the Bible since it was widely regarded as corrupt by Muslims. It would be wiser to refer to the way the Qur'an actually refers to the Christian scriptures, 'to show that the arguments which Muslims now bring against the Bible are confuted in large measure by the statements of the book which they themselves believe to be God's best and final revelation to man.. .in quoting it we acknowledge merely that it has been handed down from Muhammad, and that he claimed for it the lofty position which Muslims accord to it' (Tisdall: 1904, 4). It is clear from this advice

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that Tisdall believed it was imperative not to show disrespect to the Prophet himself, and this is emphasised in the way a missionary should answer the question, What do you think of Muhammad? 'In this manual I have on certain occasions pointed out certain facts with reference to Muhammad, e.g. that he is not in the Qur'an regarded as sinless. This has been done for the information of the Christian student, and is necessary in a book of this description. But it is very delicate ground indeed on which to tread in speaking with a Muslim' (ibid, 16). This sensitivity to the feelings of Muslims 'was a marked improvement over many earlier apologetic approaches' (Vander Werff, 277). Another attitude to Christian mission to Muslims can be seen in the French Cardinal Charles Lavigerie whose appointment as Bishop of Algiers in 1867 led, the following year, to his founding of the Society of Missionaries to Africa, popularly known as 'The White Fathers', because they adopted white versions of local inner and outer robes, gandora and burnous. Lavigerie shared the sentiments of many French Catholics that the establishment of French rule in Algeria in 1830 might result in a return to the Christian way of life not seen properly since the time of Augustine in the fifth century. 'In his providence, God now allows France the opportunity to make of Algeria the cradle of a great and Christian nation. . .He is calling upon us to use these gifts which he has given us to shed around us the light of that true civilisation which has its source in the Gospel' (Lavigerie, 'First Pastoral Letter', 1867, in Kittler: 1957, 41—2). Lavigerie's intentions for the new missionary order were that they should work on a fourfold plan of education, charity, example, and prayer. Schools and hospitals would be the means to achieve the plan. He established a female version of the order that became known as 'The White Sisters', and by 1871 there were eight young men and six young women from French backgrounds actively learning Arabic, and about Islam and Algerian culture. The life of compassion was the hallmark of this approach to Muslims, and this was necessitated by the reality that Algeria was governed by the French political principle of the separation of church and state. There was no room for the kind of debating with Muslims that was tolerated by British governors in India. Colonial administration took different forms with respect to the promotion of Christianity.

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The Middle East contained Christian communities that stretched back in time before the arrival of Islam and this reality affected European and American Christian engagement with Muslims in the region. There were three approaches to relations with these churches according to William Shedd in lectures given at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1902—3. Shedd, an American Presbyterian missionary in Persia, had an intimate knowledge of Christian sources in Syriac as well as Muslim history in Arabic, and related the history of relations between Muslims and Christians in the first five lectures. In his sixth and final lecture he discussed the attitudes of Christians from outside the region. The Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church had attempted to absorb Middle Eastern churches into their own communions. The Anglicans had accepted the Assyrian Christian Church of the Nestorians as autonomous, yet sympathised with the Russian Orthodox in believing that there should be a return to the true orthodox community. Other Protestants worked for a reformation within the ancient churches but found that individuals preferred to be identified with the style of Christianity lived out by the missionaries, and so independent Protestant churches emerged from the traditional Christian communities. Shedd reluctantly accepted the necessity of the latter. 'I do not believe that such separation should be sought, but experience shows that it is inevitable.. .the policy of the Protestant missionaries in permitting separation from the ancient churches is justified by the fact of history that Christianity as expressed and limited by the forms of belief and organization of the oriental churches has failed to conquer Islam and that a reformation consequently is imperative in order to do so' (Shedd: 1904, 217-8). This confidence in the ability of Christian mission to attract significant numbers of Muslims was shared particularly by Americans who perhaps had more of a pioneering spirit than many Europeans. Outstanding among them was Samuel Zwemer who determined to tackle the most difficult challenge of all in the Muslim world, the Arabian Peninsula, while training for the ministry of the Reformed Church in America in 1888. Bahrain and Kuwait had no indigenous church so the Reformed mission had no competition in its outreach to Muslims. Medical work and personal evangelism based on literature were the means of interacting with the local population. Zwemer produced much of the literature in Ara-

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bic and had a reputation for talking to all kinds of Muslims. 'Taking the name Dhaif Allah (guest of God), he was at times labelled Dhaif Iblis (guest of the devil) but years later local citizens called him, Fatih al-Bahrain, (the pioneer of progress in the Islands)' (Vander Werff, 175). Among his voluminous writing for fellow Christians is his constant advocacy of making Christ known to Muslims who have the barest knowledge of him. In The Moslem Christ of 1912 he provides extensive analysis of the way the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Qur'an commentators, and the traditional stories of the prophets portray Jesus. In a subsequent chapter entitled 'Jesus Christ Supplanted by Mohammed' he points out that 'for all practical purposes Mohammed himself is the Moslem Christ' (Zwemer: 1912, 157). Having observed Muslim devotion for the Prophet and consulted popular literature from the bazaar, he expounded the widespread beliefs he encountered for a Western audience reared on classical versions of Islam. 'In spite of statements in the Koran to the contrary, most Moslems believe that he will be the only intercessor on the day of judgment. The books of devotion used everywhere are proof of this statement.. .Mohammed holds the keys of heaven and hell: no Moslem, however good his life, can be saved except through Mohammed. Islam denies the need of Christ as Mediator, only to substitute Mohammed as a mediator, without an incarnation, without an atonement and without demand for a change of character' (ibid, 160—1). So what was the Christian missionary to do? In his final chapter, 'How to preach Christ to Moslems who know Jesus', Zwemer suggests that Muslims be encouraged to read the gospels for themselves so that they can appreciate why Christians want to bear witness to him. There is no value in offending Muslims over their estimation of Muhammad, but since 'they glorify their prophet, why should we not glorify ours?' (ibid, 184). The fact that relatively few Muslims in the Middle East publicly identified as Christians caused even the most enthusiastic missionary to ponder why this was so. As colonial rule by European nations was being rejected within majority Muslim communities particularly after the First World War, Missionaries had to reevaluate their work. Wilson Cash, missionary in Egypt and then General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, reflected on the relationship between Christians and Muslims in his Christendom and Islam, of 1937. After a historical survey he approached 'the

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Christian Answer to the Moslem Quest' in his final chapter. H e advised that 'Christians can only make their contribution and preach their message in a spirit of humility.. .They cannot go as members of a superior race, but as brothers in a common humanity. They must live their faith before they can teach it.. .Ultimately men will see that the ideal held up to them is not Mohammed at all, but Christ, and in the Eternal Christ they will find again the source of life and power' (Cash: 1937, 173—4). Humble service rather than reliance on colonial prestige was now the right approach. With the coming of independence of Muslims from foreign rule after World War Two, the opportunities for Christian missionaries would become fewer in Muslim populations, and the Christian mission enterprise would come under increasing pressure. The rise of renewed and vigorous forms of Islam would mean that Muslims would become ready to see the whole enterprise of European and American impact on the House of Islam as a plot to undermine the foundations of the House, led by Christian missionaries whose task was to soften up the ground for their political masters. Republication of writing by Christian missionaries should enable readers to determine to what extent this criticism is true. 4. T H E SCOPE OF THE SERIES, EXPLORING THE HOUSE OF ISLAM: PERCEPTIONS OF ISLAM IN THE PERIOD OF WESTERN ASCENDANCY 1800-1945 The aim of the series is to re-publish significant books from the period by non-Muslims about Islam. Books written by Muslim authors are not part of the series since the views of non-Muslims are the central concern. While books that are selected for republication refer to Muslim oral and written sources, these are passed through a non-Muslim filter, and it is this process of interpretation that is the main focus of the series. The series includes a wide variety of interpretations of Islam so that no particular school of thought is privileged. This inclusive approach explains the division of the series into three sections that allow for books by scholars of Islamic texts and anthropologists of Muslim societies to be read alongside observations of travellers and reports of missionaries. Within these three sections is a sufficient range of voices, the dismissive, the critical, the sympathetic, and the admiring, which provide evidence for twenty-first century readers of approaches to

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Muslims by outsiders in the modern colonial era. If these voices can be heard afresh in all their various tones then they should enable a fully rounded assessment to be made of attitudes to Islam in this period. The critique of Said and Sardar that western writing about Islam has been irrevocably tainted by a false imagination can then be evaluated through contact with original sources. The resulting conclusion may be that, though never free from presuppositions about Islam, European and American writers about Muslims were not uniformly prejudiced but at times reported quite objectively about their explorations of the House of Islam. The first six volumes to be published include two from each of the three sections. Ignaz Goldziher's Mohammed and Islam [1917] and John Subhan's Sufism, Its Saints and Shrines [1938] provide views of various aspects of Islamic history and institutions; Alexander Kinglake's Eothen [1844] and Amy and Samuel Zwemer's Moslem Women [1926] portray Islamic religion and culture in divergent ways; and W. R. W. Stephens' Christianity and Islam [1877] and W. H. T. Gairdner's The "Rebuke of Islam [1920] show how Christian writing about Islam in comparison with Christianity varied within the period. Each volume contains a general introduction to the series along with a particular introduction to the book which places the work in its context for the twenty-first century reader. The series aims to include re-publications of around one hundred volumes. Projected books to be included are, in Section One, 'Perceptions of Islamic History and Institutions', Muir's The Efe of Mahomet [1878], Grimme's Mohammed [1892-5], and MacDonald's The Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory [1903]. Section Two, 'Perceptions of Islamic Religion and Culture', will include Lane's An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians [1836], Doughty's Travels in Arabia Deserta [1888], and Bell's The Desert and the Sown [1907]. Section Three, 'Perceptions of Islam in Comparison with Christianity', will have Wherry's Islam and Christianity in India and the Far East [1907], Jessup's F i f t y Three Years in Syria [1910], and Zwemer's The Muslim Christ [1912],

xxii

EOTHEN

REFERENCES

Beaumont, I. M. Christo log)/ in Dialogue with Muslims, (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2005) Bevan Jones, V. R. & L. Woman in Islam, (Lucknow: The Lucknow Publishing House, 1941) Cash, W. W. Christendom and Islam, (London: SCM Press, 1937) Donaldson, B. A. The Wild Rue: A Study of Muhammadan Magic and Tolklore in Iran, (London: Luzac, 1938) Doughty, C. M. Travels in Arabia Deserta, new edition, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1921) Kittler, G. D. The White Fathers, (London: W. H. Allen, 1957) Powell, A. A. Muslims and Missionaries in PreMutinj India, (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1993) Rodinson, M. "The Western Image and Western Studies of Islam" in The Legacy of Islam, (eds) J. Schacht and C. E. Bosworth, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979) Said, E. Orientalism, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985) Sardar, Z. Orientalism, (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999) Shedd, W. A. Islam and the Oriental Churches: Their Historical Relations, (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1904) Tisdall, W. S. A Manual of the Leading Muhammadan Objections to Christianity, (London: SPCK, 1904) Vander Werff, L. L. Christian Mission to Muslims: The Record, (South Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1977) Waardenburg, J. D. J. L'Islam dans le Miroir de L'Occident, (Paris & the Hague: Mouton & Co, 1963) Waardenburg, J. D . J . Islam. Historical, Social, and Political Perspectives, (Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2002) Westermarck, E. Ràtual and Belief in Morocco, (London: Macmillan, 1926) Zwemer, S. M. The Moslem Christ, (Edinburgh & London: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1912)

Series Section II: Perceptions of Islamic Religion and Culture

ALEXANDER KINGLAKE, EOTHEN

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Holy Land is represented as a region both in conflict, and of conflicting identities but, Palestine and Israel are also the land of the Bible, the place on which sacred scenes were played out and where Jesus' physical presence has made the land unique. And we are often led to believe that this has always been so. If this is the case we may wonder what we can learn from reading a travel narrative published in 1844. Eothen is Alexander Kinglake's account of his journey through the Levant and shows a region undergoing social and political turmoil, subject to internal and external forces of change and in these terms we may recognise the contemporary Holy Land. He visits the major Christian sites of the day, takes a sojourn into Cairo through the Sinai, marvels at the enigmatic Sphinx, and returns via Gaza to Beirut. Beirut, then as now, is space between East and West, and brings him back to civilisation. So much of this text may seem familiar. Given this brief description it would be easy to surmise that little has changed in the intervening one and a half centuries. However, many of the social forces in the Arab world of today have their roots in the early Victorian period, and are key to making sense of the contemporary Middle East. And such a text as Eothen, written with a contemporary audience in mind, and enjoying a celebrated status throughout the nineteenth century, gives us a unique chance to observe these evolving forces at an earlier period in their development, as understood by an articulate and entertaining eyewitness.

xxiii

xxiv

EOTHEN

Kinglake describes a local population of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, experiencing political uncertainty, economic hardship, and the effects of European involvement in the region, and some understanding of the historical context helps to make sense of his descriptions and experiences. The Holy Land, through which Kinglake travelled, was part of the Ottoman Empire, but during his journey in the 1830s it was occupied by the Egyptian army of Mohammed Ali, and ruled by his nephew, Ibrahim. The Egyptians at this period were challenging the authority of Constantinople, and each Western power strove to support Ottoman integrity just enough to prevent other powers gaining from Ottoman weakness; Palestine, then, was part of the 'Eastern Question'. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Palestine had been involved in Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, and on this earlier occasion, Britain had supported the Ottomans in expelling the French. The subsequent conflicts between Britain and France over the region were to become a feature of Britain's policy in the Levant; Britain's acquisition of the Suez Canal in the 1860s is a later episode in this ongoing political tussle. Kinglake dates his text quite precisely, contextualizing for his readers the political situation in which he travelled; on his first adventure after arriving in Beirut he visits the English resident in Lebanon, Lady Hester Stanhope, living in her abandoned convent, defying the forces of Ibrahim by offering protection to a troop of Albanian, therefore Ottoman, soldiers. He then proceeds to visit various Catholic and Greek sites, such as the Church of the Annunciation and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and from these descriptions we learn a lot about his reaction to indigenous Christianity. Kinglake's journey could never be described as a pilgrimage, it is a secular adventure, but his Protestant reaction to these sacred places reveals a Christian response not focussed upon the authenticity of biblical sites. He witnesses a Christian environment at odds with his own Christian background, and although Muslims are, on occasion, referred to as heathens and infidels, this language does not lead him to identify with local Christians. So although the narrative begins by contrasting 'wheel going-Europe' to the 'splendour and havoc of the East', the opposition does not assume the religious dualism we may anticipate. Kinglake undermines this potential duality by describing, often with great compassion, the difficulties of people's lives, the impoverished beduin who are forced to live on grass, or the towns-

INTRODUCTION

XXV

people who live with the fear of plague. Indeed his own travelling party is comprised of a Greek Orthodox dragoman as well as a Muslim, and Kinglake comes to respect them individually. As a group they represent the populations of the Levant, and in including them in his narrative, Kinglake offers us details which broaden out to illustrate a wider history of the period and the region. His amusement and reliance upon them is quietly evident throughout the text, and in describing his relationships with them we see something of his character, too. For it is the character of Kinglake which makes this text such a rewarding reading experience, as the author cultivates an intense, if at times overpowering, narrative persona, but who can be on other occasions genuinely humble and fascinated by his environment. Although he is pompous, he is also intrepid, willing to subject himself to a sense of adventure for the sheer sensation of the experience, and describe it candidly. Chapter XII is called 'My First Bivouac' and Kinglake displays an innocent excitement in [his servants] making a camp-fire for the evening feast of bread, cheese, and tea and staring up through the dark, to infinity as the fire burns low. He romanticises the nomadic sparseness of the bivouac even as he is self-consciously aware that it contrasts to his own luxury and indulgence, but is also aware of how his readers might be sharing this romantic fantasy of spending a night under the stars on the east bank of the Jordan. But Kinglake is not always so reflective, and is certainly open to the accusation of condescension and his flippant narrative tone, which scholars such as Edward Said find so objectionable, is evident many times over. This arrogance may be explained by his youthful nature, and still more by what Edward Said, in Orientalism, calls his 'sovereign Western ego', but often we find his wit is often directed against himself. On occasions he sees himself, and is aware of this absurdity; his reluctance to acknowledge a fellow English traveller in the Sinai being the clearest example of his awareness of such ridiculousness. In Nablus, Kinglake becomes involved in an incident which highlights both the religious aspects of Arab society and also indicates how the local people engage with a westerner among them. A Christian girl had been encouraged to convert to Islam by a wealthy old Muslim sheikh who wished to marry her, and a deputation from the Greek Church came to seek Kinglake's interference and

xxvi

EOTHEN

support in the matter. Unknown to Kinglake, his dragoman Dhemetri, a Greek Christian, supported the community in their appeals to the local authorities, claiming he was speaking on behalf of his master, although Kinglake himself thought that she would be better off remaining a Muslim and marrying the Sheikh. The incident illustrates the willingness of the local people to appeal to a western traveller for judgment and their belief in the imminent arrival of either Britain or France in superseding the Egyptians. Kinglake's response, in support of the Muslim, may appear unexpected, but it also demonstrates just how little theological sympathy existed between Eastern Christians and a western traveller from a Christian background. Later on in the century this Christian sympathy emerged as missions were established, which focussed upon the conversion of Arab Christians, but also proved that the western intervention in the Levant when it did become apparent came about by various means other than the political and military. In this period before the establishment of the European consulates and western missions, the Christian engagement with the Holy Land occurred within a different set of imaginative boundaries. The wilderness and romantic adventure were to be replaced by a definition of the land as the landscape of the bible. Kinglake shows us a historically defined landscape inhabited by a wide range of people. Eothen shows a western perspective of a period of Levantine history, not focussing exclusively upon the religious nature of the landscape or the people, and when encouraged to choose between a Christian and Muslim, favours the Muslim. By writing so openly about his own opinions and interests Kinglake offers us a picture of Palestinian life, which although we observe through his eyes, gives us the opportunity to read through his narrative perspective and glimpse into a period in the social and cultural history of the Holy Land to a place and time recognisable but very different from the current one. Alison Dingle, University of Birmingham, UK.

CONTENTS

PREFACE CHAP

I. II.

OVER

.

THE

JOURNEY

.

FROM

CONSTANTINOPLE

IV.

THE

VI. VII. VIII.

T'ROAD

INFIDEL GREEK

LADY

FROM MY

FIRST DEAD

THE

BLACK

.

PASSAGE TERRA THE

.

.

.

.

.

23

.

37

.

.

47

AND

THE

THE

SPHYNX

CAIRO

87

.

.

.

.

104 ,

.

.

93 97

.

JORDAN .

84

.

.

. .

6:2

.

.

.

.

.

.

TO

.

PLAGUE .

SUEZ

XXII.

SUEZ

.

SUEZ

TO G A Z A

X X I V .

GAZA

.

.

.

.

.

PROPHET

OF

.

.

118

.

.

. .

188

. .

LEBANON

.

.

.

.

193

.

. .

181

. .

DAMOOR

179

.

. .

JGG

.

. .

203 .

, _

SATAUEH

. .

154 176

.

OF T H E

SURPRISE

.

.

.

TO N A B L O U S

DAMASCUS

.

.

.

.

IAM

110 113

.

.

XXIII.

PASS

.

.

.

. LAND

TIBERIAS .

.

133

X X .

THE

.

.

DESERT

PYRAMIDS

MAR

TO

.

THE

XXV

.

.

OF T H E

.

HOLY

TENTS

SANTA

CAIRO

X X V I .

.

SEA

XIX.

X X I X

.

BIVOUAC

THE

X X V I I ,

.

STANIIOPE

NAZARETH

XIV.

X X V I I I

.

OF T H E

XIII.

XXI.

.

11

55

HESTER

SANCTUARY

XVIII.

.

MARINERS

MONKS

XVII.

1 CONSTANTINOPLE

CYPRUS

THE

XV.

TO

31

SMYRNA

THE

XVI.

.

.

X.

XII.

.

.

IX.

XI.

»

.

BELGRADE

III.

V.

.

BORDER

.

. .

,

211 215 222 22FI

PREFACE ADDRESSED

BY

THE AUTHOR TO ONE OF HIS FRIENDS. W H E N y )u first entertained the idea of travelling in the East, you asked me to send you an outline of the tour which I had made, in order that you might the better be able to choose a route for yourself. In answer to this request, I gave you a large French map, on which the course of my journeys had been carefully marked ; but I did not conceal from myself, that this was rather a dry mode for a man to adopt, when he wished to impart the results of his experience to a dear and intimate friend. Now, long before the period of your planning an Oriental tour, I had intended to write some account of my Eastern Travels. I had, indeed, begun the task, and had failed; I had begun it a second time, and failing again, had abandoned my attempt with a sensation of utter distaste. I was unable to speak out, and chiefly, I think, for this reason—that I knew not to whom I was speaking. It might be you, or, perhaps, our Lady of Bitterness, who would read my story ; or it might be some member of the Royal Statistical Socie y, and how on earth was I to write in a way that would do for all three? Well—your request for a sketch of my tour suggested to ine the idea of complying with your wish by a revival of my twice abandoned attempt. I tried, and the pleasure and confidence which I felt in speaking to you, soon made my task so easy, and eve 1 amusing, that after a while

VI

PREFACE.

(though not in time for y o u r tour), I completed the scrawl from which this book w a s originally printed. T h e v e r y feeling, h o w e v e r , w h i c h enabled m e to w r i t e thus freely, p r e v e n t e d me f r o m robing m y thoughts m that g r a v e and decorous style w h i c h I should h a v e maintained if I had professed to lecture the public.

W h i l s t I feigned to

myself that you, and y o u only, w e r e listening, I could not b y possibility speak v e r y solemnly.

H e a v e n forbid that ]

should talk to m y o w n genial friend, as though he w e r e a g r e a t and enlightened C o m m u n i t y , or a n y other respectable Aggregate ! Y e t I well understood that the m e r e fact of m y professing to speak to you r a t h e r than to the public g e n e r a l l y could not perfectly excusc rnc for printing a n a r r a t i v e too roughly w o r d e d , and accordingly, in revising the proof sheets, I have struck out those phrases w h i c h seemed to be less fit for a published volume than for intimate conversation.

It

is hardly to be expected, h o w e v e r , t h a t correction of this kind should be perfectly complete, or that the almost boisterous tone in w h i c h m a n y parts of the book w e r e originally written should be t h o r o u g h l y subdued.

I venture

therefore, to ask, that the familiarity of l a n g u a g e still possibly a p p a r e n t in the w o r k , m a y be laid to the account of our delightful intimacy, r a t h e r than to a n y p r e s u m p t u o u s m o t i v e ; I feel, as y o u k n o w , m u c h too timidly—too distantly, and too respectfully, t o w a r d s the P u b l i c to be capable of seeking to put myself on t e r m s of e a s y fellowship with strange and casual r e a d e r s . It is right to f o r e w a r n people (and I h a v e tried to do this us well as I can, b y m y studiously u n p r o m i s i n g title-page* 11 * "EMhen" ii, I hope, almost the only hard word lobe found in tho nook ; it is written ii Greek frh$ur,—(Attice with an asj irated t instead oi

PREFACE,

vii

that the book is quite superficial in its character. I have endeavored to discard from it all valuable matter derived from the works of others, and it appears to me that mv efforts in this direction have been attended with great success ; I believe I m a y truly acknowledge, that from all details of geographical discovery, or antiquarian research— from all display of " sound learning, and religious knowledge"—from all historical and scientific illustrations—from a ! useful statistics—from all political disquisitions—and from all good moral reflections, the volume is thoroughly free. M y excuse for the book is its truth ; you and I know a man fond of hazarding elaborate jokes, who, whenever a story of his happens not to go down as wit, will evade the awkwardness of the failure, by bravely maintaining that all he has said is pure fact. I can honestly take this decent, though humble mode of escape. My narrative is not merely righteously exact in matters of fact (where fact is in question), but it is true in this larger sense—it conveys— not those impressions which ought to have been produced upon any " well constituted mind," but those which w e r e really and truly received at the time of his rambles, by a headstrong, and not very amiable traveller, whose prejudices in favor of other people's notions were then exceedingly slight. As I have felt, so I have written ; and the result is, that there will often be found in my narrative a jarring discord between the associations properly belonging to interesting sites, and the tone in which I speak of them. This seemingly perverse mode of treating the subject is forced upon me by my plan of adhering to sentimental the •),)—and signifies Lex., Aih cditutn.

;

from the early d a w n , " — " f r o m the East."—jDona

PREFACE. truth, and r e a l l y does not result from a n y impertinent w i s h to teaze or trifle w i t h r e a d e r s .

I o u g h t , for instance, to

h a v e felt as s t r o n g l y in J u d e a , as in G a l i l e e , but it w a s not so in f a c t ; the religious sentiment (born in solitude) w h i c h had heated m y brain in the S a n c t u a r y o f N a z a r e t h w a s r u d e l y chilled at the foot of Z i o n , b y disenchanting scenes, a n d this c h a n g e is a c c o r d i n g l y disclosed b y the perfect!} w o r l d l y tone in w h i c h I speak o f

Jerusalem

ind B e t h ,

lehem. My which

notion o f d w e l l i n g p r e c i s e l y happened

upon those

to interest me, and

upon none

matters other,

w o u l d of c o u r s e be intolerable in a r e g u l a r book o f travels. I f I had been passing t h r o u g h countries

not

previously

explored, it w o u l d h a v e been s a d l y p e r v e r s e to w i t h h o l d c a r e f u l description o f a d m i r a b l e objects, m e r e l y

because

m y o w n feelings of interest in t h e m m a y h a v e happened to flag;

but w h e r e the countries w h i c h one visits h a v e b e e n

t h o r o u g h l y and a b l y d e s c r i b e d , and e v e n artistically illustrated b y others, one is fully at l i b e r t y to s a y as little (though not quite so much) as one chooses.

N o w a travel-

ler is a creature not a l w a y s looking at s i g h t s — h e r e m e m bers (how o f t e n ! ) the h a p p y land of his b i r t h — h e has, too, his moments o f humble enthusiasm a b o u t fire and f o o d — about shade and drink ; and i f he g i v e s to these feelings a n y t h i n g like

the p r o m i n e n c e w h i c h r e a l l y b e l o n g e d

to

them at the time o f his travelling, he w i l l not s e e m a v e r y g o o d t e a c h e r : o n c e h a v i n g determined to w r i t e the sheer truth c o n c e r n i n g the things w h i c h c h i e f l y h a v e interested him, he must and he w i l l sing a s a d l y l o n g strain about Self;

he

will talk for w h o l e

pages together about

his

b i v o u a c fire, and ruin the R u i n s of B a a l b e c w i t h eight 01 ten cold lines.

PREFACE

But it seems to me that the egotism of a traveller, however incessant—however shameless and obtrusive, must still convey some true ideas of the country through which he has passed. His very selfishness—his habit of referring the whole external world to his own sensations, compels him as it were, in his writings, to observe the laws of perspective ;—he tells you of objects, not as he knows them to be, but as they seemed to him. The people and the liings that most concern him personally, however mean and insignificant, take large proportions in his picture, because *hey stand so near to him. He shows you his Dragomen, and the gaunt features of his Arabs—his tent—his kneeling camels—his baggage strewed upon the sand ;—but the proper wonders of the land—the cities—the mighty rains and monuments of bygone ages he throws back faintly in the disiance. It is thus that he felt, and thus he strives to repeat the scenes of the Elder World. You may listen to him for ever without learning much in the way of statistics ; but perhaps if you bear with him long enough, you may find yourself slowly and slightly impressed with the realities of eastern Travel. My scheme of refusing to dwell upon matters which failed to interest my own feelings, has been departed from in one instance—namely, in my detail of the late Lady Hester Stanhope's conversation on supernatural topics ; the truth is, that I have been much questioned on this subject, and I thought that my best plan would be to write down at once all that I could ever have to say concerning the personage whose career has excited so much curiosity amongst Englishwomen. The result is, that my account of the lady goes to a length which is not justified either by

k

PREFACE

the importance of the subjcct, or b y the extent to w h i c h it interested the narrator. Y o u will see that I constantly speak of " m y People," " m y P a r t y , " " m y A r a b s , ' and so 011, using terms w h i c h might possibly seem to imply that I m o v e d about with a pompous retinue.

T h i s of course w a s not the case.

I

travelled with the simplicity proper to m y station, as one of the industrious class, w h o w a s not flying f r o m his count r y because of ennui, but w a s strengthening his will, and tempering the metal of his nature for that life of toil and conflict in which he is n o w e n g a g e d .

B u t an E n g l i s h m a n

j o u r n e y i n g in the E a s t , must n e c e s s a r i l y h a v e with him D r a g o m e n capable of interpreting the Oriental l a n g u a g e ; the abscnce of w h e e l e d - c a r r i a g e s obliges him to use several beasts of burthen for his b a g g a g e , as w e l l as for himself and his a t t e n d a u t j t h e o w n e r s of the horses or c a m els, with their slaves or servants, fall in as part of his train, and altogether the c a v a l c a d e becomes rather numerous, without, h o w e v e r , occasioning a n y proportionate increase of expense.

W h e n a traveller speaks of all these f o l l o w e r s

in mass, he calls them his " people," or his " troop," or his " p a r t y , " without intending to make y o u believe that he is therefore a S o v e r e i g n P r i n c e . Y o u will see that I sometimes f o l l o w the custom of the S c o t s in describing m y f e l l o w - c o u n t r y m e n b y the n a m e s of their paternal homes. Of course all these explanations are meant for casual readers.

T o y o u , without one syllabic of e x c u s e or depre-

cation, and in all the confidence of a friendship that n e v e r y e t w a s clouded, I g i v e this long-promised volume, and add but one sudden " G o o d - b y !" for I dare not stand greeting you here.

E O T HEN. CHAPTER

I.

Oyer the Border. At

Semlin

1 still w a s

e n c o m p a s s e d b y the s c e n e s ,

and

the

s o u n d s of f a m i l i a r l i f e ; the din of a b u s y w o r l d still v e x e d and c h e e r e d m e ; the u n v e i l e d f a c e s of w o m e n still shone in the light of d a y .

Yet,

w h e n e v e r I c h o s e to look

s o u t h w a r d , 1 s a w the

O t t o m a n ' s f o r t r e s s — a u s t e r e , a n d d a r k l y i m p e n d i n g o v e r the v a l e of the D a n u b e — h i s t o r i c B e l g r a d e .

I h a d c o m e , a s it w e r e , to

the end o f this w h e e l - g o i n g E u r o p e , a n d n o w m y e y e s w o u l d s e e the S p l e n d o r a n d H a v o c of the E a s t . T h e two f r o n t i e r towns a r e l e s s t h a n a cannon-shot a n d y e t t h e i r people hold no c o m m u n i o n .

distant,

The Hungarian

on

the N o r t h , a n d the T u r k a n d S e r v i a n 011 the s o u t h e r n side o f the S a v e , a r c a s m u c h a s u n d e r a s t h o u g h there w e r e fifty b r o a d p r o v i n c e s that l a y in the path b e t w e e n t h e m .

O f the m e n that

bustled a r o u n d m e in the streets o f S e m l i n , t h e r e w a s not, perh a p s , one

w h o had e v e r g o n e d o w n to look upon the s t r a n g e r

r a c e w h i c h d w e l l s u n d e r the w a l l s

of that opposite c a s t l e .

It

is tiie P l a g u e , a n d the d r e a d o f the P l a g u e , w h i c h d i v i d e the one people f r o m the o t h e r .

A l l coming and going stands

bidden b y the terrors o f the y e l l o w ¡ l a g . the l a w s

of

ibr-

I f y o u d a r e to b r e a k

the q u a r a n t i n e , y o u w i l l be

tried with

haste ; the c o u r t w i l l s c r e a m out y o u r s e n t e n c e

to y o u

military tVoni a

t r i b u n a l some f i f t y y a r d s o f f ; tli • priest, i n s t e a d o f ¿foully w h i s p e r i n g to y o u

ih-

s w e e t hopes o f r e l i g i o n , w i l l console y o u

a

s

KOTHEN.

[CHAP.

I

d u e l l i n g d i s t a n c e , and a f t e r t h a t y o u will find y o u r s e l f c a r e f u l l y shot, and c a r e l e s s l y b u r i e d in the g r o u n d of the L a z a r e t t o . W h e n all w a s in o r d e r for o u r d e p a r t u r e , we w a l k e d down to t h e p r e c i n c t s of the Q u a r a n t i n e E s t a b l i s h m e n t , a n d h e r e a w a i t e d u s a " c o m p r o m i s e d " * officer of t h e A u s t r i a n G o v e r n m e n t , w h o lives in a state of p e r p e t u a l e x c o m m u n i c a t i o n . T h e boats, with t h e i r " c o m p r o m i s e d " r o w e r s , w e r e also in r e a d i n e s s . A f t e r coming in contact with a n y c r e a t u r e or thing b e l o n g i n g to the O t t o m a n E m p i r e , it would be impossible for us to r e t u r n to t h e A u s t r i a n t e r r i t o r y without u n d e r g o i n g a n i m p r i s o n m e n t of fourteen d a y s in the odious L a z a r e t t o ; w e felt, t h e r e f o r e , t h a t before w e c o m m i t t e d ourselves, it w a s h i g h l y i m p o r t a n t to t a k e c a r e that none of the a r r a n g e m e n t s n e c e s s a r y for t h e j o u r , n e y h a d b e e n forgotten, a n d in o u r a n x i e t y to avoid s u c h a misf o r t u n e , we m a n a g e d the work of d e p a r t u r e from S e m l i n w i t h n e a r l y as m u c h solemnity as if we h a d been d e p a r t i n g this life. Some obliging persons f r o m w h o m w e h a d r e c e i v e d civilities d u r i n g o u r short stay in the place, c a m e down to s a y t h e i r f a r e well at t h e r i v e r ' s side ; a n d now, as w e stood witli t h e m at t h e distance of t h r e e or four y a r d s from t h e " c o m p r o m i s e d " officer, t h e y a s k e d if we w e r e p e r f e c t l y c e r t a i n t h a t w e h a d wound u p all o u r a f f a i r s in Christendom, a n d w h e t h e r w e had no p a r t i n g r e q u e s t s to m a k e . W e r e p e a t e d the c a u t i o n to o u r s e r v a n t s , a n d took a n x i o u s t h o u g h t lest by a n y possibility w e m i g h t be c u t off f r o m some cherished object of affection : — w e r e t h e y quite s u r e that t h e r e w a s no faithful p o r t m a n t e a u — n o patient a n d longs u f f e r i n g c a r p e t b a g — n o f r a g r a n t d r e s s i n g - c a s e with its goldc o m p e l l i n g letters of credit f r o m w h i c h w e m i g h t be p a r t i n g for e v e r ? N o — a l l these o u r loved ones l a y s a f e l y stowed in t h e boat, and w e w e r e r e a d y to follow t h e m to t h e e n d s of t h e e a r t h . N o w , therefore, w e shook h a n d s with o u r S e m l i n friends, w h o i m m e d i a t e l y r e t r e a t e d for t h r e e or four paces, so a s to l e a v e u s in t h e c e n t r e of a s p a c e b e t w e e n t h e m and the " c o m p r o mised " officer ; t h e l a t t e r then a d v a n c e d , a n d a s k i n g o n c e m o r e * A '•'compromised " person is one who has been in contact with poopla or tnings supposed to be capable of conveying infection. As a general rule the vt-uole Ottoman empire lies constantly under this terrible ban Tha " yellow flag '' is the ensign of the Quarantine establishment.

CHAP

I.]

OVER T H E BORDER.

3

if we had done with the civilized world, held forth his hand—I met it with mine, and there was an end to Christendom for man} a day to come. W e soon neared the southern hank of the river, but no sounds came down from the blank walls above, and there was no living thing that we could }'et see, except one great hovering bird of the vulture race, flying low, and intent, and wheeling round and round over the Pest-aecused city. But presently there issued from the postern, a group of human beings,—beings with immortal souls, and possibly some reasoning faculties, but to me the grand point was this, that they had real, substantial, and incontrovertible turbans ; they made for the point towards which we were steering, and when at last I sprang upon the shore, I heard, and saw myself now first surrounded h y m e n of Asiatic r a c e ; I have since ridden through the land of the Osmanlees, from the Servian Border to the Golden Horn,—from the gulph of Satalieh to the tomb of Achilles ; but never have I seen such ultra-Turkish looking fellows as those who received me on the banks of the Save ; they were men in the humblest order of life, having come to meet our boat in the hope of earning something by carrying our luggage up to the city, but poor though they were, it was plain that they were T u r k s of the proud old school, and had not yet forgotten the fierce, careless bearing of the once victorious Ottomans. Though the province of Servia generally has obtained a kind of independence, yet Belgrade, as being a place of strength on the frontier, is still garrisoned by Turkish troops, under the command of a Pasha. Whether the fellows who now surrounded us were soldiers, or peaceful inhabitants, I did not understand; they wore the old Turkish costume ; vests and jackets of many brilliant colors divided from the loose petticoat-trowsers by masses jf shawl, which were folded in heavy volumes around their waists, so as to give the meagre wearers something of the dignity of true corpulence. T h e shawl enclosed a whole bundle of weapons; no man bore less than one brace of immensely long pistols, and a yataghan (or cutlass), with a dagger or two, of various shapes and sizes ; most of these arms were inlaid with silver, and highly burnished, so that they contrasted

4

EOTIIEX.

[CHAP

I.

ehiningly with the decayed grandeur of the garments to which they were attached (this carefulness of his arms is a point of nonor with the Osnianlce, who never allows his bright y a t a g h a n to suffer from his own a d v e r s i t y ) ; then the long drooping nsuslachio% and the ample folds of the once white turbans, that lowered over the piercing eyes, and the haggard features of the men, gave them an air of gloomy pride, and that appearance of trying to be disdainful under difficulties, which I have since seen so often in those of the Ottoman people who live, and remember old times ; they seem as if they were thinking that they would have been more usefully, more honorably, and more piously employed in cutting our throats, than in c a r r y i n g our portmanteaus. T h e faithful Steel (Methley's Yorkshire servant) stood aghast for a moment, at the sight of his master's l u f c a g e upon the shoulders of these warlike porters, and when at last we began to move up, he could scarcely avoid turning round to cast an affectionate look towards Christendom, but quickly again he marched on with the steps of a man, not frightened exactly, but sternly prepared for death, or the Koran, or even for plural wives. T h e Moslem quarter of a city is lonely and desolate ; you go up and down, and on over shelving and hillocky paths through the narrow lanes walled in by blank, windowless dwellings ; you come out upon an open space strewed with the black ruins that some late fire has left ; you pass by a mountain of castaway things, the rubbish of centuries, and on it you see numbers of big, wolf-like dogs lying torpid under the sun, with limbs outstretched to the full, as if they were dead ; storks, or cranes, sitting fearless upon the low roofs, look gravely down upon you ; the still air that you breathe is loaded with the scent of citron, and pomegranate rinds scorched by the sun, or (as you approach Jie liazzar) with the dry, dead perfume of strange spices. You long for some signs of life, and tread the ground more heavily, as though you would wake the sleepers with the heel of vour boot; but the foot falls noiseless upon the crumbling soil of an eastern city, and Silence follows you still. Again and a"aiii YOU meet turbans, and faces of men, but they have noth. . o ing for you—no welcome—no wonder—no wrath—no scorn—

CHAP. I.]

OYk'R THE EOUDEPv.

,1

t h e y look upon y o u as w e do upon a D e c e m b e r ' s fall of s n o w as a « s e a s o n a b l e , " unaccountable, uncomfortable work of God, that m a y h a v e been sent for some good purpose, to bo revealed hereafter. Some people h a d come down to meet us with an invitation from the P a s h a , and "we w o u n d our w a y u p to the castle. At the g a t e s there wore g r o u p s of soldiers, some smoking, and some l y i n g flat like corpses upon the cool stones ; lve went t h r o u g h courts, ascended steps, passed along a corridor, and w a l k e d into a n a i r y , w h i t e - w a s h e d room, with a n E u r o p e a n clock at one end of it, and Moostapha P a s h a at the o t h e r ; the fine, old, b e a r d e d potentate looked v e r y like J o v e — l i k e Jove, too, in the midst of his clouds, for the silvery f u m e s of the N a r g u i l c * h u n g lightly circling round him. T h e P a s h a received us with the smooth, kind, gentle m a n n e r t h a t belongs to well-bred O s m a n l e e s ; then he lightly clapped his hands, a n d instantly the sound filled all the lower end of the room with s l a v e s ; a syllable dropped from his lips which bowed all heads, and c o n j u r e d a w a y the attendants like ghosts (their coming a n d their going w a s thus swift and quiet, b e c a u s e their feet were bare, and t h e y passed t h r o u g h no door, but only b y the yielding folds of a p u r d e r ) . Soon the coffee b e a r e r s appeared, e v e r y m a n c a r r y i n g separately his tiny c u p in a small metal stand, and presently to each of us there c a m e a pipeb e a r e r , who first rested the bowl of the tchibouque at a m e a s u r e d distance on the floor, and then, on this axis, wheeled round the long c h e r r y - s t i c k , and g r a c e f u l l y presented it on half-bended k n e e ; a l r e a d y the well-kindled fire w a s glowing s e c u r e in the buwl, a n d so, w h e n I pressed the a m b e r lip to mine, there w a s no coyness to conquer ; the willing f u m e c a m e up, a n d a n s w e r e d m y slightest sigh, and followed softly e v e r y breath inspired, till it touched me with some faint sense a n d u n d e r s t a n d i n g of Asiatic contentment, j * The NV.rfoiile is a water-pipe upon the plan of the Hook.-h, but more gwcfWJj- iUshioncd ; the smoke is drnva hy a very lmej; flexible tv.be that winds its saako-like way from the v ••- < ta tha lips "f Use be ¡tilled smoker. f F i n e t a l k i n g this, you w i l l say, lor one w h o c a n ' t s m o k e a ci ;'ar ; i.uit tsk any E a s t e r n t i a v e l k r if it is no* q u i t s possible to love t h e tcbibou pie,

8

EOTHEN.

[chap. 1

Asiatic c o n t e n t m e n t ! Yet scarcely, perhaps, one hour before, I had been wanting m y bill, and ringing for waiters in a shrill and busy hotel. In the Ottoman dominions there is s c a r c e l y a n y hereditary influence except that which belongs to the family of the Sultan, and wealth, too, is a highly volatile blessing, not easily transmitted to the descendants of the owner. F r o m these causes it results, that the people standing in the place of nobles and gentry, aTe official personages, and though m a n y (indeed the g r e a t e r number) of these potentates arc h u m b l y born and bred, you will seldom, I think, find them wanting in that polished smoothness of manner, and those well undulating tones which belong to the best Osmanlees. T h e truth is, that most of the men in authority have risen from their humble stations by the arts of the courtier, and they preserve in their high estate, those gentle powers of fascination to which they owe their success. Yet unless you can contrive to l e a r n a little of the l a n g u a g e , you will be rather bored by your visits of ceremony ; the intervention of the inter preter, or D r a g o m a n as he is called, is fatal to the spirit of conversation. I think I should mislead you, if I were to attempt to give the substance of any particular conversation with Orientals. A traveller m a y write and say that, " the P a s h a of So-and-So was particularly interested in the vast progress which has been made in the application of steam, and appeared to understand the structure of our m a c h i n e r y — t h a t he r e m a r k e d upon the gigantic results of our m a n u f a c t u r i n g industry—showed that he possessed considerable knowledge of our Indian affairs, and of die constitution of the Company, and expressed a lively admiration of the m a n y sterling qualities for which the people of E n g land are distinguished." But the heap of common-places thus quietly attributed to the P a s h a , will have been founded perhaps on some sucli talking as this :— Pasha.—The E n g l i s h m a n is welcome ; most blessed among hours is this, the hour of his coming. Dragoman (to the T r a v e l l e r ) . — T h e P a s h a pays you his coir., pliments. and the narguLe, without being able to endure the European contnviULce» for smoking.

CHAP

I.]

OVER T H E BORDER.

Traveller.—Give him my best compliments in return, and say I ' m d slighted to have the honor of seeing him. Drigoman (to the Pasha).—His Lordship, this Englishman, Lord of London, Scorner of Ireland, Suppressor of France, has quitted his governments, and left his enemies to breathe for a moment, and has crossed the broad waters in strict disguise, with a small but eternally faithful retinue of followers, in order that he might look upon the bright countenance of the Pasha among Pashas —the Pasha of the everlasting Pashalik of Ivaragholookoldour. Traveller (to his Dragoman).—What on earth have you been saying about London 1 The Pasha will be taking me for a mere cockney. Have not I told you always to say, that I am from a branch of the family of Mudcombe Park, and that I am to be a magistrate for the county of Bedfordshire, only I ' v e not qualified, and that I should have been a Deputy-Lieutenant, if it had not been for the extraordinary conduct of Lord Mountpromise, and that I was a candidate for Goldborough at the last election, and that I should have won easy, if my committee had not been bought. I wish to heaven that if you do say anything about me, you'd tell the simple truth. Dragoman—[is silent]. Pasha.—What says the friendly Lord of London? is there aught that I can grant him within the pashalik of Ivaragholookoldour ? Dragoman (growing sulky and literal).—This friendly Englishman—this branch of Mudcombe—this head-purveyor of Goldborough—this possible policeman of Bedfordshire is recounting his achievements, and the number of his titles. Fasha.—The end of his honors is more distant than the ends of ihe Earth, and the catalogue of his glorious deeds is brighter than the firmament of Heaven ! Dragoman (to the Traveller).—The Pasha congratulates your Excellency. Traveller.—About Goldborough ? T h e deuce he does!—but [ want to get at his views, in relation to the present state of the Ol'.oman Empire ; tell him the Houses of Parliament have met, and that there has been a Speech from the throne, pledging England to preserve the integrity of the Sultan's dominions.

EOTliEN.

[CHAP.

I

Dragoman (to the Pasha).—This branch of Mudcombe, this possible policeman of Bedfordshire, informs your Highness that in England the talking houses have met, and that the integrity of the Sultan's dominions has been assured for ever and ever, by a speech from the velvet chair. Pasha.—Wonderful chair ! Wonderful houses !—whirr ! whirr! all by wheels !—whiz! whiz! all by steam !—wonderful chair ! wonderful houses ! wonderful people !—whirr ! w h i r r ! all by wheels !—whiz ! whiz ! all by steam ! Traveller (to the Dragoman).—What does the Pasha mean by the whizzing 1 he docs not mean to say, does he, that our Government will ever abandon their pledges to the Sultan ? Dragoman.—No, your Excellency ; but he says the English talk by wheels and by steam. Traveller.—That's an exaggeration ; but say that the English really have carried machinery to great perfection; tell the Pasha (he'll be struck with that), that whenever we have any disturbances to put down, even at two or three hundred miles from London, we can send troops by the thousand, to the scene of action, in a few hours!. Dragoman (recovering his temper and freedom of speech).—His Excellency this Lord of Mudcombe, observes to your Highness, that whenever the Irish, or the French, or the Indians rebel against the English, whole armies of soldiers, and brigades of artillery, are dropped into a mighty chasm called Euston Square, and in the biting of a cartridge they arise up again in Manchester, or Dublin, or Paris, or Delhi, and utterly exterminate the enemies of England from the face of the E a r t h . Pasha,—I know it—I know all—the particulars have been faithfully related to me, and my mind comprehends locomotives. The armies of the English ride upon the vapors of boiling cauldrons, and their horses are flaming coals !—whirr ! whirr ! all by wheels !—whiz ! whiz ! all by steam ! Traveller {to his Dragoman).—I wish to have the opinion of an unprejudiced Ottoman gentleman, as to the prospects of our English commerce and manufactures ; just ask the Pasha to give me his views on the subjec. Pasha (after having received ;he comrnunicat.on of the Dra-

JilAV.

}.j

OVER TJiF. Jit n i b [OR.

g o m a n ) . — T h e ships of t h e E n g l i s h s w a r m like flies; t h e i i p r i n t e d c a l i c o c s c o v e r t h e whole e a r t h , a n d b y t h e side of their s w o r d s the b l a d e s of D a m a s c u s a r c b l a d e s of g r a s s . All India is b u t a n i t e m in t h e L e d g e r - b o o k s of the M e r c h a n t s , w h o s e l u m b e r - r o o m s a r e filled w i t h a n c i e n t t h r o n e s ' — w h i r r ! w h i r r : all b y w h e e l s ! — w h i z ! w h i z ! all b y s t e a m ! Dragoman.—The P a s h a c o m p l i m e n t s t h e c u t l e r y of E n g l a n d a n d also t h e E a s t I n d i a C o m p a n y . Traveller.—The P a s h a ' s r i g h t a b o u t t h e c u t l e r y (I tried m y s c i m i t a r with the c o m m o n oilicers' s w o r d s b e l o n g i n g to o u r fel. l o w s a t M a l t a , a n d t h e y c u t it like t h e l e a f of a N o v e l ) . Well (to the D r a g o m a n ) , tell t h e P a s h a I a m e x c e e d i n g l y g r a t i f i e d to find t h a t lie e n t e r t a i n s s u c h a h i g h opinion of o u r m a n u f a c t u r i n g e n e r g y , b u t I should like h i m to k n o w , t h o u g h , t h a t w e h a v e got s o m e t h i n g in E n g l a n d besides t h a t . T h e s e f o r e i g n e r s a r e a l w a y s f a n c y i n g t h a t w e h a v e n o t h i n g but ships, and r a i l w a y s , a n d E a s t I n d i a C o m p a n i e s ; do j u s t tell the P a s h a t h a t o u r r u r a l d i s t r i c t s d e s e r v e his attention, and t h a t e v e n w i t h i n t h e last two h u n d r e d y e a r s , t h e r e h a s been an evident i m p r o v e m e n t in the culture- of t h e t u r n i p , and if h e does not t a k e a n y interest a b o u t t h a t , at all e v e n t s y o u c a n e x p l a i n t h a t we h a v e o u r v i r t u e s in t h e c o u n t r y — t h a t t h e B r i t i s h y e o m a n is still, t h a n k God ! the British y e o m a n : — O h ! and by the by, whilst you a r c a b o u t it, y o u m a y a s well s a y t h a t we a r e a t r u t h - t e l l i n g people, a n d , like t h e O s m a n l e e s , a r e f a i t h f u l in the p e r f o r m a n c e of o u r p r o m i s e s . Paslia ( a f t e r b e a r i n g the D r a g o m a n ) — I t is t r u e , it is t r u e :—• t h r o u g h all Feringhist.an t h e E n g l i s h a r e foremost and b e s t ; for the R u s s i a n s are drilled swine, and the G e r m a n s are sleeping b a b e s , a n d the I t a l i a n s a r e the s e r v a n t s of Songs, a n d the F r e n c h a r e the sons of N e w s p a p e r s , a n d t h e G r e e k s t h e v a r e w e a v e i s of lies, b u t t h e E n g l i s h a n d t h e O s m a n l e e s a r e b r o t h e r s t o g e t h e r in r i g h t e o u s n e s s ; for t h e O s m a n l e e s b e l i e v e in one o n l y God, a n d c l e a v e to the K o r a n , a n d d e s t r o y i d o l s ; so do t h e E n g l i s h w o r s h i p one God, a n d a b o m i n a t e g r a v e n i m a g e s , a n d tell thf t r u t h , and believe in a book, a n d t h o u g h t h e y d r i n k t h e j u i c e of the g r a p e , y e t to s a y t h a t t h e y w o r s h i p t h e i r p r o p h e t a s G o d , or to s a y t h a t tlioy a r e e a t e r s of p o r k , t h e s e a r e l i e s , — l i e s born of G r e e k s , a n d n u r s e d by J e w s !

10

EOTHEN

[CHAP, I

Dragoman.—The Pasha compliments the English. Traveller (rising).—Well, I've had enough of this. Tell the Pasha, I am greatly obliged to him for his hospitality, and still more for his kindness in furnishing me with horses, and say that How I must be off. Pasha (after hearing the Dragoman, and standing up on his Divan).—Proud are the sires, and blessed are the dams of the horses that shall carry his Excellency to the end of his prosperous journey.—May the saddle beneath him glide down to the gates of the happy city, like a boat swimming on the third river of Paradise.—May he sleep the sleep of a child, when his friends are around him, and the while that his enemies are abroad, may his eyes flame red through the darkness—more red than the eyes o f t e n tigers !—farewell! Dragoman.—The Pasha wishes your Excellency a pleasant journey. So ends the visit.

OHAP ¡1 J J O U R N E Y — B E L G R A D E TO C O N S T A N T I N O P L E .

CHAPTER

11

II.

Journey from Belgrade to Constantinople.

IN two or three hours our party was r e a d y ; the servants, the Tatars, the mounted Suridgees, and the baggage-horses altogether made up a strong cavalcade. The accomplished Mysseri, of whom you have heard me speak so often, and who served me so faithfully throughout my oriental journeys, acted as our interpreter, and was, in fact, the brain of our corps. T h e Tatar, you know, is a government courier properly employed in carrying despatches, but also sent with travellers to speed them on their way, and answer with his head for their safety. T h e man whose head was thus pledged for our precious lives was a glorious looking fellow, with the regular, and handsome cast of countenance, which is now characteristic of the Ottoman race.* His features displayed a good deal of serene pride, self-respect, fortitude, a kind of ingenuous sensuality, and something of instinctive wisdom, without any sharpness of intellect. He had been a Janissary (as I afterwards found), and kept up the odd strut of his old corps, which used to affright the Christians in former times ;—that rolling gait is so comically pompous, that a close imitation of it, even in the broadest farce, would be looked upon as a very rough over-acting of the character. It is occa sioned in part by the dress and accoutrements. The heavy bundle of weapons carried upon the chest throws back the body so as to give it a wonderful portliness, whilst the immense masses of clothes that swathe his limbs, force the wearer in walking, to swing himself heavily round from left to right, and from right to left—in truth, this great edifice of woollen, and cotton, and silk, * T h e continual marriages of these people, with the chosen beauties o Georgia and Circassia, have overpowered the original ugliness of their Tata? ancestors.

12

EOTIIEN.

[CHAP. ! 1

and silver, and brass, and steel, is not at all fitted for moving on f o o t ; it cannot even walk without ludicrously deranging i u architectural proportions, and as to running, I once saw QUI T a t a r m a k e an attempt at that laborious exercise, in order to pick up a partridge which Methley had winged with a pis:olshot, and really the attempt was one of the funniest misdirections of h u m a n energy that I ever beheld. It used to be said, that a good man, struggling with adversity, was a spectacle worthy of the gods :—a T a t a r attempting to run would have been a sight worthy of you. But put him in his stirrups, and then is the T a t a r himself again : there you see hirn at his ease, reposing in the tranquillity of that true home (the home of his ancestors), which the saddle seems to aiFord him, and drawing from his pipe the calm pleasures of his " o w n fireside," or else dashing sudden over the earth, as though for a moment ho were borne by the steed of a T u r k m a n chief, with the plains of central Asia before biin. It was not till his subordinates had n e a r l y completed their preparations for their m a r c h that our T a t a r , " commanding the forces," arrived ; he c a m e sleek, and fresh from the bath (for so is the custom of the Ottomans when they start upon a journey), and was c a r e f u l l y accoutred at every point. F r o m his t h i f h to his throat he was loaded with arms and other implements of a campaigning life. T h e r e is no scarcity of water along the whole road, from Belgrade to Stamboul, but the habits of our T a t a r were formed by his ancestors, and not by himself, so he took good care to see that his leather water-flask w a s a m p l y charged and properly strapped to the saddle, along with his blessed tchibouque. And now at last, he has cursed the Suridgees, in all proper figures of speech, and is r e a d y for a ride of a thousand miles, but before he comforts bis eoul in the marble baths of Stamboul, he will be another and a smaller m a n — h i s sense of responsibility, his too strict abstemiousness, and his restless energy, disdainful of sleep, will have worn him down to a fraction of the sleek Moostapha, that now leads out our part} from the gates of Belgrade. T h e Suridgees arcs the fellows employed to lead the baggage norses. T h e y a r e most of them Gipsies. Poor devils! their lo JS an unhappy one—tney a r e the last; of the h u m a n racc, and al

CHAP.

II.]

JOURXEY—BELCRADF. TO COXi>T.\>! TINOPLE

t