Read Ebook: The Sultan and His People by Oscanyan C Christopher

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Ebook has 1261 lines and 87497 words, and 26 pages

Paradise is above the seventh heaven, near the throne of God. A vast and beautiful region, with palaces of gold and gardens of perpetual delight, in the midst of which is the tree of happiness, Tuba, whose roots are in the palace of the Prophet, but whose branches, loaded with luscious fruits and all kinds of meats prepared for food, silken robes and caparisoned steeds, will extend to the dwelling of every true believer. Softly murmuring fountains, cooling shades and grottoes, mountains of sparkling diamonds, and golden trees, will adorn the gardens of delight, while the ravishing houris of these enchanting regions, will be blessed with perpetual youth and virginity.

The most insignificant of the Faithful will have a retinue of 80,000 servants and 72 wives, of the sweetly odoriferous damsels, created of pure musk, in addition to the companions of his earthly sojourn. Delicious streams of wine, milk, and honey, will flow on perpetually; balmy zephyrs will pervade the atmosphere; the very physical excretions of the true believers will be but odoriferous exhalations.

While the senses are thus ravished with delights, the most excelling of all their beatific visions will be the presence of Allah, which is beyond the power of language to describe.

Fatalism is a characteristic item in the Mohammedan creed.

They believe that whatever happens is pre-ordained by the Omniscient, which article of faith is designated Kader or predestination. But the doctrine of "free-agency" the Iradeyi-J?seey? or the "lesser will," is also in their creed. Hence every one is bound to exert himself to his utmost; and it is only when he fails, that he resigns himself calmly and philosophically to his disappointment, saying kader, or it is my fate.

The following legend may perhaps serve to illustrate the spirit of Oriental Fatalism:

Half-way across the Bosphorus, and between Seraglio Point and Scutari, in Asia, is the renowned Kiz-Koulessi, or the Maiden's Tower. It was predicted that the beautiful daughter of a certain sultan would meet with an early death, from the bite of a serpent. Contrary to prediction, her father hoped to avert her fate, by placing her in a situation inaccessible to those reptiles. As he revolved the subject in his mind, from the windows of the Seraglio, his eye rested on the rock in the stream, where he immediately ordered a tower to be erected, and thither the unhappy princess was conveyed and immured in her island home.

But who can resist the decrees of Fate?

Bin djahd etsen na-murad? Olmaz moukadderden ziyad?.

You may do your utmost, But you cannot conquer Fate.

Scutari, fruitful in vineyards, and far-famed for its delicious grapes, was destined to furnish the venom, which poisoned the crimson tide in the veins of the beautiful sultana; for a basket of Scutari grapes concealed the viper, which was the instrument in the hand of Fate, and the fulfillment of the prophecy.

It is, doubtless, in the recollection of many of the citizens of New York, that a short time ago an individual passing by Wallack's Theatre was suddenly killed by the falling of the flag-staff from the top of the building. This sad occurrence was not the result of carelessness or temerity, but purely accidental; and would also be termed in Turkey kaza or accident. Yet why the accident should have happened to this individual more than to any other of the hundreds of persons who passed the same spot--Mohammedan doctrine would simply answer, "it was his kader or predestination." To mourn, therefore, for the dead, or complain against misfortune, would by them be esteemed a grievous sin, as though censuring the Almighty, without whose knowledge "not a sparrow falleth to the ground."

It is not Fatalism that makes the Mohammedan indifferent to casualties, but his exaggerated and misconceived ideas of his religious obligations; for human imperfectibility is as prominent an article of their creed as Fatalism, and even induces a disposition to avoid self-improvement either intellectually or externally. Perfection being the attribute of the Deity, it is unbecoming in his creatures to assert, in any form whatever, their capabilities of approximation to such a condition. While, then, their minds repose in the simplicity of innate ideas, they even seek imperfection in the investiture of their bodies. They will rend their garments so as to mar their completeness, assume an air of general slovenliness, or studiously clip the corner of a sheet of paper to destroy its regular uniformity.

It is, then, most erroneous to suppose that the doctrine of Fatalism is so antagonistic to civilization in the East, as it implies resignation to the Divine will, and by no means impedes active personal exertion. But in reality it is the seeming propriety of human imperfection, in contradistinction to the Divine excellence, which has hitherto maintained a spirit of indifference to progressive improvement. While an entire submission to the course of events, as preordained and predestined by the Omniscient, prevents all restless anxiety, and calms the repinings of the heart-broken and weary, this more truly fatal and false notion of inferiority, only leaves the immortal mind in a sort of embryo state, lest, perchance, there should be any assimilation to the great Supreme Essence, from which it is but an emanation, or the spark should glow with the brightness of the fire from which it has been wafted.

SECTARIANISM.

Besides the Koran, there are other sacred and traditional books called the Sonnah, the productions of Abubekir, Omer, and Osman, the successors of the Prophet. The ancient caliphs of Egypt and Babylon have also added their own. These books have numerous commentaries upon them, which constitute the principal part of the Mohammedan literature, and have been the source of much dissension. Sectarianism, therefore, prevails among the Mussulmans as in every part of the world. We will only mention those sects with whom the traveller in the East is apt to come in contact.

The principal schism which divides the Mohammedan nation is that of the S?nnees and the Sheyees.

The S?nnees are the orthodox party, and believe in the traditions attributed to the Prophet and his successors, and are strict in all their observances. Whereas the Sheyees reject all traditions and are strict legitimists, adhering to Aali, who married the Prophet's daughter, as the rightful successor, and rendering their homage to his descendants.

The Turks are all S?nnees, and the Persians Sheyees, the one is more fanatical, the other more superstitious, and as the difference between them is small, so is their mutual hatred proportionably intense.

The S?nnees repudiate Aali, the infallible director of the Sheyees, who, in their turn, decapitate the representatives of the Prophet, Abubekir, Omer, and Osman in effigy. For they erect these persons in sugar at their festivals, and when merry over their wine, cut the respected friends of Mohammed into pieces and actually drink them in solution.

The Turks elevate the sacred color, green, to their heads and turbans with the greatest respect, but in contradistinction, the Persians choose this hue for their shoes, trowsers, and every other disrespectful use their ingenuity can devise. When the one shaves, the other does not, and scorns the thorough ablutions of his rival. Indeed no matter how or what, so it be vice vers?.

Most ingenious and vituperative are their mutual curses. "May your fatigued and hated soul, when damned to Berzak , find no more rest than a Giavour's hat enjoys upon earth." Doubtless alluding to the peculiar custom of the Franks in uncovering their head in saluting, and the wear and tear that head-gear has to undergo. "May your transmuted soul become in hell a hackney ass, for the Jews themselves to ride about on," and many such emphatic compliments are the height of fashion among the zealous adherents of each adverse party.

Not only in the West, but in the East,

"'Tis strange there should such difference be, 'Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee."

Apart from the foregoing, the very meaning of the word Islam, or resignation to the service and commands of God, has been a source of much dissertation and dissension, and has produced a variety of sects, of which the Hanefees, Mevlevees, Rifayees, and Abdals, are the most noted in Turkey. The Hanefees are the contemplative philosophers, Oriental spiritualists or transcendentalists; and to this class the sultan and the principal part of the people belong. The Mevlevees are the dancing or whirling dervishes, and they may therefore be considered as the Oriental Shakers. Their object is practical resignation to God, which state of mind they think they attain, by whirling round and round until their senses are lost in the dizzy motion.

They conform to the general tenets and observances, but their form of worship is peculiar.

Their religious edifices are called Tekk?s, which are open every Tuesday and Friday, and are frequently visited by the sultan and Europeans in general.

A large square space, which is surrounded by a circular railing, constitutes the scene of their ritual, or ceremonies. A gallery occupies three sides of the building, in which is the latticed apartment of the sultan, and the place for the Turkish ladies.

In every mosque, and here also, there is a niche opposite the entrance, called the Mihrab, which indicates the direction of Mecca. The walls are adorned with entablatures, ornamented with verses from the Koran, and with ciphers of sultans, and mottos in memory of other benevolent individuals, who have endowed the Tekk?.

The Sheikh, or leader of the community, sits in front of the Mihrab, on an Angora goat-skin, or a carpet, attended by two of his disciples.

An attenuated old man, with a visage furrowed and withered by time, bronzed by many successive suns, his long and grizzly beard witnessing to the ravages of age, while his prominent eyes sparkling like lightnings amid the surrounding darkness, are the only symbols of animation or life, in his worn-out frame.

The dervishes, as they enter, make a low obeisance with folded hands to this patron saint, with an air of mystic veneration, and take their stand with their faces towards Mecca. The old sheikh arises, and presiding over the assemblyhe Angel.

"All this is exceedingly fine," he murmured at last, "but why has the artist only represented wrathful angels on these walls? Look where I will in this chapel, I see but heralds of celestial anger, ministers of divine vengeance. God wishes to be feared; He wishes also to be loved. I would fain perceive on these walls messengers of peace and of clemency. I should like to see the Seraphim who purified the lips of the prophet, St. Raphael who gave back his sight to old Tobias, Gabriel who announced the Mystery of the Incarnation to Mary, the Angel who delivered St. Peter from his chains, the Cherubim who bore the dead St. Catherine to the top of Sinai. Above all, I should like to be able to contemplate those heavenly guardians which God gives to every man baptized in His name. We each have one who follows all our steps, who comforts us and upholds us. It would be pleasant indeed to admire these enchanting spirits, these beautiful faces."

"Ah, Abb?! it depends on the point of view," answered Ga?tan. "Delacroix was no sentimentalist. Old Ingres was not very far wrong in saying that this great man's work reeks of fire and brimstone. Look at the sombre, splendid beauty of those angels, look at those androgynes so proud and fierce, at those pitiless youths who lift avenging rods against Heliodorus, note this mysterious wrestler touching the patriarch on the hip...."

"Hush," said Abb? Patouille. "According to the Bible he is no angel like the others; if he be an angel, he is the Angel of Creation, the Eternal Son of God. I am surprised that the Venerable Cur? of St. Sulpice, who entrusted the decoration of this chapel to Monsieur Eug?ne Delacroix, did not tell him that the patriarch's symbolic struggle with Him who was nameless took place in profound darkness, and that the subject is quite out of place here, since it prefigures the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. The best artists go astray when they fail to obtain their ideas of Christian iconography from a qualified ecclesiastic. The institutions of Christian art form the subject of numerous works with which you are doubtless acquainted, Monsieur Sariette."

Monsieur Sariette was gazing vacantly about him. It was the third morning after his adventurous night in the library. Being, however, thus called upon by the venerable ecclesiastic, he pulled himself together and replied:

Having thus spoken, Monsieur Sariette relapsed into silence. He was pondering on his devastated library.

"On the other hand," continued Abb? Patouille, "since an example of the holy anger of the angels was necessary in this chapel, the painter is to be commended for having depicted for us in imitation of Raphael the heavenly messengers who chastised Heliodorus. Ordered by Seleucus, King of Syria, to carry off the treasures contained in the Temple, Heliodorus was stricken by an angel in a cuirass of gold mounted on a magnificently caparisoned steed. Two other angels smote him with rods. He fell to earth, as Monsieur Delacroix shows us here, and was swallowed up in darkness. It is right and salutary that this adventure should be cited as an example to the Republican Commissioners of Police and to the sacrilegious agents of the law. There will always be Heliodoruses, but, let it be known, every time they lay their hands on the property of the Church, which is the property of the poor, they shall be chastised with rods and blinded by the angels."

"I should like this painting, or, better still, Raphael's sublimer conception of the same subject, to be engraved in little pictures fully coloured, and distributed as rewards in all the schools."

"Uncle," said young Maurice, with a yawn, "I think these things are simply ghastly. I prefer Matisse and Metzinger."

These words fell unheeded, and old Guinardon from his ladder held forth:

"Only the primitives caught a glimpse of Heaven. Beauty is only to be found between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The antique, the impure antique, which regained its pernicious influence over the minds of the sixteenth century, inspired poets and painters with criminal notions and immodest conceptions, with horrid impurities, filth. All the artists of the Renaissance were swine, including Michael-Angelo."

Then, perceiving that Ga?tan was on the point of departure, P?re Guinardon assumed an air of bonhomie, and said to him in a confidential tone:

"Monsieur Ga?tan, if you're not afraid of climbing up my five flights, come and have a look at my den. I've got two or three little canvases I wouldn't mind parting with, and they might interest you. All good, honest, straightforward stuff. I'll show you, among other things, a tasty, spicy little Baudouin that would make your mouth water."

At this speech Ga?tan made off. As he descended the church steps and turned down the Rue Princesse, he found himself accompanied by old Sariette, and fell to unburdening himself to him, as he would have done to any human creature, or indeed to a tree, a lamp-post, a dog, or his own shadow, of the indignation with which the aesthetic theories of the old painter inspired him.

"Old Guinardon overdoes it with his Christian art and his Primitives! Whatever the artist conceives of Heaven is borrowed from earth; God, the Virgin, the Angels, men and women, saints, the light, the clouds. When he was designing figures for the chapel windows at Dreux, old Ingres drew from life a pure, fine study of a woman, which may be seen, among many others, in the Mus?e Bonnat at Bayonne. Old Ingres had written at the bottom of the page in case he should forget: 'Mademoiselle C?cile, admirable legs and thighs'--and so as to make Mademoiselle C?cile into a saint in Paradise, he gave her a robe, a cloak, a veil, inflicting thus a shameful decline in her estate, for the tissues of Lyons and Genoa are worthless compared with the youthful living tissue, rosy with pure blood; the most beautiful draperies are despicable compared with the lines of a beautiful body. In fact, clothing for flesh that is desirable and ripe for wedlock is an unmerited shame, and the worst of humiliations"; and Ga?tan, walking carelessly in the gutter of the Rue Garanci?re, continued: "Old Guinardon is a pestilential idiot. He blasphemes Antiquity, sacred Antiquity, the age when the gods were kind. He exalts an epoch when the painter and the sculptor had all their lessons to learn over again. In point of fact, Christianity has run contrary to art in so much as it has not favoured the study of the nude. Art is the representation of nature, and nature is pre-eminently the human body; it is the nude."

"Pardon, pardon," purred old Sariette. "There is such a thing as spiritual, or, as one might term it, inward beauty, which, since the days of Fra Angelico down to those of Hippolyte Flandrin, Christian art has--"

But Ga?tan, never hearing a word of all this, went on hurling his impetuous observations at the stones of the old street and the snow-laden clouds overhead:

"The Primitives cannot be judged as a whole, for they are utterly unlike each other. This old madman confounds them all together. Cimabue is a corrupt Byzantine, Giotto gives hints of powerful genius, but his modelling is bad, and, like children, he gives all his characters the same face. The early Italians have grace and joy, because they are Italians. The Venetians have an instinct for fine colour. But when all is said and done these exquisite craftsmen enamel and gild rather than paint. There is far too much softness about the heart and the colouring of your saintly Angelico for me. As for the Flemish school, that's quite another pair of shoes. They can use their hands, and in glory of workmanship they are on a level with the Chinese lacquer-workers. The technique of the brothers Van Eyck is a marvel, but I cannot discover in their Adoration of the Lamb the charm and mystery that some have vaunted. Everything in it is treated with a pitiless perfection; it is vulgar in feeling and cruelly ugly. Memling may touch one perhaps; but he creates nothing but sick wretches and cripples; under the heavy, rich, and ungraceful robing of his virgins and saints one divines some very lamentable anatomy. I did not wait for Rogier van der Wyden to call himself Roger de la Pasture and turn Frenchman in order to prefer him to Memling. This Rogier or Roger is less of a ninny; but then he is more lugubrious, and the rigidity of his lines bears eloquent testimony to his poverty-stricken figures. It is a strange perversion to take pleasure in these carnivalesque figures when one can have the paintings of Leonardo, Titian, Correggio, Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Poussin, or Prud'hon. Really it is a perverted instinct."

Meanwhile the Abb? Patouille and Maurice d'Esparvieu were strolling leisurely along in the wake of the esthete and the librarian. As a general rule the Abb? Patouille was little inclined to talk theology with laymen, or, for that matter, with clerics either. Carried away, however, by the attractiveness of the subject, he was telling the youthful Maurice all about the sacred mission of those guardian angels which Monsieur Delacroix had so inopportunely excluded from his picture. And in order to give more adequate expression to his thoughts on such lofty themes, the Abb? Patouille borrowed whole phrases and sentences from Bossuet. He had got them up by heart to put in his sermons, for he adhered strongly to tradition.

"Yes, my son," he was saying, "God has appointed tutelary spirits to be near us. They come to us laden with His gifts. They return laden with our prayers. Such is their task. Not an hour, not a moment passes but they are at our side, ready to help us, ever fervent and unwearying guardians, watchmen that never slumber."

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