; VOOD COBB THE REAL TURK UTHOR. THE REAL TURK by STANWOOD COBB THE PILGRIM PRESS BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO C/ Copyright 1914 By STANWOOD COBB THE PILGRIM PRESS BOSTON DEDICATED TO MY MOTHER Fidelis in Litteris 331087 FOREWORD At present troubled Turkey is attracting more and more attention from those who follow world affairs. The question in every mind is, "How will things turn out?" In order, how- ever, to form any adequate conception of the future of a race, one must have studied the race at first hand, and must be acquainted with "the soul of the people." The time has gone by when every race not white is assigned to a predestined barbarism. We are beginning to believe that the future may belong to the Chinese, to the Japanese, to the Hindu, as well as to the Anglo- Saxon. Will it belong also to the Turk, or must he be condemned to a helpless inferiority? It was my good fortune to spend three event- ful years in Turkey during a period which saw the rise of the Young Turk Party and the down- fall of Abdul Hamid; and I had excellent op- portunities for studying the possibilities of the Turk and comparing him with the races amidst [vii] THE REAL TURK which he lives the Greek, the Jewish, the Ar- menian and the Bulgarian. In the course of these years I grew to love the Turk, as do all Americans who live among them. I tried to understand his character, his temper- ament and his way of looking at life. I was constantly analyzing the Oriental customs, in order to distinguish the factors of race, climate, environment and religion which make the Turk what he is. The conclusions which I reached I present to the reader, feeling sure that he will find here a true portrait of the Turk, and one that does him what justice is in my power. What will be the future of Turkey? In spite of the many misfortunes, discouragements and evils through which the Land of Allah and the Crescent is passing, I have never given up my faith in the ultimate salvation of this brave and admirable people. There are still true patriots in Turkey men whom I know and love and if the reins of government can but fall into their hands, true progress will ensue. Some may accuse me of giving too favorable an impression of the Turk and of his religion. That there are many evils to deplore in the in- THE REAL TURK stitutions, government and religion of Turkey, I would be the last to deny; but so much has been written of these more unfavorable aspects that I prefer to present the good side of the Turk, believing that the best way of helping a people, as is the case with an individual, is by seeing their good qualities rather than their bad. I hope this book will bring to the reader a new point of view, depicting the life of the Turk and his character in such a way as to give a better understanding of that much-maligned race. Several chapters of it were written for mag- azine publication. Chapters I and IX and a part of chapter XIII have been published in The Boston Transcript; parts of Chapters VIII and XI in The Open Court; and Chapter V in The New England Magazine. I take pleasure here in thanking the friends who have helped in the making of the book my dear Oriental brother, Halousi Hussein, Pro- fessor of Turkish at Robert College, for much of the material that has gone into the book ; Miss Hester D. Jenkins, formerly Professor of His- tory at the American College for Girls, and Dr. George Washburn, twenty years President of [ix] THE REAL TURK Robert College, for reviewing the manuscript; and my brother, Percival B. Cobb, for a final reading of the manuscript, for the revision of the proof sheets, and for constructive criticism. STANWOOD COBB. Newton Upper Falls June 16, 1914. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I Character and Climate .... 1 Climate an Important Factor in History The American's Contempt for Turkish Indolence Yet He Succumbs to It Himself Enervating Effects of the Turkish Climate Customs of the Country- Peculiar Effects of Climate on Mentality "Never Do Today What You Can Put Off till Tomorrow" Delightful Dreaminess of the Orient The Fascina- tion of the East II The Turk Still a Medieval ... 21 The Turks a Kindly People Yet Still Barbarous The Oriental and the Occidental Cruelties of the Turks The Explanation A Change for the Better The Turk a Medieval in Religion Also in Educa- tion III The Turk as a Citizen .... 87 Loyal to His Sultan and His Religion Soldier and Citizen Peculiar Oriental Methods of Government The Novelty of Citizenship The First Taste of Liberty A Visit to the Turkish Parliament Recep- tion of Delegates on Their Return to Native Countries IV The Turk in Business .... 51 Turks not Naturally Traders Very Honest as Merchants and as Servants Have Little Ambition Do not Solicit Business^ Methods of Industry and Business Medieval The Turkish Merchant Has a Sense of Leisure, and Is not a Slave to the Dollar V The Eternal Feminine .... 63 Oriental Attitude towards the Gentler Sex Mo- hammedanism not Solely Responsible The Usual Life of a Turkish Lady Evils of Polygamy [xi] THE REAL TURK CHAPTER PAGE Polygamy and the West The Mohammedan's De- fence of Polygamy Turks Treat Women Better than Do Other Oriental Races The Sentiment Against Polygamy Character of Turkish Women The Revolution and the New Freedom Halliday Hanum Changing Conditions Love and Marriage The Oriental Dream VI At Home 83 The "Simple Life" in the Orient Domestic Habits of the Turk Common Sense in Clothes Headgear and Footwear Need of Tolerance for Other People's Customs Turkish Diet Favorite Dishes- Delicious Fruit and Vegetables of the Orient Pilaff A Persian Dinner VII A Great Ottoman Patriot and Teacher . 105 Sacrifice and Character Tewfik Fikret Bey His Youth Becomes Teacher and Editor His Influence for Good Persecuted by Abdul Hamid The Tragedy of Helplessness Means of Diversion Pro- fessor at Robert College His Charming Wife The Revolution New Opportunities for Service Fik- ret's Vision of the Perfect School Fikret a Poet His Lofty Character VIII Turkish Schools 127 Turkish Education in a Process of Transition The Mosque Schools No Higher Education for Women Secondary Schools for Boys The Galata Serai A Progressive Turkish Educator The Otto- man University Turkish Theological Schools A Visit to the University of Cairo Intellectual Stag- nation IX American Influence on Turkish Education . 143 American Schools Had Nothing to Do with the Turkish Revolution Influence of Missionary Schools Confined Largely to Christian Population of Tur- key Missionary and Mohammedan Great Scholars Among the Turkish Missionaries A Movement to Reorganize and Endow the Mission Schools of Turkey Robert College Its Influence The Syrian [xii] THE REAL TURK CHAPTER PAGE Protestant College at Beirut Career of Dr. Post The American College for Girls Amateur Theatri- cals in the Orient Different Events of the College Year Commencement Future of the Girl Gradu- ates A Splendid Testimony X The Education of Oriental Boys at Robert College 167 Their Eagerness for Study Their Thoughtfulness The Ancient Sources of Education in the Near East Modern Languages and Oriental Learning The Enthusiasm of the Students Early Maturity of Thought The Marvelous Greek Mind The Suicide Club Problems of Oriental Boys Student Anar- chistsTeacher and Pupil The Joy of Teaching XI Islam 185 The Religion of Mohammed Cannot Be Despised Its Civilizing Influence in Arabia Its Rapid Spread What Europe Owes to the Arabian Civiliza- tionThe Spell of Islam Its Simplicity Devotions and Observances Influence of Islam Waning Among Educated Moslems The Mosque Service on Friday The Pilgrimage to Mecca Tolerant Attitude of Islam toward Christianity Points of Agreement and Difference Islam and the Revolution Mistaken Missionary Methods The Cultured Turk an Eclectic XII Islam and the Inner Life .... 207 Sunnis and Shiites Sufi Mysticism The Dervish Orders Bektashis Bahaism Its History, Baba Ullah and His Teachings Is the East more Spir- itual than the West? "Inshallah" Fatalism The Oriental Calm Attitude toward Death The Mos- lem Lives His Religion His Devotions Total Ab- stinenceThe Oriental not Worldly His Mind Dwells on Eternity and not on Material Things Ori- ental and Occidental Attitudes XIII Peculiar Rites and Beliefs of Islam . . 241 The Night of Power at St. Sophia Its Impressive- ness The Power of Fanaticism Howling Der- [xiii] THE REAL TURK CHAPTER PAGE vishes Phenomena for the Abnormal Psychologist to Study Strange Immunity from Pain and In- jury Incredulity and the Unexplained Religious Parallels The Dancing Dervishes The Bektashis General Observations on the Dervishes The Ghastly Persian Festival The Month of Ramazan Night Scenes Bayram XIV Faith Healing in the Orient . . . 269 Faith Healing among the Howling Dervishes Sacred Springs Holy Men Forms of Magic Professional Healers Peculiar Religious Survivals Mohammedan Superstitions The Mohammedan View of Death Mohammedan Cemeteries XV Brotherhood of East and West ... 285 Contact through Education The Ideal of World Peace The East and the West Emerson the Great Interpreter of the East to the West Oriental Re- ligions Broad The Broadening Effect of Education The Awakening of the East An Ideal Civiliza- tion Would Result from the Mingling of the Oriental and Occidental Elements America's Opportunity The Brotherhood of Man [xiv] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Author Frontispiece FACING PAGE The Sweet Waters of Asia 18 An Original Turk 24 A Typical Untamed Turk 80 Typical Turkish Citizens 49 A Typical Turkish House 68 Gypsy Women 68 A Vender of Liquorice Water .... 97 An Old Style Turk 130 A Training Class of Turkish Girls . . . 146 A Group from American College for Girls . . 164 A Turkish Mullah 188 Turks travelling Deck Passage .... 198 Some Queer Deck Passengers . . . . 198 St. Sophia 245 A Turkish Coffee Shop 264 The Ancient Hippodrome of Constantinople . . 276 The Buffalo Ox-Team .,297 A Turkish Family from Bokhara .... 297 Walls and Tower built by Mohammed . . . Cover [XT] CHARACTER AND CLIMATE CHAPTER I CHARACTER AND CLIMATE One of the greatest difficulties which a truly progressive Turkey will always have to face is the enervating nature of her climate. There is a close connection between character and climate. Changes in the Persian climate, for example, since ancient times are claimed by some to be largely responsible for the degeneration of the inhabitants, especially in regard to honesty. The ancient Persians were renowned for their honesty; the Persians of today are renowned for the opposite. The sexual degeneracy of South- ern races, the vigor of Northern peoples, the phlegmatic temperament of the English, the nervousness of the American, the pessimism of the Hindu, the laziness and politeness of people in warm climes, the psychic nature of those dwelling in high altitudes, all these differences may be traced with some reason to climate. When an American first comes to Turkey he [3] THE REAL TURK brings with him all the vigor and energy which is the peculiar gift of the American climate. He looks with disdain upon the slow-moving Orien- tals and ridicules their shiftless and easy-going ways. To a typical Chicagoan, the lazy Turk is a being who has hardly any right to existence ; and he loves to picture the benefit the East would gain if it could be peopled with a lot of hustling Americans like himself. For the first year or so he rushes around in the American way, and accomplishes twice as much work as would be adapted to Oriental standards. He feels that he has conferred a blessing on the Orientals by showing them how to work. But what do the Orientals think about it? They look on and smile, for they know that when the momentum is worn out these busy Americans must moderate their pace, or go to pieces. At this point the laugh is on the American, and, rebel as he will against the inevitable, he has finally to adapt himself to the Orient; and in time he becomes a very good Oriental, or is worn out and goes back to America. Kipling has expressed this so inimitably that [4] THE REAL TURK I cannot do better than quote his poem written from his own experience in India. For it is not right For the Christian white To hustle the Aryan brown; For the Christian riles And the Aryan smiles And he weareth the Christian down. And the end of that fight Is a tombstone white With the name of the late deceased; And an epitaph drear " A fool lies here Who tried to hustle the East." It is a hard lesson for the American to learn, but the fact is finally forced upon him that the climate of Turkey is enervating, and that he cannot do much more than half the work he could do in America. One lives there always under low vitality, and the least trouble will take away that little vitality and tend to prostrate one. This is made clear by the ease with which one falls ill there. It is the usual thing in Robert College for every teacher in the institution to have at least one week's illness during the year, and there will always be several who are laid up [5] THE REAL TURK for months. The hospital is always full of stu- dents, who take their turns, too, at being in- valids. Illness there seems to be the result of exhaustion. It may take the form of a cold, a stomach trouble, or nervous debilitation, but it simply means low vitality, and medicine is not so much needed as rest and food to build up the system. When such an attack comes it cannot be fought off, as in the bracing climate of Amer- ica, but must be yielded to: postponement only means worse illness in the end. Another thing which is peculiar is the ease with which one takes cold. The slightest draft is sufficient for this. It is generally true that if you feel cold, you will catch cold. This is doubt- less the reason why the Orientals bundle them- selves up so. Even in summer they wear heavy woolens and overcoats, when not in the sun. This is one of the first customs to be noticed and ridiculed by the Americans : but there is a reason for it in the lowness of vitality and the dampness of the climate. Even in warm weather it is not safe to lie on the ground in the shade if there is much of a breeze. One American teacher, a football hero and [6] THE REAL TURK athlete in his own college, who had hardly known a sick day in his life, contracted bronchitis during his first month by going to sleep under an open window and much to his surprise and disgust he was in bed a month. Had he yielded to his cold immediately, a week would probably have sufficed to restore his health, but by trying to fight it off, and continuing to stay on his feet, he merely increased his period of illness. It is by such experiences one learns that in the Orient the Anglo-Saxon method of stand- ing up to a foe and braving him is not always the wisest. Just as it is best to succumb to illness, so it is often best to succumb to other things, and I have no doubt the climate of the East has some- thing to do with the indirect methods pursued there. As Kipling has said, you cannot drive the East. They are not used to such methods, and their whole mode of life is based, not on fight incessant struggle but on finding the line of least resistance. In this enervating climate one can take, and indeed needs, more stimulants than in a more vigorous climate. I found that, although of a nervous temperament, I could drink tea and [7] THE REAL TURK coffee and smoke cigarettes without noticing any of the bad effects which they would have upon me in America. The Turks smoke all day long without becoming nervous. I found also that I could not skip a meal, as I had been in the habit of doing when in a hurry. In America, if one is pressed for time he makes a lunch of an egg-shake or a piece of chocolate, and goes on with his work till the evening meal. But this is impossible in Turkey. If you eat but little at noon, by four or five o'clock you feel completely tired out, having that sensation of being "all gone" "gevshek" as the Turks call it which makes you depressed and incapable of doing much. It is wonderful what effect a little food will have upon you at this juncture: quickly your spirits rise, and you are able to go about your work again or to continue your shopping. It is the universal custom among Americans and Europeans living in Constantinople to have afternoon tea at four or five o'clock. The old inhabitants could no more do without that than without their dinner. The new-coming Amer- icans laugh at this custom, for afternoon teas are generally a subject of ridicule with American in THE REAL TURK men; but in time they fall in with it and a de- lightful custom it is, apart from its dietetic necessity. As a social function, it fills a place in life which no American institution supplies. As the climate of England is somewhat sim- ilar to that of Constantinople, I imagine the large amount of food eaten by the English and their afternoon teas are natural results of cli- mate. In fact the diet of every nation is natur- ally adapted to its climate. Americans who live in London come to feel the need of tea; Kipling said recently to one of them: "The difference be- tween America and England is this. Our cli- mate is so depressing that we have to stimulate ourselves all the time with food and drink, while yours is so bracing that you can run across a Carpet and then light the gas from the electric- ity in your fingers." Orientals take a nap after the midday meal; and although Constantinople is by no means a tropical city, being on the same latitude as New York, yet Americans who live there any length of time find this nap a necessity. Generally very little work is done in the afternoon. A nap [9] THE REAL TURK after dinner, then a short spell of work, then afternoon tea, and a stroll before supper, is the ordinary program. After dinner at noon you begin to feel more and more sleepy; your eyes become so prickly that you can hardly see; and there is no greater bliss than to yield to this de- lightful sensation and float off to slumberland. One awakens refreshed and happy, in good con- dition for the rest of the day. I stopped once for a week with a group of Persian friends. After lunch they would all roll up in their yorgans on the Oriental couches, and in a few minutes every one would be asleep. At about three o'clock they would begin to stir, and one after another would awake and sit up. When all were awake, tea would be prepared, and the intervening time spent in conversation. Then a stroll at sunset would bring the day to a delightful close. The morning is reserved for work, the after- noon for rest and recreation, and the evening given partly to work and partly to social pleas- ures. The longer you stay in the Orient the harder it is to study or work in the evening after a heavy dinner. The Orientals themselves go to [10] THE REAL TURK bed with the sun like the birds, and rise with it. In the summer they put in many hours of work before the European is awake. I have spoken of the enervating effects of this climate upon the body. It has similar ef- fects upon the mind. This delicate organ, which responds so sensitively to conditions of the body, seems to lose its vivacity and clearness. One finds it difficult to think incisively. Dreamy, speculative thinking is delightful, but mathe- matical thinking a burden. This is probably why Orientals are so poor in mathematics and exact sciences. Forgetfulness becomes a habit. You cannot carry anything in your mind. Errands, duties, appointments, are all likely to be forgotten, un- less careful note is made. If you want anything done by another person, you have to remind him several times before he remembers to do it. This is true even of men in administrative positions, where, if anywhere, you would expect to find exactness. The climate exercises its effect upon all, from room-servant to college president. Even troubles do not stay on your mind if they are of the future you forget to worry! Thus THE REAL TURK the natural state of the Oriental mind is one of dreamy meditation, which is delightful. When, however, you have to give a lecture or write an article, this condition interferes, for you find it hard then to collect the thoughts, to think clearly, and to retain the subject as a whole. Lack of vitality makes lectures lack vigor and takes the fire out of one's style. You never hear a piece of oratory or impassioned delivery. Strangely enough, it becomes almost impossible to write. Style demands energy, vitality, and you haven't it to give. Finally the time conies when you can hardly compose at all. Yet let one go to the invigorating climate of Switzerland, among the eternal snows for a few weeks, and composition again becomes easy. It has been said that the motto of the East is, "Never do today what you can put off till to- morrow." One might think this a caricature of the Oriental, but it is absolutely true. And in fact, why should you do today what you can put off till tomorrow? Are we any happier with the opposite rule of conduct? In our sanitariums and hospitals are many people who are broken- down, miserable and unfit for work, because they [12] THE REAL TURK tried to do everything today, and left nothing for the morrow but nervous prostration and the rest- cure. The Orientals take their rest as they go along, and sanitariums are unknown among them. The result of such a maxim is a tendency to let all things go. If one has a piece of business to attend to, he puts it off as long as possible and spends little time worrying about it. Re- pairs are delayed until they become absolutely necessary, and often they are postponed beyond the point where they will do any good. When the Turks, by some miracle, do construct a good road, they leave it after its completion in the hands of God; such a thing as keeping it in re- pair is beyond their comprehension. Each suc- cessive rainy season washes a bit from the road, until finally not only the surfacing is carried away, but the foundation is ruined in many places; and when the road becomes impassable, the teams turn out into the fields and form cart- paths there, so that it is not uncommon to run across paved roads which, once highways but now unused, are paralleled by roads struck out through the original soil. [13] THE REAL TURK Similarly, Turkish bridges are always out of repair. If a route in the interior crosses many bridges, you may be sure it will be impracticable to follow it, for some of the bridges will be in ruins; so you would better take a route that crosses the streams by fords, which never need mending. One of the saddest sights in Turkey is a de- serted palace gradually falling into ruins. The damp climate of the Bosphorus hastens decay, and the stucco and plaster peel from the walls. Many palaces which once cost immense sums are left to the mercy of the elements. Until the Turks change their nature it would be ludicrous to expect them to adopt agricultural machines. At the first disaster to the machine they would leave it standing in the fields, putting off repairs until rain and rust would have ren- dered it worthless. It is true that under the new regime the Turks are waking up somewhat. That they can exercise care and system is evidenced by the dis- cipline in their army. The Young Turks took hold of the navy, too, which Abdul Hamid had left to rot in the Golden Horn, and they have [14] THE REAL TURK developed it to a good degree of efficiency. The Turks are not incapable of using the mechanism of modern civilization, in spite of the drawbacks of climate. Yet it is significant that the leaders in the revolution had been living for years, not in Constantinople, but in Europe, to which they had been exiled. When the crisis came they acted with a dash and energy which was due largely to their European environment and cli- mate. Ali Risa, the first President of the Senate and political leader of the Young Turks, had been for years in Paris ; and Chevket Pasha, once the most able personality in all Turkey, and its practical dictator, who conducted the capture of Constantinople so ably as to call forth the praise of Europe's best strategists, had been trained for twelve years in Germany, And so with many other military and political leaders. I really doubt that the revolution could have been carried out so successfully had it not profited by this vigor brought from Europe. The climate of the Bosphorus is too depressing, too conducive to inactivity and inertia, to make possible a bold and well-organized movement. I have been showing some of the unpleasant [16] THE REAL TURK features of Turkish climate. Let me now de- scribe its joys. There are few places in the world where one could be happier, provided he had no responsibilities. The very absence of worry, the inability to think long on bothersome things, is conducive to peace and joy. The mind is at rest. It can lose itself in dreams and vi- sions, care-free, oblivious of time. In addition to the charm of scenery unsurpassed in the world and the bright blue, intoxicating sky, there is a certain feeling due peculiarly to the climate which amounts to an ecstasy a joy which I have never felt elsewhere than in the East. Travellers remark on it; you will find it described in books on the East. And the Turks have a name for it they call it "kef." There are two words in Turkish in which the newcomer can see little difference "rdhat" and "kef;" "rahat" means "rest," "cessation of ac- tivity," and this idea is common to all countries we all of us at times, when we are tired, sit down to rest but ef kef 3 is something quite different, something unique: it is cessation not only of physical activity, but also of mental a kind of intoxicated dream-state, a trance due to the at- [16] THE REAL TURK mosphere. In spring the Turks will sit on the hillsides and smoke and dream this way for min- utes at a time sometimes for hours. They call it "making kef." When you have a Turkish stu- dent who "makes kef in class, he is hopeless. No part of the lesson sinks into his mind. He smiles when you call on him, and tries to an- swer your questions, but his thoughts are far away. I have stood leaning against our terrace wall, in the beauty of spring, and gazed for long min- utes at certain shrubs and flowers which were bright with sunshine, until my thoughts seemed to soar away beyond the confines of space and of time. It is as easy to be a mystic in the East as it is to be practical in the West. Have we ever stopped, I wonder, to consider that our extreme activity in America is the result of climate? One can even see differences in this respect in the different latitudes and sections of our country. The New England people and New Yorkers hustle much more than the people of Washington; and if you go still further south, you will find men sitting on their shady veran- das, smoking and sipping mint juleps and [17] THE REAL TURK dreaming in quite good Turkish style: they are really "making kef!" How changed is the feeling in Constantinople from that in New York! Whenever I am in the latter city, I feel uneasy at the thought of even half an hour's going to waste. "Isn't there something I can do to fill in the time profita- bly?" I think. But in Constantinople, after a certain amount is done, one says, "Well, that's enough let's sit down and rest awhile." Then come Turkish coffee and cigarettes and "kef" and in half an hour you are ready to begin over again. The difference between the West and the East, in a word, is this: here we do not like to sit down; there we do not like to get up. Here leisure is a sin ; there it is a virtue ! Our American habit of crowding every mo- ment and of seeking recreation in violent and ex- citing forms is the result of our air. Such a life, feverish in its activity, does not make one really happy, and is bound to lead at last to a break- down. In the East, one does not have to plan theater parties, games or crowded excursions in order to be happy, since one is happy merely to exist. Pleasant repose is as natural to Orientals [18] !< frl as ? I , 4 Si* &i * -O S-S-* ny O ^ ^ 4 '$ -S Jl THE REAL TURK as activity is to us. Even the laborer enjoys his work ; and the farmer becomes a poet. I have often thought that the East may in time become our great sanitarium. Just as the Orientals who come to our country learn to work and to hustle, so Americans who go to the East learn repose. A few years there will change restless, nervous habits into calmness and poise. Worry ceases. Desire, which is the chief source of anxieties, disappears. If you can't do a thing you have planned, you say, "Never mind, it was not important;" if there is something you need but cannot get, you say, "Well, I can do without it;" if there is a play you want to see, a trip you want to make, a friend you want to visit, and things stand in the way, you say, "Some other time." Thus the East creeps in upon you with its feeling of resignation and you grow fat and healthy and forget that you have nerves. In concluding this chapter I cannot do better than to repeat a passage which was written while I was still in Constantinople, in the midst of its wonderful charms. What a fascination the East exerts how tranquil life is here, and how peaceful ! When one thinks of departing, [19] THE REAL TURK it seems like leaving a comfortable fireside where one has been sitting dreaming, to go into the cold world outside; yet America is the world, and this only a dream, a ravish- ing dream. One cannot work here nobody does that but one can merely live and feel happy. One does not crave excite- ment. Life itself is joyous, and the goal of each day is to get through the day's work. This is not thoroughly satisfactory to a New England conscience bred in the American atmosphere of constantly- increasing accomplishment. One's work should be the greatest source of one's pleasure. Here it is not no one goes about his work with zest. But how sweet are the leisure hours, when you curl up on your couch with a book in your lap no responsibility nothing to do but to read and dream. Oh, the dreams that come to one here the utter sense of the joy of living the mystical anticipation of unknown joys awaiting you. This is the greatest joy the East has to offer the joy of irresponsibility. How responsibility weighs on one, how one dreads work, how dull duties seem! We never do today what we can easily put off till tomorrow. Why should we spoil the present moment, mar the perfect beauty of today by any- thing which has to be done ? Let us do anything but that. Let us read books which do not have to be read, write let- ters that do not have to be written; but the obligatory duties how cruel, how uselessly tiring! But when one has described the joys of life indoors, he has shown but a hundredth part of the enchantment of the East. Her glory lies in her spring. How the sun- shine pours over everything; how limpid is the air how heavy with perfume! How magic the charm of it all. * * * Reader, if you want to know what Paradise is on this earth, visit Constantinople and the Bosphorus in the month of May. 20 THE TURK STILL A MEDIEVAL CHAPTER II THE TURK STILL A MEDIEVAL IN CHARACTER, MENTALITY AND RELIGION No people in the world are more likable than the Turks. They are kindly, honest, and gen- erous-hearted; and they are gentle in their or- dinary life. I remember one old man who sold beads in an open-air bazaar in Constantinople: there he sat cross-legged all day long, his white beard sweeping his breast a grand figure. An- other beautiful face was that of an old gardener in a medrese which we visited; he was a model for an artist to paint, with a strong, robust figure clad in Oriental garb and a face full of simplicity and power; he seemed to exhale the same radi- ant, harmonious life as his flowers. Many Americans will find it hard to reconcile this view of the Turk with the stories they have heard of his cruel and bloodthirsty nature. "How can the Turks be kind and gentle," they ask, "when they commit such barbaric deeds?" [23] THE REAL TURK It is just at this point that the Turk is hard to understand. He is kind and gentle and of winning personality yet he is capable of the utmost cruelty. When his religious fanaticism is aroused or when he is putting down a rebel- lion, he slays in cold blood women, and children at the breast; he burns down homes and shoots the inhabitants as they come forth; he violates women before their own husbands and carries the best into captivity. A town which he ravages leaves little resemblance to a human dwelling- place. There are Bulgarians and Armenians living today who have gone through scenes of untold horror. Naturally they do not love the Turks. Yet the English and Americans who live among the Turks do like them and come to feel a real affection for them. You may meet a Pasha who will captivate you today by his kindness and winning personal- ity; and the next day he may have a prisoner tortured to death with perfect unfeeling. Whence these contradictions in his nature ? The assumption that he is a hypocrite that his kind- ness is merely put on is not an explanation, for [24] rriHE original Turk fresh from Turki- 1 stan, showing strongly the Mongolian type. The Turks in Constantinople have a large admixture of Aryan blood. THE REAL TURK it is not true. The explanation lies in this that the Turk is still in the Middle Ages. He is only half way up from savagery. Like all Ori- entals, he holds life and suffering as of little im- portance. Indifference to physical pain is char- acteristic of the East. The Oriental does not differ in nature from the Occidental. We who inherit and receive from our environment an exquisite sensitiveness to the sufferings of others, leading us to establish hospitals, to care for the suffering and to do away with all forms of cruelty, must not be too harsh in our judgment of our Eastern brothers. It is only a few centuries ago that we, too, held life and suffering in little value. We hanged men for stealing, we quartered them for differ- ing from us in political opinions, we burned them at the stake in order to save their souls. An offense to a prince meant more than ostra- cism from his society it meant a sudden re- moval from this world. A grim age an age of bloodshed and horrors, of cruelty and torture has but recently gone, never to return to us, for we have risen above it: from the Dark Age of Europe to the enlightenment of the twentieth century. [25] THE REAL TURK Within two or three centuries we could have found in England the prototype of the modern Turk the cultured English gentlemen, the kindly, dignified merchant, who could witness with calmness torture, execution and burning at the stake. That it is not Christianity alone which has produced this twentieth century gen- tleness the religious tortures of the Middle Ages bear witness. In a cruel age, Christianity was also cruel. In the name of Christ people under- went tortures of every conceivable form, and perished at the stake. Refinement of feeling is a natural result of a peaceful, segregated life. Our nerves are too sensitive to witness the shed- ding of blood.* We are not cruel physically, but our age is none the less cruel. We can let hun- dreds be maimed and killed in order to increase our stocks and bonds. We can be coldly in- different to suffering caused by us if it goes on at a distance. Yet this much has been gained: physical gen- tleness and kindness hold sway in the twentieth * I would suggest also the thought that much of our sympathy for human suffering is a direct result of what medical science has done in the last century in eliminating unnecessary causes of sick- ness and death. The constant view of unpreventable physical suf- fering causes indifference to it such as we now see in the East. [26] THE REAL TURK century, and we do not have to fear the rack, the sword, or the stake. A difference of opinion does not necessarily mean death, or even im- prisonment. Our feudal lords may exact reve- nue from us in the price of oil, beef, wool, and other commodities of life, but they have no di- rect power over our persons. The highest gen- tleman in the land may not wilfully strike the meanest servant. The Orientals are still in the Dark Age: they have not yet cultivated a sensitiveness to suffer- ing. Numerous forms of torture still exist with them, delightful in their simplicity. In Samar- kand it has been the custom to throw criminals from a high tower in the center of the city; an- other form of execution was dragging them over roughly-paved streets behind swift horses; a still more interesting death awaited political of- fenders in the shape of a deep pit full of loath- some vermin, where the victim is gradually eaten up. In Teheran a few years ago three men suc- ceeded in affecting a corner in wheat Orientals who had admirably caught the financiering spirit of the twentieth century. As the price of [27] THE REAL TURK wheat went up suffering was naturally caused among the poor. Not being able to view the subject in a scientific way, these unfortunate people laid the blame for their hardships upon the three financiers, and seizing hold of their per- sons, crucified them upside down in the public square. This is said to be a very painful death, as all the blood descends into the head, bringing enormous pressure upon the brain. Thus do the Persians rebel against the enlightenment of twentieth century financiering. One of the worst governors in Persia, just be- fore the Revolution, appropriated the estate of a subject. This man had the hardihood to ap- pear before him and demand his land back again. The governor said, "Why, you have a lot of gall to come to me and ask for your land. I should be interested to see just how large your gall bladder is." With that he had two of his serv- ants cut the man open and take his gall bladder out. He looked at it and said: "Yes, it is quite large. Now I will give you your land. I hope you will enjoy it." In a few hours the unfortunate man was dead. That governor is living today in Paris, and if you were [28] THE REAL TURK to meet him, you would be charmed by his manners. Terrible massacres took place in Persia on ac- count of religious fanaticism against the Babis. They were butchered in many horrible ways gashes were cut in the flesh and burning candles inserted ; pitch was burnt on top of men's heads ; babies were dashed against walls. The same barbarous treatment was accorded to Armenians by Abdul Hamid. Whole villages were cut to pieces men, women and children. The wounded were piled on brush-wood soaked in kerosene and burned alive. Women were cut open before their husbands' eyes. While the Turks were responsible for these massacres, they did not actively participate in them. The bloody work was done by the Kurds, a tribe much more savage and uncivilized than the Turks. Some of the Turks even sheltered their Armenian neighbors. The responsibility rests upon the shoulders of Abdul Hamid and his ad- visors. This cruel tyrant had many ways of tor- turing Young Turks suspected of liberalism. Boiling eggs were placed under their armpits a torture which soon drives the victim insane; the [29] THE REAL TURK skin was flayed from a person's back, mustard poultices laid next to the raw flesh, and the skin sewed up again; red-hot irons were run up the body. People were burned to death with kero- sene, and many a fine young man of progressive ideas found his bed upon the bottom of the Bos- phorus. These are only a few of the deeds of horror that could be told. In the face of them, can it still be believed that the Turk is kind and gentle? Yes, for it is true. The solution of the problem rests with psychology. As it is said, "Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar," so it is true that beneath the gentle manners and kind heart of every Turk lie volcanic possibilities of religious fanaticism and of brutal cruelty. He has not yet got control of the brute in him, though he is progressing. Beneath the culture and civilized exterior of every one of us lie submerged depths of ferocity and blood-thirstiness waiting for outlet. The Southern gentleman with the most charming manners and the kindest heart may with his own hands kindle the flames that are to burn alive the negro who has violated his daughter. Our pas- [80] TYPICAL untamed Turk at his hay- ing. In war he would be capable of any cruelty. THE REAL TURK sions are like dogs held in leash: people who come to us by the front gate receive our kind hospitality, but those who approach by forbidden paths, if they step within reach of our ferocity, may feel its bite. So it is with the Turk. In ordinary life he is affable and dignifiedly courteous; kind to his children, to animals and to strangers. He sel- dom loses his temper ; but when he does, beware ! He does not encourage street-fighting; yet, if he bears resentment, he may kill. One of the greatest signs of the awakening of the Orientals is their growing sense of shame at atrocities. The influence of Western civilization, even at a distance, is strong upon them. They respect its ideals of physical refinement and sensibility to suffering. They quail before its abhorrence of cruelty. They already feel that inhuman deeds do not become the twentieth century. With the establishing of constitutions and the consequent check of despotism, great changes are taking place, and it will not be long before barbaric actions will be things of the past. Al- ready there has been a great refining process in [81] THE REAL TURK the Near East, during the last half century; and within the present century we may see the East purged of its cruelty and physical roughness, ready to join in a great world culture, whose ideals of gentleness shall not permit of needless suffering. In other directions it is interesting to trace the medieval character of the Turkish civiliza- tion. In religion it is distinctly medieval. Is- lam is still a religion of authority. The voice of the priest is all-powerful; he rules his ignorant followers through their ignorance. The Koran is written in old Arabic and cannot be under- stood even by those who know how to read mod- ern Arabic, and when it is read in the mosques, it is read in the original. Things are in the same state as when Tyndall and Wycliff suffered per- secution in their efforts to bring the Bible to the level of the English people. The clergy, alone possessing the key to the Scriptures, have un- limited power to interpret them as they wish, and the complaint of educated Mohammedans is that the clergy have distorted the teachings of the Prophet. [32] THE REAL TURK Already there is a movement on foot to get back through the mass of priestly interpreta- tions to the Koran itself. A Protestant wave is sweeping over Islam. Quietly and cautiously a translation of the Koran into modern Turkish is being prepared.* The grip of the clergy is waning in proportion as the people are becoming educated. It must be said in justice to Islam, however, that it has never been as fanatical and intolerant of heresy as the Christian Church. There has never been any Inquisition in Islam and per- secutions for religious differences have been far rarer than in Christianity. The Turks are the broadest and most tolerant of all Mohamme- dans. In education, also, Turkey is still in the Mid- dle Ages. Its system is scholastic. The whole trend of studies is religious. The Koran is the basis from elementary school to university. More stress is laid on memorizing than on origi- nal thinking. Why should you do any thinking * A translation made about 40 years ago was quickly sup- pressed. [33] THE REAL TURK for yourself when Mohammed gave the solution to all the problems of life? The result is that the Oriental mind is unsci- entific; it is marked by absence of critical ability. Things are learned by rote from the teacher. Obedience is given to intellectual and spiritual leaders who hand down the learning of the past. This attitude of the Turk is quite different from that of the Greek, who possesses a natural scien- tific mind, and always questions. If an Oriental accepts a man as his spiritual teacher or master he follows him with unquestion- ing loyalty, and absorbs his system without crit- icizing it. The dialectic method of the Greek mind, matching statement with question and question with statement, is unknown to the Ori- ental. If he asks questions it is not for the pur- pose of criticism, but merely to draw out the teacher and elicit further information. Usually he sits at his master's feet and listens in reverent silence to his discourse, which he treasures up in his mind and heart. A Westerner trying to question an Oriental thinker will quickly find that he cannot pin him down, or pursue his own questions to any logical [34] THE REAL TURK end. After the first few questions the teacher takes the conversation in his own hands and pro- ceeds to give a discourse which it would be im- polite to interrupt. Our modern methods of criticism are foreign to the East. It is our liberation from dogma- tism, our freedom to criticize, to disagree, to find fault, which has produced the wonderful fruits of European civilization. Investigation must always precede scientific discovery, and the East never investigates. It has no understanding of the relation between cause and effect. A scholar who was collecting economic data once wrote to a Mohammedan merchant in an in- terior Turkish town, asking him for information as to the population of the town, the number of caravans entering it, etc. The Mohammedan wrote back in indignation, saying that it was blasphemous to inquire into such things. If Allah had wanted these facts to be known he would have informed his people. Modern education, however, is rapidly de- stroying this naive state of mind. The Young Turk is thoroughly up to date. His contact with European civilization has opened his mind to the [35] THE REAL TURK necessity of scientific methods. Even the Turk or Persian who has studied medicine in his own country has been forced to think along the lines of modern science. A few generations of this culture will make a great change in the Orient. Turkey and Persia are both eager for Western education in both countries there are leaders who have received a European training and are thoroughly in sym- pathy with its ideas, and their influence is radiat- ing through the country. In the end it must pervade the masses. The despotism of the East is over. No more can its rulers consign to death at their whim. The Dark Age is dissolving before the light of the Modern Age. Yet the poise and peace of Medievalism in the Orient have a charm which we would not wish lost. Will the East be able to retain this charm? [36] THE TURK AS A CITIZEN CHAPTER III THE TURK AS A CITIZEN Two things characterize the Turk as a citizen loyalty to his Padishah and the Dynasty of Ottoman, and loyalty to his religion. In the East religion and government are inextricably mixed. The empire founded by Mohammed was a theocratic one, ruled over by the caliphs, who centered in one person the spiritual and tem- poral succession. The Turkish sultans obtained the caliphate by the conquest of Arabia at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Therefore the padishah of Turkey is not only the temporal ruler of his people, with the divine right of a king, but also the spiritual head of some 200,000,000 Mohammedans. Loyalty has ever been a leading quality of the Turk. His unquestioning obedience to his su- periors and military leaders was the chief cause of the victories of the Turkish armies and the marvelous rise to power of that vigorous race. Whatever changes have taken place in the gov- [39] THE REAL TURK ernment of Turkey, the rulers have always been drawn from the House of Ottoman, the founder of the Turkish Empire. Even at the time when the Janissaries had such power that they could appoint and dethrone sultans at will they never dreamed of setting up any but descendants of this dynasty, which has held a longer continuous rule than any dynasty of Europe a rule of over 800 years. This quality of the Turk is still a factor to be reckoned with, and, combined with his splendid physique, gives promise of a rising rather than a declining race. Of the Turk as soldier we hear much, but of the Turk as citizen very little, for the reason that as a citizen he has hardly begun to exist until the present moment. His service to his country in the past has consisted chiefly in serving in her armies, furnishing the material for her conquests, and paying his taxes in unrebel- lious loyalty. Now, with a freer government, come new duties; and if Turkey is to take its place among the enlightened nations of the earth, it must develop capacities of citizenship among its subjects, for the difference between the abject subject of an Oriental despotism and [40] THE REAL TURK the thinking, responsible citizen of a free coun- try is vast. A little incident will illustrate the change which the new regime has brought about. One day a Turkish friend of mine decided at the last mo- ment to join a party which was leaving at 11:30 A. M. for Roumania. He did not reach the city until 11 o'clock, but between then and 11:30 he managed to drive to the passport bureau, get his passport and catch his steamer, and was quite proud of the achievement. Well he might be. To one who has lived among the Turks and seen their habits, it was little short of a miracle. Under the old regime he could not have had his passport made out in less than two hours at the least, and perhaps a day would have been required. An- other friend was told by the new official who took charge of a passport bureau that the man whom he had displaced could hardly read or write, and had made the entries in his books under wrong headings. All the papers were found in a wretched state. It would have taken this for- mer official a long time to gather his wits to- gether and go through the laborious process of copying down the data and making out your [41] THE REAL TURK passport, and if you had tried to hurry him he would have grown angry and stopped alto- gether. Government in the East is a very antiquated affair. It has hardly changed since the most an- cient times. It has always been one of des- potism at the center, with little despots in the provinces more or less amenable to the great des- pot who ruled the whole country. Under the heads of provinces were lesser rulers, all despots, down to the local despots in towns and cities. All of these officials were responsible to those above them for results, but not for methods. So long as they paid the required taxes and no com- plaints reached their superiors, they were safe; and it was difficult for a subject to get a com- plaint past his own ruler to the ruler higher up, as can well be imagined. And if the com- plaint did arrive, justice might or might not be done. In the matter of taxes the method was to squeeze as hard as possible. If a lemon which has the reputation of being juicy does not yield enough juice, it must be squeezed harder. There were various ways of squeezing, more or less [42] THE REAL TURK brutal, from moral pressure down to physical pressure. Hence the thing for the individual taxpayer to do was to keep inconspicuous and give no appearance of prosperity. Prominent heads were the first to be cut off. That this system is a deadening and stagnating one, all history has borne testimony. Ambition and prosperity are rewarded with extortion, perhaps death. A premium is put upon commonplace- ness. When you wanted anything done, you bribed the official nearest you; if he did not respond, you went one step higher and gave a larger bribe to the next higher official, and so on up the scale until, if your enterprise was a large one, you might lay a gift upon the altar of the sultan himself. Sometimes you might save trouble by sizing up your men, and might settle the matter immediately by bribing the right man with the right amount the very first time. Under this system no salaries were ever paid. The officials reimbursed themselves from their positions. If they took too much it was likely to get to the ears of the sultan and they were in danger. Thus a certain limit was set, depending [43] THE REAL TURK upon the governor's pull with the chief execu- tive. All the government administration, all transaction of business, and even the administra- tion of justice, were carried on in this way. It has been the method of governing in the East from time immemorial and exists today all over Turkey, Persia, India and China. Graft in the Western world is but a faint survival of this primitive idea, that the government is for the sake of the governors. How have the Young Turks faced this prob- lem? Have they been able to make a radical change, and overturn the system of government which has been in vogue in the East ever since history began? We could hardly expect them to do this. There are not enough honest men to fill the positions, in the first place ; and the hand- ful of progressives at the head of the government have a stubborn mass of common people to deal with, who are too ignorant to desire better things ; and at the same time they are obliged to defend themselves from the hungry wolves among the Old Turks, who have been deprived of their spoils. This class of men, able rascals, if we may so designate them, who have no sym- [44] THE REAL TURK pathy with modern ideas of government, consti- tute the greatest internal danger which reformed Turkey has to face. Old Turk officials may still be found in various parts of the country in suf- ficient numbers to prevent speedy reform. It is a matter of education. The people have got to be educated up to the ideal of an efficient govern- ment, and that will take time. It seems that the Turks are sincere in their efforts to better their country. Among them are many noble and pro- gressive men; but it will take years to bring solid improvements to pass and meanwhile Turkey deserves our patient sympathy. One of the primal necessities of a free citizen- ship is freedom of speech and of the press. So great was the oppression under Abdul Hamid that not only all public and journalistic criticism of the government was suppressed, but owing to the spy system the expression of private opinion was extremely dangerous. In public places the discussion of politics was absolutely impossible, and even in one's own home servants and wives might be in the employment of the sultan. Hence one can understand the statement of a prominent Turkish woman, that she had never [45] THE REAL TURK seen the word "liberty" in print until the Revolution. But all this has been changed. The Turkish people have tasted of liberty, and it is the sweet- est drink they have known. To be able to dis- cuss freely matters of government, to criticize if necessary, to suggest improvements is the birthright of every citizen in this age of dem- ocracy. When the Turks stepped into the pos- session of this birthright, they took the most important step of years of centuries, perhaps. It is interesting to see the new citizenship of Turkey actually working out in its representa- tive Parliament. True, there are certain unob- trusive restrictions which greatly limit the free powers of the body; but, withal, the Turks are learning how to discuss, weigh, and govern. It is an inspiring sight to visit this Parliament and watch its proceedings. Such a heterogeneous array it would be hard to find in any legislative body! Turks, Arabs, Syrians, Albanians, Bul- garians, Armenians and Jews sit side by side, peaceful or wrangling, as the occasion may re- quire. The guttural remonstrances and criti- cisms from different parts of the floor in a [46] THE REAL TURK strange language (all the people speaking at once in moments of excitement) made me think of nothing more than of a frog pond in which huge frogs raise up a chorus of rough bass voices. Yet there is something stupendously impressive in the thought of these delegates from all over the Empire coming together for the first time in free assembly, deliberating and weighing the problems of their nation. In America the pre- ponderance of representation is given to the legal profession, while in Turkey it is the clergy who secure this advantage, as is shown by the sprinkling of white turbans all over the assembly. It was my good fortune to travel to Syria in the summer of 1910 in the steamer which was taking home the Syrian delegates after the clos- ing of the first year of Parliament. Everywhere they were greeted with popular acclaim. At Constantinople they were ushered to the quay amid soldiers, brass bands, and speeches by local celebrities. With similar welcome they were greeted at Beyreut, where tents and decorations had been put up, and cheers rent the air upon their arrival. They could not have been more heartily received had they been football heroes [47] THE REAL TURK instead of mere legislators ! I took the first train for Damascus, thinking I had left delegates and reception committee behind but lo and behold! upon the platform was a local committee, a brass band and a crowd of soldiers to receive the dele- gates who were on the same train, travelling to the interior. When I arrived in Haifa by rail two mornings later, there in the public square were more soldiers, more brass bands, more local speakers. Fortunately my modesty and the ex- periences of the preceding days prevented me from imagining that all this was in my honor. As I surmised, they were waiting for the arrival of more delegates, who had come less quickly by steamer than I had by rail. In this celebration there was one thing of peculiar interest a green cushion borne by a mullah,, on which reposed a single hair from the head of Mohammed. To touch this cushion would bring a great blessing, and crowds surged around it and a sea of hands uplifted strove to reach the sacred emblem. Thus were modern progress and Oriental re- ligious enthusiasm strangely mingled. What does all this acclaiming of the delegates signify? It signifies that the people have tasted [48] rriWO Turkish citizens of the best type J. showing admirably the contrast be- tween the old and modern costume. THE REAL TURK of liberty and appreciate it. The seeds of free- dom are now firmly planted in their hearts and minds. It means that Turkey cannot go back to absolutism for any length of time. Even the most pessimistic of Turkey's wellwishers do not apprehend any overthrow of the popular govern- ment which would be more than temporary. Great changes come and we wonder at them for a time and then forget about them. Persia and Turkey, with their revolutions, parliaments and popular governments, have already passed a lit- tle below the horizon of public notice. At pres- ent China is attracting more attention. Yet the situation is larger than any one country and should be viewed as a whole. With Persia, Tur- key and China entering upon the stage of popu- lar government, there is not now (with the ex- ception of a few obscure states) a single Oriental despotism left. This fact means a change in the whole face of Eastern civilization. THE TURK IN BUSINESS CHAPTER IV THE TURK IN BUSINESS Turks are not naturally traders. Coming into history eight centuries ago from a nomadic life in the steppes of Turkestan, they adopted as their chief professions in their present home agri- culture, warfare, and beaurocracy. There is no middle class among them from humble work- man or servant one may rise to nobleman. The upper classes get their living from the govern- ment by holding official positions which are more or less sinecures. Business is left to the Greeks, Armenians and Jews in the Empire, and to foreigners who settle in the chief cities for the purpose of commerce. In Constantinople and the other seaports all the business is in the hands of Jews and Christians except for small eating-houses and bazaars of Oriental goods. Among Mohammedans the Persians and Arabs are much keener business men than the Turks. The Persians are good at trading; they maintain in Constantinople a large [53] THE REAL TURK Persian Bazaar, as well as many shops in the Buyak Bazaar. In business the Turks are the most honorable of all Orientals. In all my shopping I have found a great difference between them and other races. To the tourist who spends a few days at Smyrna or Constantinople all the traders seem alike, a crowd of robbers; but, as a matter of fact, he probably cannot distinguish Greeks from Armenians nor Jews from Turks, since they all look alike to him in their red fezes and since all charge enormous prices for things the chief impression which he carries away from the bazaars. After one has lived in Turkey awhile, however, and has learned to distinguish the Turks from traders of other races, he begins to notice that the Turkish shopkeeper is less exor- bitant and less inclined to haggle over small amounts; that he will come more quickly to a reasonable price than the others; that he knows what the true price of his goods is, and that if he realizes that you know it, too, he will quickly cease to bargain and will be willing to sell the thing for what it is worth. I think it is safe to say that the Turk would prefer to adopt fixed [54] THE REAL TURK prices. In the interior, where the population is pure Turkish, the fixed price holds sway, and there is no bargaining at all. In fact, the Turk is not so cunningly endowed for business as are his neighbors, the Persians, Armenians, Greeks, Jews and Syrians. I have often noticed that if I go into a Turk- ish mahalabiji (restaurant) for something to eat I always get the right change when I give a large coin in payment; while in a Greek restau- rant the owner almost always cheats me, giving back less change than is due and claiming double the prices for his foods. One who is used to the ways of Greek shopkeepers very seldom gives them any money to change, but pays them in small coins the current price of the food he has eaten and walks out heedless of the expostula- tions of the shopkeeper, who almost always asks more. Turks are not only more honest as shopkeep- ers, but they make the most reliable servants. The Turkish servant who comes from the in- terior, unspoiled by contact with civilization, is absolutely honest, faithful and veracious. You can trust him alone in the house without fear of [55] THE REAL TURK articles disappearing which cannot be said of men of the other races of the Ottoman Empire. If sent on an errand, he brings back a true re- port of what he has done. If commissioned to buy something he can be trusted to deliver the right change. Perhaps he is honest because he is too slow-witted to be otherwise, and cannot dodge about the truth so nimbly as his more subtle-minded brothers of the Orient ; but what- ever the cause, he deserves credit for the posses- sion of this virtue. The simple honesty of the Turks is not the only drawback in their business careers. Their inactive temperament and their religious fatal- ism also cut short their profits. They are not bending all their energies to the accumulation of wealth and the acquisition of fame: they are content with little there are hardly any people in the world that are content with less. If they can earn enough money in a day to buy their very simple food and allow them a few hours at a coffee-shop, which will cost the trifling sum of two or three cents, they are satisfied. I have often seen an itinerant fruit- or candy-vender smoking peacefully in some coffee-shop and en- [56] THE REAL TURK joying rahat (a dreamy condition of rest) to- tally unconcerned that a customer was standing by his wares outside, waiting to buy. In fact, he had to be called before he would take notice of his customer; and then he seemed indignant at being disturbed from his rahat for the few pennies that the sale brought him. It was interesting to compare the service in two grocery stores standing side by side in Rumeli Hissar, one run by Turks, the other by Greeks. The latter were ambitious to do business, did up bundles rapidly and solicited further trade. The former, on the other hand, appeared very nonchalant ; they waited on you with supreme in- difference, and spent twice the time in wrapping up packages that the active Greeks consumed. There is no hurrying the Turk a dozen people may be waiting to purchase, but he weighs out his wares and does them up with the same exas- perating slowness and unhurried calm. If you are in haste you buy of the Greek; but if you have time you buy of the Turk, because of his greater honesty and the friendly smile with which he greets his old customers. He is ready to do [57] THE REAL TURK you any little favor, for which he would indig- nantly refuse a tip. In methods of industry and business the Medie- val form holds sway. Hand work is the rule. Industrialism has not yet struck the Orient to which fact we owe the beautiful hand-made ar- ticles which characterize the East. You may stroll through the bazaars of Constantinople and see men in little booths cutting out various shapes of wood with hand lathes, working at baskets, shaping and painting coarse china. They work slowly but deftly. Their hours are long, but their labor dignifies instead of degrad- ing them. Now and then they stop, light a cig- arette, and dream there is a chance for a bit of meditation and a broadening of the vision of life. Compare the feverish activity of our modern industrial system, with its soul-racking machines and dehumanizing servitude to work. While visiting a chair factory in America, I saw a man tending a machine lathe with both hands, adjust- ing the new piece of wood with one, and remov- ing the finished product with the other. His labor was incessant and so quick and nervous that it left little room for the soul in him to peep [58] THE REAL TURK forth during his eight or nine hours at tHe ma- chine; he was working at a tension which must inevitably tell on his nervous system and health some day. "What is his reward for this?" I asked the owner of the factory. "Eleven fifty a week." On that he could live no more happily than the hand laborer of the Orient, who enjoys his work in a leisurely and dignified way. "Why then is this man working so fast, if his pay is so small?" "He has to," the proprietor answered, "or I would kick him out and find an- other man." To whom was this laborer a slave? to his owner, or to the system? At any rate, he was a slave to his work, while our Oriental brother was the master of his. Poor East! Little does it dream, in its silent, meditative happiness, that it will one day have to face the industrial system, the age of machinery and iron, which already is creeping in upon it; for factories are being established, and labor is being chained to the loom. When it comes to selling his products, the Ori- ental is again the master of his business sitting cross-legged in his little shop waiting patiently for a customer. He is never anxious to sell. If [59] THE REAL TURK you wish to exchange your money for his goods, he is ready to serve you. Strange as it may seem, to bargain with one of these venerable old Turks for a chain of prayer beads and finally make a purchase is like going away with a beni- son upon you. You feel an affection, a love, for the old man. He is happy to sell his beads, you are happy to buy them and the whole transac- tion has been conducted on the highest level of honor, courtesy and brotherly feeling. The Turk has no idea of enlarging his busi- ness, of buying up the shops around him and erecting a department store. The booth which served his father serves him; he makes a living, he is happy, he lives near to Allah what more could he want? Ah, the possibilities of automo- biles, of steam yachts, and of palaces in town and mountain have not yet appeared to him. Will you go and awake him from his lethargy and dream, American financier? Will you under- take to show him the possibilities of combination, of fierce competition, of ostentatious wealth? Will you take away his soul and give him a few millions in return? Pray do not. Leave us some corner of the [60] THE REAL TURK earth where we can flee when the shadows of in- dustrialism oppress us; when the soullessness of human faces arouses our despair; when the clutch of the dollar begins to seize upon us and to draw us into the mad vortex of haste for false pleasure and showy rivalry. The East is as yet a land free from nervous desire, a land where one can rest, can seek the eternal solitudes of the spirit can find something more valuable for hu- manity than materialistic comforts. [61] THE ETERNAL FEMININE CHAPTER V THE ETERNAL FEMININE The East is in many ways the antipodes of the West, and especially in its treatment of women. Here women have every right there none. Here men make love to their wives there wives make love to their husbands. Here men wait upon the women there women wait upon the men. The male in the East is petted and spoiled from birth. An Oriental boy is a little autocrat, learning from childhood to dominate the women. On a certain social occasion in this country a young man of the Orient asked for something from an American lady in such a peremptory way as to make the request almost an order. No- ticing her surprise and indignation, he apol- ogized, saying, "Why, at home my mother and sisters fly around to do things for me." Yet the time seems to be coming when "mere man," even in far-away Turkey, is to fall from [65] THE REAL TURK his regal position the "New Woman" is in- vading the East! In all seriousness, the position of the Oriental woman up to this time has indeed been pitiful one of isolation, contempt, ignorance and degra- dation. Nor is this attitude toward woman con- fined to Mohammedan countries: it is the gen- eral attitude of the East, from the Bosphorus to the Pacific Ocean. It was inherited from classic times. Paul seems to have been influenced in his ideas concerning the fair sex by Greek philoso- phy and culture; the Mohammedans took their custom of secluding and veiling women from the Greek civilization then prevalent in the East. In India polygamy prevails, with its conse- quent subjection of woman. In China and Japan the contempt for the female child is great. It must not be supposed that Mohammedan- ism lowered the position of the Arab woman. Before this religion prevailed, it had been a common custom among the Arabs to bury su- perfluous female children alive in the sand. Mo- hammed restricted his followers to four wives, a great advance over the promiscuous intercourse which had preceded; and other worse things, un- [66] THE REAL TURK namable here, were done away by the Prophet. Degradation of women was inherited from the environment, since it has been a racial charac- teristic of the East. With just as little reason might the freedom of the Occidental woman be ascribed wholly to Christianity. The average Mohammedan female does in- deed hold an unenviable position. She cannot feel herself essential to her husband, save in the satisfaction of his sex needs; she cannot in any way be said to share his life; she lives in a little world of her own, a feminine world, into which her husband may enter as he will, but no other man, save her nearest male relations. Her quar- ters, called the harem, are entirely separated from the men's quarters. She does not see her husband's guests. The whole world might come and go, and she be never the wiser. A licen- tious husband, if he be so inclined, may entertain courtesans within his own rooms and his wife never know it, save through tale-bearing serv- ants and she would be unable to prevent it, even if she did know it. What can the wife do, then, to amuse herself? Her greatest source of enjoyment is in visiting [67] THE REAL TURK or receiving visits from other Mohammedan women. During these visits, tongues rattle and local gossip is exchanged. At other times, the Turkish woman amuses herself by smoking, dreaming, playing backgammon, or sleeping. Life in the harem is very boresome. Ennui is the fatal disease of the Oriental woman. She does not, as a rule, know how to read; her head is empty of ideas, and her language is vile. The talk of the harem, in which wives, servants and little children join, is pornographic to a degree. The Constantinople women seek amusement in shopping, which furnishes an opportunity for delightful flirtations; in driving through pleas- ure resorts, where they raise their veils on oc- casions; or in boating on the Sweet Waters, where they display their charms more freely than elsewhere. But the Mohammedan women of the interior of Turkey, of Persia, and of India, have none of these liberties. They never dare to unveil in public, and they must drive in closed carriages. In travelling by boat or train they have special quarters reserved for them, and do not appear where the men are. These are not the worst things Mohammedan [68] A TYPICAL Turkish house, Turkish women boating on the Bosphorus. G YPSY women at the Sweet Waters. THE REAL TURK wives have to put up with. Perhaps the greatest evil of polygamy is its destruction of the home. What ambition would a woman have to save and scrimp and make a home for her husband, and then, as she grows old and ugly, see him take a second wife, young and beautiful? As a result of this danger, they take little thought of the home. Their one aim is to have a good time, and to get their husbands to spend as much money as possible upon them. In Persia, the word for "woman" is used to describe any evil thing. Not only does the Oriental wife run the dan- ger of competition from a second wife, but she is liable at any time to be divorced. The slight- est quarrel, or even dissatisfaction, on the part of the husband may result in a divorce and no legal proceedings are necessary: all the husband has to do is to say before a witness, "I divorce you," and the deed is done. If he says it only once he can take her back when his anger cools; if he says it three times, it is irrevocable, and he cannot take her back again till she has been mar- ried to another man and divorced. For this pur- pose, therefore, there exists a special profession in the Orient: men make a business of marrying [69] THE REAL TURK divorced women for one night, in order that their fond and forgiving husbands of yore may take them back again. Ambiguous and flowery language is often used in the East to soften hard facts. The hus- band may say, "I think you had better visit your mother, my dear," and he is perfectly understood by his discerning wife it is not necessary for him to add, "Do not come back again!" The frequency of divorce varies in different countries and localities, and according to the wealth and position of the men. It is very com- mon among the Egyptians, where some women at twenty have been divorced ten or twelve times. In fact, divorce in Mohammedan coun- tries is a great evil, because through its facility a woman is practically at the mercy of her hus- band. She must manoeuvre day and night to keep in his good pleasure. She lives always in anxiety. Should she, however, desire to divorce her husband, she would have to go through a complicated legal procedure, which makes it dif- ficult for her to get free the freedom is all on the other side. Another degrading effect of polygamy and [70] THE REAL TURK harem life on the Oriental woman is the necessity she is under of suing for her husband's favor in competition with his other wives. She must al- ways be making love to him, and counts herself lucky if he deigns to notice her. The terrible jealousies and intrigues of the harem make life a hell in many cases. The wife who first bears her lord a male child is in great favor, and she holds a position su- perior to the other wives: as mother of a man child she reaches the highest state woman can at- tain in the Orient. As a girl she is neglected, as a wife degraded, but as a mother she is respected and cared for. Through her influence upon her son she may exert a good deal of power. When he marries she becomes the ruler of his house- hold and a tyrant she often is, too. For this reason it is the one desire of the Oriental woman to have a son. This is her dream and this is what her rivals most fear. Therefore they some- times attempt, through bribing the midwife, to maim her so she can never bear children again. To what depths .will jealousy not go! In Persia, besides plurality of wives, and possibility of di- vorce, the Mohammedan man can also have con- [71] THE REAL TURK cubines or keep women for stated periods. The position of these women is legalized by religious law, so that they are not held in dishonor. They may fill such a capacity while young and later marry respectably. The poor generally have but one wife and they live as happily together as any other peas- ant peoples. The lower-class women are not bound up in the fol-de-rol of veil and secluded quarters. Their life is so much in the open that the veil would be often in the way. They wear it, but when they work in the fields they put it up over their head. So they are much freer than their wealthy sisters. For the harem is dis- tinctly an adjunct of the plutocrats. And it is a question whether a legal provision for such men's appetites is any worse morally than the covert licentiousness of Western peoples. Let that country which is without evil be the first to throw stones. Some of our rich men are also po- lygamists, and in the practice of their pleasures they often ruin young girls, whose course may then continue downward until it ends in the gutter. The Oriental women are at least assured of a home, a position in society, and a certain [72] THE REAL TURK amount of happiness. Let us not think that monogamy has stamped out the desires of men, nor that American gentlemen of wealth are al- ways more virtuous than their wealthy Moham- medan brothers in this respect. Mohammedans seek to defend polygamy by arguing that it avoids prostitution; and another defence is that it is necessary in a country where women have no independent means of support (there are few old maids in Turkey marriage means assurance of support and protection). Polygamy may be a social evil, but whether or not it is a moral evil (in some stages of civiliza- tion) is open to question. It is rather inconsis- tent of Christians to hold up their hands in horror at the polygamy of Islamic countries now, while they read with perfect equanimity the lives of Abraham, Jacob, and the other pa- triarchs of the Bible, who were also polygamists. The Turks treat their wives more liberally than many other Mohammedans, and there is more real love and domestic happiness among them than in Persia or India. Along the shores of the Bosphorus, on pleasant summer days, can be seen many a Turkish family father, mother [78] THE REAL TURK and children strolling along together enjoying the fresh air in company a thing unheard of in stricter Mohammedan countries. However, polygamy is now a waning custom in Islam. The influence of European culture has been steadily creating a sentiment against it among progressives, and the Young Turk al- most universally restricts himself to one wife. It is only in the passing generation that the harem exists. The Young Turk aspires to the happiness of a real union a home built up by the love and devotion of two people, one for the other a partnership between man and wife. And he knows this is impossible if he has more than one wife. He also desires his wife to be educated, so that she can be his intellectual and spiritual companion. The young Turkish woman of the present day has often a culture that would eclipse that of many an educated American woman. She reads French fluently, and usually English, also. She devours French novels, and even reads works of philosophy. She is a woman of force and of character no longer the doll-like creature of the harem. Turkish women, like Turkish men, are admir- [74] THE REAL TURK able in character and personality. They have a charm which attracts. In personal appearance they are often very beautiful, with clear delicate complexion, wonderful eyes, and a grace which is the heritage of the Orient. Their voices are melodious, and their manners kindly yet digni- fied. The veil, half revealing, half concealing their charms, renders them still more attractive; and when pushed wholly up on the head, fur- nishes a head-dress which is always becoming, framing the rich oval face and bringing out its delicate contour. A wonderful change has come over the women of Turkey since the Revolution. Rebellion against their oppressed position, long smoulder- ing, broke out in demands for more liberty at a time when liberty was in the air. The women began to appear in the streets and in public places unveiled. Groups of them would meet you bare-faced, with brazen effrontery. A significant sight was that witnessed by the writer just after the Revolution, when at a fete on the shore of the Bosphorus, given to raise money for the exiled Turkish pariots, some two hundred Turkish women sat in the audience, un- [75] THE REAL TURK veiled. This was a miracle indeed for Islam a breaking away from old ties a sign of new conditions and a new world-culture. Prominent Young Turks made speeches one word of which would have caused their death before the consti- tution was declared ; and one speaker turned and addressed the women, assuring them that they would share, too, in this glorious liberty, and that they must prepare themselves to be mothers of a worthy race. We were even waited on by beautiful Turkish maidens, unveiled, who served us ice cream and handed us change. One must have lived in the Old Turkey properly to appreciate this. One of the boldest and most talented among the Young Turkish women is Halliday Hanum, the daughter of a government official of high rank under Abdul Hamid. This officer sacri- ficed promotion and advancement and even en- dangered his life by refusing to take her out of the American College for Girls at Constantino- ple before her graduation. Abdul Hamid would never permit any Turkish man or woman to graduate from the American schools if he could prevent it by threats and pressure. [76] THE REAL TURK Halliday Hanum, up to the time of the Revo- lution, was the first and only Turkish graduate of the American Cqllege for Women. She had married a cultured Young Turk, later made a member of the Board of Education, with whom she continued the training of her mind, reading and discussing French novels, philosophy and history. When the Revolution broke out and freedom was declared, she was one of the best fitted of all Turkish women to represent her sex and her country. She developed into a brilliant writer, and the leading Turkish journals were eager for her work. She was made a member of the Constantinople press club the only female member and she mingled freely with men of all nationalities except her own. Another historic precedent was established when she gave a lecture at her Alma Mater, be- fore an audience of men and women, unveiled. Such boldness had not been known since the days when Kurat-el-Eyn, the Babist, of Persia, ap- peared before her fellow disciples unveiled; which shocked them so that one went and com- mitted suicide, no longer caring to see the light of day after witnessing such shameless effront- [77] THE REAL TURK ery. It was as great a sacrilege against propri- ety as for a woman here to appear nude in public. Such is the force of custom. For her boldness in violating the sacred cus- toms of Islam, Halliday Hanum came near be- ing torn to pieces during the fanatical uprising of April, 1909. Once more the Old Turks were in power, and they sought eagerly for all who had offended them. Halliday was safely hidden, but if she had been found she would have been torn limb from limb. Aggressive suffragism has set an example which the Turkish women were not slow in fol- lowing. They demanded with such persistence the right to attend the sessions of Parliament that it was finally accorded them. The boldness of the women in throwing off the old restraints was modified somewhat after the first flush of liberty had died down. The pres- sure of public opinion on the part of the fanatical Old Turks, who still numbered nine-tenths of the Turkish population, was too great. Women were mobbed in the streets for appearing un- veiled. Finally the Young Turk Committee issued an appeal to the Turkish women to be [78] THE REAL TURK more moderate in their emancipation and to wait patiently for the day when public opinion would be with them. As this advice was for their own good and the good of the cause, it was followed, and the women were more careful about throw- ing up their veils when among fanatics. Yet the movement of emancipation, of uplift, and of education, is going rapidly on. The American College for Girls has been besieged by Turkish applicants, and it is devoting all its energy to preparing the young Turkish woman for her place in the new Empire by the side of the young Turkish man. Other foreign schools are now educating Turkish women, and the government has established schools of its own, so that at last the doors of opportunity are opened and the new woman, enlightened, able, and patriotic, will arise in the East. It is very interesting to meet and converse with these young women, not only Turkish, but Greek, Bulgarian and Armenian, who are being educated up to the standards of modern civiliza- tion. They are like undiscovered lands. If it is fascinating for man to study the psychology of the opposite sex in his own country, how much [79] THE REAL TURK more so to study the women of other races, just blossoming out into the fullness of their intellec- tual powers. For centuries they have been mere dolls. Men asked from them nothing but beauty. Now their minds are developing, and they show great abilities. Imagine a blushing Turkish beauty discussing the political problems of the day or a Bulgarian girl reviewing her sociology for your benefit. They are still rather shy in the presence of men. An account of the women of the Orient would not be complete without a description of the ways of love and courtship there. Love is in- evitable. It has inspired great poems, one of which, "Leila and Majnoon" by Nazami, is the classic of Persian literature, and one of the most beautiful love poems in the world. Majnoon is so intoxicated with his love that he becomes crazed by it. That is the way love strikes one in the Orient that land of nightingales and roses. Love in the cold north is pale compared to love where spicy breezes blow. And it is always love at first sight, since there are no opportunities for courting. One sees a beautiful face, becomes in- toxicated by it, dreams over it, feels that life [80] THE REAL TURK holds no interest for him unless he can possess it ; he speaks to the parents, financial matters are ar- ranged and she is his! It is for her to fall in love with him at her leisure; but since she never has a chance to become familiar with anyone else and has no basis upon which to make compari- sons, she is usually satisfied. It is contrary to strict Mohammedan custom for the man to see his bride except by accident before the day of the marriage. After the cere- mony has been performed the men being en- tertained in their own quarters, and the women separately in the harem the bridegroom is led into his bride's chamber and left there with her. He goes up to her, raises her veil, and for the first times sees her face. If he does not like it, he can get a divorce the next day. Nowadays, however, a chance is given the prospective pair to see each other, and some liberty of choice is left with them. A kind father would not force a girl to marry a man to whom she felt an aver- sion. The two sexes are isolated so much from each other that love, when it does break out, is very powerful, for this is the land of romance ! In the [81] THE REAL TURK spring, with the scent of blossoms in the air, the moonlight lying upon the Bosphorus, and the nightingale breathing its passion forth in liquid notes, every woman is a Houri, invested with celestial charms. It is the place for dreams, for ecstacies, for joys untold a land where love holds sway as the most potent force in the lives of its subjects. In the words of Hafiz : When thus I sit with roses on my breast, Wine in my hand, and the Beloved kind; I ask no more the world can take the rest. Even the Sultan's self is to my mind, On such a planetary night as this, Compared with me a veritable slave. [82] AT HOME CHAPTER VI AT HOME If Charles Wagner had lived and died in the Orient he would never have written his "Simple Life/' because there it is lived so habitually that it is taken as a matter of course. In the Occident there are movements of different kinds on foot for the encouragement of this "simple life," but in the East it needs no encouragement. To an American trained in the etiquette of the West life in Turkey seems like camping out ; and one falls into their way of living with as much de- light as here one leaves the stiff and formal ways of the city for a week or a month of tent life by mountain or seashore. All the unnecessary things are stripped away, and only those things which make for comfort and real ease of living are to be found. The Turk has been a nomad for so long that he still carries the traces of the wanderer about him and his home is more or less an enlarged and glorified tent. What would you think of a home in which [85] THE REAL TURK there were no chairs and no beds, no bathroom, no pictures upon the walls? Yet such a home may be comfortable and artistic. Beautiful rugs upon the walls take the place of pictures ; and in- stead of chairs, the Orientals have long divans running all around the room, which are wider than our couches, serving both as chairs and as beds. The Turks sit upon them cross-legged, in the attitude so well known through pictures, and read or write in that position. They never write at a desk or table, but use the left hand to sup- port the paper, and with the little inkwell upon the divan or on the ground in front of them will write all day. In the University of Cairo, one of the largest in the world, I saw neither desks nor black- boards. In the various open-air courts the stu- dents were seated cross-legged on the ground around their hodja, or teacher, listening to a lec- ture or taking notes on small pieces of paper which they held in their hands. But to return to the divans. When you come to an Oriental house in which you are to stop, you are shown into a room such as has been de- scribed and take up your abode upon a section [86] THE REAL TURK of the divan. Anywhere from one to ten per- sons can be accommodated in one room. By day you recline there and chat a favorite Ori- ental occupation or read; and when night comes blankets are brought and the same divans serve as beds. The people roll themselves up, head to head and foot to foot, candles are extin- guished, and soon all are asleep. When the Oriental is in his own home he wears only his underclothes to bed. Upon getting up in the morning he puts on a long dressing-gown and cases his bare feet in slippers a costume more comfortable than any other on earth. Why shouldn't men enjoy the luxury of such gowns as well as women? Collars are unknown. If they wear shirts made to hold collars they leave off the collars. When dressing for the street they slip on a pair of light, loose trousers, possibly a jacket if the weather is cool, and over all the long silk gown which comes up to the chin when buttoned and conceals a multitude of sins if sin it be to have dirty linen. With his large, easy shoes, his light, flowing robe, and a sunshade over his head, an Oriental [87] THE REAL TURK is as comfortable in warm weather as costume will permit. Notice this their costume is built for comfort. Those of us who know what it is to hit camp in the Maine woods after a long, hot journey from the city and strip off all the bar- baric trappings of civilization, and then loaf around in the luxury of camp clothes, can realize how comfortable life is in the Orient as regards clothes, at least. On account of the seclusion of women and their absence from social and business life, the men of the Orient become rather lax about their personal appearance. They seldom shave more than once a week, or twice a week at most. If you meet a government official, an editor, a pro- fessor, a statesman the highest people of the Empire you may find them with a hirsute growth upon their faces which the social life of the Occident taboos. Where the Turk comes into frequent contact with Europeans, this is changed, however, and he adopts their standards. It was laughable yet pathetic to see one little change made by the Revolution in the matter of street dress. Many of the old-style Turks had been in the habit of appearing on the street in [88] THE REAL TURK their comfortable, kimona-like home costume. Under the new regime this was considered a little behind the times, especially as the European la- dies protested to the government against this un- tidiness; a law was passed by Parliament prohibiting these poor old men from appearing upon the street in decollete, and they had to dress up thereafter. I do not wish to be understood, however, as branding the Turk with slovenliness. He is by far the neatest and cleanest of all the Orientals. His person he keeps scrupulously clean, washing his face, neck, hands and feet with religious reg- ularity (ablutions are one of the requirements of his religion) . If he fails to wash the rest of his body it is because total immersion is not one of the ideals of the East. An Oriental can live for a long time without a complete bath, and be as happy as an Englishman would be miserable under the same circumstances. His clothes he invariably keeps clean, and even the laborers al- ways look neat. A costume which contains so many patches that the original cloth is hard to discover will yet be clean and well-kept. They are neat, too, in their habits. A Turkish [89] THE REAL TURK food shop is much neater than a Greek or Ar- menian one. I have travelled several thousand miles on ship with the peasants of all races in the Orient, and have discovered that, of all of these, the Turks are the neatest. When they come in contact with European civilization and adopt its costume and habits they are great dandies, exquisite in their dress and ap- pearance. The Turk is one of the handsomest, most graceful, and most charming of men, and no one could fail to be attracted by a gentleman of this race who puts himself out to please. In one respect the East stands at a point to which we may hope to progress after a few cen- turies of effort and struggle for common sense in clothes : it has no change of styles that tyranny of the tailors which devours so large a portion of our attention, time, patience and money. The Oriental buys a silk robe and it is good for life. It may even pass down to the next generation and still be in style. He has no collars, neckties, silk hosiery, to change from season to season, no spring styles and winter styles, no change in the form of his shoes and his red fez is good all the year round, and every year. [90] THE REAL TURK The fez is as democratic a hat as the derby. It lasts for years, and costs at the most only a medjedie, or eighty cents. Rich and poor, high and low, wear the fez. It is the national head- dress of the Ottoman Empire, and to wear any- thing else would be unpatriotic. If a Turk in the interior, where Mohammedan customs are still rigidly observed, should appear in a felt hat or a straw hat he would undoubtedly be mobbed just as much as if he insulted his country's flag. After the Revolution the New Turks tried to discard the fez by gradually modifying its shape and appearance, but the opposition was too great and the matter was dropped for the time. One of my Turkish friends, when he went on any ex- cursion with me, would take a cap in his pocket and upon leaving the outskirts of the town sub- stitute it for his fez, which is not an ideal head- dress for a hot sunny day. I wonder that the Turks have so long let this religious custom of the fez stand against their comfort. In winter it is all right, but in the bright sun of summer it heats the head and affords no protection for the eyes and neck. Usually the peasants attach a handkerchief to the back of the fez and drape it [91] THE REAL TURK over the neck to prevent sunstroke. At every street corner in the city are little shops for cleans- ing and reshaping the fez usually run by Jews or Armenians. This work is done for one cent, and makes your fez as good as new. The Turk reverses our customs in this : in en- tering a house he keeps his hat on; and he bows gallantly to ladies, but never lifts his hat. The Turkish custom of taking the shoes off upon en- tering a house is one which, far from being ridic- ulous, as many Americans think, is both comfort- able and hygienic. None of the dirt of the street is tracked into the houses and in the East the streets are pretty dirty. Our housekeepers here who lose so much good-temper over the careless way the men folk have of tracking mud and dirt across a newly-cleaned floor can realize the ad- vantage of taking off one's shoes at the door. The old-time Turk wears thick socks and low shoes without any leather at the back, walking with a peculiar motion which is necessary to keep such shoes on and developing tremendous ankles. Upon reaching home he slips out of his shoes without needing to use his hands in the process, and walks across the threshold in his stocking- [92] THE REAL TURK feet. Then he curls up on a divan, as comfort- able as a dog by the fire. The washing of the feet is a religious duty and since it is performed from one to five times a day there is no offensive odor. The New Turk, however, who has become affected with European footwear, puts on over his shoes a kind of leather overshoe something like a low rubber, and takes this off upon enter- ing a house, keeping his shoes on. You Americans who are suffering from afflic- tions which require the services of a chiropodist what would you not give if you could shuffle off your tight shoes whenever you entered a house and sit as the Turk does, in your stocking- feet? What a comfort! And yet I will guaran- tee that you have considered the Turk a most eccentric and unnatural man because his custom as regards the covering of head and foot are diametrically opposite to yours. Such little things as this, even, may teach us tolerance for other races, whose customs seem so different from ours. Let us remember that there is a reason for every such custom and that often this custom may be intrinsically better than [93] THE REAL TURK our own. I think a great opportunity is lost in our schools by not presenting the customs of foreign peoples in such a way as to develop tol- erance and breadth in the pupils. Our geogra- phies have aimed too much at arousing interest by sBowing the peculiarities of foreign races. Just as sure as a child comes to think any race peculiar, he will despise it. He should be shown the deep underlying sameness of human na- ture, which expresses itself in different cus- toms under different environments and needs. On the surface men seem different; at the bottom they are one seeking the same things in life, moved by the same needs and passions. To a stranger, a Turk in his red fez, peculiar garb, and swarthy complexion, is something to wonder at and even ridicule, as the old joke in "Punch" illustrates: " 'Arry, 'ere comes a stranger 'Eave 'alf a brick at 'im." We most of us have bricks up our sleeves for the stranger ; and what the world needs is to realize that no men are strangers. When you have associated with the Turk for a while he will become as a brother to you, and the differences will seem [94] THE REAL TURK to drop away. It is no honor to be provincial in one's attitude toward others. In matters of diet the Turk again displays his simplicity and common sense. One of our most noted dietitians, whom I met in Constantinople, declares that the Turks have the finest physique of any race in the world, and lays this fact to their simple diet and abstinence from liquor. Although a man of wealth or a gentleman in official life may surround himself with a luxury of diet befitting his rank, it is the exception ; those in ordinary walks of life eat very simply. For Breakfast they take only the small cup of Turk- ish coffee, and possibly a roll. At noon they eat a very simple lunch perhaps only a bowl of sour milk (yaourt) and bread. At night comes the main meal of the day, but this is not elab- orate. It consists of meat and rice (pilaff), sev- eral dishes of vegetables, salad, and pastry, ending with the delicious coffee. In the summer the Turks are almost vegetarians, consuming very little meat, but eating fresh salads, good vegetables and fruit. The diet of the workman or the peasant is simpler still. He lunches on a piece of bread [95] THE REAL TURK and an onion or any fruit in its season. A quarter of a loaf of bread costs him one cent, a melon, a bunch of grapes, or a piece of cheese costs another cent, and for two cents his lunch is complete. At night he has a stew with cheap vegetables and a bit of meat in it the whole thing costing four or five cents. Yet the strength of the Turkish workman with such a slim diet is amazing. The hamals or porters can carry loads of from two hundred to eight hundred pounds the most astounding burden-bearers in the world. It is nothing for one of them to carry a piano on his back. I have counted twenty-four chairs upon one hamal. Perhaps it is because of their simple diet as well as because of the soothing effect of their cli- mate and the absence of excitement and worry, that the Orientals do not need exercise as much as we do. They never suffer from indigestion, although they will remain sedentary from morn- ing to night. The idea of walks or games or horseback rides for the sake of exercise seems preposterous to them. It might be of interest to know some of the Turkish dishes. Food made from milk they are [96] ENDER of liquorice water. THE REAL TURK very fond of a relic of their pastoral life, per- haps. The most famous dish of this kind is yaourt, a form of cultured milk, which has the consistency of thick sour milk, and can even be carried in a handkerchief. It is made from the milk of the cow and also from goat's milk and from that of the buffalo-cow, which is rich in cream. No more delicious food than this has ever been invented for hot weather. Sutlach is a rice-milk of the consistency of gruel, very delicate and easy to eat when the ap- petite flags. Then there is mdhaldbi, something like cornstarch pudding, eaten with sugar and rose water ; and taouk-gok-sud, or chicken-breast milk, made of grated chicken-breasts. All of these dishes are appetizing and easily digested. The Orientals are fond also of sweet pastries, of which they make many delicious kinds. Ekmek-ka-daif is a sort of bread soaked in honey and eaten with the kaimak or thick cream of the buffalo-cow, made up in the consistency of cottage-cheese. Or if you prefer, there is paklava made of thin layers of pastry with honey and ground English walnuts between the [97] THE REAL TURK layers. Tel-ka-dcdf is made of strings of pastry soaked in honey. These dishes are almost cloying in their sweet- ness there is nothing weak about them! Half a portion would fill most people with dulcitude enough to last for days. In vegetables and fruits the Orient is rich. Many of our fruits originated in the East and were brought to Europe by the Arabian con- quests and commerce. In Constantinople one can get fresh fruits almost all the year 'round. Strawberries commence in May to call to the hillsides of the Bosphorus the pickers, who fill the marketplaces with baskets of the luscious fruit. Cherries appear in June and last for a month or more for two cents you can get all you can eat, and they are delicious on hot, dusty tramps in the country. Just as the cherries go the melons begin to come in. There are many varieties of them and they last into the autumn. Then the figs and grapes appear. It is worth while visiting Constantinople if only to buy a bunch of those magnificent grapes from a street vender large and beautiful clusters that will carry you back to Sunday school days and the [98] THE REAL TURK picture-cards portraying the spies of Moses bringing back from the brook Eshcol a huge bunch of grapes upon a pole between their shoulders. Perhaps then you had periods of doubt and scepticism, as I did, but come to Con- stantinople, and for two cents you can get a bunch large enough to dispel your doubts. Pears and apples last into the winter, and in January there begin to appear the splendid Jaffa oranges and tangerines from Egypt, and the cycle is complete. Fresh vegetables also can be obtained almost through the year. Tomatoes, peas, and beans begin to come from Egypt in February. Lettuce and cabbages can be picked fresh from the gar- dens about Constantinople as late as January. The egg-plant is a favorite vegetable, as is the okra. Meats are poor in Turkey, all except chicken and mutton. The beef comes from Russia, Bul- garia, and South America and is poor. Chickens are cheap, but one tires of them. The mutton is good, but is cut in peculiar ways. The meat of the hog is of course not to be had in Moham- medan countries except from Christian butchers. [99] THE REAL TURK The Turks have a favorite dish which consists of egg-plant stuffed with chopped onions and rice, and cooked in oil delicious but hearty. They also stuff marrows with chopped meat and rice. Another dish is rice wrapped in grape-leaves and steamed. Last, but not least, is the great staple food of the Orient, pilaff, which is as necessary to their existence as the potato is to the Irish. Pilaff is rice cooked in a certain way so as to preserve each grain distinct and firm. It is made from un- polished rice, the little white powder about each grain forming a gelatinous coat in cooking. It is boiled in mutton fat and has a delicious flavor. There is a chemical difference in the rice thus cooked, owing to this little coat of gelatine about each grain, which makes it easier to digest than our rice. Often I sigh for pilaff as the He- brews did for the fleshpots of Egypt. It is a unique dish, and a much more satisfying and healthful staple than potatoes. There are dif- ferent forms of pilaff: it is sometimes cooked with small currants and pinenuts, and sometimes mixed with bits of roast mutton, when it is called kebab-pilaff. The most delicate pilaff is that [100] THE REAL TURK" made by the Persians and flavored with orange peel. A plate full of the pilaff with the freshly-cooked mutton sliced and scattered through it, followed by a bowl of yaourt, a cup of Turkish coffee and a cigarette, puts you in a condition of contentment where you do not envy even kings. Before I leave the subject of food I must men- tion a Persian dinner to which I was once invited in Ramleh, a suburb of Alexandria. It was nine o'clock before we reached the house. I was very hungry, as I had been travelling all day, and was ready to sit right down and eat. But we chatted away in the guest room with no hint of food until I began to wonder if the cook had absconded or had had his head chopped off for flirting with my friend's wife. It was ten o'clock. Still the talk went on, my host entertaining me in execrable French and I answering in worse. I don't know which of us was the more bored, but I hope he did not feel any worse than I did. At last the signal for dinner came, just in time to save me from an acute attack of nervous pros- tration. It was eleven o'clock. If I had only known that it was the Persian custom to do the [101] THE REAL TURK after-dinner talking before dinner, to dine late at night, and to fall asleep immediately after, I should have fortified myself with a supper at six o'clock and been spared this agony. The meal progressed through the various stages of salad, meat and pilaff, and vegetables, until it came to fricasseed partridge. I was mildly surprised to see my host pick up several choice bits of this delicacy with his fingers and put them on my plate. That is a great cour- tesy in the East. I was not able to eat all the meat he gave me, and at the end a perfectly good wing was still left on my plate. As my Per- sian friend passed my plate to the servant he took off this wing with his fingers and put it back on the platter. We have only to go four hundred years back to find similar customs prevalent in the best society of England. Often the Orientals eat without individual plates the peasants always do. A bowl of soup is put down on the table and all attack it with big wooden spoons until it is annihilated. Then meat may come on in little rolls, and these they eat with their fingers. A bowl of yaourt is next placed in front of them and that is scooped out [102] THE REAL TURK1 with pieces of bread. When the meal is finished the only utensils to be washed are the wooden spoons and a few bowls and platters. This is what one might call simplified housekeeping. [103] A GREAT OTTOMAN PATRIOT AND TEACHER CHAPTER VII A GREAT OTTOMAN PATRIOT AND TEACHER The movement instituted in the Ottoman Empire by the so-called New Turk party was one of the most remarkable events in history unique in the closeness and secrecy of its organi- zation, unique in its greatness of accomplishment with so little expenditure of force, and, above all, unique in the change it wrought in Turkey from the grossest absolutism to the highest kind of idealism. Perhaps no country in the world was controlled by a foody of men so ideal in their policies, so truly patriotic, so utterly de- voted to the welfare of their native land, as those who governed Turkey after the Revolution. The explanation of this is easy to give. Every movement from the Old to the New calls out idealism, devotion and self-sacrifice. Such a movement can only be brought to pass by those who are ready to suffer for it to give their lives [107] THE REAL TURK for it, if necessary. And who brought about the renovation of Turkey? It is just such men as these ; men who had already dearly paid for their patriotism by prison and exile, by confiscation of property, by long years of waiting. The more we sacrifice for a cause, the more we are ready to sacrifice further for it; and those who give most not those who get are the ones who love most. Therefore it happened that the men who came back to Turkey from exile, from imprison- ment, from expatriation, came back with charac- ters purged as by fire, came back with ideals of service of a height reached only in the great epochs of a nation's history. They are the George Washingtons, the Adamses, the Jeffer- sons of Turkey. Among these idealists there is none of loftier devotion, of purer motives, of wider vision, than Tewfik Fikret Bey. Although he has never been in exile, his life is typical of true Turkish patriotism, and gives us a glimpse of the oppression under the old regime. Fikret Bey was born and brought up in Stam- boul, the Turkish quarter of Constantinople. When he was a young man his father received one of those appointments which the Sultan so [108] THE REAL TURK generously gave to all suspected radicals ; in this case it was the governorship of Acca, a penal town on the coast of Syria, of very unhealthful climate and unsanitary conditions. In this exile his parents spent the rest of their lives, and his father died there without Fikret's being allowed to go to see him. The reason for his exile was a peculiar one. He was a very generous man, and used to give in large quantities to the poor, who frequented his house in considerable numbers. This gave his enemies ground for telling His Majesty that he was trying to make himself popular with the people and that he was a dan- gerous man. As the Sultan did not wish any- one to be popular in Constantinople except himself, he sent the man to Acca, where he could practice his charity without danger. In conse- quence of this experience, Fikret Bey, who is as generous as his father was, has been obliged to be very cautious and circumspect in his charities, never giving openly. Meanwhile Fikret had been sent to the Galata Serai for his education. This college, although a government institution, was founded and op- erated under French influence; and no doubt [109] THE REAL TURK Fikret imbibed many liberal ideas there. The French language opened up to him the store- house of Western knowledge and thought, and he read deeply along these lines. After graduating he was appointed teacher there, a position in which he was very successful and popular with his students. He is a born teacher. While he was at the Galata Serai, one of the most interesting episodes of his life took place. A new Turkish weekly was started called the Serveti Funnoun or "Treasures of Science," and he was appointed editor-in-chief. In this position he had a splendid outlet for his abilities as a writer and a leader. The paper had some measure of freedom at first, and Fikret exercised an influence over the young men of his time in a direct and personal way even more than in what he wrote. This young man, possessed of a most charming personality, a writer and thinker, and of broader learning than most of his contemp- oraries, began to be the leader and idol of the youth of Constantinople; and the office of the Serveti Funnoun became the rendezvous of a coterie of liberal young men who gathered there from week to week to discuss modern and radical [110] THE REAL TURK subjects. Fikret Bey was one of those men cheerful, sympathetic, intuitive who know how to appreciate and draw out ability in others ; and he inspired many young geniuses to think and to write. His influence at this time was great. But such a state of affairs could not go on for long. Any man who was popular and any home to which visitors gathered in too great numbers became objects of suspicion. It was inevitable that some envious person should report these meetings at the office of the Serveti Funnoun to the Sultan, and take advantage of his despotic nature to arouse suspicion against this brilliant young editor who was so popular with the youths of Constantinople. The homes of the editors were searched and all their books confiscated. Several members of the staff, including Fikret Bey, were imprisoned and brought to trial at the palace. Nothing of serious nature could be proved against them, and after a few days they were set free. But, although liberated from the material prison, Fikret Bey walked forth an ob- ject of suspicion a mental and moral prisoner for ten long years. For a year or more he re- mained in close retirement, not daring to assume [in] THE REAL TURK any duties of a public character. It was at the end of this period that he commenced his work as Professor of Turkish at Robert College, with which he was connected until the Revolution broke out, nine years in all. This was the darkest period of his life. Very few people came to see him. He was forced to exercise the greatest cau- tion in regard to his actions, and none of his powers of leadership and thought could find ex- pression. He was obliged to see his country, which he loved with such a passionate love, robbed and oppressed by the Padishah, and in no way could he serve it. His genius and his pa- triotism smouldered within him and turned to pessimism. He became melancholy, even sad; yet throughout it all he maintained his kindness, his unselfishness and his charm of personality, which nothing could subdue. It is hard to realize in America what the op- pression under the old regime was. It was not only that things could not be written in the papers, or spoken in public, but it was hardly possible even for people to converse together on political or liberal subjects. Meetings were for- bidden, and the mere dining together of sus- [112] THE REAL TURK pected people would be dangerous. Spies were everywhere. The officials at the steamboat land- ings were obliged to make reports on the pas- sengers, and sentinel-boxes were stationed at convenient places so that watch might be kept on suspected houses. At Therapia, along the quay in front of the different embassies, there were al- ways men fishing; weather never interfered with their sport, because they were paid by the Sultan to spy on the embassies and see who went in and out of them. On all the boats and cars and in public places where men might gather and talk, spies were placed in great numbers, so that no one dared to talk on serious subjects. Even Europeans were obliged to be cautious in their conversation in public places, and as for the Turks, only such subjects as are proper at an afternoon tea were open to them. Such limitation was not only very irksome but tragic to a man like Fikret Bey. He saw himself powerless to help his country. He could have held office under the old regime, had he wished it in fact, he had been appointed at an earlier date to a position in the Sublime Porte, in con- nection with the Foreign Office ; but after a short [113] THE REAL TURK service in that capacity, seeing how rotten were the conditions there, he resigned. His resigna- tion was not accepted by the government, and for years his name was down on the books for that position and he could have drawn a salary all that time without doing a stroke of work. This experience showed him that even to hold a public office would not give him the slightest op- portunity for real service. The system was too strong. During his long period of helplessness, he turned to various things for amusement and for an outlet to his energies. One thing which ab- sorbed his attention for some time was the de- signing and superintending of his new residence near the college grounds, on a hill overlooking the Bosphorus. He was the sole architect of this house, which is unique in its way, full of delight- ful angles and viewpoints. On the top is a cupola commanding a magnificent view of the Bosphorus, in which he spent much of his time. A model which he had made in cardboard he used to show with childlike pleasure to his vis- itors : it was made with great neatness and skill, an exact replica of the house and grounds with [114] THE REAL TURK the paths winding in and out among tiny bushes of green tissue paper. He took much delight in working in the garden himself, planting trees, weeding the flowers forgetting his troubles in communion with Nature. Another thing which served in some way as a means of expression for his artistic nature was painting, of which he was very fond, and in which he had attained a great deal of skill and feeling in an amateur way for he was self- taught. He rigged up a studio for himself in his study, and decorated the walls of his home with the productions of his own brush. While professor at Robert College, he of course came into relation with Europeans and Americans, and had some social life in common with them; but not much, because for his own sake foreigners did not dare to call upon him too often. His beautiful wife has been a true help- mate and consolation to him. She is of course also liberal in her ideas, and on several occasions went to social functions given by the Americans and mingled freely with them without a veil; but as her husband was threatened with imprison- ment if he continued to permit this, she had to [115] THE REAL TURK remain veiled, as far as Americans and other foreigners were concerned. She is a woman who would be an attraction in any social gathering. At the time when I first met Fikret Bey he was under this cloud sad and without hope for himself or for his country. How could he know that so soon the clouds were to pass, the bonds were to be broken, and he was to be free to dedicate his genius to the service of Turkey! It was in June that I saw him thus depressed. On the 24th of July the Revolution burst out like lightning from a clear sky, and from that day on Fikret Bey was in the full exercise of his powers, and overdriven with work. As soon as the Constitution was declared and the restrictions were removed from public speech and from the press, many Turkish newspapers and journals came into existence. Of one such paper, The Tanine, Fikret was urged by his friends to become editor-in-chief, and under his management it made an excellent reputation. Thorough and conscientious in everything that he undertakes, he devoted himself with great earnestness to the work, going over very care- fully everything published in the paper, even to [116] THE REAL TURK the advertisements, revising articles which were faulty or poor in style, and often almost re- writing certain parts. Here again, as when edi- tor of the Serveti Funnoun, he did Jiis best to encourage rising genius. It was very hard for him to refuse articles. "Let us give a chance," he would say, "to these young men who have never had as yet an opportunity to write for the public." While connected with The Tanine, Fikret Bey received two offers which he declined: one was to be Minister of Education, and the other was to be President of Galata Serai. His friends could not make out why he refused these opportunities for service, the first of which was especially de- sirable and suited to his acquirements and learn- ing. The reason he gave was that he wished to found a school of his own when the time came and that he could not be satisfied with either of these positions. He was also offered a professor- ship of Turkish Literature in the Turkish Uni- versity at Constantinople, but he refused that, saying that he was not capable of filling it. Sev- eral different men had to be engaged to take the place, which he alone could easily have filled. [117] THE REAL TURK Meanwhile his work on the paper was becom- ing very arduous and confining. On account of his high ideal of what a newspaper ought to be, he gave so much time to revision that he had no opportunity of writing anything himself, or of doing any other original work. He was con- stantly urged to give up a position which allowed such little opportunity for an expression of his real genius ; and in the winter an illness brought on from overwork inclined him to listen to this advice. At about this time many of the alumni of the Galata Serai who had been students of his when he was professor there persuaded him to accept the presidency of the College, assuring him that it would go to ruin if he did not. So he became President of the Galata Serai. During his administration there he made many changes. The school was really in a bad condi- tion when he began his work disorganized, badly disciplined and more or less corrupt in its management. He improved it wherever possi- ble. It was unfortunately under certain limita- tions of a political character which rendered it impossible to make a clean sweep. Again he was hampered by politics, and was forced to resign [118] THE REAL TURK from the Galata Serai. He was immediately welcomed back to Robert College as the head of the Turkish Department, where he has since re- mained. The idol of his heart and the goal of his am- bitions was to found a school of his own in which he could be absolutely free to carry out his own ideas of education. He would model it some- what after Des Moulin's school with a great deal of freedom in the government of the stu- dents, small groups in individual houses and close relations between teacher and student. This plan of a school to fit young men for mold- ing the future of Turkey came to his mind im- mediately after the founding of the Constitution. This ideal school would train the students to appreciate their personal dignity, their duties and their social and political rights. All the latest ideas of teaching and pedagogy would be realized here. The instruction would be more than merely scholastic. Attention would be given to physical culture and manual labor. The students would learn how to use the hammer and saw, how to take care of gardens, etc. in fact, they would be trained in all the requirements of [119] THE REAL TURK actual life. The attention and observation of the students would be cultivated by experimental in- struction. The system of instruction would have for its purpose to develop supple and able in- tellects and not merely to cram the mind with knowledge. The course of study in this school would be de- signed to cover eight years and to turn the stu- dent out at the end of that time not only equipped with a general education, but also pre- pared to take up and practice the special profes- sion he might have chosen. Thus the students would be able to earn their own living immedi- ately upon graduating, and would complete their professional knowledge in the practice of their profession. This would necessitate the omission of a good deal of mere book knowledge. The aim of the system would be, in the words of Fikret Bey, to "develop a logical reason and to trace a framework of general ideas, luminous and precise. Education is a means, and not an end." The shortening of the course to eight years would be imperative on account of the imme- diate need of Turkey for young men trained, not [120] THE REAL TURK in the old bureaucracy, but in the highest social and civic ideals. In the last years of the course, civic instruction would be made the pivot around which everything else would center. Lectures would be frequently given on the great national and social problems. The school would try to efface all race hatred and intolerance. Excur- sions would be made at home and abroad for social, historical and economic study. Care would be taken to prepare the student for social life, and to overcome such idiosyncra- cies as timidity, egotism, and emotionalism. They would be taught how to speak and act in society. Numerous sports would form part of the training, such as hunting, fishing, riding on horseback, canoeing and swimming the pur- pose of these being not only to perfect the body but to cultivate sangfroid and precision mens sana in corpore sano. At present the young Turk has no career open to him except in the bureaucracy. Fikret would not only fit his students for other professions, such as agriculture and business, but would en- deavor to overcome that prejudice which exists in the minds of the Turks for any but a govern- [121] THE REAL, TURK ment position. If the constitutional government in Turkey has come to stay, and if the country is to progress with rapid strides in the develop- ment of its resources and institutions, what a great need there is for just such a school as this, which would send out young men filled with the highest ideals and equipped with the knowledge necessary to serve their country! It is because of a dearth of such men now that the Young Turk party can accomplish so little of immediate reform. The people must be educated up to it. It may be, also, that such a school, if it could be successfully initiated, would give instruction to the West in the matter of education. Can we pretend that our system of higher education is a model one? Is it fitted to the times? Does it turn out men of character? Has it got rid of all "sterile book-knowledge," as Fikret calls it? The great need of Turkey, by the law of neces- sity, may call forth a better system of education than our modern Occident contains. Fikret Bey is the second greatest, if not the greatest, poet of the Ottoman Empire. The lau- reateship of Turkey, if such a thing existed, he [122] THE REAL TURK would have to share with Abdul Hak Hamid, the poet and dramatist, for Fikret is a purely lyric poet and his work is limited in quantity. In the year 1899-1900, at about the time he came to Robert College, he brought out a small edition of his poetry with the consent of the Min- ister of Public Instruction. The edition was. quickly exhausted and has never been re- published. Since then he has written a few poems of patriotic nature, one of which became immediately famous all over Constantinople, al- though it was never printed, but had to be passed on orally on account of the strictness of censor- ship under the old regime. It is known as The Mists, and is a lamentation over Constantinople, the Queen of the East, mistress of so many peo- ples, gradually sinking into obscurity. The poem is in part as follows: A cloud holds thy horizon in clinging embrace; An obscurity white slowly grows o'er thy face, Blotting out and absorbing; the mist's heavy net Veils the scene, as with dust, to a faint silhouette A majestic dust veil, what lies ' neath this robe By its folds is concealed our regard cannot probe. But thee, oh how fitly do sad veils conceal, Arena of horrors, fit nought should reveal. Arena of horrors, yea, majesty's stage; O glorious setting for tragedy's rage! [128] THE REAL TURK Thou of greatness and pomp at once cradle and grave; Queen eternally luring, the Orient thy slave. What bloody amours with no shuddered protest Have been held to thy generous harlot breast. Oh within the deep Marmara's azure embrace, As one dead sleepest thou, whilst her waves thee enlace. Old Byzance, still thou keepest immune to all harm, After husbands a thousand, thy fresh virgin charm; Thy beauty the magic of youth still retains, The trembling of eyes seeing thee yet remains. To the eye of the stranger how lookest thou dame, With thy languorous sapphire-blue eyes, oh how tame ! But the tameness is that of the woman of shame, Without dole for the tears shed o'er thee, o'er thy fame. As though sapping thy very foundations in gloom, A traitor hand added the poison of doom, O'er each particle spreadeth hypocrisy's stain; Not one spot of purity there doth remain; All stain: of hypocrisy, jealousy, greed, Naught else and no hope of aught else hence proceed. Of the millions of foreheads protected by thee, How few, shining clearly, and pure may one see? Thou Debauched of the Ages, sleep on till mists fail. Veil thyself, O thou Tragedy, O city, veil.* This poem reveals in its sad strains utter hope- lessness and pessimism. Soon after the revolu- tion of last July, however, which wrought such a great change in Turkey, Fikret wrote a sequel to The Mists, taking for his theme The New Constantinople. *From translation by Miss Hester D. Jenkins. The Open Court, 1909. [124] THE REAL TURK His poetry marks an advance in spontaneity and freedom of form over that which has here- tofore represented Turkey for Turkish poetry in the past has been of very rigid meter, with much rhyme and little flexibility. He has tried new forms of meter, more European in character, and his lyrics are full of feeling and music. Many of them are written in praise of nature and contain that beautiful imagery which is pecu- liarly the gift of the Oriental. The character of Tewfik Fikret Bey is lofty, as his personality is charming. The best people among the Turks seem to possess a "New Eng- land conscience," if one may use that term a conscience and an ideal which put them at once above all temptation of power, influence, or lux- ury. One cannot imagine Fikret Bey commit- ting the slightest act of selfishness, greed, or narrow partisanship. It was with difficulty that he could be persuaded to accept money for pri- vate lessons which he gave while connected with Robert College. The poor he has had always in mind, and his charity toward them, exercised in numerous hidden ways, was all the more praise- worthy, because under the old regime such things [125] THE REAL TURK were difficult and likely to arouse suspicion. His kindness and generosity are so great as to attach all his friends to him with an ardent devotion. At the same time he possesses a natural dignity and a passionate nature which make him the last man in the world to trifle with. It is this com- bination of qualities which made him such an ex- cellent teacher and administrator. His personal courage is great. During the late reaction his name was upon the list of those who were to be killed. He was urged to go into hiding, but he replied: "If it is my destiny to be killed, I shall be killed; if it is not, I shall live," and he abso- lutely refused to hide. It was evidently his destiny to live, for Constantinople was rescued before any harm could come to him. His coun- try needed such a man, whose ideals are of the purest and loftiest kind, whose patriotism is as far-seeing as it is ardent, and whose character is unimpeachable. It is because Turkey can produce such men as this that her future looks hopeful. [183] TURKISH SCHOOLS CHAPTER VIII TURKISH SCHOOLS Education in Turkey is at present in an inter- esting state of transition; it has been and still is, to a large extent, purely scholastic. Could we transport ourselves to the Europe of the Middle Ages, we should see just the kind of education which has held sway in Mohammedan countries since the day of Mohammed. The chief pur- pose of the schools has been to educate the clergy; the basis of education has been the Koran with its commentaries, and the Sunna or Book of Traditions about Mohammed, just as in Medi- eval Europe religious speculation formed the chief interest of scholars. The Koran, however, holds even greater sway in the higher Islamic education, for the reason that it furnishes the chief basis for both civil and religious law. Hence it is the text-book, not only of theologians, but also of jurists. Science in the modern sense has never played a large part in such an educational system. Extreme reli- [129] THE REAL TURK gious faith opposes free inquiry and criticism as blasphemous. However, this naivete of mind cannot endure in the face of Western progress and Western triumphs, because of the application of modern science to the needs of life. Modern schools are slowly being established throughout the Orient, and the higher education consists of more than theology and jurisprudence. The introduction of modern medical schools, both Turkish and Christian, has done much to hasten this progress. Constantinople possesses an excellent school of this kind, and there are today many Turkish physicians of good training and professional equipment. But let us begin at the beginning, which in any educational system is the primary schools. In the East these are called "mosque schools" and are under the domain of the clergy, as they still are in the Catholic countries of Europe. The teachers are usually mullahs or softas. The Koran takes its preeminence from the start: every day verses are learned from this sacred text and recited viva voce by the class in unison. The louder they shout the better, and the hodja [130] N old style Turk rather impervious to things modern, but full of native dignity and character. THE REAL TURK or teacher leads the chorus, joining with his own loud voice when the recitation flags, or beating time peremptorily with his bamboo wand. It makes no difference that these verses are in Arabic and are not understood by the children. At other times when a single pupil is reciting, the others pay no attention but go on studying aloud, so that the school room is always noisy, and to Western senses, disorderly. The elemen- tary subjects, such as reading, writing and arithmetic, are more or less successfully taught, as are also bits of geography and history, strongly colored by patriotism and religion. Girls and boys attend these schools together and are intellectual companions until the age of puberty, which comes much earlier in Eastern countries than in the West. Such schools exist, in the imagination of the Turkish Minister of Education, in every town and village of the Em- pire; but in reality they exist only where local effort keeps them going, which is chiefly in cities, large towns and suburbs. They are very poorly equipped (the pupils have no chairs or desks but sit on mattresses upon the floor), sadly lacking [181] THE REAL TURK in funds, and provided with teachers whose learning and efficiency would not come up to even the poorest European standards. Educa- tion is not compulsory, and the lower classes seldom send their children to school. Thus the illiteracy of Mohammedan countries is enormous. Mature persons can hardly count in simple num- bers. An old Turkish woman who sold her own needlework in a street of Constantinople asked me to count up my few purchases and tell her what they amounted to a testimony both to the ignorance and to the simple, honest trust of the average Mohammedan mind among the lower classes. With the primary schools the girls' public edu- cation stops. There is no higher education for women as yet in Mohammedan countries,* al- though movements are already on foot to es- tablish schools for such a purpose. If the girl belongs to a family of the upper classes, she may receive further education at home. Many Turk- * Exceptions to this are the Sultan Ahmed School, the oldest in Constantinople, where girls can study grammar, arithmetic, Persian, Turkish, history and embroidery; and the Dar-ul-malu- mat, also in Constantinople, a normal school for the training of women teachers. There are also a few orphan schools where girls learn sewing and embroidery. [182] THE REAL TURK ish women of the aristocracy have a thorough training in French and sometimes in English, and spend their idle hours, of which they possess a great abundance, in reading. The Moham- medan has never considered it necessary for women to have trained minds, any more than he would think of cultivating the intellect of his donkey or ox. That attitude is rapidly chang- ing, however, thanks to the invasion of the New Woman movement even into the heart of the Orient. The progressive Turks are beginning to prefer to have progressive wives, of mental ability equal to their own true helpmates and intellectual companions. Meanwhile the boys, more fortunate than their sisters, go on acquiring knowledge in the second- ary schools, which are modeled somewhat upon the French Lycee. These schools are planned for each large center of population, but their ex- istence is sporadic and precarious. Again we find poor equipment no libraries or laborato- ries and unsanitary buildings, lack of funds, and too great a preponderance of the clergy in the teaching force. The leading secondary school of the Empire, however, the Galata Serai in [ 133 ] THE REAL TURK Constantinople, is an exception. Lately this school has been housed in a magnificent new building on the height of Pera, and it is the pride of the Turkish heart. I had the pleasure of visiting Fikret Bey, at the time when he was director, in his magnificently appointed office ; he is very fond of this school, from which he himself graduated, and in which he served years ago as teacher. The courses of instruction here are thoroughly modern, with fine lecture rooms, lab- oratories, and dormitories for the resident stu- dents, and the young men who graduate are at the point in education reached by our juniors at college. There are several secondary schools or mekya- tub idadie of this nature in Constantinople. I frequently visited one of these in Cabatash, where a Turkish friend of mine was sub-master a man of real, unselfish devotion to his work and to the school, the growth of which he watched with great delight. After the Revolution the Ministry of Education made extensive plans for the improvement of the schools which they were never able completely to carry out through lack of funds, but this particular institution was for- [134] THE REAL TURK tunate enough to receive money for repairs and equipment. Part of it was rebuilt, and new lec- ture halls and laboratories put in. It was touch- ing to see the delight with which my friend showed the physical laboratory with its up to date equipment, proudly turning on faucets and moving the various pieces of apparatus. A per- fectly-equipped laboratory was to him a sort of miracle, a sign of the New Turkey. After looking around the school we would go to visit the principal in his cozy office, where we were always entertained in Turkish fashion with coffee and cigarettes. The walls of the office were decorated with oil paintings, some of which, quite charming works of art, were painted by the principal himself. He was a perfect gentleman a man of power and yet of extreme kindness, for whom one cannot help forming an affec- tion. His smile, lighting up his strong Turkish face, put me immediately at ease and made me feel the warmth of his friendship. These two men he and my friend worked together in perfect accord to improve and build up their school, and they tried hard to secure more funds in order to carry out their work and make it per- [135] THE REAL TURK feet in its every detail. (I fear the army has since absorbed the money which should have fallen to the share of education.) I was shown here a map of Europe, used in the geography classes, upon which Greece, Egypt and the Balkan states were colored as be- longing to Turkey. The Orientals do not like to face facts. In the teaching of history, prior to the Revolution, all reference to historic revolu- tions was tabooed. Sociology was not taught at all. There exists in Constantinople an Ottoman University the highest expression of education in Turkey. It has departments of Letters, Sa- cred Law, and Theology. Its work is much lim- ited by scholasticism, and it cannot be said to turn out real scholars. It forms a basis, however, upon which a real university may some day be erected. It is well equipped with seats and desks, but there are no libraries to study from, and no laboratories for the direct study of the physical sciences. The chief means of instruc- tion is by lectures, as in the medieval universities of Europe. Even the text-books are ancient. Until a few years ago physics was taught from [136] THE REAL TURK an Arabic text-book over a thousand years old dating from the Cordova period. There are theological schools or medreses, con- nected with the leading mosques, whose students, called softas, are given free tuition and lodging, and in addition a small sum, about five dollars a month, which is sufficient to feed them in the sim- ple Oriental way. Strange that divinity schools in the East, as well as in the West, have to offer more inducements than secular schools do! The medrese adjoins the mosque, with which it is of- ficially connected. The students live in very simple rooms or booths opening into the central court. They sleep on matting, and cook their own food on charcoal braziers. The sums doled out to the students, enough to keep them fed and clothed, tempt many Turks to become theolo- gians. Indeed, the popularity of this comfortable cloistered existence has been so great as to form a scandal. Examinations were merely nominal, and thousands of students continued to live on to old age in the eager ( ?) acquisition of re- ligious knowledge. At the time when the Young Turks came into power there were some twenty thousand softas in Constantinople alone. The [137] THE REAL TURK Young Turks instituted a reform, established more rigorous examinations, and turned away many of these spiritual attaches. There are still large numbers of them, however, and if you pass by one of the larger medreses at the close of the day you will meet hundreds of them pouring out of the court of the mosque and filling the streets with their white turbans and scowling faces for their theology does not seem to have mel- lowed their characters. They are among the most fanatical and haughty of all Moslems. The chief Mohammedan educational institu- tion of the Near East is the great University of Cairo, said to be one of the largest in the world, with its enrollment of over eight thousand stu- dents. This university is a relic of the days when Islam led the world in education, and Christians from all over Europe attended its great uni- versities at Cairo and Cordova, bringing back with them ideals which led to the founding of universities at Bologna and Paris, and the es- tablishment of higher education in Medieval Europe. Christians are not welcomed at this university, even as visitors. In order to see its interior I [138] THE REAL TURK went there with an Arab friend in the disguise of a Turk a simple transformation for which only a fez is required. We passed from the exterior, where we took off our shoes, into the great court. There we saw different groups of students seated cross-legged upon the tiled floor around their professors, taking notes, or listening to exposi- tions. The Orientals in writing hold a piece of paper on the left palm and write with queer wooden pens. Other lectures were given in inner courts and classrooms, but nowhere did I see any modern equipment of blackboards, desks or sci- entific apparatus. The university is noted chiefly for its courses in Arabic, in which it is one of the leading authorities. The education offered is mostly scholastic, including also in- struction in Turkish and Persian, the study of the Koran, the Sunna, and commentaries upon both, and training in religious dialectics. It is interesting to see the order in disorder which characterizes such a school. With ap- parently no system, and with distractions which would upset American classes, all goes smoothly and quietly in the true Oriental way. The great respect for the teacher or hodja and the simple [139] THE REAL TURK earnestness and lack of initiative of the Oriental, serve as checks to any possible disturbance. While classes are going on in some parts of the large court, in other parts students are cooking their midday meal over charcoal braziers, and eating together. There is none of the bustle and appearance of administration which characterize an American university. This university at Cairo is a hotbed of political discontent the cradle of the Young Egyptian movement; its students are always engaging in strikes, processions and protests against the government. With all these institutions of learning, an Ori- ental can scarcely acquire an up to date educa- tion unless he goes to a European university. Paris and Geneva have contributed more to the enlightenment of the Turks than all their own schools, or the schools of the missionaries in Tur- key, which the Turks have never attended in large numbers. Education in Moslem countries admirably illustrates the need of constant progress and im- provement in our changing world. The Moham- medan schools, once the best in the world (if we [140] THE REAL TURK except those of China and India), furnishing in the Middle Ages inspiration and guidance not only to the adherents of their own religion, but also to Christian Europe, preserved and spread abroad the treasures of the Greek learning geometry, science, philosophy and added thereto their own contributions in the realms of mathematics and chemistry; but since then the Western World has grown in knowledge and wisdom, while the East has remained stationary. It seems unkind to Islam to say that Islam is the cause of this stagnation yet such is the case. The only reason that there is hope for a progres- sive educational system in Turkey is that religion is waning, and that the hold of the Koran upon the most modern Turks is very slight. As has been previously said, excellent plans have been made for a broad and thorough educa- tional system in Turkey, but they cannot be car- ried out at present for lack of funds. The budget is made up with particular attention to the army and navy; and certainly the aspect of the political horizon at present does not encour- age the Turks to divert their funds from these channels of defence. [141] AMERICAN INFLUENCE ON TURKISH EDUCATION CHAPTER IX AMERICAN INFLUENCE ON . TURKISH EDUCATION American educational institutions have played a large part in the uplifting of Turkey. Unfor- tunately, however, they have never had an op- portunity of directly influencing the Young Turk mind, as they have influenced mind and character in China and Japan, for the reason that Turks have seldom been enrolled in these schools, owing to the mandates of the ex-sultan. Up to the time of the Turkish Revolution there were in Constantinople only one Turkish man and one Turkish woman who had graduated from an American college. It can easily be seen, therefore, that American schools played little part in the political liberation of Turkey from the tyranny of Abdul Hamid, the claims of mis- sionary writers on the Near East notwithstand- ing. This Revolution was purely Turkish, planned and carried out by men who had never seen the inside of an American school. [145] THE REAL TURK When, however, the constitutional govern- ment was established in a new, free Turkey, the excellent work of the American educational in- stitutions was recognized by the Young Turks themselves, who were glad to copy ideas and methods, and to cooperate with them in every Hvay possible. The government set aside a fund with which to educate five young men each year at Robert College, and the same number of young women at The American College for Girls. Thus the opportunities for direct Amer- ican influence on Turkish education are just be- ginning. When the first missionaries started work in Constantinople and Smyrna, some fifty years ago, efforts were made to convert Moham- medans. The success was not large. I en- quired of one missionary who had just finished a service of fifty years in Constantinople how many Mohammedans had been converted there Within his memory. He thought of one. This one later turned out to be a rascal, and the mis- sionaries were therefore not inclined to boast of him. When Abdul Hamid came to the throne, in 1878, he pledged the missionaries not to attempt [U6J 19 c iS 8 THE REAL TURK to proselyte among the Mohammedan popula- tion of his Empire ; so since that time their work has been confined to the Christian sects Ar- menian, Bulgarian and Greek. The pictures shown by missionaries of their students in the native schools, sitting cross-legged with red fezzes on, might lead one to think them Turks; but they are not Turks, in spite of the fez, which all subjects of the Turkish Empire may wear. This same condition is true in other Moham- medan countries: that mission work is largely confined to the native Christian population. In Persia, the missionaries work mainly among the Nestorian and the Armenian Christians. Very little proselyting among the Mohammedans is attempted, although medical aid is given them. Such a thing as a Mohammedan's becoming con- verted is very rare. In Syria the work is among the Syrian Christians. They need education and social uplift. In Egypt, it is the Coptic Chris- tians who receive the attention of the mission- aries; although this country has been under French and English rule for some time, and pro- tection has been given the missionaries, very little [147] THE REAL TURK success has been attained among the Moham- medans. I was speaking with one of the older mis- sionaries who has been in Egypt for fifty years. "How many converts from Mohammedanism have been made in Egypt during these fifty years?" I asked. "About one hundred and fifty," he answered. "In all Egypt?" "Yes, and even then you are not sure." "What do you mean?" I said. "They be- come Christians for interested motives?" "Yes," he answered. "Some do it in order to get aid, or Christian patronage for business." (I had been told by native Egyptians that such was the case, and that the Mohammedans who be- came converted to Christianity were men of no character.) "Do you think, then," I asked, "that there is any hope of the Mohammedans ever becoming converts to Christianity?" "No," he said, "I am afraid not." This is the verdict of a man who has worked for fifty years among Mohammedans under the most favorable conditions. Such opinions, how- [148] THE REAL TURK ever, do not as a rule reach the churches of this country. I asked the same question of a missionary who was born and brought up in Turkey, and whose father was a missionary before him both of them men of learning and authority in the mis- sionary world. "Do you believe the Mohammedans will ever be converted to Christianity?" I asked. "No, and there is no need of it." "You think the Mohammedans have a good religion of their own?" "Certainly." "You would limit the mission work to trying to correct the faults of Mohammedanism?" "Yes. And even then, have we not faults of our own? Can Christians afford to throw stones? I believe the Mohammedans will reform their own religion, as we did ours." Here is one of the broadest missionaries one could meet. If all were like him, there would be more chance of the Mohammedans being, if not converted, at least influenced by Christianity. We see, then, not only that little success has been met with in the Mohammedan world, and [149] THE REAL TURK that the work there is mainly among native Christians, but also that the more progressive missionaries have given up the idea of conversion altogether. They do not believe in it. In the first place they feel it is too difficult, and in the second place they believe that more can be done by influencing Mohammedanism itself letting the progressive followers of that religion bring about a reform from within, adopting anything in the Christian religion which appeals to them. In fact, the missionaries who have lived among Mohammedans are usually broader and more tolerant than their lay supporters at home. The influence of American missionaries, never- theless, upon the native Christian population of Turkey, to whom their work was largely confined, has already been immense. It might almost be said that whatever the Bulgarians, Ar- menians > Copts and Syrians have of modern edu- cation and national culture is due to the foreign missionary schools in their midst, foremost among which stand the American schools. It was the missionary educators who, together with the native priests, first aroused these subject races from the lethargy of ignorance and de- [150] THE REAL TURK spair into which they had fallen under the rule of the Turk, who had done his best to suppress their racial consciousness, culture, and even written languages. The missionaries, by awakening the intellectual interest of the Bulgarians and Ar- menians, did a great deal toward the revival of their native literatures. Some of the first gram- mars and dictionaries of the Armenian and Bulgarian languages were compiled by these indefatigable scholars, whose linguistic ability and scholarship were so great that Bulgaria to- day, in attempting the translation of the Bible into modern Bulgarian, is obliged to draw largely from the translations made by the American mis- sionaries of a generation ago. The same thing is true of the modern Armenian Bible. All honor to the men who gave their splendid intellects and noble characters to the awakening of these subject peoples Dwight, Riggs, Schauffler, Goodell, Hamlin and Herrick names that must rank high in the history of the world's progress. I know of no loftier service than that of carry- ing learning to countries which either through misfortune or apathy have been deprived of it. [151] THE REAL TURK There is an immense joy in such work, because of the pathetic eagerness with which the natives of these backward countries reach out for en- lightenment and education. One does not have to devise means for urging them to study nor are the professors hard put to make their courses vie in popularity with the pigskin football and the little spheroid which have so obsessed the minds of American students. There is a movement on foot to reorganize and unite the mission schools of Turkey, and to back them with a large endowment fund of several millions. This would free them from the neces- sity of begging for funds bit by bit, and from too great dependence upon the lay minds of Amer- ica, who do not understand the problems of edu- cation in the Orient. A commission has been appointed, with a well-known educator and mis- sion worker of broad liberal views at its head, to visit the field and draw up plans for the appli- cation of the endowment already mentioned. This is the most important event in the growth of the missionary schools of the Near East since their inception, and must result in great good to the schools themselves and to Turkey. It will [152] THE REAL TURK put missionary education on a broad progressive basis. Among the American schools established in Turkey the foremost in influence has undoubt- edly been Robert College.* Its situation is unique many travellers have called it unsur- passed in the world. On a high eminence on the Bosphorus, half way between the Black Sea and the Golden Horn, it commands a view of that magnificent strait which is the constant delight of those whose good fortune it is to spend several years there as pupils or as teachers. From the college terrace one can look down upon the blue, dancing waters of the Bosphorus and watch the passing of steamers and sailboats. When the moon at its full floods these waters with its sil- very light, and the evening air is full of the breath of spring, there is no place in the world where I would rather be than on the terrace of Robert College. The history of this institution is unique. It has the honor of being the first school, so far as I know, to be established in a Mohammedan country, or any other non-Christian country, * See Chapter X. [153] THE REAL TURK with the sole purpose of giving a broad and up to date education, without any attempt or under- motive at proselyting. Robert College was never a missionary institution, and it has never sought to change the religion of its pupils. Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Jews and Turks come here without having to fear any attempt at modifying their own religious beliefs. Yet while the college has never attempted to proselyte or convert, it has always aimed at influencing for good the character and morals of its students. That it succeeds in this, the abundant testimony of those who come in contact with Robert Col- lege graduates in business or travel bears wit- ness. Three names are inseparably connected with the college that of Mr. Robert, its generous founder; that of Cyrus Hamlin, its first presi- dent, whose unique personality is well-known to the American public through his book, "My Life and Times;" and that of Dr. Washburn, its second president, who built it up to the proud position which it holds today. The interesting story has been many times told : how Mr. Robert first conceived the idea of carrying Western edu- [154] THE REAL TURK cation to the East; how he fell in with Cyrus Hamlin, then a missionary in Constantinople, and selected him for the difficult task of starting an American college on Turkish soil; and how Dr. Hamlin worked against great odds until he finally secured the present magnificent site with permission to build. The remaining history of the college is one of gradual growth. At present it numbers some 500 students, and has an endow- ment of about two millions (larger than that of many a famous American college) , thanks to the generosity of the late Mr. Kennedy, who had been for ten years on its board of trustees. With this ample endowment Robert College has a magnificent future ahead of it. A school of civil engineering is being added to the College proper, and other branches, such as medical and commercial schools, that are much needed in the East, will soon be founded. School organization in the Orient presents many difficulties which do not exist in this country. One cannot employ al- together Anglo-Saxon methods nor carry out Anglo-Saxon ideals in such a school. To an American teacher who comes new to the institu- [155] THE REAL TURK tion, its whole method seems Oriental yet there is enough American spirit in it to influence tre- mendously the lives and thoughts of its pupils. They enjoy here a liberty such as they would never know in their native schools. Their char- acter and self-reliance are developed, so that when they leave the college they have a solid foundation upon which to build their life work, whatever that is to be. Teachers and pupils live in close intimacy. Dormitory and table bring them together daily. These boys of the Orient are eager to know about the West, and love to discuss the problems of twentieth century life which the unfolding edu- cation brings to their notice. Hence many ties are formed, both with teachers and with fellow- students, which are broadening and ennobling. The complex nature of the student body, con- sisting as it does of five or six nationalities, sev- eral of whom on their native heaths are deadly enemies of each other, presents many difficulties ; but it is a profound source of tolerance and cos- mopolitanism when used to advantage. As the students approach graduation, after living closely together for five or six years, they have [156] THE REAL TURK become much more tolerant of each other's racial peculiarities and religion than they were at the beginning. They have learned to respect, if not to like, one another; and they even learn to en- dure their American teachers, who, it must be confessed, carry over a good deal of blatant jin- goism and pride to that ancient seat of empire, Constantinople. The Orientals naturally resent the assumption of superiority which every American holds for his country yet at the bottom of their hearts they admire America profoundly, and look to her as the leader in the struggle for individual liberty and culture. Many upon graduation enter American universities for further study. Others go to the universities of England, Ger- many and France. These, when they return at last to their native country, are progressive and cosmopolitan to a degree true citizens of the world who are able to judge impartially of the merits and faults of every country and who strive to develop their own country to the highest efficiency. The direct influence of Robert College upon the peoples she has worked among is greatest in [157] THE REAL TURK the case of the Bulgarians, who in the early days of the college composed the majority of its stu- dents. Before a free Bulgaria ever existed, Bul- garians were imbibing learning and freedom at Robert College; and after the freeing of that doughty little country (and this was due largely to the interest and sympathy for that race which one of the Robert College professors, Dr. Long, was able to arouse in Europe and particularly in England) many of Bulgaria's leading statesmen, including her greatest prime minister, were found to be graduates of Robert College. At that time these graduates were the only educated men in Bulgaria; now Bulgarians have fine schools of their own, and the influence of the American college on the Bosphorus is not so strong but every patriotic Bulgarian looks back with gratitude to the part that Robert Col- lege played in the development of his country. Among the Turks Robert College has had as yet little direct influence, because she has never graduated but one of their race (Abdul Hamid would not let them come to such a hotbed of liberty) . Now there is a large influx of Turkish students, since the government is quite friendly [158] THE REAL TURK to the College, which has tremendous opportuni- ties of service in the development of the New Turkey. America has a right to be proud of this college on the hill which overlooks the tower of Mohammed the Conqueror, now almost five centuries old a symbol, one hopes, of the dur- ability and strength of this progressive Christian institution. Another college which has done a great work in the Orient is the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut. Here, as at Robert College, the Ameri- cans have secured the finest site in the neighbor- hood a piece of high ground out from the city, on the seacoast, which overlooks the blue waters of the Mediterranean to the distant mountains of Lebanon a charming scene. This college is the largest American institution in the Near East, containing some thousand students, a large corps of American professors, and many depart- ments of learning. It is famous all over the East for its medical school the best in that part of the world in which Dr. Post, one of the greatest surgeons not only in Syria, but in the whole world, gave a long life of service. Dr. Post's career suggests one point in regard [159] THE REAL TURK to missionaries which needs discussion the ques- tion of material rewards. The world has looked upon the missionary too much as a person who should do without all earthly rewards and com- pensations. In a period when the chief work of the missionary was to teach Christianity and to proselyte, a type of men were drawn into the field whose religious enthusiasm was so great that they were willing to sacrifice everything to their work. But now the scope and direction of missionary work is somewhat changing. The majority of missionaries go into the field as trained teachers, doctors, nurses secondarily as proselyters of Christianity. Necessarily this im- plies a more professional training, and a need of specialization. Is not a teacher, or doctor, or nurse who goes abroad to practice his profession just as deserving of material compensation as those who stay at home? In fact, the most able services can be had only by paying adequate wages. Those mission schools whose professors are primarily sectarian Christians and with whom teaching is a side issue cannot build up in- stitutions of real scholarship. If one may take the word of Bishop Brent, who has studied close [160] THE REAL TURK at hand the mission work in the Philippines, the young men and women who are at present going out as missionaries are not by any means above the average in intelligence, breadth and ability. Dr. Post was of another type a genius in his profession and he earned the wages of a genius. His medical practice among the rich Syrians and Arabs was very lucrative, and before he died he had amassed a considerable fortune, and built a summer home among the Lebanons which is the most magnificent in the whole district. The student body of the Protestant Syrian College is composed of Greeks, Syrians, Arabs, Egyptians, and a few Turks and other nation- alities. It vies with Robert College in prestige and influence, and is doing a splendid work in education and technical service. A third institution, the American College for Girls in Constantinople, is perhaps the most in- teresting of all the American schools in the Orient, because of its wonderful work in bring- ing higher education to Oriental women. It is unique in its kind in no other institution in all Turkey or in the whole East can women go so far in education as here. It has recently become [161] THE REAL TURK famous through the career of its first Turkish graduate,* who played a leading part in the journalism which sprang up after the Revolu- tion. Several years ago this college severed it- self from The American Board of Missions, in order to have the complete freedom and inde- pendence of an endowed college. Since then it has received numerous gifts, including that of a new site on the European side of the Bosphorus, just a mile below Robert College a huge estate of fifty acres, with beautiful hillsides, gardens and terraces, where it is erecting a noble group of buildings for its future home. I shall never forget the performance of "As You Like It" which was given out of doors on these new grounds by the students of the College. The Orientals are wonderful actors by tempera- ment, and they had received a splendid training for this play. The part of Rosalind was taken by a graceful young Greek girl with reddish golden hair. Her acting was entrancing so fresh, so natural and exuberant! One felt throughout the play all the romance of the East and the ardor of the Oriental girls, who lived Halliday Hanum. [162] THE REAL TURK their parts. It has spoiled the play for me ever after, for I cannot bear now to see paid actresses of middle age play the part of the youthful Rosalind. The college is splendidly organized and con- ducted by its able President, Dr. Patrick. Its corps of American women professors are all graduates of American colleges, some with sev- eral degrees to their names. A high standard of scholarship is maintained, higher than that of its brother college at Roumeli Hissar, I am ashamed to say. Its students excel especially in modern languages, history, and sociology. Imagine the inspiration of directing research work among these young women, whose native towns and vil- lages in Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece are full of most interesting material which has never been written up ! There is always something of moment going on at the College: a lecture by some prominent traveller who is enticed that way; a fine concert; a recital or chorus by the girls themselves; a dramatic performance something to keep the students interested and thoughtful and happy. One of the most important of such occasions was [163] THE REAL TURK the lecture on Turkish Literature given by Halliday Hanum after the Revolution, which was most scholarly and charming. Afterwards I had the pleasure of meeting her at tea, and found her modest and sweet in spite of her fame in two continents one of the most womanly of women, a credit to any race and any country, and a promise of what Turkey may yet become. The great event of the year at the college is of course Commencement. There is always some noted speaker; and the American ambassador gives out the diplomas to the "sweet girl grad- uates," with a few words of fatherly advice. Very able papers are read by the graduates themselves, and it is interesting to see what is the attitude of these girls toward life, as shown by these ad- dresses : girls of varied environment and heredity here one from Greece, there a Bulgarian, a Turk or an Armenian. After the speeches, all adjourn to an out-of-doors tea where one is priv- ileged to meet the new graduates and congratu- late them upon their entrance into the life of the world. But many of them, I imagine, feel more sorrow than joy at leaving this institution which has been an intellectual and spiritual home to [164] THE REAL TURK them, such as they may never find again in the isolation of their own native towns. "What will be the future of these women going out into life?" one wonders. Many of them will "just marry," as one of their teachers told me in disgust; but even married they may have careers before them, for they are picked women, and are sought as wives by the leading young men of Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. Some of them marry professors, some become wives of diplomats, and some give their hands to merchants whose wealth affords them assurance of wide social influence. Most of those who do not marry become teachers, and as such carry to others the influences they have received from their Alma Mater. A splendid set of women this college is training and sending out each year to exert a quiet influence for culture and breadth of thought and modernism in the back- ward East. I know of nothing in the Near East so interesting and so full of promise as this American College for Girls at Arnaoutkeuy. Halliday Hanum, in her first article to the Turkish press after the Revolution, wrote the following beautiful tribute to her Alma Mater: [165] THE REAL TURK "With the finest subtleties and the broadest real- ities of civilization and humanity, you extended knowledge to the darkest horizon of Turkey, O Institution. And you, honored women, yea, you teachers, who left your own land to elevate and enlighten the dark corner of this freedomless, portionless land you have struggled to bring light to Ottoman soil, to Ottoman civilization, fighting for learning and culture. The large ideas from which Turkey was shut out, the great feelings which were opened up to me in your classrooms, the ideas to which I was lead in your libraries, showing me that there was no difference in men for race, class, sect or religion, these ideas that make me live like a civilized person, a hu- manity-loving person, that enabled me to live larger thoughts, generous thoughts, thoughts such as you were living; these ideas I owe you, O women, and to each and all of you I essay to express my gratitude and to live according to the principles which I owe to your teaching alone." [166] THE EDUCATION OF ORIENTAL BOYS AT ROBERT COLLEGE CHAPTER X THE EDUCATION OF ORIENTAL BOYS AT ROBERT COLLEGE The indifference with which our American boys meet their opportunities for education is a cause of much distress and perplexity to our teachers. From the age of adolescence to that of legal manhood, they treat the acquisition of knowledge and of culture as a thing of slight importance. Their whole energies are centered on athletic contests, either as participants or as spectators. In many schools women wear them- selves out trying to cram Latin, French, Eng- lish, and geometry down the boys' throats ; while parents bewail at home the low marks or the fail- ures to pass which show the sidetracking of the youthful energy from paths of learning. In the East the exact contrary is true. The boys would injure themselves with overstudy if allowed to, and have to be driven to the gym- nasium and athletic field. This results from two causes: first, the scarcity of education in the [169] THE REAL TURK Orient, making it a thing of much demand; and secondly, the more thoughtful nature of the Oriental, which makes him grapple with the serious problems of life at an age when our boys are chiefly interested in ball games and girls. The Oriental peoples live much more deeply in the world of thought than we do. In fact, of all countries upon the globe, the United States is one of the most superficial in intellectual mat- ters, the most easily satisfied to pass through life without delving into its philosophy. The Americans are too busy getting a living to sit down and think. Their energies are so taken up with meeting practical and material problems that when they get through the day's work they could not think deeply if they wanted to. Hence the light magazines and the musical comedies. Take the Greeks, on the other hand, of whom we have a large number in Robert College. Their inheritance from time immemorial has been one of deep metaphysical speculation, and the world of thought has been immeasurably en- riched by their contributions to it (we are not in- [170] THE REAL TURK terested here in its evils) ; and the Greeks today are the same as in the time of Pericles eager for discussion, lovers of the beautiful, quickly sus- ceptible to every aesthetic impression. The same thing is more or less true of the Jew, who has done our religious thinking for us, of the Persian, who possesses a great genius for specu- lation, and in greater or less degree of the Ar- menian, Bulgarian and Turk, all of whom are represented in the College. In regard to the first cause of the Oriental youth's intense desire for study the scarcity of education in the East it is easy to see why the Robert College boys study with such eagerness. They realize the value of their opportunity, just as in this country the boys who go to academies or colleges from the farm, or who are working their own way through, are not likely to waste their time ; education means better equipment for life, and it is too valuable to be thrown away for mere amusements and good times. There is, however, an additional reason which makes the education we offer the Oriental boys appear of tremendously inspiring value in their eyes their wonder and overwhelming joy upon realizing [171] THE REAL TURK that the whole world's learning is put within their grasp. This fact will be made more clear to the Ameri- can reader when it is understood, as has been said in a previous chapter, that the races of the Near East are still in the past as regards their intellec- tual and religious life that is, their training in these lines is wholly scholastic and traditional. Science and history can come to them in their na- tive schools only through the lens of religion. The elementary education begins with the read- ing and memorizing of the Koran; history is taught from the Mohammedan point of view; law in Turkey is derived mostly from the legal code of the Koran; the higher education in the universities is mainly theological; dogma and religious authority still hold sway there, as they did five hundred years ago over all Europe. Among the Greeks the same thing is true to some extent. The Iliad and The Odyssey still furnish the chief mental food in the elementary schools, and "the glory that was Greece" some two thousand years ago still furnishes the chief food for thought in the minds of the students in the higher schools. They know Plato and Aris- [172] THE REAL TURK totle and the Greek dramatists, but they are not familiar with modern schools of thought. They know ancient history and the glorious part Greece played in it, but they do not realize the problems which confront the world today. They dream that they are still marching under the ban- ners of a conquering Alexander. The Armenians are still worse off, for up to within fifty years ago they had little education worthy of the name at all. The Armenian lan- guage and culture of ancient times was almost forgotten and it is the missionaries who have revived them, against the opposition of Turkey, which had good reason for wishing things to re- main as they were. The Bulgarians, only, from among our stu- dents, come to us with anything like a twentieth century trend of thought. They have been mak- ing rapid strides in education since their freedom from Turkey in 1878, and have absolutely wiped out the ascendency of the Church. They are a very enterprising and up to date people Yan- kees of the Near East, as they have sometimes been called. It would be difficult for one brought up in the [173] THE REAL TURK midst of our modern civilization to realize the paucity of real knowledge at the disposal of the Orientals from books in their own languages. The whole scientific literature of Turkey con- sists mostly of books drawn from the Arab learn- ing of the period when Mohammedanism was at its height, while in the native Armenian lan- guage there exist hardly any books of scientific value; and only a few epoch-making scientific works of Europe and America have yet been translated into Bulgarian or Greek. Only by learning one or more of the languages of cultured Europe English or French or Ger- man does the Oriental gain access to the knowl- edge of the present day. It is indeed a Revival of Learning a Renaissance for them, and they feel the same excitement, the same intellec- tual stimulus that the Italians felt at the discov- ery of the Greek Learning and the resulting freedom from the thrall of the Church. Now, as then, the New Learning means escape from the Dark Ages in which these Orientals have been living. You can hardly keep them from books. They devour the English authors, the German philos- [174] THE REAL TURK ophers, the French religious writers, trying in a few years to absorb the intellectual progress of the past century. In their studies, too, they show the same ea- gerness, especially being attracted to sociology, economics, history and psychology. When we remember that within fifty years or less have arisen all the social sciences which are proving so important in our modern life; that the study of biology, psychology and religion have been al- most re-created by the theory of evolution intro- duced into the world within this same fifty years ; that movements which threaten to disrupt both state and church and family such as socialism, anarchism, new thought, mental healing, investi- gation of the occult, the growing theorizing about marriage have arisen even later than fifty years ago; and that none or few of the works on these subjects exist in the Turkish, Greejk, Armenian or Bulgarian language then we can realize the extraordinary expansion of thought wrought in the minds of students, who, by acquiring the English language, suddenly fall heirs to modern learning and are brought face to face with its attendant problems. [175] THE REAL TURK How eagerly my students, of all nationalities, used to discuss problems of socialism and of religion! How excited they were at their first discovery of the psychic world which has almost imperceptibly invaded our modern life ! That no reasonable man, no matter how matter-of-fact he may be, can deny the phenomena of hypno- tism, of telepathy, of healing by suggestion, and that further psychic powers are crowding for admission into our daily, recognized life are extremely interesting facts to the Oriental boy. It is a new world to him. * A second cause of earnest intellectual work among the students already spoken of is their early maturity of thought. No race, perhaps, preserves its youth so long as the Anglo-Saxon, and the slow ripening of its powers gives a vigor and solidity to the mature man which is one of the causes of the Anglo- Saxon supremacy. Yet to a teacher, the child- ishness of thought on the part of his pupils is often wearisome, and so it is refreshing and in- spiring to deal with pupils such as those at Robert College, who begin to think deeply at [176] THE REAL TURK fourteen and are capable of the most intricate philosophical discussions from the age of sixteen on. The acuteness and logical clarity of the Greek mind is amazing. Mere boys can discuss matters of religion and philosophy with an insight and perception which would put to shame many a mature American. They are very fond of such discussions, and enjoy nothing more than visit- ing the teachers and talking over questions of art, of philosophy, of religion, and of life in gen- eral. I could have filled in all my time outside of class in this way, if I had had the leisure and the energy. Even in walks which I took with the students, serious topics of discussion would arise, and I enjoyed walking up and down the shady ter- race of our College, with that unequaled and magnificent view of the Bosphorus spread out below me, conversing with some thoughtful and congenial student. We used to call it in fun the Peripatetic School of Philosophy. Plato must have had a delightful time! I remember one student, a Greek, who came shyly to my room, and, after a desultory chat, [177] THE REAL TURK began asking me questions about religion. I was amazed at the depth and penetration of his ques- tions, for he was only sixteen. It seems he had been reading some French works on religion, and was full of ideas. I have seldom known a more clearly logical mind than his, and it was a de- light to talk with him as he sat there, with his face, of a most graceful Grecian type, lit up with the enthusiasm of high thought. It was interesting to discover what currents of thought were strongest among the boys. There were various trends, differing, peculiarly enough, according to the nationality of the student. The Armenians are inclined by temperament and his- tory towards pessimism, but they can hardly be blamed for this, as their place in the world for the past two thousand years has been one of sub- jection and suffering. They like to read Scho- penhauer, and come to the conclusion that life is not worth whilel For a time, suicide gained great popularity among our senior class not in practice, fortu- nately, but in theory. For some months the dis- cussion went on at table and in dormitory as to the value of existence ; and the intellectual lead- [178] THE REAL TURK ers having decided that existence was a curse, most of the class accepted this doctrine and went about with such woebegone faces that the teach- ers, and students of the other classes had to laugh at them! Yet if you could listen to the life history of some of the Armenians whose families had passed through the massacres, you would not be inclined to ridicule them. The Bulgarians are more hopeful, for their race is free and is rapidly progressing. They show a strong tendency toward a study of spirit- ualism and hypnotism. They seem to be psy- chically sensitive, and the phenomena of these subjects have a great fascination for them. The Greeks also are interested in these branches, as well as in art, to which they are very sensitive. The students are great devotees of Tolstoy, which would make one inclined to take exception to Roosevelt's opinion, as stated in published ar- ticles, that his influence is very small. In East- ern Europe, at least, Tolstoy's readers look upon him with almost worship, and in any talk to our boys, a reference to him was sure to call forth a quick response. [179] THE REAL TURK It is difficult for one in America, who enjoys the sheltered life of the twentieth century civili- zation, to realize the problems which these Orien- tal boys have to face. Life in the East is far from being sheltered. Many a boy in the school had some near relative, perhaps even a parent, who was killed in a political feud. No wonder that they think deeply at an early age, or ques- tion the meaning of things! One of the students, on going home for the Easter vacation, was met at the station by his father and ten friends all armed to the teeth. It seems that the life of his father had been threatened by a political band, and for two weeks he had not dared to leave his house, or even his chamber, while armed men, his rela- tives, guarded the house day and night. A life fraught with such dangers brings early maturity. Another boy told me the story of his life, which might form a plot for an ^Bschylus. It was a veritable drama in itself. At the age of sixteen he was confronted with the realization of sin within his family, which he felt himself called upon, as the oldest son, to avenge. The evil [180] THE REAL TURK weighed upon his mind. One night he took a long knife and crept into his father's room but his father awakened too soon, and he crept out. He could not bring himself to this pitch again, and so his father continued to live and to sin, and the boy continued to bear the burden of this sin upon his mind and heart. We had some anarchists among our students, who caused us difficulty in discipline at times. Like the Irish, they made it their principle to be "agin the government" and they felt it wrong to have to obey rules. But anarchy, like every- thing else, must be judged with relation to its causes and environment. I think if I lived in Russia I should be an anarchist, too. The American teachers who come to the col- lege with ideas of what discipline ought to be are surprised and mortified by the failures of the students to obey. The East is very different from the West in this respect. Strangely enough, there where government has always been an absolute despotism, students do not know what it is to obey, while in America, where free- dom has reached its extreme development, school-teachers are autocrats, ruling with an ab- [181] THE REAL TURK solute power which it is almost impossible to ef- fect in the East. Among the races of the Orient, voluntary or- ganization for the accomplishment of any end, necessitating absolute loyalty and unquestioning obedience to the person who is put at the head of the enterprise, is unknown. The Oriental at- titude of mind is one of constant insubordination. This is the greatest fault of the Greek and the Armenian. They do not know how to obey. They do not know how to trust a leader and fol- low him implicitly. Our students place no confidence in their pro- fessors. It is almost impossible to command them to do anything. Instead of obeying they will stop to argue about it. Even in the plan of study they interfere and refuse at times to take up certain portions of the work. The teachers, they say, are paid by them and are in their serv- ice. One class marched out from an examina- tion, refusing to take it. In fact, one finds he must adopt other methods of teaching than those current in America. Someone has said, "You cannot drive the East, but you can lead it." This is true. Orien- [182] THE REAL TURK tals resent offhand treatment, which Americans will put up with in their superiors if they have confidence in them. Politeness and diplomacy are ingrained in the Orientals. They do nothing abruptly. Therefore it is necessary to use round- about methods in dealing with them. After the Turkish Revolution a feeling of insubordina- tion made the rounds of all the schools in Turkey, both missionary and national. The Galata Serai became entirely demoralized. In the missionary schools the students went on strikes, and in many cases won their point. It was the infection of liberty which was in the air. Another drawback in our teaching was the superficial character of the work. The program is so heavy, due to the necessity of five or six lan- guages being learned, that there is very little time for the preparation of any one lesson. Three quarters of an hour is the average time of prep- aration, and a lesson which would take the stu- dents one and one-half hours to prepare would call forth cries of protest. They do not know what it is to undertake a hard mental task and push it through regardless of time. The curric- ulum and the climate are against them. [183] THE REAL TURK Yet when our students enter foreign univer- sities they do excellent work, and adapt them- selves to the new conditions with a facility that is surprising. In spite of drawbacks, teaching in the East is very inspiring. The enthusiasm of the students ; the feeling that one is able to bring to them the gift of knowledge, which they prize above all other gifts ; the opportunities quietly to influence the thought and character of the students these things constitute an incentive and reward to the teacher greater than any mere money can bring. The friendship and loyalty of these Oriental boys, who are so quick to resent, yet so ready to forgive full of distrust and yet of affection is worth all the hardships it costs to win them. In bestowing an education I gained one. I count my years at Robert College as the most delight- ful and most instructive period of my life. [184] ISLAM CHAPTER XI ISLAM The time has passed when Islam can be treated with contempt, or Mohammed looked upon as a charlatan. A religion which controls the lives of nearly two hundred million people and is rapidly spreading commands the attention if not the respect of the civilized world ; and in the closer relations economic, social, and political which are bound to come between the East and the West, it will be worth while to have an ap- preciative understanding of this world religion. Carlyle was one of the first to treat Mo- hammed with the respect he deserves. No charlatan could have influenced his times and posterity as this prophet of the desert did, and the theory that he was a trickster is untenable. He had a great message to deliver, even though the preaching of it meant derison, ostracism and finally persecution. In his own day Mohammed met the charge of impostor, and branded it as a lie by his spiritual power and the fruits of his [187] THE REAL TURK life. He lived in utter simplicity, and at the time of his death hardly had even sufficient cloth- ing to wear. His teaching lifted Arabia from a state of wild and gross barbarism to a high civ- ilization. Those who criticise Islam for its de- fects should examine the conditions under which it arose. Its legalizing of polygamy was a great advance over the incestuous sex relations of the Arabs of his day. In every direction his religion established law and order superior to any that had before existed and cemented the wild, hostile tribes into a powerful nation. The history of Islam is an impressive one. Within one century from the death of its founder it had spread from the Indian Ocean to the At- lantic, including in its sweep all the Asiatic races outside of China and India, and had established itself in Europe, where it threatened the very ex- istence of Christendom. Throughout all this vast Islamic Empire the sense of religious brotherhood was so strong that peace prevailed where there had been only con- stant warfare. Merchants could travel from India to Spain without fear. To fight a brother Moslem was a sacrilege. [188] TURKISH Mullah or priest as kindly a face as one would see in any country. THE REAL TURK In this conglomeration of mixed races made homogeneous by a common religion, civilization became possible. The arts and sciences flour- ished, and centers of learning were established; the Greek learning was revived, and passed on to Europe by the Arabs. The magnitude of the astounding debt which European civilization owes to the Arabs is well described in these words, which we quote directly from Seignobos: "Let one compare the two civilizations which in the Eleventh Century divided the Ancient World: in the West miserable little cities, peas- ants' huts and great fortresses a country al- ways troubled by war, where one could not travel ten leagues without running the risk of being robbed; and the Orient, Constantinople, Cairo, Damascus, Bagdad, all the cities of the 'Arabian Nights', with their marble palaces, their work- shops, their schools, their bazaars, their gardens which extended over several leagues a country well-watered and covered with villages and with the incessant movement of merchants, who trav- elled in peace from Spain to Persia. There is no doubt that the Mussulman and Byzantine worlds [189] THE REAL TURK were richer, better policed, better lighted than the Western World. In the Eleventh Century these two worlds began to become acquainted; the barbarous Christians came in contact with the civilized Mussulmans in two ways by war and by commerce. "By contact with the Orientals the Occidentals became civilized. It is often very difficult to tell precisely by what route an invention of the Orient has penetrated to us whether it has come to us through the Crusaders, through the Italian merchants, through the Saracens of Sicily or the Moors of Spain. But we can draw up a list of what we owe the Arabs, and that list is a long one. "1st. From the Arabs came buckwheat, aspar- agus, hemp, linen, mulberries, saffron, rice, dates, lemons, oranges; even coffee, cotton, and cane sugar, which have become the principle crops of America. "2nd. Most of our luxuries damask cloth, morocco leather, silk and gold stuffs embroidered with silver and gold, muslin, gauze, taffeta, vel- vets (perfected later in Italy) glass, paper, sugar, sweetmeats and syrups. [190] THE REAL TURK "3rd. The beginning of most of our sciences algebra, trigonometry, chemistry, Arabian nu- merals which the Arabs had borrowed from the Hindus and which have rendered the most diffi- cult calculations easy. "The Arabs had collected and condensed all the inventions and all the knowledge of the an- cient worlds of the Orient Greece, Persia, India, even China: it is they who have transmitted them to us. Through them the western world which had become barbarous entered again into civilization. If our ideas and our arts are connected with antiquity, all the inventions which make life easy and agreeable have come to us through the Arabs."* In the face of such a debt, all that we can do in spreading education and Western progress among the Mohammedan peoples is but a just return for their service in the past. Once they were the enlightened race and we were in dark- ness. Now we have far outstripped them, by the aid of modern science, and they are striving to acquire the Western civilization. There is no * Ch. Seignobos: Histoire de la Civilization au Moyen-Age 6t dans leg Temps Modernes. [191] THE REAL TURK reason to suppose they cannot succeed in this, and finally take their place in the world as our peers. What was the spell which Islam cast over the East, to make it captive? In its very simplicity lay its power : One God, Mohammed his prophet, the Koran descending from on high like the Mosaic decalogue, the brotherhood of man, sub- mission to God (Islam means "submission") and a few definite practices such as prayer, pilgrim- age, almsgiving, which could appeal to the concrete, childlike mind; no metaphysical speculations, no mysteries of incarnation and transubstantiation, no subtleties of flic Greek mind such as had dominated Christianity. That explains why Islam spread where Christianity had never succeeded and why it is spreading today in Africa in the face of Christianity. Just as the characteristic note of Buddhism is the absence of desire, and of Christianity love of God and of man, so the characteristic note of Islam is submission to God a submission which goes to the extreme of fatalism. The average Mohammedan believes that all his life is written [192] THE REAL TURK down beforehand in his book of destiny in heaven hence he is powerless to change his life one iota. In this lies at once the weakness and the strength of the East. Lethargy and inertia hold it back from progress; yet the sublime faith in Allah smooths the path of life, meeting all dis- appointments or calamities with a calm folding of the hands and complete submission. The forms of Islam are simple, and yet rigor- ous. There are five duties which are obligatory prayer, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage and ablutions. Prayer is supposed to be said five times a day at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sun- set, and during the night and consists of the repetition of formulas, with a certain number of kneelings and prostrations. If possible every Mohammedan goes for one of these prayers, preferably that at noon, to a mosque, where he performs the ceremony in concert with other worshippers. Ablution of the hands, face, and feet must be observed before each prayer, if possible, and for this purpose there are faucets of running water at every mosque, either in front or in the court, [193] THE REAL TURK where "the faithful" may bathe. Mohammedans never wash in still water in a basin, as we do, but always in running water. For the purpose of calling the faithful to prayers the muezzins climb to the top of the mosque-minarets five times a day and cry out toward each point of the compass the call to prayer. They have wonderfully trained voices, which reach over an entire village. It is a beau- tiful thing to hear at sunset the liquid notes floating down from above, and to realize that everywhere at this hour muezzins are calling and faithful Mohammedans are kneeling in prayer. For a while we had in Bebek the favorite muezzin of the Khedive of Egypt, who had a tenor voice of marvelous quality, and we often strolled by the mosque at sunset to hear his call. As all over the world the external observances of religion are waning, so in Islam. Wherever European civilization has come in contact with Mohammedans, it has weakened their faith. In Constantinople very few make their prayers in public only once in a while have I seen soldiers or priests praying on the boats; and sometimes the Turkish merchants close their shops at noon, [194] THE REAL TURK but this is rare. The average cultured Moham- medan cares very little now about the externals of his religion. A friend told me how he had begun at adolescence to doubt and to lose in- terest in these duties of Islam: the public prayer and fast of Ramazan he failed to observe, but he kept his heresy from his parents, who were strict Mohammedans. The same wave of irreligion which is emptying our churches is decimating the ranks of "the faithful." Yet I do not believe that a Mohammedan, no matter how neglectful of re- ligion he becomes, is ever crassly materialistic. The Oriental seldom goes to the extreme of a positive atheism. On Friday the Mohammedan Sabbath a service is held in the mosque at noon, consisting of prayers followed by a sermon from the mullah, or priest. I had the good fortune to witness one of these services (it would have been impossible before the Revolution, and would be impossible today in any Mohammedan city other than Constantinople). At twelve o'clock the mullahs began to intone the Koran antiphonally from different parts of the mosque, and for half an hour this was continued, while "the faithful" [196] THE REAL TURK came into the mosque one by one, removing their shoes at the door, and squatting on the floor in Oriental fashion. At 12:30 all arose, faced Mecca and went through their prayers, but not in unison. Then they sat down, and there was more antiphonal chanting. Finally the imam, or head priest, appeared in a green robe and mounted the pulpit, while the chanting rose to a louder pitch. When he had taken his position he too began to chant, the mullahs sometimes replying, and continued for half an hour; then he came down and led prayers, which were repeated by the congregation twice in unison. At the end, just before going out, each man turned his head once to the right and once to the left to salute his two guardian angels, who protect him on each side. The service was very impressive to me, and also to my friend, who was in a mosque for the first time. We felt the earnestness of it all the zeal which made each participant oblivious of all that was going on around him. The voices of the mullahs resound beautifully through the mosque, whose bare walls enhance the purity of their tones. The music of their intoning under [196] THE REAL TURK such circumstances is more appealing than our church music. The most dominant note of such a service is its simplicity and democracy. Each one feels himself a part of his great religion a child of God and a brother to his fellow Moham- medan. Rich and poor kneel together patched breeches by the side of fur coat hamal and mer- chant one before God. Sometimes the imam preaches a sermon dur- ing the Friday service. The ordinary Turk gets his ideas of his religion partly through this and partly from a Mohammedan catechism which he is taught in his boyhood, for he cannot read the Koran himself nor understand it when intoned by the mullahs from the Arabic : hence the power of the Mohammedan clergy. Women do not have to go to mosque on Friday, or observe the other forms of their re- ligion. There is no statement anywhere in the Koran that women have no souls, but they are treated as if they had none. They could not profit by these forms; they are not important enough to God to be considered in these matters. It is enough if they accept the faith God and their husbands will see that they get safely to [197] THE REAL TURK Paradise. If they wish to attend mosque they must go into the galleries, or occupy the sides, which are screened in by wooden lattices. The mosque is for men ; Islam is a masculine religion (perhaps that accounts for its steady earnestness and power). It offers a strong contrast to our church, with its growing effeminacy. The pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the reli- gious duties which is considered most sacred. Those who cannot afford this journey make pil- grimages to other sacred places or to tombs of local saints, but it is the dream of every Mussul- man to visit Mecca before he dies, since, if he can accomplish it, he returns to his community a noted man wears a white turban around his fez, and has the title of "Hadji" I have often seen pilgrims on the boats going to Mecca, and I have travelled with them. They live very simply. Everything in the way of bedding, food, and cooking utensils they take with them. When they get on the ship they se- cure a clear place on the deck, spread their baggage about so as to fence this space in, cover the bare boards with textiles and rugs, and are soon as cozy as if in their own homes. They [198] GROUP of Turks travelling deck passage on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The one on the right has an extremely typi- cal Turkish face. queer deck passengers, Turks from Turkistan travelling by deck on their pilgrimage to Mecca. THE REAL TURK cook their meals over spirit lamps or charcoal stoves. Overhead is spread an awning, which shades them by day and keeps off the dew at night. It is delightful if the weather is good and one is well supplied with food and bedding. The price of deck passage is about one-fifth of the second class fare. Thousands travel this way yearly, coming from the farthest confines of Turkestan by way of Bartoum and the Black Sea through Constantinople to Palestine, whence they proceed by caravan to Mecca. Other thousands go overland. Islam is by its theology more or less tolerant. Mohammed did not claim to be divine, to be an Incarnation or the unique Son of God. He says over and over in the Koran "I am not divine, I am a man, as you are." His only claim was to be the prophet of God. He urges tolerance upon his followers, and in one verse tells them to help the Christians if they are building a church and need aid. Islam looks with more or less favor upon what it calls the "religions with a book" that is, Christianity and Judaism which possess the Old Testament jointly with Islam. Of poly- [199] THE REAL TURK theism and idolatry it is not tolerant to them it can, by its theology, make no concessions for the chief burden of Mohammedan's teaching was against idolatry. Peculiarly enough, it is this very point which has estranged Islam from Chris- tianity. The crude Trinitarianism of the Eastern Christian churches (Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Nestorian) appeared to Mohammed as a form of polytheism three gods instead of one and the image worship and extreme formalism of their ritual looked like idolatry. Indeed, there is very little difference between the kissing of the Virgin's eichon by Christians and the worship of images by polytheists. If there is one thing that Moslem theology is strict about, it is the idea of the One God, and among orthodox Mohamme- dans a very pure form of monotheism prevails. Mohammedans have necessarily formed their idea of Christianity from the sects they have been acquainted with in the East, and are surprised to find there are Christians who are not Trini- tarians. There is really a very small barrier be- tween a liberal Mohammedan and a liberal Christian. The Mohammedans all accept Christ as a divine teacher, a prophet sent by God, and [200] THE REAL TURK his title in Mohammedan writings is "The Spirit of God." The prophets of the Old Testament they of course share with Christianity, since their religion is founded on that book quite as much as Christianity is. On the other hand, liberal Christians are ready to accept Mohammed as a prophet. There are even books of worship com- piled from the writings of Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, and Confucius which are used by Chris- tian clergy. A sympathetic and fraternal relation between progressive Christian, Jewish and Mohammedan thinkers is not far away. There are many things which would shut out an orthodox Mohammedan from such a brotherhood his practice of polyg- amy, for example, and his belief (how far wrong?) that much of our New Testament, be- ing falsified by St. Paul, does not represent the teachings of Christ. His belief that Mohamme- danism is the final religion, destined to supplant Christianity, would cause a good orthodox Chris- tian and a good orthodox Mohammedan to argue for hours and never make a dent in each other's superb faith in the finality of his own religion. Mohammedans are becoming progressive, just [201] THE REAL TURK as Christians and Jews are. The cultured Mo- hammedan of today no longer practices or ad- mires polygamy. He is not dogmatic. He is ready and willing to study the Christian's Bible and he admires the words of Christ in our New Testament. He cannot accept the unique divin- ity of Christ, but neither can many Christians. It must not be thought, however, that he is open to conversion. He is no more likely to become a Christian because he is a progressive Moham- medan than a Christian is likely to be converted to Mohammedanism. In other words, he is loyal to the religion of his fathers, although open to truth from whatever source. The missionaries have mistakenly thought that the Revolution would open the Turks to con- version. It has not done so and will not loyalty and patriotism are factors which will always stand in the way. The New Turkey has meant rather a reform of Islam; and the result of the awakening of Turkey, Persia, and Mohamme- dan India is a Pan-Islamic movement which can offer no encouragement to Christian proselyting. The Revolution, however, did open the way for a closer and kinder feeling between Christian [202] THE REAL TURK and Moslem, and awakened, or made apparent, a great desire on the part of educated Moslems to know about the Christian religion. The stu- dents in the University of Constantinople pe- titioned to have comparative religion included in the curriculum. Several mission centers opened meetings for Mohammedans in which talks were given in Turkish on the teachings of Christ, and one mission, which was Quaker and very broad, had great success in this line. Talks on Chris- tianity were attended by scores of Mohammedan divinity students, who betrayed great interest in discussing the Christian theology. One of the leaders of the Salvation Army gave a speech which won admiration, and he himself carried away a great respect for the Turks and for their religion. A movement is on foot to establish the Y. M. C. A. among the Turks, as it has been spread in China and Japan, but it can have little success if attended with a narrow dogmatism. The name "Christian" will be somewhat against it, just as we should rebel against a "Young Men's Mohammedan Association" which should invite membership among the young men in this [203] THE REAL TURK country. Yet the aim is good, since it is for fra- ternity and service, and if its leaders have broad enough ideals, and use wise and tolerant methods in their work, it will surely be of great service. The Turks are more tolerant in religious matters than the Arabs or the Persians. I have a Turkish friend who is as good a Chris- tian as any I know yet he is also a good Mo- hammedan, loyal to his religion, and angered by foolish attempts to detach him from his own faith. I quote from a letter of his a little episode which occurred between him and an earnest Christian young man who caught him one day and began a religious discussion. "To start with he told me that he never believed in attacking other peoples' religions. He said he had a great respect for the great religions of the world. Then little by little he tried to tell me and con- vince me that Christianity was far superior. To sum up the whole conversation, he told me a story: 'A Christian (Chinese) fell into a well. He wept and prayed for deliverance. Confucius appeared at the mouth of the well and said "If you had followed my teachings you would not have fallen into the well" and left. After a [204] THE REAL TURK while Buddha appeared. He looked down and said "Do not cry and weep lose yourself in blissful Nirvana and you will be saved." I was getting nervous. I said to myself 'Now Mo- hammed will come and take a big stone and crush the head of the poor Chinaman.' But for some reason or other he did not appear. 'Last of all Christ appeared. He came down the well and put his arm round this dying Chinaman and pulled him out.' Of course I asked for a bap- tism immediately! And he had said he never at- tacked other religions. "They think now that the country has a con- stitutional government therefore more liberty they can come over here and convert people right and left. I was invited to attend a meeting at X 's. We were to discuss the question 'How to help the Students of the Ottoman Uni- versity.' They never thought that the name under which they were working is enough to prejudice the Mohammedans over here 'Stu- dents' Christian Federation.' Of course I did not go. Strange, very strange, they do not seem to understand the world." This same man was present once at a service [205] THE REAL TURK in which a travelling missionary spent his whole time and energy vilifying Mohammedanism. At the end of the service he was introduced to my friend, and he turned upon him savagely and said, "Don't you know that Mohammedanism is an invention of the devil, and that your soul is in danger?" What kind of impression would such a method produce upon cultured Moham- medans, men with trained minds and world- wide in their outlook? Fortunately this missionary is not at all representative. The cultured Turk, like the cultured Chris- tian, is really an eclectic. He gleans truth from whatever source he may and while in loyalty he calls himself a Mohammedan, he is not a be- liever in infallibility and does not accept all that Mohammed taught, nor think his religion is above reform. He is a gentleman of the world, taking his sanctions for conduct from his social environment rather than from the tenets of Islam. In other words, he has outgrown his past religion and will some day be ready for a more universal truth. [206] ISLAM AND THE INNER LIFE CHAPTER XII ISLAM AND THE INNER LIFE The Mohammedan world is divided into two sects as different in theory and as antagonistic in practice as the Catholic and Protestant divisions of Christianity: Sunni and Shiah. The Sunnis are the orthodox Mohammedans and comprise the Turks, Egyptians and the Arabs. They rec- ognize the caliphate succession, of which the sul- tan of Turkey is the representative, and look to the Sheik-ul-Islam in Constantinople as their spiritual head. Their name is taken from the Sunna, a compilation of traditions about Mo- hammed which they accept as next in authority to the Koran. The Shiites, however, reject the Sunna, and will acknowledge neither the caliphate nor the Sheik-ul-Islam. They claim that Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othman, the first three caliphs of the Sunnis, were impostors, and that Ali, who was murdered after holding the caliphate five years, was a martyr and the true successor of Mo- [209] THE REAL TURK hammed. This succession has been handed down spiritually through twelve imams, the last of whom was the Imam Mohammed, whose second coming will inaugurate the millenium. They look to their leading priests, or mujtahids, for the interpretation of the Koran, rather than to the traditions of the Sunna. It is a very interesting religious phenomenon to note that this sect has succeeded in turning Mohammedanism into a religion of personal de- votion similar to the evangelical attitude of Christianity toward Christ, and the Bhakti wor- ship of Khrisna in India. No religion could give less ground for worship of human personality than Islam, which is as pure a form of mono- theism as Judaism, yet the Shiah followers have succeeded in deifying not only Mohammed but also Ali his son-in-law and Ali's two sons, Hus- sein and Hassan, all three of whom were killed in battle and are looked upon as martyrs. Mohammed has become almost too lofty a personality for intimate worship. It is Ali who is the popular idol. To him the Shiites turn with an intensity of devotion which is paralleled only in the Christian mystics' devotion to Christ. The [210] THE REAL TURK celebration in mourning of the death of All, Hussein, and Hassan, which occurs yearly throughout all Shiah communities, I shall describe later. The Shiah sect arose in Persia after that coun- try had fallen under Arab conquest and turned Mohammedan. If the Arabs could compel their Persian subjects to adopt Mohammedanism, they could not limit the Persian ingenuity from working upon this religion until it took a very different form from that Mohammed intended it to have. The Persians are Aryans and per- haps the most subtle-minded of all the Eastern peoples except the Hindus. They have a great genius for speculation and intellectual creation. It is no wonder that they could not rest until they had transformed Islam, which is essentially a simple faith, into a metaphysical religion suited to their mental habits. Out of this tendency arose a sect which holds the flower of Mohammedan mysticism the Sufi philosophers. Their teachings show strong Hindu and Greek influence Persia having been the melting-pot of the Eastern and Western philosophies for the many centuries succeeding [211] THE REAL TURK the conquests of Alexander. More directly, Sufiism may be called the working of neo-Plato- nism upon Islam. Its basic teaching is the at- tainment to union with the Divine by means of love, the entire loss of self in a love for God so great as to cause absorption into his unity. With this idea leading, Sufi teachers have some- times announced that they were God. This does not appear blasphemous when we understand what was meant: they considered themselves so at one with the Divine that they no longer had any will of their own, but were completely swayed by the divine will. This assertion is similar to the ideas and teachings of the Perfec- tionists, and of the followers of Molinos, who claimed they were sinless. The beauty of the Sufi writings lies in the fact that human love is accepted as a necessary step leading to the divine love and this figure runs through all their literature, spiritualizing the earthly love, and bringing the divine love within reach of human hearts. No more beauti- ful love poems exist in any language than those of Hafiz, Jalal-u-din, and Jami. Their expres- sion of human love always carries a hint of the [212] THE REAL TURK higher love and the higher love so illumines the longings of the erring mortal heart as to make its utterances sublime. In no other philosophy is the path to God so beautiful "God, the True Beloved, from whom all that is beautiful borrows its beauty." Prof. E. G. Brown of Oxford University, one of the leading Orientalists, writes as follows of the Sufi teaching: "The great practical aim of Sufiism is to es- cape from self, and until this lesson is learnt no further advance can be made. Worship, love, devotion to any one or anything are therefore good in so far as they conduce to self-renuncia- tion and self-forgetfulness. What, then, is the pain which man suffers, and how can he escape therefrom? For only by finding the cause of this pain can he hope to cure it. That pain is love of self the remedy for it is to renounce self, and the escape is into God. So long as man is held captive by the illusion of self he inevitably suffers from unsatisfied desire and unquenchable craving. Let him learn the truth and look up- ward to the One, not around at the many, and least of all downward at that dark shadow of un- [213] THE REAL TURK reality which he takes for himself. What does he then behold? The Light and nothing but the Light; Good and nothing but the Good; God and nothing but God. This is the supreme hap- piness, the ultimate goal, the beatific vision : this, in a word, is 'Annihilation in God.' The drop is merged into the Ocean; the pilgrim has reached the Shrine; the lover is united to the Beloved. 'He has ceased to exist?' you ask. No, he is one with Being. 'Has he lost the friends that he loved on earth?' No, for what he loved in them was the reflection of that wherewith he is now at one. All that he ever was he is and far more than that; all that he ever had he has, and infinitely more." The following poem from Hafiz illustrates the sublimity of the Sufi ideal: I died from the mineral and became a plant; I died from the plant and re-appeared in an animal; I died from the animal and became a man; Wherefore, then, should I fear? When did I grow less by dying? Next time I shall die from the man That I may grow the wings of the angels. From the angels, too, I must seek advance; " All things shall perish save His Face." * * Quotation from the Koran. NOTE : It is easy to trace in this poem the influence of Hindu philosophy. [214] ft THE REAL TURK Once more shall I wing my way above the angels, I shall become that which entereth not the imagination. Then let me become naught, naught; for the harpstring Crieth unto me " Verily unto Him do we return.'* In Sufiism must be found the origin of the many dervish orders which exist, not only in Persia, but throughout Islam. Thus while Sufi- ism is essentially an outgrowth of Shiism, it has sent its tentacles out to Sunni countries such as Turkey in the form of dervish orders. The most prominent of these in Turkey are the Mevlevis, or "Dancing Dervishes ;" the Rufais, or "Howl- ing Dervishes," whose peculiar ceremonies I shall describe in a later chapter; and the Bek- tasliis, orders which trace their beginning to some Sufi saint or teacher. They have both active and lay members. Unlike Christian monastic orders, they do not enforce celibacy : the active members live in a sort of monastery with their wives and children, if they have any; the lay members may hold their connection with the order secret, but their lives and beliefs are profoundly influenced by it. The general attitude of the dervish orders to- ward the forms of their religion is antinomian. They are mystics, and, as such, are lifted above [215] THE REAL TURK the necessity of obedience to forms. Hence they go through prayers only when publicity obliges them to. They do not observe the fast of Ramazan, nor abstain from spirituous liquors. They are far from being dogmatic Mohamme- dans and are very tolerant of any religion or faith which points the way to God. The Bektashis are the most numerous and powerful sect of dervishes in Turkey; they owe their origin to Hadji Bektashi, a saint of Konia, Turkey. This order is especially strong in Al- bania, where it has thousands of followers. It was so powerful around Constantinople that one of the late sultans felt obliged to persecute it, and it fell from favor. Even today the ceremony of The Girding of the Sword, which corresponds to the coronation in other monarchies, can be performed only by the Chelibi or head of the Bektashi Dervishes, who comes on from Konia for this purpose. There is a strong tie of brotherhood between Bektashis, and the different families composing one chapter unite in worship, men and women together, with all the brotherly and sisterly zeal of a Methodist prayer-meeting. These [216] THE REAL TURK Mohammedans are so progressive as to dis- regard the veil before members of their own order. The Bektashis are entirely tolerant toward any religion which is sincere, and believe in the validity of other faiths, welcoming all men as brothers. They represent the broadest views that the Turks have yet taken in matters reli- gious. The broadest movement in all Islam today, one which also had its inception in Sufiism, is Bahaism, sometimes called Babism from Ali Mo- hammed, "the Bab," its founder. This young man, in 1844, in the heart of Persia, felt himself called to proclaim a new religion of peace and justice and universal brotherhood. He had med- itated over his own religion, Mohammedanism, and began to be impressed with its failings. Finally, after a pilgrimage to Kerbala, the cen- tral shrine of the Shiite Mohammedans, like Luther after his visit to Rome, he felt deeply the hollowness of the religion in which he had been brought up. He returned to Shiraz and began to proclaim himself the herald of a reformed Islam. "He denounced the worldliness and im- [217] THE REAL TURK morality of the mullahs, or Mohammedan clergy, and spoke with a conviction which compelled be- lief in the era of justice and happiness now at hand, and the certain triumph of the new truth which he was commissioned to proclaim."* Ali Mohammed was possessed of a beautiful and striking personality, which, upon being fired with the zeal of religion, proved invincible to the mullahs whom he was denouncing, and who sought in every way to humiliate him. He met them in public debate and put them to shame. So great was the charm of his speech that he won converts by the hundred. Several of his most zealous followers also went about teaching, among them a young woman of wonderful beauty and intellectual power, Kurat-el-Eyn, the Joan-of-Arc of Persia. The cause of the inspired youth grew so fast that at last the government was persuaded to put it down and persecutions too horrible to de- scribe decimated the ranks of the Babis. As with the early Christians, the property of rich Babis was confiscated, their homes ravaged and burned, Prof. E. G. Browne. [218] THE REAL TURK and whole families destroyed with the utmost barbarity. There are Persians living today whose parents thus lost their property and their lives, and who have been reduced from wealth to poverty. In 1852, as a last resort against the re- sistless growth of Babism, it was determined to put Ali Mohammed, "the Bab," to death. Ac- cordingly he was carried to a public square in Shiraz and shot in the presence of many of his followers. The martyrdom of the Bab did not by any means end the power of Babism. It continued to grow, and in 1864 Baha Ullah, who had been one of the disciples of the Bab, and who had been obliged to live in exile, first in Bagdad, and then in Adrianople, demanded the allegiance of the Babis. The Bab (the name means "gate" or "door") had constantly asserted that one would follow him who should complete the religion which he was only privileged to begin. Baha Ul- lah now claimed to be that one, and by his blame- less life and spiritual power succeeded in demon- strating his fitness for leadership and in winning the Babis to follow him. At his death in 1892 there were few Babis left who had not accepted [219] THE REAL TURK him as the one whom the Bab had predicted would take the leadership of his cause. Baha Ul- lah assumed the authority to complete the teach- ings of the Bab, and to abrogate whatever was necessary. The changes that he wrought in Bab- ism were so great that it deserves at present to be called Bahaism after him, as indeed all his fol- lowers call it. What were the changes that he made? Under Ali Mohammed Babism was hardly more than a reformed Islam; it was left for Baha Ullah to give it a world-wide meaning. He transformed it into a universal religion, whose platform is ex- tremely broad. Bahaism teaches the validity of all religions, claiming that truth is essentially one, and that, as there is only one God, the worship of that God is the same, no matter under what name he is called. The differences in religion are due to the differences in race and times, but these may be overlooked in the light of the underlying unity of all spiritual truth. Such a platform furnishes an excellent basis for proselyting, since the Bahai missionary never seeks to confute the beliefs of the peoples among [220] THE REAL TURK whom he may be teaching. Whether he dis- cusses with Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu, Zoro- astrian, Mohammedan, Jew or Christian, he accepts their religion as valid to begin with, and seeks to demonstrate the value of Bahaism from their own sacred books. The Bahai missionary always makes himself familiar with the sacred books of those he would convert, and argues with the Jew from his Old Testament, with the Hindu from the Vedas, the Mohammed from the Koran, the Christian from the Bible, etc. Not only did Baha Ullah proclaim a universal religion which should unite men in one vast spir- itual brotherhood, obliterating all religious hatred and rancour, but he taught, as early as 1870, the necessity for world peace. War must cease, nations must mingle in friendship, justice must become universal, all men must be as brothers. He censured that form of patriotism which says, "My country, right or wrong." "Pride not thyself in that thou lovest thy coun- try, "he said, "but rather that thou lovest the whole world." The stand that he made for uni- versal peace is remarkable when it is remembered that it antedated by several decades the rise of [221] THE REAL TURK peace sentiment in Europe, and that he sent out his teachings from the cruel and benighted East. In pursuance of his teachings of peace, Baha Ullah forbade his followers to kill, even in self- defence an injunction which had never been put upon them under the Bab, when they had been obliged to take up arms and fight with all the vigor of a zeal-inspired people. But under Baha Ullah the fierce followers of the Bab be- came gentle. The employment of force is hate- ful to God, he said. "If ye be slain it is better for you than that ye should slay." Love was to take the place of hatred, and peace to be substi- tuted for violence. "Close your eyes to racial differences and welcome all with the light of Oneness." As a further need for the establishment of that brotherhood of nations which was the vision of Baha Ullah, he advised the study of languages, and the choice, in time, of one universal language, either an existing one or a new one, which should unite the minds of the peoples as his universal religion was to unite their hearts. Education received great stress. "The diffu- sion of knowledge is a most laudable thing," he [222] i THE REAL TURK said. For a father to let his children grow up in ignorance was a sin against God and if he could not afford to educate both his sons and daughters, he must educate his daughters first, as they were to be the mothers of the future race. A most radical teaching, this, to proceed from the Orient. As Prof. Browne points out "Bahaism, in spite of the mystic enthusiasm which pervades it, differs from Sufiism in the essentially practi- cal objects which it has in view. The future life must not divert our thoughts from the work of regenerating this world." Not so much stress is laid on the salvation of the individual soul for the sake of a future para- dise as for the sake of a reformed life in this world. The Kingdom of God, to which the Ba- hais look forward with vivid faith, cannot come to earth, they say, until the individual is pre- pared for it. Hence they do not aim at chang- ing the external forms of life so much as working on the heart, and improving the character of men by means of their religion. Religion is worth nothing, Baha Ullah said, unless it is lived out in the daily life. "In this [228] THE REAL TURK day, all must serve God with purity and virtue Some are content with words, but the truth of words is tested by deeds and dependent upon life. Deeds reveal the station of the man." Work is commended to all men. Idleness is a sin. "It is necessary for you to engage in arts and business. Fruitless trees have been and will be only fit for fire. The lowest of men are those who bear no fruit upon the earth." There is no room in his system for the idle rich. And while he does not seek to overturn the social ranks and classes, or put the servant on a level with his master, yet he teaches the essential dignity of the individual and the honorableness of work, no matter how menial. One of the happiest and most spiritual men I have ever met was a Bahai who had been a cook in the service of Baha Ullah, and had become glorified by his labor. "Man is not worthy in the eyes of God/' says Baha Ullah, "because of wealth and adornment, learning and refinement. He is not worthy of the name man until he be imbued with the attri- butes of the Merciful One faithfulness, wis- dom, chastity, intelligence and deeds." The rapid spread of this religion has forced [224] THE REAL TURK it upon the attention of scholars. Bahaism now numbers among its adherents about a third of the population of Persia besides many persons in India, Turkestan, and Egypt; and it even has followers in France, Germany, England, and America. In this country there are Bahai centers in every large city, with a total of some 3,000 members. Bahai teachers are working in many different countries to spread their re- ligion. In fact, every Bahai constitutes himself a missionary; you cannot be with one an hour but what he enters upon a discussion of religion. It is one of the religious duties of a Bahai to gain new adherents to his cause. Bahaism in the East has produced wonderful results in the lives of its followers. One of the most striking of these is the tolerance and sym- pathy for other religions and races which is al- ways characteristic of Bahais, even though they may be wild shepherds upon the mountainsides of Persia. They are the soul of kindness and devotion to one another, and they are com- manded by their religion to be kind to all, whether Bahais or not. Bahaism has proved a great solvent of racial [225] THE REAL TURK and religious hatred in Persia. It has many con- verts among the Jews and Zoroastrians of that country as well as among Mohammedans, and they all meet together in perfect unity and love, where before there existed only hatred and con- tempt. It is no uncommon thing to see men of five or six races and as many religions sit down at table together, bound by the ties of a common religion, members of a universal brotherhood. The opium habit, which is a great evil in Persia, was denounced by Baha Ullah, and is never indulged in by his faithful followers. Smoking is also discouraged. Honesty in word and deed is enjoined upon all, and the Persians, who are naturally some of the worst liars in the world, show a great change for the better when they become Bahais, and then are found much more trustworthy as servants, and more honor- able in business. Bahaism gives to the Oriental ideals of sex purity which were never held before. It con- demns polygamy altogether, and puts its fol- lowers upon a basis of monogamy. Travellers in Persia testify that the home life of Bahais is far above that of their Mohammedan brothers. [226] THE REAL TURK Chastity is commanded a new ideal to the Orient. The Bahai women see opportunities which their Mohammedan sisters never dream of, since education was opened to them through Baha Ullah. They have been eagerly waiting for a chance to acquire the learning of the twentieth century and to take their place by the side of men in the regeneration of their country and of the world. There is reason to believe that in time Baha- ism will become the religion of all Persia, and its growth in other countries shows no signs of weakening; it is a movement to be watched, for it is in complete sympathy with the most pro- gressive tendencies of the day. It may be interesting to compare at this point the inner life of the East and of the West. Is the East more spiritual than the West? There is no doubt that it is. The effect of education and scientific progress in the West has seemed to be scepticism, and, what is worse, indifference to- ward religion. Many of our churches are grow- ing empty, ministers are at their wits' ends, and men of affairs too often become content to get [227] THE REAL TURK along without any definite religion. One man, a scientist, remarked to me that science had pro- duced more benefit to the world in the last hun- dred years than religion had in all the centuries preceding. It is not hard to see where the in- terest of the West lies practical things absorb its attention. In so far as religion is practical it appeals; otherwise, it does not. The East has not yet awakened to pure intel- lectualism, and is bound to superstition. Even in business the fear of God is stronger than the dollar. Two merchants are bargaining together. The seller wants a larger price ; the buyer replies, "I will give it but may Allah turn it bad for you." This curse, pronounced not on the seller, but on the extra money which he demands, is usually enough to give him pause and make him content with the smaller sum. The Greek mer- chant, however, takes a thrifty advantage of this way of bargaining with the Turk, for he does not fear the curse and is quite willing to ac- cept the tainted money. No plans are made for the future without the provision ff Inshallah""God willing." There was a woman who was very pious, and never [228] THE REAL TURK made a promise without the humble "Inshallah." Her husband, becoming tired of this, ordered her to stop it, or he would beat her. One morning as he was leaving for business he asked her what time they would have supper. "At seven o'clock God willing." At this word, which had slipped out in spite of his threat, the man took a stick and gave her a good beating, saying, "Nonsense, woman, we will have supper at seven, whether God wills or not," and then went on his way. At nightfall as he was returning to his home, some robbers fell upon him and beat him so that he lay there insensible for most of the night. In the early hours of the morning he managed to crawl home a regenerated man and told his wife to say "Inshallah" all she wanted. Stronger than any other idea in the Mussul- man's mind is his belief in destiny, and his every act is in accordance with this fatalism. The candy vender enters a coffee shop and smokes, regardless whether he misses a customer or not; the Turkish boatmen or hackmen do not com- pete for a customer with the fury of other nationalities, because they know if it is their des- tiny to get one, he will come anyway; nor does [229] THE REAL TURK the Turkish merchant force his goods upon you nor race out into the street after you, like the Jew and the Armenian. The hustling American traveller wonders how the Turk can make a liv- ing. As a matter of fact, he does not make so good a living as his Jewish, Greek and Armenian competitors, but the peace and contentment which is written on his face are worth the cost he pays for it. There is no strain in his business life. He is as calm and placid as if he were an anchorite meditating upon the goodness of his Creator. The absence of ambition in the average Turk is partly an outcome of this same fatalism; he is content with whatever Allah sends, having few desires; in times of business stress his faith in God is superb. In these ways, religion enters into the daily life of the Turk to sweeten it and make it peaceful. Misfortune is met with com- plete resignation. Worry never dwells upon the brow of the Turk. Life's end is met with this same calm fortitude. The Angel of Death never comes save at God's command, and at the destined time so why murmur or repine? Why fruitlessly endeavor [230] THE REAL TURK to escape one's fate? The prime minister of a certain sultan once came in fright to his master and asked leave to withdraw for the rest of his life to Tunis, because the Angel of Death was following him with calm steps. The Sultan granted the request; and as the prime minister walked gladly from the room, thinking he had saved his life for a few years more, the sultan saw a grim smile upon the face of Death, who stood near. "Why do you smile?" he said. Death re- plied: "Your majesty, Allah sent me to fetch this man, but I was commanded to take him at Tunis, I wondered how I could get him to go there, but now you have solved the difficulty for me." Such fatalism has its evil side a folding of the hands without effort to struggle against un- favorable conditions but it relieves life of much of its terror. It is said that experienced soldiers in any country become fatalists, influenced by fre- quent exposure to death to accept fatalistic ideas as a protection against fear. The calmness with which they face the whistling bullet is induced by a belief that they will not be shot until their time comes. Napoleon was a confirmed fatalist. [231] THE REAL TURK His faith in his own destiny was so strong that by it he inspired all his followers, and the spirit with which they fought was but a reflection of his own fiery assurance. In the East, in addition to the spirit of fatal- ism, there is the promise of immediate Paradise to every Mohammedan who falls in a religious war- fare, and this gives not only calm acceptance of death but a welcoming of it and lends a fury to Mohammedan warfare which has more than once made Europe quail. The Mohammedans in general carry their re- ligion into their everyday life it is not a matter of mere seventh-day observance. Their hospi- tality is renowned. Never do they let the stran- ger go hungry. They have few organized chari- ties, but each Mohammedan is at the service of his brother. A poor man can get bread at the kitchens of the rich. No one need starve. The feeling of brotherhood is very strong in Islam stronger than in Christianity. It is a powerful religious democracy. He who asks in the name of Allah is seldom refused. I have already spoken of the reverence with which the Mohammedan goes through the forms [232] THE REAL TURK of his religion. The mosque service cannot fail to inspire any visitor with its feeling of hushed worship and devotion. The Mohammedan at prayer has no attention for anything else. Nothing can distract him. The fear of God is always in the heart of the Mohammedan. He is simple-minded childlike, if you will for he lives near to God. His speech is permeated with pious phrases. The hold of religion upon pious Mohammed- ans is best seen in their faithful observance of the long fast of Ramazan, necessitating a real sacrifice of personal comfort and efficiency; and in abstinence from liquor, a habit which Christian countries have not been able to acquire. Here is a vigorous race full of red blood that is pure and strong. The Turks are neither degenerate nor effete. The things of which I have so far been speak- ing are the externals of religion, rather than the indications of a true spirituality; but there are many ways in which the Oriental shows himself to be more spiritually-minded than his Western brother. His thoughts are more constantly upon the divine. It is not without significance that [233] THE REAL TURK every one of the great world religions has arisen in the East and had its conception in the mind of an Oriental. There is something in the East which seems to induce meditation. The climate invites mysticism just as our American climate forces life into feverish activity. One falls under "the spell of the East" insensibly; it is there a real thing as vital in the lives of its peoples as our machinery and productivity are to us. How little time our business men have for meditation on the nature of existence! How seldom when they are together does their conversation turn on spiritual themes: the nature of the Ultimate man's position in the universe his relation to the Divine. The typical American has no cos- mic view; his mind does not scan the universe, nor find for him any relation to the mysterious All of which the world where he breathes and lives is but an infinitesimal part. He bothers little with such idle speculations ! To the Oriental, however, this is the one ab- sorbing theme. He is ever pondering upon the nature of existence as a whole. Other things, the practical things of everyday life, are but passing shows from which he is glad to withdraw [234] THE REAL TURK whenever possible in order to be face to face with the Divine to feel that mystic sense of union with the Whole which is peculiarly Oriental. If two or three business men get together, their talk is sure to run into religion, which is the fa- vorite subject of discussion. From the time he enters this world till the time he leaves it, the Ori- ental is surrounded with the feeling of awe and reverence for the Unseen, and a reaching out for a closer relation to it. It is from the East that there have come the ideas of renunciation and submission to God, and the absence of all desire save His will, without which essentials no individual can become truly spiritual. A Mussulman is "one who submits to God." The patience with which he bears suffering and misfortune is wonderful. His calm and majestic attitude toward the buffets of the world, render- ing him superior to suffering, places him, even in misfortune, above the plane of material fluc- tuations an accomplishment which only a strong religion can bring to pass. What is the goal of every individual's desire, save to be beyond the power of misfortune to [235] THE REAL TURK be assured of constant peace and happiness? There is one way of striving for this: piling up investments, perfecting the external conditions of life, surrounding oneself with friends and then shaking one's fist in the face of Destiny and defying it; but the very defiance shows a fear, and no stronghold is proof against calamity. And even if all other obstacles to happiness were removed, death alone were sufficient to disturb the materialist's peace of mind. It was an Oriental who said, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal;" and having perhaps a vision of the bravado of our modern materialist, this same Oriental told the story of a man who piled up wealth in his barns and then invited his friends to carouse, defying Destiny to do him harm fool that he was! His grain was safe, but he was not, for his soul was required of him that very night. Emerson's poem "Hamatreya" admirably illustrates this principle of material possession. Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint, Possessed the land which rendered to their toil [236] THE REAL TURK Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood. Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm, Saying, " 'Tis mine, my children's and my name's. How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees ! How graceful climb those shadows on my hill ! I fancy these pure waters and the flags Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize; And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil." Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough. Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs, Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave. They added ridge to valley, brook to pond, And sighed for all that bounded their domain; ' This suits me for a pasture ; that's my park ; We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge, And misty lowlands, where to go for peat. The land is well, lies fairly to the south. 'Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back, To find the sitfast acres where you left them." Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds Him to his land, a lump of mould the more. Hear what the Earth says: EARTH-SONG " Mine and yours ; Mine, not yours. Earth endures; Stars abide Shine down in the old sea ; Old are the shores; But where are old men? I who have seen much, Such have I never seen. [237] THE REAL TURK "The lawyer's deed Ran sure, In tail, To them, and to their heirs Who shall succeed, Without fail, Forevermore. "Here is the land, Shaggy with wood, With its old valley, Mound and flood. But the heritors? Fled like the flood's foam. The lawyer, and the laws, And the kingdom, Clean swept herefrom. "They called me theirs, Who so controlled me ; Yet every one Wished to stay, and is gone, How am I theirs, If they cannot hold me, But I hold them?" When I heard the Earth-song, I was no longer brave; My avarice cooled Like lust in the chill of the grave. To the Occidental, a material possession seems the most solid thing in this universe; but to the Oriental, who has always the eternal values in mind, the things of this earth appear very fluc- [238 ] THE REAL TURK tuating and unstable, while death is the only sure and universal adjunct of life. The best way of insuring peace in the midst of one's possessions is by being detached from them. Only he who is without desire is safe from misfortune. As Laotze says, "By not making any claims of ownership, the sage is superior to loss." Of course he is, for how can a man lose what he does not possess? The man who is free from desire and submissive to God's will looks upon his possessions as loaned to him, and is ready at any time to see them go without com- plaint or whining. The Oriental can do without the things which the Westerner considers as necessities. He can be happy under almost any circumstances. Thus he lives perpetually in a realm of peace, above the jar and turmoil of the world. In occasional solitudes he meditates upon God and his life is lived in spiritual spaces. I do not say that the East has all. The prac- tical achievements of the West are also necessary. The perfect civilization would be that which would combine these two elements: masterful wrestling with Nature for the utilization of her [239] THE REAL TURK resources and the prevention of waste, whether economic, social, or physiological; and the calm submission to the will of the Almighty which in- sures happiness. Either without the other is but half of perfection. [240] PECULIAR RITES AND BELIEFS OF ISLAM CHAPTER XIII PECULIAR RITES AND BELIEFS OF ISLAM One of the greatest occasions in the Moham- medan year is The Night of Power, which comes at the end of the month of fasting. It was on this night that the Koran is believed to have de- scended from heaven, letter perfect. On this most holy anniversary angels descend from heaven to take men's prayers up to Allah, and the act of worship is of tenfold merit. At Constantinople prayers are always held on The Night of Power in the Mosque of St. Sophia, which is closely packed with "the faith- ful," to the number of seven or ten thousand. A limited number of tourists and foreign residents are admitted into the gallery as spectators a privilege which is as desirable as it is hard to secure. In the autumn of 1909, I had the good fortune to see this wonderful ceremony, and after it to mingle in disguise with the Mohammedans on the floor of the mosque. [243] THE REAL TURK A small party of Americans went under the auspices of the American Embassy. (Each embassy is allowed to take a certain number of people.) Upon arriving we found the gallery already filled with other parties French, Ger- man, English who had come with their kavas- ses. We found our way to the edge of the balcony and looked down. There, through the midst of the floating lights hundreds of little oil cups burning in chandeliers we discerned the throng of worshippers, all wearing red fezes. The service consisted of the usual prayers, led by the imam from his tall pulpit. The impres- sive thing about it was the immense number of worshippers, and the absolute unity with which they went through the different movements of the prayers. To see some ten thousand men pros- trating themselves in the direction of Mecca, touching their foreheads to the floor and rising again, as one man, is a sight I shall never forget ; nor shall I forget the sound of ten thousand voices raising to the dome a united chant in praise of God. The sightseers whom I was among took this awe-inspiring spectacle as a mere diversion, and chattered and laughed [244] THE REAL TURK through it all. I stole away to the end of the corridor, where I could be all alone and give my- self up to the emotions aroused by this great ceremony. There was the same compelling power which is felt in a great revival meeting the audience had become as one man, each indi- vidual having merged his soul into the soul of the whole. They were so closely packed together in rows that each one had just room to make his prostrations, and they did not look to right or left, but devoted themselves to the worship with absolute zeal for upwards of an hour. As I watched them, several impressions came to me. One was of the wonderful unity of Islam, expressed here so strikingly in the perfect unison with which these thousands performed their prayers ; and there was also the feeling of power of great potentiality. What might not this zeal accomplish? Here in Constantinople, one of the most Europeanized of Moslem cities, under the progressive rule of the Young Turks, we were witnesses of the same blind religious fanaticism which had so often made Christendom tremble. A few words from the imam in incita- tion against the Christians, and the ten thousand [245] THE REAL TURK worshippers would have become a howling mob, hurling itself murderously against the unbelievers. Yet their fanaticism appealed to me. After all, it was zeal, real devotion to Allah, which brought them together and welded them into one spirit of adoration before the throne of their Creator. Was this a thing to laugh at? They were worshipping God, and I felt that his all- hearing ear was open to their supplications, and that he accepted their worship in proportion to its sincerity. I felt a tie which united me to these children of the same Father, and thereby in spirit I was one of the vast brotherhood of Islam. At length the service ended, the imam came down from his pulpit, and the audience broke up into little groups about different mullahs who ex- pounded the Koran to them, or gave them hom- ilies on this life and the next. With an Ameri- can friend I put on a fez I had brought in my pocket, went down to the entrance and slipped in, walking around among the Turks and visiting the groups of listeners. We coulo!, not follow the sermons, from lack of proficiency in Turkish, but [246] THE REAL TURK could gather from the fierce looks of several speakers, and the ejaculations of their listeners, that the Mohammedan fanaticism was at its height, and we felt somewhat like lambs among wolves. We had been listening for some time in one group when my friend whispered to me that we were being watched. It seems our actions in some way aroused suspicion. The Moham- medans had a queer gesture by which they gave approval to the words of the speaker a raising of the palms toward the ears which we tried to imitate, but evidently with poor success. We did not dare linger now that we were being fol- lowed, for the discovery of Christians among them on this most sacred night might have pro- duced serious results. Had anyone accosted us we must have shown by our ignorance of Turk- ish that we were foreigners. So we sidled for the door, crab-like, and made a hasty exit, and crossing the court to a little coffee-shop we sat and smoked and sipped coffee, conversing about our interesting experience. The peculiar performance of the Howling Dervishes takes place on Thursdays in a teke, or monastery, at Scutari. On that day a string of [247] THE REAL TURK carriages may be seen ascending the hill from the boat-landing at Scutari, and by half past two, when the performance begins, the visitors' gallery and part of the floor of the teke is filled with travellers of all nationalities German French, Swiss, English and American. Let us secure a seat on the floor next to the railing which separates us from the actors. Close by us stands the line of Howling Derv- ishes, ready to begin work. Their sheik,, or leader, steps forward facing them and begins the prayers, which they go through once as in a reg- ular mosque. Then they begin chanting the at- tributes or qualities of God in Arabic, especially confining themselves to the rapid repetition of the words "La Ilaha ill Allah 3 ' "There is no God but Allah" which is the most sacred group of words in the Moslem theology. Faster and faster they chant, with the purpose of working themselves up to a religious frenzy or ecstasy. As they chant they sway back and forth, nodding their heads in religious abandon. At first the movements are volitional, but one by one the dervishes assume a state of religious enthusiasm in which their actions are largely subconscious. [248] THE REAL TURK Standing near enough to them to study their faces, we easily distinguish the adepts, whose emotional systems have long ago been trained to easy entrance into the blissful state of lialet, or "oneness with God." They quiver and droop in all their bodies, and their faces take on an empty expression which is a sign of their having almost left the plane of the conscious. But things are not lively enough to suit the master dervish who is leading them. He steps nearer, increases the volume of his tone, fastens his black, magnetic eyes on the swaying line of zealots, and as he repeats the "La Ilaha ill Allah" in sharp staccato-like tones, he taps his foot fiercely upon the ground with an impelling rhythm. The dervishes respond to the hypnotic stimulus, and the work grows warmer. The outer garments are cast off, sweat pours down the faces of the chanters, and they grow more and more excited. Suddenly an old graybeard of seventy jumps out of the line, and yelling at the top of his voice leaps twice high into the air and comes down on his knees upon the bare floor, with violence enough to break a sane man's knee- cap. They pick him up and lead him to the [249] THE REAL TURK sheik, who smooths his forehead to calm him. Then the performance goes on with redoubled vigor. The finest part of the show is yet to come. A large negro soldier who is the prize exhibit of the teke is just getting warmed up. Presently he begins to froth at the mouth, and running, he dashes his head violently against the pillar which supports the roof. Not satisfied with that he leaps up and strikes his head against the stone floor. Now the spectators are getting a fair re- turn for the franc they paid to see the perform- ance. After the negro has been led away the sheik allows the enthusiasm to die down. Soon the chanting stops, and the healing of the lame and sick who have gathered there takes place. Percival Lowell in his "Esoteric Japan," de- scribes phenomena similar to those noticed among the dervishes of Turkey. He tells of conditions in which the body, when its indwelling soul is worked up into a frenzy of religious faith, seems capable of enduring scalding heat without pain and without harmful results. Even among the natives of the Pacific Islands this art is practised. After working themselves [260] THE REAL TURK into a religious frenzy they walk barefooted upon red-hot stones without injury. To pass such phenomena off with the single word "fake" is no longer possible, because of the attestations of scientific observers to their reality. Hanging upon the walls of the teke are strange implements which speak of more dread- ful practises than we had been allowed to see. It was formerly the custom here, and still is in less public centers, for the dervishes to torture themselves in their final ecstacy with sharp in- struments which pierce the flesh, with red-hot irons which they handle, and with live coals which are placed upon the tongue. These gruesome rites Abdul Hamid had prohibited the one hu- mane act of his reign. Another custom in Islam similar in its develop- ment of the same indifference to pain is that of the so-called Persian Festival, or celebration of the martyrdom of Hussein and Hassan, in which the Persians, more fanatical even than the Turks, gash themselves upon the head and breast until blood flows in streams; yet after the per- formance they put on a salve, and the wounds are said to heal up quickly. [251] THE REAL TURK We seldom will admit any fact which we are not able to understand. Were a savage to go back to his tribe and tell his friends that he had visited a great city and ridden in carriages with- out horses, and had sailed through the air 'way above the tops of trees with a man-bird, he would very probably meet with sublime incredulity. So with the average man of cultured America: tell him of an event the causes of which he cannot understand, and in nine cases out of ten he will refuse to believe it occurred. This illogical shut- ting of the eyes to actual occurrences is not at all confined to laymen, but even penetrates the ranks of would-be scientists, many of whom are far more bigoted and blind to the everyday events about them than is the average man. It is only since hypnotism has revealed strange psy- chic occurrences that such religious phenomena as I have been describing have received any se- rious investigation. I suppose that the tourists left the teke with a feeling of thankfulness that they belonged to an enlightened religion which contains no such rites. Yet it is not difficult to find parallels in Christianity where, too, the heart of the devotee [252] THE REAL TURK seeks to lose itself in the One by similar perform- ances. Davenport, in his "Primitive Traits of Religious Revivals," describes features of fa- mous revival meetings which are just as abnor- mal: people were seized with "the shakes," or were hurled violently to the ground by some un- known force, and lay frothing at the mouth in a state of trance which corresponds exactly to the ecstasy into which these dervishes sought to work themselves. The use of music and of magnetic speakers in the great revival meetings corres- ponds to the repetition of the "La Ilaha ill Allah" and the hypnotic influence of the black- eyed sheik. It is a matter of arousing the emo- tions and holding them at white heat until the audience passes into a subconscious state in which it is peculiarly open to suggestion. Such performances, however, are no more characteristic of Islam, whose regular mosque service is essentially dignified and sane, than the exuberance of the Holy Jumpers is characteris- tic of Christianity. Mankind possesses a strange faculty for seeing the abnormal and peculiar at a distance, without being able to perceive it nearer home. Self-analysis is good, not only for [253] THE REAL TURK the individual, but for the state, and even for religion itself. It helps us to prune away the excrescences which are not vital and which do not bear good fruit. For this reason the study of comparative religion is imperative. It should form a part of every curriculum and be taught in our Sunday schools, but, alasl the majority of religious people prefer to safeguard their con- victions by refraining from facing facts. There is another sect of dervishes whose cere- monies are more pleasing the Mevlevis or Dancing Dervishes, who hold a public service in their teke in Pera every Friday. Among these the ecstasy or state of halet is sought by whirl- ing around in a circular dance which symbolizes the movement of the planets about the sun. Twelve dervishes, clad in flowing robes, with tall brown hats, enter the hall and commence their slow, graceful dance about the central figure, their sheik. There is nothing violent about this ceremony, which ends, as it begins, with each dervish's bowing low before his leader; the dancing step is so smooth and practised that the dervishes seem to float around the room; little lead balls are fastened to the skirts of their [254] THE REAL TURK gowns, which float out in charming billowy waves as they dance. Their hands are held in the air, the palm of one turned up, and the palm of the other turned down. Sweet music preludes the dance, breaking out at intervals again and again during the perform- ance. It comes from an Oriental reed instru- ment whose tones are somewhat like those of a clarionet, but infinitely more sweet and mourn- ful. The silvery notes bubble out like the song from the breast of a nightingale. The Eastern music is less intellectual and more primitively natural than ours; it pierces the senses in an al- together peculiar way, producing a dreamy ecstasy of mind and soul in which all beautiful things seem possible, and troubles far away. The Mevlevis are a more philosophical and cultured sect than the Rufais or Howling Derv- ishes. Among the lay members of the Mevlevis are many of the finest minds in Turkey; the ceremony of their dance is only an outward form, which gives no indication to the careless onlooker of their deep metaphysical concepts. The Bektashis* are very liberal in their theol- * See Chapter XII. [355] THE REAL TURK ogy, and welcome fraternal relations with other faiths. Their initiates are taught to restrain the senses and to aspire toward spiritual progress, yet celibacy is not practised as among Christian Monks. They marry and live together in their tekes with their Sheik. The ceremony which with them corresponds to the howling of the Ruf ais and the dancing of the Mevlevis is a meet- ing of men and women together in spiritual wor- ship the only religious ceremony in Islam to my knowledge in which the two sexes unite. The unveiling of their women amidst the members of their own sect makes possible a friendship between man and woman which is generally unknown in Mohammedan countries. This of itself would be sufficient foundation for the ac- cusation brought against them by other Moham- medans of immoral and antinomian practises; but whether there is any real foundation for this report is hard to tell. The character, earnestness and breadth of mind of certain Bektashis I have known is a testimony to the good religious train- ing they received. The dervishes, as has already been surmised by the reader, correspond to the monastic orders of [256] THE REAL TURK Christendom, with the exception that they per- mit matrimony. The word "dervish" means lit- erally "sill of a door," or "those who beg from door to door." They are related to the different orders of religious beggars of India the Yogis, Sunyasin, etc. In all of the dervish orders the aim is the same: to reach a state of ecstasy in which the individual consciousness is lost and merged into the Universal Soul a mystic state induced not only by the ceremonies heretofore described but also by drugs, fasts, and periods of meditation. Like all mystics, the dervishes hold themselves superior to the laws of their re- ligion, which, they say, are intended to guide the uninitiated. Hence they do not observe the rules of Islam, such as prayers, fasting, and abstinence from liquor, except on occasions when it is polite to do so. They recognize no spiritual authority but Allah himself speaking directly to their souls, and take as their motto the Sufi phrase: "The paths leading to God are as many as the breaths of his creatures." They live in monas- teries which are richly endowed with land and money. A study of their tenets would give one an entirely different idea of Islam from that held [257] THE REAL TURK by the average Westerner. The formal, hide- bound laws of this religion have very little hold upon those thoughtful minds of the East whose influence is bound to liberalize and reform Islam at no distant date. A strange rite is celebrated by all Shiah Moslems on the tenth day of the Mohammedan month Muharrem, in memory of the martyrdom of Al-Hussein. Although its ceremonies have become much moderated in Constantinople, they are still quite terrible enough to make many of the spectators even men faint; in the interior the rite is conducted yearly with unabated fury. The fanaticism and ecstasy of the Persians when fully aroused is so great that even the Turks think it necessary to protect the spectators by a cordon of soldiers armed with rifles. One must understand that the Shiah sect look upon Hussein not only as a great saint and martyr, but almost as a divinity. In Constantinople, the ceremonies take place yearly in the old Persian Hahn in Stamboul. At sunset (or Turkish noon) we arrived at the Hahn, with a Kavasse to insure us admittance, just in time to see the ghastly procession enter [258] THE REAL TURK from the street where it had been parading. The Hahn is a square court open to the sky, sur- rounded by the low bazaars and buildings of the Persians, and around it the procession filed three times. As it was passing us we heard behind the marchers a thud, thud like the sound of chains against human flesh, and behold ! there came into sight a group of men who were striking their bare backs and shoulders with flails made of iron chains. At each stroke they jumped with a dancing motion into the air, turning partly around as they leaped. Their dark-tanned backs were blue and raw from the flagellations. Next came the wildest and most disgusting part of the procession. Sixty-two men in white, representing the sixty-two Relations, or Mar- tyrs, who died with Hussein in the battle, stag- gered along carrying in their hands long knives, which they wielded about their heads and brought down every now and then upon the scalp, apparently inflicting a severe wound. The tops of their heads were shaved, and were dripping with blood. Fortunately for our own comfort we had been [269] THE REAL TURK informed beforehand that most of the blood was sheep's blood, smeared on before the procession began, and that only a few of the men were so fanatical as to cut themselves, many of them being hired for the occasion. The procession withdrew, and after a short pause it returned with a new set of men and re- peated the performance. This continued for several hours. As each procession came in it was met by an imam who chanted verses in praise of Hassan and Hussein, to which the per- formers responded. This ghastly rite is observed yearly in every Persian city and town, not only in Persia, but in Turkestan and India, and although it serves to refresh in the mind of the Persian his bitter hatred of the Sunni Moslems, who were respon- sible for the death of Hussein, the Turks, who belong to the latter sect, allow and witness, much to their credit, the performance of this rite, the whole spirit of which is antagonistic to them. During the month of Ramazan the followers of Mohammed are expected to observe a strict fast from dawn until sunset. Owing to the [260] THE REAL TURK Turkish year's being lunar, this month comes at a different time each year; and when it occurs during the summer months the fast is a great hardship. Among earnest Mohammadans the wealthy and educated can hardly be reckoned, for their contact with the West has taken away their taste for the rigorous duties of Islam. The lower classes, however, obey the rules of their religion, no matter how irksome they may be. There is something admirable about the sight of the zeal- ous worshippers going through their prayers, even on a crowded boat of the Bosphorus kneeling down and touching the head to the floor a certain number of times, then rising and facing the east and then prostrating themselves again as they repeat their formulas and the ninety-nine names of God. Think of the Turk- ish workmen laboring all day in the hot sun with- out food or drink! These very men upon whom the conditions imposed by Ramazan fall the hardest observe them the most strictly. The hamal who carries your baggage through the streets on his back, loaded down at times with a weight which four ordinary men could hardly [261] THE REAL TURK lift from the ground the kayikji who rows you against the strenuous current of the Bosphorus the ishji who works on the streets and build- ings all go through the day's work handicapped not only by lack of food and drink but by lack of sleep the night before, for it is in the night that they have to take their meals. One afternoon I hired a boat at about five o'clock to take a row on the Bosphorus. (In these boats you never have the privilege of going out rowing alone you must take a kayikji with you and let him sit in the stern, smoking a cig- arette and smiling inwardly at your clumsy at- tempts to manipulate the long, weighted oars which always slip off their thole pins just at the wrong moment.) After I had been rowing for half an hour, the kayikji asked me by signs helped out with a little Turkish and broken French where I wished to land. I shook my head, intimating that I did not wish to land at all the Bosphorus was growing more and more beautiful under the sunset light, and I was be- ginning to enjoy the rowing. In a little while he inquired again very vigorously whether I wanted to land. I shook my head again; five [262] THE REAL TURK minutes later and the operation was repeated. I was beginning to get angry why should the boatman, who was making his money by the hour, be so eager to land? Then suddenly it flashed across my mind that the sunset gun had sounded some half hour before, and that the poor fellow was inwardly groaning at my stupidity in keep- ing him from his long-anticipated meal. I let him turn in toward shore, and when we got there, all the other boatmen had disappeared gone to the eating house to make up for lost time! Although Ramazan is a fast in one sense, in another it is not, because during the period be- tween sunset and sunrise "the faithful" get three square meals. In order to make sure of awaken- ing for their second and third meals, which are taken at midnight and just before sunrise, they have a drum beaten outside their windows. Many . a night I have been awakened by the drumming in the distance, perhaps with a horn of classic style thrown in. One would imagine that after being up half the night and going without food in the daytime for a few weeks a Turk would become irritable [263] THE REAL TURK and cross; but there seemed to be just the same genial good nature on most of the faces, and the same gentleness of behavior. Only one street fight did I see during Ramazan, and that was stopped by a Turkish policeman before one of the hamals could succeed in his attempts to pull out the beard of the other, or the latter could manage to choke the first. During Ramazan the city of Constantinople is alive at night. Usually the Turk regulates his day by the sun, and at sunset, his noon, retires from active life to the bosom of his family. It is only during this one month that he turns night into day, and then he does it in a way which is interesting enough. All night long the few streets around which center the native amusements are thronged with fezzes. In every coffee-shop (some are little larger than a huge dry-goods box) are crowds drinking coffee, smoking nargliilees, and playing backgammon. Perched on a shelf in one corner, half way up from the floor, is the orchestra, discoursing sweet (?) Turkish melodies. The men drink in silence. There is no brawling, no confusion for their beverage does not deprive [264] THE REAL TURK them of their self-control, but rather increases their stolid and comfortable enjoyment of life. Let us enter one of the larger and better-class shops, not because we are ashamed to associate with the Turkish soldiers, hamals and workmen in the tiny places, but because we want the proper privacy for our experiment we are going to try a narghilee. A servant brings us one of these water-pipes filled with tobacco, and in a few minutes he appears with live coals, which he places on top of the tobacco. It requires a huge amount of puffing and breathing to get the thing started, for you cannot smoke a narghilee with the lips but must inhale it, and violently at first, if you do not want the coals to go out. Once you have got the narghilee fairly lighted, it becomes more pleasant you can recline com- fortably in the cushions and take a puff whenever you feel inclined, sipping the coffee meanwhile, and listening to the musical click, click of the backgammon games going on around. A subtle feeling of laziness and content creeps over you, and you are in a fair way to become an Oriental. .-i [ 265 ] THE REAL TURK The gaieties of evening life are for the Mo- hammedan all concentrated in the one month. It is then that he goes to the theatre and strolls along the brilliantly-lighted streets in search of amusement. One of the most interesting of Turkish amusements is the Carageuse a sort of Punch and Judy show which is centuries old, the primitive theatre of the Turks. The other theatres in Stamboul are cheap melodramas, in which the parts are usually taken by Armenians, as the Turkish custom would of course prohibit Mohammedan women from appearing on the stage. On these nights, all the theatres are doing business in full force, being crowded to the doors with Turkish laborers and soldiers. Even here, in the midst of Mohammedan life, is found the European invasion in the shape of cinemetographs, penny-in-the-slot machines, and shooting galleries, at which the soldiers delight to linger. The little eating-shops are open, if one wants refreshments sutlatch, mahalabi, ekmekadaif, etc. But at last the streets that have been brilliantly lighted for four weeks are plunged into darkness for another year. Bayram begins at the end of [ 266 ] THE REAL TURK Ramazan, and every decent Mohammedan stays at home feasting; and theatres, shooting galleries and all are deserted and closed up. On the evening of the first day in which the new moon is seen, Bayram is announced by a dis- charge of artillery. Sometimes, however, the moon is kept back a few days at the sultan's re- quest for it is the sultan's custom at Bayram to give presents of money to his higher officials, and sometimes it happens that the treasury is empty, and several days are required for raising the necessary sums. During such negotiations the poor moon is obliged to stay in hiding; but as soon as the money is raised, it is immediately dis- covered, and everybody joyfully hails the com- mencement of Bayram. So Ramazan ends with great feasting and jollification, and the pious follower of Islam once more returns to his normal habits of eating. Unnecessary as such a fast may be, there is an example of religious devotion and unselfishness in its faithful observance which should command the respect of the world. [267] * FAITH HEALING IN THE ORIENT CHAPTER XIV FAITH HEALING IN THE ORIENT Doctors look askance at all forms of healing that are not based upon the study of materia medica. The good old orthodox method of drugs and the surgeon's knife appears to them the divinely-appointed way of curing disease. Yet thousands of cures wrought in this very country by means of suggestion under one form or another have called the attention of the civil- ized world to the practise of faith healing, which has been in vogue among primitive peoples ever since the dawn of history. Even the medical profession goes so far as to grant that nervous affections may be cured in this way and who shall say just where the limit of possibility lies? At any rate, faith healing has become legitima- tized sufficiently to arouse a real interest, under whatever form and in whatever country it is practiced. In primitive countries like Turkey, the peas- ants, in the absence of real medical aid, resort to [271] THE REAL TURK herbs, magic, and faith healing. One of the most common forms of the latter (already mentioned) is that practised at the monasteries of the Howl- ing Dervishes, where cures are wrought by the laying on of hands at the close of the weekly re- ligious ceremony. Numerous sick people sit about the floor as spectators, waiting for the mo- ment of healing. Doubtless the extremely emo- tional performance serves to increase their faith or suggestibility, so that they are in a proper frame of mind to be healed when, at the end of the prayers, the sheik, or holy man of the order, steps forward and lays his hands upon each in- valid in turn, stroking the affected parts and looking fixedly into the patient's eyes. As in healing shrines of the Catholic Church, numerous crutches hung about the walls of the teke bear witness to previous cures. After the adults have been treated, infants are brought forward and laid in a row upon the floor, face upward. The sheik starts at one end and steps tenderly with stockinged feet upon the body of each child, walking across the row of human stepping-stones until the last infant has received this peculiar blessing. Strangely enough, the children do not [272] THE REAL TURK seem to be at all injured by such a performance, which is considered an excellent remedy for in- fant ills. Many bring bottles of water for the sheik to bless, and carry them home to other invalids who are too sick to be brought out. This use of holy water as a magic remedy is very ancient. There is the well-known story in Acts of the man healed by Peter at the pool of Bethsaida a pool which was frequented by invalids because of its healing qualities. One finds similar sacred springs today all over the Orient. Originating in the religious beliefs of the ancient Syrians, they became grafted upon Judaism, Christianity and Mo- hammedanism, so that today you may find ad- herents of all three of these religions worshipping at the same holy well or spring. The Greeks es- pecially cherish these sacred waters with venera- tion; and many a shrine the wayfarer passes which has its pictures of the saints and its candles burning by the holy stream. Usually a spring is dedicated to some particular saint or hermit of former centuries who passed his life in its vicinity and drank from it so that the magical virtue of a spring is due to the holiness of the saint who [273] THE REAL TURK presides over it. The Mohammedans are not at all loath to avail themselves of the sanctity of a Christian spring for healing, and vice versa, and the Greeks will sometimes say their prayers at a Mohammedan shrine an exchange of courte- sies pleasing in its naivete. Frequently bits of rags are seen tied to the grating or to a tree near a sacred tomb to which Mohammedans have come to pray for healing, or wealth, or happiness in affairs of the heart. They leave the rags so that the holy man will not forget them and their petitions a good plan, for the Oriental climate, as we have seen, makes one very forgetful, and then, too, the saint is burdened with many applications for his favor. If the suppliants' prayers are answered, they burn a candle at the tomb, or give an offering of olive oil to the mosque for the little lamps; if rich, they sacrifice a sheep. In the minds of the Orientals healing is associ- ated with holiness; hence many sheiks can heal by prayer or by touching and blowing. The con- nection between spiritual life and power to cure is exemplified in the records of the cures wrought by Christ, which were accepted as proof of his [274] THE REAL TURK spirituality. Once his fame became established, hundreds flocked to him as he passed from village to village. The Orientals are strong in the qual- ity of faith, having developed little ability or in- terest in the process of analysis. Charms and amulets are supposed to ward off disease, which to the Oriental is a kind of evil charm that can be kept away or disrupted by the proper formulas, and imams and professional healers are often visited for the procuring of remedies. A girl who had suffered from the withering of the muscles of her arm, so that it had become useless, went to an imam for help. He gave her some syrup-water and sugar and told her to pour some of it early every morning, not on her arm, as one might suppose, but upon the grave of her father, and to come away with- out looking back. Another woman, of the in- telligent class, was told to take dust from her room and throw it out of the window; she also read a verse of the Koran over a glass of water which she took out of doors in the dark and threw upon the ground with the words: "Take my disease and give me back my health!" These forms of magic are as old as the hills. [275] THE REAL TURK Water is most frequently used as a remedy, for because of its fluent nature it easily lends itself to the idea of carrying away disease and sin hence the origin of ablutions and ceremonies with water in all religions. An animal, also, may be made the repository of the undesirable and evil tenant as the scapegoats of ancient Israel, and the swine into which the evil spirits from the madman entered at the command of Christ. Professional healers mulct the people of large sums; in Constantinople they have many shops, which the wealthier women frequent, paying sev- eral pounds sometimes as much as fifty dollars to buy attar of roses as a gift to the healing spirit. The magic doctor knows how to play upon the gullibility of his patients, and keeps drawing money from them under one pretext or another until often they have to borrow in the vain pursuit of health by means of incense and prayers. The government is trying to stop this kind of medical graft. Once in a while a man not a priest will get a reputation for healing by prayers and magnetic touch. There was lately in Stamboul a custom- house official whose mere touch sufficed to heal, [276] i II 8.3 .2 -at ^ A S O THE REAL TURK and people flocked by dozens to him. At first he used to pray over each one, but later he had time only to ask the trouble and touch the affected part. Many of his patients recovered. Chaldean magic has maintained its hold upon the peoples of the Levant, whatever their race or religion, for thousands of years ; amulets, charms and love philters are used today by Mo- hammedans, Jews and Christians just as they were used by the ancient Babylonians, and other customs have survived as religious under-strata. In addition to the springs already mentioned, certain hills and groves are held sacred by Jews, Christians and Mohammedans alike a survival from the religion of the ancient Syrians, who worshipped hills, groves, and springs. There is a high hill at the northern end of the Bosphorus which commands a magnificent view of the surrounding country one of the few hills from which one can see both the Marmora and the Black Sea. The Mohammedans call it the "Mountain of Joshua," and believe that the He- brew conqueror, after he had gained possession of the Promised Land, was granted the priv- ilege of living, dying, and being buried here; [277] THE REAL TURK they point to a peculiar mound some forty feet in length which they say is his grave. The same mountain was sacred to the ancient Greeks, who called it the Bed of Hercules, and doubtless was sacred to the Phoenicians in even earlier days. Thus a locality may preserve its legendary holiness through successive conquests and various religions. At Bardazag, near ancient Nicea, I was shown a hillside with a sacred grove upon it, where the Armenian Christians still offer living sacrifices if they meet with special good fortune a dove or a chicken is used by the poor, fat sheep by the rich. This, too, is a relic of the religion of the Syrians. In the mountains not far away is another sacred grove from which a spring bubbles forth, making the place doubly sacred. It seems that two men less superstitious than their neighbors cast longing eyes upon these trees, and decided to cut some of them down for firewood, which was very scarce upon the mountain. The neigh- bors did their best to dissuade them from this sacrilege, but without avail. They had already chopped down one grand old tree, and had an- [278] THE REAL TURK other chopped nearly through and just ready to fall, when a sudden burst of wind caught and felled it, whirling it around in such a way that both of the men were struck before they had time to escape and crushed into lifeless masses. The event, which actually happened a few years ago, is told by the natives, who never fail to point the spot out to passers-by; the story will be handed down to their children and children's children, and all the wisdom of the ages could not persuade one of those mountaineers to gather firewood in that sacred grove. The Mohammedans are naturally very super- stitious. Their daily life is surrounded with a thousand beliefs and practices which have their origin in ignorance and fear. The most potent superstition among them is belief in the "Evil Eye:" if any misfortune occurs, they think it is because someone has cast an "evil eye" on the victim. Blue-eyed people they consider espe- cially dangerous, and hence European travellers are feared above all other people, if, in addition to having blue eyes, they persist in gazing admir- ingly at a pretty Turkish child and praising its beauty a most dangerous thing in the eyes of [279] THE REAL TURK the Turk, who has the same dread of praising his possessions that we have of boasting of our health or good fortune without knocking on wood. If anything belonging to a Turk is in- advertently praised, he wards off ill effect by say- ing "Mashallah" (The praise be to God). The Turkish woman, if she wishes to admire a child, says not "How pretty," but simply "Mashallah! Mashallah !" in sympathetic tones. Here at least she shows common sense! The Turk adopts various means to avert the "evil eye." Blue beads, bits of coral, and cloves of garlic sewed in silk are tied to the caps or hung around the necks of children; blue glass bracelets are frequently worn, and when they get broken, it is believed that some "evil eye" has been luckily warded off from the wearer ; strings of blue beads are hung around the necks of all horses, cows and donkeys belonging to Turks, for even animals are subject to the "evil eye." Great confidence is placed in the efficacy of talismans, in which every letter of the alphabet has a numerical value. In accordance with the cabalistic lore, words are changed into their nu- merical value for the purpose of divination; and [280] THE REAL TURK these values are multiplied and divided, squared and cubed, added and subtracted, by regular rules and the result, if odd, is lucky; if even, un- lucky. Certain magic phrases have a special power because of the numerical value of the let- ters comprising them. Such phrases, written out by magicians under proper astrological condi- tions, are worn about the body as charms. In spite of all these superstitious fears, when Death himself approaches he finds the Turk completely resigned to the will of Allah, cringing not from the final act of Destiny, but meeting his fate with the divine calm of the Moslem spirit. The thought of death and of the life be- yond enters much more into the Orientals' minds than it does into our own: to them this earthly existence is but a shadow of reality a brief camping out and when the summons comes, they are quite ready for the soul to strike its tent and start its journey to its permanent home. Death is called by poetic names, such as the "Cupbearer of the Sphere." The Mohammedans believe vividly in the joys of Paradise, which are promised to every true be- liever: eighty houris, pure and charming as the [281] THE REAL TURK spring flower, shall wait upon him, and he shall eat and drink without satiety. Hence excessive sorrow for the dead is considered sinful. The Turk does not wear mourning nor change his mode of life at the death of a relative. For his departed parents he will invoke the blessings of Allah, and for the forgiveness of their sins he will pray daily. Like the Catholics, the Moham- medans consider alms and prayers to be most beneficial to the souls of the departed. Turkish cemeteries are much more charming and picturesque than our own, owing to the selec- tion of hillsides for the sites, and to the planting of Cyprus trees by each grave to protect the soul from evil influences. These beautiful trees, with their dark green pyramids of color, contrast ex- quisitely with the tender blue of the Oriental sky. The Turks love to come and sit in the ceme- teries, and they allow the village sheep to graze in them. Here one does not feel the sadness or somberness of death, but only its beautiful peace. The tombstones are painted in bright colors blue, or green, or black, or red, with raised letters in gilt, and are surmounted by turbans in stone. The tombs of saints are often surrounded [282] THE REAL TURK by a gilt cage-like structure, to which the people tie bits of rags in the hope of obtaining some blessing from the departed spirit. One of the largest cemeteries in the world is in Scutari, the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople; and one of the most charming is on the heights of Roumeli Hissar, just above Robert College, where one can sit and dream as he looks up the fair waters of the Bosphorus and across to the hills of Asia. The same simplicity and peace which rules the life of the Turk reigns over the sanctuary to which Death calls him. [283] BROTHERHOOD OF EAST AND WEST CHAPTER XV BROTHERHOOD OF EAST AND WEST Since it does not seem that there is much pos- sibility of converting Islam to Christianity, what is to be the attitude of Americans toward Mo- hammedanism and the Turk? One of hostility or of brotherhood? While the Turk does not care to adopt our religion and our civilization in its entirety, he welcomes the friendship of Christians, is always willing to look into the tenets of Christianity, and admires Western education above all other systems of learning. Throughout Turkey American schools are graduating men and women of trained minds. And through educa- tion and helpfulness, more ideal than mere prose- lyting, America comes into closer contact with Turkey than does any other country. Ideals of world peace and the brotherhood of man are rapidly growing in this age of inter- nationalism. As scientific and industrial prog- ress was the keynote, of the nineteenth century, [287] THE REAL TURK so internationalism bids fair to be the dominant note of the twentieth century. Many look for- ward to the time when the energies of man, no longer taken up with national rivalries and wars, can be turned to the improvement of the human race and the building up of a world culture which will never after be destroyed by hand of man. This will be the glorious heritage of the human race the Golden Age of man, which every re- ligion anticipates, and of which every social reformer has dreamed. But this Age can never come until the ends of the world have touched, and the East and the West have embraced as brothers. The civiliza- tion of Europe and America is identical, and when we dream of a world unity, we stop short with that. We do not take the East into con- sideration, for it is far away and outside the pale of our knowledge and familiarity ; its civilization, furthermore, is so different from our own that we see no possibility of union with it save by con- quest and absorption on our part. In other words, the ordinary Western attitude toward the Orient is one of contempt. That there can never be any permanent peace [288] THE REAL TURK nor hearty union on such a one-sided basis must be apparent, however, to any person who has studied the Eastern question. England is already full of anxiety over her Indian possessions, and Egypt is clamoring for liberty. China is awak- ening, a vast nation of 400,000,000 people, and refuses to be divided up or owned by Europe. Turkey and Persia, though weak compared to European nations, would never tamely submit to absorption by them. Japan has established herself on a par with Western nations, thus demonstrating that the East is not effete, and that it cannot be swallowed up by Europe. The wonderful victories of the Japanese over a great world power of the West won a new re- spect for the East; their perfect organization and unselfish devotion to their country proved that Buddhism could produce virtues as well as Christianity. One little realizes what a vast deal the Con- cord Sage accomplished towards bringing Orien- tal religion near to American thought. His philosophy of transcendentalism is but a reflec- tiori of Eastern wisdom. He was a deep student of the Hindu sacred texts and the Persian Sufi [289] THE REAL TURK poets. He possessed the second translation of the Bhagavad-Gita that was introduced into this country and his poem "The Brahn" is a para- phrase of a passage from the Upanishads. The Concord school, consisting of Emerson, Thoreau and Alcott, were all interested in these Hindu writings nay, more than interested they were influenced by them. One who is thoroughly fa- miliar with the Hindu teachings and the teach- ings of Emerson can trace the parallelism. The result has been that Emerson has helped make the West familiar with the doctrines of renunciation and of pantheism of the pervad- ing Diety, impersonal and ever-creative. From his writings there has spread a wide influence over the cultured thought of America, until the Eastern wisdom no longer seems peculiar or paganistic. The intellects which are brought in contact with Oriental religions are ready to ad- mit their beauties. It must be borne in mind that the same prep- aration for tolerance is not needed in the Orient, for Oriental religions by their very composition are tolerant of truth under other forms than their own. The East is quite ready to admit the [290] THE REAL TURK beauties of Christianity and to welcome it as a fraternal religion, though not as a conquering one. If Christianity contains all the truth, as its loyal followers believe, why will they not have faith that in such a fraternal relation, seeking not absorption but only friendly unity, the truth will prevail in its own time and bring all to its level? In the way of custom and habits of living the East of course differs fundamentally from the West; but here it is willing to learn, and is quickly becoming convinced that our standard of living is the best. The chief thing that pre- vents Oriental nations at present from adopting at once the Western improvements is religious prejudice. Customs in every land tend to be- come crystallized and to wear the stamp of re- ligion upon them, making a change seem not only disloyal but sacrilegious as well. This prejudice must in time break down, how- ever, and it is already fast disappearing under the influence of education. The East is forced to acknowledge that the Western education is the better in many ways. Physics, chemistry, applied mechanics all such exact sciences do [291] THE REAL TURK more than ages of argument to sweep away mis- understandings and racial conservatism. It is remarkable how much a common education will do to break down barriers of race and religion. Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians, Persians, and Egyptians who have received a European uni- versity education approach each other in their mental attitudes, and think in much the same ways. Dress them all in the same clothes and converse with them, and you will not realize that they represent several very different races, be- cause they have really left the confines of race and entered into a world culture which is above race. Yet the uneducated of these races are as different and as antagonistic as ever. In the same way a Buddhist, a Confucian, a Mohammedan, a Jew and a Christian, when they have completed the higher education, no longer quarrel over differences of religion. As a matter of fact, they have but few, although out of loy- alty they may still call themselves Buddhist, Confucian, Mohammedan, Jew and Christian for names and other outward forms are the last to disappear, lingering long after essential dif- ferences have vanished. They are really mem- [292] THE REAL TURK bers of a common brotherhood fellow alumni of the Alma Mater of the Twentieth Century and each one is an active agent, a little center in himself, for spreading world culture in his own country. Let Young China, Young Japan, Young Persia and Young Turkey partake of modern education, and they will no longer be opposed to the admission of Western ideas and improve- ments into their country. They will welcome progress and recognize truth, in whatever form it may masquerade. Each one of them will be a link in an endless chain, which will grow until it finally encircles the whole world. The time has been when the East has scorned the Western progress as much as the West has scorned the Eastern lack of progress and has shut its doors against all innovations; but this at- titude is rapidly changing to one of respect and desire for Western institutions. Japan has tried them out and proved their values. The ex- ample is not lost upon the other Oriental na- tions. China has seen the vision and is striving for improvement. Edward Ross, who has re- cently travelled there, says : "Within this genera- [ 293] THE REAL TURK tion we shall see the full awakening of China, and the adoption of all our Western improve- ments telephones, telegraphs, railroads, and even the New Woman." The change in Turkey since the Constitution and the dethronement of Abdul Hamid is greater than would appear from the actual im- provements accomplished. Those who are the rulers of Turkey today are thoroughly in sym- pathy with Western ideas and methods. They want to introduce improvements as rapidly as possible, but the ignorance and fanaticism of the masses and the obstacles put in their way by selfish European diplomacy act as hindrances. The same awakening is taking place in Persia, which has been, until now, the most backward and uncivilized of the world nations. A country without a mile of railroad in it is badly handi- capped, not only in economic but in administra- tive ways. A railroad running from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf and connecting the main cities of Persia would work a wonderful change in that most Oriental of countries. At present its chief and indeed only industry is rug-making. There is very little money in the country and that [294] THE REAL TURK little is badly managed. A great step was taken by Persia in the engagement of Mr. Sinister and his assistants to reorganize the finances of the country and administer them. What a pity that the splendidly efficient work he was doing there had to cease, owing to international selfishness and aggression. Persia is eager now for indus- tries, and her business men are corresponding with this country for information which will help them improve their own. A movement which is bound to produce great results within the next generation is the educat- ing of Oriental youths in European and Ameri- can universities. Hundreds of Chinese students, thanks to the indemnity fund, are seeking educa- tion in this country, and imbibing Western ideas. India has had the benefit of modern education for many years. One of the first steps of the Young Turks after the Revolution was to send to Europe for advanced education a hundred young men, all of whom are pledged to return and de- vote their newly-acquired knowledge to the building up of Turkey. At the same time im- provements were made in the educational institu- tions at home throughout the Ottoman Empire. [295] THE REAL TURK Persia, too, has awakened to her educational needs, and her students may be found through- out the universities of Europe and America. Only recently some children of the nobility, in- cluding a prince of royal blood, were sent to this country to be trained in Western ways. When these Oriental countries can command their own talent for public enterprises, for scien- tific and industrial progress, and for advanced education, as Japan is already doing, they will be on the highroad to civilization. The impor- tant thing is.that they now realize their weakness, and see that the strength of European nations is due to their utilization of scientific discoveries: this is a complete change of heart, so to speak. Here lies the great opportunity of the West. If it gives what it has in the spirit of brother- hood, instead of in contempt and in selfish de- signs upon the integrity of Eastern nations, we shall see a genuine friendship established within a few generations between these two parts of the same world a friendship which can be mutual, for the East has as much to give as we have, but of a different kind. From the mingling of these two civilizations, [296] FTJHE buffalo ox-team, characteristic of J. Turkey and the whole Orient. They move so slowly that they seem to stand still, but the Turk is never in a hurry. TURKISH family from Bokhara, the interior of Turkistan, migrating to Constantinople. The Turkish peasant, though absolutely uneducated, has a charm and dignity of manner. THE REAL TURK so different, yet each so rich in treasures, would come a wonderful age. We can help the people of the East to reach a higher standard of living and to enjoy comforts which advanced civiliza- tion has brought to us. They can teach us the secret of happiness: true simplicity of heart; spirituality which is not quenched by material things; and the vision of infinitude which has grown into their minds and souls. We have much, and yet are not contented; they have little, and are satisfied. Somewhere between our restless discontent, which leads to progress, and their lethargic satisfaction, which leads to stagnation, lies the golden mean a calm activity, and a striving for the best which has in it no bitterness, no feverish intensity nor disappointment, because upheld by a large faith in the universe. Of all Western countries America has the widest opportunities for promoting the cause of brotherhood with the East. Its mission in the world's history is to prove a noble one. It has al- ready upheld the torch of liberty to the world; and now it must take the lead in the movement for the brotherhood of nations. It is trusted in [297] THE REAL TURK the Orient because alone of all the great powers it is not looking for territorial aggrandizement. All nations are selfish and designing, but Amer- ica is probably the least so. Americans may be rough and uncultured in their ways, but they are full of a ready sympathy for the unfortunate of whatever race. They have already taken the lead in spreading education in the East and in lending a helping hand. One Oriental told me, not in idle compliment, I know, that he had found the Americans the most kindly and disin- terested of all races. If we but realize how eagerly the Orientals look to us for help, how largely America looms in their dreams, and how willing they are to give their confidence and friendship to us, we should be inspired to increased effort. Orientals do not merely like or dislike they either love or hate. Their affections are strong. It is a wonderful thing to win the confidence and affection of such people. I call to mind many Turks from whom, after only a brief time of friendly association, I have parted as a brother. They are ready to do their share toward meeting us on a friendly basis, on a basis of world unity, but they need our help. [298] THE REAL TURK There is a great need of American teachers in all the Oriental countries. The Chinese say, "We need Americans." Persia feels the same need, and so does Turkey. As is often said, the world cannot truly prog- ress save as each member in it progresses and it is the duty of the most advanced to help the lag- ging. No part of the world needs our assistance more today, or is more desirous of it, than the Orient. Here, then, is our opportunity to help in bringing to pass the brotherhood of man. In the past every civilization, after it reached its prime, was wiped out by a barbarous race which destroyed its art and literature, thus re- ducing the culture of the world to a low level. The last time this was done the offenders were people of our own race the Teutonic who poured into the Roman Empire and nearly effaced its vast culture, the accumulation of centuries. The most marvelous fact in connection with our present civilization is that there seems to be no possibility of its extinction by human means. There exists no lower race at present that is powerful enough to destroy the West. The yel- [299] THE REAL TURK low race is dangerously large, but by the time it gets its full power it will have no desire to de- stroy. The brown race is in many ways less ad- vanced than the yellow, but it is now striving for culture ; and it has made much progress since the days when Genghis Khan poured his hordes into Southern and Western Asia and wiped out civilization wherever he crossed its path; we have therefore, little to fear from it, but it would be best for the world that it become educated and organized upon an efficient and enlightened basis as quickly as possible. The black race how large nobody exactly knows is certainly po- tentially powerful, but has small chance of sweep- ing over the world; it, too, must become civilized ere long. There is every probability, then, that the world will advance at an even pace from now on, adding discovery to discovery, accumulating knowledge and wisdom, perfecting the arts of life, until it reaches a stage of culture of which we cannot even dream today; of which we can hardly conceive with our present limited experi- ence. So much has been accomplished in the last hundred years that it is safe to say much more [800] THE REAL TURK will be accomplished in the next hundred years; and in the next ten hundred years but the mind is staggered at the possibilities therein, and the pen refuses to write. Suffice it to say there is a glorious civilization ahead for each one of us to work for a brother- hood of men banded together by common ties and constantly progressing toward better and higher living. Here is an ideal great enough to quicken the dullest imagination and to inspire even the most sluggish individual to increased activity for the common good. [801] THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. MAR 25 i 94n 1 ** l\7*fU P ^_J :- ; k If ' * |T*4k O f*l :\w :J:f /SORP 26lun f 5: ^ . REC'D A 1C 47046' 331087 Co*. 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