Leading the Blind (31 page)

Cook reminds the visitor that ‘although he may not believe in the religion of the Moslems, he should respect their institutions so far as to adopt those customs which are deemed by them to be due to their religion. It will be well to observe these things, not only as a matter of good taste, but also from prudential motives, as there is still a strong feeling against this invasion of holy places by infidels – as the Christians are called – and Mohammedan fanaticism is a passion which it is unsafe to arouse.'

One ought not to leave Jerusalem, however, without an example of Christian fanaticism, and I quote from Murray's handbook of 1868: ‘A description of the Church of the Sepulchre could hardly be considered complete without some account of the scenes enacted at the time of the miracle (
imposture?
) of the Holy Fire. On the Easter-eve of each returning year it is affirmed that a miraculous flame descends from heaven into the Holy Sepulchre, kindling all the lamps and candles there, as it did of yore Elijah's sacrifice on Carmel. The Greek patriarch or his representative alone enters the tomb at the prescribed time; and the fire soon appearing is given out to the expectant and excited multitude through a hole in the northern wall. The origin of this extraordinary scene is involved in mystery. It is singular, too, and worthy of notice, that at a few of the Moslem saints' tombs a supernatural fire is said to blaze on every Friday, superseding all necessity for lamps.'

Murray continues: ‘The imposture of the Holy Fire is unquestionably one of the most degrading rites performed within the walls of Jerusalem. It is not too much to say that it brings disgrace on the Christian name. It makes our boasted Christian enlightenment a subject of scorn and contempt to both Jews and Mohammedans. Its effects upon those who sanction or take part in it are most melancholy. It makes their clergy, high and low, deliberate imposters; it rouses the worst passions of the poor ignorant pilgrims who assemble here from the ends of the earth: and it tends more than aught else to convert the pure, spiritual, elevating faith of the Lord Jesus into a system of fraud and degrading superstition.

‘The fostering of fanaticism, superstition, and imposture is not the only evil result of the Holy Fire. Scarcely a year passes in which some accident does not occur at the exhibition – an unfortunate woman is crushed to death, or an old man is trampled over by the crowd; or oftener still one or two are stabbed in the quarrels of rival sects. In the year 1834 a fearful tragedy occurred …'

The description of it is given over to Lord Curzon, from his
Monasteries of the Levant:

The guards outside, frightened at the rush from within, thought that the Christians wished to attack them, and the confusion soon grew into a battle. The soldiers with their bayonets killed numbers of fainting wretches, and the walls were spattered with blood and brains of men who had been felled, like oxen, with the butt-ends of the soldiers' muskets. Every one struggled to defend himself, and in the mêlée all who fell were immediately trampled to death by the rest. So desperate and savage did the fight become, that even the panic-struck and frightened pilgrims appeared at last to have been more intent upon the destruction of each other than desirous to save themselves.

For my part, as soon as I had perceived the danger I had cried out to my companions to turn back, which they had done; but I myself was carried on by the press till I came near the door where all were fighting for their lives. Here, seeing certain destruction before me, I made every endeavour to get back. An officer of the Pasha's, equally alarmed with myself, was also trying to return; he caught hold of my cloak, and pulled me down on the body of an old man who was breathing out his last sigh. As the officer was pressing me to the ground, we wrestled together among the dying and the dead with the energy of despair. I struggled with this man till I pulled him down, and happily got again upon my legs – (I afterwards found that he never rose again) – and scrambling over a pile of corpses, I made my way back into the body of the church … The dead were lying in heaps, even upon the Stone of Unction; and I saw 400 wretched people, dead and living, heaped promiscuously one upon another, in some places above 5 ft. high.

A final comment from Murray wonders whether or not it isn't ‘high time for enlightened Russia to step in, and put an end, by the high hand of her authority, to this most disgraceful and degrading imposture'.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

TURKEY

We will begin our section on travel in the Turkish Empire by quoting from an article in
Blackwood's Magazine
of 1847, which describes a party of English travellers disembarking on the coast near Smyrna. ‘When I landed at that nest of pirates, Valona,' the anonymous author says, ‘was I to look upon that wretched rabble as Turks? Men dressed in every variety of shabby frock-coat and trousers; and above all, men who were undisguised in the exhibition of vulgar curiosity. When, then, I saw these people flocking together on their jetty to meet us, I at once recognised them as mongrel and degenerated. The whole community are piratical; the youth practically, the seniors by counsel. They manage their evil deeds with a singleness of purpose that neglects no feasible opportunity, and with a caution that restrains from doubtful attempts, and almost secures them from capture. Incontinent they launch their boats, – terrible vessels that hold twenty or thirty armed men besides the rowers, and cleave their irresistible course towards the motionless and defenceless victim. On such occasions it is only by rare hap that any individual survives to tell the tale and cry for vengeance. The bloody work is no sooner over than its traces are obliterated and the community restored to the appearance of inoffensiveness: the boats are pulled up on shore, the crews dispersed.'

The town isn't mentioned in Murray's handbook for Turkey of 1854, and though if the Turks in general get a somewhat better reference for their would-be employers, it isn't by much. On reaching Constantinople: ‘Those that mean to confine their excursions to Stamboul and its vicinity want no weapons, but those that mean to go inland had better provide themselves with some portable efficacious arms, such as the smaller size of Colt's revolvers.'

The traveller is told, with regard to the climate, that the ‘thin, pure and exciting air, is salubrious, but also very dangerous, and persons of a full habit, or those that are intemperate, are liable to acute diseases of an alarming character. Catching cold very frequently leads to bronchitis and pneumonia; intemperance produces dysentery.'

Access to the city seemed easier in those days to what it was to become later. ‘On arriving in the Bosphorus the kaiks are by far the safest boats, if one gets into them and out of them with proper care; and the Maltese, anywhere but in Malta, are among the greatest scoundrels in the Levant. The stranger, if conscious of having no goods liable to duty (and it would be strange if he had), should refuse to be taken to the Custom-house, where he would be detained to no purpose.'

If he does go through the Customs, however, he must, when finished, engage a
hamal
(porter) to carry his luggage. ‘The stranger should name the hotel he wishes to go to, and the hamal will conduct him. If more than one hamal seizes the luggage, they should be left to fight it out among themselves.'

Murray states that, as a general rule, ‘before the hamals are sent away it is necessary to have a preliminary settling with the landlord. The hotels, or rather the boarding-houses which are called hotels, are full to overflowing, and for one guest who leaves the house, deterred by the prices, the landlord may have two or three next day. In any case the stranger should refuse to settle the price with the landlady if the husband be absent. He should rather wait for the return of the master of the house, for, greedy and grasping as the Greeks are (most of the hotel-keepers are either Greeks or Maltese), the women are by far more greedy and grasping, and decide their bargains with an unblushing hardness which utterly confounds the wanderer.'

After more sermonizing on the incompetence and rapacity of the people, Murray goes on to say: ‘Though in the first instance it is necessary to go to an hotel, a prudent stranger will not remain here, but look out for some furnished lodgings.' The only way to find them is to walk the streets, though the houses which display notices that rooms are to let are always full. However, should he at last find one he may be unlucky enough to be given dinner, which he will eat alone, ‘in the worst room of the house, served on a dirty tablecloth, by a grumbling servant, while the children of the house come in and look at the barbarian taking his meal'.

Having settled the price of all this: ‘The next proposition, which the stranger should resolutely decline, is to take the rooms by the month. Some trifling difference in the price is held out as a bait, but it should not be swallowed. If taken for a month the landlord will also insist on prepayment, and every complaint of rudeness, filth, and neglect, is after that met with the cool rejoinder, “You are perfectly at liberty to go if you don't like the house.”'

If the traveller is lucky enough to get a room he should move in immediately, ‘for the landlords do not scruple to let the same room twice in a day, and he who comes first occupies it, while the man who comes too late is in a very awkward position, especially if he had given up his room in the hotel. A slow or careless person may most unexpectedly find himself on the pavement, with his traps loaded on the shoulders of two hamals, whose language he does not understand, but whose impatient gestures ask, as plain as words can tell, “Where in the name of all that is absurd, are we to go?”'

As for getting information from the landlord or waiters of a hotel, ‘they know nothing, and, generally speaking, are not even able to tell the traveller in which direction to go to the British legation'.

For those wanting to venture beyond Constantinople the guidebook says that travelling on horseback at the rate of twenty-five miles a day ‘involves hardships, exposure, and fatigue'. Even so, you are ‘in immediate contact with nature. A burning sun may sometimes exhaust, or a summer-storm may drench you, but what can be more exhilarating than the sight of the lengthened troop of variegated and gay costumes dashing at full speed along to the crack of the Tartar whip?'

If our traveller be rich, intrepid, valiant and not disposed to consider his personal comfort – indeed he may be delighted to disregard it – he could take the road to Baghdad, perhaps as an army officer retracing his leisurely steps to his regiment in India.

A steamship from Constantinople to Trebizond on the Black Sea would put him on the old Tartar road to Mosul, in modern-day Iraq. Not only that, but if he knew his classics he might choose to follow, though in reverse, the celebrated March of the Ten Thousand – Greek mercenaries commanded by Xenophon on their retreat from Persia where they had served under Cyrus in 401–399
BCE
.

The guidebook tells us that, after Mosul: ‘There is no danger whatever on the journey when the Beduin tribes are quiet; but if the traveller learns on inquiry that they are at war, either with each other or with the Sultan's authorities, he should consult the Turkish officers and modify his plans accordingly.'

When the traveller is deep into Mesopotamia we are treated by Murray in the handbook of 1854 to a passage which deserves to be quoted in full, for there could surely have been no more amazing piece of advice.

If of an adventurous disposition, and not averse to run a certain degree of risk, the tourist might extend his sphere of observation by paying a visit to the great Bedouin tribe of Shammar. The first step is to get the consul at Moussul to send for some small sheikh of the tribe, who would not venture within a Turkish pasha's grasp to meet a long account of plundered caravans unless he had the protection of a consulate. But with that assurance he arrives with 2 or 3 attendants on broken-down old mares or trotting dromedaries. He is remarkable for a scanty and unclean wardrobe, brilliant eyes and teeth, and a very dignified and gentlemanly deportment. A present must be made to him – a fur cloak for winter or a brace of Turkish pistols – to secure his good-will, conciliating him further by hints of additional largesse in the event of a safe return, and the traveller may then set out on his novel expedition.

The desert once gained, there will be abundant sources of gratification for the lover of nature. As he rides over the boundless waste of short grass, unbroken by the smallest attempt at cultivation, he will also observe the sharp look-out kept by the Bedouin escort. All around the horizon is a vast solitude, and the little party creeps across it like lonely pilgrims through a deserted world.

Suddenly is heard the word ‘horsemen', uttered by some one perched on the back of a camel: at once all is excitement; the sheikh scans the horizon, and announces strangers, though none are visible to less practised eyes. The escort is on the alert; the sheikh receives his spear from the hands of his henchmen; the camels are left in the charge of a boy; led horses are mounted; the priming of pistols and guns is looked to, and the whole party is ready to fight or retreat according as the enemy may be in strength or not. The sheikh gallops up a small height to reconnoitre; comes back at full speed; shouts ‘enemies', and in a greater force than their own.

Not a moment is lost; sauve-qui-peut is the order of the day; and the Arabs disperse, leaving the traveller to make terms as best he can, probably a permission to return on foot and naked to the town. The wild-looking sons of the desert, mounted on rough but high-bred mares, comes down upon him like a whirlwind, with a loud unearthly yell, shaking their lances over their heads; and the interview is soon over, the tourist finding himself again alone on the broad plain, with or without a shirt, as the case may be. If any resistance has been made by him, any man or mare killed or wounded, the traveller's adventures here terminate for ever in the thrust of a lance.