Amurath to Amurath

by Bell, Gertrude

  Fattûḥ is innocent of any sense of humour. “Oh Merciful,” said he gravely.

  I do not know whether it was the effect produced by these tales which prevented me from lodging in Ḳaiṣarîyeh, or whether the prospect of two days spent in the society of people of my own speech and civilization would not have proved too strong a temptation, even if the Cæsareans had shone with every virtue; at any rate I went no further than Talas, and there remained as a guest in the hospital of the American missionaries. And if I saw little of the famous city of Cæsarea, I passed many hours in the hospital garden at the feet of men and women whose words were instinct with a wise tolerance and weighted by a profound experience of every aspect of Oriental life.

  Ḳaiṣarîyeh was the end of the caravan journey. In two days we had sold our horses (“One for us to sell and one for them to buy,” said Fattûḥ), and packed our belongings into the carts which were to take us to the railway at Ereglî. I rode down from Talas to conclude these arrangements and to visit the citadel which stands on Justinian’s foundations. The interior is now packed with narrow streets, the houses being built partly of ancient materials (Fig. 230). The fragments of columns and the weather-worn capitals which are imbedded in the walls of the houses were derived either from the early Christian town which occupied the site of modern Ḳaiṣarîyeh, or from ancient Cæsarea, which lay upon the lower slopes of Mount Argæus. A few foundations outside the limits of the present town are all that remain of the churches that adorned the greatest ecclesiastical centre of the Anatolian plateau, the birthplace of St. Basil, but the memory of the Seljuk conquerors, who gave it a fresh glory during the Middle Ages, is still preserved in many a decaying mosque and school.

  We set out from Ḳaiṣarîyeh a diminished party, Ḥâjj ’Amr and Selîm having found work with a caravan of muleteers and returned with them across the mountains to Aleppo. The first day’s drive took us round the foot of Argæus to Yeni Khân, a solitary inn, not marked in Kiepert, which lies two hours to the north of Ḳaraḥiṣâr. The mighty buttresses of Argæus, rising out of the immense flats of the Anatolian plateau, are as imposing as the flanks of Etna rising from the

  sea, and its height, over 13,000 feet, is scarcely less from base to summit than that of the Sicilian volcano. The second day brought us to a khân by the roadside, half-an-hour from the village of Andaval; upon the following morning we reached, after three-quarters of an hour’s drive, the church of Constantine, of which the foundation is attributed by legend to the Empress Helena, and in two hours more we came to Nigdeh, where I halted for a few hours to see the Seljuk mosques and tombs for which the town is famed. Of these the most beautiful is the so-called mausoleum of Havanda, the wife of ’Ala ed Din. It is in ground plan an octagon, but above the windows the number of faces is doubled, the additional angles being built over projecting brackets, finely worked with stalactite ornaments (Fig. 232 and Fig. 233). The spandrils above the windows are decorated with pairs of sphinxes (Fig. 234), and the door is framed in a delicate tracery of lace-like patterns. Beyond Bor we came into a well-known country dominated by the twin peaks of Ḥassan Dâgh, the Lesser Argæus, which I greeted with a respect mingled with the familiarity born of an intimate acquaintance with its rocks. Three hours from Nigdeh we reached Emîr Chiflik, where there is a khân unnamed by Kiepert, and next morning we drove into Bulgurlû, the present terminus of the Baghdâd railway. But the art of modern travel accords ill with the habits of the East; the baggage wagon missed the daily train and we were obliged to wait for it at Ereglî.

  “Your Excellency does not wish to see the pictures of the Benî Hît?” said Fattûḥ suspiciously as we stepped out upon the platform. We had never before passed through Ereglî without visiting the great Hittite relief in the gorge of Ivrîz. But I reassured him: we had seen enough.

  One more expedition lay, however, between us and Konia. It was to be accomplished in light order; indeed, we might have ridden up to the Ḳara Dâgh without possessions, for there was no man in all the mountain who would not have been proud to offer us a lodging. Fattûḥ and I shone there with a reflected glory that radiated from the Chelabî, whose fame is not confined to the Ḳara Dâgh, though few perhaps of his colleagues in the Scottish Academe which he adorns would recognize him under his Anatolian title. Had we not spent weeks under his direction in grubbing among old stones, to the delight and profit of all beholders? Had we not consumed innumerable hares and partridges at twopence a head, and offered a sure market for yaourt and eggs? And when the regretted hour of departure arrived, what store of empty tins and battered cooking pots was left behind to keep our memory green! Our renown extended even to Ḳaramân, where we alighted from the train on the following evening. The khânjî was a trusted friend, the shopkeepers pressed gifts of rose jam upon us, and when the hiring of horses presented a difficulty, I had only to step out into the streets and explain our needs to the first acquaintance whom I met. He happened to be a ḥammâl (a porter) who had done a couple of days’ work for us in the Ḳara Dâgh, and he was intimate with an arabajî (a carriage driver), who would without doubt place his horses at our disposal; and if I would come in and drink a cup of coffee the matter should be settled. I accepted the invitation and was introduced triumphantly to the ḥammâl’s wife: “This is the maid I told you about—she who worked with the Chelabî.” On our way back to the khân we chanced to pass by the exquisite Khâtûnyeh Medresseh, and since the mullah was standing under the carved gateway, I stopped to bid him a good-evening. In the tomb chamber that opens out of the cloistered courtyard I remembered to have seen fragments of a fine inscription of blue tiles: scarcely a tile was left upon the walls and I knew how they had vanished, for I had found one of them in the hands of a Konia dealer and bought it from him. This incident I related to the mullah.

  “You did very wrong,” said he. “You have stolen one of our tiles and carried it away.”

  “I did not steal it,” I pleaded weakly. “I found it at Konia.”

  “It is all one,” he replied. “You should give it back.”

  But as we went out through the cloister I noticed that the columns which supported it were double columns of a type peculiar to Christian architecture. They had in all probability been removed from a church.

  “Mullah Effendi,” said I, “we are equal. I have taken a tile out of your Moslem tomb, and you the columns from our Christian church.”

  The mullah’s indignation vanished in a flash. “ferîn!” he cried, with a jolly laugh. “Bravo!” and he clapped me on the back.

  The ḥammâl’s confidence in the arabajî had not been misplaced; we set out next morning for the Ḳara Dâgh, and every mile was full of delightful reminiscence. The yellow roses dropped their petals in familiar fashion over the mountain path, mullein and borage spread their annual carpet of blue and gold between the ruins, and the peak of Mahalech, on which I had found a Hittite inscription and a Christian monastery, stood guardian, as of old, over the green cup wherein had lain an ancient city. The sturdy Yuruks came striding down from their high yailas to bid us a joyful coming and a slow departure; many were the greetings that passed round the camp fire, and it was well that Fattûḥ had laid in a good provision of coffee at Ḳaramân.

  So on a hot morning we struck our last camp and rode down the northern slopes of the mountain to rejoin the railway by which we were to travel to Konia. And as we crossed the level plain Fattûḥ observed with satisfaction:

  “The cornland has increased since two years ago. Effendim, there is twice as much sown ground.”

  “Praise God!” said I. “It is the doing of the railway.”

  “Wherever it passes the corn springs up,” said Fattûḥ. “Mâshallah! Konia will become a great city.”

  “It has grown in our knowledge,” said I. “But this year we shall find it much changed, for all our friends have left.”

  “Where have they gone?” inquired Fattûḥ.

  “Riza Beg is in Salonica,” said I, mentioning
one who had eaten out his heart in exile for ten weary years. “He has gone back to his wife and child.”

  “He would make haste to join them,” assented Fattûḥ.

  “And Meḥmet Pasha is in Constantinople. I saw his name among those who helped to depose the Sultan.”

  “He has risen to high honour,” said Fattûḥ. Meḥmet Pasha was another of the proscribed.

  “And Suleimân Effendi is deputy for Konia, where he was so long in exile. Oh Fattûḥ, we shall be strangers there now that our friends have gone.”

  “Your Excellency will meet them in other cities,” said Fattûḥ. “And they will be free men.”

  Fig. 210.—ARGHANA MA’DEN.

  Fig. 211.—GÖLJIK.

  Fig. 212.—KHARPÛT, THE CASTLE.

  Fig. 213.—IZ OGLU FERRY.

  Fig. 214.—MALAṬIYAH ESKISHEHR.

  Fig. 215.—VALLEY OF THE TOKHMA SU.

  Fig. 216.—TOMB AT OZAN.

  Fig. 217—OZAN, TOMB.

  Fig. 218.—THE GORGE AT DERENDEH.

  Fig. 219.—TOMB NEAR YAZI KEUI.

  Fig. 220.—TOMARZA, CHURCH OF THE PANAGIA FROM SOUTH-EAST.

  Fig. 221.—TOMARZA, CHURCH OF THE PANAGIA, SETTING OF DOME.

  Fig. 222.—TOMARZA, WEST DOOR OF NAVE, CHURCH OF THE PANAGIA. Fig. 223.—SHAHR, DOORWAY OF SMALL TEMPLE.

  Fig. 224.—FATTÛḤ.

  Fig. 225.—ON THE ROAD TO SHAHR.

  Fig. 226.—SHAHR, TEMPLE-MAUSOLEUM, UPPER AND LOWER STOREYS.

  Fig. 227.—SHAHR, TEMPLE-MAUSOLEUM.

  Fig. 228.—SHAHR, THE CHURCH ON THE BLUFF.

  Fig. 229.—AVSHAR ENCAMPMENT.

  Fig. 230.—ḲAIṢARÎYEH, THE CITADEL.

  Fig. 231.—MOUNT ARGAEUS FROM NORTH-WEST.

  Fig. 232.—TOMB OF HAVANDA.

  Fig. 233.—NIGDEH, TOMB OF HAVANDA.

  Fig. 234.—NIGDEH, TOMB OF HAVANDA, DETAIL OF WINDOW.