CHAPTER XVIII

THE NEW RÉGIME IN TURKEY

The new government of Turkey is doing as well as could be expected, notwithstanding the many embarrassments which are perfectly natural under the circumstances. It has been properly said that the greatest evil which Abdul Hamid inflicted upon his country was by depriving it of men of capacity, trained to exercise the functions of government. His policy of centralization, the monopoly of administration which he kept in his own hands, and the small number of subordinates who were entrusted with responsibility, has resulted in a lack of experience and knowledge which is being realized now for the first time in its full significance. Almost everybody agrees that the leaders of the Young Turk party, and the cabinet ministers they have selected, represent the best sentiment of the country, and that a better class of officials could not be found. They are honest and disinterested to a degree which has been unknown before in Turkish history. They are full of good intentions and their greatest fault, or rather weakness, is shrinking from responsibility. The people have expected much and have received little or nothing.

People complain that it is more difficult to do business with the government now than it was under the old régime because now a contractor has to deal with forty different people, when formerly he had to deal with one. Now, if he fails to consult or overlooks some official who has to do with the case, or neglects to show that deference which the sub-deputy assistant to some minister expects, he makes an enemy for life, and his business is blocked beyond relief. And, although the prevailing opinion gives the new government an excellent reputation for integrity, there are still skeptics who insist that the bribes are passed under the table instead of over it, as was formerly the case.

It is scarcely to be expected that a nation will change its habits in a day. The payment of “baksheesh” has been customary in Turkey since the beginning of time, and the practice was not only tolerated but recognized as legitimate by the former government. Abdul Hamid, for example, expected the ambassadors and ministers of foreign powers to pay the salaries of the officials of the foreign office with whom they had to deal, which relieved him of the necessity of paying them himself, and the same system prevailed through the entire government. Nobody ever went to a Turkish official for a favour without bringing a gift. That has always been the custom in all Oriental countries, even in Bible times, and the value of the gift must correspond with the value of the favour desired. No one who understands the Oriental character would concede that this practice had been entirely abandoned at the sublime porte, although the ministers and the other men high in authority are believed to be incorruptible. Mr. Crawford, the Englishman who is in charge of the customs, has made it perfectly plain to the employés of that department, that any man who accepts a bribe from an importer must hand in his resignation at the same time. There has undoubtedly been a great improvement in this respect. The delay in granting concessions for public works, therefore, is not due to the reasons which might have prevailed in the old régime, but merely to indecision on the part of the officials, who have never been accustomed to decide questions of importance for themselves and hesitate to do so for fear they may be criticised. They try to shoulder the responsibility upon somebody else or, as the saying goes, to provide a screen behind which they may hide in case they are criticised. These delays have been the greatest fault of the administration.

The next most serious cause of complaint is the failure of the government to require the governors of provinces and other local officials to go ahead and carry out plans for the benefit of the people. It is conceded that the character and ability of the local officials have been greatly improved. Better governors have been selected, and they have been cautioned that their tenure of office depends upon their behaviour. The provincial magistrates no longer depend upon blackmail for a living. Formerly a governor bought his position and used it to reimburse himself for past expenditures and to provide for his future. While he was robbing the people and feathering his own nest, nothing was done for the benefit of the public. No roads were built or bridges repaired and none of the revenues were spent for the general welfare. To-day, things are supposed to be different, and the governors have been instructed to drain the marshes, build roads and bridges, to improve the prisons and the barracks, to provide schools and repair the mosques; but they do not act. They are afraid of responsibility. They cannot get rid of habits formed under the old régime, when no governor dared do anything without first reporting his intentions to the sultan and securing his majesty’s approval and consent.

There are some exceptions. Certain governors have acted promptly and have received the cordial commendation of the ministry at Constantinople. Their work has been publicly commended in the Chamber of Deputies and it is probable that these examples will be regarded as precedents and imitated by others.

The greatest amount of trouble from this source is found in the eastern portion of Asia Minor, where ignorance and fanaticism are universal and where the people need public works more than any other community. They have given the new régime their cordial indorsement; they have been told that the new government will give them roads by which they can take their produce to market; schools in which their children may be educated; bridges over the streams and other modern improvements, and they have waited patiently for more than a year for something to happen; but there is “nothing doing,” and the peasants are beginning to have their doubts as to the sincerity of the government, which, if it goes much further, will result in repudiation and revolution.

One great benefit which the peasants enjoy, however, and the importance of which they recognize, is the abolition of the passport system, which prohibited the resident of one village from visiting another without the permission of the police. Now any one can go wherever he pleases at any time without interference from the authorities and no questions asked.

Another great improvement has been in the character and the conduct of the gendarmes or national police, who are under the direction of the minister of the interior, with local commanders who report to the governors of the provinces. Formerly the gendarmes were the brutal tools of tyranny. Every massacre was led by them. They were blackmailers, robbers, despoilers of homes, ravishers of women, and murderers, and their uniforms protected them from punishment. Since the new government came in there has been an almost universal change in the personnel of the police, and the present force is made up largely of veteran soldiers with honourable records. The most intelligent and reliable men have been detailed for the service, and as a rule they are honest, conscientious and anxious to perform their duties properly.

There are several schools for training them similar to those adopted by the foreign officials in Macedonia. They are taught by European officers, and the first lesson is to convince them that they must command and deserve the respect of the people. It is perfectly natural that they should be regarded with jealousy by the zaptiehs and spies of the old régime, but there has been very little complaint and they are winning golden opinions.

Another serious mistake of the new government has been the treatment of the Albanians, who were greatly favoured by Abdul Hamid and are haughty, independent, fearless mountaineers, very difficult to deal with. They are only semi-civilized, and their province is probably the most primitive in all Europe. Instead of giving them roads, railways and schools of their own and cultivating their good will, the new government has antagonized the Albanians from the start. They were recognized as favourites and adherents of the old sultan, and the Albanian regiments, which formed his body-guard and received four times the pay of the ordinary soldier, were disbanded and sent home to make mischief. An unwise governor issued an order requiring the use of the Turkish language exclusively in all the Albanian schools, which was the most offensive act that could have been committed. The Albanian representatives in the Chamber of Deputies protested and in vain. They had thrown in their lot with the reformers and had offered their support to the government, but the government would not trust them and treated them as enemies. Hence an insurrection which stirred up the entire province, cost several hundred lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars. An armed peace has been restored, but no attempt has been made to improve the condition of the Albanians. The ruins of the villages that have been burned and the graves of the neighbours that have been killed will be perpetual reminders of what the Albanians consider to be a tyrannical and unjust treatment of their province.

A similar mistake was made in Macedonia, where the sympathy of the people was so strongly on the side of their nextdoor neighbours, the Albanians, that the government feared a revolution. Instead of trying to prevent it by giving the Macedonians new roads and schools and other public improvements they need so much, an order was issued to disarm the entire population. Comparatively few guns have been surrendered and even a smaller number have been found by searching parties. The rest are buried in the woods, ready for use whenever a favourable opportunity is offered to show their resentment against the new government. It would not be difficult to point out other mistakes, but none so serious as these. And, taking all in all, there has been a decided improvement in conditions. The finances are in good shape; the taxes are honestly collected and the money is honestly expended. The increase in the revenues is remarkable and the importers and other tax-payers no longer complain of favouritism.

Another sign of progress is the respect which the officials show to the public, and that is much appreciated. There is still some complaint concerning the administration of justice, but such troubles will naturally correct themselves with changes in the personnel of the judiciary. At any rate, the least that can be said is that the courts are no longer used for political purposes or for blackmail or persecution. The present government is the best Turkey has ever had, and as Sir Edwin Pears, the venerable correspondent of the London _Times_, says: “Its faults are those of inexperience which time will cure. Experience will give the ministers greater courage to accept responsibility, and they and the masses of the people are gradually gaining confidence in each other and in themselves.”

There has always been a department of education in the Turkish administration, but it has never amounted to anything until now. The present minister is an earnest, ambitious, conscientious man, who realizes the illiterate condition of the people and the importance of education. And he has begun the organization of a free public school system throughout the entire empire, to be supported by local taxation, with subsidies from the imperial treasury. The parliament appropriated $4,300,000 for the year 1910, of which one sixth was paid to private schools and the remainder was allotted to public educational institutions and the free public schools throughout the empire. It is expected that this amount will be increased gradually year by year as the revenues will permit. The spirit shown by members of Parliament promises generous grants in the future.

D. J. Mahmoud Bey, the inspector general of public instruction, told me that there would be about 65,000 elementary public schools in operation throughout the Turkish Empire before the end of 1910, and that number will be increased as rapidly as possible. The greatest difficulty is to get teachers. Indeed, that is the only obstacle to the extension of the system. Mahmoud Bey says the inhabitants of the various provinces are “crazy” for schools, and are willing to pay any amount of taxes within their power to secure them. But there are no teachers to be had. The salaries that can be allowed will not tempt educated men away from other professions and there are so few educated women in the country that it is almost impossible to find instructors for the girls’ schools. Mohammedan girls cannot attend mixed schools and cannot be taught by men.

“We have just started two large normal schools in Constantinople for the education of teachers,” said Mahmoud Bey, “and will establish others in the provinces as rapidly as possible. It will be at least two years and probably three years before any of the students from these schools will be available for teachers, and in the meantime we will have to do the best we can. We are getting some teachers from the American missionary schools in different parts of Turkey, although they are, of course, reluctant to let their teachers go. We are placing promising young men and women in all the American institutions, to be educated at government expense. We have five government students in the American College for Girls at Scutari. We shall have as many or more young men in Robert College at the opening of the fall term. We have already sent 150 students to Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Geneva and other European educational centres at government expense. These young men are selected from the most promising students in our high schools. We will send more next year. We expect to send twenty-five, perhaps fifty, young men to America to be educated. We like the American system of education very much, but in the organization of our public schools we are adopting the German and Swiss systems rather than the American because it is more easily applied.

“There is a great educational renaissance in Turkey,” continued Mahmoud Bey. “The deputies of our parliament are here every day demanding more schools for their constituents. One of them who was in this morning said that the people in his province were ‘actually screaming for schools.’ The deputy from Mesopotamia has just sent me a copy of a speech he has recently made in approval of our efforts and promising his earnest support for us in the future.”

The appropriations for 1910 were divided as follows--a piaster being five cents in American money:

Piasters. Subventions to primary schools 20,000,000 Subventions to secondary schools 12,000,000 Government primary schools 3,000,000 Government lyceums 3,000,000 Government normal schools 2,453,820 Subventions to provincial normal schools 3,000,000 Subventions to provincial lyceums 4,000,000 University of Constantinople 2,928,816 Agricultural schools 3,636,000 Medical schools 8,502,200 Schools of music and art 1,030,000 Technical schools 7,839,000 Schools of commerce 2,670,120 Students in private schools 5,190,000

The several military academies are supported from the appropriations for the war department. The provincial schools referred to in the above table are situated in forty or fifty of the largest centres of population in the different provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The lyceums are what we call high or preparatory schools. Schools of commerce are what we call commercial colleges where modern languages, bookkeeping, typewriting, stenography, and other accomplishments required in a business career are taught.

The Ottoman Imperial University was established in Stamboul, the native part of Constantinople, by the ex-sultan, Abdul Hamid, in 1904, with six departments--law, medicine, politics, theology, literature, and natural sciences. It was a concession to the orthodox and loyal families of the Moslem faith who were determined that their sons should have a liberal education, but were reluctant to send them to the American missionary colleges or to the European universities. Hundreds of Turkish young men have been going to the universities of Paris, Geneva, Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest, and at those institutions have acquired liberal and revolutionary doctrines which made them dangerous to the despotism. Abdul Hamid was opposed to education in every form, particularly among the middle and lower classes of his subjects, because it made them troublesome and discontented, but he threw a tub to the whale, as it were, by starting a university of his own about four years before his downfall. It did not amount to much under his reign, but since the Young Turks came into power it has branched out considerably and promises to be an institution of importance.

There are now about twenty-five hundred students in the various departments, and a faculty of two hundred professors, most of them competent men, but only a few have had experience in instruction. For the year 1910, the appropriation for the support of the university was three million piasters, which is equivalent to $150,000 in American money--a sum that is ample to meet the present demands.

The university occupies the former palace of Kiamil Pasha, near the mosque of Sultan Bayazid, on one of the highest and best positions in the city. While the building is not at all adapted to the purpose, it is a costly and highly decorated mansion, and when the Cheragan Palace, occupied by the parliament, was burned in 1909, it was proposed to turn out the university and use the Kiamil Palace as a parliament house. Fortunately the minister of public education was able to head off the plan, because he would have found it very difficult to find even so good, or so poor a place in Constantinople for the institution. Plans have been made for a new building to cost five million dollars, but it will be a long time before the Turkish treasury can afford such an expenditure.

The largest branch of the university is the law department, called the Mektebi Hookouk, where an average of more than a thousand young men are attending lectures to prepare themselves for the bar, and for employment by the government as magistrates and in other legal capacities. Many of these young men finish their courses at the Sorbonne, Paris, and other European institutions. More attention is paid to the Shariat, the Mohammedan code, than to European law, because that prevails throughout the entire Ottoman Empire, and is based entirely upon the Koran. Several propositions have been offered for the appointment of a commission to modernize this code, that it may better apply to everyday affairs, but thus far the Mohammedan priests have been able to head them off.

The law school is open to students of all nationalities. The matriculation fee is $5.00 and there are similar fees for tuition and for each examination, which makes the total charge $15.00 for the first year. Parliament has passed a law authorizing the officials of the university to waive the fees of students who bring certificates from local magistrates that they are competent and worthy to attend the lectures, but are not able to pay the charges. During the year 1910, 40 per cent. of the students in the law department took advantage of this exemption.

There are about fifty instructors in the law school, and probably 2,500 different young men attend all or a part of the lectures during the year, coming and going according to their convenience, but the average attendance does not exceed one thousand.

The next largest school is the Mektebi Milkieh, or school of politics, where attendance is obligatory and each student is required to appear at three lectures a day, except on Friday, which is the Moslem sabbath. There are about three hundred students and nine professors, who are teaching the several languages spoken in the Turkish Empire, and other general branches for the purpose of qualifying the graduates to fill official positions in the different provinces and in the various departments of the government. It is a training school for government employés.

The Ulumi Dinieh, or theological department, has ten professors and one hundred and forty students, who are being prepared for the Moslem priesthood. The methods of instruction are said to be considerably in advance of those that prevail in the ordinary medresses, or seminaries. In the latter the students simply commit to memory the Koran and study the commentators on that remarkable book. At the university the instruction is broader and includes other branches of learning.

The medical department has nearly a thousand students and occupies a separate building near the railway station in Haidar Pasha on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus. This school was established many years ago to train medical officers for the army and most of the instructors are Frenchmen and Greeks. There are several Germans also. The course of study covers five years and the examinations are said to be very strict. There are schools of dentistry and pharmacy connected with the medical department.

The department of natural sciences has ten instructors and ninety students, who are mostly engaged in studying chemistry, and the graduates are employed in laboratories connected with the custom house, arsenals, and other military depots. There does not seem to be any fixed course.

The school of literature includes everything else, a sort of omnibus, where a student may receive instruction in almost every branch. And the department is divided into various schools of mathematics, modern languages, finance, engineering and fine arts. The latter has about one hundred and fifty students under the direction of Vosgam Effendi, a sculptor who has made a considerable reputation by his work. Architecture, painting, sculpture, engraving, and etching are taught by twelve instructors. The school occupies a building in the Seraglio near the new museum.

A normal school, called Dar-ul-Mouallumin, was added to the university in 1910, for the purpose of training teachers for the public schools that have recently been established throughout the empire. The corps of instructors are mostly drawn from the American missionary schools, which have been accepted as models by the government, and to secure admission to the normal schools students must have diplomas from one of the branches of the university or from some American missionary school.

The best education to be had in Turkey outside of the American colleges has been given by the military school at Constantinople. Nearly all the leaders of the recent revolution were educated there. It was a pet of Abdul Hamid and at times he treated it with great generosity. The lyceum of Galata Serai, in the foreign quarter of Constantinople, has been the only other native school where Turkish boys could get a respectable education, and some of the best men in the Turkish service have been educated there under a French principal and German and Swiss professors. The school had a bad reputation, however, among the autocrats. It was suspected of being a nursery for breeding enemies of the despotism, and Abdul Hamid compelled several of his ministers to take away their boys who had been sent there, because of the liberal tendencies of the faculty. Five or six years ago, the school was burned down. It was a case of arson, and every body believed that the sultan paid one of his minions to set it on fire. He would never allow the Galata Serai to be rebuilt, and the ruins lay undisturbed until the Young Turk party came into power. Then the school was promptly reorganized and Fikret Bey, a Turkish scholar and poet and a member of the faculty of Robert College, was appointed director. As soon as a new building can be erected the school will resume its old importance.

There are several Roman Catholic schools in Constantinople, taught by the Franciscan and Augustinian monks. There is a German school of some importance and a dozen or more French schools, including a medical college. Its faculty have charge of the French hospital, which is the most important institution of the kind in Turkey, and is patronized by members of the diplomatic corps from all countries. A large number of schools are supported by the Greek population, and some of them are attended by the children of Turkish families. There are probably more Greek schools than those of all the nations put together, and they are scattered in every part of the city. The French language is taught as well as Greek, because French is really the language of commerce, diplomacy, and fashionable society in the East. If a stranger goes into a bank, he is always addressed in the French language, and it is spoken by a larger number of the inhabitants of Constantinople than any other, except the Turkish.

The Armenians, the Jews, and the other different races have their own schools, which have been made necessary because of the absence of a general educational system. And it is from the graduates of these schools that the Turkish government is now getting its supply of teachers.

The Mohammedan schools connected with the mosques are worthless for a practical education. The teachers are priests, most of whom have no knowledge outside the Koran, which, to them, is the source of all light and learning and law and morals, and is regarded with as much reverence as the maxims of Confucius by the Chinese. Connected with each medress, or theological seminary, are several ulemas, or theologians, who are supposed to be profound thinkers and expound the doctrines of the church to groups of students who gather around them in the different mosques. These students are called “softas” and there are said to be 7,000 of them in Constantinople to-day studying the Koran and the Shariat--a code of laws used, based upon the teachings of the Koran, which is the authority of every court in the empire. These softas become priests, judges, notaries, valis, cadis, and other local officials. Many of them go into private practice, but there are comparatively few lawyers in Turkey. A judge here gets the facts direct from the litigants who come before him and applies the law himself. The softas are never taught geography or history or mathematics, and most of them are so illiterate that they cannot read an ordinary book at sight. The text of the Koran would puzzle them if they had not been required to commit it to memory.

The English government has established a high school for boys, which will accommodate about one hundred and fifty, with rooms for thirty or forty boarders. It is intended primarily for the education of the sons of English families living in Turkey, but is free to everybody who can pay the fees. It is partially a charitable institution, and a fund of $50,000 has been contributed during past years by benevolent people to assist in the education of worthy young men who haven’t the means to pay the fees.

Thus you will observe that the lack of government educational system in Turkey has been very largely supplied by foreigners, primarily for the benefit of their own children, but often available for the natives also. Most of these schools have been established and maintained in defiance of the prejudice and the hostility of the late sultan, who was opposed to all forms of education and did his best to keep his subjects in ignorance as well as poverty.

Mr. Straus, the American ambassador, has recently succeeded in correcting a great wrong inflicted upon these institutions by Abdul Hamid. He has obtained from the new government an irade authorizing all foreign schools and benevolent institutions to hold their property in their corporate name, instead of being compelled to place it in the names of individuals, as heretofore. His predecessors in the embassy have been working for it for thirty years or more. He tried to get such a decision when he was occupying the same post during the Cleveland administration, but Abdul Hamid was inflexible in his refusal to do anything for the encouragement of education. The recent decision of the council of state, secured by Mr. Straus, exempts all religious, benevolent and educational institutions founded and conducted by foreigners from the restrictions imposed upon other foreign corporations. It applies to about three hundred American schools, hospitals, colleges, orphanages, and asylums, and to as many institutions of the same kind supported by Europeans.

The privilege of searching the libraries of the mosques of Constantinople has long been coveted by the scholars of the world, because they are supposed to contain many ancient manuscripts of unique value and interest by Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, Egyptian, and Byzantine scholars and historians, but very few originals of literary merit are likely to be found there. Constantinople has never been renowned for its scholars or literary men. It never had a university until recently. The ancient city of Khiva, far away to the northeast, beyond the Caspian Sea and the deserts of Central Asia, was a literary centre when Constantinople was the political capital of the world. Samarkand, Bokhara, and the cities of Asia Minor were centres of learning and theological controversy when the thoughts of Constantinople were absorbed in military and political affairs. Practically all of the literary treasures in the libraries of this city are the loot of a score of conquered nations. Most of them, when brought home from the wars, were dumped at the mosques and other places without arrangement and generally without any appreciation of their value or knowledge of their contents. Several of the sultans had an appreciation of literary merit and encouraged science and art, but this encouragement has never been continuous. More of them have been iconoclasts, like the Caliph Omar, who used the books of the great library at Alexandria, the greatest of its period, to heat the waters for the public baths.

Many of the manuscripts of the Alexandrian library were stolen, and some of them, doubtless, found their way to Constantinople. There were colonies of Greek and Roman scholars all along the coast of the Black Sea, particularly at Trebizond and in the Crimea. Palestine was once rich in lore. Damascus, Antioch, Ephesus, Armenia, and several cities of Persia and Turkestan were well blessed with wise men--authors, philosophers, theologians, mathematicians, poets, and essayists, and were the seats of colleges and universities.

Nobody knows much about the libraries of Constantinople, however; none of them have ever been catalogued; few of them have even been consulted. The books are piled up on their sides in shelves and covered with the dust of ages. The Mohammedan priests, who have charge of them, are usually illiterate men and look upon learning with superstition. They can give no information concerning the volumes in their charge. Only occasionally, when some scholar from Germany, England, or Italy comes here, with sufficient patience and persistence to break through the restrictions that have protected these collections, has anything of interest ever been brought to light.

These unknown collections, however, are believed to contain early copies of the Gospel, of the Greek poets, of the Egyptian geographers, the Phœnician astrologers, and other ancient tomes, and probably within a short time we will be able to learn something about them. The lost books of Livy are supposed to be in a collection of ancient manuscripts at what is called the topcapon or Cannongate of the Seraglio, the ancient residence of the Turkish sultans.

Dr. Arminius Vámbéry, a Hungarian author, writer, and scholar of note, who somehow or other made himself popular with Abdul Hamid, obtained permission to examine the Cannongate collection, and spent several weeks there. He afterward persuaded the sultan to let him take back to Hungary a number of historical manuscripts which were brought to Constantinople as loot from Budapest after the Turkish army sacked that city in the Middle Ages. As it was strictly a personal matter between the sultan and Dr. Vambery, there is no record of what the latter carried away.

Several years ago an enterprising Russian scholar found his way into the same library and secured a very early manuscript copy of the Hexateuch, the first six books of the Bible. The manuscript was sent to the Russian Institute at St. Petersburg, where it is now being edited for publication.

Arthur Evans of London also got an opportunity to look over the books at the Cannongate a few months ago, and found a manuscript of great historical interest. It was a life of Mohammed II, by Critobolus, a Greek author, who accepted service under that sultan and became a sort of Boswell for him. His work is especially important because he was the only Greek writer of importance in that period who belonged to the Mohammedan faith and had an opportunity of consulting the Mohammedan authorities.

There is a strong impression that the libraries at all the mosques have been looted of their treasures from time to time, because the opportunity has not been lacking, and they have never been properly protected. No one has been responsible for the library at that most famous of all mosques, St. Sophia, which must have been very important at one time, but is now only a collection of bound manuscripts, not more than three or four hundred in number, in the custody of a fanatical old priest. They have been kicked around the mosque and could easily have been looted by any one who was able to gain the confidence of the custodian. But all the libraries are amply protected now, and the world of book lovers will soon have accurate information about them.

There have been conflicting reports about Abdul Hamid’s library at the Yildiz Kiosk. It has been represented by some newspaper writers to be of incomparable value and importance. Others condemned it as a lot of rubbish. Mahmoud Bey told me that it contains about 40,000 printed books and manuscripts which have been hauled away to Kuba-Altai, one of the old palaces in the Seraglio, where they have been examined and classified by a commission, of which Abdureman Sherif Bey, minister of public instruction, is the chairman. Captain Safed Bey, perhaps the foremost historian in Turkey, was in immediate charge of the work.

The sultan’s collection contains many manuscripts in the oriental languages, which were inherited by him and were received as gifts during his reign; and many printed volumes of great value for their bindings and illustrations are in English, French, and German, and were presented to him by people who were seeking favours and supposed that he had a taste for such things. But Mahmoud Bey says that he really did not care particularly for books. He was no student; he never read anything and was actually illiterate. His early education was neglected, like that of the present sultan, who has no culture or inclination to acquire it. Mehmed V is fond of show and ceremony, but it is probable that he never read anything more serious than a French novel in his life. Abdul Hamid was a miser in everything. He accepted all gifts that came his way and seized everything he could reach, simply for the pleasure of possession. He was crazy to add to his wealth, but did not care much what he acquired.

Hence his books are a motley collection of good, bad, and indifferent works in manuscripts and printed in all languages, but there is very little to interest scholars, so far as they have been examined. They were never classified nor catalogued, but were carefully kept. Sixteen librarians were employed during the latter days of Abdul Hamid, and they had several servants who dusted the books regularly and kept them clean, but the librarians were neither competent nor inclined to make a catalogue.

The most valuable items in the collection are ornamental copies of the Koran and ancient classical poems in Persian and other oriental languages. Many of them are of script of the greatest beauty. They were made when penmanship was an art. Painting is prohibited by the Koran, and for that reason, Moslems turn to penmanship and the illumination of manuscripts to exercise their taste. There are also many Turkish and Arabic works of historical value, but thus far no Hebrew, Greek, or Latin volumes of interest have been discovered.

The acquisitive disposition of Abdul Hamid is manifested in a curious way by some of the books that were found on his shelves. Catalogues of American manufacturers, price lists, descriptions of battleships and torpedo boats, and every kind of commercial advertising was mixed up with his French novels, illustrated manuscripts of the Koran, illuminated copies of Persian poems and Turkish classics. One of the most elaborate volumes in the collection is a description of the exposition held at the Crystal Palace in London sixty years ago. His majesty was very well supplied with similar literature. He had the official reports of almost every exposition that has since been held, including that of the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago, which has additional value for the reason that it is a presentation copy from Hakki Bey, the present grand vizier and one of the leaders of the Young Turk party, which shoved him off his throne.

The number of books about Turkey in all the European languages, and most of them presented “with the compliments of the author,” is surprising. The sultan never bought a book, and never read one, and whether these descriptions of his empire were sent him because they spoke favourably of his reign or the contrary can only be determined by examination.

Opening into the library was a sort of storeroom filled with Abdul Hamid’s clothing, new and old, mixed with sheets and towels and other soiled linen. Why these things should have been there, a long way from his living apartments, has never been explained. In another room was a stuffed horse and several stuffed dogs, cats, and pigeons, all of them pets of his majesty, which he had preserved in that way.

The library of St. Sophia, which was founded nearly a thousand years ago, consists of only about two thousand volumes, all manuscripts, without one single printed book, which are piled up like merchandise upon shelves protected by woven wire doors, in a small room adjoining that mosque. The walls are covered with beautiful Persian tiles and the roof is a low enamelled dome. The windows are small and narrow and are protected by heavy bars. Only since the constitution was proclaimed and the new government came into power have strangers been allowed to enter this library, and its existence was practically unknown to the public until recently. There is no catalogue; the books have lain undisturbed for centuries, and even now nobody knows exactly what they are.

A quaint old patriarch with a long white beard and keen black eyes that shoot out rays from under heavy black eyebrows is in charge. He told me he had been connected with the mosque of St. Sophia for fifty years and had been in charge of the books for more than thirty years, but was unable to read one of them. He was very much more disposed to discuss theology and politics than to tell me about the books, and I learned by close questioning that he was quite as ignorant on that subject as the rest of the mullahs about the mosque. He was so garrulous that it was difficult to stop him long enough for Michel Naskidoff, my interpreter, to tell me what he was talking about.

His name is Selim Abdullah; he was born and brought up in Constantinople, and was never outside of this city in his life. He gave us a few other facts in his biography and to make sure that we did not report him unfavourably to the minister of education, who gave us a permit to visit the library, he explained that he had always been in favour of constitutional government and had never been a fanatic in religion, but until recently people in Turkey had not been allowed to say what was in their minds.

Here we stopped him long enough to examine what he said were the rarest books in the collection. They are kept in a wonderful old chest which is modelled after a mosque and heavily veneered with mother of pearl. That chest would be a prize in any museum, and the old man told me that it was more than 2,000 years old. Nine of the most precious volumes are kept there under lock and key, and he brought them all out for us. He told us that they are worth more than 20,000 piasters each and were written more than 3,000 years ago. They are the original manuscript, in the handwriting of the authors in the classical language which was spoken by the early Turks in Turkestan. No one could read that language now, he said, in Turkey at least, although certain famous scholars in Khiva are familiar with the text.

He showed us, among others, an exquisite specimen of penmanship bound in gold covers, about ten by fourteen inches in size, which he said was an ancient Tartar poem, called “Divan,” written in the year 911, by Hussein Biscara, one of the most famous of all Tartar poets. This volume was presented to one of the sultans of Turkey about 600 years ago by one of the shahs of Persia. The text is the most ornate Persian script, and each page is illuminated with a border about two inches wide, of geometric designs worked out in mosaic, with gold leaf and bright coloured paper. The colours are as brilliant as they were when the book was written, and the mosaic was made by cutting the coloured paper and gold leaf into little bits and pasting them on according to a design. The volume contains fifty-two leaves and 104 pages, also illuminated with a title page that is a mass of colour. The binding is not particularly artistic, but is very rich and costly.

The old gentleman explained that no one in Constantinople could read the book, but in Khiva there were plenty of scholars who could do so. When we told him we had recently returned from a visit to Turkestan, he inquired eagerly what the Russians were doing up there and whether they were persecuting the Mohammedans. He said the Russians are the worst people in the world to persecute believers in other religions and are trying to force the Mohammedans and Jews to accept the orthodox Greek faith. Large numbers of Jews have done so to avoid persecution and to preserve their property, but no Mohammedan, under any circumstances, had ever renounced his belief in the prophet. The only nations who do not persecute the Mohammedans, the old man said, are the English and the French.

“Do the Americans persecute Mohammedans?” I asked.

“I do not know that I ever heard that they did,” he replied, “but the Americans are just the same as the English, and most of them live in England, because they can make more money there. All the Americans want is money. They don’t care for art, or science, or religion. I have heard that they dig up the bones of their ancestors from the cemeteries and sell them to the farmers for fertilizers, they are so greedy to get money, but I never saw any of them do it. I never saw an American to know him, but I suppose they look like other people.”

We assured him that we were Americans and that he had been misinformed about their persecuting Mohammedans. I asked him if he knew how much American money had been expended to educate Mohammedans and to give them hospitals, and how much had been devoted to the relief of people of the Turkish Empire who had suffered in droughts and epidemics and massacres. He confessed that he did not know; he was not aware that the Americans had ever contributed any money for such purposes, and admitted, reluctantly, that he did not read the newspapers, for the reason that he did not consider them reliable. He had known so many cases where people had been deceived by newspaper publications, and he had never read anything about American contributions for the benefit of Turkey. I told him about the recent Kennedy legacy of $2,500,000 to Robert College and of the Red Cross fund that had been sent to the relief of sufferers by massacre, by flood, and by epidemics. He had never heard anything of the kind. He never had anything to do with Christians.

“We are not Christians,” he said, “because we cannot understand how they can have two or three Gods (referring to the doctrine of the trinity). Such a thing is impossible. There is but one God. There can be no division of spiritual responsibility. It is impossible to believe that a man can become a God, and I cannot understand why you Christians have three Gods when the first commandment of Moses forbids you to have more than one.”

I didn’t try to explain the doctrine of the trinity to him, because our time was short, and endeavoured to get him back to his books. After a little further discussion he showed us two ancient volumes in Sanscrit script on parchment which he said were more than three thousand years old and were also presented to Mahomet the Great by the shah of Persia.

“Nobody can read these books,” he said, “because the language in which they are written has been forgotten by all mankind. It is a language that was spoken by millions of people once, but they are all dead and it has been forgotten.”

He showed us a gorgeous volume called “Nargai,” which, he said, contained the observations of Mohammed “the champion,” the first Turkish sultan of that name, whose reign, beginning in 1314, is noted as the period when a taste for literature and art and a fondness for poetry and the drama first prevailed among the Osmanlis. Each parchment leaf is stained a different tint, including various shades of the primary colours, and they are ornamented with gold tracery in the corners and at the tops and bottoms of the pages. On many pages are broad borders of exquisite design and workmanship.

Another beautiful volume in Persian script on parchment about fourteen inches square, the old gentleman said, is the third book ever written about the stars. The author was a very learned Egyptian who lived about three thousand years ago. The name was on the title page, but he could not read it--nevertheless, he was certain that there had never been any such book on astronomy written since that time. It contained everything that was ever known about the stars, and all other astronomies could be destroyed without doing any damage so long as this one existed. The covers are exquisite pieces of leather enamel inlaid with pearl, and the work is as fine as that of a watchmaker.

All of the 2,000 books in the collection, he said, had been written by hand. He does not believe much in printed books, because they are full of mistakes and wear out in a very short time, while manuscripts are more accurate and parchment lasts much longer than paper. Many of the books in the collection had belonged to Moorish princes in Spain and were taken from them at the time of their expulsion from the peninsula. “The most learned men in the world are Persians. There are very few scholars in Europe,” he said, and the wisest of them had studied in this library, which he declared was founded by the Sultan Mahmoud, who reigned from 1142 to 1158.

The most remarkable volume he showed us was a heavy folio, perhaps 15 by 20 inches in size, of the thickest kind of parchment, covered with beautiful script. It is a work of world-wide fame, but doubtless there are few such beautiful copies. It is known in the medical world as the “Avicenna,” and is a treatise on botany and medicine by a famous physician and philosopher and the most learned man of his time.

The librarian insisted that it was the most important book on medicine ever written and that medical men from every part of the world came to Constantinople to consult it. “It tells,” he said, “about every kind of disease that afflicts human beings, and about every plant that grows, and what diseases each plant will cure.” There is no finer specimen of penmanship in the world than this volume, and although he was certainly mistaken when he said that it was written by the hand of Dr. Avicenna himself, he did not wander very far from the truth in his assertions concerning the value and importance of the treatise. Although many of its theories have long since been exploded, and human knowledge on the subjects of which it treats has been expanded, it is undoubtedly the most famous and remarkable medical work that was ever written, and is well known to every educated physician.

The author, whose name was Abu Ali el Hosein, was born in Bokhara, about the year 980 A.D., of a Persian father and a Bokhara mother. He was educated among the great scholars who at that period made Bokhara famous as a centre of learning. At a very early age he had mastered mathematics, logic, theology, and medicine. Before he was sixteen he was familiar with all the medical theories of that time, and by gratuitous attendance upon the sick had discovered new methods of treatment. He developed remarkable genius in botanizing and in extracting the medicinal properties from plants, in which he was assisted, according to the popular idea, by supernatural agencies. When he was seventeen years old he was famous throughout the khanate of Bokhara, and was appointed official physician to the emir, who owed him his recovery from a dangerous illness. This appointment gave Avicenna, as he was known, leisure to study, means to purchase books that he required, and access to a library which was filled with important manuscripts on scientific and other subjects.

When he was twenty-two years old, Avicenna left Bokhara and proceeded westward to Merv, Khiva, and other centres of learning, where he remained for a few years, and then went over into Persia, where he settled at Rai, the birthplace of Zoroaster, in the vicinity of modern Teheran. There Avicenna remained the greater part of his life, prosecuting his studies, teaching medicine, and writing books. He received generous support from the emir, although at times he was subject to persecution and various annoyances. The last twelve years of his life were spent as physician and scientific adviser to the emir of Ispaha.

It appears that Avicenna, like many other wise and great men, did not practise what he preached, but at intervals indulged in excessive sensual pleasures and dissipation, which ruined his health, and he died in June, 1037, at the age of fifty-eight, at the city of Hamaden, Persia, and was buried among the palm trees in the park that surrounds the palace.

He wrote more than one hundred treatises. Some of them are pamphlets of a few pages; others extend through several volumes, and they covered the entire range of scientific and intellectual activity at that age of the world, from astronomy to zoölogy. His greatest work, entitled “The Canons of Medicine,” that which was shown me by the librarian at St. Sophia, for six centuries was the highest authority upon medical subjects throughout the civilized world. Up to the beginning of the eighteenth century it was used as a text book in most of the European universities, and even now lecturers in the most famous medical schools frequently refer to the discoveries and theories of Avicenna with profound respect.

In the Middle Ages manuscript copies of this book were sought for the libraries of kings as well as scientists, and no library was complete without his works on metaphysics, mathematics, alchemy, logic, botany, and philosophy. Avicenna ranks among Moslem scholars as Aristotle or Plato ranks among the Greeks. For six hundred years he was entitled to his surname of “Prince of Physicians.” In the mediæval world he ranked equally high as a philosopher and astronomer. His writings have been discussed and elucidated by hundreds of commentators in every one of the civilized nations.

And so he continued to discuss his treasures, as fast as his tongue could waggle, and he would not let us go without explaining his views on the doctrine of the atonement as taught by the Christian missionaries in Turkey. He did not know whether Christian theologians in other parts of the world were guilty of the same folly, but the American missionaries in Turkey were teaching the people that they could be saved and go to heaven, no matter how many sins they committed, provided they repented of those sins before they died. “This,” the old gentleman declared, “is such a pernicious doctrine that I am surprised that the government does not prohibit the missionaries from teaching it. Anyone must see what it would lead to; for if this missionary theory is correct, it simply offers an inducement for men to sin. And then, when they get old, and do not care to sin any more, it is only necessary for them to say that they are sorry and they will be forgiven and taken back into the fold and have just as high a place in heaven as those who have been good and pious all their lives.”