Chapter XI: Religious Colouring

ANOTHER striking feature in the life of Constantinople is the extent to which life here has a religious colouring. The Turkish State is a theocracy. Its supreme law is a code reputed to be Divine. Citizenship is secured by the profession of a particular religion. Obedience to the law of the land is obedience to the will of God. The defence of the State is the defence of a faith. Patriotism is piety. To die in battle is to belong to the noble army of martyrs. The cemetery on the hill above Roumeli Hissar is known as "The Field of the Witnesses" (Martyrs), because the resting-place of soldiers who died while Mehemet the Conqueror was building, in 1452, the castle which should command the passage of the straits, and cut the communications of the city with the lands around the Black Sea during the forthcoming siege, "when the bud would open into flower." The picturesque cemetery, shaded by oaks, on the hill above the Genoese Castle, overlooking the entrance to the Black Sea, a view that Darius I. and Herodotus came to admire, is also named "The Field of Witnesses," because there, it is supposed, Saracen soldiers who fell in an attack upon the castle were buried. Such cemeteries are holy ground, and sepulture in them is regarded as a great honour. The attendance of the Sultan at the midday public prayers on Fridays is the official act of the Caliph of the Mohammedan world. He ascends the throne after girding his sword at the grave of the first standard-bearer of the Prophet, in the Mosque of Eyoub. The mantle of the Prophet, his green standard, his staff, sword, bow, are enshrined in the Seraglio as the sovereign's regalia, and are annually visited by the Sultan as a great State function. Around that standard all true Moslems must rally when Islam is in peril. No great act of Government may be performed until the chief doctor of the Sacred Law, the Sheik-ul-Islam, has been consulted, and sanctions the act, as in accordance with the supreme authority of faith and righteousness. Sultan Abdul Azis and his nephew, Sultan Murad, were deposed only after such sanction had been obtained.

One of the towers of the old Turkish castle built by Mehemet II. ("The Conqueror"). The distant hills seen across the Bosporus are on the Asiatic coast. The Judas tree in full bloom is a prominent feature in the spring.]

Upon this theocratic conception of the State, the exclusion of the Christian subjects of the Empire from the army is based. For, how can aliens in religion be enlisted under the banner of the Faith? Hence the institution of the janissaries in the early history of the Ottoman Power, whereby children of Christian parentage were taken from their homes and brought up as Moslems, to furnish recruits for the army. It was an ingenious device to maintain the religious character of the military force of the Empire, and yet to prevent the burden of filling the ranks from resting exclusively upon the faithful. The abolition of the child-tax, however fortunate to others, proved a great injury to Turkey. It not only deprived the Sultans of their finest troops, but has been one of the principal causes of the great decrease in the Moslem population of the country; as that class of the community alone has since been called to sustain the losses involved in military service. The mortality among the soldiers of the Turkish army from disease and war is so great that the Moslem population is rapidly dying out, and well-informed medical experts are heard to say, "The Eastern Question will be solved by the disappearance of the Turks in the natural course of things."

The theocratic character of a Moslem State facilitates, indeed, the incorporation of different races in the same social and political system, seeing that all distinctions between men are obliterated by community in the faith of Islam. And it is impressive to see how closely the Mohammedan world, though not free from sects, is knit together by religious principle, and how strongly it cherishes the brotherhood of believers. In it, not in theory only but also in practice, the black man and the white man are fellow-citizens and of the same household. But on the other hand, because of its theocratic constitution, it is impossible for a Moslem State to accept reforms which seek to secure equality of rights among its subjects, on the ground of a common humanity. Nothing is more opposed to the deepest convictions of a genuine Moslem than the idea that men of a different faith from his own can be his equals. There is no one who can be more polite than a Turk; no one who can treat you in a more friendly and flattering manner than he. Yet persons who have known him well, nay, who have loved him, testify that even in the relation of private friendship they have never felt that a Turk had given them his whole self, but was a friend with reservations that might lead him to act toward you in the most unfriendly manner. His religion confers on him an inaccessible superiority, from which he cannot descend without becoming a faithless son of Islam. His interests are superior to those of an infidel. He is a religious aristocrat, and no patrician of old or of modern days has resisted the demands of plebeians or commoners for equality more obstinately or strenuously than a Moslem opposes the pretensions of unbelievers to be placed on a parity with him. In the case of the patrician, it was a matter of pride; with the Moslem, it is a case of conscience. Though it may seem a small matter, it is a significant fact that a Turk can wish the salutation of peace only to a fellow-Moslem, and that in the exchange of courtesies with persons not of his faith he expects to be saluted first. Rather than admit equality in any real and absolute sense, it would seem as if the wreck of the Empire were preferred--"faithful unto death."

The outward forms of Mohammedanism are exceedingly impressive. The muezzin's call to prayer--at dawn, at noon, in the afternoon, at sunset, and three hours later at night--floats through the air like a voice from the upper world. No music of bells evokes such a sense of the Divine Majesty as his proclamation, "God is Great, there is no God but God." However grand or however humble a mosque may be, whether frequented by the most intelligent or the most ignorant of the people, it contains nothing that tells of superstition, nothing that belittles or lowers the conception of the Most High. One can understand why, when Islam and Christianity confronted each other in the Byzantine Empire, there were emperors who, for upwards of a century, strove to banish pictures and statues from the worship of the Church. And where is the reverence of the human soul before God expressed so utterly, as when the Moslem worshipper, washed clean, with shoes off his feet, stands, bows, kneels, prostrates himself before his Maker, in silent prayer? There is no more impressive religious service in the world than that celebrated, under the dome of S. Sophia, on "The Night of Power," in the season of Ramazan. Under the dim light of hundreds of small, hanging lamps, fed with oil, as in days past, ten thousand men are then gathered upon the floor of the mosque for evening worship, their hearts stirred by the associations of the sacred season. It is essentially a service of silent prayer. The silence is made only the more impressive by the brief chant or vehement ejaculation that occasionally breaks the stillness, to afford pent feelings some relief. But though dumb with awe, the multitude cannot rest. The emotion is too strong for complete suppression, and the vast congregation heaves to and fro, rises and falls. It stands upon its feet, bends low, sinks to the floor, kneels, prostrates the head to the very earth, filling the great church with a sound as of distant thunder, or the sea breaking upon the shore. It is a scene of intense humility and veneration. And yet it is so grave, so quiet, so controlled, that the dignity of the worshippers is never lost. It is the homage of the great to the Greatest. It is a remarkable combination of reverence and of self-respect. Except in the practices of certain orders of dervishes, the Howling Dervishes for instance, nothing in the attitude of a Moslem at his devotions betrays an overpowering feeling due to the weakness of human nature. The consciousness of belonging to the _élite_ of the religious world, the sense that the worship is paid to the One, True, Great Allah, beside whom there is no other God, and that it is offered in a form worthy of the Divine nature, inspire an elevation of soul like the pride of great nobles in the presence of a mighty over-lord. A devout Moslem is an aristocrat to the tips of his fingers.

The howling dervishes perform their devotions by standing in a row and repeating the confession of faith, "La ilâh illa 'llah," rocking themselves backwards and forwards meantime; beginning slowly, they gradually quicken the time and work themselves into a frenzy of religious excitement.]

Partly because of the natural reserve of Moslems in speaking with Christians on religious matters, and partly on account of the influence of the social institutions, which Moslems have inherited from an inferior stage of civilisation, it is exceedingly difficult to determine the ethical power of Islam in the inner life of its adherents. Perhaps the following remark, made by an intelligent Mohammedan to a Christian friend, gives a glimpse into the spirit of the system. "Christianity is perhaps the best religion, but it is too high for frail human beings. Therefore God, in His mercy, has given us another religion, Islam, which, if not so lofty as yours, is more easy of attainment and practice." Certainly, the distinction of Islam is the force with which it insists upon the unity, spirituality, and greatness of God. A dogma, not a moral ideal, is its chief concern. Nevertheless, although the system does not develop the loftiest character, it does secure a demeanour that commands respect. The submission to the Divine will, which it inculcates, may have its defects; but it has likewise its merits. If it saps energy, it fosters seriousness, calmness of spirit amid life's vicissitudes, and a dignified acceptance of the inevitable. If Islam fails to inculcate disinterested virtue, or to inspire goodness on a grand scale, it urges the performance of many beautiful deeds of kindness.

Member of a religious order whose particular act of devotion consists in whirling round on the toes until completely exhausted, the object being to produce a trance-like condition, during which the mind is entirely withdrawn from material surroundings.]

Almsgiving is one of the great duties incumbent upon a Moslem. During Ramazan and the two festival seasons of Bairam, tables are set in the houses of the wealthy classes, to which poor neighbours are made welcome. Groups of beggars gather then about the houses of the rich to receive liberal portions of pilaf, and meat stewed with vegetables, besides a present of money or some article of dress. Connected with the principal mosques of the city, there are endowed soup-kitchens (Imarets), at which, along with the softas and imaums of the mosque, the poor of the district can obtain soup every morning, and once a week pilaf and zerdé (sweetened rice, coloured yellow with saffron). During Ramazan, pilaf and zerdé are supplied every evening. The lame, the blind, the halt, are usually allowed to cross the bridges over the Golden Horn without paying toll, and to travel by the steamers on the Bosporus free of charge. The regard of Turks for animals is well known. If, again, the legal and ascetic prohibition of the use of intoxicants by Mahomet is not the noblest method of educating free agents in self-control, the sober habits of a Moslem community and the rarity of violent crimes in it, when uncontaminated by foreign influence, are advantages not to be despised. A distinctive feature of a Turkish quarter in town or village is the absence of a wine-shop. On the other hand, the segregation of the sexes, while it diminishes the "social evil," fosters a sensual tone of thought and feeling in Mohammedan society, that contrast most unfavourably with the chivalrous sentiments entertained towards womanhood in Western civilisation. The martial spirit congenial to Islam has its admirable side, but, by the unfortunate sanction of the use of the sword for the suppression of unbelievers, unspeakable atrocities have been committed under the mantle of religion; as, indeed, wherever a similar sanction has been allowed. Opinions differ as to the lengths to which this spirit would go, if Turkish Power were, under certain circumstances, driven to despair and brought to bay. Will the part of Samson Agonistes be repeated then?--"The edifice, where all were met to see him, upon their heads and on his own he pulled." There are some who think so. But much may be said in favour of the contrary opinion. The Turk is a brave man, but he can be cowed by superior strength, firmly applied. A Turkish maxim says: "The hand you cannot cut, kiss, and press to your forehead." This is not like Samson.

It is not, however, only the Turkish community that presents a religious colour. The same is true of the other communities of the country. With them, also, the nation has come to be the Church. This is due, in part, to circumstances anterior to the Turkish Conquest. The theological disputes between Christians in the earlier centuries of the history of the Church, even if purely religious and philosophical at first, erelong assumed a national character, and became respectively the banners around which racial distinctions and political antagonisms rallied, and acquired a consistence which endures to this day. How deeply ingrained in the Christian population of the country, to-day, is the spirit to see things under a religious colour appears, sometimes, in small but significant ways. A poor Greek woman, anxious to find a husband for her daughter, who was neither young nor beautiful, was informed that a worthy boatman was prepared to marry the girl. He had everything to recommend him, but he was an Armenian. "What!" exclaimed the mother, turning indignantly to the friend who recommended the man; "What! do you wish me to give my daughter to an Arian? No; let her rather die." Evidently the woman was not an expert in the use of theological terms, for the Armenians are not Arians. But her reply shows that old theological disputes, which one might suppose had been forgotten, have left their impress upon the popular mind, and are associated with national distinctions. The division between Eastern and Western Christendom is not merely a religious schism. The organisations known as the Coptic Church, the Nestorian Church, the Armenian Church, are not simply different ecclesiastical denominations, or various schools of thought. They are as much, if not more, the assertion of national peculiarities. They have maintained, so far as the times allowed, a people's independence; preserved the ties which bound a people to its past; and continued the use of its ancestral speech at home, in the affairs of social life, and in the worship of God. With the Turkish Conquest, this fusion of national and religious sentiments became, if possible, more complete. The new rule, involving the loss of political freedom, and the ascendency of an alien faith, made the Church dearer, and left her to be the only sphere of anything approaching national life and independence. The distinction between Church and Nationality consequently passed out of sight. And nowhere is the idea that to change one's religious profession is to be false to one's people, and that to be a faithful churchman is to be a patriot, more strongly entrenched than among the adherents of the Christian communities in Turkey. On the other hand, the new rulers could not hope, and did not desire, to assimilate the Christian populations of the country, or to incorporate them in one political body. What with the differences of race, creed, language, civilisation, a gulf was fixed between the conquerors and the conquered. The two parties could be nothing else but distinct and alien communities. Under these circumstances, policy and necessity led the conquerors to maintain the different organisations in which they found the subjugated peoples already arranged. To divide and conquer may not be the highest statesmanship, but it was a principle that, in the condition of the country, could be quickly applied. For one thing, by that process the power of the conquered to rise would be crushed. Furthermore, to leave the different churches of the land to their own ways was, after all, the only solution of the problem how to govern people who, because of their religious beliefs, and their social institutions, could not be brought under the operation of the Sacred Code of Islam. It would, so far, please the conquered. It would accord with that regard for use and wont, for what he calls _Adet_, which the Turk cherishes. It was practical, and in harmony with the theocratic conception of society familiar to the Moslem mind. Hence the Turkish Government has been accustomed to classify the various peoples of the Empire according to their respective creeds, and has granted them a considerable measure of self-government, in such matters as marriage, inheritance, education, the management of charitable institutions, and jurisdiction over the clergy. As these bodies were ecclesiastical corporations, their ecclesiastical chiefs became at once their rulers, both in religious and in civil affairs, and their representatives in all transactions with the Ottoman authorities. In fact, these communities have enjoyed privileges that give them, in some respects, a status similar to that conferred upon foreigners by the Capitulations. On the principle of religious classification, Greeks, Roumanians, Bulgarians, Servians, were considered members of the same civil community, because members of the same Church. And, on the same principle, if an Armenian left his National Church to join the Roman Catholic or the Protestant communion, he passed beyond the authority of his former ecclesiastical superiors not only in matters spiritual but also in matters secular, acquiring with his new beliefs a new legal standing, as a "Latin" or an "Evangelical." In this new character, he came under the protection of another chief, was placed under new regulations, and made amenable to a different court. It is because of this intimate union of the religious and the civil, that converts from the National Churches in the Empire have been compelled to form themselves into distinct civil communities, and to incur the odium of, apparently, deserting their own people. But only thus could they escape the pains which their original ecclesiastical authorities had the power to inflict upon dissident subjects; only thus could the Turkish Government grant the converts a legal independent status in religious life.

This method of dealing with the Christian subjects of the Empire worked, on the whole, smoothly, until the idea of nationality, which has been such a powerful factor in the recent history of Europe, spread also among the various peoples of Turkey, inspiring them to assert their distinctness from one another, and to seek liberation from the rule of the dominant race. Then great searching of hearts arose. For the new idea was subversive of a system based upon the principle that the fundamental bond of unity between men is community of faith. Hence, when the Bulgarians demanded to be organised into a community distinct from the Greek community, though one in doctrine with it, and to have bishops and an ecclesiastical head of their own nationality, the request proved a source of considerable difficulty. The chiefs of the Greek Church, under whose authority the Bulgarians had been placed since 1767, as fellow-believers, naturally opposed the demand, taking ground upon the principle that, "In Jesus Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free"; a principle which Moslems could appreciate. Turkish statesmen opposed the demand as unconstitutional, and contrary to custom; at the same time, suspecting it to be a step towards ultimate political independence.

Under these circumstances various expedients were suggested, whereby the desired result might be secured in harmony with the law of the land. By some of their friends, the Bulgarians were advised to separate from the Greek Church on some unimportant point of doctrine or ritual, and so acquire the right before Turkish law to form a distinct community. Another proposal was to declare themselves Protestants, and thus not only escape from the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople, but gain the support of Protestant nations. Yet another plan was to join the Roman Catholic Church, with the advantage of receiving the protection of France. The movement in favour of the last course went so far that a Bulgarian priest was consecrated a Roman Catholic bishop; but the scheme was abruptly terminated by the spiriting away of that personage to Odessa, with all the paraphernalia of his office. Eventually, under Russian pressure, the demand was granted, and the Bulgarians became a distinct civil and religious community on the ground of difference of nationality. They were, however, a religious corporation before the eye of the law, and in view of the large Bulgarian population still under Turkish rule, especially in Macedonia, the Exarch of the Bulgarian Church must reside in Constantinople to have his authority over that class of the community recognised by the Turkish Government. As though to add more religious colour to the arrangement, the Patriarch of Constantinople, in 1872, laid the Bulgarian Church under the sentence of excommunication as schismatic.

The form in which the Bulgarian question was settled has furnished a precedent which other nationalities, in furtherance of their political aims, have not been slow to appeal to, and which the Turkish Government, with the object of weakening their Christian subjects by sub-divisions, has been, of late, disposed to follow. In the province of Macedonia the system is carried out to perfection. There Bulgarians, Greeks, Servians, and Kutzo-Wlachs, all adherents of the Greek Orthodox Church, have had the fires of their national rivalries fanned into fiercer flame by being organised into different religious communities, under different ecclesiastical superiors, with the result that a situation exists in that province than which nothing more complicated can be imagined.

Before leaving the subject, it is only just to remark that, perhaps, the world has not sufficiently admired the tenacity with which the various Christian peoples of the Near East have adhered to their faith and nationality, in the face of hardships and temptations to which some of their members succumbed. If their life has been stagnant, it is not altogether their fault. Their circumstances have been exceedingly adverse to growth. But they have kept the treasure, although the vessel which has contained it may be earthen. However much the identification, or confusion, of political and religious issues has wrought mischief among these peoples, however much it has quenched their spirit of brotherly love, it is to their churches that they are mainly indebted for the preservation of their national consciousness and aspirations. Amid the darkness, the churches kept the lamp of hope ever burning. They consecrated patriotism by associating it with loyalty to God. They made faith firmer by uniting it with the love of fatherland. And their peoples have lived to see the light of a new day. There is something pathetic in the fact that all this was rendered possible by the degree of self-government in civil and religious matters granted them by their conqueror. There is something tragic in seeing the policy which a conqueror adopted as the only method to establish his rule--nurse the life of his foes, and forge the instruments of his ruin. But men are not always masters of their fate.