Chapter II: Albanians, Pomaks, Tartars, and Bulgarians

Having briefly narrated the history of the rise and decline of the Ottoman Empire, it may be interesting to have a peep at the various races and nationalities which at present constitute it.

Beginning with Turkey in Europe, we have the Albanians, who occupy the mountainous country north of Greece, and also Albania and Epirus on the eastern shore of the Adriatic. They are a brave, haughty, liberty-loving, but turbulent people, whom some maintain to be the descendants of the ancient Pelasgi, who originally occupied Greece. They boast of having given Alexander the Great to the world. The Albanians were never properly conquered by the Turks, and, excepting those inhabiting the lowlands, they do very much what they please, and even at this moment they are defying the Turkish troops sent to disarm them, and bring them under subjection. Some are Mahomedans, others are Roman Catholics, and others belong to the Greek Church. They have a language of their own, but until quite recently they had no alphabet for it, and it was only within the last forty years that a Scotsman, the agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, endowed them with one, and printed the Scriptures in their tongue. It is this alphabet that the Turks are now trying to suppress by substituting the Arabic, and the Albanians are fighting to maintain. The national dress of the Albanians is a white kilted petticoat coming down to their knees, with a scarlet or purple embroidered vest, and a corresponding sleeveless jacket worn over a white shirt with wide sleeves. The waist is girded with a broad silken band folded many times round the body. Embroidered leggings, corresponding in colour with the jacket, protect the legs, and a red cap, called a _fez_, with a silken blue tassel, covers the head.

So attached are they to their national costume that an attempt made by Sultan Mahmoud to forbid it led to an insurrection in the same way that the edict in 1747 to do away with the kilts and tartans in the Scottish Highlands created the troubles which followed the rebellion. Naturally, the peasants cannot afford costly material, and their dress consists of a closely-woven, home-spun tweed called _shayiak_, which is very warm and enduring. They wear a skull-cap of the same material, _shayiak_ knickers and leggings, and sandals instead of shoes. Over this girdle they wear a broad cartridge-belt, which bristles with old-fashioned pistols and formidable daggers.

The Albanians are a nation of clans, implacable in their hatred and constant in their friendships. Their covenant of friendship is cemented by tasting a drop of each other's blood, and from that moment they consider themselves blood kinsmen, and sworn to befriend, defend, or avenge each other.

Like the Israelites of old, the blood avenger pursues the murderer of his friend or clansman until he finds him, and if he should fail to do so during his lifetime, his children are bound to act on his behalf. You can thus understand that in accordance with this law of "vendetta," as they call it, whole families become sometimes exterminated.

Another peculiar method of establishing friendships is by securing the assent of an influential person to stand as godfather to children at baptism. It involves no spiritual obligations, as may be seen from the fact that these godfathers are frequently Mussulmans, but is recognized as a social rite whereby the two families become relations. Albania being a poor country, a large number of its Moslem population join the Turkish army as soldiers or officers, this vocation being congenial with their tastes. Others go to Constantinople or other large towns, and engage in an occupation very different from that of warriors--namely, that of manufacturing and selling cakes, called _simits_, and an Albanian speciality of confection called _halva_. It resembles nougat, and is prepared with walnuts or sesame seeds. These commodities are temptingly arranged on large circular trays, which they poise very adroitly on their heads by means of a small cushion resembling a quoit. You will see, under the heading of "Simitji," a picture of this kind of tray, and the tripod upon which it is rested. The seller in the picture is not, however, an Albanian, but a Turk from Anatolia.

These _halvagis_, as they are called, are great favourites of boys and girls, and of grown-up persons too, and are to be met with at every gathering of people. Albanians also go out as vegetable-gardeners and fruit-sellers, and deal in the remarkably beautiful apple which grows so splendidly in their native country.

The Turks call the Albanians _Arnaouts_, and many a village occupied by them has in consequence been named Arnaoutkioy, the village of the Albanian.

Another occupation in which they engage is that of shepherds, and among some of this craft I may mention those of the Sultan's flock of sheep on Mount Olympus, to which I have already alluded. They keep huge fierce dogs, which are a terror not only to wolves and bears, but also to human beings whom they may encounter. So daring and powerful are shepherd-dogs of this description that they have been known to tear riders down from the saddle. The writer might once have undergone this fate were it not for the powerful dog-whip which he carried on the occasion of an attack, and to the fact that his horse finally bolted with him until he was some miles from the field of danger.

To shoot one of these dogs is at the peril of your life, for the Albanian law of vendetta seems to extend to avenging their dogs. There is a strong suspicion that an Englishman, who made the ascent of Olympus some twenty years ago, was murdered by these shepherds for shooting one of these creatures in self-defence. On another occasion the captain of one of our ironclads, while shooting in that neighbourhood, had occasion to kill a dog which attacked him, whereupon he was himself felled to the ground by the axe of the shepherd.

Turkish shepherd-dogs, though savage and powerful, have none of the finer instincts of our collies; they will not bring round the sheep in accordance with the shepherd's directions; they are only fighters, and often turn and rend their masters.

It is interesting to watch, as I have done, the yearly migrations of the Albanian shepherds to and from Olympus. My home lay at the foot of the mountain, and one summer's night, when the moon was full, I was waked by the sound of sonorous voices, and the barking of dogs, and bleating of rams. Gradually the sounds became louder, and I could hear the tinkling of bells and finally the tramp of thousands of little feet pattering past my door. To the bleating of the rams was added the shriller cry of the ewes and the feebler notes of the lambs, and, rushing to the window, I could see the whole procession--sheep and shepherd--winding its way upwards. It was a weird sight, those shepherds in their heavy capotes of sheepskin, and their shadows reflected on the mountain, and gave one the impression of so many spectres gliding in the moonlight. The procession passed along, the bleating, the tinkling, the barking, the shouting became fainter, and finally the mountain returned to its silence primeval, and when I awoke in the morning I could not help wondering if it had not all been a dream.

Bordering on Albania and Epirus, and east of them, you will find a district marked on the map as Macedonia. It is inhabited principally by Tartars, Bulgarians, and Greeks, with a large sprinkling of Jews in its seaport towns, specially in Salonica, the Thessalonica of Scripture. The Bulgarians belong to the Slav family, and are mostly Christians. Some, however, have turned Moslems, and are generally known under the name of Pomaks. The Pomaks have intermarried and fused with Tartars, who migrated to Macedonia, as well as to other parts of Turkey, in large numbers when their native lands--the Crimea, Bessarabia, Roumania, and Bulgaria--passed under the sovereignty of Christian rulers. They have high cheekbones, broad flat faces, globular noses, and sunken eyes. They are fanatical, ignorant, and naturally embittered against Christians, and many, as the authors of the so-called Bulgarian atrocities, have fled to escape the punishment they deserved.

During the time of the Russo-Turkish War in 1879, I remember witnessing the wholesale flight of thousands of them to Constantinople. Many arrived in ox-drawn waggons laden with their families, their goods and chattels, and driving before them their cattle, which they disposed of for a mere song in the market. Others were conveyed in railway-trucks, packed close like sheep in a pen, and seemed as bewildered. A peculiar sight was a truck-load of children packed among sacks and bedding, from which they emerged on the arrival of the train, like ants issuing from an ant-hill. The city swarmed with these immigrants, the courts of the mosques were converted into refuge houses, and the utmost misery prevailed until Government had quartered them in different villages in Asiatic Turkey. There they still may be found, and their location recognized by their wretched wooden shanties and their squalor. But in many cases change of environment has not occasioned change of disposition, and I am assured that during the time of the Armenian massacres (1896) Pomaks quartered in Brusa sharpened their knives and armed themselves to a man to kill and plunder the Christians, and they were only prevented from carrying out this nefarious deed by the armed interposition of the humane Turkish Governor.

In dress Pomaks differ but little from the ordinary Turk; in habits they are perhaps more industrious, and it may be put down to their credit that they introduced into Constantinople and elsewhere a new and light form of carriage which is now extensively used for picnics and excursions into the country.

In addition to the half-caste Tartars of Macedonia there are the pure Tartars who for several centuries past have inhabited the highlands of Asia Minor, and who are credited with great trustworthiness. This quality, in addition to their capacity for long and rapid riding, has obtained for them the practical monopoly of the postal service in the interior of Turkey, and the word _tartar_ has come to be synonymous with postillion, or mounted postman. There are relays of horses at stated intervals, but the same rider travels over the whole distance. His saddle is capacious, with broad stirrups in the form of an open shoe. The saddle has, moreover, a hump on which the rider can support his arms, and an arrangement for fixing a short rod, with a crescent-shaped top or cushion, on which the rider rests his chin and sleeps during night travelling. Letters and parcels are placed in saddle-bags, which are thrown astride the saddle in the same way as paniers are with us. They are made of leather, of carpet, or camel's-hair, and the opening is closed through a series of loops running into each other. There is usually great excitement at the arrival of the Tartar, and the letters, where no post office exists, are strewn on the floor of a room of the _conak_, or Governor's house, and applicants asked to pick out any addressed to them.

Money is also conveyed from province to province by these Tartars, when, if the amount is large, several horses are strung together, and are escorted by mounted police. The currency in the interior being silver coins of the size of our five-shilling pieces, the jolting and friction occasioned by the drive are likely to tear ordinary bags, so the latter are enclosed in a special rope-bag, which is neatly and compactly knitted over them. Gold coin is put up in leather, which is puckered up to form a bag, and tied and sealed on the top.

The Christian Bulgarians of Macedonia, having been brought up more or less under servitude, are of a much meeker character than the Pomaks, but, judging from the strides which have been made by the other Bulgarian races in Turkey since their independence from Turkish rule, we may infer that their Macedonian brethren are also capable of great development. On the whole they are poor, and live in thatched hovels, plastered both within and without with a mixture of clay, cow-dung, and straw. The interior is divided into three rooms--a public room, a family bedroom, and one for keeping provisions. The floor is of clay, beaten hard, and is covered with coarse rugs and cushions large enough to serve as beds. A small oil-lamp burns in a corner under the _icon_, or picture, of some grim patron saint. Outside the house is an oven, resembling an ant-hill, and accommodation for hens, pigs, and cattle, and the whole is enclosed with a wall and guarded by dogs.

The Bulgarians are frugal in their habits, and live principally on beans seasoned with vinegar and red pepper, and they have a great partiality for garlic. Their principal occupation is agriculture and sheep-farming.

The men's dress somewhat resembles the Albanian, but their vests and jackets are generally made from sheepskins, with the wool turned inwards, and they wear on their heads the _calpak_, or low cap, made from black lamb-skins, with the wool turned outwards. This _calpak_ is as much the national characteristic of the Bulgarian as the fez is of the Turk. The women's dress is pleasing--green and red being very conspicuous--and when in gala dress their persons are weighted down with ponderous silver ornaments worn on the head, round the neck, waist, and wrists.

Their national music is the bagpipe, but the music is very primitive, and does not soar to the heights of the pibrochs of Scotland, and their dance is heavy and uncouth, and apparently modelled from the bear. Indeed, in one of these dances the principal dancer puts on a real bearskin, and, led about by a young girl, performs all sorts of antics, much to the enjoyment of the spectators, who at the close of the performance all join in hooting and pursuing the dancer.

Formerly large bands of Bulgarian dancers used to come to Constantinople during the Easter festivities, and march through the streets with inflated bagpipes, or resort to the field of sports. Their bear-dance ended, they would fling their caps heavily to the ground, then pick them up, and walk round with them to the crowd for the collection of coppers.

But the Bulgar is no longer popular, either with the Turk or the Greek, and they now seldom grace the festivals in the capital with their presence and their antics.

The Greek population of Macedonia is not large, but is inimical to the Bulgarian, both from feeling of racial antipathy and from religious discord. Both, it is true, belong to what is called the Greek or Orthodox Church, but a few years ago a dispute arose regarding the language in which services should be conducted in Bulgarian churches. The Patriarch and heads of the Greek Church insisted that it should be Greek, whereas the Bulgarians, who do not understand Greek, claimed that it should be Bulgarian, the language of the people. The dispute led to a disruption, and now the Bulgarian Church is governed by a Bulgarian Exarch, and the priests and language are Bulgarian, but the Greek Church considers them schismatics, and will have no ecclesiastical dealings with them.

Further reference to Greeks will be made in Chapter V.