Urban Life in Turkey, 1911
From Turkey and the Turks by Z. Duckett Ferriman, 1911.
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Turkey and the Turks by Z. Duckett Ferriman, 1911.
Cleanliness is a distinctive characteristic of the Turks. The abode may be humble, it may not even boast a carpet, but the grass matting will be swept, the tiles scrubbed, and pots and pans scoured with a thoroughness that recalls a Dutch household. You may eat, without apprehension, in a Turkish establishment of the simplest. It may be only a brazier and a few stools under a tree, but your two pennyworth of kebabs will be served on a spotless platter with a snowy napkin.
The waterside eating-houses kept by Christians on either side of the Golden Horn, though far more pretentious, are malodorous and repellent. It is not because he is a Mohammedan that the Turk is cleanly. The Arabs are also Mohammedans, but their dwellings are not clean, their villages are noisome, and who would have the courage to enter the cheap Arab restaurants of Cairo, Alexandria, or Beyrout? Turkish cleanliness is a national attribute.
The wooden houses, usually square, with gently sloping tiled roofs and broad eaves, are detached in the villages, and even in the cities, to a great extent. Where they are not, they are usually placed in echelon, like the profile of a saw, each house corresponding to one of the teeth. Thus the sides of a street do not present a plane surface, but are broken into a series of projections. This not only relieves the monotony of a straight line, but has the advantage of affording the inhabitants a view along the street as well as across it.
The better class of houses in towns are surrounded on three sides by gardens, the fourth giving onto the street, which is thus composed of isolated buildings like our detached villas. Even the poorest houses have a courtyard, to which access is gained by an outside stairway ending in a broad landing under a pent-house roof. Another prominent feature is the upper storey, which overhangs the basement and is supported by curved joists springing from the latter.
This is copied from the old Genoese houses, some of which still exist in Constantinople. In their case the supports are stone corbels, and there are a few instances in which the wooden joists of the Turks are carved imitations of these. The unpainted wood soon assumes a brown hue; or it is painted a dark red, and more rarely pink or pale blue.
In spring and summer all is in an emerald setting, for not a house but has its trees and flowers. This holds good even in Constantinople, except in the Frank quarters of Pera and Galata. All the rest is a garden city. The vine wanders everywhere, often across the street on a trellis to the opposite houses, forming a green translucent roof. Or we may walk under a canopy of wistaria with pendent racemes of delicate mauve. Probably nowhere else is this plant found in the same profusion or of such dimensions. It drapes the walls, festoons verandahs, its rope-like stems twist up the open stairways.
In spring the Judas-tree is in its splendour, the red blossoms oozing like drops of blood from trunk and limbs. They are thicker on the upper branches, and the terminal sprays to the tip of every twig are covered with bloom, close as a coat of fur. When this falls in red dust on the ground, the heart-shaped leaves appear, and the tree puts on its summer garb of bright green. The Judas-tree has not ceased flowering when the acacias begin, and then the magnolias open their petals, making ivory moonlight against the deep tones of their foliage.
One of the sights of Constantinople, not mentioned in the guide-books, is the Bosphorus in June, with the great magnolias, not trained against walls, but standing free as forest trees. The gardens, rising tier above tier, are brilliant, with gorgeous cannas, which grow there to perfection, but their stateliness is a little formal and the catalpas and tulip-trees are exotic. There is a more intimate charm in the native growths, the smother of jasmine and banksia roses, of clematis and passion-flower, which turn the humble dwelling into a jewelled casket, and give to the narrow street the semblance of a Devonshire lane.
In early spring the clustering blooms of the lilac nod over every wall—the lilac beloved of the Turkish people, from whom we have borrowed its name. Leaf and blossom redeem the meanest quarter from ugliness, and among the habitations of the Turkish poor there is nothing to offend the senses. Nowhere in Turkey can you find the sordid squalor of an Italian village, except in the poorer districts of Pera, where the population is European.
Turkish soldiers soon transform a sentry-box into a leafy bower by means of a quick-growing gourd. I have before me as I write a koolook or guard-house, bare and ugly in itself, but its door-way is wreathed with convolvulus, and there are parterres in front, now ablaze with marigolds. These will give place to other plants, and in autumn there will be chrysanthemums.The open-air cafes of Turkey might be made the subject of delightful sketches. There are no marble-topped round tables and clipped trees in green tubs. The trees are not brought to the cafe. The cafe goes to the tree. I have one in mind now. It is a long way off, at the other end of Asia Minor, on the road to Ivreez, famed for its “Hittite" rock-hewn figure and inscription. The cafe consisted of two poplar trees and an old vine. The only artificial part of it was an awning of grass mat.
I remember another at Broussa. The boughs of a walnut tree formed the roof. The seats were artificial banks of turf bordered by flowers. There were others similar to it in the neighbourhood—one was roofed with honeysuckle trained on reeds. I know another at Haidar Pasha, no great distance from the Constantinople end of the Bagdad Railway, where the tree itself is the cafe. It is a venerable plane, which may have been young when the Crusaders camped there.
A platform has been made in the vast fork, no great distance from the ground, approached by steps leaning against the trunk. One more glimpse of a Turkish rus in urbe, here from my window in the populous town of Scutari, over against Constantinople. An alley of acacias, loaded now with drooping flowers, leads to a mosque, the minarets showing between ragged cypresses wrestling with clinging ivy, and getting the worst of it. On the hill to the left stands a rambling wooden mansion, tapestried with jasmine. Its roof is overshadowed by the dark fans of a spreading pine, and behind rises the emerald dome of a tall horse-chestnut studded with spiry bloom.
If one might enter such a konak, the wide entrance would lead us into a court, on one side of which are the stables, and various offices on the other. The kitchen is usually a separate building in the garden, and is known by its row of chimneys. But the cafe-ojak, the coffee-hearth, is near the wide staircase that leads to the upper storey.
Here the cafeji has his braziers with the live charcoal buried in white ashes, always ready to be fanned into a glow by the goose-wing affixed to a short handle, hanging on the wall. The cafe-ojak does not exist in a house of more modest dimensions. The coffee is made in the kitchen, which is on the ground floor, together with the apartment serving as the selamlik, whilst the upper storey is the harem, the portion of the dwelling that is lived in. In a konak the selamlik and harem occupy separate wings.
The yali is peculiar to the Bosphorus. The word may be translated by our term marine villa, though it has little resemblance to the residence we know under that name. It is more marine, indeed. It overhangs the sea, and the sea comes under it in the caique-hane, a kind of little dock in the basement, where the boats are kept, for the caique takes the place of the carriage. Nowhere, save in Venice, does the sea so come home to a place as at Constantinople. But it is not the stagnant sea of the lagoons and canals.
The Bosphorus is a magnificent marine street whose waters rush swiftly down from the Euxine, and dance in blue wavelets when wind opposes current. Though it is land-locked, it can never be mistaken for a lake, even were there not the procession of ocean-going ships constantly passing up and down. The straits are so deep that vessels can come close in to the shore. There are stories of the occupants of bedrooms being startled by the jib-boom of a sailing craft out of her course coming through the window, and in more than one place such an occurence is quite possible. In many others, people can supply their table with fish by the simple expedient of throwing a line from the windows.
A feature of the yali is the separation of the selamlik and harem by a courtyard, and the two buildings often communicate by means of a covered bridge. Owing to the nature of the ground, which slopes steeply, nearly all the gardens are terraced, and here, or on the hill-top, is the kiosk. There may be more than one, and they may be anything from a pavilion to a mansion, but are usually of modest dimensions, and the site is chosen with a view to catching the cool northern breezes.
For the kiosk—keshh would be a nearer approach to the Turkish pronunciation—is primarily a summer retreat. Probably man has never devised for himself a more pleasant habitation than the combination of yali and kiosk as it exists on the Bosphorus. It should be noted that the kiosk is not necessarily an adjunct of the yali. It may be situated far away from the sea, but the site is always elevated, and, if possible, one commanding a fine prospect.
To return to our old konak, A wide staircase leads to the upper storey, an ante-room divides the selamlik from the harem. We turn to the latter and come to the divan khane—the reception-room, round three sides of which runs a low wide divan. The absence of tables will probably strike the Western visitor. Perhaps there is one, a console, with candelabra, at the end where there is no divan. There may also be a few high-backed chairs, but not for use. On the other hand, there are cushions and rugs in profusion.
There are also sofras, low, octagonal stands, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, familiar in bric-a-brac shops in the West. In niches in the wall are goblets, pomanders, and perfume-sprinklers. The absence of washstands and dressing-tables and wardrobes from sleeping-rooms will also be remarked. In the khasna-khane, the treasury, are coffers of walnut-wood, in which the clothes are kept, and here, hidden away, are gems, glass, and porcelain. The washingroom contains a tap and basin, and there is a hole in the marble floor for the escape of water. In addition, every house of any pretensions has its hamman or bath. The public baths are for those who do not possess a private one.
The quilts, coverlets, and portieres are often very handsome, and there will be nothing crude or inharmonious in colour in an old-fashioned house like the one in which we are. Bad taste comes in with the introduction of European things, which usually mean crystal chandeliers, profuse gilding, and mirrors. The drawing-room mentioned at the beginning of the chapter is quite exceptional.
In receiving visitors the hanum has her particular corner of the divan. In the harem, as in the selamlik, the strictest attention is paid to the minute rules of etiquette. Host and guests know what to do and what to say. The position on the divan, the manner of occupying it, the manner of salutation, are all laid down in accordance with the relative rank of each. A breach in the observance of this would be an affront.
It is important to serve coffee simultaneously to guests of equal rank, for instance. Hence the necessity for so many servants. In a great house a kalfa or head slave enters with a tray containing coffee-pot, cups, and zarfs. The zarf is a cup-holder, for the tiny Turkish cups have no handles. It is the replica of an egg-cup, and is also a familiar object of bric-a-brac.
Girls accompany the kalfa, pour out, place the cups in the zarfs, and hand them to the guests in order of rank. And so with cigarettes. One girl offers cigarettes on a tray, and another follows with a little brass bowl with a handle, in which is a morsel of glowing charcoal for lighting. Turkish ladies have now almost entirely ceased to smoke the nargileh—the hookah of India. If a guest is invited to luncheon, it needs three servants to assist her in washing her hands. One holds the basin, another pours water over her hands from the ewer, and a third proffers the towel.
The stereotyped inquiry as to health is invariably repeated after the guest is seated, and is accompanied by the form of salutation known as the temenas, the placing of the hand on heart and lips and brow. It has been interpreted as intimating that the heart, the tongue, and the mind are at the service of the person saluted, although Turks have told me that they have never heard of this explanation. In any case, it is very graceful. A sign of deep respect towards a person is to bring the hand almost to the ground in making the temenas.
Persons who desire to display extreme humility will endeavour to seize the hand of the person saluted and kiss it. In this case the hand is usually withdrawn in protest. Slaves and dependents will kiss the hem of the garment. There is something repugnant about this show of servility, and it is discouraged by those who are the objects of it. On the other hand, nothing can be prettier than the salutations of Turkish children, who take the hand of their parents' guest, kiss it, and press it to their brow.
Ferriman, Z. Duckett. Turkey and the Turks. James Pott & Co., 1911.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
