Women 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 It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.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.
A distinctive trait in the character of the Turkish woman is her love for the open-air and the open country. In the mass it may be limited to the liking for shade, running water, and flowers, but among the educated there is a feeling for the beautiful in nature, and, so far as the writer is aware, this is not shared by other Eastern women, certainly not in the same degree. Little Fakireh, aged eleven, with her rippling mantle of bright chestnut hair falling about her knees, trips in, her face aglow, her grey eyes wide with wonder:
“Oh, Miss A" to her English governess, “do come and look at the reflection of the pines in the lake."
A fine sunset will attract Turkish women, who gaze at it from every coign of vantage. This appreciation of the scenic side of nature is not confined to the educated. If the visitor to Constantinople cares to walk by the sea-walls any fine evening, he will encounter group after group perched among the masses of masonry fallen from the ruined towers. They do not concern themselves with these. Antiquity does not appeal to them.
They sit, for the most part silent, contemplating the sea incarnadined, the ruby glow on the Princes’ Islands, and the faint amethyst of the Asian mainland culminating in the snows of the Bithynian Olympus. Their Christian sisters may appreciate this pageant too, but they do not show it. They take the air, chattering gaily, but their interest seems to be centred in the human elements of their environment, the passing trains on the railway which skirts the walls and the open-air cafes.
They do not come where these are curtained off by the crumbling bastions of Theodosius, where the only sounds are the scream of sea birds and the lapping of the waters. Turkish women alone are to be found there, and they are women of the poorer class. They know nothing about aesthetics. They have never heard of “culture." They are not adopting an artificial attitude. They are simply following their inclinations in all sincerity.
A Turkish lady of rank, with whom it has been my privilege to converse, told me that country walks were among their most cherished recreations. This is patent to the most casual observer. The picnic is a delight which never palls. There is not a picturesque spot near Constantinople, in vale or on hill-top, that is not dotted with groups of Turkish women.
The lady herself was an illustration of this tendency. Speaking of a recent visit to Europe, she said she could not live in Paris. In London she only liked the parks, but loved the English countryside with its hedgerows. Italy appealed to her most, partly on account of its churches, but more on account of its natural features. The Sorrentine peninsula and the intense blue of the sea at Capri had great charm, but that which held the chief place in her memory was the dreamy quietude of the Venetian lagoons.
All this is opposed to the spirit and disposition of the ladies of Pera, to whom Paris is Paradise, and who would certainly be bored by the lagoons. After hearing it, I could understand a favourite occupation of the young people in the harems of the upper classes is the building of airy castles, and day-dreams.
Whilst music appeals to all, the cultured have other resources. There are water-colours from Turkish pencils that would find a welcome on the walls of exhibitions in London. They read much, and, though novels have the lion's share of attention, there are some who attack works of a more solid character. French is more generally read than any other tongue, though there is a growing taste for English, and the Turkish temperament with its love for poetry finds congenial food in a literature in which it is so rife.
Turkish parents send their girls to English schools in ever-increasing numbers. There are two establishments in Constantinople, the English Girls' High School in Pera, and the American College for girls in Scutari, both of which have a considerable contingent of Turkish pupils. As they grow up, English will be more generally diffused in Osmanli homes. As it is there are harems in which the children are familiar with Alice in Wonderland and Little Lord Fauntleroy, and with classics like Robinson Crusoe, as well as with such well-nigh forgotten favourites of youth as Queechy and The Wide Wide World.
Ever since the fifteenth century, when Turkish superseded Persian as a literary medium, Turkey has produced women writers. Zeyneb was one of the earliest. They all expressed themselves in verse. Among those who are still read are Mihri, Sidqui, and Fitnet, all pen-names concealing the identity of the writer. At least one princess, Hibetulla Sultan, has a place among women of letters. In the manner of their age they imitated Persian models. This went on until the middle of the nineteenth century, when it was abandoned for a natural mode of expression.
A Turkish lady, a writer, said to the author recently: “We had almost ceased to know our own language, buried in a mass of Arabic and Persian terms. Indeed, much of the Turkish of Central Asia was unintelligible to us. Yet that is the bed-rock of the Turki tongue which is spoken nearly through the whole length of Asia. It has been our object to restore it in its simplicity, to rid it of unnecessary foreign accretions, retaining only words that convey ideas for which Turki has no equivalent expression, or which are adapted to modern needs. But we want them to be an integral part of the language, not exotic ornaments which the people cannot understand."
So it is that the inflated artificial style of the past has been relegated to the medressehs. Contemporary writers employ language that differs little from spoken Turkish, and cultivate a direct and simple style. With the change in form has come a change in mode of thought and the outlook upon life. Verse is always a favourite mode of literary expression with Turkish women writers, but that of Nigyah Hanum displays an originality far removed from the artificialities of her predecessors.
The novels of Fatimah Aliyeh Hanum are as modern in tone as those of her Western contemporaries. The short stories of Halideh Hanum, were they translated, would find eager readers, and the writings of Emineh Semieh Hanum reflect the clearness and strength of a personality which has done, and is still doing, much for the moral and intellectual progress of her countrywomen.
Ferriman, Z. Duckett. Turkey and the Turks. James Pott & Co., 1911.
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