Istanbul - European world

A Mohammedan polity is opposed to the

assimilation of strangers, unless the aliens become converts to Islam. Whatever

process of assimilation goes on in Constantinople appears in the slow changes

of the East towards some likeness to the West Otherwise, the European

world is as present to the view as the Asiatic, and together

they spread a wide vista before the mind.

Furthermore, what a broad outlook does the

heterogeneous population afford! Whether you walk the streets or stay at home,

on the mart of business, at all large social gatherings, in all public

enterprises, you deal with diverse nationalities and races. Everywhere and

always a cosmopolitan atmosphere pervades your life. One servant in your

household will be a Greek, another an Armenian, a third a German or an

Englishman. Your gardener is a Croat, as tender to flowers as he is fierce

against his foes. The boatmen of your cacique are Turks.

In building a house, the foundations are

excavated by Lazes; the quarrymen must be Croats; the masons and carpenters are

Greeks and Armenians; the hodmen, Kurds; the hamals, Turks; the plumbers,

Italians; the architect is an Englishman, American, or a foreigner of some

other kind; the glaziers must be Jews. Fourteen nationalities are represented

by the students and professors of an international college.

Pilgrimages comes round

When the season of pilgrimages comes round,

the streets are thronged by Tartars, Circassia’s, Persians, Turcoman, on their

way to Mecca and Medina, wild-looking fellows in rough but picturesque garb,

staring with the wonder and simplicity of children at the novelties they see,

purchasing trifles as though treasures, yet stopping to give altos to a beggar,

and groping for the higher life.

Nor is it only in great matters that this wideness of human life comes home to the mind in Constantinople. It is pressed upon the attention by the diversity that prevails, likewise, in matters of comparatively slight importance; in such an affair, for example, as the calculation of time. For some, the pivotal event of history is the birth of Christ; for others, it is the Flight of Mahomet from Mecca to Medina, and accordingly, two systems of the world’s chronology are in vogue.

One large part of the populations still adheres to the primitive idea that a new day commences at sunset, while another part of the community defers that event until the moment after midnight. Hence in your move-mints and engagements you have constantly to calculate the precise time of day according to both views upon the subject.