Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf by Reynolds George W. M

Author:Reynolds, George W. M. [Reynolds, George W. M.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Adventure, Fiction
Publisher: manybooks.net

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE APOSTATE IBRAHIM.

Constantinople, like haughty Rome, is built on seven hills--the houses being so disposed that they do not intercept the view commanded by each on the amphitheatrical acclivities. But the streets are narrow, crooked, and uneven; and the grand effects of the numerous stately mosques and noble edifices are subdued, and in many cases altogether lost, either by the very insignificant width of the thoroughfares in which they stand, or by the contiguity of mean and miserable wooden tenements.

The mosque of St. Sophia, once a Christian church, with its magnificent portico, supported by marble columns, its nine vast folding doors, adorned with bas-reliefs, and its stupendous dome, a hundred and twenty feet in diameter; the mosque of the Sultan Solyman, forming an exact square with four noble towers at the angles, and with its huge cupola, in the midst; the mosque of the Sultan Ahmed, with its numerous domes, its tall minarets, and its colonnades supported by marble pillars; and the mosque of the Sultana Valida, or queen mother of Mohammed the Fourth, exceeding all other Mussulman churches in the delicacy of its architecture and the beauty of its columns of marble and jasper, supplied by the ruins of Troy--these are the most remarkable temples in the capital of the Ottoman empire.

The Grand Bezestein, or exchange, is likewise a magnificent structure--consisting of a spacious hall of circular form, built of free-stone, and surrounded by shops displaying the richest commodities of Oriental commerce. In the Ladies' Bazaar there is a marble column of extraordinary height, and on the sides of which, from the foot to the crown, are represented in admirable bas-reliefs the most remarkable events which characterized the reign of the Emperor Arcadius, ere the capital of Roman dominions of the East fell into the hands of the descendants of Osman.

But of all the striking edifices at Constantinople, that of the Sultan's Palace, or seraglio, is the most spacious and the most magnificent. Christian writers and readers are too apt to confound the seraglio with the harem, and to suppose that the former means the apartments belonging to the sultan's ladies; whereas the word seraglio, or rather sernil, represents the entire palace of which the harem, or females' dwelling, is but a comparatively small portion.

The seraglio is a vast inclosure, occupying nearly the entire site of the ancient city of Byzantium, and embracing a circumference of five miles. It contains nine enormous courts of quadrangular form, and an immense number of buildings--constituting a complete town of itself. But within this inclosure dwell upward of ten thousand persons--the entire court of the sultan. There reside the great officers of state, the body guards, the numerous corps of bostandjis, or gardeners, and baltojis, or fire-wood purveyors--the corps of white and black eunuchs, the pages, the mutes, the dwarfs--the ladies of the harem, and all their numerous attendants.

There are nine gates to the palace of the sultan. The principal one opens on the square of St. Sophia, and is very magnificent in its architecture.

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