Читать книгу A Visit to the Holy Land, Egypt, and Italy - Ida Pfeiffer - Страница 27

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Without spending a great deal of money, it is very difficult to obtain admittance into the mosques. You are compelled to take out a firmann, which costs from 1000 to 1200 piastres. A guide of an enterprising spirit is frequently sufficiently acute to inquire in the different hotels if there are any guests who wish to visit the mosques. Each person who is desirous of doing so gives four or five colonati {54} to the guide, who thereupon procures the firmann, and frequently clears forty or fifty guilders by the transaction. An opportunity of this description to visit the mosques generally offers itself several times in the course of a month.

I had made up my mind that it would be impossible to quit Constantinople without first seeing the four wonder-mosques, the Aja Sofia, Sultan Achmed, Osmanije, and Soleimanije.

I had the good fortune to obtain admittance on paying a very trifling sum; I think I should regret it to this day if I had paid five colonati for such a purpose.

To an architect these mosques are no doubt highly interesting; to a profane person like myself they offer little attraction. Their principal beauty generally consists in the bold arches of the cupolas. The interior is always empty, with the exception of a few large chandeliers placed at intervals, and furnished with a large number of perfectly plain glass lamps. The marble floors are covered with straw mats. In the Sofia mosque we find a few pillars which have been brought hither from Ephesus and Baalbec, and in a compartment on one side several sarcophagi are deposited.

Before entering the mosque, you must either take off your shoes or put on slippers over them. The outer courts, which are open to all, are very spacious, paved with slabs of marble, and kept scrupulously clean. In the midst stands a fountain, at which the Mussulman washes his hands, his face, and his feet, before entering the mosque. An open colonnade resting on pillars usually runs round the mosques, and splendid plantains and other trees throw a delicious shade around.

The mosque of Sultan Achmed, on the Hippodrome, is surrounded by six minarets. Most of the others have only two, and some few four.

The kitchens for the poor, situated in the immediate neighbourhood of the mosques, are a very praiseworthy institution. Here the poor Mussulman is regaled on simple dishes, such as rice, beans, cucumbers, etc., at the public expense. I marvelled greatly to find no crowding at these places. Another and an equally useful measure is the erection of numerous fountains of clear good water. This is the more welcome when we remember that the Turkish religion forbids the use of all spirituous liquors. At many of these fountains servants are stationed, whose only duty is to keep ten or twelve goblets of shining brass constantly filled with this refreshing nectar, and to offer them to every passer-by, be he Turk or Frank. Beer-houses and wine-shops are not to be found here. Would to Heaven this were every where the case! How many a poor wretch would never have been poor, and how many a madman would never have lost his senses!

Not far from the Osmanije mosque is the