BOOKS.

THE POSITION OF WOMEN IN TURKEY.* THE author of this work, our whole knowledge of whom is derived from his casual allusions to himself, was born and bred in the harem, has served as an officer in the Turkish Army, and has many friends among the inmates of the Seraglio and the ruling class. He deals with the whole position of women in his native country in an ex- haustive and attractive manner. We shall not attempt to analyse. his work—in itself an analysis—which all who wish to be well informed on the subject must read for themselves. We shall only mention briefly a few points which remain most prominently in, the memory after its perusal.

The first part is entitled, "The Turks and their Wives." One- of its curious features is the account of the manage de pelerinage, which is only contracted for the time occupied by the pilgrimage. to Mecca, and is then dissolved by a divorce ; though if the wife be rich and the temporary husband poor, she often has to pay dearly for her release. The ceremony of divorce is in itself simple,—for the husband. He has but to say, without further formality, "Woman, begone from me !" and the wife is at once turned into the streets. With regard to the setr-avret, Osman

Bey informs us that the modification of the veil which is now common in Constantinople, and which consists in wearing it so- thin as to be almost or quite transparent, does not extend ten leagues from the capital. Engaged lovers are now allowed to see one another at least once before marriage, a licence which would, have horrified the Mussulinans of a past generation. This portion- of the volume is enlivened by an amusing narrative of Mussulman.

courtship and matrimony, cast in the form of a novelette, in. which the characters of bride and bridegroom are supported by Zerah and Izzet Bey. The dowry is paid by the bridegroom, usually amounting to four or five thousand francs ; and the cost of the wedding is represented as something serious. " C'est tout

le contmire de ce qui se passe en Europe ; lit, on fait une noce- pour se marier ; en Turqnie, on se marie pour faire une noce.'r Marriage is regarded by the Koran as a purely civil ceremony,. and, as on such occasions nearer home, an old shoe is thrown at the bridegroom, in order to avert the evil-eye. On the evening of a wedding, one of the chief commandments of the Koran is very generally set at naught :— " The Mussulmans of our days care little for the interdiction pro- nounced by the Prophet against spirituous drinks. They consider that after so many centuries these laws have finally dissolved and evaporated, to leave behind them only a residue of alcohol. It is especially at wed- dings that this happy belief finds fervent adepts, for with the excep- tion of the bridegroom and his father, you may make sure, after seven • Les Femmes en Turquie. Par Oaman-Bey (Major Vladimir Androjevich). Paris Calmann Levy. 1678. separate, obey the special attractions exercised over them by ethno- Hasnadar-Ousta (or Grand Mistress of the Treasury), her altera logical influences, and mass themselves round new centres. Divers ego during her lifetime. The finances of the harem are administered nationalities would take the place of a great empire, and the crumb- by the Valide-Kiaissi, or Superintendent of the Sultana-Valid, ling of the old edifice would be the necessary consequence of a blow slavery, and all the absurdities of the Mussulman law must be regarded of these dignitaries appear in the new Almanach de Gotha. Be- as indispensable to tho maintenance of tho Ottoman Empire, as well as low the Sultana-Vnlick, with her numerous Court, come the to the tranquillity of the Powers which have guaranteed its integrity." Kadines, or wives, each with smaller Courts of their own. The Politically, too, Islamism is a failure. The Ottoman dynasty, the Sultan can have no legal wives, in the strict sense of the term, longest-lived of all Mussulman dynasties, passed triumphantly marriage with subjecta being forbidden him ; and therefore his through the period of conquest ; but in the period which should have harem is always recruited from slaves. As there is no strictly legal been that of civilisation and progress, woman, one of the essential marriage, so there is no divorce for the Sultan. Our author remarks factors of progress, was degraded and paralysed, and the Turkish that of all the House of Othman, Abdul-Medjid is " the only Empire entered at once on the steep and ever steeper slope that one who ever had the double satisfaction of taking a lawful wife leads to national decay and annihilation. The process was only re- and of getting rid of her by divorce." This fortunate Kadine- tarded by the fancied necessities, the imbecility and evil statecraft, the sixth, by the way—married, as her second husband, a certain of other Powers. Among these, to her shame and to the permanent pasha. Below the Kadines come the Ikbals, or favourites, who injury of her dearest " interests," Great Britain has been con- are liable to be dismissed at short notice ; and thirdly, the spicuous. How directly and vigorously this Turk brushes away Guieuzdes (literally, "damsels in the eye "), or aspirants. The all the ever-recurring fallacies about Turkish " reform " !— mother of Abdul-Medjid was occupied in heating the baths, when "The first reform that they should have undertaken is the emanci- the Sultan's eye lighted upon her, and he raised her by a word to pation of woman. So long as she is paralysed in her action and in her the lofty rank of kadine. On the death of a Sultan, his Ratlines intellect, society will gain little by opening schools, by ameliorating the and lkbals are at once removed to the Old Seraglio, and there administrative or military system. Go back to the fountain-head ; begin by renewing the human seed-plots, and you will have mon. If Peter the kept in close confinement till after the age of fifty. After Groat had not inaugurated his work by proclaiming the emancipation the Kadines come the Sultanas, or unmarried princesses of of women, whore would Russia be to-day ? In the steppes of barbarism." the blood. Foster - mothers are highly esteemed in the The second part deals with "Slavery and the Harem." in the East (as we might gather from a familiar passage in the New palmy days of Turkey, slavery was a kind of noviciate, from which Testament), and especially among the Turks ; mid the foster- the forces of Islamism were recruited. But it is now entirely brothers and foster-sisters of the Sultan often rise to high honour confined to domestic life and the harem. Black slaves are im- and to great power, as Nahir.-Hanum, foster-sister to Abdul- ported from Africa ; white slaves were imported from Circassia Medjid, between 1840 and 1864. We must pass over with bare till 1864, and from Georgia till the Russian occupation and the mention the menial slaves of the harem, the Kalfas (mistresses), conquests of Paskiewitch, early in the century. Some twenty years the Alaikes (apprentices), the musicians and ballet-girls, and all ago the public slave-market was abolished, and the traffic decen- the host of them. Our author, on the whole, speaks more favour- tralised and transferred to other parts of Constantinople. It was ably than might be expected of the morals and discipline of the formerly carried on by wretches as brutal as those who live for us harem. It maybe mentioned that the Mehemet Pasha who so nearly in the pages of Mrs. Stowe, of whom a typical specimen is here took Peter the Great and Catherine prisoners rose from among sketched in the person of a certain Hadji Abdallah ; it has now the baliadjis (literally, " woodcutters "), who are the hewers of passed into the hands of private dealers, and of ladies in high wood and drawers of water of the harem. The whole staff of the society,—the wives, if our author is to be believed, of Pashas and palace is composed of Mussulmans, with the exception of a few Ministers ! The price of a slave seldom exceeds /1,000. The Cir- German and Hungarian coachmen. cassians in Turkey now sell their own children into slavery, and In the Mabein, not to mention the coffee-maker, of whom we have we are assured that Circassian slaves make all the best matches. heard very recently, the first barber is a highly important personage. If it be asked why domestic slavery is necessary, it may be Beside swearing by the beard of the Prophet, the Turks have a answered that Mussulman women are incapacitated for domestic custom that when a man decides to let his beard grow, he invites service by the necessity of always wearing the yashmak in pre- his friends to solemnise the event by special prayers. The cure- Bence of a man,—a necessity which entails, beside great inconveni- mony is called Sakal-douasi, or " the liturgy of the beard." The ence, a serious risk of being burned to death ; while the employ- person on whose behalf these prayers are offered would be ipso ment of Christian servants would lead the way but too surely to facto guilty of sacrilege if he shaved again. But to quote from the emancipation of woman in general, and the suppression of the

old Mussulman code of manners.

" Reece it will be understood that the Sultan's first barber takes rank Osman Bey points out that by the Koran, Mussulman women among exalted personages. His importance even survives his functions ; cannot be slaves ; and he raises a serious question as to the legiti- an ex-fit at barber has a claim to all kinds of dignities, e.g., tho govern- micy of children born of a marriage between a Mussulman and a ment of a province. One of them whom I knew well, Emin-Agha, was appointed Governor of Yusgat. It will doubtless be surmised that the woman who is not legally capable of being a slave. He mentions clover man who know how to clip the master's beard would be equally the curious questions of casuistry to which this difficulty gives rise, well able to shave his subjects. Emin-Aglia did not fail to do so, as is and the embarrassment which is felt on the subject by those generally agreed."

learned in the law. True to their principle of being well in the rear of Western civilisa- Negro slaves are employed chiefly in the kitchen ; here we tion, the Sultans still have their tasters, whose work is no sinecure ; learn a damning fact,—that "le cas do descendance nive an beside their fools and their dwarfs, who are occasionally served up at troisime degrd cat chose tout-a-fait inconnue." The author table in a chaldron of pilau., an amusement of a kind not unfamiliar gives an extraordinary account of the Association of the Blacks, at the Court of Charles I. Wrestling is very popular, and Abdul

o'clock in the evening, of seeing the majority of the guests lying on the which is, first, a Mutual Benefit society, and secondly, a National ground, or stretched along the divans." Club that intervenes in all differences between masters and Our author calculates that out of ten marriages, one is happy, dare& year by year the negresses take part in some mystical and six end in divorce, and three in polygamy ; polygamy leads to obscene rites, under the presidency of their Kol-bachi, in honour mutual hatred and jealousy, to the practice of sorcery and vile of their deity, Yavroubd ; these rites must certainly, the author incantations, such as Canidia practised in the time of Horace. holds, be imported from Africa. Male negroes are not initiated The author frankly expresses his opinion that, in consequence of the into these mysteries, but share in the charity dispensed by the position of women, Islamism must be pronounced a social failure. association. Their lot is exceptionally wretched. Male white Mussulman societies have never, as he confesses, been distinguished slaves, it should be added, are now very few in number ; but by the purity of their manners or by the brilliance of their civilisa- some have risen to the rank of pasha, as Nevres Pasha and Ziuer tion ; and he will make no exception even in favour of the Arabs. pasha.

Corruption, too, is more intense and more precocious among The third part of the book is devoted to the Sultan's harem, Mussulman peoples than among any other. And those who have or rather his seraglio, for the Mabem (the men's portion) is in a genuine wish for social reform are, after all, very few in number, eluded, as well as the Harem. The Seraglio appears to be in- -Ali, Fuad, Achmet Fazil, Munif, a dozen statesmen possibly i habited by from three to four thousand persons, of both sexes. but these, despite the best intentions, are powerless to modify the At the head of the harem is usually the Sultana-Valithi, or social system. And why, our Turk shall tell us, in his own Empress-Mother, for, not to mention other difficulties, the selection

words :— of one of the Sultan's wives to figure as Empress in the eyes of

" If the bonds which unite the True Believers in one compact mass Europe would be a flagrant violation of the Koran. In case of were once relaxed or broken, you would immediately see the Greek the death of the Sultana-Valide, her privileges devolve on the Mussulmans, the Slav Mussulmans, the Armenian Mussulmans, &a., separate, obey the special attractions exercised over them by ethno- Hasnadar-Ousta (or Grand Mistress of the Treasury), her altera logical influences, and mass themselves round new centres. Divers ego during her lifetime. The finances of the harem are administered nationalities would take the place of a great empire, and the crumb- by the Valide-Kiaissi, or Superintendent of the Sultana-Valid, ling of the old edifice would be the necessary consequence of a blow

who is nominated, it may be remarked, by imperial rescript. None struck at its fundamental laws. Therefore, the harems, the domestic Osman Bey :— Aziz had a peculiar passion for goat-fights and cock-fights. Then there are astrologers, who are consulted whenever the Sultan or one of the great ladies is about to start on a journey ; and there must be a whole host of tailors and clothiers, for the Commander of the Faithful never wears the same garments twice. The

365 coats, waistcoats, and so forth which fall into the hands of his valets every year must alone constitute a serious item in the Budget. Finally, our author asks what is to be done to sweep away this vast incubus, under which Turkey has groaned so long. A reform of the Seraglio, says Osman Bey, is as indispensable as

were the destruction of the Janissaries and the abolition of so many administrative abuses :—

"The great obstacle with which all revolutions of this kind have to contend is the composition of the Seraglio, which is a complete world of itself, isolated from the rest, a powerful corporation, whose members and connections number thousands of individuals. Further, this corpora- tion owes its power and prestige to the privilege reserved to it of sur- rounding the sacred person of the Padishah, the vicar and successor of Mahomet. Depositories and guardians of the sovereign authority, the personages of this Court continually hold in check the other political bodies, and often even dictate laws to them. The Sultan, in the last resort, depends on this entourage, whose discontent may produce one of those coups d'eat in which the Sovereign loses throne and life What would be the remedy for such great dangers ? Another reform, perhaps, in the law of succession to the throne. But the Sultan hesi- tates no less before the solution of this second problem. These two questions are closely connected with one another, so as in some sort to constitute but one. Thus it is impossible to approach the question of direct succession without having first reformed the Seraglio, and it is impossible to reform the Seraglio without having previously settled the question of the succession."

In conclusion, we must add that we have found this book one of singular interest, and it is impossible to praise too highly the manner in which, with scarcely an exception, the author has dealt with a very delicate subject. He has told us, in brief compass, much more than we knew before of the rottenness of the state of Turkey. And such testimony is specially valuable from the mouth of a Turk, and might have been still more valuable a year or two ago. Osman Bey discerned clearly enough the handwriting on the wall, which half the statesmen and diplomatists of Europe, and to our shame be it said, of England, could not or would not see. It can hardly be said that his arguments or his facts are calculated to make us look forward with any very sanguine hopes to the results of the "positively last chance" which it has pleased our rulers to give to his countrymen.