DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62355#0290
128
BEAUTIES OF THE BOSPHORUS.
disgust, totally uncalled for by the aspect of the place itself. This is no arena for
controversy ; nor has the writer of these sketches either wish or intention to
defend a traffic utterly revolting to every principle of our nature; but justice to
the Turkish nation calls for a contradiction of those absurd and indelicate episodes
with which the active and wonder-creating imaginations of certain writers and
artists have laboured to render the name of the Yeser Bazar odious, not only
inferentially, but actually. A sentimental chapter is easily woven of the tears
and terror of a fair and fainting girl, torn from her home and her kindred, and
exposed to the gaze of a coarse and ribald crowd; a pretty picture may be
readily produced when the formal quadrangle of the market is relieved by groups
of beautiful Georgians or Circassians, habited in flowing draperies of white
muslin, and unveiled by the coarse hands of the dealer to gratify the whim of
every lounging passenger; but surely if the creators of these flimsy prettinesses
were to reflect for a moment that they are not only violating good taste in their
own persons, but moreover libelling a whole people, and distorting truth at the
same time, they would consent to sacrifice a sentence, or to dispense with an
effect, in order to be at once more decent, more veracious, and more just.
It is only those who look superficially at the East,—the travellers against time,
who make deduction serve for experience, and inference for fact,—who fall into
such gross errors as these ; and Turkey is not a country to be described on infe-
rence and deduction. Not one of those who have spread the fallacy which we
are now deprecating, ever witnessed the revolting spectacle born of their own
fancy. How does Dr. Walsh speak of the Yezer Bazar? And we quote him,
not only because he was resident in Constantinople many years, looking deeply
and earnestly into its institutions, but because the whole tone and tendency of
his work must at once acquit him of any leaning to the Turkish people :—
" Here decorum is no further violated than in the act of sale. It consists of
a quadrangular building, with an open court in the middle. Round this are
raised platforms, on which black slaves sit; behind are latticed windows, lighting
apartments where the white and more costly women are shut up till they are
sold; and there is a certain decency and propriety observed in the purchase." *
The wanton exposure, therefore, which has been represented as a concomitant
of the sale of slaves in the Yeser Bazar, did not originate with the Turks; to
whom Dr. Walsh (certainly not their most lenient historian) thus concedes the
merit of " decency and propriety."
We have been somewhat prolix on this point, because it is one which has been
deeply and painfully felt by many individuals of the calumniated nation ; and
* Dr. Walsh's "Residence in Constantinople." vol. ii. p. 2.
BEAUTIES OF THE BOSPHORUS.
disgust, totally uncalled for by the aspect of the place itself. This is no arena for
controversy ; nor has the writer of these sketches either wish or intention to
defend a traffic utterly revolting to every principle of our nature; but justice to
the Turkish nation calls for a contradiction of those absurd and indelicate episodes
with which the active and wonder-creating imaginations of certain writers and
artists have laboured to render the name of the Yeser Bazar odious, not only
inferentially, but actually. A sentimental chapter is easily woven of the tears
and terror of a fair and fainting girl, torn from her home and her kindred, and
exposed to the gaze of a coarse and ribald crowd; a pretty picture may be
readily produced when the formal quadrangle of the market is relieved by groups
of beautiful Georgians or Circassians, habited in flowing draperies of white
muslin, and unveiled by the coarse hands of the dealer to gratify the whim of
every lounging passenger; but surely if the creators of these flimsy prettinesses
were to reflect for a moment that they are not only violating good taste in their
own persons, but moreover libelling a whole people, and distorting truth at the
same time, they would consent to sacrifice a sentence, or to dispense with an
effect, in order to be at once more decent, more veracious, and more just.
It is only those who look superficially at the East,—the travellers against time,
who make deduction serve for experience, and inference for fact,—who fall into
such gross errors as these ; and Turkey is not a country to be described on infe-
rence and deduction. Not one of those who have spread the fallacy which we
are now deprecating, ever witnessed the revolting spectacle born of their own
fancy. How does Dr. Walsh speak of the Yezer Bazar? And we quote him,
not only because he was resident in Constantinople many years, looking deeply
and earnestly into its institutions, but because the whole tone and tendency of
his work must at once acquit him of any leaning to the Turkish people :—
" Here decorum is no further violated than in the act of sale. It consists of
a quadrangular building, with an open court in the middle. Round this are
raised platforms, on which black slaves sit; behind are latticed windows, lighting
apartments where the white and more costly women are shut up till they are
sold; and there is a certain decency and propriety observed in the purchase." *
The wanton exposure, therefore, which has been represented as a concomitant
of the sale of slaves in the Yeser Bazar, did not originate with the Turks; to
whom Dr. Walsh (certainly not their most lenient historian) thus concedes the
merit of " decency and propriety."
We have been somewhat prolix on this point, because it is one which has been
deeply and painfully felt by many individuals of the calumniated nation ; and
* Dr. Walsh's "Residence in Constantinople." vol. ii. p. 2.