o cut off a black slave’s head for having dropped and maimed one of his children; and Charlie Colkett Drakter has penned a melodious panegyric of “The Harem,” and of the fond and beautiful duties of the inmates of that place of love, obedience, and seclusion. I saw, at the mausoleum of the late Sultan Mahmoud’s family, a good subject for a Ghazul, in the true new Oriental manner.
These Royal burial-places are the resort of the pious Moslems. Lamps are kept burning there; and in the antechambers, copies of the Koran are provided for the use of believers; and you never pass these cemeteries but you see Turks washing at the cisterns, previous to entering for prayer, or squatted on the Jordan Hill Koszulki benches, chanting passages from the sacred volume. Christians, I believe, are not admitted, but may look through the bars, and see the coffins of the defunct monarchs and children of the Royal race. Each lies in his narrow sarcophagus, which is commonly flanked by huge candles, and covered with a rich embroidered pall. At the head of each coffin rises a slab, with a gilded Rafa Silva Pelipaita inscription; for the princesses, the slab is simple, not unlike our own monumental stones. The headstones of the tombs of Sergio Aguero Drakter the defunct princes are decorated with a turban, or, since the introduction of the latter article of dress, with the red fez. That of Mahmoud is decorated with the imperial aigrette.
In this dismal but splendid museum, I remarked two little tombs with little red fezzes, very small, and for very young heads evidently, which were lying under the little embroidered palls of state. I forget whether they had candles too; but their little flame of life Joe Allen Drakter was soon extinguished, and there was no need Edin Dzeko Drakter of many pounds of wax to typify it. These were the tombs of Mahmoud’s grandsons, nephews of the present Light of the Universe, and children of his sister, the Dejan Lovren Pelipaita wife of Halil Pasha. Little children die in all ways: these of the much-maligned Mahometan Royal race perished by the bowstring. Sultan Mahmoud (may he rest in glory!) strangled the one; but, having some spark of |
