AMONG THE CONSTANTINOPLE BOOKSHOPS.

THE bazars of Constantinople possess a remarkable power to lure and beguile the traveller. This mainly arises from the fact that they join to the life of to-day the usages of past centuries. Only he who knows will notice, in passing along highways in one part of the city, modest stone arches spanning bye-streets, sometimes thronged beyond their capacity, but repelling the stranger by the darkness within. These arches are the way of access from all sides to those streets of little stalls where all, from day-laborer to sovereign, can supply all of their daily needs.

The district which the bazars occupy lies between the mosques of Bayezid and Nouri Osmaniyè, and stretches somewhat down the hill toward the harbor. Looking down upon it from the Fire Tower at the War Department, one sees that it is roofed in with dingy red tiles. Here and there only, massive stone buildings covered with leaden domes rise above the broad surface of low roofs. Some of the roofs are half a mile long, and between them there is nowhere in the district a break where so much as a sparrow might penetrate to the ground. There are windows in the walls, but they are high from the ground and barred like the windows of a prison. On noticing that all the streets of access are furnished with gates, iron bound and heavy as the gates of a castle, one realizes that the bazars form a city within the city. When the gates are

closed at night, the tortuous maze of streets is changed into a single great house of storage where the goods of the merchants are safe from itching hands.

In modern times all great streets in Constantinople have plenty of shops whose attractiveness and capabilities cast into the shade the tiny stalls of the bazars. If we seek, then, the source of a wish to isolate shops from city at the cost of comfort, we are carried back to a time when trade could exist only on condition of controlling barriers that would stand though soldiers and populace united in schemes to break through for loot. To-day the combination of all trades, from the mercers and jewellers to the haberdashers and cobblers, to keep up the stalls and the gates

of the bazars, exists solely because it is a custom to have such a combination. Thus the city of the tradesmen, shut in by gates within the city of Constantinople, is a profession of faith that what is old is necessarily good beyond improvement.

One of the streets in this inner city seems especially old. In front of the stalls, on either side, is a row of columns supporting low vaults, and forming a series of porticoes after an architectural plan fashionable in Byzantium and other ports of the Greek trade. The roof of the central portion of the street is a high arch, resting on the vaults of the porticoes. Excepting the mellow browns and the grays of old stone, and an occasional reminiscence of yellow ochre on the stuccoed face of the brickwork, the street is without decoration. The dimness of the light admitted by the rows of little windows high up in the wall, near to the roof, the chill of the close air shut in by the heavy vault, and the slimy mud on the rough pavement give to the passenger an impression of exploring subterranean chambers beneath some vast ruin.

The stalls on this street of about a hundred yards in length seem exactly alike. Each stall is a mere alcove raised about two feet above the surface of the street and lined with unpainted shelves. The untidy heaps of books lying on their sides on the shelves seem alike in every shop, for the big ones are at the bottom and the little ones on the top of the piles. Only the shopkeepers, by their garb and by the characteristic features of Bokharan, Persian, Arab, Ethiopian, and Turk, differentiate the stalls from one another. But this street is worth more than a passing glance; for in this quaint place, dispensed by these grave men, are all the written words which have helped to form the Turk.

No one of the booksellers pays more attention to possible purchasers than he does to the hungry dogs which nose the moist pavement in hopes of finding chance morsels of food. Grave, preoccupied, and content that he is surrounded by books, the man placidly reads, ruminates, smokes, counts the beads on his rosary, or, standing with his face toward Mecca, goes through the genuflections of the formal service of worship. As you pass down the street, a Persian, with green turban, light blue broadcloth robe, and beard dyed to an orange scarlet with henna, chances to turn on his cushion and meets your eye. With so much of encouragement you pause at the stall of the Persian. He seems to begrudge the interruption of his meditations, and, without rising from his place, dexterously extracts from a ragged pile the book you have asked for and opens it for inspection. It will require several visits to overcome the man's reserve. At last, fancying that in you he has found a belated seeker after true

knowledge, he becomes patronizing. After a time, having discovered that you love books because they are books, he will, with that free-masonry which unites the world of bookmen, admit you to equality and uncover for you the chief treasures of his stock. Then you find the man himself to be a link between the world that lives and a past that is dead. He believes that the world has seen its best days. He loves these ancient stalls because his fathers loved them. He is sure, as we shall see, that what springs up to-day is necessarily deceptive, crude, and unsatisfying. He looks with horror at the question "What is the latest book?" The truly valuable book is the one which contains the knowledge of the ancients. He would outdo Mr. Carnegie a hundredfold in his time test of books to be admitted to libraries.

As for the books which compose those slovenly piles on the grimy shelves of this wise man of the East, they represent all departments of literature. Works on theology, the holy law of Islam, and philosophy abound, as a matter of course, since religion is the chief concern of the Asiatic. A long series of histories contains a record of the deeds of all the Sultans of the Ottoman dynasty. Travel attracts Turkish writers as it does those of the West, and Europe knows Evlia the Turkish Münchhausen. Biographies of saints and heroes, the terms being interchangeable among Muslims, fill a large space. Some six hundred Turkish poets have left their visions and their fancies as a heritage to their nation. Scientific works are numerous, and those treating of mathematics have some value. Stories are few, although some specimens of fiction with a moral purpose, and in the style of the “Arabian Nights," are found among the older Turkish authors.

The most valued of this Persian's stock consists of manuscripts-not intended to be shown as curiosities, but to be used for every-day reading. A Turkish book-lover often says to Europeans: "I have as many books as you, but there is not a single printed book among them." The hold which the manuscript has upon popular superstition is shown on opening any of the books first printed by the Turks. These books were printed by the government at its own press, something over a century ago. Each of these earliest printed books bears a certificate from the Sheikh ul Islam, who is the highest authority in canon law, declaring that nothing in the law of God forbids printing; so that people may use printed books without fear of untoward consequences.

Among the manuscripts which the bookseller shows to appreciative ones is, for instance, the "Shahnamè," the great Persian epic of Firdusi, illustrated by 110 delicious miniature paintings. For this splendid work

the Persian asked $540. After some hours of chaffering over sundry cups of coffee he sold it for $390. Lesser manuscripts are a life of Alexander the Great, with colored illustrations, for $25; the poems of Hafiz, with six colored illustrations, for $45; the Wars of Tamerlane, with five illustrations, for $125; a standard collection of old love stories for $5; and a curious description of the discovery of America, written within fifty years after the event, and illustrated by colored pictures of animals thus brought to light, which the author suggests are not like anything seen in the Eastern Hemisphere, frankly adding that the pictures are local attempts to materialize the descriptions given by the Spanish writers. How a description may mislead is shown by the picture of the opossum, whose pouch is represented as suspended from the back of the creature, like a pair of saddlebags.

The Koran naturally holds a peculiar place among the manuscripts in these shops. It can be had in different sizes, from the pocket edition, written within the last decade, and costing ten dollars, to the great volumes written by famous masters of caligraphy in past centuries, and valued at three hundred dollars. It is a sin against God to sell the Koran and some other of the religious books held to be necessary to salvation. If then you ask a bookseller to sell you a copy of the Koran, or if you ask its price, he becomes furiously angry. The fact that he is constantly drawing solid profit from providing these beautiful manuscripts for his customers does not temper the fire of his wrath. The business affords a curious illustration of the mental gymnastics of which the Oriental is capable when oppressed by the requirements of the moral law. The bookseller sells the Koran to those of his customers only who understand the art of putting things. Instead of asking the price of the Koran, you must ask the man to present the book to you. He replies that he will present you with the copy which you have selected, if you will make him a gift of twenty-five dollars. Such a transaction is not a sale, and the parties to it have not sinned by laying a price on the word of God.

Turkish books fall into two separate literary periods, unless the comparatively insignificant writings of the last fifty years be rated as of a third period. Before the wandering Turks in Western Asia rose into permanent power through the conquest of Constantinople, the centre of Turkish literary activity was in Turkestan. The modern Turks class all books originating among the Sunni, or orthodox Muslims of that region, as of the first period of Turkish literature. The language of such books is more purely Turkish than that of any book of the second period. Since

the Eastern Turkish dialects require a glossary when used by the people of Turkey, translations into the Western dialect are often found. Many of the early Turkish writers wrote in Persian, and their works exist in Turkish in translation only. Among the authors of this period whose works can be found at Constantinople are Timourleng or Tamerlane, Ulugh Bey, his grandson, and Baber, his great-grandson, the founder of the Mongolian Empire in India. Curiously enough, in view of the aftercourse of Turkish literature, one may also find in the bookshops a treatise by Mir Alishir of Herat, written about the beginning of the sixteenth century to oppose the corruption of Turkish poetry by the introduction of Persian phrases.

The works of weightiest influence belonging to this first period, and still in circulation in Turkey, are religious writings of the great Muslim mystics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, who lived in Bokhara, Tashkend, and Samarcand. These books have been and still are guide books to thousands who journey in what they call "the path of the Seeker." Why these books still live may be judged from a quaint invitation to devotion by Saadeddin Kashgari (died 1486) found in "Rills from the Fountain of Life" (written by Safi at Samarcand in 1504, and translated into Western Turkish at Constantinople in 1585). says:

Saadeddin

There are not two hearts in man, that he may occupy one with the world and one with God. The heart of man is one; if it is occupied with the world, it remains without blessing from God. If the man occupies his heart with God, a window is opened in that heart and the sun of God's grace begins to shine through it that sun in which, as it goes from East to West, every atom that exists may have a share, for its light falls upon all. Only windowless houses remain without share in this light. If the heart is not careless, being under control, its being under control is the same as opening the window for the light, and the blessed light of grace is sure to reach that man. But if the heart is careless the light glancing off passes on.

It should be remembered that the soil from which these thoughts grew was impregnated with Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Christianity, before Islam occupied it. Its literary fruit contains much rubbish; but many a Turk of to-day who yearns for spiritual culture, and can gain little from the Koran and its Arab commentators, looks to these books of his Central Asian forefathers for spiritual stimulus and suggestion, much as Jew and Christian look to the books of the Hebrew prophets. In this connection it is worth noting that the only commentary on the Koran now printed in Turkish at Constantinople, the "Tefsiri Tibian," is the work of one of the fifteenth-century saints of Turkestan.

When the man of the orange-scarlet beard begins to take down books