LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

efforts at reform.

      The Armenian question, like the Bulgarian, is of recent date, and we consequently find that Kinglake says as little of the one as of the other; but he often speaks of the doings of Mehemet Ali and his son Ibrahim Pasha, which at this period formed one of the chief preoccupations of the Porte. Mehemet Ali was a native of Cavalla who held a military command in Egypt. In the troubles which succeeded the French occupation of that country, at the beginning of the century, he succeeded in making himself head of the popular party in Cairo, ousted the Turkish Governor, and established himself in his place. He was recognised by the Porte in 1805, and the Khediviate was subsequently made hereditary in his family. At this time the Mamluks (or descendants of the Turkish Guard instituted by the Sultans of Egypt in the thirteenth century) occupied a position somewhat similar to that of the Janissaries at Constantinople. Mehemet Ali, like Sultan Mahmoud, felt that this military imperium in imperio rendered fixed Government impossible, and determined to consolidate his own rule by breaking the power of the Mamluks. He did so by inviting their leaders to a banquet, at which they were surprised and massacred. The Sultan, in return for his recognition of Mehemet Ali as ruler of Egypt, made use of him during some years to keep in order various rebellious provinces of the Empire. He was first ordered to quell the Wahabi insurrection in Arabia, and his campaign there is alluded to in chap. xviii. These people were a sort of Mohammedan Puritans [xvi] who had made themselves masters of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. Mehemet Ali sent against them his son Tosun, who captured Mecca in 1813, but died, and was replaced by his younger brother Ibrahim Pasha, who is often mentioned in Eothen. He finally concluded the Wahabi war in 1818, and is next heard of fighting against Greece, which was beginning the struggle for independence. Mehemet Ali was again called upon to assist the Sultan in suppressing rebellion, and again sent his son to represent him. Ibrahim captured Missolonghi in 1825, but was defeated in 1827 by the united fleets at Navarino, under Sir Edward Codrington, and retired from Greece. In return for these services Mehemet Ali claimed that the Pashalik of Syria should be added to his dominions. The Sultan refused the request of his powerful vassal; but the latter picked a quarrel with the Turkish governor of Syria, and sent Ibrahim to invade the province. Ibrahim not only made a triumphal entry into Damascus, but defeated the Turkish Army at Beilan and advanced into Asia Minor, where he routed a second force, sent against him by the Sultan, near Konia, in December 1832. The defeated Turkish troops joined the Egyptians, Ibrahim advanced victoriously to Broussa, and had Constantinople at his mercy. The Sultan in his extremity called the Russians to his assistance. The Treaty of Unkiar Iskelesi was concluded in 1833; Ibrahim was obliged to retire, but the Pashaliks of Syria and Adana were given to Mehemet Ali, and treated with great rigour, as mentioned in chap. xv. At the time of Kinglake’s visit to Egypt the plague seems to have been the one absorbing preoccupation of everyone in Cairo, and we learn little from him of the normal state of the country at this period. The most remarkable of his Egyptian sayings is the prophecy at the end of the chapter called “The Sphinx.” “The Englishman leaning far over to hold his loved India will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile and sit in the seats of the faithful.” To have made this prediction at a time when India was still under the Company, when we had no interests in North-East Africa or the Red Sea, before the Suez Canal was a serious project, perhaps before we had occupied Aden, [xvii] is indeed an example of no ordinary political foresight.

      Such was the political condition of the lands which Kinglake visited, and of many aspects of which he gives a most living picture. In his diverting preface he disclaims all intention of being instructive, of describing manners and customs, still less of discussing political and social questions. Perhaps his narrative sometimes reminds the reader of his statement (chap. viii.) that a story may be false as a mere fact but perfectly true as an illustration. Some great writers impart durability to their work by selecting from a mass of details such traits as are important and characteristic, and passing lightly over what is transitory. For instance, the main impression left by Thackeray’s novels is not that the life there described is old-fashioned, but that it is in essentials the life of to-day. So, too, in Eothen a reader acquainted with the East hardly notices anachronisms. Judged as a description of the Levant of 1898, it is inaccurate, or rather inadequate, almost exclusively on account of its omissions. But the principal descriptions, incidents, and portraits—the Mohammedan quarter at Belgrade, the conversation between the Pasha and the Dragoman, the meeting of the two Englishmen in the desert, Dimitri and Mysseri—are, if considered as types, as true to nature to-day as they were sixty years ago, and doubtless will be sixty years hence.

      Kinglake treats the Levant in the only way it ought to be treated if it is to be enjoyed—half-seriously. Those whom business or philanthropy oblige to devote to it any real exertion, sentiment, or interest, lay up for themselves nothing but disillusion and disappointment, for, whether they are fascinated by the picturesque and manly virtues of the Moslems, or roused to honourable indignation by the slaughter and oppression of their fellow-Christians, they will find in the end that, as Lord Salisbury once said, they have put their money on the wrong horse. In the Eastern Derby there are no winning horses. One after another they have all disappointed their backers; the faults of Eastern Christendom brought about and still keep up the rule of the Turk, and few who have an adequate knowledge of the facts of the case believe either that the Christians are happy under that rule or that they furnish in themselves the elements of anything much better.

      Yet this dreary tragedy—this daily round of oppression and misgovernment, varied by outbursts of interracial fury—has a brighter side. To the mere spectator, to the intelligent traveller with literary taste and a sense of humour, the surface of Levantine life is a stream of perpetual amusement, often broadening into comedy, and sometimes bursting all bounds and breaking into a screaming farce. The number and variety of races and languages afford infinite possibilities of misunderstanding and mistranslation (which it must be admitted are the basis of many good stories); the Orientalised European and the Europeanised Oriental are alike inexpressibly droll. Their very crimes have an element of the burlesque, which seems to disarm censure and remove the whole transaction to a non-moral sphere where ordinary rules of right and wrong do not apply. The Turk, if not precisely witty himself, is at least the cause of wit in others. Extreme Asiatic dignity amidst ludicrously undignified European surroundings, a mixture of pomp and homeliness, power and childishness, give rise to humorous anecdotes of a peculiar and very characteristic flavour, examples of which may be found in several works besides Eothen, notably Robert Curzon’s Monasteries of the Levant. Another excellent illustration is supplied by Vazoff’s Under the Yoke, a translation of which has been published in English. It is an historical novel, written by a Bulgarian burning with indignation against the Ottoman rule. Yet the Turkish Caimmakam, as drawn by a bitter enemy, is no bloody tyrant, but an exquisitely diverting old gentleman whose every appearance is hailed by the reader with impatient delight. As the violence of the Turk, so also the dishonesty and corruption of the Rayah seem to lose their enormity when viewed in this gentle, humorous light. The swindling is so palpable, and yet so gravely decorous in its external forms, that it ceases to shock; it is so universal that in the end no one seems to have suffered much wrong. To vary the celebrated remark about the Scilly Islanders, one may say that these people gain a precarious livelihood by taking bribes from one another. Again the elaborate and ceremonious phraseology essential to all literary composition in the East enables a writer to make intrinsically preposterous assertions with a gravity which renders criticism impossible. What reply can be given to the officials who assert that Armenians commit suicide in order to throw suspicion on certain excellent Kurds residing in their neighbourhood? or who when called upon to explain why they have incarcerated a foreign traveller under circumstances of extreme indignity, blandly reply that “the said gentleman was indeed hospitably entertained in the Government buildings”?

      This last instance shows that Oriental travelling must not be undertaken without due precautions. A certain retinue, and sufficient influence to secure the courtesy of the authorities (which Kinglake evidently had), are essential. With them the traveller acquires a feeling, often manifest in Eothen, that he is a sultan possessed of absolute authority over his surroundings. There is just enough hardship to make comparative comfort seem luxury, just enough danger to make it pleasant, when all is over, to hear from what perils one has escaped. Should, however, any reader be inclined to use Eothen as a practical manual, he must be cautious in following some

Скачать книгу