SECRET NO LONGER

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 119, 22 May 1930, Page 19

SECRET NO LONGER

HAREM REvkALED

NOW-A'MUSEOf

.7'; The "gate; of: ' felicity," guarding the most secret spot in..all-Europe, the erstwhile,harem of the Sultans of,.Turkey, has been thrown -wide-open. The inn*-?- portal, which for centuries nq. "ma:*., save . tt-o ' Sultaiv.' might Venter, echoes to ti>s footsteps and voices of tourists. The Sultan's harem, in niod- ■ era Turkey.- has been turned into a public museum. •' Marble bath and gilded divan where 9«ce rosy-fiiigcred hou'ris idled, dim corridor -where- a Sultana felt tlie fatal bowstring- suddenly tighten about her throat,-latticed chambers where Christian slave-women plotted empires for (heir own sons .and death for one another —all- these, restored anil rel'urishi'd, arc to-day part of a museum. The scene of tbe world's most victlent aud mysterious■'. intrigues, eloseivallcd for four centuries, is suddenly spread before the general gaze. There id a'legend which relates how the old (Sultan Suleiman scut'out: four .birds to the four quarters of the -heavens to find out the most perfect site for a palace., Coming back, they assured him that nowhere in the world was there anything to equal Seraglio Point. There, accordingly, at the', tip of Stambou), looking across the Golden Horn, "andvthe'Sea of Marmora to the fairyland, of islands, cypresses' and minarets beyond, Suleiman the JVtagniJicciit built his palace of Top Ivapen.To be sure, three former Sultans, including .Mohammed 11, the conqueror 1 qi' Constantinople, as . early as 14(37, had placed imperial pavilions here. But in them no worn an might spend .the night. It was Suleiman who, fifty ■' years later, brought here the royal • harem and the court, andraised within ■'ilie triple walls the tiled:kiosks whoso 1 secrets of arrangement and decoration 10-day for the first' time tlie world may know:. xVmid its labyrinth of. • bright pebbled; paths 10,000 gardeners' cultivated honeysuckle and , orange ' blossoms, ranunculi and tulips, against ■the background of plane trees, cyp- ■ ressos and umbrella pines.. ' Behind new gilded lattices 300 slave girls, the flower of Europe,,peered ' vainly out toward a world they we're never. to know. Russians, Greeks, -.Circassians, Italians,. Syrians, Armen- ,' ians they were, captives in. battle, tri- . vbutes from subject nations, chosen for •their beauty by emissaries of the Sulv tan. No Turkish woman was among ,'• the inmates of the imperial harem. ' -.^fainly they were Christians, and '■■ in- . variably they:were slaves, i. . '• ■• . < SECRET TERRORS. There is a, tale of an English, gover--ness who, half a century ago, was billeted with her royal charge in the harem of an old palace beside the Bosphorus. There she found that the .whole marble floor of one of the baths "could be made to sink at the, touch

of a spring, and a victim of tho SultanTaispleasufe "could be swept silent-lv-;out into the inrushing river beyond,

" But in ; Suleiman's harem so complicated a mechanism was unnecessary. Through the delicately-tiled corridors of the harem, constantly in attendance, constantly on guard, stroke the black eunuchs, whose chief was known as "master of the maidens." Servant though, he was, from him all favours and all liberties must be cajoled or bought. And if one day there was one harem woman the less, no one, doubtless, noticed the grim sack washed ashore further down .off Seraglio Point. ' For in' those cushioned rooms iae spectre o! sudden death for their erstwhile occupants was never far remote. Even yet the very walls speak of sinister intrigue. Upon doors of mosaic are ■ fastened massive, disfiguring iron bolts. Here "is a sliding panel,,- aud there a secret passage, while in one room a column of green marble, turned with a slight clacking sound, warned the Sultan when any one approached. In.the nurseries themselves, with tiny fountains oir the window ledges where children might wash, their hands, the shadow of death still lingers, perhaps most heavily. For least safe of all in the: realm'-'.lay the heads, of those who might one day wear the crown. And the first act of each newly-created Sul-tan-was to decree death for all Ins brothers. . . ...

"Mohammed, ill. began his reign in 1595 with the strangling of nineteen brothers.' His father, twenty years earlier, had held out for almost a day against the arguments and the pleadings of his viziers for the immediate destruction of his .five. Then, with bitter. weeping he handed to the chief executioner thefive handkerchiefs that symbolised their fates. RANK IN THE HAREM. The' harem had its strict degrees of rank..' At its head stood the Sultana A'alide, the Sultan's mother, ■ with fifty eunuchs to serve her, and a woman superintendent through 'whom she ruled the vast village of the harem. '. Next to her- ranked the mother or- the heirapparent,'the mothers of the Sultan's younger children, then the odalisks, and the various other slaves, from the dancing girls to the "mistress of sherbets," the "chief cofl'co server," and the neophytes. . . In: this complex competitive system each.beautiful new slave began at the bottom. The one possible aim of each ambitious woman must be to have her son become the Sultan. Only in that ■way-, could, she become -ruler of her world, the .harem. ' . , In :. the -old 'Turkish Sultanate there was usually no legitimate heir. Unlike his subjects, who in prosperous times were apt to take the four wives allotted them by Moslem law, the Sultan rarely married. And among the sons of his harem there was no strict rule of primogeniture. The empire in reality was thus in the constant state of being contended \for by the sons of alien slaves. Whichever ope tho Sultan chose as his successor ; was only so much tlie more the marked'victim of plot, and intrigue. ■ ■.Indeed, when at the beginning of the seventeenth cntury it was decided .that the eldest male of the royal Hue should rule, tho prospective Sultan was locked from childhood in^a. wing

of the palace, known as "tho cage." From this he was released only for the throne or the stranglcrs bowstring1, One-Sultan was thus imprisoned for forty-three years before lie canio to rule; and several of them ascended the throne with minds seriously impaired from the long confinement. Thus the "Grand Turk," tyrant of vast a, realm and owner of such prodigious wealth, was neither a free-born' nor a carefree man, anil, as time went on, he was not even in truth a Turk. Far more, through the long harem line, he was Europeau—of Greek, Italian, Russian, and Circassian blood long intermingled. And often :in actual power as in his lineage the. Jiarem was predominant.