Rubies Big as Tennis Balls Stored in Harem

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6849, 2 March 1929, Page 13

Rubies Big as Tennis Balls Stored in Harem

Turkey’s £20,000,000 Worth of Treasures

“I see that the Turkish Government is going to sell, either in Paris or London, or perhaps in both cities, the famous court jewels of the Osman family. Only the unhistorical jewels are to be sold, but they alone are valued at £20,000,000,” writes H. J. Greenwall. in the London “Daily Express.”)

“A fey months ago, when I was in Constantinople, I had official permission to visit this collection of jewels and never in my life have I seen anything approaching such magnificence. “Turkey to-day is almost forgotten. It has changed so quickly that we are apt to forget the splendours of the past. “I had been walking in the courtyard of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque watching the Turks in caps and bowler hats, puffing their hookas under the shady arches. Public scribes sat waiting for customers, while round their heads doves flew.

“Turkey to-day stands half in and half out of Asia; but when I left the Mosque of Ahmed, I walked straight into a page of the Arabian Nights. “A few hundred yards away from the mosque is the old seraglio of the Imperial Palace. The seraglio was the harem, the Imperial harem, of the Sultans of Turkey. But when Kemal came and opened the doors of the gilded cages, and, like so many glittering birds of paradise, the women flew away, there was still something left In the harem —the collection of the Osman jewels; a collection, I might say, such as would make Hatton Garden faint.

To Found State Bank “There are moments in our lives when fairy dreams come true. This was one of them; and when I entered a room, and stood amid £20,000,000 worth of so-called unhistorical jewels, I realised that sometimes the. most fantastic efforts of the imagination fall much short of reality. “I saw two classes of jewels; the historical and the unhistorical. The historical jewels have never yet been valued; but the unhistorical, the diamonds, pearls, sapphires, rubies and emeralds, which the sultans gave their favourites, are worth £20,000,000. When the jewels are sold, the money

they fetch wil be used to found the new State bank of Turkey. “First of all, I was shown the collection of porcelain, presents that other potentates from the East and West had sent as gifts to the sultans of yore. The porcelain is indeed magnificent, and it was the correct prelude to the wonders to be disclosed to me. “After walking through several rooms and admiring the china, I entered another room in which the damp was eating its way through the walls and ceiling. Scattered about were men in civilian clothes, with the unmistakeable look of the detective about them.

“Think of the biggest emerald your mind can conceive, and I can promise you that I saw hundreds bigger than that. Imagine an enormous ruby of real pigeon blood colour, and I will produce for you—behind closelyguarded glass cases—a score literally as big as tennis balls. Sapphires and emeralds, rubies and pearls, so monstrously big that they appeared to me like burlesques of pantomime jewels. The diamonds deserve a paragraph all to themselves. • ■ •

Sacks of Diamonds “Smash a large and beautiful chandelier. Take another, take a dozen, take all you can find, and smash those. Mix the result; shake well, pour the mixture into sacks—and you will have something that will fall far short of the display of diamonds I saw in the old seraglio of the Imperial Palace. “When the sultans determined to bedeck their favourites with jewels, they stopped at nothing. There are jewelled fans so gorgeous that it is difficult to describe them. There are jewelled sweetmeat boxes and scent bottles; wash-basins of gold, studded with all the precious stones the world knows; jewelled opera glasses and even a telescope through which the Fatimas used to gaze from barred windows at the boats creeping out into the Sea of Marmora. “There are the jewelled head-dresses of all the sultans. Thera are wonderful jewelled scimitars, even arrowcases of the 17th century, covered in jewels. A suit of mail which Mourad IV. wore on his expedition to Baghdad in' 1638, particularly took my fancy. One hears of watches, jewelled in every hole; this suit of armour had jewels in every link. “I saw a magnificent throne of solid gold, which blazed from the light reflected back by every kind of precious stone the world knows. The mind reels at the thought of so much treasure hidden away in this crumbling and flaking old Imperial Palace, perched on a hill top looking down on the Golden Horn and the dazzling plains of Asia.” ,