Fanar

“When on a go to on the Fanar, or Greek quarter of the town, 1 had as soon as a momentary glimpse of the widow’ of this celebrated insurgent. She was the daughter of a Greek papas, or priest, of Yanina, of nice magnificence and a few erudition, to whom the Pasha was reported to have been passionately hooked up; although she is accused (it’s uncertain with what justice) of getting stipulated to obtain her “ thirty items of silver” for betraying him to the Authorities, lie this as it might, it’s sure that she possessed nice affect over his thoughts ; and that it was fully by her arguments and entreaties that he was dissuaded from the determined intention of blowing her, himself, and his treasures, up with gunpowder, to forestall their falling into the palms of the Sultan; and that it was she who negotiated the affair between Ali and Hourchid Pasha; whereas it’s equally a reality, that permit her have made what compact she may, she obtained neither cash nor land from the Turkish Authorities after the execution of her husband, blit was turned over in a state of constructive destitution to the custody of the Patriarch, the place she actually owed her day by day comforts to the charity of the benevolent. She was a voluntary prisoner in her condominium, from which she seldom emerged save to attend some ceremony within the Patriarchal Church; and her time was stated to be usually handed in prayer.

The view from the cemetery is strikingly high-quality; on the one hand the town, throned on its seven hills, with a thousand stately domes gleaming within the sunshine, and a thousand taper minarets glancing in direction of heaven, stretches alongside the sting of the harbour, till the road is misplaced on the abrupt and palace-cumbered level of the traditional Byzantium ; past which can be descried the termination of the Bosphorus, and the mountain-chain of Bulgurlhu, on the Thracian shore of the channel.

Gently-flowing Barbyses

On the opposite facet of the land-locked harbour the gently-flowing Barbyses glides, like a silver thread, by means of the valley of Kyat Khana, to pay its tribute to the wealth-freighted waters of the Golden Horn; and on the verge of a small hamlet not above two furlongs from this calm stream, stands a small mosque, half buried in bushes, insignificant in look, and infrequently remarked by strangers; which is, nevertheless, too traditionally attention-grabbing to be handed over. It’s referred to as the “ Mosque of Blood,” and is painted a boring pink from the bottom of its partitions to the summit of its single minaret. It’s a desecrated temple, having been compelled over the last siege by a celebration of combatants, a few of whom expired beneath its roof, and thus introduced the presence of demise the place, on non secular rules, it’s by no means suffered to intrude ; whereas in its fast neighborhood rises a bleak, treeless, and desolate-looking eminence, occupied by the bones of all of the True Believers who perished throughout that memorable battle, to the quantity of some 1000’s : their stays have been revered, however there’s neither monument nor inscription to perpetuate the reminiscence of their good companies.

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