File:The Turk and his lost provinces - Greece, Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia (1903) (14799669943).jpg

Identifier: turkhislostprovi00curt (find matches)
Title: The Turk and his lost provinces : Greece, Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Curtis, William Eleroy, 1850-1911
Subjects: Eastern question (Balkan) Greece -- Description and travel Bulgaria -- Description and travel Serbia -- Description and travel Bosnia and Hercegovina -- Description and travel
Publisher: Chicago London : F.H. Revell Company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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e, which must have cost an enormous sum ofmoney. Everything about the place is of the mostcostly material. The bath and toilet-room connectedwith the Sultans apartments, which is shown withgreat pride, is lined with slabs of alabaster—floor, wallsand ceiling—and the tub is of the same material.There are wash-basins in nearly all the reception-rooms made of onyx and alabaster, which we were toldwere necessary to take the place of finger-bowls afterthe people of the court ate sweets. Both the Dolma-Baghtcheh and the Beyler-Bey palaces are mixtures ofMoorish, Arabic, Turkish and French architecture anddecoration, but the big ballroom, where the Sultansformerly held receptions, is pure French. We asked the handsome young aide-de-camp, whowas detailed by His Imperial Majesty to conduct usthrough the palaces, how a ball-room was used in acountry where gentlemen were not permitted to meetladies. He explained that in the harems the ladiesoften danced among themselves for the entertainment
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MOSQUES AND PALACES 133 of their husbands, although the latter never dancedwith them, but a ball-room was considered a necessaryfeature of a palace, and this one had been used onseveral occasions years ago. The young colonelshowed us through the picture gallery also, wherethere is a collection of paintings made by the lateSultan Abdul Aziz, who evidently knew very littleabout art. His taste seemed to run to nude women,horses, and battle pictures in which Turkish legionswere trampling down their enemies. There wereseveral portraits of Sultans also, notwithstanding thepopular impression that the Mohammedan religionforbids the reproduction of the human face and figure.People who have read fanciful descriptions of Con-stantinople, penned by poets, artists and other senti-mentalists like DAmicis, for example, who are apt tosee more than appears to ordinary eyes, have animpression that the Seraglio of the Sultan is a palaceof mysterious seclusion; that it has something to dowith the harem a

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