Identifier: edgeoforient00russ (find matches)
Title: The edge of the Orient
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Russell, Robert Howard
Subjects: Middle East -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : Scribner's
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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s aninteresting spectacle, if only to show what elabo-rate precautions can be taken for the personalsafetv of the Moslem ruler. To view this cere-mony, the visitor must obtain a card from hislegation or embassy, which will admit him to theguard-house opposite the mosque, and near thegate of tiie Sultans palace grounds. Here he isushered into a long, narrow room, with windowsoverlooking the entrance to the mosque and thesquare around which the troops are beginning toform, and after being warned not to lean out ofthe windows and not to use opera-glasses, he ispermitted to view the grecn-turbaned regimentsof Bashibazouks, the Nubian Blacks, and AlbanianWhites, and the magnificently mounted squadronsof lancers and cavalry. When all the troops havebeen formed in place, watering-carts appear andsprinkle the road, and then come men in cartswith Hne gravel, which is carcfullv distributedalong the route, so that there shall Ix- no risk of his Majestys horses losing their fcjoting. Then nu- 146
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If ?-) Constantinople mcrous household servants and eunuchs, bearini;-the Sultans prayer-rug and Koran, and variousaccessories for making his prayers, saunter downthe roadway and enter tiie nioscpie. Then comebroughams full of veiled ladies Irom the harem,guarded by the chief eunuch, who are driven intothe enclosure about the mosciue, where the horsesare taken trom their tra))s. and the\are \v\\ Ixtxctlup in their bi-ougiiams to listen Id thr music olthe bands, and to get such a limited view ol theproceedings as they may from behind the drawnblinds ol their carriages. Then conies a long pause, duiing which all e\esare directed toward the gale through which thewSultan is to appear, and present 1\- an open carriageaj)j)roaches, in which is seated a little man in ablack coat, with a straight collar, without orna-ments or orders, oi anv distinctive signs ol rankor rovaltv, and wearing an ordinar\- red Ic/ : andtjicii the bod\-guards and the Turkish troopsto a man burst into a shout lil&lt

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