[Illustration: Interior of Mosque of Ahmed.]
Throughout the whole of the city’s huge body there coursed an exuberant and feverish life; the treasury overflowed with jewels, the arsenal with arms, the barracks with soldiers, the caravanseries with strangers; the slave-market was thronged with merchants and lofty personages come to inspect the crowds of beautiful slaves. Scholars pressed to examine the archives of the great mosques; long-winded viziers prepared for the delectation of future generations the interminable annals of the Empire; poets, pensioned by the Seraglio, assembled in the baths, where they sang the imperial loves and wars; swarms of Bulgarian and Armenian workmen toiled at the erection of mighty mosques, employing huge blocks of granite and Paros marble, while by sea, columns from the temples of the Archipelago, and by land, spoils from the churches of Pesth and Ofen, were brought to contribute to their splendor. In the harbor a fleet of three hundred sail made ready to carry terror and dismay to every coast in the Mediterranean; between Stambul and Adrianapolis companies of falconers and gamekeepers, to the number of seven thousand, were stationed; and in the intervals between military uprisings at home, foreign wars, and conflagrations which would reduce twenty thousand houses to ashes in a single night, revels would be celebrated, lasting thirty days, in honor of the representatives of every court in Asia, Africa, and Europe. On these occasions the glorifications of the Mussulmans degenerated into folly: sham battles were fought by the Janissaries in the presence of the Sultan and the court, amid huge _palme di nozze_ laden with birds, mirrors, and fruits of various kinds, in order to make room for which walls and houses were ruthlessly destroyed; and processions of lions and sugar mermaids, borne on horses whose trappings were of silver damask, and mountains of royal gifts sent from every part of the Empire and every court in the world; dervishes executed their furious dances, and bloody massacres of Christian prisoners were followed by public banquets where ten thousand dishes of _cuscussù_ were served to the populace; trained elephants and giraffes danced in the Hippodrome, while bears and wolves, with fireworks tied to their tails, were let loose among the people; allegorical pantomimes, grotesque masquerades, wanton dances, fantastic processions, games, comedies, symbolic cars, rustic dances, followed each other in rapid succession. Little by little as night descended the festival degenerated into a mad orgy, and then the lights from five hundred brilliantly illuminated mosques spread a great aureole of fire over the entire city and announced to the watching shepherds on the mountain-heights of Asia and the wayfarers on the Propontis the revels of this new Babylon.