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Today's Zaman, Turkey
Jan 6 2014
Turkey through a traveler's eyes: from İstanbul to Diyarbakır with E.
B. Soane in 1908 (1)
British traveler Ely Banister Soane began his tour of Turkey on
Ä°stanbul's old peninsula. (Photo: AP)
6 January 2014 /TERRY RICHARDSON, Ä°STANBUL
Although few Turks are likely to have much time for a man sometimes
referred to as Kurdistan's very own Lawrence of Arabia, there is no
doubt that Ely Banister Soane, born in the genteel London district of
Kensington in 1881, was a remarkable figure.
GALLERY
For unlike the vast majority of Western European travelers in 19th and
early-20th century Ottoman lands Soane was fluent in more than one of
the many local languages spoken in the eastern half of the empire,
having mastered both Farsi and several dialects of Kurdish. Perhaps
even more uniquely, Soane was a Muslim, having converted to the Shiite
branch of the faith in 1905 whilst working as a banker in Persia
(today's Iran).
In 1907 he quit his banking position in Persia and, in 1908, he set
off on an intrepid journey from the Ottoman capital of Ä°stanbul to
Baghdad. This was an adventure that he later wrote-up in `To
Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in Disguise," an exciting and unusually
informed travelogue which received rave reviews at the time of its
publication in 1912. Soane's proficiency in Farsi and Kurdish, his
knowledge and understanding of the rituals of Islam (`As a Shiite [I]
could say my prayers and dispute the Qur'an with the best of them')
and the donning of local Muslim garb enabled him to pass, undetected
as an English gentleman, through Ottoman territories recently shaken
by the Young Turk revolution.
Across the Horn to Galata
Unlike an earlier European visitor, the Italian Edmondo de Amicis, who
waxed lyrical about the great Ottoman imperial capital back in 1875,
Soane was disappointed with Constantinople. To most modern travel
writers, Sirkeci station is the apotheosis of the "Golden Age of
Travel," the grandiloquent terminus of the fabled Orient Express. To
Soane, arriving one `dismal morning' in winter it was `a bleak
terminus just like a hundred of its kind all over Europe.' Rattling
his way in a horse-drawn carriage along `the mud-pits that are the
roads of Constantinople,' he soon came to the Galata Bridge. The
historic waterway it spanned was, like Sirkeci station, an
anti-climax. `The Golden Horn [was] a most perfect misnomer in
December, suggesting the crowing of some disappointed tourist. ¦ [It]
was of a very ordinary mud colour.' Even worse were the buildings
facing him across the inlet. `The wharfs were lined with unbeautiful
Customs, port and shipping offices, backed on the rising ground by the
indescribably hideous French and Viennese architecture of Galata and
Pera.'
Soane's destination was a boarding house in Galata recommended by a
fellow traveler. Then, as now, the neighborhood huddled beneath the
"Tower of Galata, a circular erection topped by a Turkish flag,' was
busy and cosmopolitan. `Greeks of course are in the majority. ¦
Armenians, too, abound, and Levantines of all kinds. Italians. ¦ are
everywhere, and the language of the street is anything but Turkish.'
It is in Galata, too, that Soane first comments on the people whom he
would later spend most of his journey traveling amongst, taking note
of the porters (hamals) eking out a living in the steep, narrow
streets of Galata. `They are Kurds, the most manly of the population,
and the most despised, probably for those very qualities -- in this
town of sharping and guile.'
According to Soane, the streets of Galata both ran, and were heaped
with, human waste. The `powerful and eloquent of odour' of the alley
outside the Italian-run boarding house in which he lodged soon sent
him scurrying off in search of more salubrious accommodation. Having
been shown the overpriced and `loathsome dens of various Armenians and
Greeks,' he eventually struck lucky, renting a new apartment near the
posh Pera Palace Hotel from a Russian returning to his native Moscow
for a three-month visit. Like many a visitor to this part of the city
today, Soane was initially distracted by the flesh-pots of BeyoÄ?lu
(then known as Pera) cementing, for example, his deal with the Russian
with "innumerable aperitifs, followed by vodkas and liqueurs at
various brasseries about Pera.'
Blizzards and bureaucracy
Eventually, however, Soane started, in spite of `the execrable
weather,' to make forays back across the Golden Horn to the old city.
`Avoiding all guide books,' he went where his fancy took him. Although
he made no comment on the big sights, such as the Blue Mosque and Aya
Sofya, Soane was constantly drawn to the Grand Bazaar. Tourism had
already made its mark on this cavernous Ottoman mall, where `the
effect was so often spoiled by the interpreter of Mr T. Cook and his
train of amiable creatures, seeking the 'secret of the mysterious
East' in the shops of Greeks.' Soane, however, passed his time there
with Azeri Turkish shopkeepers, whose culture and Shiite faith, if not
language, were of his beloved Persia.
He finally managed to track down a Kurdish notable, a sheikh from
Halabja (in today's Iraq), who was ensconced in an icy-cold, run-down
caravanserai in the old city. Sitting around a brazier, drinking tea
and smoking cigarettes, talk soon turned to the sheikh's native land,
sending Soane into rapturous daydreams of `the freedom of plain and
mountain, the slow march of the clanging caravan, the droning song of
the shepherds on the hills, the fresh clean air, and the burning sun.'
His frustration at being trapped in wintry Constantinople, where the
weather was `indescribably awful' with `daily blizzards, rain-storms
and blizzards again, freezing hurricanes from the plains and uplands
to the north' began to boil over, and he vowed to leave the city as
soon as possible.
Like anyone hoping to make an extended stay in Turkey today, Soane had
first to go through the labyrinthine procedure of acquiring a permit,
a `tezkere I uburi, a travelling passport in Turkish, issued by the
police,' before setting out on his travels through the eastern fringes
of the Ottoman Empire. Having run from `hovel to hovel to interview
numerous efendis, whose duties apparently consisted of making marks
upon the application form,' Soane finally got his permit. Much to his
chagrin, however, the police clerks had put down his religion as
Protestant. As he was planning to travel as a Muslim, in local garb,
this erroneous entry could prove disastrous. He protested in vain; as
far as the Turkish police were concerned, `all Turks were 'Musulman,'
all Armenians 'Kristian,' all French 'Katulik,' and all English and
Americans 'Purutestan'.'
By boat to Beirut, rail to Aleppo
In early spring, Soane boarded the vessel that would take him to
Beirut, from where he planned to travel inland to Aleppo and then
north to Urfa and Diyarbakır. By the simple expedient of donning a
fez, he succeeded in fooling the mostly European passengers (the
majority making the pilgrimage to the Holy Land) as to his true
identity, on one occasion overhearing a provincial Englishman
wondering aloud `ow many wives `e's got.' Soane was vehemently
anti-Turkish but, to be fair, he poured equal scorn on the Greek,
Armenian and other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire. He
could also be very scathing about people of his own race, noting of
his fellow English passengers `the ignorance of these people was
wonderful and colossal.'
In Beirut he found a `youldash' or travelling companion, a Turk from
Konya, and together they `procured a large quantity of excellent
oranges and some bread and various kinds of sweet cakes' from the
bazaar before boarding the Aleppo-bound train. Although the travel
restrictions imposed by the deposed sultan, Abdulhamit II, had
supposedly been eased by the new Young Turk government only four
months before, Soane found himself quizzed by uniformed Turkish
officials as to his identity and destination.
Across the Euphrates to Urfa
Aleppo was much more to Soane's liking than Ä°stanbul. `To him who has
dwelt in the further East, it comes like the first step towards the
old country again. With joy I roamed through these busy alleys of
shops, and purchased my road apparatus, candles, sugar, tea, tin and
glass tea utensils, knobs of cheese, fruit, etc.' After only a night
in Aleppo, where he stayed in a `filthy place, the Hotel de Syrie,
kept by an Armenian,' Soane found a Turkish carriage and coachman
bound northeast for Diyarbakır. Mistaken by the coachman for a haci,
or pilgrim returning from Mecca, Soane quickly seized on this as `an
excellent disguise' and `forthwith wound about my fez the white
handkerchief which is a sign of the pilgrim homeward bound.'
Heading across a `yellow undulating plain,' Soane reached the
Euphrates (Fırat), where a traffic jam of twelve carriages waiting to
cross the great river held him up until nearly sunset. After a night
in a village, bunking up with a Kurdish family in one of the
beehive-style houses the northern Mesopotamian plain is still famed
for, his carriage negotiated `an undulating plain peopled by
Armenians, and sedentary Kurds of the Milli tribe.' At some point that
day, he must have crossed what is today the border between war-torn
Syria and Turkey, and eventually came to the village of Çarmelik, near
Suruç. His initial goal, Urfa, now lay just a few hours journey ahead,
albeit over roads so bad that `the worst tracks in that maligned and
unhappy country (Persia) are paved boulevards compared to the
carriage-ways of Turkey.'
About Ely Banister Soane
Soane worked as a banker in Persia for several years, where he learned
Persian and converted to Islam. He quit banking to travel widely in
the Middle East, especially the region where today's Turkey, Iran and
Iraq meet -- territory then divided between the Ottoman Empire and
Persia. His editorship of the `Basrah Times' during World War I was
probably a cover for working for British intelligence.
Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War
I, Soane was, from 1919 to 1921, the political officer for the
predominantly Kurdish district of Sulaimaniya, in the northeast of
British-mandated Iraq. An unabashed Kurdophile, he promoted the use of
Kurdish in education and newspapers and was more than sympathetic to
Kurdish autonomy. He was dismissed from his post in 1921 when British
policy moved away from self-rule for the Kurds of Iraq. He died at sea
from a recurrence of TB in 1923. His wife, Lynette-Lindfield Soane,
was the first Western woman to be photographed wearing traditional
Kurdish dress.
"To Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in Disguise" by Ely Banister Soane was
originally published by John Murray in 1912. A facsimile version is
available today from Elibron Classics (www.elibron.com) or (free)
online from www.archive.org/stream/tomesopotamiakur00soanuoft#page/n7/mode/2up.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Jan 6 2014
Turkey through a traveler's eyes: from İstanbul to Diyarbakır with E.
B. Soane in 1908 (1)
British traveler Ely Banister Soane began his tour of Turkey on
Ä°stanbul's old peninsula. (Photo: AP)
6 January 2014 /TERRY RICHARDSON, Ä°STANBUL
Although few Turks are likely to have much time for a man sometimes
referred to as Kurdistan's very own Lawrence of Arabia, there is no
doubt that Ely Banister Soane, born in the genteel London district of
Kensington in 1881, was a remarkable figure.
GALLERY
For unlike the vast majority of Western European travelers in 19th and
early-20th century Ottoman lands Soane was fluent in more than one of
the many local languages spoken in the eastern half of the empire,
having mastered both Farsi and several dialects of Kurdish. Perhaps
even more uniquely, Soane was a Muslim, having converted to the Shiite
branch of the faith in 1905 whilst working as a banker in Persia
(today's Iran).
In 1907 he quit his banking position in Persia and, in 1908, he set
off on an intrepid journey from the Ottoman capital of Ä°stanbul to
Baghdad. This was an adventure that he later wrote-up in `To
Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in Disguise," an exciting and unusually
informed travelogue which received rave reviews at the time of its
publication in 1912. Soane's proficiency in Farsi and Kurdish, his
knowledge and understanding of the rituals of Islam (`As a Shiite [I]
could say my prayers and dispute the Qur'an with the best of them')
and the donning of local Muslim garb enabled him to pass, undetected
as an English gentleman, through Ottoman territories recently shaken
by the Young Turk revolution.
Across the Horn to Galata
Unlike an earlier European visitor, the Italian Edmondo de Amicis, who
waxed lyrical about the great Ottoman imperial capital back in 1875,
Soane was disappointed with Constantinople. To most modern travel
writers, Sirkeci station is the apotheosis of the "Golden Age of
Travel," the grandiloquent terminus of the fabled Orient Express. To
Soane, arriving one `dismal morning' in winter it was `a bleak
terminus just like a hundred of its kind all over Europe.' Rattling
his way in a horse-drawn carriage along `the mud-pits that are the
roads of Constantinople,' he soon came to the Galata Bridge. The
historic waterway it spanned was, like Sirkeci station, an
anti-climax. `The Golden Horn [was] a most perfect misnomer in
December, suggesting the crowing of some disappointed tourist. ¦ [It]
was of a very ordinary mud colour.' Even worse were the buildings
facing him across the inlet. `The wharfs were lined with unbeautiful
Customs, port and shipping offices, backed on the rising ground by the
indescribably hideous French and Viennese architecture of Galata and
Pera.'
Soane's destination was a boarding house in Galata recommended by a
fellow traveler. Then, as now, the neighborhood huddled beneath the
"Tower of Galata, a circular erection topped by a Turkish flag,' was
busy and cosmopolitan. `Greeks of course are in the majority. ¦
Armenians, too, abound, and Levantines of all kinds. Italians. ¦ are
everywhere, and the language of the street is anything but Turkish.'
It is in Galata, too, that Soane first comments on the people whom he
would later spend most of his journey traveling amongst, taking note
of the porters (hamals) eking out a living in the steep, narrow
streets of Galata. `They are Kurds, the most manly of the population,
and the most despised, probably for those very qualities -- in this
town of sharping and guile.'
According to Soane, the streets of Galata both ran, and were heaped
with, human waste. The `powerful and eloquent of odour' of the alley
outside the Italian-run boarding house in which he lodged soon sent
him scurrying off in search of more salubrious accommodation. Having
been shown the overpriced and `loathsome dens of various Armenians and
Greeks,' he eventually struck lucky, renting a new apartment near the
posh Pera Palace Hotel from a Russian returning to his native Moscow
for a three-month visit. Like many a visitor to this part of the city
today, Soane was initially distracted by the flesh-pots of BeyoÄ?lu
(then known as Pera) cementing, for example, his deal with the Russian
with "innumerable aperitifs, followed by vodkas and liqueurs at
various brasseries about Pera.'
Blizzards and bureaucracy
Eventually, however, Soane started, in spite of `the execrable
weather,' to make forays back across the Golden Horn to the old city.
`Avoiding all guide books,' he went where his fancy took him. Although
he made no comment on the big sights, such as the Blue Mosque and Aya
Sofya, Soane was constantly drawn to the Grand Bazaar. Tourism had
already made its mark on this cavernous Ottoman mall, where `the
effect was so often spoiled by the interpreter of Mr T. Cook and his
train of amiable creatures, seeking the 'secret of the mysterious
East' in the shops of Greeks.' Soane, however, passed his time there
with Azeri Turkish shopkeepers, whose culture and Shiite faith, if not
language, were of his beloved Persia.
He finally managed to track down a Kurdish notable, a sheikh from
Halabja (in today's Iraq), who was ensconced in an icy-cold, run-down
caravanserai in the old city. Sitting around a brazier, drinking tea
and smoking cigarettes, talk soon turned to the sheikh's native land,
sending Soane into rapturous daydreams of `the freedom of plain and
mountain, the slow march of the clanging caravan, the droning song of
the shepherds on the hills, the fresh clean air, and the burning sun.'
His frustration at being trapped in wintry Constantinople, where the
weather was `indescribably awful' with `daily blizzards, rain-storms
and blizzards again, freezing hurricanes from the plains and uplands
to the north' began to boil over, and he vowed to leave the city as
soon as possible.
Like anyone hoping to make an extended stay in Turkey today, Soane had
first to go through the labyrinthine procedure of acquiring a permit,
a `tezkere I uburi, a travelling passport in Turkish, issued by the
police,' before setting out on his travels through the eastern fringes
of the Ottoman Empire. Having run from `hovel to hovel to interview
numerous efendis, whose duties apparently consisted of making marks
upon the application form,' Soane finally got his permit. Much to his
chagrin, however, the police clerks had put down his religion as
Protestant. As he was planning to travel as a Muslim, in local garb,
this erroneous entry could prove disastrous. He protested in vain; as
far as the Turkish police were concerned, `all Turks were 'Musulman,'
all Armenians 'Kristian,' all French 'Katulik,' and all English and
Americans 'Purutestan'.'
By boat to Beirut, rail to Aleppo
In early spring, Soane boarded the vessel that would take him to
Beirut, from where he planned to travel inland to Aleppo and then
north to Urfa and Diyarbakır. By the simple expedient of donning a
fez, he succeeded in fooling the mostly European passengers (the
majority making the pilgrimage to the Holy Land) as to his true
identity, on one occasion overhearing a provincial Englishman
wondering aloud `ow many wives `e's got.' Soane was vehemently
anti-Turkish but, to be fair, he poured equal scorn on the Greek,
Armenian and other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire. He
could also be very scathing about people of his own race, noting of
his fellow English passengers `the ignorance of these people was
wonderful and colossal.'
In Beirut he found a `youldash' or travelling companion, a Turk from
Konya, and together they `procured a large quantity of excellent
oranges and some bread and various kinds of sweet cakes' from the
bazaar before boarding the Aleppo-bound train. Although the travel
restrictions imposed by the deposed sultan, Abdulhamit II, had
supposedly been eased by the new Young Turk government only four
months before, Soane found himself quizzed by uniformed Turkish
officials as to his identity and destination.
Across the Euphrates to Urfa
Aleppo was much more to Soane's liking than Ä°stanbul. `To him who has
dwelt in the further East, it comes like the first step towards the
old country again. With joy I roamed through these busy alleys of
shops, and purchased my road apparatus, candles, sugar, tea, tin and
glass tea utensils, knobs of cheese, fruit, etc.' After only a night
in Aleppo, where he stayed in a `filthy place, the Hotel de Syrie,
kept by an Armenian,' Soane found a Turkish carriage and coachman
bound northeast for Diyarbakır. Mistaken by the coachman for a haci,
or pilgrim returning from Mecca, Soane quickly seized on this as `an
excellent disguise' and `forthwith wound about my fez the white
handkerchief which is a sign of the pilgrim homeward bound.'
Heading across a `yellow undulating plain,' Soane reached the
Euphrates (Fırat), where a traffic jam of twelve carriages waiting to
cross the great river held him up until nearly sunset. After a night
in a village, bunking up with a Kurdish family in one of the
beehive-style houses the northern Mesopotamian plain is still famed
for, his carriage negotiated `an undulating plain peopled by
Armenians, and sedentary Kurds of the Milli tribe.' At some point that
day, he must have crossed what is today the border between war-torn
Syria and Turkey, and eventually came to the village of Çarmelik, near
Suruç. His initial goal, Urfa, now lay just a few hours journey ahead,
albeit over roads so bad that `the worst tracks in that maligned and
unhappy country (Persia) are paved boulevards compared to the
carriage-ways of Turkey.'
About Ely Banister Soane
Soane worked as a banker in Persia for several years, where he learned
Persian and converted to Islam. He quit banking to travel widely in
the Middle East, especially the region where today's Turkey, Iran and
Iraq meet -- territory then divided between the Ottoman Empire and
Persia. His editorship of the `Basrah Times' during World War I was
probably a cover for working for British intelligence.
Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War
I, Soane was, from 1919 to 1921, the political officer for the
predominantly Kurdish district of Sulaimaniya, in the northeast of
British-mandated Iraq. An unabashed Kurdophile, he promoted the use of
Kurdish in education and newspapers and was more than sympathetic to
Kurdish autonomy. He was dismissed from his post in 1921 when British
policy moved away from self-rule for the Kurds of Iraq. He died at sea
from a recurrence of TB in 1923. His wife, Lynette-Lindfield Soane,
was the first Western woman to be photographed wearing traditional
Kurdish dress.
"To Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in Disguise" by Ely Banister Soane was
originally published by John Murray in 1912. A facsimile version is
available today from Elibron Classics (www.elibron.com) or (free)
online from www.archive.org/stream/tomesopotamiakur00soanuoft#page/n7/mode/2up.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress