EYOUB 12
PLATE: THE GOLDEN HORN; FROM THE CEMETERY OF EYOUB
and that it was she who negotiated the affair between Ali and Hourchid Pasha; while it es equally a fact, that let her have made what compact she might, she received neither money nor land from the Turkish Government after the execution of her husband, but was turned over in a state of positive destruction to the custody of the Patriarch, where she literally owed her daily comforts to the charity of the benevolent. She was a voluntary prisoner in her apartment, from which she seldom emerged save to attend some ceremony in the Patriarchal Church; and her time was said to be generally passed in prayer.
The view from the cemetery is strikingly fine; on the one hand the city, throned on seven hills, with a thousand stately domes gleaming in the sunshine, and a thousand taper minarets glancing towards heaven stretches along the edge of the harbour, until the line is lost as abrupt and place-cumbered point of the ancient Byzantium; beyond which may be descried the termination of the Bosphorus, and the mountain-chain of Bulgurlhu, on the Thracian shore of the channel.
On the other side of the land-locked harbour the gently-flowing Barbyses glides, like a silver thread, through the valley of Kyat Khana, to pay its tribute to the wealth-freighted waters of 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 trees, insignificant in appearance, and seldom remarked by strangers; which is however, too historically interesting to be passed over. It is called the "Mosque of Blood," and is painted a dull red from the base of its walls to the summit of its single minaret. It is a desecrated temple, having been forced during the last siege by a party of combatants, some of whom expired beneath its roof, and thus brought the presence of death where, on religious principles, it is never suffered to intrude; while in its immediate vicinity rises a bleak, treeless, and desolate-looking eminence, occupied by the bones of all the True Believers who perished during the memorable struggle, to the amount of some thousands: their remains have been respected, but there is neither monument nor inscription to perpetuate the memory of their good services.
Beyond this mosque, the out-buildings of the Imperial arsenal, the dry-dock for the construction of shipping, the galleys, (which are under the immediate control and authority of the High Admiral,) the powder magazines, and the ruined palace of a former Capudan Pasha, occupy the shore as high as the suburb of Kassim Pasha, where stands the Marine Barrack, a huge pile, chiefly remarkable for the wretched taste of its tawdry fresco-painting, and its air of chilling desolation; and near to it the new Tershana, or Admiralty, a bright, many-coloured, highly-ornamented edifice, in the Russian taste; occupying the side of a small creek, and overlooking a wooden peer.