The library of St. Sophia, which was founded nearly a thousand years ago, consists of only about two thousand volumes, all manuscripts, without one single printed book, which are piled up like merchandise upon shelves protected by woven wire doors, in a small room adjoining that mosque. The walls are covered with beautiful Persian tiles and the roof is a low enamelled dome. The windows are small and narrow and are protected by heavy bars. Only since the constitution was proclaimed and the new government came into power have strangers been allowed to enter this library, and its existence was practically unknown to the public until recently. There is no catalogue; the books have lain undisturbed for centuries, and even now nobody knows exactly what they are.
A quaint old patriarch with a long white beard and keen black eyes that shoot out rays from under heavy black eyebrows is in charge. He told me he had been connected with the mosque of St. Sophia for fifty years and had been in charge of the books for more than thirty years, but was unable to read one of them. He was very much more disposed to discuss theology and politics than to tell me about the books, and I learned by close questioning that he was quite as ignorant on that subject as the rest of the mullahs about the mosque. He was so garrulous that it was difficult to stop him long enough for Michel Naskidoff, my interpreter, to tell me what he was talking about.
His name is Selim Abdullah; he was born and brought up in Constantinople, and was never outside of this city in his life. He gave us a few other facts in his biography and to make sure that we did not report him unfavourably to the minister of education, who gave us a permit to visit the library, he explained that he had always been in favour of constitutional government and had never been a fanatic in religion, but until recently people in Turkey had not been allowed to say what was in their minds.
Here we stopped him long enough to examine what he said were the rarest books in the collection. They are kept in a wonderful old chest which is modelled after a mosque and heavily veneered with mother of pearl. That chest would be a prize in any museum, and the old man told me that it was more than 2,000 years old. Nine of the most precious volumes are kept there under lock and key, and he brought them all out for us. He told us that they are worth more than 20,000 piasters each and were written more than 3,000 years ago. They are the original manuscript, in the handwriting of the authors in the classical language which was spoken by the early Turks in Turkestan. No one could read that language now, he said, in Turkey at least, although certain famous scholars in Khiva are familiar with the text.
He showed us, among others, an exquisite specimen of penmanship bound in gold covers, about ten by fourteen inches in size, which he said was an ancient Tartar poem, called "Divan, " written in the year 911, by Hussein Biscara, one of the most famous of all Tartar poets. This volume was presented to one of the sultans of Turkey about 600 years ago by one of the shahs of Persia. The text is the most ornate Persian script, and each page is illuminated with a border about two inches wide, of geometric designs worked out in mosaic, with gold leaf and bright coloured paper. The colours are as brilliant as they were when the book was written, and the mosaic was made by cutting the coloured paper and gold leaf into little bits and pasting them on according to a design. The volume contains fifty-two leaves and 104 pages, also illuminated with a title page that is a mass of colour. The binding is not particularly artistic, but is very rich and costly.
The old gentleman explained that no one in Constantinople could read the book, but in Khiva there were plenty of scholars who could do so. When we told him we had recently returned from a visit to Turkestan, he inquired eagerly what the Russians were doing up there and whether they were persecuting the Mohammedans. He said the Russians are the worst people in the world to persecute believers in other rehgions and are trying to force the
Mohammedans and Jews to accept the othodox Greek faith. Large numbers of Jews have done so to avoid persecution and to preserve their property, but no Mohammedan, under any circumstances, had ever renounced his behef in the prophet. The only nations who do not persecute the Mohammedans, the old man said, are the English and the French.
"Do the Americans persecute Mohammedans? " I asked.