Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
Then he saluted the Sultan, and in obedience to a gesture from the Padishah, took his place among the viziers, and they regarded him with as much amazement as if it was his ghost that had come among them. "You have been in Stambul, I understand?" inquired the Grand Vizier at last. "I have just come from thence within the last hour." "What do the people want?" asked the Padishah.
"My faithful servants!" said he, smiling pleasantly, "this day is to me a day of felicity. The Sultana Asseki at dawn to-day saw a vision worthy of being realised. A dazzling festival was being celebrated in the streets of Stambul, and the whole city shone in the illumination thereof.
They were brought to the Padishah, who was enchanted by their beauty, and ordered that they should be conveyed to Stambul, to the Sultana Asseki, with the message that he himself would not be long after them. Moreover, he patted Abdi on the shoulder, and protested with tears in his eyes that there was none in the world whom he loved better.
Ibrahim, a whilom schoolmaster, who went by the name of "the Fool," he made chief Cadi of Stambul, and then catching sight of Sulali, he beckoned him forth from among the ciauses and said to him: "Thou shalt be the Governor-General of Anatolia." Sulali bowed to the ground by way of acknowledgment of such graciousness. "I thank thee, Halil!
And let not a single cry be heard in your streets, for if you dare to come out of your holes, I swear by the shadow of Allah that I'll make a rubbish-heap of Stambul with my guns, and none shall live in it henceforth but serpents and bats and your accursed souls, ye dogs!" And nobody durst say him nay.
How do you propose to pacify this uproar?" "The thing is quite simple. The cobblers and petty hucksters of Stambul are not worth a volley, and, besides, I would not hurt the poor things if possible. Many of them have wives and children. Those who have stirred them up are in the camp of the Janissaries there you will find their leaders.
The only army that he now has eyes for is the army of the odalisks and slave-girls, who seize their tambourines and mandolines, and weave the light dance around the happy imperial couple, singing sweet songs of enchantment, while outside through the streets of Stambul gun-carriages are rattling along, and the mob, in a frenzy of enthusiasm, clamours for a war of extermination against the invading Shiites.
"My name is Janaki, and I am a butcher at Jassy. The kavasses have laid their hands upon my apprentice and all my live-stock at the same time, and that is why I have come to Stambul. I shall be utterly beggared if I don't get them back." "Well, Allah aid thee. Let us make haste, for it is already dark."
So five or six of them, all speaking together, began to heckle and cross-question Pelivan. "Are there no more barbers in Stambul that you make such a fuss over this particular one?" "What an infamous thing to demand the lives of a couple of Janissaries for the sake of a single beard-scraper!" "May you and your Kapu-Kiaja have no other pastime in Paradise than the shaving of innumerable beards!"
There she saunters for a time, enjoying the perfume of roses and jasmine, and stands before the cage of singing birds to amuse herself with them. One of the other wives comes down to the harem garden and calls out to her: "You are as ugly as a monkey, Fatima; you are old and wrinkled and your eyes are red. Not a man in all Stambul would care to look at you."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking