Synopses & Reviews
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 11 THE MOHAMMEDAN QUEST1ON STANDING at the top of one of the two Fire Towers of Constantinople one notes a curious peculiarity in the structure of the city. There are several considerable groups of light coloured buildings of more or less modern aspect and of solid structure. Surrounding these groups as a great sea surrounds small islands, and stretching away into the distance on all sides is the vast dingy mass of old and shapeless houses. Although there are many and increasing exceptions to the rule, the solid and light coloured buildings, generally speaking, are in the districts where Christians live, while the great dull coloured mass represents the quarters inhabited by Muslims. The question inevitably rises to the lips why are not the Mohammedans more generally drawn to build and live in, instead of building for Christians to live in, houses attractive and solid? And on examining the social organization of a Mohammedan country like Turkey, this question is broadened by discovery of strange facts. The Muslim inhabitants of Asiatic Turkey are sturdy, 47 simple minded, and often honest and industrious peasants, working the soil and making their squalid living out of it. But they are far behind the people of European Turkey in their appliances for work. The degree of intellect which these people possess is shown by their farming apparatus. Being farmers, their crops must be got to market or they will starve. But they do not know this fact, for no one has told them that it is a fact. The cart of the Turk of Asia Minor, is the highest evolution of brain that he has ever seen; but do not think that he invented it. It has not a particle of iron about it except the iron tires of its narrow footed wheels. The wagon builder takes two long poles and lays them side by side...
Synopsis
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