(Times.)
At the invitation of the Anglo-Hungarian Committee, Professor Arminius Vambéry, of Budapest, attended a meeting at Exeter Hall on the 11th May, and delivered a discourse on Cultural Progress in Turkey. The chair was taken by Sir Lepel Griffin, and there was a large attendance.
Professor Vambéry commenced his address with a short review of the social and domestic life of the Turks. He said that, except for the quiet and somewhat melancholy expression of his countenance, which one might call the seal of fatalism and of Mahometan nirvana, the Turk was as much a European as ourselves. In his dress he had entirely approached the English, excepting his head gear, the food of the upper classes was nearly like our own, and in his amusement the Turk went even further than ourselves. Even the harem—decidedly the blackest point of the social life in the East—was continually undergoing essential changes. Of course, it would be much better if that horrid and inhuman custom could have disappeared entirely, but female education must proceed on the way of radical reforms, and the key of that terrible lock could only be manufactured in good girl schools. But plenty of signs were forthcoming of the beginning of a transformation. In their dress the Turkish ladies were beginning to show better taste than before. The veil had arisen from the eyes to the upper part of the forehead and had fallen down from the middle of the nose to the chin. We in Europe still laboured under the impression that the harem was sanctioned by the Koran. The Koran did not speak of any restrictions to the rights of woman. In the habitation, in furniture, and in the social intercourse of the better class hardly any trace was left of the Oriental spirit which pervaded the same class in Persia and in India. The light of western culture, noticeable in the upper classes, was beginning already to penetrate to the lower strata of society. Up to recent times the Turks were following strictly the Mahometan mode of teaching of bygone ages, which was generally of a religious character and something like our own scholasticism in the middle ages. There existed in Turkey three different schools—the primary schools ; schools which corresponded to the English colleges and to the gymnasiums of the Germans, where religion, Arabic, Persian, geography, history, natural sciences, and French were taught ; and there was also a kind of school where pupils were trained for admission into the military colleges.
Professor Vambéry next dealt with the language and literature of Turkey. The Turks had borrowed thousands of Persian and Arabic words, and they went so far as to employ foreign words even where their own vernacular would have been fully sufficient. The Ottoman Turkish became a horrible medley of three entirely different languages, of course wholly unintelligible for the illiterate and lower class. An essential change for the better had taken place. Instead of the long sentences extending sometimes over more than two pages, it had become a habit quite recently to write short phrases, to use good Turkish words instead of Arabic and Persian, and to popularise the literary language. The Press had begun rapidly to spread. In his own time there was only one paper which was read, and that only by a few selected persons, whilst at present the Turks had a number of daily papers, and the number of readers was certainly as large as that of other countries in the south-eastern portion of Europe. During the reign of the present Sultan all branches of our modern science were duly cultivated in Turkey, and science and religion were better friends in Turkey than even here in Europe, and no Turkish Huxley would be necessary to take up the gauntlet against over zealous ecclesiastics. In the modern Ottoman literature all standard works on natural sciences could be found in good and clear Turkish translations. What surprised him most in the modern Turkish literature was the zeal shown to make the Turks acquainted with the worthies of our own public life and with the heroes of our own literary world. In a collection would be found the biographies of the great English princes, politicians, generals, philosophers, travellers, engineers, and actors, and to see a Turk interested in the life or works of Shakspeare, of Garrick, of Darwin, of James Watt, of Herbert Spencer, and others had certainly an uncommonly strange appearance. The changes wrought did not appear only in style and language, but also in the spirit and tendency of Turkish literature. It was only to be regretted that the Turk portrayed in his modern literature a too slavish imitation of the French, who were up to recent times the favourite teachers in Turkey, but whose modern literature was by no means apt to leave a beneficial influence upon the minds of a nation tending towards our Western civilisation. It would be certainly much better if Turkish literary reformers would take for a pattern the healthier products of English literature, and if politics would not influence their literary-tastes. Their modern writers, such as Kernal Bey, Shinassi Effendi, Hamed Bey, and many others were fully penetrated by the new spirit and were animated by the best desire to serve their country, and some of them, brilliant literary geniuses, would do honour to the most advanced European nation.
By their strictly over-watched and often curtailed meetings they had already succeeded in arousing the feeling of patriotism and of national self-esteem, feelings of which the Turks, like all Moslems, were hitherto sadly lacking, but which, if properly fostered and wisely directed, might bring forward results surprising to public opinion in Europe, and particularly so to the class of politicians who imagined that they had only to shovel the corpse of a Turk out of Europe and of Asia. This new tendency of Turkish literature had greatly diminished, and would in the future still more diminish, the fanaticism and hatred of the Mahometan of Turkey against us. The real source of that fanaticism and aversion was not at all the Koran, as generally supposed, but rather our political dealings with the Turkish State, which were not always very fair and which had been mostly actuated by the common desire of injuring the State interests of the Ottoman Empire in every possible way. We could not expect the Turk to love us, knowing as he did that we did not love him, and if we were anxious that the reformatory work should succeed, we must prove to the Turks that we did not share in the views of our politicians of anti-Mahometan tendencies, and that we looked upon them as brethren and not as enemies.
Englishmen, standing at the top of our modern civilisation, had only to look at the neighbouring Christian nations and they would discover many symptoms of that difference even in the heart of Europe. More than one Christian nation was still looming in the dark recess of mediæval politics and society, and so was still Asiatic. The real glory of our European civilisation did not lie in big armies, but in our liberal institutions and in the free and unchecked development of our mental qualities and energies. And if a good many of our fellow-Christians in Europe were still behind in grasping the sublime idea of our nineteenth century, how could we expect the Mahometan Turk, the Asiatic Turk, to do it so quickly ? He believed the best course would be to show forbearance and patience, and then our modern civilisation would and must progress in the neighbouring East. He could not approve of our continued scolding and blaming instead of endeavouring to encourage and support the Moslem world, and still less could he justify the doings of a certain class of statesmen who prided themselves on throwing all kinds of impediments in the way of the hard-struggling Turk, and who were ready to denounce a nation they hardly knew. That unjust dealing not only produced distrust against our civilising efforts and ruined our prestige, but it was frought with great danger to our own cultural life, for the more we had recently weakened the power of the Turk the more imminent had become the danger of a general European conflagration, and the heavier had grown the military budgets all over Europe. Since the last Russo-Turkish war the armies of Europe have been trebled, and even the British taxpayer had to contribute heavy sums towards the defence of his imperial interests.
It was high time that those misconceptions and prejudices should be removed which had guided us hitherto in our management of Eastern affairs, and which had been the main reason that England, formerly know all over Mahometan Asia as the true friend and protector of Islam, was now to be ranked with that Power which prided itself on the title of "the destroyer of Islam." Our Queen, who ruled more than 50,000,000 Mahometans, could not become the outspoken enemy of one-sixth of her subjects, nor could Englishmen who were known for their love of liberty and equality allow the persecution of their fellow-men because they differed from them in creed or colour. But as long as Englishmen adhered to the noble principles of justice and humanity they would be esteemed and liked all over the world, and maintaining the glorious inheritance of its ancestors England would remain great, powerful, and, happy. (Loud cheers.)
A vote of thanks, moved by Sir F. Baines, and seconded by Sir Donald Stewart, was then passed to Professor Vambdéry for his address.
Brisbane Courier (Qld. 1889,) http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3497844
No comments:
Post a Comment