104 The Sultan's Stud at Yildiz [1893 



Hamid, who has been attached to Johore for the period of his stay. 

 This Ahmed is the same who was sent to us by the Sultan nine years 

 ago to show us over the palaces and treasury, a good-natured, courtly 

 personage, said to be the most be-decorated of any in Turkey. Our 

 conversation at table was a regular Tower of Babel, for though we 

 were only ten people, we were talking five different languages, English, 

 French, Turkish, Arabic, and Malay. 



" In the afternoon we went with the Walter Blunts to see the Sultan's 

 stables at Yildiz — first, however, to call on the director of it, Izzet 

 Pasha, the most European Oriental I have ever met. We found him in 

 trouble, his son having attempted to commit suicide the day before 

 through a love affair. He talked of this quite as a European might. 

 He was sitting in his house near Yildiz, in a rough kind of smoking suit, 

 his hair en brosse, and no fez — rather a picturesque looking man, who 

 might have been a French or Italian artist. One certainly would never 

 have guessed him an Oriental. He talked a good deal of heresy about 

 horse-breeding, declared that nine out of ten Arabs had unsound hocks 

 (an absurdity), and they were all unsound one way or the other. He 

 says there is hardly a horse or mare sent by the Bedouins to the Sultan 

 which would pass a veterinary examination. This may perhaps be true, 

 as I daresay they pass on their unsound ones when they are making 

 presents, to say nothing of the horses they send getting changed on 

 their road to Constantinople. 



" At the stables, which are inside Yildiz Park wall, we found a 

 splendid collection of stallions arranged in stalls according to their 

 colours, gray, black, or bay — very few chestnuts. Among these the 

 most remarkable were, I think, half-a-dozen brought by Nasr el Ashgar, 

 Sheykh of the Montefik, and several very fine ones from Mohammed 

 Ibn Rashid, and others presented singly by Walys of Bagdad. There 

 were some enormously powerful horses among the bays, and one very 

 fine black horse from Ibn Rashid. But there was unfortunately no 

 intelligent person to explain, nor anybody who knew Arabic, except a 

 black slave. In the first stable there were about sixty horses, nearly all 

 of high quality, but we could not have more than two or three led out, 

 so it was impossible really to judge them. Beyond these were a couple 

 of hundred more, inferior ones, in another stable, and yet a third and 

 fourth stable with European animals. A very old white Arab horse 

 was shown us as the Sultan's favourite for riding, but they say he 

 seldom gets on horseback. Altogether the grandest Arab collection I 

 have seen, and far superior in quality to the mares we saw yesterday. 

 " Dined at Ahmed Ali's in Stamboul with Johore and his suite ; a 

 dull dinner in the modern Turkish style, with music during it — which 

 I hate. Our host showed us with pride some astonishing daubs he had 

 perpetrated at Paris twenty years ago, and some of which he had even 



