It Is Necessary To Have Lived For Some Time Among The Turks, And To Have
Experienced The Mildness And Peacefulness
Of their character, and the
sobriety and regularity of their habits, to conceive it possible that
the inhabitants of a
Town like Aleppo, should continue to live for years
without any legal master, or administration of justice, protected only
by a miserable guard of police, and yet that the town should be a safe
and quiet residence. No disorders, or nightly tumults occur; and
instances of murder and robbery are extremely rare. If serious quarrels
sometimes happen, it is chiefly among the young Janissaries heated with
brandy and amorous passion, who after sunset fight their rivals at the
door of some prostitute. This precarious security is however enjoyed
only within the walls of the city; the whole neighbourhood of Aleppo is
infested by obscure tribes of Arab and Kurdine robbers, who through the
negligence of the Janissaries, acquire every day more insolence and more
confidence in the [p.655] success of their enterprises. Caravans of
forty or fifty camels have in the course of last winter been several
times attacked and plundered at five hundred yards from the city gate,
not a week passes without somebody being ill-treated and stripped in the
gardens near the town; and the robbers have even sometimes taken their
night’s rest in one of the suburbs of the city, and there sold their
cheaply acquired booty. In the time of Ibrahim Pasha, the neighbourhood
of Aleppo to the distance of four or five hours, was kept in perfect
security from all hostile inroads of the Arabs, by the Pasha’s cavalry
guard of Deli Bashi.
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