After this excursion I was not permitted to revisit the European quarter of the capital for a considerable time. I had to resume the course of my education.
In what way my cousins and I should be educated in Constantinople was a question which had to be considered by my uncle. There are two kinds of higher education in Turkey. One of them is to receive instruction in the old-fashioned colleges or _madrasseh_, of which I have made mention before, and of which I will in this chapter give some further description. The other form of education is that now carried on in the modern schools and colleges. Of these there are many in Constantinople. They are modelled on the system of the educational institutions of some of the European countries. In these places of learning, unlike the old-fashioned _madrasseh_, all kinds of what I may call utilitarian subjects, necessitated by modern requirements, are taught In addition to the great military academy and preparatory military colleges, naval college, civil and military medical institutions, and the Imperial lycée, some of which are fifty or sixty years old, there are civil servants', law, civil-engineering, and several minor colleges of recent foundation. Two years ago an official project was in the air for creating a regular University in Constantinople. But the present Sultan is not likely to favour in earnest such a scheme, which would necessarily result in the increased popularity of European culture. Formerly those colleges of modern creation turned out men of marked ability in all branches of literature and science which existed in the country. But, unhappily, Abd-ul-Hamid's inflexible determination to suppress at any cost what are called 'young-Turkish ideas,' or liberalism, has seriously interfered with and paralysed the progress of these seminaries of culture and education.
My desire was to join one of these colleges, after having been prepared by private tuition to pass the obligatory entrance examination. But since my elder brother had already entered one of the modern colleges, my uncle urged me to affiliate myself to one of the old-fashioned _madrassehs_. As we had yet some hope of recovering our confiscated property, and as the right of holding the estates depended on the heir's following our grandfather's semi-theological profession, my uncle insisted that I should continue my studies in one of these quasi-theological _madrassehs_. Although I was most reluctant, I had to fall in with his wishes, so I prepared to go and live with a tutor who had his room in the _madrasseh_ which is attached to the mosque of little St Sophia,[3] a Byzantine building, which is as much visited by European tourists as the great St. Sophia. When one becomes a member of these old-fashioned institutions of learning, one must wear a professional turban and a long cloak, let the beard grow, if one is old enough to have one, and shave the hair off one's head. They procured for me a turban and cloak, and my uncle sent me with a manservant to a barber's shop to get my head shaved. The shaving of a thick head of hair is a most painful thing, and tears filled my eyes, partly from the pain caused by the razor on my unaccustomed head, and partly, I think, from the anticipation of the terrible monk-like existence I was about to pass in the _madrasseh_. Next day I went with my luggage to the school, but did not begin my studies until several months had passed away, as I caught cold by being shaved, and suffered in consequence from headache and ophthalmia. I shall never forget the miserable life I passed in that school. It will perhaps be of some interest if I give a description of a _madrasseh_, and the mode of life and study therein.