A noble form of sport was practised in the Middle Ages, and until comparatively recent times a pastime that has given rise to much that is beautiful in poetry and painting--the art of falconry. This was a favourite pursuit of many a sultan, this and hunting with those strong hounds whose descendants (though to judge from their appearance one can scarcely believe it) now roam the streets of Constantinople, and act as rather unsatisfactory scavengers.
A mighty sportsman in these particulars was Achmet I, who reigned in the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was in this monarch's reign that the Turkish theologians propounded a peculiar doctrine. Achmet had ordered all the dogs in Constantinople to be transported to Scutari, on the opposite side of the Bosphorus, with an allowance of bread and carrion for their maintenance. By a later decree they were again removed, this time to an island sixteen miles away, where they all perished for want of food. The lives of dogs, though held unclean by Turks, were deemed of such importance that the Sultan thought fit to ask the Mufti whether it were lawful to kill them. After due deliberation the head of Islam answered (for he can give no fetvah or decree unless first consulted) that every dog had a soul, and therefore it was not lawful to kill them.
What subsequently happened to the dogs is not recorded; some legends say that they swam back to their old haunts, and incidentally to their ladies, who it appears had not been exiled. Certain it is that their lives were spared, for there are plenty to be seen everywhere in Old Stamboul and its neighbourhood, for of course Achmet, a pious Moslem, would not disregard the Mufti's momentous utterance.
That Achmet was a pious man is without doubt; his mosque bears witness to his devotion, a mosque which far out-rivalled that of St. Sophia in the splendour of its decoration, though it is somewhat smaller. Great treasures were spent upon this mosque, and neither trouble nor expense were spared to make it more glorious than any other. But Achmet left behind an unpaid, discontented army and an empty treasury, having grasped the secret of laying up for himself treasure in heaven by the ingenious method of robbing other people's possessions on earth. In those days East and West drew nearer to each other than heretofore. Where formerly the West had paid sporadic visits which were by no means always welcome, commerce had begun to spread its tendrils, and found the policy of Turkey singularly liberal. So all the greater nations established relations on that friendly basis with the Porte; England, France and Holland had each a regularly accredited ambassador at the Ottoman Court. This inaugurated a more peaceful method of settling disputes, as, for example, when the Moors of Granada brought to the Sultan their grievance against France, telling how, in their passage to that country on being expelled from Spain, they had suffered bodily harm and loss of goods. A chaus or ambassador from Sultan Achmet to Henry IV soon set matters right without resort to what diplomats call the _ultima ratio_. While on the subject of ambassadors a romantic story should be told, an incident which nearly disturbed the peace of Europe.