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Of the passengers that are not of our party the three most
conspicuous characters are an old Walachian, Thomas Murat
by name, a Student of Divinity, understand Mahometan
Divinity, and a man who is the proprietor of the
Negresses. The first of these is an interpreter appointed
by Providence for our use: he is the channel and the only
channel of communication except a very imperfect grammar,
between us and our Mahometan Ship-mates. He
speaks amongst other languages, German, Italian and
Turkish; this last in perfection, having been need to speak
it from his infancy: he is by birth a subject of Hungary.
He calls himself a Merchant; and says he has
a house at Vienna. In the course of his travels he has
been at Constantinople 4 or 5 times. the object of his
expedition however was not merchandise, but devotion:
what think it you of a pilgrimage to Loretto? He
set out from Vienna, and made his way to Loretto across Italy
sometimes on ship-board sometimes on foot: from
chance as a more easy means of returning he availed
himself of an occasion for Smyrna: when he
is at Constantinople he will make his way to the
mouth of the Danube, and so home. He has all the
externals of the most wretched poverty, bread only to eat, &
not enough of that; and for apparel rags crawling with
vermin which he makes no scruple of cracking in the
face of the world with as much composure as his Turkish
neighbours. Yet he speaks of himself as continuing
for his amusement, the expedition to which devotion had given
birth.
birth: and he is to stay at this and that place on his
route, longer or shorter, according as he finds them more
or less agreable to him. This is not out of pride; for
he shares with thankfulness, the repast of our servants.
The student of Divinity is a young Moor, seemingly
about 19 or 20, who is going to Constantinople to be one
of 2,000 who are brought up to the Church there, or if
you phase the Mosque, at the public expence. He
was looked upon as a good Scholar, that is he could
write read, and write a good hand, and had with him
some Manuscripts of his own copying. But I found
that they were all in Turkish, that he understood
nothing of the Arabick, that his stock of divinity; setting
aside the Koran, which he was not disposed to
shew, consisted of nothing but a Cathecism and a
few homilies, and that he had never so much as
read any books on any other subject. Yet if a Giaur
like myself ( so the Mahometans call all who are not
of their persuasion) might be allowed to judge, I should
suppose him not ill qualified to make a conspicuous
figure in his profession, for he channted forth
his orasions five times I think it was in the
24 hours with great fluency and with an audible
voice. A great part of the discourse seemed to
make its way through the nose, in a manner
that would have led any one who was not in the
secret to suppose he had been mocking somebody
with the intention of making him but of as ridiculous as
possible
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Identifier: | JB/540/217/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 540.
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540 |
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217 |
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001 |
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Correspondence |
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Jeremy Bentham |
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