Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 216, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1914 — Where Modern and Archaic Mingle [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Where Modern and Archaic Mingle

THERE is probably no otner city In Europe that presents such decided contrasts as Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, in which Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated. On the one hand you have great modern governmental buildings, substantial, artistic, clean and well-kept, that would do any nation proud to possess and that serve to tell every comer how Austria kept her word to govern Bosnia for the very best of the province. On the 'other hand, in the native quarter, you have bazaars and kavanas; you meet with latticed harem-balconies and old, walled-in court yards and fall afoul of deep-hooded women and fezzed and turbaned Mussulman that take you back to the days of the Arabian Nights. It is a strange irony of fate that in this modern, yet archaic, city the heir to the Austrian throne should meet his nemesis. But even aside from this recent play of history Sarajevo is of interest. In this city of curious contradictories there, exists the queerest department store* in the world. Not alone is this so because every man, woman and child in the place is compelled to buy of the great institution, but also for the fact that the most modern systems are intertwined with those of centuries passed. This great department stdre, which is known as the grand bazaar, is run on the system of individual shopkeepers housed together in one great building. There are as many as a dozen shops of certain sorts and competition has been overcome by the strongest kind of unions—the trade guild—which sets the price of everything and also, the minimum to which bartering will bring it. As a result, In Sarajevo there are no professional shoppers; for when a Bosnian has stated a price he will not and cannot bSdge. | The Great Bazaar. The great bazaar of Sarajevo consists of an Intricate labyrinth of lanes, some of them arcaded, so that but a

feeble light falls on the cobbled floor; others open to the beating sun, and all lined with open, wooden booths, behind which are the storehouses for the wares. The houses themselves are two stories high, built square and coated over with plaster externally. The second story is wider than the first* thus throwing a deceptive gloom on the goods in the shop. Often the belles of the shopkeepers’ harem live in the upper story and there are lattices through which they peer down at the shopkeepers. In other sections the loft is also the storeroom and heavy gratings protect it from thieves. In one • section of the great basaar the hounds which practically form one immense dwelling, have the first floor of crude, sun-dried brick, while in the center facade of the upper, projecting story there is a little latticed balcony to which ascepd the noise and the smells ind, often, the dust of the little irregular street. In some sections the house walls are yellow, with a striping of blue about the windows and doors. Some of the booths ere clean and orderly. Others are a mass of filth. In all of them, however, the Turk eits cross-legged in a corner beside a tall, •fiver flagon of cold water smoking the eternal cigarette. Folks wander by. but he does not seem to care to attract their attention. None of these bazaars does a land-office business, and yet they all exist. One sees the wares at their best on Wednesday, when the peasants come to town and there is more likelihood of sales. In this great department •tore it may be said that everything under the Balkan sun is for sale. Shops of every sort are together, but things -which we should sell in one class of •tores will be found with strange com sutou.bn*.

In the very heart of the great bazaar is the Mosque of Husruf Bey. One passes through a great wall into a court yard of stone, where a fountain plays that one may wash in for the prayers or draw free drinking water, for elsewhere in Bosnia water is not free, but is sold. Beyond the fountains tree throws its shade and in the shadow stands the tomb of the founder of the mosque. Good shoppers are a pious folk, and they will drop in here to offer prayer, while on their way through the bazaar. The interior is almost identical with that of a mosque, the walls eloping up to the dome, with countless niches, decorated with geometrical designs in blue and white, for the Koran forbids the picturing of things animate. An elegant rug graces the floor and in the center of this stands the sarcophagus itself, hewn of marble and covered over with' a green canopy, heavily worked in gold. At one end of the tomb immense candles stand, illuminating a turban of stone oh a pedestal close by, the turban indicating the grave of a man. At one side of the tomb, a little settee is placed, that the weary shopper may sit in prayer, resting his eyes on a great glass case on the opposite wall, in which a green prayer-cloth from Mecca now hangs. The Coffee Houses. Among the bazaars are the kavanas, or Turkish case houses. For the poor, in the center of the bazaar, there has been opened a Wakf, a Turkish charity, where the poor receive their coffee free. Others, however, take their beverage in the regular cases. In the smaller of these the coffee beans are placed in a tiny brass mill, of the thickness of a pump handle, the lower half of which unscrews to emit the pulverized grain, while in the larger establishments the beans are pounded in a stone mortar, with great iron pestles, and then worked through a circular sieve, that only' the finest may be used. This powder is then placed in brass pitchers, upon which hot water

is played, until the mass is practically dissolved, when a small flagon of the deep, dark liquor is presented the guest. These are just a few vignettes of the common life of Sarajevo. Military reviews, with cohorts of proud Austrian soldiery; simple peasant fetes, with their Kola dances on some green, shopping among the stores, the peer of any in Europe to have one’s purchases brought home by muleteer, as were wares in the holy land in the days of the Savior, medley of color; the noises of the criers, the quiet of the residential streets and harems —all these go to make of the Bosnian capital one of the unique spots of all the near East.

Street Scene in Sarajevo.