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OLD BUILDINGS 85
view and nonchalantly watching the measuring. Detected
at last when filling the bowl, he ran, but the
barley-merchant ran faster and captured him in the
archway leading to the street. Having knocked
down the thief, the merchant dragged him to a
cobbler's hutch in the Man-yard, pressed the victim's
head on the doorstep, snatched a flat-faced hammer,
and began smiting, using the step as an anvil, as it
were. What he smote was the head, and his blows
were not light ones. The boy's screams quickly
ceased, and I intervened. He seemed to have
become insensible. But the angry barley-merchant
had done this kind of thing before, apparently, and
knew how to deal with fainting. He stopped his
blows and violently pulled the boy's ears, first one
and then the other, as a restorative process, and the
screams recommenced ; but with that the punishment
ended.
In Amasia you may see old mosques with cloistered
courtyards, Seljuk colleges, tekJces, and hlians ; there
are old bridges, old houses, and rock-hewn tombs, but
the finding of them depends chiefly on inquiry and
your own labour. There is little in guide-books to
help in your search, little of the buildings' story
and associations, nothing, or very little, of the city's
history. After bringing together all the pieces of
information available you remain much in the dark.
Even if sufficiently an archseologist to recoofnise old
work and assign it correctly, you are thereby only
furnished with a dry skeleton. A Seljuk quadrangle
or khan may be very beautiful in itself, but is a dead
thing without some outline of its history, some notion
of those who built it, some story of life within its walls.
Looking at such buildings, you are conscious that they
have seen a world of romantic Eastern history, of hopes
and fears and ambitions and effort and tragedy, that
their story would have more than ordinary interest
but you are conscious, also, that their story is hopelessly
lost. Investigate Seljuk history a little, and you
find not much to go upon. The most notable Turkish