acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

146 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
about 70,000, is generally called the lar^^est and most
important city in the interior of Asia Minor. It is
a cold, sombre, ill-built town, with little or nothing
of Eastern colour and charm. It never attracts you
for itself. Cities have a personality, like individuals
—some you take to instinctively, and by some are repelled
; Sivas is among those which repel brusquely,
and leave you pleased with the prospect of never
visiting them again. For one thing, you are conscious
of having been deceived by its first distant appearance.
Its castle and rock together make a fine, bold,
confused pile when seen afar, and though not to
be resolved into definite parts, thereby gains much
in suggestion and interest. But it is the most
fraudulent castle in Anatolia, for much of it is mere
wooden boarding, and the rock that uplifts this sham
is in keeping. Though I spent an hour or two upon
it, I could find no trace of rock, and suspect it of
being no more than a great artificial mound of earth.
The mosque of Abd-el-Wahab, called also the
Church of Holy John, which stands so boldly on
another rock, is likewise another disappointing structure.
The rock is indubitable, and the position a
fine one—a precipitous headland thrust into the plain,
with the Pirkinek river at its base, the city's outskirts
beyond the river, and the mosque and minaret
at the tip of the promontory. But the building is
small and mean and shabby, and by no persuading
can you be brought to think of it as an old Christian
church appropriated to Moslem use. Yet this is the
history given it by Armenians, who count it one of
several churches so lost to them in Sivas.
Except for colleges and mosques, five or six in all,
erected in the thirteenth century by Seljuk sultans
when Sivas had become one of their chief cities, there
would be little to see in the town. But these
buildings, and perhaps a few street fountains of
later date, do convey the atmosphere of the East.
Several of the medresses and mosques exist merely
as substantial fragments ; others, however, have been