acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

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46 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
the trouble to become proficient with them. These
pistols, I have no doubt, were su})plied to Armenians
as purchasers not knowing what they bought, and for
whom anything would do that had the looks.
Marsovan has one link connecting it with European
history which it does not readily forget. For here
or, more correctly, at the village of Marinja, a mile
outside the town—was born Kara Mustapha Pasha
Black Mustapha—who commanded the Turkish army
at the siege of Vienna in 1683, and came so near to
establishing the Crescent in Central Europe. His
name, familiar and dreaded in Christendom once, is
almost forgotten now, but Marsovan has it still in
daily speech in shortened form. They have the Pasha
Mosque and Pasha Baths, and the public water
supply is the Pasha Water —
gifts of Black Mustapha
to his native town ; and there is the Tash Khan,
built by him as a speculation, the rents of which
are received by his descendants to the present day.
The village mosque at Marinja, erected by him in
memory of his mother, has also come to bear the
greater name of her son.
His was one of those romantic careers of which the
Turkish Empire shows so many examples. With
Sultans ever on the watch for men to serve their
purpose, and influenced in their choice by no considerations
of rank or birth, high appointments often
went to the obscure. A stableman, eunuch, pipebearer,
coffee -seller, private soldier—any one with wits
—might suddenly find himself lifted to greatness by
the mere word of his sovereign. Black Mustapha's
was a more steady ascent, but took him quickly to
the highest position under the Sultan.
One reads that Black Mustapha was born son of
a hey ; one hears locally that his father was a donkeydriver
or muleteer, and that young Mustapha followed
this calling in his native district till he was seventeen.
Like any country lad of the present time, doubtless he
trudged, dusty and hot, in goatskin sandals behind
his beasts, going to Amasia and SamsAn and Angora