Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/599

Rh S C U S C Y 573 SCUTARI (Turkish, UsMdar), anciently Chrysopolis, a seaport town of Turkey in Asia, on the eastern shore of the Bosphorus, opposite Constantinople (see plan, vol. vi. p. 305), of which it is regarded as a suburb. Climbing the slopes of several hills in the form of an amphitheatre, its houses generally painted in red, distinguished by a number of mosques adorned with numerous minarets, pos- sessing some fine bazaars and public baths, and merging farther inland into burying-grounds, gardens, and villas, Scutari presents a very picturesque appearance, especially when viewed from the bridge of the Golden Horn or ap- proached from the Straits of Constantinople right in front of its most prominent point. The inhabitants are largely engaged in the manufacture of saddlery and silk, muslin, and cotton stuffs ; the town also contains granaries and is prized as a fruit -market, more particularly for grapes, lemons, and figs. The population is estimated at 60,000 (entirely Mohammedan, with the exception of some Jews). The streets, especially the main street leading from the pier to the barracks, are in general much wider than those of Constantinople. The city includes eight mosques. Behind the landing-place is the Biijiik Jami (great mosque), sur- mounted by a cupola and a minaret and presenting terraces mammillated by small leaden domes. The centre of the square is adorned by a fountain of simple architecture. The mosque of Selim III., farther in the interior of the city, is likewise flanked by two minarets and surmounted by a cupola. The most elegant mosque, however, is the Valide Jami or mosque of the dowager sultana, surmounted by two minarets, built in 1547 by the daughter of Solyman. Another prominent mosque, on the right of the main street and south of Biijiik Jami, is Jeni Jami (new mosque). Other noticeable buildings are the barracks built by Selim III., forming a handsome and vast quadrangle surmounted by a tower at each angle, and whose corridors, &c., are calcu- lated to have an aggregate length of 4 miles ; an old large red building now used as a military hospital, and during the Crimean War as a hospital for the English sick and wounded ; a seraglio of the sultans ; a convent of howling dervishes, a simple wooden structure of two stories front- ing a small cemetery. Other business quarters of the town deserving mention are Jeni Mahalle (new quarter) and the Dohanjilar Mejdani (tobacco merchants' square). The most characteristic feature, however, of Scutari is its immense cemetery, the largest and most beautiful of all the cemeteries in and around Constantinople, extending over more than 3 miles of undulating plain behind the town. 1 In the centre of the ground rises the magnificent dome, supported by six marble pillars, which Sultan Mohammed erected in memory of his favourite horse. Close to the barracks, on the Bosphorus, the scene of Miss Nightingale's labours, 8000 English dead are over- shadowed by a large granite obelisk. Immediately behind the town is the mountain of Bulgurlu clad in evergreen savins and red beeches, one of the plateaus of which is a favourite holiday resort. Its summit commands a very extensive view. In the plain of Haidar Pasha close by, between the cemetery and Kadikoi (judge's village, anciently Chalcedon), the English army lay encamped during the Crimean War. In front of Scutari, on a low- 1 The cemetery is intersected with numerous paved alleys, and the tombstones are inscribed with verses of the Koran gilded on a dark blue ground and bearing each simply the name of the deceased. The monuments of the men are distinguished each by a turban, those of the women each by a lotus leaf. The nature of the carved turban indicates the rank of the deceased and the fashion of the time to which it refers, so that the tombstones present the sculptured history of the Mohammedan head-dress from the date of the Turkish conquest. Each corpse is allowed a separate grave, never desecrated either by axe or spade. This cemetery lying in Asiatic ground is on that account the more desired as a burial-place by pious Mahommedans, and holds half the generations of Stamboul (probably some 3,000,000 persons). lying rock almost level with the water and about a cable's length from the shore, rises a white tower 90 feet high, now used as a lighthouse, called "Leander's Tower," and by the Turks Kiz-kulessi, or the " Maiden's Tower." The first printing press in Turkey was set up at Scutari in 1723. Its ancient name Chrysopolis most probably has reference to the fact that there the Persian tribute was collected and repositcd, as at a later date the Athenians levied there too a tenth on the ships passing from the Euxine. Its more modern name of Uskiidar, signifying a courier who conveys the royal orders from station to station, commemorates the fact that formerly Scutari was the post station for Asiatic couriers, as it is still the great rendezvous and point of departure of caravans arriving from and destined for Syria, Persia, and other parts of Asia, and the spot whence all travellers and pilgrims from Constantinople to the East begin their journeys. SCUTARI (Turkish, Scodra; Slavic, Skadar), the capital of North Albania, at the south end of the lake of the same name, with a population of 24,500 in 1880 (mostly Mohammedans). There is only one street with any pretensions to regularity. The straggling town is built on the low flat promontory formed by the Bojana, which takes off the waters of the lake to the Adriatic, and the river which flows into the lake after crossing the plain between Scutari and the mountains of Biskassi. In winter the town is often flooded by the Bojana. The mosques and minarets are insignificant ; the handsomest of the churches is the Catholic church at the north-east end. In the background is an old Venetian fortress perched on a lofty rock. The town is favourably situated for commerce, being connected by the Bojana with the Adriatic, whence its boats carry the products which descend by the Drina to the mountaineers in exchange for their wool, grain, and dyeing and building woods. There are some manufac- tures of arms and of cotton stuffs. In 1884 330 ships of 123,923 tons entered the port and 325 ships of 123,713 tons cleared. Livy relates that Scodra was chosen as capital by the Illyrian king Gentius, who was here besieged in 168 B.C., and carried cap- tive to Rome. In the 7th century Scutari fell into the hands of the Servians, from whom it was wrested by the Venetians, and finally, in 1479, the Turks acquired it by treaty. Early in 1885 a beginning was made with the construction of a highway from the roadstead of San Giovanni de' Medici to Scutari. SCYLAX of Caryanda in Caria was employed by Darius I. to explore the course of the Indus. He started from Afghanistan and is said by Herodotus (iv. 44) to have reached the sea and then sailed to the Gulf of Suez (comp. PERSIA, vol. xviii. p. 569). Scylax wrote an account of his explorations, which is referred to by Aristotle and other ancient writers, but must have been lost pretty early, and probably also a history of the Carian hero Heraclides, who distinguished himself in the revolt against Darius. 2 But Suidas, who mentions the second work, confounds the old Scylax with a much later author, who wrote a refuta- tion of the history of Polybius, and is presumably identical with Scylax of Halicarnassus, a statesman and astrologer, the friend of Panaetius spoken of by Cicero (De Div., ii. 42). Neither of these, however, can be the author of the Peri- plus of the Mediterranean, which has come down to us under the name of Scylax of Caryanda in several MSS., of which the archetype is at Paris. This work is little more than a sailor's handbook of places and distances all round the coast of the Mediterranean and its branches, and then along the outer Libyan coast as far as the Carthaginians traded ; but various notices of towns and the states to which they belong enable us to fix the date with consider- able precision. Niebuhr gave the date 352-348 B.C., others bring it down a year or two later, and C. Miiller as late as 338-335, which is only possible if the writer's informa- tion was sometimes rather stale. See the discussion in Miiller's edition (Geog. Gr. Min., vol. i., Paris, 1855), and against him Unger, in Philologus, 1874, p. 29 sq., who con- 2 See A. v. Gutschmidt, in Rhein. Mus., 1854, p. 141 s