Vincent Henry Penalver Caillard and Elias John Wilkinson Gibb

“ The war is blamed by Turkish historians as unjustifiable and untimely, the country needing reform. A vast Turkish army marched to the walls of Vienna and closely beleaguered the imperial city, from which the emperor and his court fled. All hope seemed lost, when by a brilliant feat of arms John Sobieski, king of Poland, drove away the besiegers in hopeless confusion and saved the cause of Christianity, 1683. This was the signal for a general coalition against Turkey; Venice, Poland and the pope allied themselves with the Austrians; Russia, Tuscany and Malta joined in the attack. ”

“ The Mussulman population of the Morea, taken unawares, was practically exterminated during the fury of the first few days; and, most fatal of all, the defection of the Greeks of the islands crippled the Ottoman navy by depriving it of its only effective sailors. The barbarous reprisals into which Sultan Mahmud allowed himself to be carried away only accentuated the difficulty of the situation. The execution of the patriarch Gregorios, as technically responsible for the revolt, was an outrage to all Christendom; and it led at once to a breach of diplomatic relations with Russia. ”

“ Sinope, rather wanton slaughter than a battle, raised excitement in England to fever heat; while the excellent bearing and consistent successes of the Turkish troops during the first months of the campaign on land excited the admiration of all Europe. The belief in the rejuvenation of Turkey seemed to be justified; and when, on the 27th of March 1854, Great Britain and France declared war on Russia, the action of the governments was supported by an overwhelming public opinion. As regards Austria, too, the emperor Nicholas was no less mistaken. ”

“ The agents of the finance ministry, instead of being mere clerks, are now employed in “the assessment and collection of taxes, the control of expenditure, the preparation and execution of the budget, the estimates of the necessary cash required at different points of the empire—all that, in fine, constitutes the real financial administration of a great empire.” Laurent points out that direct taxes furnish 54% of the revenues of the empire, that agriculture is accordingly very heavily taxed, and that the tax on realty is both excessive and unfairly administered. ”

“ Servia and Montenegro were with great difficulty pacified, but it was plain that Russia, whose Slavonic and Orthodox sympathies had been strongly aroused, would soon begin hostilities herself. Turkey now made a show of going even beyond the demands formulated by Europe, and the international conference which met at Constantinople during the last days of 1876 was startled by the salvo of artillery which heralded the promulgation of a liberal constitution, not for the European provinces only, but for the whole empire, and the institution of a Turkish parliament. ”

“ Twenty-one out of the thirty-four sovereigns who have occupied the throne of ‛Osmān have left verses, and among these Selīm I. stands out, not merely as the greatest ruler, warrior and statesman, but also as the most gifted and most original poet. His work is unhappily for the greater part in the Persian language; the excellence of what he has done in Turkish makes us regret that he did so little. ”

“ The real property of a Mussulman does not pass by inheritance to non-Mussulman heirs, but may pass to his Mussulman heirs of a foreign nationality, and vice versa. Property of an individual who has abandoned Ottoman nationality without legal authority so to do does not pass to heirs, whether Ottoman or foreign, but devolves to the state; if legal authority has been granted the government under which the foreign heirs live must have accepted the protocol above cited. An heir who has voluntarily caused the death of the person from whom he should inherit loses all rights of succession. ”

“ The reign of Suleiman the Magnificent marked the zenith of the Ottoman power. At the time of his death the Turkish Empire extended from near the frontiers of Germany to the frontiers of Persia. The Black Sea was practically a Turkish lake, only the Circassians on the east coast retaining their independence; and as a result of the wars with Persia the whole Euphrates valley, with Bagdad, had fallen into the sultan’s power, now established on the Persian Gulf. The Venetians had been driven from the Morea and the islands of the Archipelago ”

“ The military exemption tax is not collected as above, but by the spiritual chiefs of the various religious communities. None of the above regulations apply to Constantinople, where no military exemption tax is imposed, and where separate official regulations for the collection of taxes are in force. The system of farming put the revenues is admitted, and is almost invariably followed in the case of the tithes. When this is done, the revenues to be farmed are put up to public auction and sold to the highest bidder, provided he can prove himself amply solvent and produce sufficient sureties. ”

“ The Ottoman troops in Arabia were mutinous and unpaid; the Albanians, long the mainstay of Turkish military power in the west, had been irritated by unpopular taxes and by the repressive edicts which deprived them of schools and a printing-press; foreign interference in Crete and Macedonia was resented by patriotic Moslems throughout the empire. In these circumstances the headquarters of the Young Turks were transferred from Paris to Salonica, where a central body, known as the committee of union and progress, was established (1908) to organize the revolution. ”

“ The principalities of Aīdin, Menteshē, Sarukhan and Kermian were annexed to Bayezid's dominions to punish their rulers for having joined with the Karamanian prince in rebellion. The exiled princes took refuge with the Kizil Ahmedli, ruler of Kastamuni, who persuaded the Walachians to rebel against the Turks. By a brilliant march to the Danube Bayezid subjugated them; then returning to Asia he crushed the prince of Karamania, who had made head again and had defeated Timur Tash Pasha. ”

“ In 1786 Catherine made a triumphal progress through the Crimea in company with her ally, Joseph II., who had succeeded to the imperial throne on the death of his mother. These events and the friction caused by mutual complaints of infringements of the treaty stirred up public opinion in Turkey, and the British ambassador lent his support to the war party. In 1788 war was declared, but Turkey's preparations were inadequate and the moment was ill-chosen, now that Russia and Austria were in alliance, a fact of which Turkey became aware only when the horse-tails were planted for the campaign. ”

“ After yielding to these hard conditions, Turkey took advantage of her respite to strengthen the frontier defences and to put down the rebellions in Syria and Egypt; some effort was also expended on the hopeless task of reforming the Janissaries. It was not long before Russia showed that it was not the independence but the absorption of the Crimea which she desired. In 1779 a rupture on this account was only averted through the mediation of the French ambassador, coupled with the fact that Turkey was in no condition to enter upon hostilities, owing to the outbreak of plague in her army. ”

“ Concessions were made to one side and the other; and the question of the right of “protection” was solved by the Turkish government itself undertaking the duty. But neither Napoleon nor Nicholas desired a settlement. The French emperor wanted a war for dynastic reasons, the tsar because he conceived his honour to be involved, and because he judged the moment opportune for expelling the infidel from Europe. ”

“ In temporal matters the sultan is a constitutional monarch, advised by a cabinet formed of executive ministers who are the heads of the various departments of state, and who are responsible to the elected Turkish parliament. All Turkish subjects, of whatever race or religion, have equal juridical and political rights and obligations, and all discrimination as to military service has been abolished. The sultan remains the spiritual head of Islam, and Islam is the state religion, but it has no other distinctive or theocratic character. ”

“ The ḳasīda and the ghazel are both monorhythmic; the first as a rule celebrates the praises of some great man, while the second discourses of the joys and woes of love. Why Persian rather than Arabian or any other literature became the model of Ottoman writers is explained by the early history of the race (see Turks) . Some two centuries before the arrival of the Turks in Asia Minor the Seljūḳs, then a mere horde of savages, had overrun Persia, where they settled and adopted the civilization of the people they had subdued. ”

“ Tobacco is grown all over the empire, the most important market for it being Smyrna. Opium is mainly grown in Anatolia. All the more common fruit-trees flourish in most districts. In Palestine and elsewhere there is a large orange trade, and Basra, in Turkish Arabia, has the largest export of dates in the world. The vine is largely cultivated both in Europe and Asia, and much Turkish wine is exported to France and Italy for mixing purposes. The chief centres of export are Adrianople (more than half) , Constantinople and Smyrna, the others being Brusa, Beirut, Ismid, Mytilene and Salonica. ”

“ An extraordinary love of precedent, the result apparently of conscious want of original power, was sufficient to keep their writers loyal to their early guide for centuries, till at length the allegiance, though not the fashion of it, has been changed in our own days, and Paris has replaced Shīrāz as the shrine towards which the Ottoman scholar turns. ”

“ All officers who were partisans of the reforms were obliged to take refuge in flight; and Turkey's position would have been desperate but for the conclusion of the peace of Tilsit (July 7, 1807) between Russia and France, to which Turkey also became a party. The army hereupon retired to Adrianople, and the powerful pasha of Rustchuk, Mustafa Baïrakdar, who had distinguished, himself by his resistance to the Russians, and who thoroughly shared Selim's desire for reform, was now induced by the many officers who held similar views to march on Constantinople to restore Selim to the throne. ”

“ A great army was assembled in the south of Russia, and the emperor Alexander had gone to place himself at its head when he died (Dec 22, 1825) . It was to prevent such an intervention that Canning seized the opportunity of the accession of Nicholas I. to send the duke of Wellington to St Petersburg in order to concert joint measures. The result was the protocol of St Petersburg of the 4th of April 1826, by which Great Britain was empowered to offer to the Ottoman government a settlement of the Greek question based on the establishment of Greece as a vassal and tributary state. ”

“ Egypt, Syria and the Hejaz, the former empire of the Mamelukes, were added to the Ottoman dominions. Towards the end of Selim's reign the religious revolt of a certain Jellal, who collected 200,000 adherents, was the cause of much trouble; but he was eventually routed and his force dispersed near Tokat. While preparing an expedition against Rhodes to avenge the repulse sustained forty years before by Mahommed II., the sultan died at Orashkeui, near Adrianople, at the spot where he had attacked his father's troops. His reign of eight years had almost doubled the extent of the Turkish dominions. ”

“ The independence of Bulgaria was proclaimed on the 5th. The Ottoman government protested to the powers, but it wisely limited its demands to a claim for compensation. Austria-Hungary had from the first undertaken to withdraw its garrisons from the sanjak of Novibazar—an important concession; after prolonged negotiations and a boycott of all Austrian goods exported to Turkey, it also agreed to pay £2,200,000 as compensation for the Turkish crown lands seized in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ”

“ The first onslaught of the Knights of the Cross did indeed rout the weak irregulars placed in the van of the Turkish army, but their mad pursuit was checked by the steady ranks of the Janissaries, by whom they were completely defeated (1396) . King Sigismund of Hungary barely escaped in a fishing boat; his army was cut to pieces to a man; among the prisoners taken was Jean Sans Peur, brother of the king of France. To the usual letter announcing the victory the caliph in Egypt replied saluting Bayezid with the title of “Sultan of the lands of Rum.” ”

“ Production and Industries.—The Ottoman Empire is renowned for its productiveness, but enterprise and skill in utilizing its capabilities are still greatly lacking. For the introduction of improvements something, however, was done by the creation in 1892 of a special ministry of agriculture, to which is attached the department of mines and forests, formerly under the minister of finance. Since the year named an agricultural bank has been established, which advances money on loan to the peasants on easy terms. ”

“ Turkey was admitted to the concert of Europe, and all the contracting parties agreed to respect her independence and the integrity of her territory; moreover, the provisions of the Tanzimāt were reaffirmed in a fresh decree of the sultan, which was incorporated in the treaty, and further provided for a large measure of local autonomy for the Christian communities. It was stipulated that Turkey's promises of reform gave no power the right of interference on behalf of the Christians. ”

“ Peace, however, left the rebellious Janissaries leisure to engage in plots against the sultan, and in order to occupy them and to remove them from the capital advantage was taken of the king of Poland having intervened in the affairs of Transylvania and the principalities to declare war against him. Osman marched against Khotin, but failed to capture it, and his unpopularity with the army was increased by rumours that he designed to collect such troops as were loyal to him, under pretence of going on pilgrimage to Mecca, in order to destroy the Janissaries and reform the country. ”

“ Venice having adopted a hostile attitude since Turkey's conquests in the Morea, greater attention was devoted to the fleet; Mytilene was captured and the entrance to the straits fortified. The conquest of Bosnia, rendered necessary by the war with Venice, was next completed, in spite of the reverses inflicted on the Turks by the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, the son of János Hunyadi. The Turks continued to press the Venetians by land and sea; Albania, which under Scanderberg had for twenty-five years resisted the Ottoman arms, was overrun ”