Mahmud II

“ Until the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839, the club of Mahmud and the wood gates of Somnath were preserved at the tomb of the great conqueror near Ghazni. The club has now disappeared, and the gates brought back to India by Lord Ellenborough are recognized to be a clumsy forgery. To Mahommedans Mahmud is known, not only as a champion of the faith, but as a munificent patron of literature. The dynasty that he founded was not long-lived. Fourteen of his descendants occupied his throne within little more than a century, but none of them achieved greatness. ”

“ During the next 20 years the misdeeds and turbulence of the janissaries knew no bounds. Sultan Mahmud II., powerfully impressed by their violence and lawlessness at his accession, and with the example of Mehemet Ali’s method of suppressing the Mamlukes before his eyes, determined to rid the state of this scourge; long biding his time, in 1825 he decided to form a corps of regular drilled troops known as eshkenjis. A fetva was obtained from the Sheikh-ul-Islam to the effect that it was the duty of Moslems to acquire military science. ”

“ It was full time that these seditious demonstrations, and the sanguinary scenes enacted under former Sultans, should teach prudence to the fortunate, but daring and impetuous Mahmud. He felt the necessity of surrounding himself with faithful and vigorous-minded friends. He chose men qualified both as intelligent advisers and men of action. He invited to a great banquet in his palace his great state functionaries, the teachers of the law, the professors, the officers, the seven generals of the empire, the magnates of the nation, and the warmest partisans of his reforms. ”

“ The Indian campaigns of Mahmud and his father were almost, but not altogether, unvarying successes. The Moslem historians touch lightly on reverses. And, although the annals of Rajputana tell how Sabuktagīn was defeated by one raja of Ajmere and Mahmud by his successor, the course of events which followed shows how little these and other reverses affected the invader’s progress. Mahmud’s failure at Ajmere, when the brave raja Bisal-deo obliged him to raise the siege but was himself slain, was when the Moslem army was on its way to Somnath. ”

“ The first word it articulates is the name of 'Mahmud'.
In the banquet Mahmud is a heaven of liberality; in battle a lion or a dragon.
When he walks in the garden of roses, lilies spring up beneath his feet.
His splendour causes objects to smile like a grove in spring; it makes the air soft and the earth prolific. ”

“ Mahmud.
The fleet which, like a flock of clouds
Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner.
Our winged-castles from their merchant ships!
Our myriads before their weak pirate bands!
Our arms before their chains! our years of empire
Before their centuries of servile fear!
Death is awake! Repulsed on the waters,
They own no more the thunder-bearing banner
Of Mahmud; but, like hounds of a base breed,
Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend their master.
Hassan.
Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanæ, saw
The wreck—
Mahmud. ”

“ That Mahmud and his advisers could carry through such reforms at all in so old a body politic is remarkable: that they carried them through amid the events of his reign is almost miraculous. One affront after another was put on the Sultan, one blow after another was struck at his empire. Inspired by echoes of the French Revolution and by Napoleon’s recognition of the rights of nationalities, first the Serbs and then the Greeks seized moments of Ottoman disorder to rise in revolt against their local lords. ”

“ With Mahmud's expedition into India begins one of the most horrible periods of the history of Hindustan. One monarch dethrones another, no dynasty continues in power, every accession to the throne is accompanied by the murder of kinsmen, plundering of cities, devastation of the lowlands and the slaughter of thousands of men, women and children of the predecessor's adherents; for five centuries northwest and northern India literally reeked with the blood of multitudes. ”

“ He would rather die, he exclaimed, or become the slave of Russia, than not destroy his rebellious vassal. On his sole initiative, without consulting his ministers or the council of the empire, he sent instructions to Hafiz Pasha, commanding the Ottoman troops concentrated at Bir on the Euphrates, to advance into Syria. The fatal outcome of the campaign that followed he did not live to hear. When the news of Ibrahim’s overwhelming victory at Nessib (June 24, 1839) reached Constantinople, Mahmud lay dying and unconscious. ”

“ Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them;
Our hills and seas and streams,
Dispeopled of their dreams,
Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,
Wailed for the golden years.
Enter Mahmud, Hassan, Daood, and others.
Mahmud.
More gold? our ancestors bought gold with victory,
And shall I sell it for defeat?
Daood.
The Janizars
Clamour for pay.
Mahmud.:
Go! bid them pay themselves
With Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virgins
Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy?
No infidel children to impale on spears? ”

“ The least beautiful, but not the least interesting sight, is the gallery where the costumes of the Janizaries are exhibited. Most persons will remember that this Turkish soldiery, the formidable opponents of all progress and civilization in the Turkish Empire, the terror of the Sultans and the tyrants of the people, were burnt and massacred by thousands in the year 1826, by order of Sultan Mahmud II., who probably, in doing so, conferred an inestimable benefit upon the nation. ”

“ This old slave of the Court honoured by the Earth-Cherished Emperor Jahangir was told, 'You have grown old. Serve in the tomb of the Heaven-Nestled One at Delhi.'
"Humbly says Mahmud, old slave of the Court! He has come nigh to ninety years, he has come nigh his end. He has passed his life in luxury and ease through the kindness of Kings. Oh! Mahmud! no desire is left unfulfilled. ”

“ If Russia lost her rank as a military power, if Turkey replaced her in this quality, Europe would only have changed one peril for another. Now, the danger which would come upon us through the scimitar of Mahmud would be of a much more formidable nature than that with which we should be threatened by the sword of the Emperor Nicholas. If fortune, by chance, seat a remarkable prince upon the Throne of the Sultans, he cannot live long enough to change the laws and manners, even if he had the intention to do so. ”

“ The rising in the north was easily crushed; but in the south the Ottoman power was hampered by the defection of the sea-faring Greeks, by whom the Turkish navy had hitherto been manned. After three abortive campaigns Mahmud was compelled, infinitely against his will, to summon to his assistance the already too powerful pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, whom he had already employed to suppress the rebellious Wahhabis in Arabia. The disciplined Egyptian army, supported by a well organized fleet, rapidly accomplished what the Turks had failed to do ”

“ Early in January, the Sirdar learned that the Khalifa had changed his mind, and had sent peremptory orders to Mahmud to advance and drive the British out of Berber, and destroy the railway. Mahmud had now been joined by Osman Digna, with five thousand men; and as the Egyptian troops, well as they had fought, had never yet been opposed to so formidable a force as that which Mahmud commanded, the Sirdar telegraphed to England for white troops. ”

“ At the same time cunning as slaves and haughty as tyrants, with them anger is never tempered by anything save fear. Sultan Mahmud II. [681] appears, in some respects, to be a superior [Pg 268] prince to the last sultans; he has, above all, political courage; but has he personal courage? He is content to hold reviews in the suburbs of his capital, and he lets himself be entreated by the magnates not to go even so far as Adrianople. ”

“ Reverting to the Dervish situation in Darfur and Kordofan, it should be noted that the present force of the Emir Mahmud amounts to some thousands of rifle and spear men, scattered in garrisons at El Fasher, Shakka, and El Obeid. Mahmud himself resides at El Fasher with the bulk of this force, and is constantly at war with the Dar Gimr, Massalit, Tama, Beni Hussein, Hotir, and other tribes of the Kebkebia and Kulkul districts. Recently, one of Mahmud's lieutenants, Fadlalla, was killed, and his force of six hundred men heavily defeated in a contest with these revolted tribes ”

“ There was, too, some anxiety as to the safety of the forces at Ambukol and Korti; for Mahmud, on learning that the garrisons had been weakened by the despatch of troops to Abu Hamed, might have crossed the desert with all his force and fallen upon them. Mahmud had indeed, as it turned out, believed that the expedition to Abu Hamed was only undertaken to cover the flank of the Egyptian army from attack, from that quarter; and still believed that it was from Merawi that the main British force would advance against him. ”

“ Hence, as in Constantinople with the Janissaries, so in the provinces with the Dere Beys, destruction of a drastic order had to precede construction, and more of Mahmud’s reign had to be devoted to the former than remained for the latter.
He did, however, live to see not only the germ of a nation emerge from chaos, but also the framework of an organization for governing it well or ill. The centralized bureaucracy which he succeeded in initiating was, of course, wretchedly imperfect both in constitution and equipment. ”

“ Ibrahim, the conqueror of Syria, scoffed at the sultan’s idea “that reform consisted in putting his soldiers into tight trousers and epaulettes.” The criticism is not entirely unjust. Mahmud’s policy was the converse of that recommended by Machiavelli, viz. in making a revolution to change the substance while preserving the semblance of the old order. Metternich’s advice to Mahmud to “remain a Turk” was sound enough. His failure to do so—in externals—left him isolated in his empire: rayahs and true believers alike distrusted and hated him. ”

“ Mahmud also was already planning reforms borrowed from the West, and Mehemet Ali, who had had plenty of opportunity of observing the superiority of European methods of warfare, was determined to anticipate the sultan in the creation of a fleet and an army on modern lines, partly as a measure of precaution, partly as an instrument for the realization of yet wider schemes of ambition. ”

“ Mahmud, silent and tenacious, had long been planning the destruction of the Janissaries, the mutinous and degraded representatives of a once irresistible force, who would now neither fight themselves nor permit their rulers to organise any more effective body of troops in their stead. It is possible that the Sultan may have believed that a victory won over the enemies of Islam by the re-modelled forces of Egypt would facilitate the execution of his own plans of military reform ”

“ Mahmud's plan was to march along the Nile to Ahab, then to cross the desert to Hudi, at an angle of the river; whence a direct march, of twenty-five miles, would take him to Berber, and in this way he would avoid our strong position at the junction of the Atbara and the Nile. It would have been easy for the gunboats to prevent Mahmud from crossing the Nile, but the Sirdar was glad to allow him to do so. The movement afforded him time to concentrate his force, and to get up large supplies. For, each day, the distance that these could be transported by the railway had increased ”

“ Here we have got the river and the railway, but we have no land carriage for an army, and he might keep on falling back to the great lakes, for anything that we could do to overtake him. So we all hope that Mahmud will retire to Omdurman without fighting, and with such a host as the Khalifa would then have, he would be certain to give battle before abandoning his capital."
"They are fine-looking fellows, these blacks," Gregory said.
"They are splendid fellows--they love fighting for fighting's sake. ”

“ Answered Ala alDin, "The Arabs," and Mahmud said, "O my son, the mules and the baggage were thy ransom; so do thou comfort thyself with his saying who said,
'If thereby man can save his head from death, * His good is worth him but a slice of nail!'
But now, O my son, come down and fear no hurt." Thereupon he descended from the cistern-niche and Mahmud mounted him on a mule, and they fared on till they reached Baghdad, where he brought him to his own house and carried him to the bath, saying to him, "The goods and money were the ransom of thy life, O my son ”

“ Mahmud will die: to whom will he leave the Empire, with its disciplined, fanatical soldiers, with its ulemas holding in their hands, thanks to the initiation of modern tactics, a new means of conquest for the Koran?
"While Austria, at last terrified by those false calculations, would be obliged to guard herself on frontiers where the janissaries gave her nothing to fear, a new military insurrection, a possible result of the humiliation of the Emperor Nicholas, would perhaps break out in St. Petersburg, spread from place to place, and set fire to the north of Germany. ”

“ Sultan Mahmud had a grandfather alive, named Raja Tuah, who was greatly attached to Raja Menawer, who had been installed in Campar, and wished him to be Sultan of Malaca, and he was displeased at the elevation of Sultan Mahmud, and prayed for his speedy death. When Raja Tuah heard of the severe sickness of Sultan Mahmud, he came to join the mourners in great haste, with his hair all flying loose, pretending to be greatly attached to him, but he thought, "I will turn him on his face, squeeze his throat and put an end to him." ”