Osman Bey

“ Hassan, drawing himself proudly up to his full height, and darting on Osman Bey a glance of withering scorn, replied in a loud voice, “Delì Pasha is father of the lady and Governor of the province; for him I reserve what I have to say: to you I shall give no reply.”
“Take him to the guard-house prison,” cried Osman Bey in a fury; “we will see if that insolent tongue will not find another kind of speech 306to-morrow. Let four soldiers with loaded pistols attend him to prison and watch at the door: if he escapes, their lives shall answer for it.” ”

“ We were of the party whom you treated so well when we were in your power, and when you sent back Osman Bey to Siout on a donkey.”
“I believe, comrades,” he replied, “that on that day I maltreated none excepting Osman Bey, and he had deserved it at my hands.”
“He was a brute,” said the first speaker, lowering his voice; “but Ali Bey, our present chief, is better: he always takes our part against those who rob and injure us.”
“Who are they who rob and injure you?” inquired Hassan.
“Why, Mohammed Ali, to be sure, and his rascally Paymaster-General.” ”

“ Let Ali Bey, Osman Bey, and Nour-ed-din, who have robbed the troops of their pay, incited 440them to mutiny, and conspired against the Government, suffer the doom of traitors—off with their heads; and their villages, houses, and properties are confiscated. Let that villainous servant of Osman Bey named Ferraj, whose crimes are known to me, and his brother, Hadji Mohammed, who came into my service to poison me, receive one thousand blows of the stick; let the other prisoners await further inquiry and orders. Where is Hassan Ebn-el-Heràm? ”

“ How many men are there now in Ali Bey’s house?”
“If we count his and Osman Bey’s, and Nour-ed-din Binbashi’s Mamelukes and followers, there may be two hundred of them in the house and buildings round his courtyard,” replied the yuzbashi.
“A mere handful,” said Hassan scornfully; “you are enough to master them in five minutes. My advice, then, is this. As the Beys do not know that your eyes have been opened to their treachery, they will of course admit you at any hour. Let the yuzbashi knock at the gate and say that he has something of importance to 432communicate to the Bey ”

“ Soon afterwards I met Osman Bey, my acquaintance of the previous day. He was on the point of leaving for a Circassian hamlet in the neighbourhood. It appeared that a feud had arisen between the people of this village and another one in its vicinity; the Bey was going there to calm, if possible, the angry feelings of the inhabitants.
He remarked that in the event of war breaking out between Turkey and Russia he should go to the Caucasus. 265
"Will there be a great rising in that country?" I inquired.
"It is very doubtful," was the answer; "our people have risen several times ”

“ The Bey escaped to the Thebaid, and the disappointed Sheikh presented himself to his employer. Osman passionately demanded of him if it was true that his wife had saved the life of his deadliest enemy, when in her power. "Most true, praised be Allah!" replied the Sheikh, drawing himself proudly up, and presenting a jewel-hilted dagger to the old Bey; "this weapon," he continued, "was your gift to me in the hour of your favour; had I met Elfy Bey, it should have freed you from your enemy. Had my wife betrayed the hospitality of the tent, it should have drank her blood ”

“ I have appealed to Delì Pasha; it is he alone who should judge his own khaznadâr.”
“Dog!” replied Osman Bey, “dost thou teach me my duties and my powers? Am I not Governor till Delì Pasha arrives; and shall I not punish a scoundrel who dares to invade his harem? I will have thy back beaten till thou canst not speak, and I will leave thy feet for Delì Pasha to beat till thou canst not stand. Slaves,” he continued, addressing two men armed with sticks who had silently taken their places on each side of the prisoner, “strike! ”

“ Osman the First (Ottoman) Turkish Sultan. On the death of the Seljouk ruler of Iconium, who left no son to succeed him, the Emirs, the chiefs of the clans, divided his dominion into petty states among themselves. Osman, the son of Ertogrul, being one of these local chiefs, became practically an independent prince, 1289 A. D. His dominion as a Sultan began, however, in 1299, by the invasion of Nicomedia, the first conquest of the Ottoman Turks. ”

“ Without him Bardissi cannot, he well knows, venture to give battle, for he, with his men and the Mamelukes of Elmar Bey, is too weak to engage an enemy of such superior strength.
"To be sure, the Turks are cowards," said Osman to himself; "and against the Turks every Mameluke counts for two. Yet, as the scouts announce, their forces are too strong for us. Youssouf Bey comes first at the head of three thousand Turks, and the sarechsme, Mohammed Ali, follows him with five thousand men. In addition to these, Taher Pacha is also advancing with his forces ”

“ Oh, to live there, to go to Egypt as the grand- sultan's pacha, to rule in that beautiful land, to make the rebels, the Mamelukes, and the beys, bow down in the dust. To vanquish them all, Osman, this is my dream of bliss, this is but no, I am still the same foolish boy, dreaming of impossibilities. See, there come those of whom we have been speaking," raising his hand and pointing to the hallway. "There comes the tschorbadji with Cousrouf Pacha. Let me go now, Osman, it is unpleasant to be in the vicinity of this haughty man; my heart always fiercely resents his insolence. ”

“ The Prince got up upon the breast of his enemy, and wresting his sword from his hand and holding his own over his throat, said,
"How now? Has your craving for fight been satisfied."
"Not while I live," returned Osman.
"Your life I can end this moment," said the Prince.
"Do so;—or else your mortal enemy will live," said Osman.
"Let him," replied the Prince; "the Rajput scorns to fear it. I would have killed you; but you spared my life, and so do I."
He then bound together the hands and feet of Osman, and one by one deprived him of all his weapons. ”

“ Like all previous Turkish immigrations, they came not in any overwhelming horde, with sword in one hand and Koran in the other, but as a small compact body with a genius for military organisation, and the gift, which they retain to this day, of stalwart fighting. The policy to which they owed their growth was absorption, and the people whom they first began to absorb were Greeks and other Christians, and it was to a Christian girl, Nilufer, that Osman married his son Orkhan. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The founder of the Mevlevi dancing dervishes, the poet Mahommed Jelal-ed-Din (Rumi) , in 1307, though tempted to assume the inheritance along with the empire of the Seljuk sultan Ala ed-dīn Kaikobad III., who died without heirs, preferred to pass on the power to Osman, son of Ertogrul, and with his own hands invested Osman and girt him with the sword: this investiture was the legitimate beginning of the Osmanli authority. ”

“ She gave a cry of wonder, and as she gazed at me, her large black eyes dilated and flashed with anger.
"Basilia," said I, "do you not remember me?"
"No," replied she, while trembling; "who are you?"
"Osman, the son of Mostapha, your own Osman, who saved you at Anapa."
"It is false," she answered, with eyes full of anger and sorrow; "Osman was a brave Circassian warrior, and I loved him; oh! how dearly and how well; but he fell in battle at Mikhailov. Thou art either a base Muscovite, or some fiend in the shape of Osman; a ghoul it may be, a son of Ifrit; begone, and leave me." ”

“ Every noble loafer about my person seems anxious to have Osman continually employed in contributing to my comfort; Mohammed Ahzim Khan even deprecates the independence displayed in lacing up my own shoes. "Osman," he says, "let Osman do it."
Osman's chief characteristic is a reckless disregard for the conventionalities of social life and religion; he never seems to bother himself about either washing his person or saying his prayers. Somewhere, not far away, every evening the faithful are summoned to prayer by a muezzin with the most musical and pathetic voice I have heard in all Islam. ”

“ The first regiment of professional Ottoman soldiery was recruited by him and embodied later by Orkhan, his son, from Greek and other Christian-born youths, who, forced to apostatize, were educated as Imperial slaves in imitation of the Mamelukes, constituted more than a century earlier in Egypt, and now masters where they had been bondmen. It is not indeed for nothing that Osman’s latest successor, and all who hold by him, distinguish themselves from other peoples by his name. ”

“ It is repulsive to me to think of a man's surrounding himself with women, and taking delight in their caresses and soft words."
"It suits Cousrouf very well!" said Osman, smiling. "He spends the greater part of his time in the harem. Singing, music, and rejoicing, are the order of the day there. Black female slaves fan him with fans made of peacock-feathers; others, on their knees, fill his chibouque, while he reclines on his cushions, smoking and dreamily gazing at the beautifully-attired female slaves who dance before him." ”

“ But Osman thanked the good colonel, and shook his head, saying,—
"Mohammed was the first Prophet of God, and the holy Murid Schamyl is the second! Our destiny is written on our foreheads; may it be mine to die in the ranks of war! Every man hath his part in life allotted to him; may it be mine to fight for my country, and fight again I shall! Is not her blood red on the Russian bayonets? I will carry a lance under no flag but the green Sangiac Sheerif of Circassia. ”

“ Had he started to persecute Christians, the Greek Church would have taken a new lease of life, and Osman could not have gained the converts who made possible the Ottoman race.
Attila, Djenghiz Khan, Timur, the greatest conquerors of the stock from which Osman came, utilized a race already made. They were leaders of a united people. In spite of their dazzling exploits, they were mere raiders, and their empires were the territories of an unassimilated path of conquest. ”

“ Osman had a humanity so broad and deep, that although his speech was so bold and free with the Koran, as to disgust all the dervishes, yet was there never a poor outcast, eccentric, or insane man, some fool who had cut off his beard, or who had been mutilated under a vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, but fled at once to him, — that great heart lay there so sunny and hospitable in the centre of the country, — that it seemed as if the instinct of all sufferers drew them to his side. ”

“ These are some of the reasons different countries would like to get control of Turkey and its great city. They all look toward it with longing eyes.
"Besides these things, the Sultan himself is not a good ruler for his people. He has many wives and hundreds of slaves. Many of his people follow his bad example and buy slaves, both black and white."
But little Osman knows nothing of what is said about the Sultan and the people of his land. It has never entered his head that it is wrong to buy and sell human beings. ”

“ The paradise of the Mohammedans, its shady groves, marble fountains, walled gardens, and cool retreats, its kara ghuz kiz and wealth of material pleasures, no doubt seem to poor Osman, with his one tattered garment and unhappy servility, far beyond the aspirations of such as he. Like the gutter-snipe of London or New York who gazes into the brilliant shop windows, he feels privileged to feast his imagination, perchance, but that is all. ”

“ Darkness frightens him. Therefore a light is always kept burning in his chamber, and [76] Ismet Bey, grand master of the imperial wardrobe, always sleeps in the same room. Ismet Bey is his foster brother, and probably possesses his confidence more fully than any other man. Because he resembles the Sultan so closely in appearance, it is believed among the gossips of Constantinople that he often impersonates His Majesty at ceremonies and on other occasions where the latter is likely to be exposed to the danger of assassination. ”

“ He shrugged, dangled his pistols, glanced at Gizzler,—or rather through Gizzler as though, the wretched creature were not there,—and his eyes encountered the interested jet black orbs of Eddin Bey.
Both smiled, Eddin in the face of death; Raoul with the generous grin of a man who recognizes in his enemy a peer.
"Eddin Bey," he said, still smiling, "the Osmanli fight fairly. Ask the British Tommy.... And your fool of a Sultan is dead. And what do you think of affairs at present?"
"They are not any too gay," replied Eddin Bey, laughing, "especially in the Alps." ”

“ For his success in killing the Greek, the Sultan rewards him with the castle of{265} Ottomanzich, which is often confused with Sugut, and is claimed to be the origin of Osman’s name. [669] By another story, which is asserted to be the invention of Mohammed II, who thus wanted to legitimatize in the eyes of the world his claim to the throne of the Caesars, Osman is the descendant of a certain Isaac Comnenus, a member of the imperial Byzantine family, who fled to the court of the Seljuks of Konia, and became a Moslem. ”