Ottoman sultan

“ On the accession of a new Sultan to the throne, it was customary to make a clearance of most of the inmates of the seraglio, and replenish it with fresh ones, such as those that already belonged to the household of the new sovereign, and others further to augment the number. Ottoman sultans, with two exceptions, have never been known to marry; the mates of the Sultan, chosen from among the ranks of slaves already mentioned, or from among those that are presented to him, can only be admitted to the honorable title of wife when they have borne children. ”

“ In spite of all efforts, the Ottoman Power is rapidly wasting away. The life of the Orient is nerveless and effete; the native strength of the race has died out, and all attempts to resuscitate it by the adoption of European institutions produce mere galvanic spasms, which leave it more exhausted than before. The rosy-colored accounts we have had of Turkish Progress are for the most part mere delusions. The Sultan is a well-meaning but weak man, and tyrannical through his very weakness. ”

“ A weak or vicious Sultan may be deposed and strangled, but his inheritance devolves to an infant or an idiot; nor has the most daring rebel presumed to ascend the throne of his lawful sovereign. While the transient dynasties of Asia have been continually subverted by a crafty visir in the palace, or a victorious general in the camp, the Ottoman succession has been confirmed by the practice of five centuries, and is now incorporated with the vital principle of the Turkish nation. ”

“ The decline of the Ottoman Empire was due to the corruption of the Turks that followed acquisition of wealth. They lost their hardihood, and their Sultans became profligate and luxurious. They filled their harems with wives and numberless slaves, and addicted themselves to pleasure instead of duty. They became tyrants, and their jealousies and fears of being supplanted made them so cruel that it became customary for a Sultan ascending the throne to kill all his brothers or near male relatives. ”

“ The high character of the early Sultans of Turkey—to which all contemporary authorities, Christian and Mahomedan alike, bear testimony—had, as has been said, profoundly affected the Ottoman character. Their fervid loyalty to their rulers sprang in no small measure from the lessons inculcated by their early history and their most cherished traditions. Now, up to the reign of Selim II., the Sultan of Turkey received a very superior education. They were not merely patrons of learning, but often themselves men of letters of no mean order. ”

“ The Ottoman monarchy, therefore, consists today of an aggregation of kingdoms, principalities, and republics which are kept together only by habit and the communion of the Koran. And if a despot is a ruler whose words are law, then the Sultan in Constantinople is very far from being a despot. ”

“ The decision of Murad was accepted by his successors. Even after the capture of Constantinople, many an Ottoman sultan felt more at home in Adrianople than in the imperial city. For more than a century the Osmanlis directed their energies almost exclusively to European conquests. Whatever they accomplished in Asia was the indirect result of their stupendous successes in Europe. ”

“ No troops ever more powerfully affected the imagination of friends and foes. Among the Turks they were always the leaders, the forlorn hope. Among Christians the terror of their name spread over Europe. In every war they gained new laurels, and from the moment when they stormed the walls of Constantinople they began to be, slowly but certainly, the sole strength of the Ottoman power. At first the absolute servants of the Sultan, before two centuries were over they became his masters. ”

“ Yet many still think that the Ottoman Empire is a great one, a powerful government. They look at the Sultan and his dominion through a magnifying glass. This shows ignorance. The Turks are decayed and are decaying. The sick man of Turkey is the dead man of Turkey, and ought to be buried, but the European powers do not bury him because there are precious stones and jewelry in the coffin; no matter how bad the corpse smells, they will endure it. And the bad smell of the Sultan is killing hundreds of thousands of Christians ”

“ Political reforms can be made only by those in high places of authority; and to be sanctioned by the prejudiced and infatuated Ottoman they must assume the garb of religion. The sultan himself, wielding the sceptre over millions of subjects, uniting in [Pg 260] his own person all the powers of the state, claiming to reign by divine commission, and profanely styling himself the shadow of God—even he dares not venture to vary one iota from the teachings of the Koran and the Sunnah. ”

“ The fact that they have Ottoman blood in their veins, and the right they have to the Turkish Empire on the extinction of the race of the Sultan, make their family respected and their persons formidable even to the Sultan himself: that is why the Sultan dare not destroy the race of the Kans of Tartary; but he hardly ever allows them to continue on the throne to an advanced age. The neighbouring pashas spy on their conduct, their territories are surrounded by janissaries, their wishes thwarted by the Grand Vizir, and their designs always suspected. ”

“ There is no coronation in Turkey; instead the Sultans gird on the sword of Osman, the founder of the Ottoman Dynasty, which is kept in the mosque of Ayoob, in Constantinople. When a Sultan is proclaimed, he goes to that mosque with great pomp, and all the members of the Sublime Porte, the civil officers, the generals, commanders, soldiers, patriarchs of different religions, and the Sheik-ul-Islam, the Mohammedan religious head, follow him. ”

“ Mohammed was also the last of the Imperial Princes to be trusted with the governorship of a province; from his time on all scions of the House of Othman were kept in rigorous seclusion, leaving it for the grave or the throne as fate might decide. This Sultan also preferred a life of ease to the hardships of campaigning, and amidst the pleasures of the Seraglio, where his mother, Safiyé Sultana Validé, reigned supreme, let the misfortunes that befell the Ottoman armies pass unheeded. ”

“ The Hungarians, under Count Pfalfi, attacked the Ottoman artillery in flank and captured all the guns. The battle seemed to be irretrievably lost. The Sultan, seated on a tall camel, surrounded by his bodyguard, watched the rout of his army. He wished to fly while there was time. He was dissuaded again by Seadeddin, who quoted a verse from the Koran: “It is patience which wins victory, and joy succeeds to sorrow.” The Sultan, wrapping the Prophet’s mantle round him, consented to remain on the field. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are nominally free subjects of an enlightened government, but virtually the slaves of circumstances, groaning under the petty chiefs and subordinate understrappers of government, who have yet to learn submission to the will and mandates of the present excellent Sultan, Abdul Medjid Khan, whose reign has already been distinguished by many great improvements in the condition of the Christian population. Many of the firmans issued of late years have not as yet come into force in the interior of Turkey, and in those possessions of the Ottoman empire situated farthest from the sea-ports. ”

“ Western Europe was becoming more and more aware of the decline of Ottoman power in Europe, and there were not wanting prophets who foretold the speedy dissolution of the Turkish Empire, among these Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador from James I, who bemoaned the misery, anarchy, and general decay, as evident in 1622. A wise woman, his mother, Sultana Mahpeiker, guided Amurath IV through the troubled days of his childhood, and brought up a Sultan endowed with vigour of body and mind to man’s estate. ”

“ By threatening to promote the cause of Andronicus, whose eyesight had not been quite extinguished, after his mad rebellion against the Emperor, the Sultan compelled the two Emperors to sign a treaty, under which the remnant of the Greek Empire became an abject vassal State to that of the Ottomans. The Emperors promised to pay an annual tribute of thirty thousand pieces of gold and to supply a contingent of twelve thousand men to the Ottoman army to be at the disposal of the Sultan for any purpose he might design. ”

“ If the intervention was simply for installing a new Khedive, his objections would be less. This would be a single definite sovereign act of the Sultan. It might be accomplished in a week or ten days, and the Ottoman troops would have no pretext for staying, or for interfering in the administration. He should not object to a Turkish, French, and English fleet going to Egypt to support some single definite act of this kind, nor even, speaking solely for himself personally, to Turkish troops being landed. ”

“ Their valor was at length oppressed by heat, thirst, and the weight of numbers; and the unfortunate Sultan, afflicted with the gout in his hands and feet, was transported from the field on the fleetest of his horses. He was pursued and taken by the titular Khan of Zagatai; and, after his capture and the defeat of the Ottoman powers, the kingdom of Anatolia submitted to the conqueror, who planted his standard at Kiotahia, and dispersed on all sides the ministers of rapine and destruction. ”

“ Whatever yet adhered to the Greek empire in Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, acknowledged a Turkish master. ... The humble title of emir was no longer suitable to the Ottoman greatness; and Bajazet condescended to accept a patent of sultan from the caliphs who served in Egypt under the yoke of the Mamelukes—a last and frivolous homage that was yielded by force to opinion, by the Turkish conquerors to the House of Abbas and the successors of the Arabian prophet. The ambition of the sultan was inflamed by the obligation of deserving this august title ”

“ This is the thirty-fourth Sultan in the Ottoman line, and probably the worst, the least, and the last. It is not likely the Turks will ever have another Sultan, for this one is pretty sure to bring the Sultanate to an end. His days are numbered, he knows it well, and the Turks know it well too. Before his life and his kingdom are finished, he has resolved to end the Armenian nation; that, however, will not be ended, the people will not be exterminated; when the Turkish Empire is abolished the remaining Armenians will have freedom. ”

“ Fortunately the new Sultan’s mother had the great gift of finding the right man for the right place, the gift which enabled King William of Prussia, first German Emperor, to discover Bismarck, Moltke, and other great men who brought ruin to one Empire to give birth to another. The Sultana Validé called Mohammed Kiüprilü, then Governor of Jerusalem and Vizier of State, to be Grand Vizier, and thus started a dynasty of Grand Viziers which devoted great talents and energy to the saving of Ottoman power in the world. ”

“ It follows that this immense Mohammedan population in Great Britain's Eastern dominions will some day prove of the highest importance in determining 203the direction of her policy in the East There are now symptoms of rivalry between the Sultan of Turkey and those British authorities whose business it is to maintain their country's prestige and influence in the Moslem world. It is on account of this rivalry that some British writers and politicians try to represent the religious influence of the Sultan as being less than it is, while others seek to deny the validity of the Ottoman Caliphate. ”

“ 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 ”

“ If history taught anything in the solution of the Eastern question, it taught that the effort to reserve for the Sultan a military existence in countries which had passed from under his general control was futile, and that the best barrier against Russian influence was to be found not in the division but in the strengthening and consolidation of the States rescued from Ottoman dominions. ”

“ That England’s attitude has not been too strongly emphasized, read this quotation from Lord Salisbury’s summing up of the situation in 1879:
“The Sultan’s dominions he informed the Powers have been provided with a defensible frontier far removed from his capital. * * Rich and extensive provinces have been restored to his rule, at the same [441] time that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made which will, it may be hoped assure their loyalty, and prevent the recurrence of calamities which have brought the Ottoman Power to the verge of ruin. ”