Ottomans

“ This nation, isolated, ignored, and shut out from the civilized world, crouched under the despotic rule of the Ottomans, and submitted to a life of perpetual toil and hardship, uncheered by any of the pleasures of life, unsupported by the least gleam of hope for a better future. ”

“ They exhibit the empire of the Ottomans as once occupying a proud station among the greater powers—as forming a boundary and preserving a balance between the East and West—as a firm check on Muscovite ambition—and as, from her consequence, possessing great weight in the councils of nations; and it is apparent that she cannot fall without important political consequences. ”

“ In the east of Europe, the Ottomans—Asiatics from Turkestan and other countries—maintained an incessant and savage warfare against the subjects of the Emperor of Germany.
There was but one peaceful spot in all Christendom, and that the “right little, tight little island” of our forefathers. ”

“ In the perpetual struggle between the herdsmen and the tillers of the soil which has been waged from remote ages on the continents of Europe and Asia, the advance of the Ottomans was a decisive victory for the children of the steppes. ”

“ It was the descendants of those Persianized Seljūḳs whom the early Ottomans found ruling in Asia Minor on their arrival there. What had happened to the Seljūḳs two centuries before happened to the Ottomans now: the less civilized race adopted the culture of the more civilized; and, as the Seljūḳ Empire fell to pieces and the Ottoman came gradually to occupy its place, the sons of men who had called themselves Seljūḳs began thenceforth to look upon themselves as Ottomans. ”

“ And those tottering Ottomans, whose existence in Europe is already tolerated with too much indulgence, and who must be aware, notwithstanding the high opinion they entertain of their own importance, how much they are at the mercy of Christian 197powers, would they have ventured to combat any decisions of the congress which deprived them of a comparatively small extent of territory to enable them to preserve the remainder of their possessions in Europe? ”

“ Hence the vast majority of the people whom we are accustomed to think of as Ottomans are so only by adoption, being really the descendants of Seljūḳs or Seljūḳian subjects, who had derived from Persia whatever they possessed of civilization or of literary taste. ”

“ To allege the real or supposed primeval kindred between Magyars and Ottomans as a ground for political action, or at least for political sympathy, in the affairs of the present moment, is an extreme case--some may be inclined to call it a reductio ad absurdum--of a whole range of doctrines and sentiments which have in modern days gained a great power over men's minds. ”

“ Whilst the only defence of Europe consisted in feudal troops which were assembled at certain periods, and could not be held beneath their banners for any length of time together, the Ottomans were the only people who had a regular army always under arms. Their warriors, always animated by one same spirit, had moreover the advantage of discipline over the insubordinate chivalry of the Franks, who were constantly agitated by discord, and were put in action by a thousand different passions. ”

“ This resulted in the establishment of various Turkish dynasties in that country. At the close of the thirteenth century the paramount power over these was exercised by Osman (or Othman, whence the name Ottoman) , who seized all that remained of the ancient Roman world in Asia, and thus practically founded the Ottoman Empire. In the middle of the fourteenth century the way was opened for the Ottomans to advance into Europe. They were invited by one of the rival factions at Constantinople to undertake their cause. ”

“ We learn from a German paper that, since the brave Ottomans have discovered that their Culture and that of the Germans are one, many Englishmen who live in Crescents are crying out in fury for an alteration of their addresses. ”

“ When the Ottomans of all races and creeds suddenly found themselves free they became filled with an exceeding joy, a new sentiment of brotherhood, and a profound gratitude to the saviours of the country, the Committee of Union and Progress, that took the practical form of implicit obedience to the Committee’s mandates, so that it had little difficulty in preserving order. ”

“ His Majesty the Emperor of the Ottomans cedes to their Majesties the Allied Sovereigns all the territories of his Empire on the continent of Europe to the west of a line drawn from Enos on the Aegean Sea to Midia on the Black Sea, with the exception of Albania. ”

“ While conspicuously lacking in creative genius, the Ottomans have always shown themselves possessed of receptive and assimilative powers to a remarkable degree, the result being that the number of their writers both in prose and verse is enormous. ”

“ The Turks hold the inconsistent, but perfectly justifiable, point of view that all Ottomans, of whatever race and creed, shall have equal rights, but that the predominance of the Mussulman Turks must be safeguarded. ”

“ Numerous loiterers are usually found lingering about the portal, applicants for justice; and there, in former times, when the Ottomans were indeed Turks, scenes of injustice and cruelty were not unfrequently witnessed by the passer-by.
This lofty portal generally bears a distinct title. At Constantinople it has even grown into one which has given a name to the whole government of the Sultan. I am not aware, however, that the custom here alluded to was ever in force in that capital, though it certainly was in other parts of the empire of Othman. ”

“ I only desire to evince that England will never derive such advantages from Turkey, as whilst it remains in the hands of the Ottomans, and consequently that it is our interest, as well as that of every other nation that does not expect a share in the partition of the Turkish Empire, to break the confederacy between the Empress of Russia and the Emperor of Germany, and check the progress of the two Imperial Courts. ”

“ He then went on to explain that the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, consisting of army officers, civil officials, townsmen, and peasants, all honourable men, had been formed with the object of establishing a system of govern165ment that would give liberty and justice, without distinction of creed or race, to all Ottomans, so that they might live in peace and happiness in their common fatherland. ”

“ A Moslem, in walking the streets of our country-towns, would be more incommoded in England than a Frank in a similar situation in Turkey. Regimentals are the best travelling dress.
[206]
The best accounts of the religion and different sects of Islamism may be found in D'Ohsson's [272] French; of their manners, etc., perhaps in Thornton's English. The Ottomans, with all their defects, are not a people to be despised. Equal at least to the Spaniards, they are superior to the Portuguese. ”

“ It was with forces thus constituted that the Ottomans extended their Empire up to and beyond the Danube. The conquests of the larger part of Asia Minor, of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, were also effected, by composite forces, to which Serbia and Wallachia sent contingents by virtue of treaties with the Porte. The greater number of Ottoman generals who distinguished themselves in these early days of conquest were not of Turkish race, but were Greeks, Albanians, Slavs, and Italians, who had embraced Islam or whose forbears had done so. ”

“ Ils ont les mêmes droits et les mêmes devoirs envers le pays, sans préjudice de ce qui concerne la religion.
Art. XVIII. L'admission aux fonctions publiques a pour condition la connaissance du Turc, qui est la langue officielle de l'État.
Art. XIX. Tous les ottomans sont admis aux fonctions publiques suivant leurs aptitudes, leur mérite et leur capacité. ”

“ Their dominion extended from the shores of the Adriatic on the west to the borders of China on the east; while in Africa it reached very nearly from the Atlantic to Suez. Accordingly we have been taught from our childhood of Turkey in Europe, Turkey in Asia, and Turkey in Africa. But I am not sure that we are all aware that the Turks, or Ottomans, are Asiatic invaders who obtained their dominions by conquest.
III. So much for the overflow. Let us now turn to the drying up, as predicted in the prophecy. ”

“ Turks and Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, and whoever else lived together under the Crescent, were to co-operate in liberty, equality, and fraternity to make Young Turkey into a state respected in international life. The empire of the Ottomans was not to presume on any interference with co-religionists living under non-Mohammedan rule. ”

“ If the conquest had resembled in character the old Persian conquest, if the inhabitants had been required only to pay tribute to a distant ruler and receive his garrisons in their cities, the lot of these lands would have been light. But they were taken into full possession by their new lords; and oriental nomads of an alien and intolerant religion were planted as the dominant race amid the Christian population. The circumstance that the Ottomans were nomads (they were a clan of the Turkish tribe of Oghuz) gives their empire its significance in the history of mankind. ”

“ Now-144a-days any one can go there, and many who do so come away quite unimpressed; but of one thing we may be quite certain, and that is that when centuries shall have elapsed, when possibly the Ottoman power will be only a memory in Europe, and that exquisite hill be crowned by the busy streets of a new and populous city, no traveller will pass through them without seeing again, in fancy, the imperial kiosks of former days, and thinking enviously of us in the nineteenth century who can still behold the speaking, breathing records of that storied habitation of the Ottomans. ”

“ On the next paroxysm in the dissolving empire of the Ottomans, the plain would be occupied by a warlike population descending from the mountains that commanded on one side the whole Syrian coast, and on the other all the inland cities from Aleppo to Damascus. ”

“ The greater is the number of troops sent by the Ottomans into the field, the better are we pleased; because if they are very numerous, 252their magazines will be exhausted, and they will disperse before two months have passed ”

“ In truth, it is well known to those who are acquainted with history, that in the wars which have taken place since the invention of this new system of tactics, the Ottomans have been most frequently worsted, because they found it impossible to make use of their sabres among the infidels as they wished to do; for their regular troops keep in a compact 244body, pressing their feet together that their order of battle may not be broken ”

“ Masūd fell, probably about 1295, a victim to the vengeance of one of the amirs, whose father he had ordered to be put to death. After him Kaikobād, son of his brother Farāmarz, entered Konia as sultan in 1298, but his reign is so obscure that nothing can be said of it; some authors assert that he governed only till 1300, others till 1315. With him ended the dynasty of the Seljūks; but the Turkish empire founded by them continued to exist under the rising dynasty of the Ottomans. ”

“ STATE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.—In July, 1875, the Turkish provinces of Herzegovina and Bosnia rebelled against the intolerable oppression of the Sultan's government. The little mountainous kingdom of Montenegro—which for four centuries had preserved its independence through numerous struggles with Turkey, and had a quarrel of its own with that power—lent help to its Slavonian neighbor. Servia did the same. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, a composite of distinct provinces and nationalities, was strongly interested to avert war in that region. The revolt was not put down by the Turks. ”

“ The Ottoman Empire is made up of Turkey in Europe—the strip of territory stretching across from the Black Sea to the Adriatic—Turkey in Asia, which includes Arabia, Syria, and Palestine, and provinces in the isles of Samos and Cyprus are also under the sultan’s rule. ”

“ The losses which the Ottoman power has undergone at the hands of its independent neighbours, Russia, Montenegro, and Austria or Hungary, must be distinguished from the liberation of certain lands from Turkish rule to form new or revived European states. ”

“ ASIATIC TURKEY. The mainstay of the Ottoman dynasty is the Asiatic portion of the Bound- empire, where the Mohammedan religion is absolutely predominant, aries. and where the naturally vigorous and robust Turki race forms in Asia Minor a compact mass of many millions, far outnumbering any other single ethnical element and probably equalling all taken collectively. Here also, with the unimportant exception of the islands of Samos and Cyprus and the somewhat privileged district of Lebanon, all the Turkish possessions constitute vilayets directly controlled by the Porte. ”

“ We here turn aside for a brief hour from the stream of historical narrative to consider some of the results of Ottoman misrule which has for more than four centuries controlled an empire in Eastern Europe almost as large as France, in one of the most delightful and beautifully varied regions on the continent and which yet holds its peoples in the relentless grip of the Dark Ages. ”

“ Turkey. Or the Ottoman empire, called by the Turks Osmanli Vilayeti, includes large portions of the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and consists of Turkey Proper, which is under the direct rule of the sultan, and of numerous dependent and tributary states, governed by their own princes. The existing Turkish empire dates only from the end of the 13th century, when it was founded by Osman, or Othman, a Turk of noble family, who had been driven westward from Khorasan by the invasion of Genghis Khan. Osman first invaded the Greek territory of Nicomedia on July 27, 1299 ”