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The foreign merchant was not only tolerated, but was at times supplied with capital by the Moorish sultans, to whom he was allowed to go deeply in debt for custom's dues, and half a century later the British Consul at Mogador was not permitted to embark to escape a bombardment of the town, because of his debt to the Sultan.
The most flagrant example of Turkish formality that came to our notice was the following address on an official document to the Sultan: “The Arbiter; the Absolute; the Soul and Body of the Universe; the Father of all the sovereigns of the earth; His Excellency, the Eagle Monarch; the Cause of the never-changing order of things; the Source of all honor; the Son of the Sultan of Sultans, under whose feet we are dust, whose awful shadow protects us; Abdul Hamid II., Son of Abdul Medjid, whose residence is in Paradise; our glorious Lord, to whose sacred body be given health, and strength, and endless days; whom Allah keeps in his palace, and on his throne with joy and glory, forever.
Ah, as the young Queen, seated up there, received the homage of the richly-robed Aldermen, and the resplendent Sheriffs, and that effulgent Lord Mayor, she must have fancied herself something more than a fairy Princess, say, an Oriental goddess being adored and sacrificed to by gorgeous Oriental Princes, Sultans and Satraps, Pashas, Padishas, and the Grand-Panjandrum himself.
This chief is pensioned by the Dutch Government, but retains the sovereignty over the native population of the island, and of the northern part of Gilolo. The sultans of Ternate and Tidore were once celebrated through the East for their power and regal magnificence. When Drake visited Ternate in 1579, the Portuguese had been driven out of the island, although they still had a settlement at Tidore.
The Merinid Sultans of Rabat had a terribly troublesome neighbour across the Bou-Regreg, and they built Chella to keep an eye on the pirates of Salé. But Chella has fallen like a Babylonian city triumphed over by the prophets; while Salé, sly, fierce and irrepressible, continued till well on in the nineteenth century to breed pirates and fanatics.
Under the sanction of the Pope, the Venetians entered into a treaty of commerce with the sultans of Egypt; by which they were permitted to have one consul in Alexandria, and another in Damascus. Venetian merchants and manufacturers were settled in both these cities.
The comparatively humane neglect of the unfortunate alien peoples herded within the frontiers of earlier Sultans was improved upon by Abdul Hamid, who struck out the swifter and superior methods of maintaining the dominating strength of the Turkish element in the kingdom not by the absorption of subject peoples, but by their extermination.
We were informed by the agents, that there were above four thousand messengers present, partly from those who paid tribute or sent presents, and from other sultans and dukes who came to make their submission, or who had been sent for, and from the various governors of countries and places under their authority.
I quote from Protestant authorities when I say that the Sultan, on the news of the calamity, neither ate, nor drank, nor showed himself, nor saw any one for three days; that it was the greatest blow which the Ottomans had had since Timour's victory over Bajazet, a century and a half before; nay, that it was the turning-point in the Turkish history; and that, though the Sultans have had isolated successes since, yet from that day they undeniably and constantly declined, that they have lost their prestige and their self-confidence, and that the victories gained over them since are but the complements and the reverberations of the overthrow at Lepanto.
The facility of transport from the southern and eastern harbors of the Mediterranean, and the mildness of the Italian climate, made it practicable to buy the largest animals of the south, or to accept them as presents from the Sultans. The cities and princes were especially anxious to keep live lions even where a lion was not, as in Florence, the emblem of the State.
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