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He played chess you don't know what that meant to me like a master. We used to talk about the regeneration of Turkey and the Sheik-ul-Islam between moves. Oh, everything under the sun we talked about! He was awfully open-minded. He believed in slavery, of course, but he quite saw that it would have to die out.
I know that the cellars of the Seraglio are full of gunpowder, and I would not that the blossoms of the Sheik-ul-Islam and the descendants of the Prophet should perish. Behold, I am ready, and my comrades also, to swear on the Alkoran to do no harm either to Sultan Achmed, or his sons, or his daughters, or his daughters' husbands.
He gave his guides but one order: "Take me to the house the Gabours call the Glory of God." "Sancta Sophia, my Lord?" "Sancta Sophia and bid the runners run." His Sheik-ul-Islam was pleased. "Hear!" he said to the dervishes with him. "The Lord Mahommed will make mosques of the houses of Christ before sitting down in one of the palaces. His first honors are to God and the Prophet."
In certain special cases, the Sheik-ul-Islam of Constantinople, the highest religious tribunal in Turkey, had the right to revise the decisions of the cadis. At the Congress of Paris, Turkey, as one of the participating parties, was admitted into the concert of European Powers. Then civil tribunals were for the first time created in Turkey.
On the night of May 29-30 they struck at the Sultan himself. The new Ministers were on their side: the Sheik-ul-Islam, the chief of the Ulemas, who interpret Mohammedan theology and law, now gave sentence that the Sultan might be dethroned for mis-government; and this was done without the least show of resistance.
These Softas, as they are termed, numbering some 20,000 or more, determined to breathe new life into the Porte an aim which the patriotic "Young Turkey" party already had in view. On May 11 large bands of Softas surrounded the buildings of the Grand Vizier and the Sheik-ul-Islam, and with wild cries compelled them to give up their powers in favour of more determined men.
I had been acquainted with Redouza Pasha, and cast an eye about for him amid that invasion of veiled hanums, fierce-looking Caucasians in skins of beasts, a Sheik-ul-Islam in green cloak, a khalifa, three emirs in cashmere turbans, two tziganes, their gaudy brown mortality more glaringly abominable than even the Western's.
No one is great: neither Shakespeare nor Napoleon, neither Peter the Great nor Kutuzov, neither the Russian landlords nor the Czar himself, neither Prince Bolkonsky nor Raskolnikov, neither Nero nor St. Paul, neither Beaconsfield nor Osman Pasha, neither Pope nor Patriarch, neither Dalai-Lama nor Sheik-ul-Islam.
He was believed to have visited the East, to have fought in Egypt, to have run blockades in South America, to have found priceless diamonds in South Africa. He had suffered the awful penances of the Fakirs, he had fasted with the monks of Mount Athos; he had endured the silence of La Trappe; men said that the Sheik-ul-Islam had himself bound the green turban round Lord Blandamer's head.
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