United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They knew what the ordinary man was thinking, for they were the best intelligence department in the Ottoman Empire far better than Enver's Khafiyeh. And they were popular, too, for they had never bowed the knee to the Nemseh the Germans who are squeezing out the life-blood of the Osmanli for their own ends.
From the middle of the eighteenth century Turkey had been a prey to the political gangrene of which she is vainly trying to cure herself to-day, and which, before long, will dismember her in the sight of all Europe. Anarchy and disorder reigned from one end of the empire to the other. The Osmanli race, bred on conquest alone, proved good for nothing when conquest failed.
But as for those who shall answer: 'I saw the danger which threatened the Osmanli nation, it was in my power to help and I did it not, their bodies will be scourged by the angels with iron rods and their souls will be thrust into the abyss of Morhut there to await the judgment-day.
The imperial Osmanli sits and smokes long days in his pavilion, without any thought at all of his broad domain except to despise and to plunder and impoverish its cultivators; and is his title made better thereby than the Turcoman's, to be the heir of Alexander and Seleucus, of the Ptolemies and Massinissa, of Constantine and Justinian?
The Ottoman Empire is named after the Osmanli, but you might search long before you found one among its inhabitants. These Osmanlis are a governing class, indigenous only in Constantinople and a few neighbouring towns, but planted here and there, as officers and officials, over the Ottoman territories.
A Christian by birth and education, he has a profound respect for the Mussulman faith, as being the religion of the government he serves, and a profound hatred of the Armenian, whom he regards as the evil genius of the Osmanli. He is a man whom many trust, but whose chief desire seems to be to avoid all show of power.
All around were dead and dying men, disabled galleys, floating wreckage; the Galleon of Venice had taken a terrible toll of the Osmanli; the order to retreat out of range was given, and never was order obeyed with greater alacrity. With accuracy and precision the galleon played upon such vessels as remained within range, doing great execution.
Caliph of Islam, victorious guardian of the Moslem marches, and heir by conquest of imperial Rûm, the Osmanli Sultan held his Asiatic provinces with ease; but the best security for his tenure was the misery to which they were reduced. Commerce and cultivation ebbed, population dwindled, and nomads still drifted in upon what once had been settled lands.
Young officers, controlling their elders, only needed a change of uniform to pass in an Athenian crowd. Spare and dapper officials, presiding in seats of authority over Kurds and Arabs, reminded one of Greek journalists. Osmanli journalists themselves treated one to rhodomontades punctuated with restless gesticulation, which revived memories of Athenian cafés in war-time.
On the one hand, in Asia, it had been found impossible to establish military fiefs in Arabia, Kurdistan, or anywhere east of it, on the system which had secured the Osmanli tenure elsewhere.
Word Of The Day