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Updated: May 14, 2025
The Osmanlis are not behind Tartar or Russ in pretending to a divine mission; the Sultan, in his treaties with Christian Powers, calls himself "Refuge of Sovereigns, Distributor of Crowns to the Kings of the earth, Master of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and shadow of God upon earth." We might smile at such titles, were they not claimed in good earnest, and professed in order to be used.
The chief of Shendi, the same who had come to our camp in Berber, has done his uttermost to promote a good disposition in his people towards the Osmanlis, and has made the Pasha a present of several hundreds of very fine camels, within the last two days. His house is not built of better materials than those of his people, and differs from them only in being larger.
There have been fallow periods before in the slow rhythm of its life under the Persians, for instance, who overran all lands and peoples of the East in the sixth century B.C., overshadowed the Greeks for a moment, as the Osmanlis overshadowed Europe, halted, too massive for offence but seemingly unassailable, and then collapsed pitifully before the probing spears of Alexander.
The Kurd is, of course, an Indo-European as much as the Armenian, and rarely a true Moslem; but it would be a very long time indeed before these facts reconciled him to the domination of the race which he has plundered for three centuries. Most of the Osmanlis of eastern Asia Minor are descendants of converted Armenians; but their assimilation would be slow and doubtful.
Swift as lightning, a second killed the keeper of the wardrobe, and the guards, firing at the same time, brought down several officers. Terrified, the Osmanlis forsook the pavilion. Ali, perceiving blood flowing from a wound in his chest, roared like a bull with rage. No one dared to face his wrath, but shots were fired at the kiosk from all sides, and four of his guards fell dead beside him.
It seemed then to young Andras that he was assisting at one of the combats of the Middle Ages, during one of those revolts against the Osmanlis, of which he had heard so much when a child. In the old castle, with towers painted red in the ancient fashion, where he was born and had grown up, Andras, like all the males of his family and his country, had been imbued with memories of the old wars.
Distrusting in some measure the Pasha's intentions, I thought it necessary to carry a full purse to Tayf; I therefore changed the whole of the three thousand piastres which I had received from Yahya Effendi into gold, and put it in my girdle. A person who has money has little to fear among Osmanlis, I was, however, fortunately mistaken in both these conjectures.
The Teutonic Knights exterminated their victims; the Osmanlis drained theirs of their blood by taking a tribute of their male children, educating them as Moslems, and training them as recruits for an Ottoman standing army.
It was a despotic military control that the Osmanlis had established, they always regarded their subject peoples as aliens, whom they did not scruple to destroy if they exhibited symptoms of progress and civilisation. Henceforth the Turkish Government shall govern Turks, and Turks alone.
Such a belief is dying now, of course; but it dies slowly and hard. It still constitutes a real asset of the Osmanlis, and will not cease to have value until they lose Constantinople. On the possession of the old imperial city it depends for whatever vitality it has.
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