DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4752#0149
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 139
the Mohammedan revival; the means whereby
Turkish power is restored is always the same—
massacre—and the preparation consists in preaching
that it is a virtue and a merit before heaven to slay
and spoil the infidels.
Further, it is not, so far as I know, doubted by
any one who is familiar with Turkey, that this
revival of Orientalism had been planned and
directed from one centre, and that the effects seen
since 1882 are the result of long preparation. This
great historical movement is due to the will and
the wit of that remarkable man, the present Sultan,
who alone did not despair of the state, but with
marvellous patience and hard work and diplomatic
skill, set himself to strive against fate. Shelley,
in his Hellas, puts into Sultan Mahmud's mouth
the words :—
Even as that moon
Renews itself—shall we be not renewed ;
Far other bark than ours were needed now
To stem the torrent of descending time.
But Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid believed that the
Crescent would be renewed, and he has for twenty
years faced the torrent in his shattered and hardly
seaworthy bark, kept her head upstream, and made
astonishing way. With an almost bankrupt trea-
sury, a navy which has rotted till the ships hardly
hold together, a beaten and broken army, a dis-
the Mohammedan revival; the means whereby
Turkish power is restored is always the same—
massacre—and the preparation consists in preaching
that it is a virtue and a merit before heaven to slay
and spoil the infidels.
Further, it is not, so far as I know, doubted by
any one who is familiar with Turkey, that this
revival of Orientalism had been planned and
directed from one centre, and that the effects seen
since 1882 are the result of long preparation. This
great historical movement is due to the will and
the wit of that remarkable man, the present Sultan,
who alone did not despair of the state, but with
marvellous patience and hard work and diplomatic
skill, set himself to strive against fate. Shelley,
in his Hellas, puts into Sultan Mahmud's mouth
the words :—
Even as that moon
Renews itself—shall we be not renewed ;
Far other bark than ours were needed now
To stem the torrent of descending time.
But Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid believed that the
Crescent would be renewed, and he has for twenty
years faced the torrent in his shattered and hardly
seaworthy bark, kept her head upstream, and made
astonishing way. With an almost bankrupt trea-
sury, a navy which has rotted till the ships hardly
hold together, a beaten and broken army, a dis-