DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4752#0160
ISO PAST AND PRESENT
when the ministers on being summoned to a
council had to wait long, as was often the case,
for the Sultan's appearance, the reason was said by
report to be that he was with a set of Dervishes in
another place waiting till the ecstatic moment had
arrived. The prophecy used to be current (though
it has long died out in the development of the
Mohammedan revival) that the Empire of Turkey
was to end with an Armenian Sultan, and this was
the Armenian Sultan. This strange saying was
explained in several ways, some of them too scan-
dalous for belief or quotation ; but the best attested
account was that his mother was an Armenian by
birth, who had adopted Mohammedanism. This
account, widely believed in 1880-1882, is given as
indubitable in the North Americaii Review, Sept.,
1896, p. 280, by Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, who knows
Turkey from thirty-five years' residence as few men
know it. In more recent years the authorised
statement is that the Sultan's mother was a Georgian
or Circassian—people vary as to the exact race.
The important point is that every one recognises
how essentially unlike Turkish is the Sultan's
character; and every one feels that the ex-
planation lies in the inheritance from his mother.
For my own part, the Armenian origin seems to
me proved by the results : only Armenian parent-
age gives the clue to the Sultan's character, his
when the ministers on being summoned to a
council had to wait long, as was often the case,
for the Sultan's appearance, the reason was said by
report to be that he was with a set of Dervishes in
another place waiting till the ecstatic moment had
arrived. The prophecy used to be current (though
it has long died out in the development of the
Mohammedan revival) that the Empire of Turkey
was to end with an Armenian Sultan, and this was
the Armenian Sultan. This strange saying was
explained in several ways, some of them too scan-
dalous for belief or quotation ; but the best attested
account was that his mother was an Armenian by
birth, who had adopted Mohammedanism. This
account, widely believed in 1880-1882, is given as
indubitable in the North Americaii Review, Sept.,
1896, p. 280, by Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, who knows
Turkey from thirty-five years' residence as few men
know it. In more recent years the authorised
statement is that the Sultan's mother was a Georgian
or Circassian—people vary as to the exact race.
The important point is that every one recognises
how essentially unlike Turkish is the Sultan's
character; and every one feels that the ex-
planation lies in the inheritance from his mother.
For my own part, the Armenian origin seems to
me proved by the results : only Armenian parent-
age gives the clue to the Sultan's character, his