Abdul Hamid then informed Midhat that he declined to accept his resignation, that he wished to see him continue his services to the State, and that he appointed him Governor‐General of the vilayet of Smyrna. The Syrians addressed a petition to the Palace, begging that Midhat might remain at Damascus, but the Sultan paid absolutely no attention to this act on the part of the Syrian population, and Midhat found himself compelled to start off for his new post on board the Imperial yacht Izzeddine, which had been sent for that purpose.
CHAPTER X
MIDHAT, GOVERNOR‐GENERAL OF SMYRNA
The vilayet and town of Smyrna were then, like other provinces of the Empire, in a state of lamentable disorder. It is quite certain that the Sultan, who had refused to apply the necessary reforms in Syria, had never sent Midhat to Smyrna with the intention of putting a stop to the administrative anarchy existing in that part of his dominions. Midhat, although well aware that the aim of all these machinations was only to paralyse his activity, could not forget the duties and responsibilities which the Governor‐Generalship placed on his shoulders.
There were a quantity of liberated convicts of every foreign nationality in Smyrna, who daily committed all manner of theft and crime; the sense of terror in the province was so great that no one dared venture abroad in the streets after night‐fall. Midhat Pasha formed a corps of police, in imitation of the European police, a force which at that time did not exist in Turkey apart from the gendarmerie. He showed the same activity here as in the other vilayets, and succeeded, after several arrests, in establishing public security. He widened the streets of the city, and founded a School of Arts and Crafts, as well as an orphanage, which still exists under the name of “Islahané.”
On the other hand, the Sultan never renounced his aim of ridding himself of Midhat, and four or five months after his arrival in Smyrna, Abdul Hamid decided to strike a mortal blow at him, in once more raising the question of the sudden death of his uncle, the ex‐Sultan Abdul Aziz, whose suicide in the Palace we have already related (see p. 89). This suicide had not only been verified by eye‐witnesses, but also by the report of all the doctors of the foreign embassies at Constantinople, and above all by the statement of Dr Dickson, doctor at the British Embassy, a fact which has been confirmed by Sir Henry Elliot, who was the then English Ambassador, and who wrote an account of the deposition and suicide of Abdul Aziz, which appeared in the February number of the Nineteenth Century in 1888. Now, after a lapse of four years, the Sultan asserted that his uncle had not committed suicide, but that he had been assassinated, and that the murder had been perpetrated by Hussein Avni Pasha, the Minister for War (who was himself murdered in Midhat’s house, in 1876, by Cherkess Hassan), and by his two brothers‐in‐law, Mahmoud Djelaleddin and Nouri Pashas, and that other personages of high rank (an allusion to Midhat, Mehemet Rushdi Pashas, and to the Sheik‐ul‐Islam—Haïroullah Effendi) were implicated in the affair. In fact the two brothers‐in‐law, Mahmoud Djelaleddin and Nouri Pashas, were arrested in Constantinople, and the news of a fresh trial of the assassins of Abdul Aziz was noised abroad by the European Press.[24]
The Turkish Press, inspired from the Palace, addressed praises to the Sultan, and some newspapers—amongst others the Terdjumani Hakikat—actually went so far as to advise Abdul Hamid to arrest every one who had played any part in the affair of Abdul Aziz.
By this time the Sublime Porte had lost all authority, and the enemies of the Constitutional Party had increased very considerably. Mehemet Rushdi Pasha, the former Grand Vizier, and colleague of Midhat, had been condemned to pass his remaining years on his estates near Manissa; the Sheik‐ul‐Islam, Hairoullah Effendi, a follower of Midhat, had been exiled to Mecca. The few Liberals who remained in the capital had all been sent away into the provinces, either as officials or as exiles. Only the partisans of Abdul Hamid and those who had changed their opinions and who now ranged themselves on the side of despotism—such as Ahmed Midhat Effendi—were to be found in Constantinople. Ahmed Midhat Effendi, who had been one of Midhat Pasha’s most ardent followers, now heaped all the lowest slanders upon him, through the pages of the Terdjumani Hakikat, asserting that Abdul Aziz had been murdered, and that the culprits must be arrested.