Twenty Years' Residence among the People of Turkey: Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, Turks, and Armenians

by Fanny Janet Sandison Blunt

At the foot of the imperial throne we see the princes, who, like children at dessert, are to be seen, not heard. They now enjoy a degree of freedom before unknown, and their wants and caprices are to a certain extent satisfied by allowances from the Sultan. In childhood and youth they are masters of their own time, and employ it as they please. On emerging from boyhood they are furnished with harems; some more distantly related to the reigning Sultan are allowed to have children; but the others are denied that privilege. All these members of the imperial family live a very secluded life. They are not allowed to take any part in the administrative, hold commissions in the army or navy, or enter the civil service. The only exception to this rule was the son of the late Sultan Abdul-Aziz, who, at the age of ten, was, I believe, a captain in the army, and a few years later was made a general. This is said to have given the occasion for a reproach made to the prince by his father, who at the moment of his deposition turned to him and said, “My son, I placed you in the military school where you remained three years without making a single friend; see what this has now led to!”

This reproach of being friendless addressed to any of the princes is unjust, as they are not allowed to make friendships. Friends for a prince mean a party, and a party means cabals and conspiracies, so all such dangerous connections are carefully suppressed, and the prince, under the influence of the suspicion and espionage by which he is surrounded, is as little disposed to have any friends among the influential classes and men of rank as they are to court his friendship or approach him too closely. A personal friend of the ex-Sultan Murad told me that in early youth that prince and he had been very much thrown together, and a sincere affection had sprung up between them, which, however, on Sultan Abdul-Medjid’s death, had to be entirely given up. Rare meetings between them could only be arranged when the prince went to Pera on shopping expeditions. Thus the Ottoman princes, spoilt in childhood, secluded from active public life, are left to vegetate in their respective homes.

The Princes of the Blood and all relations of the late Sultan used always to be cleared out of the way on the accession of a new Padishah; but the custom has fallen into disuse since the time of Mahmoud II., who found it necessary to order the strangulation of the deposed Sultan, the drowning in sacks of 174 of his wives and odalisks, and also the decapitation of a great number of other persons. This measure, considered needful to insure the inviolability of his person, as the only remaining representative of the house of Othman, soon put an end to the rebellion that had occasioned his ascension to the throne. On the day of his proclamation as Sultan, thirty-three heads were exposed at the gate of the Seraglio to bear evidence to the fact. Rebellion, fire, and murder, it was said, could not be otherwise put down than by counter-violence, and the extreme measures adopted by the new sovereign ended in the restoration of order in the capital.

Notwithstanding this black page in the history of Mahmoud, this Sultan, to whom history has not yet done justice, was one of the best, most enlightened, and powerful of Ottoman sovereigns.

Unlike most of his predecessors, he had not wasted the long years of captivity in idleness and frivolous occupations, but had seriously employed them in study. He originated the material changes that have since been made in the life of seraglio inmates, and also endeavored to better the condition of his Christian subjects. Whatever progress has been made by the Turkish Mohammedans in the road of civilization must also be attributed to his efforts. Amid wars without and revolts within, the discontent of the Moslems at the attempted innovations, the clamoring of the Christians for the amelioration of their condition, the Sultan struggled on for thirty years with a perseverance worthy of the cause, till death put an end to his work. He was succeeded by his son, the liberal but weak-minded Abdul-Medjid.

The young Sultan was well imbued with the ideas of his father, but less capable of carrying them out; yet he showed himself liberal and sincerely desirous of improving the degraded condition into which the country had fallen.

The security of life and property became greater under his rule. Executions and confiscation of property became less frequent, and a general change for the better in the material existence of the people was decreed; but unfortunately the Sultan could not insure the carrying out of his decrees. The exchequer, impoverished by the extravagance of the palace and the corruption of the officials, was on the brink of bankruptcy, which was only postponed by the foreign loans obtained in the succeeding reign.

Had the Sultan’s perseverance in seeing these changes enforced been equal to his good-will in ordaining them, Turkey might have been spared many of its present miseries.

He was beloved by his subjects, who, in the midst of their misery, forgave his weakness in remembering his gentleness and benevolence to those who appealed to his mercy. His aversion to bloodshed was so great that he was never known to decree a single execution. This was, of course, a serious hindrance to carrying on the judicial arrangements of the country. In cases of urgent necessity his signature had to be obtained by subterfuge.

A lover of pleasure and ease, Abdul-Medjid, on coming to the throne, soon plunged into that life of self-indulgence, luxury, and excess, which at once began to tell upon his delicate constitution and by degrees affected in a most fatal manner his moral and physical faculties; and he died of exhaustion on June 25th, 1861.