The sultan, therefore, is at the head of every department of government, amenable to no laws except the law of the Koran. He appoints two high dignitaries,—the grand vizier, to be the nominal head of the temporal government, and the Sheik-ul-Islam, to be the head of the spiritual government. The Sheik-ul-Islam presides over the “Ulema,” a body made up of the Mohammedan clergy, the great judges, theologians, and jurists, as well as the noted teachers of Mohammedan literature and science.

There is no constitution to exercise directing influence over either the sultan or his subordinates. The grand vizier is nominally at the head of the government and represents the sultan. At the present time he has come to be only the agent of the sultan in carrying out his wishes, having little authority to act independently. The privy council, over which the grand vizier presides, is composed of the following officials or cabinet officers:

The whole of the country is divided into vilayets or states, and these are subdivided into sanjaks or provinces, which, in turn, are also divided and subdivided. The ruler in a vilayet is a vali or governor-general, who receives his appointment directly from the sultan, and who, with the assistance of a provincial council, is master of the vilayet. He has power over the inferior officers of his district, whom, theoretically at least, he appoints and removes at will. There are eight of these vilayets in Europe, eleven in Asia, five in Armenia, three in Mesopotamia, six in Syria, two in Arabia, and two in Africa, making thirty-seven in all. The man at the head of each one of these states, averaging a population of about 700,000 souls each, is accountable to the sultan alone for his position and to him he makes constant secret reports. These valis are frequently recalled and more frequently changed from place to place by orders issued directly from the throne. In this way the sultan controls all parts of his dominions and personally determines the character of the administration. All policies carried out in any part of the empire are his own and cannot be otherwise under present conditions.

IV. THE SULTAN, THE HEART OF TURKEY

The general tendency of Islam is to stimulate intolerance and to engender hatred and contempt not only for polytheists, but also, although in a modified form, for all monotheists who will not repeat the formula which acknowledges that Mohammed was indeed the Prophet of God. Neither can this be any matter for surprise. The faith of Islam admits of no compromise. The Moslem is the antithesis of the pantheistic Hindoo. His faith is essentially exclusive. Its founder launched fiery anathemas against all who would not accept the divinity of his inspiration, and his words fell on fertile ground, for a large number of those who have embraced Islam are semi-savages, and often warlike savages, whose minds are too untrained to receive the idea that an honest difference of opinion is no cause for bitter hatred. More than this, the Moslem has for centuries past been taught that the barbarous principles of the lex talionis are sanctioned, and even enjoined by his religion. He is told to revenge himself on his enemies, to strike them that strike him, to claim an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Islamism, therefore, unlike Christianity, tends to engender the idea that revenge and hatred, rather than love and charity, should form the basis of the relations between man and man; and it inculcates a special degree of hatred against those who do not accept the Moslem faith. “When ye encounter the unbelievers,” says the Koran, “strike off their heads until ye have made a great slaughter among them, and bind them in bonds.... O true believers, if ye assist God, by fighting for his religion, he will assist you against your enemies; and will set your feet fast; but as for the infidels, let them perish; and their works God shall render vain.... Verily, God will introduce those who believe and do good works into gardens beneath which rivers flow, but the unbelievers indulge themselves in pleasures, and eat as beasts eat; and their abode shall be hell fire.” It is true that when Mohammed denounced unbelievers he was alluding more especially to the pagans who during his lifetime inhabited the Arabian Peninsula, but later commentators and interpreters of the Koran applied his denunciations to Christians and Jews, and it is in this sense that they are now understood by a large number of Mohammedans. Does not the word “Ghazi,” which is the highest title attainable by an officer of the sultan’s army, signify “one who fights in the cause of Islam; a hero; a warrior; one who slays an infidel”? Does not every Mollah, when he recites the Khutbeh at the Mosque, invoke Divine wrath on the heads of unbelievers in terms which are sufficiently pronounced at all times, and in which the diapason of invective swells still more loudly when any adventitious circumstances may have tended to fan the flame of fanaticism? Should not every non-Moslem land be considered in strict parlance a Dar-el-Harb, a land of warfare? When principles such as these have been dinned for centuries past into the ears of Moslems, it can be no matter for surprise that a spirit of intolerance has been generated.

—Lord Cromer in “Modern Egypt.”