The present sultan, Abdul Hamid II, is the thirty-fourth in direct male succession from Othman and the second son of Sultan Abdul Medjid. He succeeded to the throne upon the deposition of his brother, Murad V, August 31, 1876, at the age of thirty-four. By the Turkish law of succession the crown is inherited according to seniority by the male descendants of Othman springing from the imperial harem. All children born in the harem, whether from free women or slaves, are legitimate and possess equal rights. The sultan is succeeded by his eldest son, in case there are no uncles or cousins of greater age. The present heir apparent to the throne is the oldest brother of the sultan, who outranks all of the five sons of Abdul Hamid as heir to the throne. It is not the custom of the sultans to contract regular marriages. The harem is kept full of women by purchase, capture, or voluntary offering. Most of the inmates come from districts beyond the limits of the empire, largely from Circassia.
The sultan is, without question, the most phenomenal person sitting upon any throne to-day. Educated within his own palace, having passed but once beyond the borders of the land in which he was born, he is able to outwit and outmatch in diplomacy the combined rulers of Europe. He has administered his widely-extended and varied empire in accordance with the unmodified Moslem principles of the Middle Ages, and has successfully defied all attempts upon the part of Christian nations to change his policy. Without a navy he has succeeded in averting repeated threats of attack by the strongest navies of the world. With depleted and diminishing resources he has held his creditors at bay, capitalized his indebtedness, and continued to live in lavish luxury. It is true that his refusal to comply with the demands for reform have at times in the past led to the loss of some of his possessions, still he does not seem to have learned therefrom any permanent lesson.
Turkey as a whole has never been so unrighteously governed as it is to-day, and, in spite of the pressure of European governments, there is little prospect of radical reforms so long as the present sultan sits upon the throne. While he is an astute and unprincipled diplomat and a tireless sovereign, he is not a reformer in any sense of the word. So long as he is sultan, he proposes to be master, preferring to lose entire provinces rather than to share the administration with any. He yields only when subterfuge fails and the policy of delay is rejected; after he has yielded, he devotes himself to vitiating the advantages his subjects might gain by his concessions.
Personally timid and fearful, he astonishes the world by the boldness of his strokes at home and his stubborn resistance to pressure from abroad. Himself profoundly religious, he horrifies all by the wholesale murder of his subjects through his lieutenants acting upon direct orders from the palace. This he has done repeatedly, and it is a part of his method of administering his home affairs and keeping his subjects properly subdued.
A GROUP OF OFFICIAL TURKS IN PRAYER
FOR THE SULTAN UPON HIS BIRTHDAY
The present political, social, economic, and religious problems of Turkey center in the sultan. Few countries in the world would respond so quickly to the influence of good government, and few people would so appreciatively welcome a firm and righteous administration as the people of Turkey.
The sultan exercises his power through his army and his appointees to office. The Turks make perhaps the best soldiers in the world. They are strong, inured to hardship, uncomplaining, and practical. To them all war with non-Moslems and rebels—and they fight with no others—is holy war. Only Mohammedans are enrolled in the army, and all such, over twenty years of age in the country, are liable to military service until they are forty. The empire is divided into seven army administrative districts, in each of which is located an army corps. These are Constantinople, Adrianople, Monastir, Erzerum, Damascus, Bagdad, and the Yemen, with the independent divisions of the Hejaz and Tripoli. The infantry are armed with Mauser rifles. The effective war strength of the Turkish army is 987,900 men. The navy possesses no fighting power.