The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire (51 page)

‘May God preserve us from such a weak-kneed Sultan,’ Ali Hayder, an Arabian prince loyal to the dynasty, wrote in his journal when he heard of Mehmed VI’s flight. ‘The
Turkish Imperial Family are largely to blame’ for the ‘disintegration’ of the Muslim world, Ali added in a later diary entry.
¹⁵
Although it remains unfashionable to stress the influence of individual rulers on great events, there is no doubt that the Ottomans were ill-served by Abdulhamid’s successors. Significantly,
once he had sailed off to Malta, the last Sultan was content to drop out of the pages of history. He settled in San Remo, on the Italian Riviera, making no attempt to establish a court-in-exile.
Only once did his movements arouse even passing interest and that was when, soon after his deposition, he decided to go on pilgrimage to Mecca. Thus, so he believed, he would fulfil an obligation
binding on every good Muslim and shamefully neglected by all thirty-five of his predecessors on the throne.

Yet, even though he no longer ruled as Sultan or Caliph, those knees remained pathetically weak. Mehmed VI duly sailed through the Suez Canal and disembarked at Jeddah.
He made the fifty-four-mile journey from the coast into the barren valleys of the limestone hills, and saw for himself the Great Mosque around the sacred Kaaba. But he did not wait to perform the
full pilgrimage at the Sacred House, with its sevenfold circumambulation of the Kaaba and the contrite kissing of the black stone. While Mehmed was in Mecca, he heard that his one-time rebellious
vassal, King Hussein of the Hejaz, was again seeking to secure for himself the title of Caliph. Rather than risk being caught up in the intrigues of Arabian politics, the ex-Sultan hurried back to
his sanctuary in Mussolini’s Italy. There he died on 15 May 1926, three months after his sixty-fifth birthday. He was the first Sultan since the fall of Constantinople who could not be buried
in the city which his namesake had conquered; but French mandatory officialdom relented, allowing his body to be brought to territory over which he was briefly the ruler. His tomb lies in
Damascus.
¹⁶

A stranger fate was reserved for the last Ottoman Caliph. While Mehmed VI survived his deposition for only forty-two months, Abdulmecid II had more than twenty years of exile ahead of him when
he stepped down from the Orient Express; as a man of exquisite culture, he chose to spend his last days in Paris, the city where his artistry had once been exhibited. He lived quietly, virtually
forgotten in the inter-war world of strutting dictators, and he lived longer than any previous head of the Ottoman dynasty. When death came to him in his seventy-seventh year, his passing went
unnoticed in the wider world, not even a brief obituary being slipped into
The Times
of London.
¹⁷
But this is hardly surprising: Abdulmecid
died on 23 August 1944—an abnormal day in the history of Paris, with the Grand Palais in flames as Free French tanks and American infantry hurried to liberate his chosen city of exile from
Nazi occupation. As if to atone for upstaging Abdulmecid’s final exit, the Allied authorities gave permission for his body to be conveyed to the second Holy City of Islam. Alone among Ottoman
rulers, the last Caliph was interred at Medina.

S
ULTANS
S
INCE THE
O
TTOMAN
C
APTURE OF
C
ONSTANTINOPLE

A
LTERNATIVE
P
LACE
N
AMES

G
LOSSARY

*:‘
ş
’ is sometimes transliterated ‘sh’

akinji
: irregular horsemen in early Ottoman armies

Bab-i Âli
: ‘the high gate’, ‘Sublime Porte’; administrative office of the Grand Vizier

bailo
: ambassador of the Venetian republic

ba
ş
i bozuka
: ‘bashibazooks’; irregular military volunteers employed in Balkans in late XIXth century

bayrakdar
: standard bearer

bey: a vassal ruler in early Ottoman empire; later, the governor of a
sanjak

beylerbey: provincial governor (of a
beylerbik
)

caliph: (Arabic,
khalifa
), ‘Succesor to the Prophet’

Capitulations: system of extraterritorial jurisdiction and favoured trade tariffs established by bilateral treaties

ce
ş
me
: fountain

dev
ş
irme
: tribute of Christian boys for conversion to Islam and service to the Sultan, raised from conquered Balkan lands mid-XVIIth century

Divan: Sultan’s imperial council and court of law

dragoman: interpreter to a foreign envoy

Effendi: Turkish title of respect

Ethnike Hetairia
: Greek nationalist society in late XIXth century

evkaf
(sing.,
vakif
): Muslim religious charitable endowments

firman
: imperial edict (later replaced by
irade
)

fetva
: legal opinion given by a mufti skilled in Muslim Holy Law

Galatasaray: Imperial
lycée
; school opened in 1869; also known as
Mekteb-i Sultani

Ghazi
: honorific title denoting a warrior hero of Islam

Grand Vizier: Sultan’s chief minister

haiduk (hajduk): Balkan bandit, generally a Bulgar or Serb

hamidiye
: auxiliary gendarmerie, mainly of Kurds, raised by Abdulhamid II

hafiye
: secret police

hamam
: bath

Harbiye
: Military Academy in Pera

harem: women in the Sultan’s household; their part of a house

hatt-i hümayun
: imperial rescript (decree)

hospodar: governor of Wallachia–Moldavia

Hümbaraciyan
: bombardier corps

ilmiye
: religious cultural institution, constituting the Muslim ‘Establishment’