Sultan Quotes

The Byzantine emissary had pointed out that Mehmed’s predecessors had signed a treaty agreeing to “consult” with Constantinople before building any fortified structure in the area surrounding Constantinople. Mehmed was only 19 years old at this time. His intention f building a fort was to have a platform from which to attack and capture Constantinople itself which he did 2 years later. Earlier, the Eastern Roman Empire was much stronger and the Ottoman sultans were more cautious in dealing with them. However, the various Christian factions were all feuding with each other, and Mehmed II, despite his youth, was much better organized and was a better leader than his predecessors.

See {582893} for Saladin's Reply. King Richard was the leader of all the Christian forces in the Holy Land for the Crusade. There was a belief, that a wooden cross in the possession of the Muslim force was the true cross of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ

The import of this quotation is to see how matter of fact, atrocities by our standards, were committed in the earlier times. “Beys” was an Ottoman term for a class of nobles.

The Sultan, led 17 different military expeditions to India to spread the Muslim faith He is one of the few major conquerors of the world who was never defeated in Battle. He conquered the Lahore area and others of India that became Muslim and eventually became Pakistan. He was the first Islamic leader to bear the Title of Sultan demonstrating the separation of the civil power from the Caliph.

Mark Twain referring to and reflecting on his encounter with the Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Aziz.

Mehmet’s father Murat had just died. There was a custom in Islam that the new Sultan have all his brothers executed so that there would be absolute certainty who was the legitimate Sultan and that dissenting forces should not rally around another son of the old Sultan to have a regime change and/or a civil war. Stability and certainty in the line of succession was critical to the Muslims in that the Sultan was not only the civil ruler, but the highest religious authority as well. He had the power of the Christian Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor together. The struggle between the Sunnis and the Shiites which has overwhelmed Islamic unity was originally all about who the successor to Muhammad would be.

Bulgaria was under the control of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Levski always made it clear that Muslims were welcome in the Bulgaria that would be created after the Revolution. Most Muslims did not believe him, and many could not understand the concept of a nation without the Sultan who was the political AND religious head of Islam the world over. Essentially for many Muslims there can be no such thing as separation of church and state. To two cannot be distinct.

Young Mehmed II, had just replaced his dead father as Ottoman Turkish Sultan. Constantine XI had threatened to finance a cousin of Mehmed’s, Orhan and back his challenge to Mehmed for the Sultanate in order to put pressure on the young Sultan to renegotiate a treaty that had been signed with Mehmed’s father. It was a very ham-handed diplomatic effort, The Grand Vizier was the main force in the Ottoman Government counseling the new Sultan against war and an attack on Byzantium. He was furious as the Emperor’s action had weakened his influence with the young Sultan, who after he captured Byzntium later in the year, had his Grand Vizier executed.

Nasir Khusaro Hamiduddin Abu Muin Nasir bin Khusaro bin Harith al-Qubandiyani

This is an amazing quotation in the sense that it shows the absolute manner in which the Ottoman Turkish Empire ruled the Islamic World in the Middle East and North Africa. The Sultan and Caliph had absolute rule over both the civil and religious areas of the Islamic world. In this decree, the Caliph actually gave an entire nation to his loyal servant, Muhammad Ali, who had acted as Governor of Egypt for the Sultan. Muhammad Ali was neither a Turk or an Egyptian. He was an Albanian, racially and ethnically totally different from the nation that became his. From then on, Muhammad Ali’s children would inherit the Egyptian throne. And they did and his dynasty lasted until the revolution in 1923. The Ottoman Empire was far more controlling and arbitrary than the British Empire and lasted much longer as the Ottoman Caliph controlled the Islamic religion as well as the civil nations.

Western Saudi Arabia. Although his claim to rule all Arabs was never recognized by other nations and he was deposed by other Arabs in 1924, his sons Feysal I and Abdullah ended up ruling Iraq and Transjordan.

Sharif Husain was the leader of the Hashemite Tribes who had agreed with the British to lead a Hashemite Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks in exchange for the Hashimites to have their own independent state—Jordan. This also explains the close relationship between Jordan and Britain. The notion of enslavement to the British illustrates a blind spot that the Ottoman Empire had in its waning years. The Ottoman Sultan had the power of life and death over everyone in the empire, and Istanbul appointed all public officials for all jurisdictions, and made laws that applied to all. The Hashemites would instead have their own nation, make their own laws and would by subject to British foreign policy to the extent that the British guaranteed their independence from the Sultan and the Ottomans. They regarded it as freedom and not slavery.

This quotation illustrates that not all Islamic nations were authoritarian and discriminatory and that Turkey after the Ataturk reforms became a modern, free, democratic state.

The Ottoman Turks had captured Byzantium (Constantinople) in 1453. The Byzantines had received no help from their fellow Christians. The Christian Roman Empire was split in two—a Western (Latin) Empire led by the Roman Catholic Church in Rome, and the Eastern (Greek) Roman Empire led by the Orthodox Church headquartered in Constantinople (Byzantium). The two churches were not only in a theological conflict but violence broke out and the armies of the two religious empires attacked each other now and then. It was assumed that there would be mutual interest in protecting Europe from the Muslim armies. The comparison to the Sultan of Cairo was facetious of course. As a leading Muslim he would never provide any help to the Christians against other Muslims.