Category: Biographies
My Asiatic origin--My great-grandfather's religious order--His miracles--My grandfather and Sultan Mahmud II.--An ordeal by wine--My father's charitable extravagance--His death--Primitive surgery in Asia Minor--The original home of vaccination--My mother's European ancestors--...
True meaning of the word harem--Eastern houses divided into two parts--Male members of the family only allowed to enter the female quarter--Seclusion of women stricter among the...
16. CHAPTER XVI.Christian Ambassadors accredited to England by the Sultan--I am strongly urged to return--A question of money and health--I consent and go back to Constantinople--At the palace...
2. CHAPTER II.My hatred of lessons--Compulsory attendance at school--The bastinado in schools--My own experience of it--How schoolgirls are punished--The old-fashioned implement for beating--...
4. CHAPTER IV.The discomforts of travelling--Precautions against brigands--Village hospitality--Bad condition of inns and hotels--Broussa, the first capital of the Ottoman Empire--Constantino...
1. CHAPTER I.My Asiatic origin--My great-grandfather's religious order--His miracles--My grandfather and Sultan Mahmud II.--An ordeal by wine--My father's charitable extravagance--His death-...
5. CHAPTER V.First moderation of my prejudice against Europeans--The Levantine guide--The truth is not in him--I begin to wish to visit England--A summer trip to Asia Minor--A British consul...
15. CHAPTER XV.I obtain a passage on a merchant vessel--A fortune of forty pounds--The people on board the ship--The difficulty of conversation--English cooking--Coffee and pig! Gibraltar, a f...
7. CHAPTER VII.I adopt European dress--The standard of civilisation--English clothes 'made in Austria'--European dress first adopted under Sultan Mahmud--My vain attempts to get an appointment...
6. CHAPTER VI.The anomalous position of foreigners in Turkey--Capitulation privileges--The Porte has no jurisdiction over foreign criminals--Attempts to modify the anomaly--Reason for their f...
14. CHAPTER XIV.The Turkish bath--Some of its features--Great number of baths in Constantinople--Women's baths and a proverb--Evening parties at the bath--I encounter a spy in a bath--He is wel...
8. CHAPTER VIII.The Porte the old centre of authority--The Ministers' present degraded position--A conversational opening--Meaning of 'Yildiz Kiosk'--The Sultan's Armenian appearance--The reaso...
11. CHAPTER XI.The Sultan's opponents--His manner of dealing with them--The 'humanity' of Europe--Attempts on the Sultan's life--Lack of organisation in Young-Turkey-- refuge for the reformers...
13. CHAPTER XIII.I become an object of interest to the Palace spies--I therefore leave Constantinople for a time--England and the Anatolian Railway--Prosperous whitewash and a deceitful governor...
9. CHAPTER IX.The old right of appeal to the Sultan's person a thing of the past--He only leaves his palace once a week--The selamlik--Religious ceremonies and the sacred caravan--Its departu...
10. CHAPTER X.The Sultan's personal power--The unimportance of territories--"Après moi le deluge"--Interested Europe--The poor native Christians--'Squeezability' of the Sultan--Every man has...
12. CHAPTER XII.Abd-ul-Hamid's use of his power as Caliph--What the Moslems think of him--British Mohammedan subjects--The validity of the Ottoman claims to the Caliphate--The mistaken policy o...