Category: Biographies

The Diary of a Turk

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--...

Chapters

3. CHAPTER III.

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...