Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-12-05
SULTAN tBpUL HAMID
A Description of the Man All Ohristendom
is Watching Today.
Said to Be Generous and Sympatheti
and Beset by Inherited
Difficulties.

The recent developments in Turkey and
Armenia have centered international in
terest upon ABDUL Hamid II. sultan of
Turkey. who is today probably the most
closely scrutiniZed parsonage in the world.
Prof. Edwin A. Grosvenor of Amherst
College gives an interesting description of
this important individual in his recently
published work entitled "Constantinople -
the following extracts from which will be
therefore of interest:
1.-The sovereign of Constantinople and Of
this widespread empire TO which it is cap
ital and center, may well awaken curiosity
and interest on the score of his exalted
rank, and because of that lordly dynastic
line of which he is heir and representative.
But still sincerer respect and homage
are due the present sultan. because of the
intellectual ard moral qualities which
charec terize him as a ruler and a man. In
his veins flows the blood of twenty success
sive sultans, his ancestors, and he is the
twenty-first in direct descent from Sultan
OEman l, the illuStriouS founder of his
house. He is the thirty-fourth saber-gird-
ed sultan and the twenty-eghth who mas
reigned at Constantinople No other Euro
pean monarch can trace his ancestry in so
direct and unbroken succession through so
many years to the earliest sovereign of his
race. inheritance being always transmitted
in the male line, and at no time deviat ting
farther thar to brother, uncle or nephew.
A Title as IL Title.
THE oriental pomp of his title reads like
a passage from the Arabian Nights
Sultan of Sultans, King of Kings Bestower
of Crowrs upon the Princes of the World,
Shadow of God Upon Earth Emperor and
Sovereign Lord and the White Sea and the
Black Sea. of Roumelia and Anatolia, of
L
bekir, kurdiStan, Azerbdjan, Cham, Alep-
pc, Egypt. Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem the
Holy, Of all the countries of Arabia and
Yemen, and moreover, of an 1nfinity of
other Provinces Gloriously Acquired, Son
of Sultan Abdul Medjid Khan, Son of Sui
tan Mahmoud Khan III, the Shah, Sultan
Abdul Hamid Khan H.
lie was born on the 10th day of the
month of Shaban, in the year of the He
ira 1858 (Septembcr ~, 1922 His early
life, like that of every Ottoman prince.
was passed in the sec,usion of the serag Clio,
save that in 1861 he accompanied his uncle,
Sultan Abdul Aziz, on a journey to western
Europe. This was the first occasion in OF
toman history that a sultan has visited a
foreign land j; n peaceful guest. The men,
tai condition of his elder brother, Sultan
Mourad V, rendering abdication a state
| Necessity. Sultan Abdul Hamid II, as next
in age, reluctantly assembled the throne.
heirg girded with the saber in the Mosque
of Eyoub, on Shaban Il, 1893 august 81,
1850
Dimcult Duties.
1.-The duties incumbent on him were two
fold: He was to be caliph, or spiritual
head of the unnumbcred millions of the
Mussulman faith, and sultan of the Otto
ma n empire, whose far-reaching dominions,
with their heterogeneous peoples, stretched
through three continents. The political
condition at his advent rendered these re-
spL nSibiIties still more weighty. The en-
pire was confronted with an imminent. in
evitable and inevitably disastrous war The
treasury was empty, national credit bank
rupt the army disOrganiZed and dispersed,
the country Impoverished. discouraged and
distracted by factions whose aims were
all the more dangerous because concealed.
The new sultan manifested unusual talents
In organization ard administration. There
was no problem too humble or detail too
minute to receive his careful consideration.
Sympathetic, generous and large hearted,
he endeavored to benefit as well as rule his
people. No other living sovereign has
equaled him in gifts to the unfortunate and
suffering. Not only the capital. but count
less villages cherish tokens of his interest
and regard.
Interested in Education.
He has shown constant desire to ad-
vance education among his subjects. Nor
has this solicitude been sympathetic mere
ly and confined to words, or limited to the
requirements of a single sex. In private
conversations and official utterances he