I
have no space here to discuss the nature of the reforms attempted and
partly effected in the Ottoman Empire between the years 1839 and 1869 as
a concession to the clamour of Europe. They were instituted not by and
through religion, as they should have been, but in defiance of it, and
so failed to find acceptance anywhere with religious people. All changes
so attempted must fail in Islam because they have in them the inevitable
vice of illegality, and I hope to have an opportunity of explaining
later the manner in which alone a true reform can hope to find
acceptance. For the present I only note the promulgation of the Hatti
Humayoum and its kindred decrees as points in the history of the Ottoman
Caliphate's decline, and as direct reasons for the reactionary change of
front which we now witness in the policy of Constantinople.
Abd el Mejid for his ill-judged attempts gained with Mussulmans the name
of an unbeliever, and his son was deposed in the way we all know as a
breaker of the religious law. For a moment, however, Abd el Aziz seems
to have seen the true nature of his position and to have had some idea
of the _role_ required of him, as the following incident will show. It
marks at any rate the epoch pretty exactly when a revival of the
Sultan's spiritual pretensions, as a settled policy, was first resolved
on in Turkey.
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