Excerpt from Life of Abdul Hamid

For, in a world where cruel deeds abound,
The merely damned are legion, with such souls
Is not each hollow and cranny of Tophet crammed?
Thou with the brightest of Hell's aureoles
Dost shine supreme, incomparably crowned,
Immortally, beyond all mortals, damned.

Thus wrote Mr. William Watson in a sonnet apologising to the late Sultan for having once called him simply "Abdul the Damned."

A word of apology on my part may, perhaps, be expected for having included this sorry creature, Abdul Hamid, among the Makers of the Nineteenth Century. It will be seen by those who read this volume, written by one who has spent most of the working years of his life among the Turks, who saw and made others see what was good in them, and who has always lifted up his voice against the cowardly oppression of their rulers, that, far from gaining as a personality from intimate knowledge, Abdul Hamid loses even the little credit he had with those who judged him from afar as, at any rate, an astute and able ruler. All this is true enough, and yet as an influence on the political thought and action of Europe in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as one who has handed down that evil influence to the Europe of this century, Abdul Hamid may justly lay claim to be included among those who have helped in large measure to make or mar the world into which we were born.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.