Dar-Ul-Islam; A Record of a Journey Through Ten of the Asiatic Provinces of Turkey

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION THESE few words of introduction to the book of my friend Captain Mark Sykes are written neither because I cherish any hope that they will add in any way to its value, or diminish in the least degree the risks—remote, as I hope—at which he hints in the opening paragraph, nor because I feel conscious of any special message to its readers urgently demanding utterance, but simply in response to his request; to which, remembering the many pleasant hours passed in his society, and the many occasions on which his entertaining anecdotes and reminiscences have relieved and brightened the tedium of academic life, I can only respond with a sam'an wa td'atan, ' I hear and I obey.' Captain Sykes has chosen as the title of his book the name Dar-ul-!slam, 'the Home of Islam,' a title specially appropriate to the Turkish Empire, with certain portions and characteristics of which the book deals. Just as to the medieeval Christian the world was divided into Christendom and Heathenesse, so to the Muhammadan (I will not say 'the modern Muhammadan,' when, withoutout Mr. H. G. Wells' Time Machine,' the Middle Ages can still be reckoned not more than a week distant from London) the world is divided into the Dar-ul-!slam, or ' Home of Islam,'and the Ddriil-Harb, or 'Abode of War.' The former, that is, the territories mainly inhabited by Muslims and ruled by a Muslim sovereign, has, alas! been sadly contracted and circumscribed in recent times, so that, of all the vast empire of the Caliphs once included under this title, only Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, and Morocco still survive as independent states, while it appears doubtful if all of these will outlive the present generation. Of these four, without entering into the vexed question of the Ottoman Sultan's claim to be regarded as Ca...