Page:Story of Turkey and Armenia.djvu/27

 Rh sea-wall of Constantinople. It is called Bab-i-Humayum (the great gate of the Seraglio), or the Sublime Porte. In the old days, just without this gate pyramids of heads used to be piled up, trophies of war. The Sublime Porte really means the Sultan. He is absolute in matters both temporal and spiritual. He delegates his authority in temporal things to his Grand Vizier, and in religious affairs to the Sheik-ul-Islam. In connection with the Sultan and Grand Vizier is the Privy Council, the ministers of which, however, are little more than secretaries. Connected with the Sheik-ul-Islam is the Ulema, a body comprising priests and lawyers, and also the Mufti, the interpreters of the Koran. The government is thus before everything a theocracy, and is irreformable to any permanent degree. True, a constitution was proclaimed in 1876, but it lasted only a few months. There can be no equality of Moslem and Christian before the law. Yet the Sultan has repeatedly promised "perfect equality of civil rights" to all his subjects. What he really has had to do, however, is to exercise his Khalifate. By its votaries the Mohammedan religion is believed to be God's last expression of His will. Therefore, the Sultan, the Moslem counterpart of papal vicegerency and infallibility, is not only a sovereign, he is also an Inquisitor. He must needs compel all to embrace Islam; if the "heathen" will not, then death to them; if Christians and Jews will not, then servitude to them. The Turkish dominion in Europe is about equally divided between Mohammedans and Christians, but in Asia the former form a vast majority. The Christians number those who