Word Finder - sultan

definition

The holder of a secular office, formally subordinate to, but de facto the power behind the throne of, the caliph.

definition

A hereditary ruler in various Muslim states (sultanate), varying from petty principalities (as in Indonesia and in Yemen), often vassal of a greater ruler, to independent realms, such as Oman, Brunei, or an empire such as the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

definition

A variant of solitaire, played with two decks of cards.

definition

A breed of chicken originating in Turkey, kept primarily in gardens for ornamental reasons. See: sultan (chicken)

The whole district is the private property of the sultan of Turkey.

The sultan sent him back to the Christian camp, and he passed on to the Holy Land.

In 1421 the sultan died.

Eventually he renounced his allegiance to the sultan, but was overthrown by a Turkish army in 1822.

He accompanied his uncle Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz on his visit to England and France in 1867.

Hyder Ali was proclaimed sultan of Mysore in the south.

The total population of the Turkish Empire in 1910, including Egypt and other regions nominally under the sultan's suzerainty, was 36,323,539, averaging 25 to the square mile; in the provinces directly under Turkish government, 25,926,000.

Until the revolution of 1908, with a very short interval at the beginning of the reign (1876) of the deposed sultan Abd-ul-Hamid, the government of Turkey had been essentially a theocratic absolute monarchy.

It was subject to the direct personal control of the sultan, who was himself a temporal autocrat, which he now is not, and the most generally recognized caliph, that is, " successor," of the Prophet, and consequently the spiritual head of by far the greater portion of the Moslem world - as he still is.

So also did the " Midhat Constitution " promulgated by Abd-ul-Hamid almost immediately after his accession to the throne, owing largely to the reactionary spirit at that time of the' Ulema and of the sultan's immediate advisers, but almost, if not quite, in equal measure to the scornful reception of the Constitution by the European powers.

The theoretical absolutism of the sultan had, indeed, always been tempered not only by traditional usage, local privilege, the juridical and spiritual precepts of the Koran and the Sunnet, and their 'Ulema interpreters, and the privy council, but for nearly a century by the direct or indirect pressure of the European powers, and during the reigns of Abd-ul-Aziz and of Abd-ul-Hamid by the growing force of public opinion.

The enthusiastic spirit of reform which heralded the accession of the latter sultan never altogether died out, and from about the last decade of the 19th century has been rapidly and effectively growing in force and in method.

In July of that year the sultan Abd-ul-Hamid capitulated to the Young Turks and restored by Irade (July 24) the constitution which he had granted in December 1876 and suspended on the 14th of February 1878.

In temporal matters the sultan is a constitutional monarch, advised by a cabinet formed of executive ministers who are the heads of the various departments of state, and who are responsible to the elected Turkish parliament.

The sultan remains the spiritual head of Islam, and Islam is the state religion, but it has no other distinctive or theocratic character.

The grand vizier (sadr-azam), who is nominated by the sultan, presides ex officio over the privy council (mejliss-i-khass), which, besides the Sheikh-ul-Islam, comprises the ministers of home and foreign affairs, war, finance, marine, commerce and public works, justice, public instruction and " pious foundations " (evkaf), with the grand master of ordnance and the president of the council of state.

For administrative purposes the immediate possessions of the sultan are divided into vilayets (provinces), which are again subdivided into sanjaks or mutessarifliks (arrondissements), these into kazas (cantons), and the kazas into nahies (parishes or communes).

A vali or governor-general, nominated by the sultan, stands at the head of the vilayet, and on him are directly dependent the kaimakams, mutassarifs, deftardars and other administrators of the minor divisions.

It really, however, had the effect of centralizing the whole power of the country more absolutely than ever in the sultan's hands, since the Valis were wholly in his undisputed power, while the ex officio official members of the local councils secured a perpetual Mussulman majority.

Sultan Abd-ulHamid, on the other hand, pursued a settled policy of reducing the fleet to impotency, owing to his fear that it might turn against him as it had turned against Abd-ul-Aziz.

The conquerors were feudatories of the reigning prince or sultan, and their payments consisted principally in providing fighting forces to make up the armies of the prince.

The kharaj, the jiziye, and the whole feudal system disappeared in theory, although its spirit, and indeed in some respects its practice, still exists in fact, during the reforming period initiated by Sultan Selim III., culminating in the Tanzimat-i-Khairiye (1839) of Abd-ul-Mejid, and the Hatt-iHumayun issued by the same sultan (1856).

But the entire financial authority resided in the sultan as keeper, by right, of the fortune of his subjects.

Seeing the rapid increase of the financial burdens of the state, a commission of experts, British, French and Austrian, was charged, (1860) with setting the affairs in order, and with their assistance Fuad Pasha drew up the budget accompanying his celebrated report to the sultan in 1862.

Under the deposed sultan the Civil List Administration had encroached in every direction not only on the revenues properly accruing to the state, but upon private and upon state property in most parts of the empire.

Thus it is explained in the preface to the budget that the revenues " proceeding from the deposed sultan " are not classed together under one heading, but that they have been apportioned to the various sections under which they should fall " whether taxes on house property or property not built upon, tithes, aghnam, forests, mines, cadastre, sport, military equipment, private domains of the state, various receipts, proceeds of sales, rents " - a truly comprehensive list which by no means set a limit to the private resources of Abd-ul-Hamid II., who looked upon the customs also as a convenient reserve on which he could, and did, draw when his privy purse was short of money.

The sultan receives an annual allocation for himself and household of £T240,000, the crown prince one of £T24,000, and a sum of T153,000 is assigned to the Imperial princes and the sultanas.

The deposed sultan was allowed ET12,000 a year, and a similar amount was set aside to provide dowries for two sultanas who were just about to be married.

It should be added that the Greek War (1897) revealed to the sultan the decrepit state into which the Ottoman navy had fallen, and considerable " extraordinary " expenditure - much of which was wasted - has been incurred since (and including) 1902 to put the least out-of-date warships into a serviceable condition.

In that year a horde, variously estimated at from two to four thousand souls, with their flocks and their slaves, driven originally from their Central Asian homes by the pressure of Mongol invasion, and who had sought in vain a refuge with the Seljukian sultan Ala-ud-din Kaikobad of Konia, were returning under their chief Suleiman Shah to their native land.

His earliest conquest was Karaja Hissar (1295),(1295), where first the name of Osman was substituted for that of the sultan in the weekly prayer.

To the usual letter announcing the victory the caliph in Egypt replied saluting Bayezid with the title of " Sultan of the lands of Rum."

The sultan's five sons were with the army, as well as all his generals; 7000 Servian auxiliaries under Stephen, son of Lazarus, took part in the battle (1402).

But the sultan could not bend his pride to suffer foreign intervention in a matter that touched his honour, and the return of Napoleon from Elba threw the Eastern Question into the background.

On the 13th of October 1613, the diet of Klausenburg confirmed the choice of the sultan.

Having annihilated at Poltava the army of Charles XII., Peter was not at all indisposed to renew the struggle with Turkey, and began the campaign in the confident hope of making extensive conquests; but he had only got as far as the Pruth when he found himself surrounded by a great Turkish army, and, in order to extricate himself from his critical position, he had to sign a humiliating treaty by which Azov and other conquests were restored to the sultan.

A long series of insurrections - those of 1821, 1833, 1841, 1858, 1866-1868, 1878, 1889 and 1896 may be especially mentioned - culminated in the general rebellion of 1897, which led to the interference of Greece, the intervention of the great powers, the expulsion of the Turkish authorities, and the establishment of an autonomous Cretan government under the suzerainty of the sultan.

The sultan then invoked the assistance of Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, who despatched 7000 Albanians to the island.

The allied powers (France, England and Russia) decided, however, that Crete should not be included amongst the islands annexed to the newly-formed kingdom of Greece; but recognizing that some change was necessary, they obtained from the sultan Mahmud II.

The sultan's reply was couched in the vaguest terms, and the Cretans were ordered to render unquestioning obedience to the authorities.

The foreign consuls intervened in the hope of bringing about a peaceful settlement, but the Sultan resolved on the employment of force, and an expedition despatched to Vamos effected the relief of that town with a loss of 200 men.

The ambassadors at Constantinople urged peaceful counsels on the Porte, and the Sultan, alarmed at this juncture by an Armenian outbreak, began to display a conciliatory disposition.

The Christian leaders prepared a moderate scheme of reforms, based on the Halepa Pact, which, with a few exceptions, were approved by the powers and eventually sanctioned by the sultan.

These measures were followed by the presentation of collective notes to the Greek and Turkish governments (2nd March), announcing the decision of the powers that (1) Crete could in no case in present circumstances be annexed to Greece; (2) in view of the delays caused by Turkey in the application of the reforms Crete should now, be endowed with an effective autonomous administration, intended to secure to it a separate government, under the suzerainty of the sultan.

The sultan Jahan Begum, succeeded on the death of her mother, Shah Jahan Begum, in June 1901, being the only female ruler in India.

After conducting a campaign in Poland which terminated unfortunately, he gave a ready response to the appeal for aid made by the Hungarians under Imre ThOkoly (q.v.) when they rose against Austria, his hope being to form out of the Habsburg dominions a Mussulman empire of the West, of which he should be the sultan.

Kara Mustafa paid for his defeat with his life; he was beheaded at Belgrade in 1683 and his head was brought to the sultan on a silver dish.

At that period the Georgians were divided into various petty principalities, the chief of which were Imeretia and Georgia (Kharthlia), owing at times a more or less shadowy allegiance to the sultan of the Ottoman Turks at Constantinople.

At the close of the war with Tippoo Sultan in 1792, these territories fell to the share of the nizam of Hyderabad, by whom they were ceded to the British in 1800, in return for protection by a force of British troops to be stationed at his capital.

At first court jealousies and intrigues preventied Firdousi from being noticed by the sultan; but at length one of his friends, Mahek, undertook to present to Mahmud his poetic version of one of the well-known episodes of the legendary history.