in Europe and Africa to establish herself firmly in Anatolia with Mesopotamia for background when his efforts to reanimate the Ottoman Empire with the crescent once more ascendant in three continents should miscarry, contemplated for this contingency the removal of the Sublime Porte from Constantinople to Brussa,92 a measure strongly recommended by his Grand Vizir Kutshuk Pasha. 93 But Muḥammad VI, moving or not, will have to do without Mesopotamia, since lost to the house of Othman among so many fair lands and rich cities, alas! even Damascus of 'Umayyad renown and then another potential capital of its reduced domains.

Though as yet national consciousness is but slightly developed in the Moslim world, a change in that respect has set in with the Arabian movement, and a definitive displacement of the Ottoman centre of gravity from Istambul to Anatolia, restoring either Brussa or Konia, the old Seljuq capital, to its former glory, would agree with the nationalistic tendencies of the Turks awakened by the activities of Zīya Bey9 and exploited by the Committee of Union and Progress. From one of those coigns of vantage the Pan-Turanian idea of lining up all Turks, with the Osmanlies as their leading clan, could profitably be pursued, considering the propitious course of events in Russia, whose Central Asiatic provinces are largely inhabited by Turkish kinsfolk profoundly stirred by the Pan-Islamic propaganda, even to the extent of forgetting their sectarian differences. 95 Ottoman diplomacy, guiding 92 Capital of the Osmanlies from its capture by Orkhan in 1329 until Murad I moved his Court to Adrianople after taking possession of that town in 1360.

93 Cf ALI VEHBI BEY, Pensées et Souvenirs de l'ex-Sultan Abdul-Hamid. "A native of Dyarbakir who, having gone to Salonica on a political mission connected with the activity of the Committee of Union and Progress, founded there in 1909 the first Turkish nationalist society. A campaign was started to purify the Turkish language of Arabian and Persian words and expressions, to efface Quranic texts in Arabic characters from the walls of Turkish mosques, even to discard the Arabic original of the Book for a Turkish translation, but whatever its general results amounted to, the movement met with little success in the ecclesiastical field while it served to widen the gulf between the Arabs and the Young Turks. Cf TEKIN ALP, Türkismus und Pan-Türkismus.

95 At the All-Caucasian Muhammadan Congress, which met at Baku on April 28, 1917, the Sunnite mufty and the leading Shi'ite sheikh opened the proceedings with embracing each other in public. The Muhammadan Women's Congress, held in the same month at Orenburg, the All-Russian Muhammadan Congress at Moscow and the Muhammadan Military Congress at Kazan, which followed in May and August, cultivated that fraternising spirit while it was further encouraged by the Russian Muhammadan Council, specially appointed to look after the interests of the Moslemin affected by the breakdown of Czarist Russia. Cf for these and other particulars the able articles on Turkey, Russia and Islam and Russia, Germany and Asia in The Round Table of December, 1917, and June, 1918

the destinies of some 8.000.000 Anatolian Turks in agreement with the Tatars of the Crimea, the Muhammadans of the Caucasus (some 2.500.000 of whom are of the Turkish race) and the three great Tatar groups centred around Kazan, Tobolsk and Astrakhan, together some 16.000.000 Turkish speaking co-religionsists, might well try to revive the scheme of a defensive alliance of Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan, strengthened by the adhesion of Moslim Russia in Europe and Asia, and co-operating with a free United Arabia against infidel aggression or countervailing its nefarious influence under western control. The conception is not without merit but, unhappily for designs of the kind, Armenia lies as an insuperable obstacle in the path of their realisation, blocking it still more effectively than she does the consummation of French and Greek longings North of Syria and South of the Black Sea. In addition to this we may trust the victorious Powers of the Entente to see to it that Turkey does not nullify the advantageous results of the war by turning to account her inherent capacity for expansion any readier than Germany hers by the absorption of German Austria-Afghanistan is already taken care of, Persia bound hand and foot, and Anatolia, promoted to the dignity of being the home of the Ottoman Turks at a comparatively late date, invaded by filibustering hosts of divers western nationalities out for their respective countries' political aggrandizement and territorial gain.

It if knows how to wait, Turkish irredentism97—leagued or not with Bolshevism! may nevertheless have its opportunity as the Grand Sherif of Mecca had his, identifying himself with the Arabian movement. We speak of this because the question of the Khalifate, 98 viz. the mooted replacing of the Ottoman Commander of the Faithful

96 Geographically the keystone of Islām.

97 Directed in its present manifestations by Muṣṭafa Kamal Pasha, whose services in the Balkan Wars qualified him for a high command in the Turkish army that confronted the Allies during the earlier part of the Gallipoli campaign. Transferred to the Asiatic provinces, he was entrusted with the defence of Erzerum and served later on the Mesopotamian front. Outspoken in his criticism of German methods, he refused to submit to the dictatorial orders of General von Falkenhayn and resigned. Having rejoined Enver Pasha's forces when German strategy in the Near East had broken down, he was commissioned, after the armistice, to investigate the causes of the politically unsatisfactory condition of Asia Minor and assumed the leadership of the nationalistic movement in that region.

98 Brought to the fore by the Arabian movement and, to quote RENÉ PINON, La Réorganisation de la Turquie d'Asie, Revue des Deux Mondes, August 15, 1913, "Le monde arabe c'est la grande inconnue de l'Asie occidentale, la grande réserve de l'avenir."

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by an Arabian pretender of the true blood, Husayn Ibn 'Aly, Grand Sherif of Mecca and King of the Hejaz on probation, or an Egyptian dependent according to an earlier British project still held in reserve," or perhaps a dark horse by way of compromise, is intimately bound up with the Syrian question as part and parcel of the eternal Eastern Question which made the main object of the war centre rather in the East than in the West. Syria, portal to one of the important passageways between Europe and Asia, 100 looms large in the liquidation in bankruptcy of the Ottoman Empire. Long desirous of rounding off her Egyptian holding with that region to link up with Mesopotamia,101 Great Britain appears now, or appeared according to the Sykes-Picot agreement, tardily carried out by the recent withdrawal of her troops from the Marash,102 'Ayntāb,103 Urfah104 and Nabulus areas, to reduce her claims there in favor of France, which had deemed it advisable to clinch moral persuasion with military action, holding Bayrūt by way of first security. But France still complains of Britain "setting to work systematically to ruin the French heritage in the East," nay,

99 Consolidating her gradually acquired predominance in Egypt, Great Britain has magnified the shadowy Khedivial authority by conferring the title of Sultan on Husayn Kamil, successor of Abbas Hilmy and since succeeded by Fu'ad, a younger son of the Khedive Ismail, manifestly not without the arrière-pensée, inspired by her being the greatest Muhammadan Power, i. e. the Power whose rule extends over more Muhammadans than that of any other, to restore the seat of a generally recognised Khalifate to Cairo, in default of a higher ranking centre of Muhammadan influence under her sway, and so to attain control over Mecca and Medina too, as we have endeavored to explain elsewhere: Constantinople and the Holy Places of Islām, Oxford and Cambridge Review, October, 1912. 100 And always recognised as such by longheaded statesmen. So we find f. i. in the clever if spurious will of Peter the Great, whose alleged testamentary advice has also, en passant, a reference to Persia that sounds most pertinent as Persian affairs are shaping now, the recommendation to his successors on the Muscovite throne "de se pénétrer de cette vérité, que le commerce des Indes est le commerce du monde, et que celui qui peut en disposer exclusivement est le vrai souverain de l'Europe; qu'en conséquence on ne doit perdre aucune occasion de susciter des guerres à la Perse, de hâter sa dégénérescence, de pénétrer jusqu'au golfe Persique et de tâcher alors de rétablir par la Syrie l'ancien commerce du Levant." LESUR's version.

101 Cf f. i. a pamphlet, The Partition of Turkey an indispensable Feature of the Present Political Crisis, published in 1853 by one possessed, it seems, of inside information, who preferred to conceal his identity under the much abused pseudonym VERITAS.

102 The Germanicia-Marasion of the Lower Empire.

103 Two hours South-East of the mound which marks the site of Dolicha, once famous for its worship of Baal (Zeus Dolichenus).

104 The Assyrian Ruhu, Syrian Urhoi, Greek Orrhoë, called Callirrhoë in the Seleucidian era and Edessa by the crusaders.

attempting to create disorder with the object of eventually stepping in, interposing by force of arms as the nearest Power in actual occupation of neighboring countries.105 Britain reasons that the collapse of Russia has brought about changes which justify new interpretations of old arrangements.

"If Russia advances beyond the Araxes, she will be able to dominate Mesopotamia on the South and Anatolia on the West," wrote in 1914 a keen-sighted observer of the situation in the Near East.106 This danger and the collateral one of Russia expanding farther to the South-West, have since temporarily subsided. France, besides, has an ancient, undeniable title to mandatory privileges in Syria if a mandatory there must be to preside over the evolution of the country's national existence. Unfortunately, the Syrians themselves are at variance, different religious and ethical groups clamoring for different guides on different roads to the goal of economical and political independence. Federal autonomy in that land of racial and sectarian vendettas is moreover menaced on the one hand by Zionist activities adding fuel to the fire of resentment at Damascus, capital of Syria proper, the "head of Syria,"107 being lopped off to indulge the upstart royalty of the Ḥejaz, on the other hand by separatist agitations such as prompted the Maronites of the Lebanon to send a delegation to Paris to ask. for downright French suzerainty. As represented by those spokesmen, the Lebanonians 108 do not restrict themselves to self-determination in the suggested sense and sweeping changes in their home government already advocated in 1860,109 but wish to annex a considerable stretch of the coast, including the thriving ports of Bayrut, Sidon and Tripoli in addition to several towns in the

105 ROBERT DE CAIX, The Question of Syria in The New Europe of August 28, 1919. 106 PHILIPS PRICE, op. cit.

107 ISAIAH, VII, 8.

108 The population of the Lebanon was estimated in 1918 at "about 400.000, of whom 320.000 [were] Christians, 50.000 Druzes and the rest Moslems, with practically no Jews." Sir GEORGE ADAMS SMITH, op. cit., p. 54. A. BERNARD, op. cit., makes it 500.000 "sur 5700 kmq, soit 88 habitants au kmq."

109 "Le Liban ne sera constitué d'une manière rationelle et par conséquent durable, que le jour où, sans blesser les intérêts généraux qui y sont engagés, on lui aura donné pour capitales politiques ses capitales commerciales." Damas et le Liban, extract of a diary kept on a voyage through Syria, in 1860, by the Count of Paris and the Duke of Chartres.

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interior outside of their mountain domain,110 urging that the future of Syria depends largely on the future of the Lebanon, her soul and intellectual centre. A more pressing want than territorial expansion seems, however, to be of an agrarian character for despite emigration on an increasing scale before the war, land there could scarcely be purchased, one-third of the soil at the lowest estimate, and that the best, being owned in mortmain by the monasteries.112

With the British occupying Jerusalem and Palestine, the Arabs under the aegis of Great Britain in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Ḥamā113 among the principal cities of the districts allotted to them, while the French are firmly ensconced in Bayrut, Tripoli and Alexandretta, that is, with three governments set up in Syria and her smouldering enmities sedulously stirred by alien reformers never at a loss for a doctrine to prove that they are the people to solve the Turkish tangle, no further comment is needed to demonstrate that the country contains at present in its state of national incompleteness more explosive material than at any time in its stormy past. We are witnessing there a continuation of the old, old story in one of its episodes so graphically told by Iskander Ibn Ya'qūb Abkāriūs, a scramble for first place in the competition for commercial increase, profitable banking and attractive, investments for foreign capitalwhere peace cannot hive, privateering will thrive. Yet here, perhaps, is the best chance for the Ottoman Empire to escape total dismemberment. Apart from the long-pending, ticklish problem of the Bosporus and Dardanelles, and the complications inseparable from the division of such in many respects indivisible wares as the outlying provinces of Turkey in Asia,114 a certain côterie of la haute finance, which, inter110 "Beaucoup de Maronites demeurent en dehors de la montagne (environ 150.000); on en compte 55.000 à Beyrout, 15.000 à Damas." A. BERNARD, op. cit.

To conclude their argument with a proposition formulated by K. T. KHAÏRALLA, the author of the book mentioned in Note 76 and at the time of Jamal Pasha's iron rule condemned to death in absentia like Khalil Zanyah, another patriot working for his country's independence under the auspices of France.

112 W. MILLER, op. cit.

113 Once a royal city of the Hittites, the biblical 'Hamath, which belongeth to Judah, " II KINGS, XIV, 28.

114 Cf VON MOLTKE: "Endlich verhält es sich mit der Theilung der Türkei wie mit der Theilung eines Brilliantringes: es fragt sich wer den kostbarsten Solitär, Konstantinopel, besitzen, wer sich mit den werthloseren Rest, mit weiten Landstreichen, die von halbbarbarischen Völkern bewohnt sind, genügen lassen soll." Zur orientalischen Frage (Deutschland und Palästina).