The House of Islam: A Global His­tory

Review: E. HUSAIN, The House of Islam: A Global History. Bloomsbury Publishing, London 2018. 307 pages and 11 pages of index. ISBN: 9781408872277

In the publishers’ note to the book entitled, “The House of Islam: A Global History” it records, “Ed Husain is the author of The Islamist, a memoir of his time inside radical Islamism. Having rejected extremism, he now advises gov­ernments and political leaders on Islam. He is a senior fellow at Civitas, Insti­tute for the Study of Civil Society in London and a global fellow at the Wood­row Wilson International Centre in Washington D.C. He was a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York for five years and co-founded Quilliam, the world’s first counter-extrem­ism think-tank in Britain. He has written for the New York Times, the Tele­graph, the Financial Times and appeared on CNN, BBC, and others. He lives in London”.

The House of Islam: A Global History, written by Mohamed Mahbub “Ed” Husain, M.A.‎ ‎(Middle Eastern Studies, SOAS, University of London), was re­viewed in 2018 by the Professor of Global History at Oxford University, Sen­ior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, and the Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, Peter Frankopan, the author of the informative, The First Crusade: The Call from the East (The Bodley Head, Lon­don, 2012) and The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (Bloomsbury, London, 2015), in part, a reworking of the political geographer (1861-1947) Sir Halford John Mackinder’s early 20^th c. notion of Central Asia as, “the Heartland” the geo-strategic centre of the world, as was expressed in his, The Geographical Pivot of History (R.G.S., The Geographical Journal, Vol. 23, No. 4, (April 1904), 421-437). Peter Frankopan wrote in his review of The House of Islam: A Global History, that this book was:

“Not just timely but important too. Ed Husain does not just set out the fundamentals of Islam as a religion but explains how and why understanding it properly matter (sic.). This should be compulsory reading”^[1].

However, if one reads with some attention, one finds a remarkable num­ber of oddities, expressing a lack of accuracy in historical and geographical matters for a book that is in part entitled “A global history”. For example, any quick check by any responsible editor or reviewer would read the fol­lowing sentences, which should have given pause for thought before putting such a book before the public or recommending it to the public:

Ed Husain writes: “Turks conquered and took Central Asia from the Per­sians in 1071 during the battle of Manzikert (Malazgirt in present day Tur­key). This was the precursor to the Seljuk Muslim empire’s conquest of Ana­tolia, which led to the Ottoman eventual seizure of Constantinople in 1453”^[2].

Firstly, it is a certain fact that the Turks did not take Central Asia from the Persians at the battle of Malazgirt in August 1071. The “Persians” did not fight the Turks at Malazgirt. The Great Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan’s army was forced to turn back at Damascus from its intended destruction of the Fatimid Shīī’ite state, due to news of the arrival of Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes’ army in his rear, and the Great Seljuk forces fought the New Roman (Byzan­tine) army of Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes (1067-1071) at the battle of Malazgirt in August 1071, capturing the Emperor and destroying much of his army. The Great Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan already ruled much of Central Asia and all of Iran. In the 11^th c. Central Asia was already ruled by Turkish dynas­ties: the Ghaznavids, the Karakhanids, the Khwārezm-Shāhs, and the Great Seljuks. “Central Asia” was not ruled in the 11^th c. by the Persians, nor was Anatolia.

Secondly, “the Seljuk Muslim Empire’s conquest of Anatolia” is likewise inaccurate. The Great Seljuk conquest of Anatolia was not completed in the aftermath of Malazgirt in 1071, and no serious attempt was undertaken for the conquest of Anatolia by the Great Seljuks; while the Rūm Seljuk Sultan­ate, founded by Sulaymān ibn Qutulmish (d. 1086), likewise did not complete the conquest of Anatolia. There remained, together with a variety of other Muslim Turkish ruled states, in Anatolia in the period from 1071 to 1308, both the territory in New Roman (Byzantine) hands, split into two states in Anatolia that were formed after the 1204 Crusader conquest and sack of Constantinople and the establishment of Frankokratia, the Latin Kingdom that lasted 57 years until 1261. The first of these, in western and north-west­ern Anatolia, was ruled from Nicea-Iznik while Constantinople was in Latin hands, and then after 1261 from Constantinople until 1453. It included in the first half of the 13^th c. the territory to the west of a line extending roughly from Dalaman on the Mediterranean, N.E. to Amasra on the Black Sea; while the other state was the Empire of Trebizond (1204-1461) on the Black Sea coast; while there was also the Cilician Kingdom of Lesser Armenia (1198-1375), in addition to the Rūm Seljuk Sultanate founded c. 1077 down to the demise of the last Rūm Seljuk Sultan Ghiyath ad-Din Mesud II in 1307. There was no Seljuk conquest of all of Anatolia, nor was there any “Seljuk Muslim empire”, there were the Great Seljuk, and the Rūm Seljuk Sultanates, which received their legitimacy for rule from their investiture as sultans by the Ab­basid Caliphs in Bagdad. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Empires have Emperors, Caliphates have Caliphs, Sultanates have Sultans, and Emirates have Emirs ruling over them. If Ed Husain had called Sultan Alp Arslan an Emperor in 1071, it is probable he would have been ignored as being ignorant, but if his remark had been noticed, understood as an insult, he would probably have been bastinadoed for calling the Great Seljuk Sultan by the name associated with the New Roman Emperor of the Christian religion.

Thirdly, it can be noted that it was not any recorded aim of any Rūm Sel­juk ruler to take Constantinople. The Roman Empire with its Emperor (qayāsira-i Rūm, fāsilīyūs or malik al-Rūm, Kaiser, Basileus-βασιλεύς, or King of the Romans) and its capital was regarded as a fixture of the known world in the 12^th and 13^th and into 14^th centuries, for Muslims and Christians, Or­thodox and Latin Catholic. It appeared to remain a great power, until the Dardanelles were crossed and then the castle of Gelibolu-Gallipoli was occu­pied following an earthquake on the 2^nd of March 1354 and the collapse of fortifications, in consequence of which the Catalan garrison left by ship (Ge­libolu was lost to the Crusaders in 1366, but was regained in 1376 and held), which enabled Ottoman settlement and ghazi inroads to the west of the straits into Thrace under Süleyman Pasha, and the city of Constantinople-İstanbul began to become truly isolated by land from its former territories. Consequently, it is not the case that it was the “Seljuk conquest of Anatolia, which led to the Ottoman eventual seizure of Constantinople in 1453”. Ana­tolia was not in fact conquered by the Seljuks, as is noted above, and the whole of Anatolia, depending on where the boundaries of Anatolia are drawn, was not itself conquered by the Ottomans until more than half a cen­tury after the fall of Constantinople, by 1516. To suggest the establishment of a Seljuk state in Anatolia led to the eventual Ottoman conquest of Con­stantinople indicates no understanding of the strange course at times taken by history, nor of the Great Seljuk and Rūm Seljuk policies towards the New Romans, nor of the consequences of the Mongol conquest for the Rūm Sel­juk state, nor of the chaos and re-alignments that followed the ending of the Abbasid Caliphate in Bagdad in 1258 by Mongol, Armenian and Georgian troops; nor of the importance of the re-founded Abbasid Caliphate in Cairo and of the importance of Mamlūke-Abbasid recognition for rule in Anatolia, nor of the Mongol Ilkhanid, and then of Timur’s interventions in Anatolia, claiming suzerainty over Anatolia as the heir of the Mongols in 1394 and 1399-1405, nor of the earthquake of 1354. Ottoman historians (Ahmedi et al.) associated the Ottoman dynasty with being a continuation of the Rūm Seljuks for reasons of perceived legitimacy, but secure evidence for this con­nection is quite simply lacking; while to claim some form of legitimacy for Ottoman rule from the recognition by the last Abbasid Caliph Al-Musta’sim-billah (1242-58) in Bagdad, of the legitimacy for rule of the Rūm Seljuk Sultan Izz ad-Din Kaykaus II (1246-1260), in terms of Islamic law, was simply impos­sible, given the passage of time and the absence of contact.

Fourthly, the statement that Seljuk rule in Anatolia led to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople draws inferences as to consequences that were by no means either explicit or evident, nor were they inevitable, until after the fact of the Ottoman conquest in 1453. The word led is the past tense of lead, as in, to guide a person by the hand, or by contact, as in, to lead by the nose, to direct by example, guidance given by going in front, to follow the lead of etc.^[3]. To say that Seljuk rule in Anatolia led to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, is rather like saying for example, “the Catholic Duke of Normandy’s conquest of England in 1066 led to the Tudor monarch Henry the Eighth’s decision that the English church should separate from Rome, becoming in effect a spiritual department of state under the rule of king Henry VIII as God’s deputy on earth, and to the dissolution of the monaster­ies in 1536”, a sentence which is without substantial meaning, a non-sense except in terms of one being chronologically subsequent to the other.

Ed Husain writes: “The Ottomans 1281 to 1924 ruled Arabia and Central Asia expanding into North Africa and Eastern Europe by the sixteenth cen­tury”^[4].

It appears from this sentence, as also from that cited above, “Turks con­quered and took Central Asia from the Persians in 1071 during the battle of Manzikert (Malazgirt in present day Turkey)”^[5], that Ed Husain may perhaps have no idea of the area ruled over by the Ottoman state with its vassal states, at the time of that state’s greatest extent in the 17^th c.; or he has been misinformed as to where the place termed since the 19^th c. “Central Asia” in fact is, as the place called Anatolia, Anadolu, Anatolie, Asia Minor, Turkey, is not, in fact, in Central Asia, and this distinction between Anatolia and “Cen­tral Asia” has been recognised for the past two and a half millennia, from antiquity onwards, hence the geographical terms, Asia Minor, Little Asia, the Lesser Asia, Asie Mineure, küçük asya, etc. Central Asia is not, and never has been in Little Asia, Anatolia-Asia Minor-Turkey. Nor can I find an earlier pub­lished reference describing Little Asia-Anatolia-Anadolu-Turkey as being “Central Asia”.

The term “Central Asia” was first employed by Alexander von Humbolt (1759-1869) after 1829, and Sir Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947) drew attention to its geo-strategic significance at the start of the 20^th c. Boris Z. Rumer wrote in 1996, “The term “Central Asia” in its current geopolitical meaning applies to the southern part of the USSR and includes five former Soviet republics that are now five independent states-Kazakhstan, Uzbeki­stan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan”^[6]. C. E. Bosworth (1928-2015) provided a definition in 2002 of the extent of this region: “Central Asia, broadly defined here as comprising not only Transoxania (what the medieval Arabs first called mā warā’a n-nahr, the land beyond the River, (Oxus) and East Turkistan (the modern province of Sinkiang or Xinjiang in the People’s Republic of China), but also Khurasan or Eastern Persia, what is now Afghan­istan, the north-western parts of the Indian subcontinent, from Sind to Kash­mir, and, on the Eastern fringes, Mongolia and Tibet”^[7]. UNESCO provides an­other definition of Central Asia, of all the countries between the Caspian Sea and Mongolia without access to an ocean. A region extending from East to West over a distance of about 5,000 km.

At its greatest eastwards extent under Sultan Mehmet IV. (r. 1648-87), the easternmost provinces and vassal states of the Ottoman Sultan-Caliph included: the vassal states of the Nogay and Krim (Crimean) Khanates, the Georgian principalities, the region on the right bank of the River Don in the Ukraine, and the Bakūshāmkhal of Tarku, south of Baku, the region of Tarku and Derbent in the Caucasus, with the region east of Erzurum to Baku dis­puted with Safavids of Iran. None of which were, and there never was, any Ottoman territory to the east of the Volga River, or to the east of the Caspian Sea, and so, there never was Ottoman rule over Central Asia, as defined by Boris Z. Rumer, C. E. Bosworth or UNESCO, or by any respectable geogra­pher/historian over the last millennium.

It can also be noted that Ottoman expansion of rule in Eastern Europe began in Thrace in 1354, Macedonia was taken in 1371, Bulgaria by 1393, Serbia annexed in 1439 and most of present day Greece was in Ottoman hands before the fall of Salonika to the Ottomans in 1430, and Bosnia was annexed in 1463, that is, Ottoman expansion of rule in Eastern Europe began quite some time before, “the sixteenth century”^[8], and it began a century be­fore the conquest of Constantinople.

While to state, as Ed Husain does, that the Ottomans “ruled Arabia,” however one choses to define the rather imprecise term “Arabia”, is, to say the least, “being economical with the truth”. Ottoman rule in the Hejaz (in­cluding of the Holy Cities of Mecca, Medina, and the port city of Jidda), in western Arabia began in 1517, following Sultan Selim’s defeat of the Mam­lūke state, and in June 1517, Numayy, the son of Barakat II, Sayyid and Sharif of Mecca (1495-1524), came to Cairo, presented the Sharif’s congratulations to the Sultan on his conquest of Egypt and received Sultan Selim’s signed decrees appointing Barakat II to military command of the city of Mecca, power over the city and supervision of the markets^[9], and Ottoman rule lasted until January 1919. Some form of Ottoman control over most the coastal areas was established in the 16^th c. However, in central Arabia, in Yemen (for two centuries, from 1636 to the 1840’s, not under Ottoman con­trol or recognising Ottoman rule), and in Eastern Arabia, the al-Hasa region, which was only under Ottoman rule from 1550 to 1670 and again from 1871 to 1913^[10]. Ottoman rule over much of Arabia, over a period of 400 years, with the exception of the Hejaz, can at best be described as both intermit­tent, and largely nominal, with actual or nominal Ottoman rule over Arabia, if understood to be the geographical peninsular of Arabia, for less than 200 of the 400 years from 1516-1919. Unless Ed Husain has reduced the content of the term Arabia to mean only the region of the Hejaz, which was largely in Ottoman hands from 1516 to 1917.

Ed Husain writes: “Rumi had lived in Konya since the age of 5, after his family left Belkh in today’s Afghanistan, to escape the Mongol persecu­tion”^[11].

However Jālāl ad-Dīn Rumī did not live in Konya from the age of 5. Rumī was born in Balkh in 1207 and it was probably “in 1212 when Rumi was 5, that Bahaudin took his family into voluntary exile in Samarcand”^[12], Sa­marcand is not Konya, and, like Balkh, is also rather a long way away from Konya, about 4,000 km. In 1219 Bahā’ū Din Walad, (d. 1228) Rumī’s father and family left Balkh to avoid the Pagan Mongol onslaught and to make the pilgrimage to Makka. It was in July 1219, that Chingiz-Khān and the main body of the Mongol army left the Irtish River and by September 1219 Utrār was besieged by Chingiz-Khān’s army, who reached Bukhara in February 1220 and whose army in the same year destroyed Balkh, mother of cities (formerly Bactr, hence ancient Bactria). Therefore Rumī, after a brief period in Samarkand aged 5-6, left Balkh in 1219 aged about 12 years old and, after the completion of the Hajj and lengthy periods of time spent in Erzincan and Larende, – todays Karaman, the party led by Rumī’s father only reached Konya in 1226 during the reign of Sultan Al-a’ al-Din Kaykubad (1221-1237), and therefore Rumī only began living in Konya after he was at least 18, and probably 19 years old.

The meaning of the word, “persecute” is “To pursue with enmity and ill treatment, to subject to penalties on the grounds of religious or political be­liefs”^[13]. But to describe the expected Mongol invasion in 1219 as “persecu­tion,” rather than as an invasion, “his family left Belkh in today’s Afghanistan, to escape the Mongol persecution”, gives a different spin to the Mongol in­vasion and implies it was provoked by different religious or political beliefs, rather than that the Mongol invasion of Khwārezm in 1219 was in response to the sacking of the Mongol trade caravan at Otrar and the killing of its mer­chants, by Inal-Khan, the cousin of the Khwārezm-Shāh, Sultan Muhammed, that provoked the westward Mongol invasions^[14], with all that this entailed for Eurasian people over the subsequent 200 years. Chingiz-Khān had re­minded the Khwārezm-Shāh prior to the invasion, of the pledge that had been given and received by both rulers in 1218, “to protect and not to harm merchants”^[15], and, following the sack of the Mongol caravan at Otrar by Inal-Khan, the entirely inadequate response received from the Khwārezm-Shāh, Sultan Muhammed resulted in the Mongol invasion. There was the sustained Mongol determination to kill all the members of the family of the Khwārezm-Shāh and expunge the blood-line, which, unlike the invasion, would fit the definition of the word persecution.

Ed Husain writes: “Thus began a hundred years of humiliation. By 1901, the glory days of the Muslims were over, and Russia’s Tsar Nicholas I, referred to the Ottoman Caliphate as ‘the sick man of Europe”^[16].

However, and firstly, “the glory days of the Muslims” remain today, they are not, and they cannot be over unless there are no Muslims left in the world. This, because the word ‘glory’ refers to, Praise, honour and thanks­giving offered in adoration^[17], given to the Almighty in prayers made by Mus­lims glorifying the Almighty, not least, as repeated in the Takbir, allāhu ak­bar, thereby putting the temporal world into its relative place.

Secondly, concerning worldly matters of fact, Tsar Nicolas I., who reigned from 1825 until 1855, did not say the Ottoman Caliphate was “the sick man of Europe” as is stated by Ed Husain, nor did the Tsar say that Turkey was “the sick man of Europe” through the repetition within quotation marks of this phrase by numerous historians and others over the course of the last 160 years, into this present century^[18], this expression attributed to Tsar Ni­colas I. has all the appearance of a well-known fact of history; but, such is in fact not the case, as Tsar Nicholas I., speaking in French, did not employ this expression, but, the ‘sick man’ although Jane S. Gerber wrote in, The Jews of Spain, A History of the Sephardic Experience: “In their view (Palmerston and Canning), it would be wise to promote reforms in the hope of propping up “the sick man of Europe” (a famous expression that, surprisingly, was not used until late in the century)”,^[19] it was in fact a term in wide use before “late in the century”; while Claire Spencer wrote the term is attributable to Ben­jamin Disraeli (1804-1881), who, “sought stronger European links to coun­teract the increasing decadence and decline of what Disraeli came to dub the ‘sick man of Europe”^[20]. But Disraeli was not the first to ‘dub’ the Ottoman state the ‘sick man of Europe’, that was in fact, the New York Times in 1860 (see below).

What in fact the Tsar Nicolas I. is reported to have said to the British Am­bassador, Sir George Hamilton Seymour in St. Petersburgh (sic.), on January the 9^th, is related in the Ambassador’s own despatch of the 11^th 1853, (re­ceived F.O. January 23) to be passed on to Lord John Russell at the Foreign Office in London, in the lead up to the Crimean War, which was: “When we are agreed (Britain and Russia) (d’accord) I am quite without anxiety as to the west of Europe; it is immaterial what the others may think or do. As to Turkey, that is another question; that country is in a critical state, and may give us all a great deal of trouble”… “The affairs of Turkey are in a very dis­organized condition; the country itself seems to be falling to pieces (menace ruine) the fall will be a great misfortune, and it is very important that England and Russia should come to some understanding upon these affairs, and that neither should take any decisive step of which the other is not appraised”. I observed, in a few words, that I was rejoiced to hear that his Imperial Majesty held this language; that this was certainly the view I took of the manner in which the Turkish questions are to be treated. He said, as if proceeding with his remark, “Stay, we have on our hands a sick man – a very sick man; it will be, I tell you frankly, a great misfortune, if, one of these days, he should slip away from us, especially before all necessary arrangements are made. But, however, this is not the time to speak to you on that matter”^[21]. It was clear that the Emperor did not intend to prolong the conversation. I therefore said, “Your Majesty is so gracious that you will allow me to make one further ob­servation. Your Majesty says the man is sick; it is very true; but your majesty will deign to excuse me if I remark, that it is the part of the generous and strong man to treat with gentleness the sick and feeble man”^[22]. In a further meeting between the Tsar and the Ambassador, 20^th February, 1853, the Ambassador related in his dispatch of the 21^st (received 6^th March) “But, sir, “I replied, “allow me to observe, that we have no reason to think that the sick man (to use your Majesty’s expression) is dying. We are as much interested as we believe your Majesty to be in his continuing to live; while, for myself, I will venture to remark that experience shows that countries do not die in such a hurry. Turkey will remain for many a year, unless some unforeseen crisis should occur. It is precisely, sir, for the avoidance of all circumstances likely to produce such a crisis that Her Majesty’s government reckons upon your generous assistance”^[23]. The term actually employed by Tsar Nicolas I was “un homme malade, un homme gravement malade – a sick man – a very sick man”^[24]. The words Tsar Nicolas I. used were not, as Ed Husain and many others have stated within quotation marks, “the sick man of Europe”, but, “the sick man”.

It is certainly worth noting that in the British Government’s own pub­lished account of this conversation^[25], the emperor’s words that were re­ported by the ambassador Sir G. H. Seymour were themselves altered, for what reason is quite unclear, but ‘bear’ and ‘musk’ now appear in the official text. As officially published in the Parliamentary Papers in 1854, Tsar Nicho­las “did not talk of a ‘sick man’ but of a ‘sick bear’. ‘The bear dies…The bear is dying…you may give him musk, but even musk will not long keep him alive’^[26]. Yet what the dispatch of the 11^th of January, 1853 recorded was: “Stay, we have on our hands a sick man – a very sick man; it will be, I tell you frankly, a great misfortune, if, one of these days, he should slip away from us, especially before all necessary arrangements are made.” In neither the text of the ambassador’s dispatch, nor in the doctored published official rec­ord of this text, can one find record of the much quoted description, “the sick man of Europe”.

The Early Use of the Term, “the sick man of Europe”

It appears that the first public use of the expression, “the sick man of Eu­rope,” a term which was not used by the Czar, nor by the British Ambassador, nor by the British Government in 1853-1854, was in the aftermath of the Crimean War, in 1860, by Lajos Kossuth but not in respect to Turkey.

In the lyrics of a celebratory song published in New York in 1855, entitled, “Sebastopol is Taken: A Patriotic Song”, Words & Music by An Amateur oc­curs the line, “The “sick Man” we’ll restore”^[27], the same term as was em­ployed by Tsar Nicholas I. in 1853. Likewise, an article in the Yorkshire Ga­zette^[28] of Saturday the 3^rd of May, 1856, entitled, “The Peace” describes Tur­key as “the sick man”, as Tsar Nicolas I. had done, “Turkey is still the sick man, and Europe will soon be fighting again over its dead body”, but does not use the expression, “the sick man of Europe”. Likewise Turkey was described as the “sick man,” in an article entitled “M. Kossuth at Manchester”, that ap­peared in the London Daily News^[29] on Monday 26^th of January 1857; in the North & South Shields Gazette and Northumberland and Durham Adver­tiser,^[30] on Thursday 29^th January 1857, as in the, York Herald,^[31] and the, Kent­ish Herald^[32] of London, of Saturday 31^st of January, and in Reynolds Newspa­per^[33], of London on the 1^st of February, there are the lines:

“The famous victory of Blenheim was not more futile than the famous vic­tory at Sebastopol. Turkey was the sick man indeed. Europe in general is sub­stantially in the same state as before the (Crimean) war”^[34].

The term, “the sick man of Europe”, if it was not coined by him, was cer­tainly repeatedly employed in his influential letters and speeches by the Hungarian nationalist and political reformer, Lajos Kossuth (Louis Kossuth) (1802-1894), who had found refuge in Ottoman territory after 1848. Louis Kossuth seems to have first employed the term, the sick man of Europe, to describe neither the Ottoman Sultan, nor Turkey, but, in fact, to describe the Emperor of Austria (1848-1916) (and later King of Hungary 1867-1916) Franz Joseph-Francis Joseph^[35]. This term first appeared in a letter by Louis Kossuth published on Friday the 13^th of January, 1860, in: The Scotsman^[36], Midlo­thian; in the Western Daily Press^[37] of Bristol, on Sunday the 15^th of January in Lloyd’ Weekly Newspaper^[38], London; on Monday 16^th of January, in the London Evening Standard^[39]; on Tuesday 17^th of January 1860 in the Carlisle Journal^[40], Cumberland, entitled “Kossuth on Austria”:

“Joseph of Austria is now both the nuisance and the ‘sick man’ of Europe. Sick beyond recovery…”.

It was published again but without quotation marks around the ‘sick man’ in the Cumberland, Carlisle Journal, of Friday 20^th of January, and on the same day in the Leicester Journal^[41] and in the Congleton & Macclesfield Mer­cury, and Cheshire General Advertiser^[42] on Saturday 21^st of January 1860:

“Francis Joseph now both the nuisance and the sick man of Europe”^[43].

This term was published for perhaps the first time within quotation marks, in respect to Turkey, not the Austrian monarch-state, in the New York Times on the 12^th of May, 1860, in an article entitled, “Austria in-extremis”:

“The condition of Austria at the present moment is not less threatening in itself, though less alarming for the peace of the world, than was the condition of Turkey when the Tsar Nicholas invited England to draw up with him the last will and testament of the ‘sick man of Europe’ (sic.). It is, indeed, hardly within the range of probability that another twelvemonth should pass over the House of Habsburg without bringing upon the Austrian Empire a catas­trophe unmatched in modern history since the downfall of Poland”^[44].

As noted above, Tsar Nicolas described Turkey as the ‘sick man’ not the ‘sick man of Europe’. But this inaccurate quotation became a term that was subsequently much repeated in respect to the Ottoman state, to the extent that nearly two decades after its first appearance in May 1860, the Derby­shire paper, The Derby Daily Telegraph, of the first of October 1879 pub­lished the following, in an article entitled, “The Sick Woman of Europe”:

“It has often been observed that if Turkey is the sick man of Europe, Aus­tria may be regarded (as) the sick woman”^[45].

In a characteristic modern Imperial instrument for ensuring a shared vi­sion, conformity, through the issuing and sharing of a single opinion throughout the state, on Wednesday, 26^th December 1866, an article was published in the London Daily News^[46], and the London, Evening Mail^[47], which was repeated on Thursday 27^th December in the Northern Whig^[48], Co. An­trim, repeated on Friday 28^th December in the Coventry Standard^[49], War­wickshire, and, on Saturday, 29^th December 1866 in the London newspapers: The Volunteer Service Gazette and Military Dispatch^[50], and, Bell’s Weekly Messenger^[51], where it was stated:

“And you all remember that before the Crimean War it was said that there a sick man in Europe, and all considered that the sick man of Europe…”.

In fact, as is described above, there was of course no chance of any reader remembering that “before the Crimean War it was said that there a sick man in Europe,” because the term “a sick man in Europe”^[52] or “the sick man of Europe” was not in fact actually employed until after the Crimean War had ended, the quoted terms appearing respectively in 1866 and in 1860.

Subsequently, in an article in, “The Sunday at Home” magazine of May, 1867^[53] by Elizabeth H. Walshe, reprinted in book form in 1870 in Philadel­phia, entitled: The Story of the Faith in Hungary, the term appears:

“Buda was held by the Turks all through Ferdinand’s reign, and for more than a century afterward. They were not then “the sick man” of Europe, but a mighty power continually looming from the East like a thunder-cloud, es­pecially to papal apprehensions. All beyond the river Theiss and through Transylvania and “Wallachia, heretic preachers and people abounded, on whom the pope himself dared not set a finger”^[54]. The term was subsequently employed for example in, the Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal of Friday 29^th of January 1869, “Russia is not ready, and the simple duty of the Confer­ence was to snub Greece and to bolster up “the sick man of Europe” once more. This straightforward piece of business has been accomplished”^[55]. In the speech of the Hon. Geo. F. Comstock in the House of Representatives, Committee of Ways and Means, on the Treaty of Reciprocity in 1872, he noted, “Of course, the glories of the Ottoman power soon vanished, and poor Turkey has been known to our generation as the Sick Man of Europe. The Turk, though invincible in arms, was enslaved by diplomacy”^[56]. Likewise in 1872 in, The Congressional Globe, concerning the Protection to American Labour, Representative Mr Kelley said, “Why, sir, the system under which Turkey has been made the sick man of Europe, and is kept in a condition which allows no convalescence, is tender to her people compared with that which the gentleman from Indiana (Mr Kerr) would inflict upon us. Turkey imposes eight per cent, taxes on her products and levies eight per cent, pro­tective duties”^[57]. As by Mary Elsie Thalheimer in her, A Manual of Medieval and Modern History of 1874, who in error wrote: “The Czar made secret pro­posals to the English government to join him in the partition of the spoils of the “sick man of Europe” as the declining Turkish power began to be called. The dishonest proposal had been promptly rejected”^[58]. An article of 1874 en­titled, “The mineral Resources of Turkey” in the Journal of the Society of Arts, London, begins: “Turkey, or the “sick man of Europe” is now occupying a most anomalous and pitiable position amongst the other European powers. One of the chief riches of nations consists in the possession of deposits of natural ores and minerals, provided these deposits are worked and made commercially valuable”^[59]. While the American, J. D. O’Connor employed the term repeatedly in his 1877 publication: “He (J. D. O’Connor) accepts, as highly probable, the view that sees in the not too distant future the final dis­solution of the “Sick Man of Europe” for a state cannot be long preserved against internal decomposition. The curse of polygamy everywhere debases manhood, and by being unjust to woman the Turks deprive themselves of the stimulus to advancement which the active cooperation and sympathy of the single wife afford to other races of men”^[60].

Charles Hill in his, (Hill 2011) writes, “Sultan Abdul Hamid II had this ex­panded role inserted into the constitution of 1876, on the eve of the Russian-Ottoman war which would put the term “Sick Man of Europe” into Europe’s political vocabulary”^[61]. However, the term had already become well estab­lished in Europe’s political vocabulary from 1860 onwards, as noted above, for nearly two decades before the Russian-Ottoman war of 1877-1878, it was a term that gained currency in the aftermath of the Crimean War of 1853-1856, at the conclusion of which the Ottoman government was invited by the signatories to the Treaty of Paris of the 30^th of March^[62] 1856, to “par­ticipate in the public law and concert of Europe”^[63].

It is worth noting that Igor Despot in his 2012 publication entitled, The Balkan Wars in the Eyes of the Warring Parties: Perceptions and Interpreta­tions, which provides no reference for his statement concerning, “the viabil­ity of the Turkish rule in southeast Europe and eastern Mediterranean. The term (The Eastern Question) was coined during the Greek Rebellion of 1822, by which time the Ottoman Empire had already gained the attribute of “the Sick man of the Bosporus”^[64]. However, there seems in fact to be not one single published record of the term “the Sick man of the Bosporu”^[65] or, “the Sick man of the Bosphorus”^[66] or, “the sick man on the Bosphorus”^[67] or “the sick man on the Bosporus,”^[68] or “the ‘Sick Man’ by the Bosphorus” that dates from before November 1859^[69], that is, some thirty-seven years after, not before, the Greek rebellion. And so the Ottoman state had not by 1822 al­ready gained the attribute of “the Sick man of the Bosporus,” as was stated by Igor Despot. This set of terms, appears to have been employed at times, only from 1859 onwards, while the related terms, “the sick man of Constan­tinople”^[70], was also employed at times from 1862 onwards,^[71] as also, “a sick man by the Bosphorus shore”^[72] in 1878.

It was also stated by Hamish M. Scott in 2001 that the first use of the notion, “the sick man of Europe,” employed to describe the Ottoman state, was in the late autumn of 1683, “The notion of the Sultan’s Empire as ‘the sick man of Europe’ first emerged in the late autumn of 1683, in a popular song which was heard in the Austrian territories during the immediate after­math of its defeat at Vienna”^[73]. But neither the notion nor the term, ‘the Sick Man of Europe,’ is to be found in the lyrics of this popular song sung in Aus­trian territory in the aftermath of the Ottoman retreat from Vienna on Sep­tember 12^th 1683, the Turkish Sultan was described as the sick man because the siege of Vienna had failed^[74], and it requires perhaps an unusual stretch of the historical imagination to link the 1683 lyrics of an Austrian popular song with the emergence of a term that became fashionable in the second half of the 19^th c.; not in 1684, as was stated by Jan Marius Romein and Jan Romein in 1962, “In the nineteenth century the sultan was called ‘the sick man’ – the expression was first used in 1684, – and before that century was out European Turkey would have been lost had not the rival powers, France, Britain and Russia, contrived to prop up the failing empire”^[75]. That the Sultan Mehmed IV (1648-1687) was the first Ottoman sultan to be described as ‘the sick man’, of itself seems odd, and most probably inaccurate, given the in­terest taken in the Ottoman sultan’s health by European monarchs and re­publics before 1683, news conveyed from Istanbul by diplomats, merchants and spies, and almost certainly recorded in Latin, Venetian, Genovese, Span­ish, French or Catalan texts, long before this date, while the term “the sick man” occurs repeatedly in translations of ancient Greek and Roman texts, including of Hippocrates, of Galen and of Æsop’s Fables into European lan­guages.

It certainly was not the case that, “By 1800 the Ottoman Empire was uni­versally labeled (sic.) “The Sick Man of Europe.”, as was stated by Glenn El­don Curtis in his 1993 volume on Bulgaria, a country study, for the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.^[76]. The term ‘the sick man of Europe’ was not coined by the Russian Tsar Nicolas I. in 1853, nor was it coined by Russia^[77], nor was it coined by Disraeli in the 1870’s, nor did it enter Europe’s political vocabulary after the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, nor was this term notionally present in 1683, nor yet in 1684. It was a term repeatedly used from 1860 onwards, initially by the Hungarian Lajos Kossuth to describe Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, and subsequently, from its first appearance in the New York Times on the 12^th of May, 1860, it was frequently employed to describe the Ottoman state. To summarise, Em­peror Franz Joseph of Austria was described as “the sick man of Europe” in January 1860; the Ottoman state was described as, “the sick man of Europe” in May 1860, while, in November 1859, the Ottoman state, and/or the Sultan Abdülmecid I (r. 1839-1861), was described as, “the ‘Sick Man’ by the Bos­phorus” and, from 1878, the terms, “the sick man on the Baltic (the Tsar) and the sick man on the Bosporus”, as also “the sick man of Constantinople”, were also employed. For the reader of English, from 1860 onwards there were two, and from 1878 three, possible candidates for the title of the “sick man of Europe”: the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, the Ottoman Sul­tan/state and the Russian Tsar.

After the foundation of the modern Republic of Turkey, as still today^[78], the mistaken association of this term the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ with Tsar Ni­colas I. remains. Bernard Newman related in 1950, “A member of (the Turk­ish) Parliament (related to him): “The Czar Nicholas I called Turkey the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ you remember. He waited hopefully for the death but it did not happen. He made no allowance for the vitality of Turkey”^[79].

One may wonder how carefully the former senior fellow for Middle East­ern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York, reads his­tory; and further, how such errors both historical and geographical passed editorial scrutiny before their publication; as also, if a reviewer, Peter Frankopan carefully read this book, to lead the reviewer to recommend it to the potential reader as being, “compulsory reading”, given its considerable number of significant factual errors, not least concerning the whereabouts of “Central Asia”. If any of the reviewer’s students would have written the oddities given above, one may doubt if the repeated inaccurate rewriting of both history and geography would have glided past the attentive academic eye of the reviewer

[1]     https://www.bloomsbury.com/…/the-house-of-islam-978140.

[2]     Husain 2018, 34.

[3]     S.O.D 1973³, s.v. “Led, see Lead,” direction given by going in front, leading, the position or function of leading.

[4]     Husain 2018, 39.

[5]     Husain 2018, 34.

[6]     Rumer 1996, 1.

[7]     Bosworth 2002, 27.

[8]     Husain 2018, 34.

[9]     Peters 1994, 205.

[10]   On this see, Ochsenwald 2016.

[11]   Husain 2018, 80.

[12]   Barks – Moyne 2005, xviii.

[13]   S.O.D. 1973³, s.v. “Persecute,” To pursue, hunt, drive (with missiles, or with attempts to catch, kill or injure). To pursue with malignancy or injurious action; esp. to oppress for holding a heretical opinion or belief, (from) 1482. To harass, worry; to importune. The action of persecuting, esp. the infliction of death, torture, or penalties for adherence to a particular religious belief or opinion; the fact of being persecuted; an instance of this.

[14]   Ratchnevsky 1997, 120-123, including Chingiz-Khān’s reference in his message to Sultan Muhammed Khwārezm-Shāh in 1218, “to ensure the security of the caravan routes from disastrous incidents in order that merchants, on whose flourishing trade the welfare of the world depends, may move freely hither and thither” (121).

[15]   Ratchnevsky 1997, 123.

[16]   Husain 2018, 107.

[17]   S.O.D. 1973³, s.v. ‘Glory’.

[18]   E.g. Moran 2014, 66, “The empire, already much diminished from its zenith two centuries before, had been dubbed the “sick man of Europe” by the Russian Tsar on the eve of the Crimean War (1854-56)”; (Aksan 2014, 399), “The maintenance of the territorial Ottoman Empire, later dubbed the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ by Tsar Nicholas I, had become an international concern’; (Sweetman 2014, 17),“Russia, and in particular her Black Sea fleet, represented a menacing unknown quantity in this equation, the Tsar in repeated conversations with the British ambassador describing Turkey as ripe for rich picking, ‘the sick man of Europe’”; (Goodwin 1997, XV), “Tsar Alexander (sic.) called the Ottoman Empire ‘the Sick Man of Europe’”; (Stone 2010, 106), “It was around this time that Tsar Nicholas I delivered himself of a famous phrase. He talked to the British ambassador and said, more or less (sic.), that Turkey was ‘the sick man of Europe’”; (Itzkowitz 2008, 63), “by the nineteenth century the empire would become, in the words of Tsar Nicholas II (sic.) of Russia, “the sick man of Europe”; (Buchanan 2007, 71), “Nicholas began to call the sultan “the sick man of Europe” and openly to covet the invalid’s estate”; (Demirağ 2006, 139-158), likewise writes ‘The common point of all these currents was to save ‘the sick man of Europe’ as uttered by the Russian Tsar, but the proposal differed” (139); (Finkel 2012, 457), “but early in 1853 an indignant Tsar discussed with the British ambassador to St Petersburg his plans for the partition of what he referred to for the first time as ‘the Sick Man of Europe’”; (Kelly 2008, 327), “Memorably described as ‘the sick man of Europe’ by the autocratic Tsar Nicholas I, Turkey was a constant temptation to Russian imperial ambitions”; (Briggs 1997, 109), “and in the south the Ottoman Empire, thought of by Nicholas I (and others) as ‘the sick man of Europe’” (Shepherd 1991, I, 30), “In 1853, Nicholas I, Tsar of Russia, saw Turkey as the ‘sick man of Europe’ and sought to exploit the weakness of the crumbling Ottoman Empire”; (Springman 1990, 15), “In 1844 (sic.) Tsar Nicholas I had made it clear to the British Government that Russia regarded the Ottoman Empire as the ‘sick man of Europe’…”; (Pereira 1968, xvii), “The Sick Man of Europe, however-a phrase coined by Nicholas I of Russia-”; (128), “at the beginning of the Crimean War, a war which was to see the death of Nicholas I and the failure of his policies against a country he had once nicknamed the Sick Man of Europe”; (Phillip 1942, 44), “It was the Czar Nicholas who coined that ever-famous phrase, “The Sick Man of Europe,” meaning the Turkish Sultan”; (Clear 1937, 55, III). The U.S.S.R., “Nicholas had referred to Turkey as “the sick man of Europe” in a discussion with an English ambassador and suggested that the Turkish territories should be divided between England and Russia”; (Friedell 2010, 159), “It was he (Nicholas I.) who launched that winged word that named the Sultan “the sick man of Europe.”; The Journal of Geography, 1^st October, 1914, Vol. 12, 38, “Tsar Nicholas I proposed to the British ambassador at St. Petersburg that Russia and Great Britain divide the estate of the “sick man of Europe” between them”.

[19]   Gerber 1992, 226.

[20]   Spencer 1993, 2.

[21]   ‘Tenez. Nous avons sur les bras un homme malade, un homme gravement malade; ce sera, je vous le dis franchement, un grand malheur si, un de ces jours, il devait nous échapper, surtout avant que toutes les dispositions nécessaires fussent prises’, quoted (Dodd 1856, 65).

[22]   Chesney 1854, 331. A volume dedicated to His Imperial Majesty The Sultan Abdul Medjid Khan, Emperor of the Ottomans, etc.

[23]   Chesney 1854, 338.

[24]   This is correctly related (in addition to Chesney 1854, 338), in for example: “Russian Aggression and British Statesmanship”, in The British Quarterly Review, July, 1^st, 1855, London, No. XLIII, 218, “It is almost needless to advert to the policy of Russia in disorganizing Turkey … When Nicholas discoursed with Sir Hamilton Seymour respecting the reversion of the property of ‘the sick man,’ it was an announcement to Europe that Russia…”; (Dodd 1856, 65); (Smucker 1858, 135), “And with this conclusive evidence before him of the craven weakness of the sultan, and of his inability to contend with the encroachments of his northern rival, however unjust, it is not that Nicholas should have termed the sultan “the sick man;” and should have confidently looked forward to the day, as not being very far distant, when the triumphant and invincible eagle of Russia should supplant the waning crescent on the glittering minarets of St. Sophia’s mosque, and the ancient and crumbling throne of the Constantines, become an appendage to the sceptre of the new-born majesty of the Czars”; The Parliamentary Debates (Authorized Edition), Great Britain, Vol. 239, 843, April 8^th 1878, Lord Strathnairn: “the Emperor Nicolas, predicted to Sir Hamilton Seymour many years ago, that the Sick Man was dying, and that the time had come to divide his inheritance”; (Gossip 1878, 395), accurately cites the Tsars words as reported by the ambassador; likewise, (Ollier 1885, 296); also, “The Dream of Russia”, The Atlantic Monthly, A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics, Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Vol. 58, 1886, 778; The Standard: A Record of Christian Progress, Vol., 56, May 22^nd 1909, 1165; Sethi – Chawla 1963, 325, “He said to the British Ambassador, “Turkey is in a critical state, the country seems to be falling to pieces. We have on our hands a sick man- a very sick man. It will be, I tell you, a great misfortune if one of these days he should slip away from us”; (Barber 1973, 143); (Kinross 1979, 483); (Palmer 1995, 118); (Wheatcroft 1993, 205); (Bromley 1994, 46), “For, in the words of Tsar Nicholas in 1853, Europe had a ‘sick man, seriously ill . . . on its hands’”; likewise accurately quoted by (Mansel 1997, 268); (Figes 2010, 105); (Goldfrank 2014, 1); (Stephenson 2014, 1); as also enclosed in brackets outside the quotation marks, (McMeekin 2015, 3), “If Russia’s ambitions to partition the Ottoman Empire-first broached Tsar Nicholas I in 1853 in conversation with the British Ambassador when he called it the ‘Sick Man’ (of Europe) – now had the tacit support of Abdul Hamid’s hero and Britain’s most notorious Turcophile, there would seem to be little hope for the empire’s survival”.

[25]   Sessional Papers, Accounts and Papers, Parliamentary Papers, London, 1854, Vol. LXXI, Part V, 1-3.

[26]   Woodward 1954, 246, fn. 1, citing Temperley 1936, 272; Hurewitz 1951, 61; Blainey 1988, 44. ‘I repeat to you that the Bear is dying’ said the Russian emperor; ‘you may give him musk, but even musk will not long keep him alive’; (Baumgart 2005, 106); (Macfie 1996, 103), “to believe that Turkey retains any elements of existence, your Government must have received incorrect information. I repeat to you that the Bear is dying, you may give him musk, but even musk will not long keep him alive,”; (Bellaigue 2017), “Tsar Nicholas would remark in 1844 that the Ottoman Empire resembled a dying bear – ‘you may give him musk but even musk will not long keep him alive’”.

[27]   Anonymous 1855, verse 5: “We’ll guard the “Principalities,” And “Holy Place” too; And Turkey shall maintain her right Spite all the Czar can do. For Sebastopol is taken, boys, The “sick Man” we’ll restore, And set him on his legs again, (his) Hurra! – hurra! hurra!”.

[28]   Page 8.

[29]   Page 3.

[30]   Page 2.

[31]   Page 11.

[32]   Page 3.

[33]   Page 11.

[34]   Page 11.

[35]   Contra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe Sick man of Europe. “Sick man of Europe” is a label given to a European country experiencing a time of economic difficulty or impoverishment. The term was first used in the mid-19th century to describe the Ottoman Empire (sic.)”.

[36]   Page 4, “Letter from Kossuth.” Again, on Wednesday 31^st October, 1866, in The Scotsman, Midlothian, 6.

[37]   Page 3.

[38]   Page 7.

[39]   Page 5-6.

[40]   Page 3.

[41]   Page 7.

[42]   Page 2.

[43]   Page 9.

[44]   Austria in Extremis. – The New York Times, at, https://www.nytimes.com/1860/05/…/ austria-in-extremis.htm.

[45]   Page 4.

[46]   Page 3.

[47]   Page 3.

[48]   Page 4.

[49]   Page 2-3.

[50]   Page 2-3.

[51]   Page 6.

[52]   On Wednesday 26^th December 1866, London Daily News, 3; Friday 28^th December, Coventry Standard, Warwickshire, page 2-3; Saturday 29^th December 1866, Volunteer Service Gazette and Military Dispatch, London, page 2 and The Rugby Advertiser, Warwickshire, page 8. Subsequently on Wednesday 14^th of June 1882, in the St. James’s Gazette, London, 13.

[53]   Cited, Diplomatic Review (Free Press), Journal of the Foreign Affairs Committees, 1867, October 2^nd, Vol. XV-No. 10, 158.

[54]   Walshe 1870, 62.

[55]   Pages 4-5.

[56]   The tariff on salt: proceedings in the Committee of Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, Feb. 1 and 2, 1872, Vol. 2: no.1-20. Washington, 1872, 5.

[57]   Congressional Globe and Appendix, Second Session Forty Second Congress: in Six Parts, Part II, Congressional Globe, March 18, United States Congress. Vol., 66, pt.2, 1871-1872. Protection to American Labour, 1756.

[58]   Thalheimer 1874, 419; as also in Thalheimer 1875, 252.

[59]   No. 1,134, Vol., XXII (1873-1874) Friday, August 14^th 1874, 830.

[60]   O’Connor 1877, 5, the term repeated 17, 206, 249.

[61]   Hill 2011, 43.

[62]   Shaw – Shaw 1997, 140, gives the date as the 29^th of March.

[63]   Hale 2002, 27.

[64]   Despot 2012, 9.

[65]   From the Examiner, “Turkey and the Eastern Question” Littell’s Living Age, Littell and Gay, Boston, Vol. 114, July, August, September, 1872, 379, “those designs against the Sick Man of the Bosphorus which the Czar Nicholas had declared so prematurely, and which the Czar Alexander II. had been compelled so disastrously to abandon”; “Current Topics and Events” Canadian Methodist Magazine Devoted to Religion, Literature, and Social Progress, Toronto-Halifax, Vol. III (Jan-June, 1876) “The dying sands of the long moribund “sick man” of the Bosphorus seem rudely shaken by recent events” (83); “The New Olympic Games” Athens, D. Kalopothakes, 919-924 in, Harper’s Weekly, New York City, September 28, 1895, “Even as late as twenty-five years ago “the Greeks were encouraged to hope that when “sick man of the Bosporus” should succumb to his maladies they should regain the lands and cities of which he had despoiled them four centuries back” (922).

[66]   Ottley 1884, 27, “The “Sick Man” of the Bosphorus is sick, indeed, to death”.

[67]   Review of, “The Westminster Play, 1872” December 21, 1872, 790-792; The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, Vol. 34, 1872 July-Dec. 791, “Three Emperors meet to plot for their own aggrandizement and the stamping out of democracy. The “Sick Man” on the Bosphorus is singled out as an appropriate victim, and the idea that England will protect him is treated with derision…”; “Foreign Summary” April 1873, in, Colburns’ The United Service Magazine: with which are incorporated the Army and Navy Magazine and Naval and Military Journal, Hurst and Blackett. v. 131 (Jan.-Apr. 1873) “Austrian statesmen seem especially short sighted in this matter, and one of them has lately declared, that all this clamour about the Khiva expedition has been “got up” to serve quite another purpose, namely, a renewal of the attack on the “sick man” on the Bosphorus. This attack may be very likely impending, for your Ministers have formally released Russia from her Crimean War obligations, but still I think there is something real about the Khiva campaign” (522); (Romein 1962, 111).

[68]   “The Eastern Question,” Ivan Panin, April 11^th, 1878, in, The Index, A Weekly Paper Devoted to Free Religion, Vol. IX., 1878, 176, “But General Ignatieff has accomplished his task. With an appointment of imperial councillor in his pocket, he laughs in his sleeve; and from his comfortable seat on the Neva he triumphantly looks upon the result of his labors, – the war between the sick man on the Baltic and the sick man on the Bosporus”.

[69]   The New York Daily Tribune, New York, Friday, November 11^th 1859, 4, employs the term, “the ‘Sick Man’ by the Bosphorus”; copied in, The Advent Herald, Boston, Nov. 15^th, 1859, Vol. XX, No. 44, 349, in its article entitled ‘Forebodings of War,’ “The New York Tribune, in its prospectus for the coming year, says, “The ‘Sick Man’ by the Bosphorus is with difficulty made to preserve a little longer the semblance of life, while the vultures gather to dissever and feast on his remains.”; The United States Army and Navy Journal and Gazette of the Regular and Volunteer Forces, Whole No. 164, New York, October 13^th 1866, 2, in an article entitled, “The Eastern Question,” records, “The dreaded Eastern Question, to which Louis Napoleon briefly but ominously alluded in his recent circular, begins once more to assume an alarming aspect The “sick man” of the Bosphorus is at length dying; such is, at least, the opinion of his watchers, who are already quarrelling among themselves about the administration of his effects”.

[70]   Illustrated London News, No. 1160, Vol. XLI, Saturday, August 23^rd 1862, London, 197, “diplomacy could no longer shut her eyes to the gravity of the situation – the “sick man” of Constantinople was urgently warned that he must call in his six family doctors, who accordingly have assembled and held several conferences”.

[71]    Public Opinion, No. 75, Vol. 3, JAN-JUN, Saturday, February 28^th 1863, London, 238-239, “The English Press” (Morning Post) “The son of the Emperor Nicolas has not had long to wait for the Nemesis; but will the sick man of St. Petersburg find anywhere such friends or such aid as rescued the sick man of Constantinople? Except from Berlin, the Emperor of Russia will listen in vain for a note of condolence or of sympathy; and the internal political condition of Prussia is such, that an alliance with that Power may prove a broken reed, which will pierce the hand that leans upon it”; Executive Documents printed by order of the House of Representatives, 39^th Congress, 2d Session, 1866-67 Washington, 1867, Ex. Doc. No. 38. 19 Revolution in Candia. Confidential, Letter of December 31, 1866 (New Orleans) D. N. Botassi, Consul of Greece in New York to Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington D.C., “In such a state of affairs, and the jealousy of the great European powers towards each other for the inheritance of the sick man of Constantinople, the Candiotes…”.

[72]   Davis 1878, I, 140, Attic Salt, 11-146. “Yet more remains – There is a sick man by the Bosphorus shore…”.

[73]   Scott 2001, 327.

[74]   Özyurt 1972, 100, “Im Lied Nr. 51 aus dem Jahre 1683 wird der türkisher (sic. türkische) Sultan als kranker Mann dargestellt. Da ihm die Belagerung nicht gelingen konnte.” In the lyrics of Song No. 51, written in 1683, the Turkish Sultan is described as the sick man, because he failed in the siege (of Vienna).

[75]   Romein 1962, 45.

[76]   Curtis 1993, 14.

[77]   Contra, Neumann 1999, 55, “significantly, although the metaphor of the “sick man” was of Russian coinage,…”.

[78]   Neumann 1999, 241. op. cit. for 18 modern examples see above fn. 19.

[79]   Newman 1954, 241.