32575 More than 150 years ago seems like yesterday

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE'S CENTRE OF GRAVITY THEN SHIFTED
significantly eastwards. Besides Turkey itself, the Ottomans now controlled only Syria and Palestine, Iraq
and the coastal fringes of the Arabian peninsula. And yet, despite the Ottomans' decay, the sultan remained
influential across the wider Sunni Muslim world as the caliph, or successor, to the Prophet Muhammad and guardian
of the three holiest cities in Islam: Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. This was the caliphs' last heritage, but even there the Ottomans faced discontent from increasingly self-confident Arabs who wanted greater autonomy or even independence from the dynasty that ruled
them for four hundred years. Mark SYKES's travels through the empire coincided exactly with this era and, not surprisingly, in his
latest book he portrayed the Ottomans as moribund! To reinforce his argument he included sublime descriptions of the total
squalor that he encountered in the famous cities of the Ottomans' eastern lands! In Aleppo, a city where 'ruinous modem
buildings clung for support to the ancient and more solid edifices', he found that 'dirt and disease reigned in its crowded
and crumbling bazaars; decay and poverty were the most notable characteristics'! In Damascus he was assailed by
'packs of filthy dogs ... ragged soldiers, yelling muleteers, greedy antika sellers', & dismayed by the 'ill-appointed
hotels, tough mutton & rank butter'! He saved his deepest opprobrium for Mosul, a 'foul nest of corruption, vice,
disorder & disease', in which 'the new houses are as ramshackle, as insanitary, as stinking as the old; the old
as ugly, as uninteresting, & as repulsive as the new'! The souks there were 'ankle deep in decaying guts and
offal; the kennels run with congealing blood & stinking dye in sluggish & iridescent streams,
nauseous to behold & abominable in odour'!
SYKES sounded appalled, & yet in truth he did not want this colourful,
decaying society to disappear, depriving him of the glimpse into the medieval world it gave him on his holidays?
As the influence of jockeying foreign powers began to manifest itself, he was delighted that 'the dividers, T-square,
and drawing board of the French engineer have been unable to crush out the originality of the illiterate Syrian Arab'!
He ignored the fact that the railways, which the Ottomans were building with German help, were making cheap travel
a possibility for Arabs whose horizons had previously been limited by how far they could walk or ride?! Instead, he claimed,
the steam engine had brought 'not a single virtue' & only a ' host of new vices' that included 'alcohol, dirty pictures,
phonographs & drinking saloons'!? How a postal service, the telegraph, the railway, a thriving newspaper industry & growing literacy were about to change the whole Arab world for ever, he either could not see
or did not want to say.