File 756/1917 Pt 2-3 ‘ARAB BULLETIN Nos 66-114’ [‎247v] (503/834)

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diplomatists in their imagination had construed it to be.
According to the real laws of Islam, the only consequence which
could and had to result from Article 3 of this treaty was the
necessity for temporal investiture of the Khan of the Tatars,
by the Sultan-Caliph, and the despatch or appointment of
Kadis or judicial officials and Muftis by the Ottoman Govern
ment. These consequences, however, appeared even to the
Russians to have an obvious appearance of vassalage towards
Turkey, and of political, but not religious, dependence. In
consequence, on March 10, 1779, the Convention elucidating
the treaty of Kiichuk Kainarge had to be held at Amali
Kavak, near Constantinople. In the long Articles 2 and 3 an
attempt is made to reconcile the recognition of a Caliph and the
complete political independence of other Islamic States towards
him. An absurd distinction is made between the temporal
and spiritual powers of the Sultan. The dual capacity of
the Ottoman sovereign and the Khalife supreme de la religion
Mohametane is mentioned. Facts, however, again demon
strate the absurdity of the situation, and Russia was obliged
to impose on Turkey the Convention of December 28, 1783,
concerning “ previous treaties and the delimitation of the
Crimea ”, which abolishes Article 3 of the treaty of 1774, and
Articles 2, 3 and 4 of the explanatory convention of 1779,
definitely abolishing all Ottoman so-called religious or spiritual
interference with the Tatars.
The illusion of a religious Caliphate should, therefore, have
disappeared completely among European diplomatists. But soon
after appeared the evil influence of the Armenian D Ohsson,
who, as stated in Chapter II, in 1788 developed the theory of
the hierarchic nature of the Caliphate in Europe. This theory
is absurd from the historical point of view, and one that no
Moslem has ever sustained, but it proved to the Turkish
Government an excellent, and unlooked for, method of regaining
morally, influence which was gradually being lost materially.
Above all, the Sultan, Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909), a century
later than the treaty of Kiichiik Kainarge, understood how the
mistake, which was already wide-spread in Europe, would allow
him to work towards a position of Turkish Pan-Islamic leadership
among the more than 150,000,000 Moslems subject to Christian
powers. In spite of at first keeping, in official titles and on
coins, only to those epithets of his Sultanic role, the Turkish
Government ended by overcoming all scruples and decided, for
the first time, in a document addressed to its subjects, that is,