| Adolphus Slade or the Mushaver Pasha
After serving thirty years in the Royal Navy, Adolphus Slade joined the Ottoman navy as an admiral. Renamed 'Mushaver' (meaning 'consulting'), Slade was intricately involved in the Ottoman maritime force. When the Russians burnt the Ottoman fleet in Sinop during the Crimean War and sank twelve Ottoman ships, the only surviving ship was the one carrying Slade. As the Turkish fleet was being attacked, her so-called allies at the time, the French and British ships stationed in the Bosphorus, just watched.
In his memoir, Slade displayed the shocking hatred he harbored for Turks and Muslims (Turkish nation and Islamic world are above his remarks). He claimed that all Ottoman constituents, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, shared a common trait despite their differences and that was 'a total want of conscience' and continued, "A pasha slays his confiding guest; a kadi bastinadoes an innocent man; a banker cheats his patron; a servant robs his master; —all swearing on the Koran, or on the Talmud, or on the Testament, to their respective faith..."170
... nowhere, perhaps, has corruption in Turkey been more hideously displayed than in the Mekhemés, (courts of law,) where justice is sold to the highest bidder, and witnesses stand, almost within sight and sound of the mollah's cushions, ready with their stock in trade—their consciences.171
Three English line of battle ships and as many frigates, would prove an overmatch for it [the Ottoman naval force].172
Dostları ilə paylaş: |
