I think the only one of those I know is Kipling.
Actually in its structure it reminded me more of the Bangles' Crash and Burn.
That's one of my favorites of theirs; YMMV.
Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
I think the only one of those I know is Kipling.
Actually in its structure it reminded me more of the Bangles' Crash and Burn.
That's one of my favorites of theirs; YMMV.
In and around the Ottoman Empire, June 1896
“Take a look, little yahud,” said Adnan the Bedouin, “and tell me what you see.”
Lev Davidovich Bronshtein bent in the saddle and looked down carefully. “Horsemen,” he said, “twenty or thirty of them, heading south.” He studied the tracks closer, weighing them against the day’s weather. “Half a day old?”
“Not bad, Lyova, not bad at all. Ours or theirs?”
That hardly seemed a fair question; how was Lev to tell from hoofprints alone? “Theirs, I think.”
“Why?”
“Ours would have infantry with them?”
“Usually, but what if they were another scouting company, like us? You’re right, but not for that reason. Look there, to your left.”
Lev scanned the ground, and suddenly saw the gleam of a spent cartridge, half-buried in the dirt. “It’s Russian.”
“Yes, little yahud. Those are Mikoyan’s men – up to no good, I’m certain.”
“Do we follow them?”
“We do, but we get the others first. Ride back and bring them here, and we’ll find out what they’re planning.”
He turned his horse and rode for the camp that had, in the past year, unaccountably become home. He was too young to join the regulars, but some of this Bedouin tribe had worked as hired hands on his father’s farm before the war, and when they’d been called up, they’d let him carry water and tend the horses. They still weren’t quite sure what to make of him, but Ali bin Bello had enjoined them to teach anyone who came to them as a student, and they also revered the Bahá'u'lláh as Lev and his father did. [1]
There was much about their religion, actually, that answered to his – Lev would never have expected that to be true in a Bedouin camp, but it was. They had the same mysticism, the same love of song and joy in worship, the same need to learn about the ways of God and the world. And they treated him not as a heathen but as a fellow seeker – the Bahá'u'lláh had shown them that all religions were true, though Islam was the truest.
And besides, our tribes are allies now. Both Bello and the Bahá'u'lláh had taught these Bedouins to love peace, and they sang of it as their great-grandfathers might have sung of battle and victory, but they would fight for their homes and families – and though they recognized no king, the Sultan was their religious overlord, and when he commanded them to defend his realm, they obeyed. The Jews’ allegiance to the Sultan was much more a political matter, but for now, it led them the same place…
“Lyova! Where is Adnan?”
Another Bedouin had ridden from the camp to meet him, and he didn’t have to look to know who it was: Rania, the sheikh’s daughter, two years older than he. Her hair was long and black under her felt cap, her jewelry was of gold, and she carried a rifle, for under the Bahá'u'lláh’s teaching, men and women were equal. A snatch of old Hussein’s teaching song came unbidden to mind: man and woman are two wings, if one is crippled then the bird shall not fly…
“That way,” he answered, pointing. “We found tracks – some of Mikoyan’s Bedouin horsemen. He sent me to raise the camp and follow them.”
“Who but Bedouin to catch Bedouin?” She didn’t add muhartiq as many of her tribe might have; the Bedouin who fought for Russia followed Ali bin Bello as they did, but they also revered Abd al-Wahhab, and for all that they shared a distaste for an established authority and believed in a personal understanding of God, their desire to purify the faith was the mirror-opposite of the Bahá'u'lláh’s openness. She gave a piercing bird-call instead, which Lev recognized as the signal to assemble, and from throughout the camp, Bedouin scouts issued from their tents and mounted their horses.
Minutes later they were riding through the Naqab – the Negev, Lev’s father would have said – to join Adnan and find Mikoyan’s men. If they could, they would ride back unseen and report the enemy camp to the army, but maybe there would be a fight, and the thought filled Lev half with excitement and half with fear. He wondered if Rania felt the same way, but she looked utterly fearless as she rode beside him, and he didn’t dare ask. Maybe when I’m her age. Maybe when I’m a man.
Lev looked ahead through the haze, scanning for signs of the enemy, but for the moment, there was nothing on the horizon but desert.
The Café Tamar was near the parliament building opposite the Metekhi cliff, and members of the Mejlis often repaired there after a session. Memed Abashidze, himself a member [2], sat at a table outside by the river and sipped thick coffee; the three others poured for themselves and partook of the same ritual.
“It’s time,” he said, when the silence had gone long enough.
“To you, it’s been time for the past ten years.”
“No, Rustam. It’s really time now. I’ve heard from my people in the army. It’s going to happen soon.”
“Are you sure, Memed? They’ve always considered us too friendly with the Turks…”
“Too friendly with the Turks, too willing to wink at smuggling, too cozy with the clansmen in Shirvan who are cutting their supply lines. At the beginning, they could live with that as long as we sent our soldiers to fight, but they’re getting anxious now – and they need to cover their flank in Persia, and don’t want us in the way. It’s coming within a month or two, maybe even sooner.”
Abashidze didn’t need to explain what “it” was. The Tsar had never been happy about Georgia being a client kingdom, even with him as king, and since the war began, there were constant rumors that he intended to occupy the country and make it a Russian province again. Memed, who was Muslim, would no doubt suffer most if that happened, but the other three men – members of parliament, owners of newspapers and trading houses – would suffer too. The Mejlis, the university, the primary schools that taught in Georgian, the freedom of the Orthodox seminaries – all of that would be gone if Georgia’s independence were ended.
“That’s madness!” said the one called Tsitsishvili. “We’re fighting for him now – does he want a war with us, on top of the ones he already has?”
“Right now, he thinks we aren’t fighting his war,” Rustam answered calmly. “Right now, he thinks we’re already against him. If he takes over, he can close the border, conscript our men… yes, he might do it, even if he has to fight us.”
“What I hear is that he’s hoping to do it without a fight,” said Abashidze. “The Third Section is spreading money around the Mejlis and the army officers; the plan is for us to vote away our kingdom.”
“They’ll never get the votes for that…”
“Are you sure?” Tsitsishvili asked. He came from a great feudal family, and he knew that the lords had been content enough under Russian rule, and that they still dominated the Mejlis. “If he gives the nobles enough money and promises to leave them alone, they’ll do whatever he asks.”
“Some of the nobles are patriots too,” said Orbelianov, the last of the four; he, too, was from a princely clan.
“We must visit them, then,” Rustam said. “We must be sure of their votes. And… we need to be prepared for what will happen if the vote fails.”
“I’ve spoken with the army,” Memed said; a writer and educator he might be, but he knew politicians and soldiers. “There will be soldiers here, in the capital, and they will be loyal. Maybe the Tsar will accept defeat, if he sees he can’t take Tbilisi easily. But maybe we’ll need more than that.”
“What more do we have?”
“I’ve spoken with others as well. And if we declare neutrality, there are those who will protect it…”
“It’s been six years since there was an election,” Ismet Celer said.
“There’s a war!” answered Mustafa Demir. “How can we have an election in the middle of a war?”
“France did. Ilorin did.”
“And how much of France and Ilorin were occupied by the enemy? Should we ask the Austrians to let us have an election in Bosnia, or the Russians to let us vote in Van?”
“Point,” said Celer. “Fair point. But every day without one is killing us.” He swept his hand around to take in the Izmit Brotherhood of Labor, and all the unions that had their offices in the building where they stood. “They certainly haven’t stopped passing laws while we’ve stopped voting, and they’re taking back everything we gained. No strikes, no elected mayors, wage caps, censorship – if they have their way, we’ll all be under military discipline like the Russian workers…”
“Come on, Ismet. Nobody’s proposing that.”
“Maybe they aren’t. But do you deny any of the rest of it is real?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “We’re making the guns they need to fight their war; we don’t need them to treat us as the enemy.”
“We can fight them after the war, Ismet. That’s always what we’ve planned.”
“After the war may be too late.”
“So what do we do, then? Go on strike in the middle of wartime? I don’t think we’d like things any better under the Russians.”
“No, we don’t go on strike, not now. But all of us – all the unions, everywhere in the country – need to start by telling them what we want, and telling them what we won’t stand for. And we need to make sure they know they can’t fight their war without us…”
Midhat Pasha’s desk was already covered with reports when he entered in the morning; the telegraph lines were busy day and night, and the operators at the War Department sent dispatches to the palace as soon as they came in. They all came to Midhat sooner or later; his job was diplomacy rather than fighting, but he could hardly negotiate with allies or dicker with the neutrals unless he knew how the war was going.
For once – for a change – all the news was good. The Russians were falling back in the Caucasus, the lines in the Balkans were holding, and the Austrians didn’t seem to have a clue about the surprise he was preparing for them. War production was rising: the factories in Rumelia and northwest Anatolia, and those in Salonika which was Ottoman in all but name, were turning out guns and motor wagons around the clock. And with the siege of Bornu broken and the Third North Africa Corps smashed, the French were falling back pell-mell through Libya, and the Sultan’s army was advancing from Egypt to meet them.
Bornu. Midhat Pasha’s mind was suddenly carried back to the years he’d spent there as an exile, and the thought took him forward just as suddenly to what might happen after this war was finished. He remembered Ibrahim Tandja, Bornu’s canny foreign minister, and the conversations they’d had about a community of nations. Tandja had even written a book about it, a proposal for a supreme religious court to decide disputes between kings [3], and Midhat had a copy in his study somewhere.
It had been a while since Midhat had considered the idea – the exigencies of war had left him with little time to think of anything else – but even in the midst of war, it was always good to plan for the peace. Not for the first time, he imagined what might have happened if the great powers had been able to take their quarrels to impartial judges rather than fighting it out on the battlefield: could all these millions of deaths, all the wrecked towns and broken families, have been prevented?
Tandja’s concept needs some work, of course. The Bornu statesman had proposed the Sultan as supreme judge, and Midhat Pasha doubted that the great powers would accept that, much less a court structured under Islamic law. But maybe the Muslim countries would agree to be bound by such a court – and maybe, also, the powers could live with a court in which the Sultan was one of the judges.
There was something about the Sultan as judge of nations that appealed to Midhat powerfully. It would cement the Ottoman Empire’s status as a great power, but more than that, it would put the Sultan above politics. He would be Caliph and supreme arbiter, a role he would love, but a role that would prevent him from dirtying his hands with the day-to-day administration of the empire. That’s just where we need him. Keeping the peace for the empire… and leaving the people free to rule it.
And Midhat Pasha, foreign minister, began to compose his address to the peace conference.
_______
[1] See post 1099.
[2] See post 1099.
[3] See posts 963 and 1099.
“Take a look, little yahud,” said Adnan the Bedouin, “and tell me what you see.”
Lev Davidovich Bronshtein bent in the saddle and looked down carefully. “Horsemen,” he said, “twenty or thirty of them, heading south.” He studied the tracks closer, weighing them against the day’s weather. “Half a day old?”
“Not bad, Lyova, not bad at all. Ours or theirs?”
That hardly seemed a fair question; how was Lev to tell from hoofprints alone? “Theirs, I think.”
“Why?”
“Ours would have infantry with them?”
“Usually, but what if they were another scouting company, like us? You’re right, but not for that reason. Look there, to your left.”
Lev scanned the ground, and suddenly saw the gleam of a spent cartridge, half-buried in the dirt. “It’s Russian.”
“Yes, little yahud. Those are Mikoyan’s men – up to no good, I’m certain.”
“Do we follow them?”
“We do, but we get the others first. Ride back and bring them here, and we’ll find out what they’re planning.”
He turned his horse and rode for the camp that had, in the past year, unaccountably become home. He was too young to join the regulars, but some of this Bedouin tribe had worked as hired hands on his father’s farm before the war, and when they’d been called up, they’d let him carry water and tend the horses. They still weren’t quite sure what to make of him, but Ali bin Bello had enjoined them to teach anyone who came to them as a student, and they also revered the Bahá'u'lláh as Lev and his father did. [1]
There was much about their religion, actually, that answered to his – Lev would never have expected that to be true in a Bedouin camp, but it was. They had the same mysticism, the same love of song and joy in worship, the same need to learn about the ways of God and the world. And they treated him not as a heathen but as a fellow seeker – the Bahá'u'lláh had shown them that all religions were true, though Islam was the truest.
And besides, our tribes are allies now. Both Bello and the Bahá'u'lláh had taught these Bedouins to love peace, and they sang of it as their great-grandfathers might have sung of battle and victory, but they would fight for their homes and families – and though they recognized no king, the Sultan was their religious overlord, and when he commanded them to defend his realm, they obeyed. The Jews’ allegiance to the Sultan was much more a political matter, but for now, it led them the same place…
“Lyova! Where is Adnan?”
Another Bedouin had ridden from the camp to meet him, and he didn’t have to look to know who it was: Rania, the sheikh’s daughter, two years older than he. Her hair was long and black under her felt cap, her jewelry was of gold, and she carried a rifle, for under the Bahá'u'lláh’s teaching, men and women were equal. A snatch of old Hussein’s teaching song came unbidden to mind: man and woman are two wings, if one is crippled then the bird shall not fly…
“That way,” he answered, pointing. “We found tracks – some of Mikoyan’s Bedouin horsemen. He sent me to raise the camp and follow them.”
“Who but Bedouin to catch Bedouin?” She didn’t add muhartiq as many of her tribe might have; the Bedouin who fought for Russia followed Ali bin Bello as they did, but they also revered Abd al-Wahhab, and for all that they shared a distaste for an established authority and believed in a personal understanding of God, their desire to purify the faith was the mirror-opposite of the Bahá'u'lláh’s openness. She gave a piercing bird-call instead, which Lev recognized as the signal to assemble, and from throughout the camp, Bedouin scouts issued from their tents and mounted their horses.
Minutes later they were riding through the Naqab – the Negev, Lev’s father would have said – to join Adnan and find Mikoyan’s men. If they could, they would ride back unseen and report the enemy camp to the army, but maybe there would be a fight, and the thought filled Lev half with excitement and half with fear. He wondered if Rania felt the same way, but she looked utterly fearless as she rode beside him, and he didn’t dare ask. Maybe when I’m her age. Maybe when I’m a man.
Lev looked ahead through the haze, scanning for signs of the enemy, but for the moment, there was nothing on the horizon but desert.
*******
The Café Tamar was near the parliament building opposite the Metekhi cliff, and members of the Mejlis often repaired there after a session. Memed Abashidze, himself a member [2], sat at a table outside by the river and sipped thick coffee; the three others poured for themselves and partook of the same ritual.
“It’s time,” he said, when the silence had gone long enough.
“To you, it’s been time for the past ten years.”
“No, Rustam. It’s really time now. I’ve heard from my people in the army. It’s going to happen soon.”
“Are you sure, Memed? They’ve always considered us too friendly with the Turks…”
“Too friendly with the Turks, too willing to wink at smuggling, too cozy with the clansmen in Shirvan who are cutting their supply lines. At the beginning, they could live with that as long as we sent our soldiers to fight, but they’re getting anxious now – and they need to cover their flank in Persia, and don’t want us in the way. It’s coming within a month or two, maybe even sooner.”
Abashidze didn’t need to explain what “it” was. The Tsar had never been happy about Georgia being a client kingdom, even with him as king, and since the war began, there were constant rumors that he intended to occupy the country and make it a Russian province again. Memed, who was Muslim, would no doubt suffer most if that happened, but the other three men – members of parliament, owners of newspapers and trading houses – would suffer too. The Mejlis, the university, the primary schools that taught in Georgian, the freedom of the Orthodox seminaries – all of that would be gone if Georgia’s independence were ended.
“That’s madness!” said the one called Tsitsishvili. “We’re fighting for him now – does he want a war with us, on top of the ones he already has?”
“Right now, he thinks we aren’t fighting his war,” Rustam answered calmly. “Right now, he thinks we’re already against him. If he takes over, he can close the border, conscript our men… yes, he might do it, even if he has to fight us.”
“What I hear is that he’s hoping to do it without a fight,” said Abashidze. “The Third Section is spreading money around the Mejlis and the army officers; the plan is for us to vote away our kingdom.”
“They’ll never get the votes for that…”
“Are you sure?” Tsitsishvili asked. He came from a great feudal family, and he knew that the lords had been content enough under Russian rule, and that they still dominated the Mejlis. “If he gives the nobles enough money and promises to leave them alone, they’ll do whatever he asks.”
“Some of the nobles are patriots too,” said Orbelianov, the last of the four; he, too, was from a princely clan.
“We must visit them, then,” Rustam said. “We must be sure of their votes. And… we need to be prepared for what will happen if the vote fails.”
“I’ve spoken with the army,” Memed said; a writer and educator he might be, but he knew politicians and soldiers. “There will be soldiers here, in the capital, and they will be loyal. Maybe the Tsar will accept defeat, if he sees he can’t take Tbilisi easily. But maybe we’ll need more than that.”
“What more do we have?”
“I’ve spoken with others as well. And if we declare neutrality, there are those who will protect it…”
*******
“It’s been six years since there was an election,” Ismet Celer said.
“There’s a war!” answered Mustafa Demir. “How can we have an election in the middle of a war?”
“France did. Ilorin did.”
“And how much of France and Ilorin were occupied by the enemy? Should we ask the Austrians to let us have an election in Bosnia, or the Russians to let us vote in Van?”
“Point,” said Celer. “Fair point. But every day without one is killing us.” He swept his hand around to take in the Izmit Brotherhood of Labor, and all the unions that had their offices in the building where they stood. “They certainly haven’t stopped passing laws while we’ve stopped voting, and they’re taking back everything we gained. No strikes, no elected mayors, wage caps, censorship – if they have their way, we’ll all be under military discipline like the Russian workers…”
“Come on, Ismet. Nobody’s proposing that.”
“Maybe they aren’t. But do you deny any of the rest of it is real?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “We’re making the guns they need to fight their war; we don’t need them to treat us as the enemy.”
“We can fight them after the war, Ismet. That’s always what we’ve planned.”
“After the war may be too late.”
“So what do we do, then? Go on strike in the middle of wartime? I don’t think we’d like things any better under the Russians.”
“No, we don’t go on strike, not now. But all of us – all the unions, everywhere in the country – need to start by telling them what we want, and telling them what we won’t stand for. And we need to make sure they know they can’t fight their war without us…”
*******
Midhat Pasha’s desk was already covered with reports when he entered in the morning; the telegraph lines were busy day and night, and the operators at the War Department sent dispatches to the palace as soon as they came in. They all came to Midhat sooner or later; his job was diplomacy rather than fighting, but he could hardly negotiate with allies or dicker with the neutrals unless he knew how the war was going.
For once – for a change – all the news was good. The Russians were falling back in the Caucasus, the lines in the Balkans were holding, and the Austrians didn’t seem to have a clue about the surprise he was preparing for them. War production was rising: the factories in Rumelia and northwest Anatolia, and those in Salonika which was Ottoman in all but name, were turning out guns and motor wagons around the clock. And with the siege of Bornu broken and the Third North Africa Corps smashed, the French were falling back pell-mell through Libya, and the Sultan’s army was advancing from Egypt to meet them.
Bornu. Midhat Pasha’s mind was suddenly carried back to the years he’d spent there as an exile, and the thought took him forward just as suddenly to what might happen after this war was finished. He remembered Ibrahim Tandja, Bornu’s canny foreign minister, and the conversations they’d had about a community of nations. Tandja had even written a book about it, a proposal for a supreme religious court to decide disputes between kings [3], and Midhat had a copy in his study somewhere.
It had been a while since Midhat had considered the idea – the exigencies of war had left him with little time to think of anything else – but even in the midst of war, it was always good to plan for the peace. Not for the first time, he imagined what might have happened if the great powers had been able to take their quarrels to impartial judges rather than fighting it out on the battlefield: could all these millions of deaths, all the wrecked towns and broken families, have been prevented?
Tandja’s concept needs some work, of course. The Bornu statesman had proposed the Sultan as supreme judge, and Midhat Pasha doubted that the great powers would accept that, much less a court structured under Islamic law. But maybe the Muslim countries would agree to be bound by such a court – and maybe, also, the powers could live with a court in which the Sultan was one of the judges.
There was something about the Sultan as judge of nations that appealed to Midhat powerfully. It would cement the Ottoman Empire’s status as a great power, but more than that, it would put the Sultan above politics. He would be Caliph and supreme arbiter, a role he would love, but a role that would prevent him from dirtying his hands with the day-to-day administration of the empire. That’s just where we need him. Keeping the peace for the empire… and leaving the people free to rule it.
And Midhat Pasha, foreign minister, began to compose his address to the peace conference.
_______
[1] See post 1099.
[2] See post 1099.
[3] See posts 963 and 1099.
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Bahaii Trotsky!?!
Referencing post 1099, when we're at more than double that?
wow!
Yes, i went back there, and yes, youd already mentioned the Recontructionist Bahaii Jews, but i had totally forgotten that.
Referencing post 1099, when we're at more than double that?
wow!
Yes, i went back there, and yes, youd already mentioned the Recontructionist Bahaii Jews, but i had totally forgotten that.
TROTSKY!
Honestly, this TL just keeps getting better and better.
Seconding!! And yay for Midhat Pasha, too.
Do I detect the possibility of romance between the young Trotsky and Rania?
A glorious Bedou-Jewish alliance, destined to change the world?
A glorious Bedou-Jewish alliance, destined to change the world?
So, Midhat Pasha's plan now is to achieve constitutional government (with people like himself holding the power of a Prime Minister) by kicking the Sultan (whoever he may be, presumably not just this Sultan but all his successors) "upstairs" to a World Supreme Court Justice?
I mean to say more on this but I've got to be to work an hour early every day this week.
And then leave an hour later. None of it is technically mandatory--yet.
Our site manager does not believe in the eight hour day. Fortunately the big corporation that took us over claims it does. We'll see. Meanwhile I certainly do need more money.
And perhaps this site does not need my rambling, autodialectical self-contradictory style so much?
I'm just wondering, if the Sultan (or Caliph?) of Islam (inclusive or exclusive of Shi'ites, Bahá'u'lláhites, Sufis, and the other variants we have ITTL thanks to Acabar?) is one judge, would all the others be representing some faith or other too? What about atheists? Or will there be none to speak of ITTL?
That's where I'd be skeptically going with it.
But trust Jonathan to come up with something crazy Utopian that has some pragmatic logic to it.
Meanwhile--I daresay that if Sultans who succeed the current one (something has to be done about the succession process by the way) are pragmatic politicians it won't be easy to ease them out of the day to day exercise of power in the Sultanate itself, glory of world judgeships luring them or no.
If they aren't--what kind of judges could they be?
It is a puzzlement.
I mean to say more on this but I've got to be to work an hour early every day this week.
And then leave an hour later.
None of it is technically mandatory--yet.Our site manager does not believe in the eight hour day. Fortunately the big corporation that took us over claims it does. We'll see. Meanwhile I certainly do need more money.
And perhaps this site does not need my rambling, autodialectical self-contradictory style so much?
I'm just wondering, if the Sultan (or Caliph?) of Islam (inclusive or exclusive of Shi'ites, Bahá'u'lláhites, Sufis, and the other variants we have ITTL thanks to Acabar?) is one judge, would all the others be representing some faith or other too? What about atheists? Or will there be none to speak of ITTL?
That's where I'd be skeptically going with it.
But trust Jonathan to come up with something crazy Utopian that has some pragmatic logic to it.
Meanwhile--I daresay that if Sultans who succeed the current one (something has to be done about the succession process by the way) are pragmatic politicians it won't be easy to ease them out of the day to day exercise of power in the Sultanate itself, glory of world judgeships luring them or no.
If they aren't--what kind of judges could they be?
It is a puzzlement.
So, Midhat Pasha's plan now is to achieve constitutional government (with people like himself holding the power of a Prime Minister) by kicking the Sultan (whoever he may be, presumably not just this Sultan but all his successors) "upstairs" to a World Supreme Court Justice?
I mean to say more on this but I've got to be to work an hour early every day this week.
And then leave an hour later.
Our site manager does not believe in the eight hour day. Fortunately the big corporation that took us over claims it does. We'll see. Meanwhile I certainly do need more money.
And perhaps this site does not need my rambling, autodialectical self-contradictory style so much?
I'm just wondering, if the Sultan (or Caliph?) of Islam (inclusive or exclusive of Shi'ites, Bahá'u'lláhites, Sufis, and the other variants we have ITTL thanks to Acabar?) is one judge, would all the others be representing some faith or other too? What about atheists? Or will there be none to speak of ITTL?
That's where I'd be skeptically going with it.
But trust Jonathan to come up with something crazy Utopian that has some pragmatic logic to it.
Meanwhile--I daresay that if Sultans who succeed the current one (something has to be done about the succession process by the way) are pragmatic politicians it won't be easy to ease them out of the day to day exercise of power in the Sultanate itself, glory of world judgeships luring them or no.
If they aren't--what kind of judges could they be?
It is a puzzlement.
Well, the Popes were asked for international arbitration quite routinely IOTL within the West (and sometimes elsewhere), so it's plausible that the Pope could be another judge of this court (which coull make a lot of militant Catholics, likely to be disgruntled by the outcome of the war, noticeably happier or at least more appeased). It's quite hard to figure out who else to refer too, though. Many religions have nothing like a pyramidal hierarchy (Christianity at large and Catholicism in particular stand out pretty markedly in this) or a widely recognized global leadership whatsoever (actually this is mostly the case with Sunni Islam too, although some authorities have widespread acknowledgement). So, I'm afraid that a "world council of religions" won't work. Apart form some characters like the Caliph, the Catholic and Coptic Popes, a handful of other Patriarchs, Archbishops and Ayatollahs, the Dalai Lama and possibly the Emperor of Japan (as a Shinto representative), authority of such a council would be sorely lacking among the very believers of the relevant faiths. Harder in TTL, actually, with widespread "creole" cults like Candomble or Bwiti that do not seem to have anything resembling a centralized way to represent themselves as such on the global stage.
I think that whatever process is involved in the selection of such a court, will be highly political and include massive level of horse-trading, but will still need to get wide consensus over respected figure. Within most religious communities (Christianity stands as said a significant exception), similar processes create bottom-up structures of recognized leadership (think of the way Shi'i Maraji al-Taqlid or Jewish Rabbis are selected) but they are slow and won't do here.
Hmmm... it will be very confusing.
Young Lev, who will never be known as Trotsky in TTL, isn't a Baha'i as we know the term, nor are the Bedouin with whom he's serving. Both consider the Bahá'u'lláh a great religious teacher rather than a prophet; the Bronshteins and their followers are Jews and the members of the Bedouin tribe are Muslim, although their respective co-religionists consider them more than a bit strange.
There are also Baha'is who do consider Bahá'u'lláh a prophet, but fewer than OTL and mostly in Persia; his influence in TTL will in some ways be broader but not as deep.
As for Lev and Rania, I'm not necessarily saying anything will happen, or that it will be a sign of a wider alliance if it does, but all's fair in love and war, and doubly so in wartime love. Lev's father is, after all, something of a chieftain in his own right now, and the sheikh might consider his family worth bringing into an alliance - and given the Bahá'u'lláh's teachings about the unity of religions, such a marriage wouldn't be considered unthinkable on either side.
It isn't as ambitious as a UN or a League of Nations - not a "Parliament of Man" but a "High Court of Man." It won't have any pretensions to being a world government or a lawmaking body (although its rulings will inevitably become part of customary international law) - it will simply be a binding court of arbitration to resolve international disputes. The closest analogue in OTL would probably be the ICJ, which has been very successful in resolving border disputes and has probably prevented several wars (Bakassi comes to mind first, but there have been others).
The proposal in TTL does grow out of Belloist religious thought, although that will have to be de-emphasized if non-Muslim countries are to join.
So, Midhat Pasha's plan now is to achieve constitutional government (with people like himself holding the power of a Prime Minister) by kicking the Sultan (whoever he may be, presumably not just this Sultan but all his successors) "upstairs" to a World Supreme Court Justice? [...] I'm just wondering, if the Sultan (or Caliph?) of Islam (inclusive or exclusive of Shi'ites, Bahá'u'lláhites, Sufis, and the other variants we have ITTL thanks to Acabar?) is one judge, would all the others be representing some faith or other too? What about atheists? Or will there be none to speak of ITTL?
Meanwhile--I daresay that if Sultans who succeed the current one (something has to be done about the succession process by the way) are pragmatic politicians it won't be easy to ease them out of the day to day exercise of power in the Sultanate itself, glory of world judgeships luring them or no.
That's where I'd be skeptically going with it.
But trust Jonathan to come up with something crazy Utopian that has some pragmatic logic to it.
If they aren't--what kind of judges could they be?
The above discussion assumes that Midhat Pasha will actually get everything he wants, and given that the Sultan and the great powers will have to agree, that's a big assumption. He'll get at least some of what he wants, and the peace settlement will include some kind of international court, but he'll be only one player in the political horse-trading, and he'll have to give up many of his bigger dreams. Abdulhamid abdicating the political role he's spent the war trying to enhance might well be one of the dreams that falls by the wayside; the advance to a full democracy from the Ottomans' current quasi-democracy won't be that easy.
In any event, his current plan is a Security Council model - one representative from each of the great powers (with the Sultan being the Ottoman representative) and several neutral judges. The Pope could indeed be a permanent neutral judge, and other religious leaders might serve terms on the court - Midhat Pasha is certainly open to the idea of "lords spiritual and temporal." However, the court will be set up to represent political players rather than faiths as such; where a religious leader is a major political player, he'll be included in the proposal, but otherwise not, so there won't be anyone specifically designated to represent Buddhists or Jews.
And Shevek23 - I hope things work out on your job, and we do need you here.
Persia and Central Asia next, then Korea, and then things really start popping. I estimate 10 to 15 more updates until the end of the war (although my estimates in this regard usually tend to be low) and then two or three more to deal with the aftermath and close out the nineteenth century.
"The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters."
Oh very well!
I am a bit behind reading this but the death of Ibrahim was beautifully and hauntingly written. I felt chills when a portion of the Sikh war cry crossed his mind.
I must say, I really thought the relief column would make it in time or that the Afghans would break off the siege to face the new and greater foe. Well done avoiding the sentimental option.
I must say, I really thought the relief column would make it in time or that the Afghans would break off the siege to face the new and greater foe. Well done avoiding the sentimental option.
I'd argue Ibrahim's death was the sentimental option. It sort of echoes Paulo the elder's own.
Maybe both options are sentimental in different ways. It's impossible to view the death of a promising 22-year-old man (and the Sikhs too, one of whom had a speaking part in a previous update) as anything other than a tragedy, and as you say, Ibrahim has followed in the footsteps of his grandfather. A last-minute deus ex machina rescue, for its part, would be something straight out of Hollywood, or maybe the fourth chapter of The Return of the King. I suspect it isn't possible to write that scene in a way that doesn't call to the emotions.
Speaking of Midhat Pasha getting everything he wants, I think he's being too optimistic in term's of the Empire's domestic stability. Here's what you wrote:
That's all true, of course, but Pasha is not paying enough attention to domestic unease. You put in a whole scene about the labor movement - and they're going to want big concessions later in exchange for not striking now. The minorities are going to use more democracy to push for their own rights - and it'll be a wonder if the Ottoman Empire survives the war in its current form. Overall Pasha is right - the Ottomans are doing well - but not as well as he thinks, I think.
Or am I completely wrong about all this?
Cheers,
Ganesha
P.S. Oh, and the idea of a ICJ-style world court consisting of eminent world leaders and religious figures - it's certainly plausible in the postwar world, provided the BOGs win. But the idea will run into trouble with secularists and socialists, who will only grow in number in coming years.
I think you're right about Pasha's error--from his point of view. The postwar Sultanate will be no more his toy than the Sultan's.
However, isn't he getting kind of old by now? I should look up his bio or find info in some older post of Jonathan's I guess, but I'd think he's quite an elder statesman. He might have a couple decades left in him, if his early career was that of an under-30 wunderkind, but I don't think a very young man who wasn't himself the Sultan could get very high in Ottoman politics in those days. So even though the end of the war is in sight, within a couple years or so, he might not last that much longer after it.
The tendencies you allude to are realities on the ground. I think it will be clear enough to the Sultan, and even to Pasha, that it will not do to let Ottoman industry slip post-war; it will be clear that they are still terribly backward despite the growth of wartime industry and they must redouble the continuing growth (and to some degree, dispersal) of industry to try to catch up and keep pace with the European powers. So they're stuck with labor.
The transformation of local politics, at least along the wartime Austrian front, is something Jonathan and others, me included, discussed earlier. The border communities were left to largely defend themselves; in Sarajevo at least we saw the consolidation of a commitment to a coalition of local diversity. It does not lend itself well to go-it-alone separatist nationalism; they fought, and their comrade partisans died, for the right to remain under the crescent banner, and remaining in the larger empire helps disperse the otherwise dangerous fissile tendencies of the diverse community. But, with the tacit understanding that they are not secessionists, if they stand together as during the war they are in a great bargaining position for status and respect relative to the central government. Either the central government gets wise to this reality or yes, they will fail and the Sultanate will disintegrate.
Is Pasha himself wise enough to recognize this reality and roll up his sleeves to work with it, or is he a has-been who will be shunted aside when he starts to fumble? Future updates will tell! If he gets taken out, will someone, or many someones, who are more astute, or anyway more willing to roll with the new situation, take his place, or will the thing fall apart?
I suspect people of suitable will and flexibility are available, and that willy-nilly the tent of government will keep expanding to fit in eventually all of the people, under some formula or other. It helps that the populations most stressed and devastated by the war are also the pioneers of the new localism-within-the-Sultanate model, and that others who haven't been so transformed as of yet have generally been safely sheltered.
In the end, considering the debacle of the last Sultans, it is a question of whether the democratic ideal inherent in Abacarism and the Belloist reaction to it has diffused widely enough and sunk deeply enough to make enough difference. I like to think it already has, enough that modernization is not experienced solely as capitulation to an alien enemy bloc but seems rooted in Islamic tradition, and is therefore going to be adopted more widely (in diverse, even contradictory forms to be sure!) If the various peoples under the Sultan have a will to work together, they will find a way--and each of them, in isolation, are clearly weaker standing alone than if they can remain within the larger state. So I think it can happen, whether Midhat Pasha is astute enough to get ahead of the parade and pretend to lead it or whether he is trampled over or ignominiously hustled aside.
But remember that this timeline diverges from OTL in that there is a parallel model of revolutionary activism. Alongside Marx, here, there is Abacar, and many diverse takeoffs of his model he both inspires and irritates into action.
I hope my little smilies post was clear enough--"What, what's happened already isn't 'popping' enough!?" No, compared to what might soon happen, probably not.
And the most spectacular "pop" I'm bracing myself for is Tsarist Russia ripping apart at the seams. But Jonathan has already suggested who the tailors might be who sew a new garment out of it. Not Bolsheviks! A coalition of diverse radicals rather, and one that includes many movements--Muslim, Christian, even Jewish--that are quite religiously oriented. It might come under the rubric "Tolstoyan." But it will have a pragmatic dash that comes from Paulo Abacar, by many roads.
So that's Russia itself, maybe. If that happens though and the post-war, post-revolutionary regime pulls through and something like Russia, perhaps bereft of certain parts, stands up again on those terms...
Well OTL the great revolutions tended to inspire admiration and study among other revolutionaries and progressives the world over. OTL, until the Russian Revolution, American radicals looked to Mexico as the latest great experiment. And when the Bolsheviks took over in Petrograd and Moscow, Australians danced in the streets.
Long short, the pious elements of a successful Russian revolution will give even the most radically atheistic Marxist types some pause. I imagine that in a hypothetical revolutionary Russia there will be some quite doctrinaire Marxists among them, who will dissent. But on the whole if religion is included in the package--and better still, if three religions getting along with each other while remaining devout in their separate but related faiths is how it works--then the notion that religion still has some relevance to progressives will be much stronger ITTL. The hardcore atheists will have to come to terms with it too.
Mind, I'm not at all sure that looks like progress or hope myself.
It has to work well, and it seems all to likely not to. I'm looking to Jonathan to show us how it might be done, or how its failure might still be fruitful. But thanks to Abacar, this world is different than ours, and religion is more evidently a part of everyday reality in an active sense. And much of its practice is more democratic, and the priesthoods that aren't have got to deal with a challenge, not only from an atheistic secularism, but from religious people who question their claim on the pipeline to God.
My first post at this site.
I just wanted to say what a brilliant work this story is.
I just wanted to say what a brilliant work this story is.
Welcome to the board!
It's great to have you here, and man, this is brilliant. I also joined AH.com just to comment on a timeline three years ago. That timeline, while good, is blown out of the water by what Jonathan Edelstein has created here.
Cheers,
Ganesha