Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor: Series One and Series Two in one VolumeWalsh, R. (Robert)
History
Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor: Series One and Series Two in one Volume
Walsh, R. (Robert)
Istanbul (Turkey) -- History; Istanbul (Turkey) -- Pictorial works
agonies, and the Princess of the eunuch yet unloosed from his throat.
The last years of the wretched old man were imbittered by the conduct
of the sons, for whose advancement he had suffered those foul murders
to be committed. His son Bajazet was a rebel to his father’s authority;
and Selim, who succeeded him, was the most weak and wicked of the
Mohammedan line. His noble mosque, and the tombs that contain the ashes
of himself and his wife Roxalana, are shown by the Turks to strangers
as the most splendid monuments left by their sultans.
Selim II. succeeded to the throne in 1566, and was entirely devoted
to the gratification of his appetites. His father was temperate in
wine, and forbade its use under the severest penalties. It is said he
attributed the failure of the attack on Malta to the violation of the
law of Mohammed in this respect, and he caused caldrons of boiling oil
to be kept in the streets, ready to be poured down the throat of any
person, Turk, Jew, or Christian, who was found intoxicated. Selim, as
if in contempt and mockery of his father, indulged in wine to such
excess, that he despatched an expedition to Cyprus, and annexed that
island to the empire, for no other reason but because it produced good
wine. The loss of the sanguinary battle of Lepanto, in his reign, was
another blow following the defeat at Malta, which shook the mighty
fabric of the Turkish empire. Selim died after a reign of eight years
and five months, a rigid observer of all the Prophet’s laws, except
sobriety.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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