The reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876–1909) began with a disastrous foreign war; it terminated in the turmoil of revolution. And during the intervening three decades of his régime the Ottoman Empire was forced to wage a fight for its very existence—a fight against disintegration from within and against dismemberment from without. One of the principal problems of Abdul Hamid was the government of his vast empire in spite of domestic dissension and foreign interference. His subjects were a polyglot collection of peoples, bound together by few, if any, common ties, obedient to the Sultan’s will only when overawed by military force. In Turkey-in-Asia alone, Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, Jews, Greeks combined to form a conglomerate population, professing a variety of religious faiths, speaking a diversity of languages and dialects, and adhering to their own peculiar social customs. Of these, the Armenians were receiving the sympathy, support, and encouragement of Russia; the Kurds were living by banditry, terrorizing peasants and traders alike; the Arabs were in open revolt.[1] Nature seemed to make more difficult the task of bringing these dissentient peoples under subjection. The mountainous relief of the Anatolian plateau lent itself to the success of guerrilla bands against the gendarmerie; a high mountain barrier separated Anatolia, the homeland of the Turks, from the hills and deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia, the strongholds of the Arabs. The vast extent of the empire—it is as far from Constantinople to Mocha as it is from New York to San Francisco—still further complicated an already tangled problem, for there were not even the poorest means of communication. Under these circumstances the authority of the Sultan was as often disregarded as obeyed. To police the country from the Adriatic to the Indian Ocean, from the borders of Persia to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, was a physical impossibility. Universal military service was enforced only in the less rebellious provinces. It was almost out of the question to mobilize the military strength of the empire for defence against foreign invasion or for the suppression of domestic insurrection. Efforts to build up effective administration from Constantinople were paralyzed by incompetent, insubordinate, and corrupt officials.[2]