In the course of my various visits to Constantinople I used often to look up my kind friend Ahmed Midhat Effendi, and our many conversations, always fraught with instruction for me, embraced every imaginable subject. They turned especially upon the Mohammedan religion and the attitude of Christianity towards Islam, not merely in our time, but throughout past centuries. It needed no great powers of persuasion to convince me that the European frame of mind towards the Mohammedan world must needs be the outcome of a one-sided version of events. How could it be otherwise in view of the inaccessibility of the records of Mohammedan history? Thus Lessing’s drama of “Nathan the Wise,” and the portrayal of Sultan Saladin as the ideal type of chivalry and religious tolerance, struck the Western world at the time as a revelation. To-day no serious person who has given the slightest attention to the subject can doubt that, whatever may have been the policy of aggression of the great Moslem conquerors, the spirit of Islam was one of broad religious tolerance at a time when such a quality was practically non-existent in Europe. When Sultan Selim proposed to offer the Christian population of his dominions the alternative of embracing Islam or expatriation—or, if you will, extermination—it was the Sheikh ul Islam who appealed to the precepts of the Koran prescribing the duty of the Sultan to protect and safeguard his subjects, whatever their faith, which prevented Selim from carrying out his intention. It was thus owing in a large measure to the Koran that the Christian population in Asiatic and European Turkey was protected and enabled to prosper in days when no European public opinion could have possibly intervened on its behalf. While the Turk was thus practising religious tolerance Jews were burnt at the stake in Christian Spain; the most intelligent portion of the inhabitants of France, the Huguenots, were being persecuted for their faith and driven from their homes by Louis XIV, and in England the penalty of death awaited the priest who dared to say Mass. These are weighty historical facts, without fully and constantly realizing which it is practically impossible for a Christian born and bred to be fair to the Mohammedan Turk, and approach the study of his customs and character in an impartial spirit. Ahmed Midhat, in drawing my attention to a recent publication concerning the conduct towards Christians prescribed by the Koran for Mohammedans, wrote to me some years ago as follows: “I do not know whether this document will be sufficient to bring home to you the calumny which the Christian world launches at us, in attributing to us a hatred for everything that is not Mohammedan, and more particularly for Christianity and Christians as such. But if you believe in my honesty, accept my assurance, tendered on my oath as a devout Mohammedan, on my honour as a gentleman, that such hatred has never existed among us....