him, he leaped from a window, and died in consequence of the fall.—P. E. D.
'ABDULLAH IBN ZOBEYR, caliph of Mecca, born a.d. 622. He was the constant enemy of the caliphs of the house of Umeyyah, and perished after all his soldiers had deserted him, when Mecca was besieged by the caliph 'Abdu-l-Malek. His history is made interesting by the bravery and devotion of his mother Asma, a woman of 90, who stood by him to the last during the fatal siege.
'ABDU-L-MALEK IBN HISHA´M IBN AYUB AL-HIM-YARI´, an Arabian historian and poet, born at Cairo in the latter half of the eighth century.
'ABDU-L-MA´LIK IBN SHOHEYD, poet and historian, born at Cordova about the middle of the tenth century.
ABDU-L-MEDJID, the late Ottoman sultan, the twenty-eighth since the capture of Constantinople, and the final overthrow of the Greek dynasty by Mahomet II., was born on the 23d of April, 1823, and succeeded his father Mahmoud II. on the 1st of July, 1839. It is difficult to form a just estimate of his character or his policy, so variously are they represented, according to the political or religious bias of those who have described them. He began his eventful reign at the early age of sixteen, and at a desperate crisis of the Turkish power. The old party in the state, backed by the prejudices of the Mahometan population, and comprehending the mass of them, restrained no longer by Mahmoud's iron rule, were fully determined to restore the order of things which he had begun to supersede. They were secretly assisted by the emissaries of Russia, an empire which had everything to gain by the complication of Turkish affairs. Mehemet Ali placed himself at the head of this party, and adopted its fanaticism. They regarded him as the rightful champion of the orthodox Mussulmans; and only awaited the triumphal march of his representative, Ibrahim Pacha, on Constantinople, to proclaim the pacha of Egypt "Makan of the two seas," and thus to overthrow the Ottoman throne. Just eight days before the sultan's accession, his army had sustained an apparently willing defeat at the battle of Nisib, fought on the 24th of June, 1839. Scarcely had the news of that disaster reached the ears of his counsellors, than his admiral carried his fleet to Alexandria, and surrendered it to Mehemet Ali. No time was to be lost. A treaty was signed at London on the 15th July, 1839, by all the leading powers of Europe, except France, which was deemed by many to have been paralysed at that juncture by Russian double intrigue. A series of prompt warlike operations, in which England bore a conspicuous part, suppressed the rebellion. The forces of Mehemet Ali were compelled to evacuate Syria, and the balance of power in Europe was for a season restored.
The young sultan had now leisure to apply himself in earnest to pursue the measures of reform which his father had bequeathed to him. In this task he was assisted by Reschid Pacha, his first minister, an enlightened and patriotic statesman. On the 3rd of November, 1839, was promulgated the Tanzimat, or edict of Gulhané, promising improvement in the administration of public affairs, and professing to guarantee to all Ottoman subjects an equality of civil rights; but it is to be regretted that, beyond the precincts of Constantinople, and a few other localities, the Tanzimat remains a dead letter. This decree was followed by another, not less important, dated the 12th of May, 1850, which proclaimed the professors of all creeds equal in the eye of the law. The principles of justice and toleration involved in this document had already received signal illustration, in the frank and generous hospitality given by the sultan and his advisers to the Polish and Hungarian refugees after the disastrous events of 1848. The dignity and firmness with which he refused their extradition entitle him to the gratitude of posterity.
But soon a new difficulty arose. Russia had long been advancing her frontier, with silent and certain footsteps, in the direction of Constantinople. The Muscovite czar claimed as of right the protectorate of all the subjects of the Porte who belonged to the Greek communion, enlisting their religious sympathies on his side by costly presents to the Greek churches in Turkey, and enforcing his claims by all the arts of intrigue. In pursuance of this supposed protectorate, a demand was made that Greek ecclesiastics should obtain the whole custody of what are called the "holy places" at Jerusalem. This claim was disputed by France, which, now governed by a Bonaparte, and inclined by traditional policy to maintain the rights of the Latin church in the East, also demanded a share in the management of those venerable localities. The key, say some, of a chapel in Palestine was given to the wrong ecclesiastic. Jesuit trickery, it is affirmed by others, was wielding the power of French diplomacy to extend over Palestine and Syria the despotism of the popedom. The probability is, that Russia was glad to avail herself of the opportunity afforded her by some over-zealous Latin churchmen, of fastening a quarrel on the Porte; and began to develop her long-cherished design of adding the territories of the sultan to her vast dominions. Turkey, it is intimated, was to be divided. England was to receive Egypt, the high road to her Indian and Australian possessions. Austria was to be bribed to acquiesce in the scheme of partition by the western provinces of the sultan's dominions. The claims of France were to be ignored, as her influence was at that moment weakened by intestine dissensions. But Russia was to take the lion's share. The Black Sea was to become a Russian lake; Russia was to levy a fiscal tax on every bale of merchandise which went up or down the Danube; and while, in the extreme north, St. Peterburg, Sweaborg, and Cronstadt were the standing memorials of the humiliation of Scandinavia, in the south, Constantinople, converted into the capital of the czars, was to demonstrate that the Sclavonic race was everywhere on the ascendant, and that the Turcoman incursion into Europe was at an end.
Such is said to have been the scheme. It began by negotiations between France, Russia, and Turkey; which, of course, never arrived at a satisfactory termination. Meanwhile, Russia, obeying the single will of Nicholas, who felt that he could enforce his protectorate of the Greek Christians, and any other plan for weakening Turkey, with an enormous army, and with a fleet ready to sail from Sebastopol at a few hours' notice, became impatient at this delay. The final refusal of the sultan to concede the protectorate was made a pretext for war. Troops, already prepared for the enterprise, were marched into the Moldo-Wallachian provinces. These were to be held by the czar as a material guarantee until Turkey succumbed. This audacious aggression unveiled the ambitious projects of Russia, and alarmed the rest of Europe. However divided public opinion might be in consequence of the cruelties exercised by the Turkish subordinate governors on the Christian populations under their sway; however anxiously the protestants of Europe regarded any extension of the papal authority, the strong impression in England and France was, that the future peace of Europe was imperilled. Those two great nations, whose alliance in war had been so rare that at St. Petersburg it was deemed impossible, combined to sustain the sultan and his court in their hour of danger, and to resist the encroachments of their grasping neighbour. Abdu-l-Medjid saw, from the terraces of his palace, the mighty fleets of his Western allies anchored in the Bosphorus, and welcomed their legions at the Golden Gate. After various preliminary operations, the armies—the English and French armies under the command respectively of Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud—embarked at Varna for the Crimea, in numbers variously stated, and amounting probably to about 45,000 men. The vast armada that bore them, and was destined to cover their disembarkation, arrived at the Crimean peninsula on the 14th September, 1854. They landed without encountering any serious opposition, at a favourable spot between the town of Eupatoria and the river Alma. Marching thence in the direction of Sebastopol, the great arsenal of Russia in the south of Europe, they found the Russians awaiting their arrival on an entrenched plateau in front of the Alma, near its mouth. A sanguinary battle ensued on the 20th of September, and the Russians were routed with the loss of nearly 5,000 men.
The allies reached Sebastopol, and began the siege. It was remarkable for brilliant deeds of daring, among which the charge of the English cavalry at Balaclava will for ever rank among the wonders of bravery; for a great battle, that of Inkermann; for the skill of the Russian engineers, especially in their use of earthworks; for the first application of the modern inventions of civil engineering to the purposes of war; and for the death of the allied commanders by whom it had been begun. At last, the capture by the French of a commanding point, called the Malakhoff tower, rendered the defensive works untenable. The Russians evacuated and burnt the city, destroying their fleet, and retreating across the harbour to the northern side. It has
