The question to be decided is this: which of the four successors of the
Prophet, Ali, Abu Bekr, Osmar, and Osman, was the true Caliph. The
Shiites maintain that Ali alone was the true Caliph. The Sunnites, on
the other hand, affirm that all four were true Caliphs and equally holy.
And certainly the Shiites must be great blockheads to allow themselves
to be cut into mince-meat by thousands, rather than admit that God would
enrich the calendar with three saints distasteful to them personally.
The head Mufti had already hurled three fetvas at the head of Shah
Mahmud, and just as many armies of valiant Sunnites had invaded the
territories of the Shiites. The redoubtable Grand Vizier, Damad Ibrahim,
had already wrested from them Tauris, Erivan, Kermandzasahan, and
Hamadan, and the good folks of Stambul could talk of nothing else but
these victories--victories which they had extra good reason to remember,
inasmuch as the Janissaries, at every fresh announcement of these
triumphs, all the more vigorously exercised their martial prowess on the
peaceful inhabitants they were supposed to protect, and not only upon
them, but likewise upon the still more peaceful Sultan who, it must be
admitted, troubled himself very little either about the Sunnites, or the
victories of his Grand Vizier, being quite content with the
contemplation of his perpetually blooming tulips and of the damsels of
the Seraglio, who were even fairer to view than the tulips whose blooms
they themselves far outshone.
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