EMANCIPATION OF ABDUL HAMID'S SLAVES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 181, 4 September 1909, Page 3

EMANCIPATION OF ABDUL HAMID'S SLAVES.

When Abdul Hamid was deposed by the' Young Turks one Tesult of the revnlution was the dispersion of the harem of .the ex-Sultan. According to Professor ArminTus Vambery, the eminent Orientalist and traveller, who for some time was on terms of intimacy with the deposed Sultan, the Seraglio at Yildiz Kiosk was never exactly a. Garden of Eden, "Few Turks," he says, "and still I less foreigners and Christians, can have an idea of the horrible life carried on by the inmates of the harem." But the deposition of Abdul meant emancipation to these Circassian slave girls, airman affecting account is given in the Turqire, a French daily published in Constantinople, of their restoration to their families and, friends : A REMARKABLE SCENE. "The Government first sent telegrams into all the regions of Anatolia in which ' were to be found Circassian refugees or / colonists likely to have daughters, sisters, or gelations in the harem of Abdul Hamid. They were summoned immediately to Constantinople in order to take Back into their own country the ladies of the harem who belonged to them. For several days these Circassian villagers have been arriving in the city, wearing their picturesque costume, with dagger in girdle." The Teunira of the long-separated kinsfolk is thus described: "Tears, caresses, and cries of enthusiasm and excitement prevailed. The girls recognised fathers, brothers, uncles, or cousins; they kissed! they wept, tlwy uttered exclamations of joy at the recovery of the dear relatives from whom they had been Separated for so many years. They asked for news of their .mothers, their sisteKs, their brotheis, and their friends. Some there were who did not know their relatives; from whom they had teen taken away in early childhood. The recognition was only made by a reference to family names, and names of the vilayets from which they had been ,exiled." WHAT LIBERTY MEANS. The young women are described as being heartily glad to leave the perpetual seclusion of the harem for the liberty of peasant Iffe:—"These ladies, who lived like princesses of fairyland, in a sumptuous palace, who. wore bewitching dresses and ate off plate, who floated in gilded shallops' on enchanted lakes, and still were unhappy, are suddenly snatched by a social revolution from the paradisaical shores of the Bosphorus and sent back to the isolated villages of Asia Minor. Her*, their oniy dwelling will be a thatched cottage, their only pastimes the cultivation o ! the soil, the milking of cows, the herding of cattle. Their evening meal will be a pieee of maize bread and a bowl of skim-milk; but they will have health; death by consumption or the tuberculous diseases of the harem will not be theirs. They will live happy lives, surrounded by love and affection."