DEATH OF THE SULTAN

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 247, 6 July 1918, Page 7

DEATH OF THE SULTAN

TURKEY'S NOMINAL RULER PASSES AWAY London, July 4. Mohammed V, Sultan of Turkey, is dead; aged 74—Reuter. Mohammed V, late Sultan of Turkey, was born on November 3, 1814; he was the eon of the lato Sultan Abdul Medjid, and succeeded in April. 1909. to (he throne of his brother. Abdul Hamid 11, who was deposed. The heir-apparent is not a son of the late Sultan, but his brother, Wahid-ed-Din, who is 57 years of age. The late Sultan left two sons. Mohammed V was the thirty-sixth, in male descent, of (he House of Othman, the founder of the Empire, and tho twenty-sixth Sultan since the conquest of Constantinople. By (ho law of succession obejed in tho reigning family (says the "Statesman's Year Book") the crown is inherited according to seniority by the male descendants of Othman, sprung from the Imperial harem. All children bom in the harem, whether of free women or of slaves, are legitimate and of equal lineage. It has not been (ho custom of tho Sultans of Turkey .for eorao centuries to conduct regular marriages. Tho inmates of the harem come, by purchase or free will, mostly from districts beyond tho limits of tho Empire, the majority from Circassia (in the Caucasus). From among theso inmates tho Sultan designates a- certain number, nowadays very limited, to bo called Kadin, or full wives. Tho title is only given after a child has been born to tho Sultan. , Tho late Sultan's part in the great war lias been inconsiderable. In tho early , stages of Turkey's intervention ho scorns to have taken the role of passive resistor, without any effect -upon the energetic operations of hjs Ministry and the .Gorman agents who virtually controlled the Empiro; and since then he has.scarpely been heard of.