DISPOSING OF THE SULTAN'S WIVES.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 137, 28 September 1876, Page 3

DISPOSING OF THE SULTAN'S WIVES.

A correspondent states :—Part of the ex-Sultan's stud of horses are already being sold by auction. It vnav be equally easy to dispose of his f-r.iiaUi establishment, amounting, it is said, io 1,500 persons, between what people improperly call "wives" —for a Sultan never marries—and nurses, slaves, singing and dancing girls, and other attendants. As I was walking yesterday in the neighbourhood of Beikos, across the Bosphorus, on the Asiatic shore, on the road from the kiosii or palace of Tokat, I met two " e arabs, oil country carts, drawn by oxen, and laden with women of various ranics, wit a children and nurses and negro attendants. My surmise was tlia'; these were some of the inmates of the ex-Sultan's harem, for when a temporary home was provided in the vacant apartments of Tokat till the new Sovereign or his ministers had time to consider what permanent arrangement could Tse made for them, in which case other flocks of the same cjr.ld find t'icir nests in some of tiie many other Imperial country homes. Many- of the former women of AbdulMedjid, and even some of those of Maiimound 11., who died in ISJO, are still enjoying the pension allowed to them by the" Civil List. A widow or cast-oS" woman of a Sultan has a high value in the matrimonial markfct among these loyal Turks : those who have borne c 1 ildren to the SLilian are, however, debarred from marriage. It is reckoned that of £200,000,000, constituting t ! ie debt of the Ottoman Empire, a debt of £53,000,000 has been absorbed by Sultan Abdul-Aziz during the fifteen years of his reign. It we reflect that of the £200,000,000 issued at nominal prices, little more than half was ever actually cashed, and if we take into account the-interest at the average rate of 5 per cent, for so many years, we shall easily understand how little of the ill-borrowed money ever foiinu its way into the State Treasury."