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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (42065)	9/22/2013 7:04:52 PM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

Have been keeping in touch and more so last 6mos ,he's got many great stories & perspectives without end especially insights into Islam from a knowledgable insider , here's a little look at the inside of the Ottoman Caliphate We sit in a cafe to enjoy, but not for the prospective Ottoman Caliphs the 'Shadow of God on Earth'. Not the strongest but the weakest were made the Caliph!! Kafes, below literally "the cage", was the part of the Imperial Harem of the Ottoman Palace where possible successors to the throne were kept under a form of house-arrest and constant surveillance by the palace guards. The Ottoman prospective Caliphs were opiated and drugged until Caliph died and a new successor was required from the waiting pedigree in the cage. The younger brother of Mehmed IV (1648–87), Suleiman II was born at Topkapi Palace in Constantinople and had spent most of his life in the kafes (cage), a kind of luxurious prison for princes of the blood within the Topkapi Palace (it was designed to ensure that none could organize a rebellion). He was the one who in the year 1688 requested assistance against the rapidly advancing Austrians, during the Ottoman–Habsburg War however ...the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb and his forces were heavily engaged in the Deccan Wars against the Marathas to commit any formal assistance to their desperate Ottoman allies. : "The rulers erected a windowless building called the Cage in which their heirs were confined from early childhood until they died or were put to death or, having been taught nothing about anything, were released to take their turns on the throne. The result was as inevitable as it was monstrous: an empire ruled year after year and finally century after century by utterly ignorant, utterly incompetent, sometimes half-imbecilic, half-mad men, some of whom spent decades in the Cage before their release and all of whom, after their release, were free to do absolutely anything they wanted, no matter how vicious, for as long as they remained alive. They commonly indulged their freedom to kill or maim anyone they wished to kill or maim for any reason - for playing the wrong music or for smoking, for example - or for no reason at all." The last Ottoman sultan, Mehmet VI Vahidettin (1918–22) was aged 56 when he came to the throne and had been either in the harem or the Cage for the whole of his life. He was confined to the Cage by his uncle (Abdülaziz) and had stayed there during the reigns of his 3 older brothers. It was the longest and last confinement of a sultan by his predecessors.See More