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The lights had been dimmed, and Sultan Abdulhamid II lay back against a cascade of embroidered cushions, his eyes half-closed. Sleep eluded him, as it so often did, the troubles of the Empire swirling endlessly through his mind.
From behind the carved wooden screen at the foot of the bed, a soothing voice carried through the bedchamber as Ismet Bey read aloud from a leather-bound translation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most recently published Sherlock Holmes mystery. Abdulhamid glanced at the clock on his nightstand, noting the lateness of the hour. Past midnight. He settled deeper into the lavender-scented sheets and ran a finger along the edge of the quilt, his nail catching on the embroidery as he stifled a yawn.
Ismet Bey, the Master of the Robes, the sultan’s sut kardes, his milk brother, continued reading. “Come, Watson, come. The game is afoot…” The familiar cadence of his voice coaxed his master towards sleep.
Abdulhamid closed his eyes. Turning onto his side, his head sank into the softness of the pillow as he pictured the author, his thick mustache visible beneath a tall top hat, standing on the Ambassador’s Terrace earlier that day. He exhaled deeply, and his eyelids grew heavier. Ismet Bey’s voice softened as he neared the end of the chapter. The words wrapped around Abdulhamid like a soft blanket. Gradually, the troubles of the day receded, and he drifted into a restless slumber. Ismet Bey closed the book, extinguished the reading lamp, and slipped quietly from the room, careful not to turn his back on the sultan.
Sultan Abdulhamid was highly sensitive to how he was portrayed abroad and ensured that foreign newspapers and journals reporting on him were obtained by the Ottoman embassies and translated for his personal reading.
A dedicated team worked in the Translation Office at the Yildiz Palace, translating articles and political commentary, intercepted missives, as well as popular literary works into Ottoman Turkish.
It was through one such publication, an issue of “The Strand Magazine” from October 1903, that Abdulhamid first encountered the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. While translating an article written about the sultan, a palace translator noticed a serialization of Conan Doyle’s most recent mystery, “The Empty House,” printed on the preceding page. Aware of Abdulhamid’s fondness for detective fiction, and acting upon his own initiative, he decided to translate the story too.
Abdulhamid was instantly enthralled, captivated by Conan Doyle’s intricate plotting and methodical reasoning. He soon instructed his ambassador in London to procure all the author’s works and to send every new installment from “The Strand Magazine” directly to the Translation Office at the Yildiz Palace.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. He trained as a physician and began his professional life in medicine before becoming an acclaimed author and a leading figure in popular literature at the turn of the 20th century.
His first wife died of tuberculosis in 1906, and he married his second wife, Jean Leckie, the following September. Soon after, the couple embarked on a grand tour of Europe, visiting Paris, Berlin, Dresden, Venice, Rome, Naples, Athens, Smyrna and Istanbul, before travelling back to England via Budapest.
It was while he was on honeymoon in Istanbul that Sultan Abdulhamid, an avid admirer of his work, invited Conan Doyle to be received at the palace.
On Friday, Nov. 1, 1907, the celebrated author, accompanied by Admiral Sir Henry Woods, adviser to the Imperial Ottoman Navy, attended the Selamlik ceremony from the Ambassador’s Terrace at the Yildiz Palace. This weekly procession to the Hamidiye Mosque was one of the few occasions on which the sultan appeared in public, an event of grand ceremonial pageantry, witnessed by vast cheering crowds.
As it was the holy month of Ramadan, a private audience was not possible. Instead, Abdulhamid’s chief chamberlain received Conan Doyle on the sultan’s behalf and presented him with the Order of Mecidiye, Second Class, in recognition of his contribution to literature. Lady Conan Doyle was similarly honoured with the Order of Charity, Second Class, in acknowledgement of her compassion for the stray dogs of the city.
Although the two men never met, they were, for a fleeting moment, in one another’s presence: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, unmistakable, his thick mustache visible beneath a tall top hat, observing the slow passage of the imperial procession from the Ambassador’s Terrace, while Sultan Abdulhamid, seated in his black landau carriage, allowed his gaze to rise just briefly towards his literary hero.
An unlikely meeting of minds.
If you visit the Yildiz Palace, pause for a moment in the rooms once used as the sultan’s bedchambers. Imagine Sultan Abdulhamid, exhausted by the pressures of state yet unable to find sleep, lying beneath an embroidered quilt, listening to the steady voice of Ismet Bey as he reads aloud from a translated Sherlock Holmes mystery.
Or stand on the Ambassador’s Terrace and look down at the road winding towards the Hamidiye Mosque. It is not difficult to picture a man in a tall top hat, his waxed mustache catching the light, watching the sultan’s carriage pass by—unaware perhaps that he too was being observed.
Until we meet again in the next “Sultan’s Salon.”
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