The Secrets of the Sultan's Palace

kingyus (59)in #writing • 6 years ago (edited)

I was always fascinated by how much the Arabs love food

This could be a very interesting yet a hard thing to read since I am going to use some historical references but also my imagination on how things used to be in the times of the Ottoman empire

If there is one thing that the Arabs have in common is their love for food, this is due because of the very nature of their ambient which is mainly desert and lacking of life resources

I have to admit Lebanon isn't exactly like that because of it's green landscape but also because of them being not fully Arabs in fact they like to claim to be Phoenicians

But anyways, they get hungry too...

The hostile ambient has claimed many lives since its birth millions of years ago and that has resonated or is reflected in the mentality and behavior of the indigenous population

Cut off from the rest of the world by a natural barrier, the Arabs always lived in a very conservative and small tribal conglomerates usually founded around water wells

When the well is drained out they moved to another one and so on along the year till they are filled up again by the occasional precipitations

That is why they are originally a nomad people, eternally moving in circle from well to the other and often times clashed over the precious liquid in a never ending cycle that preside between some families till this day

Hostile like the desert, they are very hot headed people and will fight anything and everything over anything
That's right! That is the nature of the beast or they have gone mad long ago ...

To tell you a crazy one there was a story of an evil wind, the "Ghibly" that used to blow so hard for weeks that men and women declared war on it and went on to fight it in full battle uniform

That is how mad you can get living in the desert

Anyways

Food!
Yes, I remember...

At the time of the Turkish Sultanate almost all the middle east was under one rule, the "Caliphate"

In Egypt for example they had their independence in 1952 before that there was a king under the governance of the British empire, a small government elite that came from a few aristocratic and rich families that owned almost all the agricultural land and the few industrial ones

They owned everything

All the rest of the population, almost 99%, were poor farmers and servants to the Family or the governing elite

These people were barefooted almost all the time and used to carry rich people on their back or pulling a cart with a comfy seat on it for the "Pasha" or the equivalent of "Monsignor" in french

The only concern they ever had was food

As long as they can eat, you could ask them to die too. they would do it with a full belly, that is how these people place food at the highest life's achievement ever

They would laugh if you had any complaints other than food

Several times in history, egyptians rioted against the rulers and guess what was the principal motive...that's right, hunger

The voracity by which they ate were used even to greater levels when revolting

To give you an idea on how things unfolded think about when Troy was infiltrated ...absolute disaster and terrifying too when you think that gold and precious metals were not in the menu as they storm the Sultan's palace snatching and stuffing their mouth with anything that looked digestible even human flesh

yes, ...human flesh

Which brings me to a story at the time of the "Mamaleek", the sultan's assigned dukes, that ruled the streets with an iron fist and were rivals between each others to gain more control and power
The sound of horses running in the street were enough to make you run home and lock your door up for the day or even days
The clash between the Mamaleek were intentionally made public so everybody can witness the passage of power

It was a gangster world, something like Al Capone's clashes but with horses and long swords

But here came a dry time were the farmers had little to nothing to harvest for months

I don't remember exactly the reason behind it but I what I do remember is my shock at knowing that small babies died either by sickness, starvation or their own mother's hands to spare them from suffering further

A bigger shock came when I realized that they ate them!

A survival instinct or pure evil? The line is very thin

This incident happened only once according to my fonts but the death of babies and children because of preventable sicknesses and starvation were a very common thing in ancient Egypt, I would say ancient as the times of the Pharaohs too in a lesser or greater degree

These stories and many others are all kept a secret somewhere in Turkey now, archived and locked away from public viewing for centuries

In fact I believe that by order of the Islamic authority in Turkey these historic documentation are not meant to be public ever!

This was in accordance with the ruling elite, namely the Sultan himself which had an entire compartment in his palace where all kinds of adultery and sexual relations occured

Certainly the Sultan didn't want that in the public eyes

And so many stories like this and more were never documented and the ones that were are now locked away

I mean, prostitutions, homosexuality, slave trades, pedophilia, alcoholism, etc. etc. were never talked about until now!

I like to think that it would be very heavy for the Islamic institutions to even face such things namely because of its nature but also and most importantly because it would put in jeopardy the credibility and ultimately the undisputed authority of the entire Islam nation!