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Within a few months, in 1909, the Young Turks obtained from the Shaykhu'l- Islam the condemnation of the Sultan himself who, as a result of further attempts to overthrow the constitution, was finally and ignominiously deposed, deported and made a prisoner of state. On one single day of that same year there were executed no less than thirty- one leading ministers, pashas and officials, among whom were numbered notorious enemies of the Faith. Tripolitania itself, the scene of Abdu'l- Baha's intended exile was subsequently wrested from the Turks by Italy. Thus ended the reign of the "Great Assassin," "the most mean, cunning, untrustworthy and cruel intriguer of the long dynasty of Uthman," a reign "more disastrous in its immediate losses of territory and in the certainty of others to follow, and more conspicuous for the deterioration of the condition of his subjects, than that of any other of his twenty- three degenerate predecessors since the death of Sulayman the Magnificent."
(272:1)
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