Word: ottoman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...site of a new Rome by the Emperor Constantine in A.D. 330, the city was known first as Byzantium. As Constantinople, it was a world capital for 1,100 years until it fell in 1453 to the founders of a new empire, the vigorous Turks of the Ottoman Conqueror Mohammed...
When the new Turkish republic of Kemal Ataturk took over from the moribund Ottoman Empire after World War I, the ancient glories of Constantinople were already flaking away in a slow death of peeling paint, collapsed masonry, commercial clutter and neglect. Nobody much cared. The fashion then was to lavish attention on the bustling new inland capital of Ankara. As time passed, tourist interest and national pride in the possession of a great historical monument gradually restored Turkish affection to the city they now called Istanbul. Still, nobody did much about repaving its streets, restoring its buildings or clearing...
...Trouble. The descendants of a Greek renegade first placed on the throne by the Turkish masters of the Ottoman Empire, the Husseinite Beys of Tunis became in later years little more than abject puppets of French colonial rule. With personal prerogatives rivaling those of true oriental potentates and on a half-million-dollar-a-year allowance (almost ten times what France pays its own President), the Beys had only to pile up their wealth and stay out of trouble. Since dynastic law provided that each Bey should be succeeded by the eldest male relative on his father's side...
...last of the lot, spade-bearded El Amin, had a passionate concern for antique clocks, and an urge to garb himself in bemedaled uniforms of the old Ottoman army. He made an impressive showpiece at royal functions, never bothered to learn French, and gazed tolerantly at the antics of a huge and predatory family...
...years older than Nuri, and an affable, intelligent and wealthy politico, Ali Jawdat, 70, is Nuri's longtime comrade in arms. Like Nuri, he was trained by the Turks in the Ottoman military college at Istanbul, fought in the Camel Corps against the Turks in the Arab revolt in World War I. He has been Premier twice before (in 1934 and 1949). One of his sons is a close friend of young King Feisal, and helps him care for his sports cars; the other is Iraqi agent for Westinghouse air conditioners...