Abdullah Quilliam (Henri De Léon) and Marmaduke Pickthall 77
Prime Minister Balfour and Foreign Secretary Lord Landsdowne for sending
warships to participate in manouevres against the Ottomans.13 During the
Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, the Balkan League of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro
and Serbia fought to gain independence from the Ottoman Empire –
horrified to hear reports of Balkan atrocities in their hostilities with the Porte.
Pickthall visited Constantinople in 1913 to verify the number of Turkish victims.
He was alarmed to note the difference between the British media and German
coverage of the same incidents. The position of the British media was clear,
the Turks were barbaric aggressors and there was no coverage of any Balkan
atrocities.14 Pickthall wrote home to his wife “how can anyone imagine the
Turks to be fanatical”;15 after four months he returned to England determined
to prevent the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, arguing that Germany would
take political advantage if the British cooled towards the Turkish.16
Quilliam agreed and was equally enraged at the coverage of the Brit-
ish press but his problems with relations between Britain and Turkey began
fifteen years earlier. The first test of the Sheikh’s allegiances occurred when
the Armenian disturbances initiated a series of acts of rebellion against the
Ottoman Empire. As early as 1893, he wrote an editorial which commented
on the trial of Armenian rebels for high treason at Marsovan and Caesarea. 17
Quilliam showed surprise that the British newspapers considered the Arme-
nian rebels to be legitimate simply because they were Christian, and asked
whether they would have accepted the right of Turkey to interfere with British
Muslim subjects in India. Quilliam took up an aggressive response to the posi-
tion of the British media, with its reports of Muslim atrocities against brave
Armenian attempts to free themselves from the imperial yoke. His strategy of
resistance to the media’s coverage was twofold. Firstly, he held to a position
13 Geaves, Islam in Victorian, 103–4.
14 Marmaduke Pickthall, With the Turk in Wartime (London: Dent, 1914), ix.
15 Marmaduke Pickthall, “Pickthall, Letters from Turkey”, Islamic Culture xi, 420.
16 See Jamie, Gilham, Loyal Enemies: British Converts to Islam 1850–1950 (London: Hurst,
2014), 151–52.
17 The New York Times of 17 April 1893 published a report written by H.E. Newberry, Secretary
of the United States Legation in Constantinople, in which he investigated the recent
reports of the persecution of Christians by Mahommedans and the burning of the
Marsovan College. It is interesting to read that American opinion was more in line with
Quilliam and noted that incendiary and seditious notices had been placed on the door
of the college by Armenian agitators, some of whom were carrying dynamite. Newberry
considered that the Turkish authorities handled the matter as well as could be expected
and released many of those arrested. This was very different to the reaction in the British
media.