Stephanov | 265celebration of St. Cyril and St. Methodius, the ninth-century authors of what
later became the Cyrillic alphabet. With the publication of the first major Bulgar
newspaper, Tsarigradski Vestnik [Tsar City Newspaper], commencing in 1848,
an influential new medium compounded the sporadic decentralized influence
of songbooks. By bringing weekly to its readers all across the imperial domains
events and high personages from the capital, the paper enhanced their awareness
of an Ottoman center, personalized by the sultan, his family, and government
ministers. A quick review of its contents over several months of 1851 provides a
cross section of the channels whereby the symbolic ruler-ruled interaction be-
came grounded in the public mind. This snapshot reveals various formulations of
the relationship between the sultan and his subjects. To begin with, the fatherly
metaphor flourished. One finds references to “the fatherly Sultanic wishes” and
to a sultan “who watches equally over all of his subjects and cares for all of them
as a humane and good-natured father.” In a letter from the Bulgars of Tulcea (in
modern-day Romania), one even finds the image of a sultan who “loves his sub-
jects as his own adopted children.” A parallel process under way aimed to link
the image of the sultan-tsar-father with the image of the Ottoman land.
Here is an excerpt from a speech read in the sultan’s presence by one of his
ministers to local communities in Edirne (in modern-day Turkey) on the eve of
the 1846 tour:
Let all of us, subjects of all ranks, dedicated to our Venerable Tsar, get to know
them [the signs of magnanimity]! Let us thank God for having the best and
most righteous Monarch, and let us work to show ourselves grateful and wor-
thy of such superior abundance [of goodness]! Let us unite our hearts with
love for the fatherland, and let us hasten, in accordance with the will of our
most kind Tsar, in the development and prosperity of our fatherly place where
we first saw the sun.This emotional appeal reiterates the subjects’ dedication to their ruler before
taking their commitment to a higher level. First, there is a quick progression in
the sultan’s moral outlook. He is not only generous and merciful (“most kind”)
but also “venerable,” “most righteous,” and a source of “superior abundance” of
goodness. All these saintly attributes add an air of sanctity to the sultan’s per-
sona. As a result, the effort to please him accelerates (“let us hasten”) and in-
tensifies (“let us work to show ourselves grateful and worthy”). This escalating
sense of urgency culminates in a profoundly new call for unification (“let us unite
our hearts”) and totalization (“all of us,” “all ranks”). This call targets Muslims,
Christians, and Jews as subsequent passages clarify. The speech goes even fur-
ther, however, by stating that “the difference of faith and its law is a matter of
everyone’s simple conscience.” Perhaps even more astonishing is the rearrange-
ment of the metaphors of love and father—what had heretofore been the sultan’s