The move of the Bulgarian Communist Government to liquidate the Muslim Turks in Bulgaria, initiated at the end of 1984 and completed in the beginning of 1985, by forcing the Turks in Bulgaria to exchange their Turkish names for Bulgarian ones, is a crime against the most elemantary principles of human rights, of world civilization and culture. By this act the Bulgarian government has committed itself to a policy of an ethnic, cultural and political genocide. Though this term has been initially used to mean physical destruction of one or another nation, in a broader sense it signifies a cultural and political extinction of a national minority.

For almost six centuries the position of the Armenian nation (millet) within the Ottoman Empire, was one of relative peace, order, security and prosperity until the genesis, in the 1870s, of the so-called "Eastern Question". The Turco-Russian war of 1877 had resulted in the abortive Treaty of San Stefano, and had brought about the signature of the Cyprus Convention and the Treaty of Berlin. These treaties were supposed to procure more privileges for the Ottoman Armenians, but they were actually intended to enable the Great Powers, in particular Britain and Russia, to interfere in the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire with the hope of snatching a greater share of the spoils when the Empire ultimately collapsed.

The historical importance of the Eastern Region of Saudi Arabia can never be denied; Al-Hasa may have the fame as an oasis, but Katif as part of it is of no less importance. The territory of Katif is divided from Al-Hasa province by an intervening range of hills, the most famous of which is know as Jabal Mushahhar. This hill, seven hundred feet high, falls about ten miles to the south of Katif.

Islam gave a new civilization to the Turks who were always great admirers of sciences. The last words of Sultan Osman to his son Orhan -"Be the supporter of the faith and the protector of the sciences"- was religiously observed. Turks also became faithful of those nations who had contributed in various fields of sciences and like the Arabs they have distinguished themselves in the science of geography. They have a definite stage in the history of this branch of knowledge and their contents are amazingly vast. Their effects are also far-reaching but their contributions are not well known to scholars as it should be.

Seventy years ago, in June 1916 to be precise, Sherif Hussein ibn Ali, the Hashemite amir of Mecca, having been encouraged by the British with vague promises of "independence for the Arabs", revolted against his suzerain, the Ottoman Sultan-Caliph, and became an instrument in the destruction of the Caliphate by Christian Powers. In the words of Robert Lacey, "his (Hussein's) movement was less an Arab revolt than an Anglo-Hashemite conspiracy", cemented by about one million pounds sterling in British gold.

When the Turks made the fateful decision of embracing Islam as their religion, they became a marked people in the eyes of the Christian World, which saw that religion as a great danger to its very existence. The Turks failure, or refusal, to accept Christianity, despite the efforts of Pope Pius II, did not endear them to the Christians of the West; nor did their contribution to the Muslim cause during the great politico-religious upheaval of the Crusades. These religious wars created bitterness, hatred and hostility between Islam and Christianity, which were to last for centuries. Christendom saw Islam as a deviance, a bogey, which, it believed, aimed at eradicating the Christian heritage; and therefore the Ottoman Turks, who had espoused the cause of Islam by taking over the Caliphate, became the object of that Christian hatred and hostility.

In the beginning of the sixteenth century the Indian Ocean witnessed the course of events which greatly effected the economies of the Mediterranean as well as the Ottoman and Arab countries. The Portuguese reached the Western India at the end of the fifteenth century and established themselves at various strategic points around the Indian Ocean, seeking to dominate and shift the flow of trade which had been running through the Red Sea and the Gulf to the Mediterranean world for many centuries. On the other hand, the Ottomans became a sea power as well as the land after the conquest of Constantinople; and conquered Egypt in 1517 taking control of the Red Sea. Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, in the time of Suleyman the Magnificent, they took Baghdad and made a direct contact with the Gulf, thus establishing themselves at various important points around the Arabian Peninsula. So became the two empires, Catolic Portuguese and Sunni Ottoman, vis-a-vis, in the waters of the Indian Ocean, drawing themselves far from their capitals.

In an essay written in about 1837, the Ottoman statesman Sadık Rıfat Pasha uses the phrase düvel-i Avrupa hukûmetleri, in a context where these words clearly mean "the governments of the states of Europe". The words devlet and hukûmet were already in common use at that time, but the formulation in this phrase, with the implied distinction between the state (devlet) as an abstract and permanent embodiment of authority, and the government (hukûmet) as the human and impermanent body of persons exercising that authority, is new in Ottoman and therefore in Islamic usage. The normal word for government in modem Turkish and Arabic is hukûmet, hukûma. Used in much the same sense as English "government" or French "gouvernement", it is standard and common throughout the Arabicspeaking lands and in Turkey at the present time-so common indeed that in word-counts which have been made of modern Arabic prose, hukûma ranks among the words of most frequent occurrence, ahead of several quite ordinary prepositions. The word is old, and is attested in Arabic from the earliest of times; its use in the sense of "government" however dates only from the 19th century. In classical Arabic usage it was a verbal noun meaning the act or office of adjudication, of dispensing justice. It could be used in this sense irrespective of whether the person so acting was a sovereign, a judge, or merely an arbitrator. The frequently quoted hadîth that "an hour of justice in hukûma is better than 60 years of worship" refers clearly to the administration of justice and not -as in some modern interpretations- to the conduct of government.

The Ottoman okka is a little known and often misidentified object. In this paper I would like to bring to general attention the historical significance and artistic beauty of these weights. Public negligence of these okkas, and of Ottoman metalwork in general, has caused a tragic loss to Turkey's artistic heritage. Very few okkas remain today; the vast majority have been sold by weight to be melted down and remade into new items of copper and brass. If I can prevent a further loss of these lovely pieces, then my research work will have served its purpose. The Ottomans inherited their weights system from the Seljuks of Rum. The Seljuk forerunners, called dirhems (after the officiol currency of Iconium), were weights in copper or bronze which have surfaced in Konya, Kayseri and other Seljuk commercial centers in Eastern Anatolia. They were cast, circular and with a hole in the center. Their decorative motifs, predominantly bifurcated and trilobed leaves in floral arabesques, were very clear and distinguished compared to contemporary metalwork in Mesopotamia and Persia

The five centuries, in which the Bulgarian lands were included within the frontiers of the Ottoman empire, left deep traces behind, some of which are stili visible today. Among these is the architectural heritage which has been tremendously rich. The vicessitudes of the extremely agitated history of the past hundred years caused the majority of the Ottoman monuments to disappear, but the number of those preserved is still considerable, and among them are works of the greatest quality which shed ample light on some important phases of the development of this architecture. Our knowledge of the Ottoman Turkish monuments of architecture in the Bulgarian lands is far from complete, partly due to the relatively late date in which Bulgarian science began to realise their value, partly of the difficulty to Western and Turkish scholars to travel the land extensively. A general work covering al! existing Ottoman-Turkish monuments in Bulgaria does not exist as yet and will take much pain-staking labour to produce. In this modest contribution we do not endeavour to give a full list of existing buildings nor wish to mentional all literature in Bulgarian, in Turkish or in other languages concerning these monuments but merely pick out a few important works of Early-Ottoman art which have remained largely unknown and unstudied until now.