My avatar, SLClemens, in Second Life has been reading chapters from Mark Twain's book "The Innocents Abroad". I have been recording these readings and producing slideshow videos of them, published here on my web site. The videos are hosted by YouTube. One of these chapters, Chapter 13, elicited a response from a listener of surprise at how much Twain seemed to dislike the Ottoman Empire. The chapter itself contains a rather negative description of on Abdul Aziz, emperor of the Ottoman Empire. Twain had seen him in the company of Napoleon III, on parade.

My initial response to the comment was largely flavored by thoughts of what Twain reported from Tangier and perhaps his ethnocentrism displayed in his prejudice against native Americans in his book Roughing It. In the mean time, I've been doing a bit of research on this topic and received a very good summary of Twain's relationship with Muslims in general and the Ottoman Empire more specifically. Ian Strathcarron, a writer and a member of the Twain-L listserv, has written a book, Innocence and War, to be published in January of 2012. http://www.twaintraveler.com He writes:

Just a point - it's worth bearing in mind the difference between the zero religious tolerance for non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire's homeland (now Turkey) and the more relaxed approach in the Ottoman Arab colonies he visited (now Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Egypt). It was the corrupt, feudal nature of the imperial Ottoman regime in the Arab lands to which he really objected, the Muslim abhorrence of Christians being more of an Arab pre-occupation in these occupied lands.

Two extracts from my book Innocence and War, which relives The Innocents Abroad, follow this theme.

In Mark Twain's time there were none of these complications as what few local tribesmen he came across, and these overwhelming Bedouin, were Sunni Muslim. In Jerusalem he found a Christian community, albeit in a state of multi-sect civil war between the Latin Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and the various Armenian and Syrian sects and sub-sects; in the desert he saw and stayed in - Eastern Orthodox monasteries. In Tiberias and Jerusalem he found Jews too, living without obvious persecution; in fact tolerance of other patriarchal Abrahamic religions was a hallmark of the Ottoman Empire; tolerance tolerated for a price, another hallmark of the Ottoman Empire.

Then later:

By this stage of his Holy Land tour Mark Twain had seen enough of the local politics to find them indigestible. If ever an oppressed race existed, he wrote at camp that night, it is this one we see fettered around us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire. I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little, not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.

I presume one of the dragomen had just explained the wonderful world of Ottoman taxation. The ruler of a province would estimate the amount of taxes he thought his region should bring. He would then auction off parcels of land, cash up front, to individual tax collectors. These parcels would still be too big for the top rung of collectors, so they in turn would auction off the collecting rights to a lower level, and so on, sometimes down to village level. In this sort of franchised reverse pyramid collecting system the peasant farmer was routinely routed. When it came to the tax collection, the peasant [has] to bring his little trifle of grain to the village, at his own cost. It must be weighed, the various taxes set apart, and the remainder returned to the producer. But the collector delays this duty day after day, while the producer's family are perishing for bread; at last the poor wretch, who can not but understand the game, says, Take a quarter,take half, take two-thirds if you will, and let me go! It is a most outrageous state of things.

I don't know but I suspect that coming into first hand contact with an empire such as the Ottoman may have started Twain down the road of his own crusade against imperialism. This brings to mind another post from an Twain-L reader. She referenced a passage from Twain's book Tom Sawyer Abroad. This is Tom Sawyer explaining to Huck and Jim just what a Crusade is:

"A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim."

"Which Holy Land?"

"Why, the Holy Land—there ain't but one."

"What do we want of it?"

"Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our duty to take it away from them."

"How did we come to let them git hold of it?"

"We didn't come to let them git hold of it. They always had it."

"Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"

"Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"

I studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way. I says:

"It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to—"

"Oh, shucks! you don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn. It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they DO own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame, and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them."

"Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now, if I had a farm and another person—"

"Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? Farming is business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all you can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally different."

"Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?"

"Certainly; it's always been considered so."

Jim he shook his head, and says:

"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake about it somers—dey mos' sholy is. I's religious myself, en I knows plenty religious people, but I hain't run across none dat acts like dat."