ITS FACTS & FALLACIES. BY MALCOLM MAC COLL, M.A. For freedom's battle, once begun, The Giaour. With a Map. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1877. All rights reserved. PREFACE. A GLANCE at the Table of Contents will show that this volume aims at giving a more comprehensive view of the Eastern Question than has yet been attempted. The author believes that his conclusions follow, by logical necessity, from the facts which he has marshalled in support of them; but, however that may be, the facts themselves are indisputable. His witnesses, too, whether as regards the principles and tendencies of Islam in general, or the particular development of it which we observe in the Turkish Empire, are for the most part unwilling witnesseshonest men, who have been constrained by loyalty to the truth to deliver judgment in opposition to their cherished prepossessions and natural bias. The author's views in respect to Turkey are based mainly, though not entirely, on a careful examination of all the Parliamentary Papers on the state of the Turkish Empire published since the Crimean War. His brief sketch of Arab rule in Spain and Sicily is also founded, as the reader will see, on standard authorities. With that part of his subject the author has been for some time tolerably familiar, having first interested |