By the first quarter of the 19th century, foreigners and Ottomans alike were keenly aware that the sovereignty of the house of Osman was rapidly eroding. Austrian and Russian armies threatened the empire from without; ethnic revolts and secession beset it from within. Its occasional allies Britain and France ate away at its autonomy through growing economic and political influence. The military threats were apparent, but the Porte was less alert to the dangers its relationships with the Western European powers held for Ottoman hegemony over the peoples of the Balkans and the Arab Middle East.1

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The events of Aleppo have caused amongst all classes of all nationalities a sensation such as I have never witnessed here before. The population of Aleppo is the wealthiest, best conducted community in Syria. That such a body of people in a time of profound peace, living under the protection of an organized government of two pashas and a garrison of regular troops of all arms should find themselves, without the slightest provocation on their part, or a moment's warning, the victims of atrocities which are rarely practiced on a town taken by storm, is a consideration which has, I regret to say, produced a feeling most unfavorable to the responsible government.

Iranian merchants, artists, and scholars had an almost continuous presence in the Ottoman Empire from its very beginnings in the thirteenth century. After the Arab provinces were added to the empire in the sixteenth century, their numbers were further augmented by pilgrims on their way to the holy cities of the Hijaz and Iraq. As such, in terms of actual numbers, during any period of its history there were probably more Iranians resident in the Ottoman Empire than from any other foreign state. This assertion, however, cannot be proven empirically, for before the nineteenth century the Ottoman sultans did not recognize the Iranians as constituting a “nation” along the model they had established for the European communities resident in the empire.