the task of stilling the troubled waters. In opposition to these views
it was contended, that the poverty of the proposed premier would prevent
his securing the adherence of the troops by the largesses which they had
been accustomed to receive, and the project was apparently abandoned;
but the incapacity and unpopularity of the grand-vizir, Mohammed-Pasha,
(surnamed _Egri_, or the Crooked,) soon made it obvious that a fresh
change alone could prevent another convulsion. On the 15th September
1656, therefore, in a fortunate[5] hour for the distracted empire,
Kiuprili was summoned to the presence of the sultan, who had now,
nominally at least, assumed the direction of affairs, and received from
his hands the seals of office.

[4] The Turkish historian, Naima, fancifully compares this plane
to the fabulous tree in the islands of Wak-Wak, the fruit of
which consisted of human heads, as is fully detailed in the
romance of Hatem Tai, besides various passages of the Thousand
and One Nights. Under this same plane, by a singular instance of
retribution, the heads of the janissaries massacred in the
At-meidan in 1826, were piled by order of Sultan Mahmood.

[5] The Turkish annalists do not fail to remark, that Kiuprili
crossed the imperial threshold at the moment when the call to
noon prayers was resounding from the minarets--an evident token
of the Divine protection extended to him!

Such were the circumstances of the elevation of this most celebrated of
Ottoman ministers, whose name stands pre-eminent, not only from his own
abilities and good fortune, but as the founder of the only family which
ever continued to enjoy, during several generations, the highest honours
of the empire. He was the son of an Arnaut[6] soldier, who had settled