Spring 1906
The Academy of Sciences and Industry stood like a citadel above Istanbul's Golden Horn. Its domes and towers were not of marble but of glass and steel, designed by German engineers but built by Turkish hands. Students poured through its gates in their thousands—Anatolians, Arabs, Kurds, even Armenians and Greeks, all in the same uniforms, all speaking the same language.
In the laboratories, electricity hummed through wires, feeding lamps that glowed white and clean. In the workshops, lathes spun, turning steel into parts for engines and rifles. And in the lecture halls, professors explained not only Newton and Maxwell, but verses of the Qur'an beside them, drawing parallels between divine order and natural law. The students whispered that here, in Istanbul, the ancient world and the modern had finally met.
Tesla's assistants stood at the forefront of one hall, surrounded by coils and strange copper devices. Before an audience of ministers and scholars, they demonstrated a marvel. A receiver crackled, hissed—and then a voice emerged, tinny but unmistakable. "This is Baghdad calling Istanbul." The words repeated, carried across a wireless beam. Gasps filled the chamber. For the first time in history, the Sultan's empire had spoken to itself not in code but in the human tongue across a thousand kilometers.
Abdulhamid sat in the front row, his hands clasped tightly. In his first life, he remembered how radio had come decades later, used first for commerce, then for war. But here, in 1906, the Ottomans had it already. He rose to his feet, and the hall fell silent.
"Allah gave us the gift of speech," he declared. "Now He allows us to speak across mountains and deserts without moving a step. This is no trick. This is His wisdom, revealed in time. And we, His chosen, will wield it to bind our empire tighter than any chain."
The applause thundered, echoing down the halls of the Academy. For the students present, it was not merely a lesson but a revelation: that faith and science were not enemies but allies, each the shadow of the other.
In the months that followed, radio towers rose across Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Signals leapt from Istanbul to Konya, from Baghdad to Basra, carried by the new wireless stations. Crescent Eyes took immediate interest. Orders no longer needed days to cross the empire. Spies could be directed in real time. Enemies could be tracked and eliminated with precision unimaginable to Russia or Britain.
But it was not only wires and waves that occupied Abdulhamid's mind. Population reports arrived, showing a surge across the empire. Families, rewarded with stipends and tax relief, bore children in abundance. Turkish-speaking marriages spread even in Mesopotamia and Arabia, where once tribes had resisted. Now they sent sons to schools, where the new script, the new tongue, and the new unity were drilled into them. By the age of ten, they were no longer Arab or Kurd or Greek. They were Turks in speech and spirit.
Resistance flared, of course. In villages near Mosul, tribal elders complained that their children were forgetting old words. In Damascus, a handful of clerics railed against the loss of Arabic dominance. But Crescent Eyes stood watch. Schools received guards. Teachers received protection. In one case, an agitator who had preached rebellion against the new script was found dead, his tongue cut out—a message clear enough to silence others.
Abdulhamid read these reports in silence. He did not relish bloodshed, but he knew it was necessary. The empire was an anvil, and on it he would hammer one identity, one nation. Too many tongues, too many tribes had fractured the state once before. Never again.
Summer came, and with it another marvel. In the Academy's medical wing, Ottoman doctors unveiled a vaccine program, guided by German scientists and improved with local ingenuity. Smallpox, once a scourge in villages, began to vanish. Parents who had doubted the new schools now brought their children eagerly, for it was in those classrooms that medicine was taught and spread. Health became a weapon of assimilation; who could resist a state that gave their children life?
And still the factories roared. New rifles rolled out, new locomotives thundered down fresh-laid tracks. Oil refineries in Basra and Mosul fueled both engines and lamps, their pipelines guarded by radio-linked patrols. The empire had become not merely a survivor but a giant.
Yet Selim's reports brought constant reminders of danger. In Europe, newspapers muttered of the "Iron Sultan." British envoys pressed the Shah of Persia more heavily, trying to box the Ottomans out. Russian generals demanded harsher crackdowns in Central Asia, blaming Istanbul for every whisper of rebellion. Even in Paris, speeches warned that the Ottoman resurgence was a threat to civilization itself.
One evening, on the balcony of Yıldız, Selim delivered the week's final report. "Majesty, Europe circles us. They cannot strike yet—they are not ready. But they plan, they conspire. Their networks weave even now."
Abdulhamid gazed out at the Bosphorus, where Ottoman ships steamed past, their lamps glowing with Mesopotamian oil. His voice was low, but resolute. "Let them weave their nets, Selim. When they cast them, they will find we are not fish, but lions. The empire they called sick now breathes in steel and faith. And when Europe comes, we will not bend. We will break them."
The commander bowed. In the night, the towers of Istanbul glowed—lamps, smoke, and now radio waves invisible but strong. The city was no longer only the heart of the empire. It was the pulse of a new world being born.