Summer 1912
The heat settled over Istanbul like a veil of brass. In the shipyards, welders worked shirtless in the glare of torches; in the factories, turbines whirred without pause, their rhythm echoing the pulse of a city that had forgotten idleness. Each day a little more of the empire's might moved from blueprint to reality: armored cruisers sliding down the slips, new rail artillery rolling from Konya foundries, and endless trains loaded with shells heading east and south.
In Yıldız Palace, the hum of war preparations was quieter but no less relentless. Abdulhamid read through the reports by lamplight, turning the pages slowly, measuring progress with the same precision he once measured prayer beads. The empire's body was strong; its bones of steel and rails were in place. Yet strength meant little without nerves to sense danger and a mind to anticipate the first blow.
Selim entered carrying a plain envelope sealed with wax. "From Vienna, Majesty," he said. "Our watchers intercepted a bundle sent to the Russian legation. It appears to contain drafts of an agreement—Austria's military staff and Russia's attachés discuss possible mobilizations should the Balkans ignite again."
Abdulhamid raised an eyebrow. "The Balkans," he repeated, as if tasting the word. "Always the spark that tempts the powder."
He opened the letter and read. It was not a treaty, merely notes of conversation, but the tone was unmistakable. Vienna feared Slavic agitation; Petersburg encouraged it. And buried in the margins, a British observer's hand had added a remark in French: 'The Ottomans will not remain passive if Serbia moves; containment must be prepared.'
Containment. A polite word for strangulation.
He laid the papers down and spoke quietly. "So, they prepare to draw lines of death again. Then we must be ready before they finish their maps."
Selim inclined his head. "The staff have begun revising the war tables. We can mobilize six armies within six weeks. Fuel stocks are complete. Ammunition depots in Anatolia and Mesopotamia are sealed and inventoried. The Iron Generation performs beyond expectation."
"Good," said the Sultan. "But now we teach them restraint. The enemy will provoke. They will want us to fire first." He looked up, eyes glinting in the lamplight. "We will answer only when the world is watching—and then, with the full weight of righteousness."
Over the next months, drills turned from mechanical to tactical. Regiments practiced night maneuvers guided only by wireless code; artillery crews fired at moving targets dragged by rail. In Mesopotamia, engineers fortified the oil fields and refineries, building underground reservoirs and armored pumping stations. A network of observation towers, connected by telegraph, watched the desert approaches to Basra and Kuwait. The British agents who still haunted the Gulf found themselves blind—every rumor they spread was met by a counter-story seeded by Crescent Eyes.
At the Imperial Academy, the scientific arm of war sharpened itself. The wireless corps introduced a compact field transmitter light enough to fit in a mule's pack. Chemists perfected new propellant mixtures. In a sealed workshop outside Izmit, metallurgists produced the empire's first hardened armor plates for naval use. The scientists who once looked to Europe for models now sent Europe their patents.
Abdulhamid attended one of the final demonstrations of the year. The engineers fired an armored train's gun at a reinforced target plate; the shell burst, leaving only a shallow dent. The Sultan ran a hand across the warm steel and said, "This is how faith must be—tested by fire, dented, never pierced."
Yet even amid triumph, he saw shadows. Reports came of diplomats whispering in Sofia and Athens, of merchants meeting in Rome, of officers in Belgrade speaking of alliances. Crescent Eyes infiltrated their circles and sent back coded fragments: shipments of rifles through Italian brokers, the quiet movement of French observers through the Adriatic ports. Every piece of evidence pointed to the same conclusion—the wolves of Europe were no longer content to watch. They were closing in.
Selim summarized it one night: "Majesty, we have confirmed at least three layers of coordination between Entente agents. They use commercial fronts, missionary schools, and telegraph companies. Their intent is clear: when the next Balkan quarrel erupts, they will turn it into a continental blaze."
Abdulhamid's expression did not change. "Then we prepare our firebreaks."
He ordered new garrisons along the western lines, supply caches hidden in limestone caves, wireless stations duplicated every hundred kilometers. He knew that when the world burned, borders would mean little; logistics would mean survival.
By autumn, the entire empire pulsed like a single organism. The railways no longer merely carried goods; they carried readiness. Provinces once half-empty teemed with workers resettled by decree—families from Anatolia and Rumelia transplanted to strengthen Mesopotamia, skilled craftsmen from the Balkans teaching in Arab towns. The policy of unity that had begun as ideology had become the practical solution to defense: a mixed population was harder to fracture, easier to mobilize.
The Sultan read population charts with the same intensity he gave to military maps. Where others saw census numbers, he saw lines of potential divisions, reserve battalions, factory shifts. The empire's growth had become its armor.
That winter he convened a private conference of the highest ministries. Around the long table sat the faces of the Iron Generation: ministers in their thirties, generals barely forty, all Turkish-speaking, all molded by the last decade of reform. Gone were the old dialect squabbles and provincial accents. When they spoke, their sentences carried the clipped rhythm of engineers rather than courtiers.
Abdulhamid listened as they presented projections: steel output up twenty percent, literacy above seventy in the core provinces, infant mortality falling under the new medical corps. The Minister of War ended with a statement that brought quiet pride to every ear: "Majesty, for the first time in living memory, no unit of the Ottoman army is equipped with foreign rifles. We produce everything ourselves."
The Sultan's fingers tightened on the arm of his chair. "Then we have done what no ancestor before me could. We have made the empire self-sufficient in blood and iron."
He rose, pacing slowly to the window. Snow fell over the city, catching in the glow of the electric lamps. "Remember this night," he said, turning back to them. "Europe believes that industry belongs only to them, that faith and science cannot dwell in one house. We have proved them wrong. But proof invites envy. The day will come when they seek to destroy what they cannot understand."
Selim stepped forward. "Majesty, that day may be sooner than we wish. Crescent Eyes in Paris report mobilization tables drafted not for defense, but for preemption. They speak openly of Ottoman oil, Ottoman rails, Ottoman ports. They call us the hinge of Asia. They plan to break the hinge before the door can swing."
Abdulhamid's gaze drifted past him to the horizon, where the faint hum of the city mingled with the whisper of snow. "Then the door shall be barred," he said quietly. "And when they strike, it will be their hands that bleed."
In the months that followed, the empire lived in a strange calm—a heartbeat before thunder. People went about their days with the quiet discipline that had become second nature. Children still recited lessons, trains still ran, factories still sang with iron. Yet beneath the surface, everyone felt it: the world tightening, the unseen weight of what approached.
Abdulhamid spent those evenings in solitude, studying maps by the light of a single lamp. He marked rail junctions, supply lines, fallback points. He memorized every mountain pass and desert well, every harbor depth. The empire was no longer abstract; it was the body of his faith, and he knew every artery of it.
One night Selim entered unannounced, carrying a telegram decoded only hours before. "Majesty," he said, "confirmation. The Entente has signed formal military understandings. Not declarations, not treaties—but they are ready. War is no longer a question of if, only when."
The Sultan took the paper, read the lines, and folded it carefully. He placed it beside his Qur'an on the desk. "Then the world walks the road I already traveled once," he murmured. "But this time, we will walk it awake."
He stood, hands clasped behind his back, and faced the window. Beyond it, the city shone—towers of glass and smoke rising above the ancient domes, rail lights winking like stars in motion. He thought of the young officers, the engineers, the mothers teaching Turkish words to their children by lamplight. They were the Iron Generation, the living proof of what a reborn empire could become.
He whispered, half prayer, half promise: "Let them hold, O Allah. Let them stand through what comes. I have given them every tool, every lesson, every ounce of my foresight. The rest is Yours."
Outside, the first snowflakes melted on the warm smoke rising from the factories. The empire slept, unaware that the countdown had already begun. In four short years, the storm he had foreseen would break across the world. But when it came, it would not find a sick man waiting. It would find an empire of iron.