My first enthusiasm was already cooled by a visit I paid to Constantinople in the autumn of 1884. It had seemed to me that the best chance of infusing general life into the university scheme was to obtain for it the Sultan’s patronage. In spite of all I knew of Abdul Hamid’s character, I thought it just possible that if I could get speech with him I might persuade him to use the enormous influence his name and Caliphal title gave him in Moslem lands in the direction I desired. But my visit was a failure; I found the Sultan personally inaccessible, except through such channels as I was unwilling to employ, and at an endless expense of time and money. At Constantinople the reign of corruption was supreme, nor was any approach to the head of the Moslem faith possible except by intrigue with the Court officials. It will be seen, when I publish the sequel to these memoirs, how entirely the atmosphere of the palace was opposed to serious ideas, and I left Constantinople convinced that it was useless any longer to fight against circumstances or attempt the impossible. Other interests at the same time allured me away, the urgency of the crisis in Egypt, the tragedy of Gordon at Khartoum, the general election of 1885, the Irish Home Rule movement, and the attempt I then made to enter Parliament as its supporter. Thus, while I still continued to interest myself in the fortunes and misfortunes of India, I never again aspired to take a leading part in its affairs.
All the same, I think I may lay claim to have contributed something towards the cause I had made specially my own, that of the Indian Mohammedans. On my return to England in the spring of 1884, I found Lord Randolph Churchill more than half disposed to go with me in my plans for them, and to make himself in Parliament a champion of Islam. It was partly through my persuasion and example that he started on his tour in India the following winter, and the letters I gave him for my Indian friends contributed not a little to his success in that direction, though in the sequel his political interests were too diverse to hold him permanently to any one line of action. His visit, nevertheless, taken in connection with his appointment in 1885 to the India Office under Lord Salisbury, marks a turning-point in the official policy towards the Indian Mohammedans which has ever since been followed. As a community they were encouraged, not, indeed, as I had intended, but as a counterpoise to the Congress movement of the Hindus; and gradually the idea expounded by me in “The Future of Islam” has come to be adopted as the Government’s own and used to its own purposes.