Sherlock Holmes and The Sword of Osman

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For six centuries until the last sultan was exiled in 1924 the Sword of Osman was a vital element in the ceremony enthroning each new ruler of the Ottoman Empire. The sword was named after Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Dynasty. Its possession conferred both temporal and spiritual power and declared the ruler ‘lord of all and everything’.

It was the spring of 1906. Another warm, hazy Edwardian summer lay just over the horizon. Gone were the harsh winter months with seas of fog so thick a gondola would be of more use on London’s streets than a carriage. In my pocket was a communication posted some six months earlier from the interior of the African Continent. It contained a stupendous invitation to come to the Congo to set up a medical hut among the Pygmies. It was signed by a P. J. Pretorius. I marvelled at the many pairs of feet and forked sticks which brought the letter from the depths of Ruanda to Mombassa in British East Africa and thence by Royal Mail to my consulting rooms in Marylebone. There had been a time in my boyhood when the map of the world was full of blank spaces. Now only the heart of Africa and the Amazon rainforest remained.

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