Just a point - it’s worth bearing in mind the difference between the zero religious tolerance for non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire’s homeland (now Turkey) and the more relaxed approach in the Ottoman Arab colonies he visited (now Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Egypt). It was the corrupt, feudal nature of the imperial Ottoman regime in the Arab lands to which he really objected, the Muslim abhorrence of Christians being more of an Arab pre-occupation in these occupied lands.
 
Two extracts from my book Innocence and War, which relives The Innocents Abroad, follow this theme:
 
‘In Mark Twain’s time there were none of these complications as what few local tribesmen he came across, and these overwhelming Bedouin, were Sunni Muslim. In Jerusalem he found a Christian community, albeit in a state of multi-sect civil war between the Latin Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and the various Armenian and Syrian sects and sub-sects; in the desert he saw – and stayed in - Eastern Orthodox monasteries. In Tiberias and Jerusalem he found Jews too, living without obvious persecution; in fact tolerance of other patriarchal Abrahamic religions was a hallmark of the Ottoman Empire; tolerance tolerated for a price, another hallmark of the Ottoman Empire.’
 
Then later:
 
‘By this stage of his Holy Land tour Mark Twain had seen enough of the local politics to find them indigestible. “If ever an oppressed race existed,” he wrote at camp that night, “it is this one we see fettered around us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire. I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little—not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.”
 
‘I presume one of the dragomen had just explained the wonderful world of Ottoman taxation. The ruler of a province would estimate the amount of taxes he thought his region should bring. He would then auction off parcels of land, cash up front, to individual tax collectors. These parcels would still be too big for the top rung of collectors, so they in turn would auction off the collecting rights to a lower level, and so on, sometimes down to village level. In this sort of franchised reverse pyramid collecting system the peasant farmer was routinely routed. When it came to the tax collection “the peasant [has] to bring his little trifle of grain to the village, at his own cost. It must be weighed, the various taxes set apart, and the remainder returned to the producer. But the collector delays this duty day after day, while the producer’s family are perishing for bread; at last the poor wretch, who can not but understand the game, says, ‘Take a quarter—take half—take two-thirds if you will, and let me go!’ It is a most outrageous state of things.”’


On 7 Nov 2011, at 20:44, Scott Holmes wrote:

> I recently published, on YouTube, a video of my reading chapter 13 of
> The Innocents Abroad.  It received a comment of some degree of
> astonishment on the degree of dislike Twain held for the Ottoman Empire.
> I replied with a remark to the effect that in some part he was reacting
> to the elitism he perceived in the Muslims, ie how anything that
> Christians come into contact with is defiled.  
> 
> I wanted to research this a bit further and found a paper presented by
> one Ben Rejeb, Lotfi, "Mark Twain, the Ottoman Empire and Palestine".
> The paper is not available but the abstract describes it:  "... This
> paper will explore the sources of that vision, Twains orientalism and
> his modes of expression, as well as the interplay of fancy and reality,
> of humor and seriousness, of childrens fantasies and historico-political
> designs."
> 
> The paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Studies
> Association.  My print out of the abstract does not contain the date of
> the meeting.
> 
> Would anyone care to comment about this?