Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Johannesburg, Diamond Hill (Major Aziz Bey.) officially engraved naming, toned, good very fine and rare £300-£400

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Fine Collection of Boer War Medals to Medical Services, the Church and the Press.

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Major Aziz Bey is confirmed on the roll of ‘Foreign Military Attachés’ as the military attaché for Turkey.

The following extract is taken from ‘High Pressure, being some record of activities in the service of The Times newspaper’ by Colonel Lionel James, C.B.E., D.S.O.:

‘My great ally, however, was Aziz Bey, the Turk. Aziz was what the French term a type, and used to accompany me on the march and into battle with the expressed hope that I might introduce him into some entanglement in which he could slip the irksome rôle of a neutral and become a combatant. Many good stories are told of Aziz, but the two best are these.
During a period of inaction he went to Capetown. At the hotel he, not unwillingly be it said, was induced to play baccarat. It was not long before there was more paper in the bank bearing the name Aziz than even the largesse from Yildiz would liquidate. Aziz was undaunted.
He was in uniform, so he drew his sword, and in less time than it takes to tell the story, he had cleared the room, and was not only in possession of his own signed paper, but of the bank's specie capital as well.
The other story has a less satisfactory ending for Aziz, as it cost him his job. After his campaign with us in the Transvaal, he was sent to Washington, as the Sultan's military representative. This, when the funds were forthcoming from the shores of the Bosphorus, suited his quaint temperament admirably. Opulence, however, was spasmodic. So Aziz took to the personal dunning of Abdul Hamid upon postcards with insulting epithets in Turkish script. One of these masterpieces, apparently, reached the august presence and Aziz was ordered home to face the bow string. Nevertheless he bobbed up again after the Revolution, and I last saw him in Constantinople as sub-chief of the Stambul police. In this capacity he was wearing civilian kit, and was a poor effigy compared to my pristine friend the popinjay sabreur of the Mount Nelson Hotel.’