As Caliph of Islam, however, he could not afford to punish Moslem rebels against Christian colonialism. He refused, Britain thereupon occupied Egypt (1881). In retaliation, Abdul Hamid, up to then something of an Anglophile, turned away from England toward Germany. He accepted a German military mission to reorganize the Ottoman armies and gave German firms railroad concessions which eventually culminated in the German-financed project for a line to the Persian Gulf — the famous Berlin-to-Bagdad railway.
