of power would enhance their value to the new rulers and help preserve their privileged status and property rights, wealthy and influential landowners, despite being closely tied to the officials of the waning Ottoman regime, were now open to Austro-Hungarians. On the other hand, most of the Muslim religious authorities and lower-class Muslim population were stridently opposed, seeing nothing good in being ruled by a foreign non-Muslim power that has no plans of granting autonomy to Bosnia. This economic class divide among the Bosnian Muslims on the Austro-Hungarian issue was clearly evident around Sarajevo during spring 1878. Members of Sarajevo's Muslim landowning elite showed public support for the Austro-Hungarian occupation at a meeting in April 1878 at the Emperor's Mosque, reasoning as one cleric put it that "it was evident the Ottoman Empire had neither the power nor the support to rule the land" before further asserting that "a ruler who cannot control his land also loses claim to his subjects' obedience and since no Muslim would want to be a subject of Serbia or Montenegro, Austria-Hungary is the only viable alternative". It didn't take long for the lower-class Muslim hostility to a possible Habsburg rule to surface as in April and May 1878 a petition called the Allied Appeal written by two Islamic conservative religious officials from the Gazi Husrev-bey Mosque's madrasa — effendi Abdulah Kaukčija and effendi Muhamed Hadžijamaković — got circulated around Sarajevo marketplaces. In addition to urging all the population of Bosnia to unite in opposing the possible Austro-Hungarian occupation, the petition bore the imprint of Islamic religious conservatism, advocating making shari'a the exclusive law of the land, demanding the dismissal of all Christian officials from the still ruling Ottoman service, appealing for formation of an assembly to control the government, calling for removal of bells from the recently built Serb Orthodox Cathedral, and requesting demobilization of Ottoman troops. Although the petition reportedly included some five hundred signatures, most Muslim landowners refused to sign it. Reflecting personal politics and worldviews of two Sarajevan Islamic conservatives, well-respected in the local Muslim community, the petition reportedly also became a tool in the rivalry among the Ottoman officials in Bosnia. According to the Austro-Hungarian consul Wassitsch, the Ottoman governor in the Bosnian Vilayet Ahmed Mazhar Pasha planned on using the petition to gain popular support in a bid to keep his post in the event of Bosnia Vilayet acquiring