Suleiman The Magnificent 1520 1566 (19 page)

On the other hand, it should be observed that the same laws and traditions by which the Sultan's authority

was to some extent limited served also, in a measure, to fortify and support it. They helped, among other things, to guarantee it against the perils of a disputed succession. "The majority of the legists," so runs the Kanun-Nameh of Alohammed II, "have declared that those of my illustrious children and grandchildren who shall ascend the throne, shall have the right to execute their brothers, in order to insure the peace of the world; they are to act conformably." 2 The son whom the Sultan selected to succeed him had the undoubted privilege of putting to death all his brothers and nephews, provided he could do it. If he could not, and if one of those brothers succeeded in doing the same by him—as Selim the Terrible did by Achmed—well, it was the will of God; and such was the respect for the "blood of Osman" that the Turks, at least in the period of their greatness, rallied ultimately around the prince who had gained the throne, no matter what the methods by which he had contrived to attain it. The power of the Commander in chief was not to be endangered by rival claimants.

No despot, however absolute, can manage everything himself. The carrying out of his instructions.and the decision of minor questions must, of necessity, be delegated to subordinates. Our next problem, therefore, is to examine the institutions through which Suleiman ruled. All of them are comprehended in two main groups, which have been respectively christened by a distinguished recent authority on Suleiman's government as the "Ottoman Ruling Institution" and the "Moslem Institution of the Ottoman Empire"; they correspond very roughly to our modern conception of "State" and "Church" in a country where there is a state church. It was not until after

2 Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Des osmanhchen Reichs Staatsverfas-sung und Staatsverwaltung, 2 vols. (Vienna, 1815), I, 98.

Suleiman's death that even the Venetians, shrewdest and most observant of all the Christian visitors at the Porte were fully able to comprehend their duality, their similarities, and their contrasts; very possibly the great Sultan may have taken pains to see to it that they were not more fully informed. But it may be worth while to quote a few comments from the reports of two famous bailos— Marcantonio Barbaro and Gianfrancesco Morosini—resident respectively in Constantinople from 1568 to 1573 and from 1582 to 1585, on the government of the Ottoman empire as they envisaged it. Barbaro tells us:

It is a fact truly worthy of much consideration, that the riches, the forces, the government, and in short the whole state of the Ottoman Empire is founded upon and placed in the hands of persons all born in the faith of Christ; who by different methods are made slaves and transferred into the Mohammedan sect. Then whoever will carefully direct his attention to this principal consideration, will come more easily to an understanding of the government and nature of the Turks. . . .

Other sorts of persons are not ordinarily admitted to the honors and the pay of the Grand Signor, except the above-mentioned, all Christian-born. . . .

The Emperor of the Turks has ordinarily no other ordinances and no other laws which regulate justice, the state, and religion, than the Koran; so that, as the arms and the forces are wholly reposed in the hands of persons all bom Christians, so, as I have already said, the administration of the laws is all solely in the hands of those who are born Turks, who bring up their sons in the service of the mosques, where they learn the Koran, until being come of age they are made kazis of the land. 3

8 Marcantonio Barbaro, report of 1573, in Albert Relation^ 3rd sen, I, 314, 316, 322-323.

Morosini follows:

There are two sorts of Turks; one of these Is composed of natives born of Turkish fathers, and the other of renegades, who are sons of Christian fathers, taken violently in the depredations which his fleets and galleys are accustomed to make on Christian territories, or levied in his own territory by force of arms from the subjects and non-Moslem taxpayers (carzeri) of the Signor, who while boys are by allurement or by force circumcised and made Turks. . . . Not only does the greater part of the soldiery of the Turks consist of these renegades, but in yet greater proportion all the principal offices of the Porte are wont to be given to them, from the grand vizir to the lowest chief of this soldiery, it being established by ancient custom that the sons of Turks cannot have these positions. . . .

To the native Turks are reserved then the governing of the mosques, the judging of civil and criminal cases, and the office of the chancery; from these are taken the kazis and the kaziaskers, the teachers (hojas), and their Mufti, who is the head of their false religion; and the kazis are like podestas, and render justice to every one, and the kaziaskers are like judges of appeal from these kazis. . . .

The renegades are all slaves and take great pride in being able to say, "I am a slave of the Grand Signor 5 '; since they know that this is a government or commonwealth of slaves, where it is theirs to command. 4

The two most striking things in the above descriptions are that those to whom the Sultan intrusted the actual conduct of his government regarded themselves as being his slaves, and that the vast majority of them were of Christian parentage and traditions. It will be worth while to devote a few paragraphs to a further consideration of these facts.

The Ottomans deliberately elected to have the service

* Ghnfrancesco Morosini, report of 1583, in Alberi, 3rd ser., Ill, 263-264, 266, 267.

of their Sultans, from the lowest menial in the Imperial Palace to the Grand Vizir at the head of the government, performed by a great family of some 80,000 slaves, who at the time of their entrance into it were practically all non-Moslems. Over each one of them the Sultan had the unquestioned power of life and death; they must obey his slightest wish; such property as they owned went automatically to their master when they died; and yet it is evident that the vast majority of them felt honored in the end by the condition to which they had been consigned. They were recruited principally in two ways; by capture in war, and by the system that was known as the devshurmeh, and in both the selection was made with the utmost care. By Mohammedan law the Sultan was entitled to one-fifth of all those taken prisoner on the field of battle, and special agents were detailed to see to it that he was given the ones most suitable for his purposes. Even more systematically planned was the so-called devshurmeh, or process by which the most promising youths were hunted out and taken from those portions of the empire from which tribute was due. These included certain parts of Asia Minor, the Black Sea lands, and the Balkan Peninsula, but the last-named proved by far the most fruitful soil. Every four years or oftener "a body of officials more skilled in judging boys than trained horse-dealers are in judging colts" 5 were sent out from Constantinople to the regions in question, to choose and bring back with them a certain number of the best youths they could find, to be inducted into the Sultan's great slave-family, and used there for whatever purpose they proved best fitted. Save in exceptional cases the recruits were between twelve and twenty years old; the ages preferred were between fourteen and eighteen. No family ties were suffered to interfere with the inexorable work-5 Lybyer,p. 51.

ings of the system. Parents who had sons of whom, both physically and intellectually, they had every reason to be proud, would be likely to lose them all, while their neighbors, who had produced poorer stuff, might well be left untouched. Certainly at first sight the whole practice seems utterly atrocious, if envisaged from the standpoint of the West. But if we approach the question without prejudice, it is at least fair to say that it had certain partially compensating advantages. If the mother was heartbroken at being forced to part with her best-loved son and see him take service with Moslems, she could console herself with the thought that it was wholly possible that he might some day attain to great wealth and power. There is plenty of good contemporaneous evidence to prove that many parents regarded the process rather as a privilege than as a burden. A passage from the third letter of Ogier de Busbecq, imperial ambassador at Constantinople from 1555 to 1562, is worth quoting in this connection:

I have my doubts [he says] as to whether the man who first abolished slavery is to be regarded as a public benefactor. I know that slavery brings with it various disadvantages, but these are counterbalanced by corresponding advantages. If a just and mild form of slavery, such as the Roman laws ordained, especially with the State for master, had continued, perhaps fewer gallows and gibbets would be needed to keep those in order who, having nothing but life and liberty, are driven by want into every conceivable crime. Freedom when combined with extreme poverty has made many a man a rascal; it causes temptation such as few can resist. Nature has denied to many the power of self-control, and the knowledge which is indispensable for acting aright; they need the support and guidance of a superior as the only means of stopping them in their career of vice. They are like savage animals, and require chains to prevent their becoming dangerous.

In Turkey the class which Is likely to go astray is controlled by a master's authority, while the master is supported by the slave's^labor. . . . We never attain the grandeur of the works of antiquity. What is the reason? Hands are wanting, or, in other words, slave labor. I need not mention what means of acquiring every kind of knowledge the ancients possessed in learned and educated slaves.

And then, at the end of the paragraph, he betrays his Occidental predilections by adding, "However, please consider that these remarks are not meant very seriously." 6 Certainly the practice could not be reconciled with Western ideals.

Yet it is not difficult to see why the Ottomans adopted it. In the first place, it conformed to one of the best-established principles of all true despotisms, namely, to rely on servants and ministers imported from afar, who could bear no part in local quarrels and factions; it reminds one of the tenth-century Slavic guard at Cordova of the Caliph Abd-ar-Rahman an-Nasir, and of the Turkish guard of the Abbasside Court of Baghdad. Secondly, it was a great missionary undertaking. By its means, unlimited possibilities were offered for the conversion to Islam of the most promising scions of the non-Moslem families of regions recently conquered. And yet it is interesting to note that the conversion was not ordinarily accomplished by compulsion. The policy seems to have been merely to isolate the new arrivals from Christian society and ideals, to give them every opportunity to become acquainted with the beauties and advantages of Islam, and to rely on environment and the influence of the majority to do the rest. Of course if the novice had any ambition to rise, conversion was the first requisite. It was impossible to attain to any post of prominence or importance in the army or government without open

ft Busbecq, I, 210-211.

profession of the Mohammedan faith, and there is evidence that its adoption was speedier and more sincere at the upper rungs of the ladder than at the lower. But It is not probable that any member of the Sultan's slave-family failed to succumb, outwardly, at least, in the end. How many continued to be Christians at heart Is a matter of opinion, but there Is reason to believe that insistence on orthodox Mohammedanism---an insistence which was probably first stressed In Suleiman's time—often resulted In hypocritical outward conformity.

We pass from the composition and personnel of the "Ruling Institution" to the ways in which It discharged its more important functions. Of these the first was the conduct of war; for "the Ottoman government had been an army before it was anything else. . . . Fighting was originally the first business of the state, and governing the second." T Though the preponderance had perhaps been shifted to the governmental side of the picture by the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, the traditional primacy of the army was never forgotten; the fact that the Sultan personally accompanied his armies on almost every one of their great campaigns, and took the larger part of his slave family with him, speaks volumes In this connection. "In fact, army and government were one. War was the external purpose, government the internal purpose, of one Institution, composed of one body of men." 8

The backbone of the Ottoman army was of course the Janissaries, or "new troops"; all of them were members of the Sultan's great slave-family, and were recruited as described above. Suleiman realized the supreme importance of having a large body of crack Infantrymen as a nucleus for his forces, and there is evidence that the 12,000 whom he had Inherited from his father were irregularly increased

T Lybyer, p. 90. 8 Lybyer, p. 91*

before the end of the reign. It is, however, quite inadmissible to assume that the 48,316 members of his slave-family, who are said to have accompanied him on his last campaign, were all members of the corps. 9 The Janissaries were picked for their physical strength and fitness, and for their love of fighting. They labored, however, under the serious disadvantage that they had no weapon wherewith to thrust. "The Ottoman's idea of arms was from the first limited to a sabre and a missile." The Janissaries had scimitars and bows, but they had no spears. At the very time when the pikeman formed the core of the Spanish infantry whose supremacy on the field of battle was the dominant fact in the military history of the Western Europe of the day, the Turk lacked any weapon to correspond. "In the sieges of Rhodes and Malta the Hospitallers constantly cleared the slashing Janissaries out of the trenches with half-pikes." 10

The Janissaries were subjected, both in peace and in war, to the most rigorous discipline. Until the time of Suleiman they had been forbidden to marry. Apparently there was some relaxation of this restriction during his reign, and at a later date, when children of Janissaries began to be admitted to the corps, its old-time pugnacity declined; the old recruits, collected in the traditional way, were far sterner stuff than their offspring. But the Janissaries also enjoyed many privileges. The Sultan's own name was inscribed on the roll of the first of the one hundred and sixty-five ortas, or companies, into which they were divided, and Suleiman insisted on receiving

9 As does C. W. C. Oman, History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century, p. 759. Officially it would seem that the number of the Janissaries remained, down to the nineteenth century, at 12,000, but it is clear that many others had by that time been permitted to enjoy the privileges and exemptions of the corps, and to use its name.

10 These quotations are from an article by Major J. W. DeForest in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1878, p. 507, entitled "The Russians on the Bosphoms."

his pay with them; u this last was a shrewd move, for it made them proudly conscious of the fact that he was one of them, and greatly increased their devotion to his person. They could not be punished for misconduct save by thek own officers; even the Grand Vizir lacked any authority over them. Everything served to enhance thek esprit de corps. In battle they guaranteed the Sultan's personal safety, and were the terror of his foes. In time of peace, they were, to put it mildly, exceedingly difficult to keep in hand, and the necessity of giving them occupation was a subsidiary reason for the initiation of more than one of Suleiman's campaigns. They regarded the periods which elapsed between the death of one Sultan and the accession of his successor as intervals during which they were vktuaHy free to do thek own will; Suleiman was indeed fortunate that he had been able to gather the reins of authority into his own hands within eight days of the death of his father. They demanded and received from him an unprecedentedly large donation on this occasion, and had often to be pacified, later in the reign, by liberal gifts. They often had a decisive voice in the matter of the succession to the throne in case there were rival claimants. The ckcumstances of Selim's accession will be recalled; in case of doubt the candidate who commanded thek allegiance was vktually certain to win; Suleiman again was exceedingly lucky in being Selim's only son. In later years, Suleiman himself was to have tragic experience, within his own family, of the power of the Janissaries. 35 The body of cavalry which most closely corresponded to the Janissaries, and like them was under command of the Sultan and not of the seraskier in time of war, was the Spahis of the Porte. Thek organization was much looser

11 Ignatius Mouradgea d'Ohsson, Tableau general de ^Empire Qthoman, 7 vols. (Paris, 1788-1824), VII, 354-355.

^Lybyer, pp. 91-93, and references there.

and more ancient than that of the Janissaries, but they were also regarded as a part of the Sultan's great slave-family or kullar. The so-called feudal Spahis, the akinji and azabs were in quite a different category, and far less closely in contact with Suleiman. Nevertheless selected members of the imperial slave-family were assigned to the command of the units into which they were divided, to make sure that they did not get wholly out of touch. The magnificent discipline of a Turkish army, which elicited such unbounded admiration from all who beheld it, was doubtless chiefly exhibited by the Janissaries and the Spahis. Certainly a wilder troop than a marauding band of ravaging akinji would be difficult to imagine; and yet when they were called in they never failed to respond. The thing that really gave the Turkish army its power and reputation in Suleiman's day was the inspiration of the constant presence of the Sultan in its midst. The moment that it came to be the custom, under his son Selim, for the Sultan to delegate the supreme command, in order to spare himself the rigors of campaigning, the Ottoman military power and empire began to decline. The system had its disadvantages. The indispensability of the Sultan's presence with his troops rendered it impossible for him to divide his army, or to fight on two fronts at once. It forced him to make peace with the Hapsburgs when a campaign against Persia became imperative. It was unsuited to the needs of a rapidly expanding empire, and limited the possibilities of Ottoman conquest. Yet it was in the army and the direction of it that Sultan Suleiman and his great slave-family were to be seen at their most successful and their best. 13

Suleiman was the undisputed head of the government of the Ottoman empire. If the sacred Moslem law and the

^Lybyer, pp. 98-113.

conservative traditions of his people set limits to what he could do, there was no rival authority or institution of any kind to challenge or imperil his power; every official was appointed, directly or Indirectly, by him and could at any moment be dismissed by him; each was expected, as long as he held his place, to do his utmost to aid in the carrying out of his master's will. The most able and intelligent members of the kullar were trained for the highest offices of the state, both central and local. The judiciary, which was the only department of the government service to be removed from the sphere of Influence of the slave-family, and was wholly staffed by Moslems born, was also entirely under his control. He continued the practice, initiated by his great-grandfather, of granting appointment and Investiture to the Greek Patriarch, and he issued orders to the latter's flock to render him suitable obedience. In all parts of his empire, and over all the different peoples and creeds that Inhabited it, his authority, in theory at least, was absolute. 14

To Suleiman belonged also the sole power to issue laws. The sacred Moslem law, or sheri, as we have already pointed out, was wholly beyond his power to alter or annul; and the sheri was originally intended not only to regulate the government of the Ottoman state of the time in which It was first adopted, but also the conduct of its individual members. But the origins of the sheri stretched back for over seven centuries, and times had changed. Its fundamental principles must indeed be left intact, but in the matter or their application it would be possible to supplement them and give greater latitude. Indeed it was essential to do so, unless the modern Ottoman was to lose touch with the precepts of the Koran, and be untrue to the faith that he professed, Suleiman saw the need and

14 Lybyer, pp. 150-151.

resolved to meet it; and the jurists and theologians rendered him great service by giving him their expert opinions on just how far he could go without actually transgressing the law. They classified the provisions of the sheri into different groups, in accordance with the measure of the obligation to obey them. They strove, whenever possible, to aid their master by elastic interpretations, Suleiman made the best possible use of thek assistance. Not that he was ever in danger of transgressing the sacred law; he was far too devout a Moslem for that; but he realized that it was imperative that its precepts be accommodated to the needs of a society vastly different from that which gave it birth. Before the capture of Constantinople, the Sultans who had attempted to supplement the sacred law had issued firmans or ordinances; beginning with Mohammed II, they had adopted the Greek word Kdvav or rule, which became in Turkish kanun, as the name for their legislation; it is but one of countless instances of the debt owed by the Ottomans to Byzantium. The Moslem was ever a judicious copier. 15

The amount of Suleiman's legislation, and the areas that it covers, will seem far too insignificant to the Western mind to justify his Turkish title of "El Kanum"; but he at least did much more than any Sultan since Mohammed II to reconcile the fundamental precepts of the sheri with the conditions under which the sixteenth-century Ottoman lived. Most of his laws are concerned with matters of land-tenure, taxation, and the regulation of markets and prices. Criminal procedure also demanded and received revision. Recently conquered Egypt, too, which was in terrible confusion, was given what virtually amounted to a new constitution—the Kanun-nameh Misr. Suleiman did not hesitate to emphasize the necessity of obeying those parts of the sacred law which were un-

15 Lybyer, pp. 152-159.

popular, such as its ban on the drinking of wine, or those which were personally obnoxious to him, such as its disapproval of musical instruments and silver-plate. It is also true that the Sultan put forth much of his legislation without adequate personal knowledge of those whom it principally affected. The whole thing was done too much de haut en has, with the result that many of the best laws which Suleiman enacted were not properly enforced. Bribery and corruption were effectively employed to shield those most unfortunately affected by his legislation, and it all had to be done over again, within fifty years of his death, in the reign of Achmet I. But there can be no doubt that the great Sultan was earnestly desirous to maintain fairness, justice, and good order, and to bring the fundamental precepts of the ancient law of Islam into accord with the wholly different circumstances under which his life and that of his subjects was lived. 16

According to the Kanun-Nameh of Mohammed II, the Ottoman empire was to be organized on the basis of a division into four departments, recalling the four posts of the regulation Turkish army tent; it was a pretty illustration of the primacy of the military consideration in the Ottoman mind: Of these four, only three concern us here; the other may be better discussed in connection with the "Moslem Institution" and judicial affairs. We now take up in order the vizirs, the Defterdars, or heads of the treasury, and the Nishanji and Reis Effendi, or secretaries of state. 17

In the earlier days there had been but one vizir. In the time of Suleiman the number rose for the first time to four. The word means "burden-bearer," or, according to

16 Lybyer, pp. 159-163, 276-277.

17 Lybyer» pp. 163-187; Alfred Rambaud, in Lavisse and Rambaud, IV. 753-

another derivation, "decider" or "judge"; and the Grand Vizir, who dominated the others, fully deserved his title. He was in fact a sort of Vice-Sultan; and as long as he continued to enjoy his master's confidence, he was virtually supreme, under him, in every department of the government service. He had little leisure; for in addition to representing the Sultan as head of the military and civil administration, as presiding officer of the Divan, and as supreme judge, he made the majority of the important appointments, and he had to receive great officials and participate in numerous state ceremonies. So heavy were the responsibilities that the term of office was usually short, but Suleiman was fortunate in finding three really notable men, whose tenure was unusually long: Ibrahim from 1523 to 1536, Rustem from 1544 to *553, and again from 1555 to 1561, and finally Mohammed Sokolli, who took office in 1565 and lasted on for thirteen years after Suleiman's death into the reign of his grandson until 1579. All of these, be it noted, were Christian renegades; and all of them also were the Sultan's kul, who might be executed, if he so desired, at a moment's notice. It was a fascinating and a dangerous job. Under a strong monarch, like Suleiman, the system worked well; for a Sultan such as he, who kept in touch with everything that was going on, could safely delegate much to subordinates. But the great increase of the authority of the Grand Vizir which marked his reign was to prove disastrous for his weaker successors. On the one hand it enabled the Sultans to spend their lives in idleness and debauchery; on the other, the position of the Grand Vizir was so perilous and insecure that he dared not formally take over to himself the duties and functions which his master was no longer capable of fulfilling. 18 We pass to the administration of finance. There can

18 Lybyer, pp. 163-167.

be no doubt that Suleiman's revenues were larger than those of any of his Christian contemporaries. They were considerably greater at the close of his reign than at the beginning, and have been estimated, toward the last, at an annual value of from seven to twelve million ducats. The bullion content of a ducat was 3.93 times that of the present American gold dollar; the relative purchasing power of money in the sixteenth century and today is a matter on which it Is impossible to pronounce. 19 But there Is plenty of evidence that, with all his wealth, the Sultan often found himself in need of more; the new methods of obtaining funds which were introduced during his reign are the best possible proof of it. The only levies authorized by the sacred law were a tithe of the produce of the lands of believers; a special poll tax on all adult male non-Moslems, and the kharaj or land-tax on conquered territories. But since then a host of new imposts had been added. The whole system of export and import duties at Constantinople had been taken over bodily from the Greeks: a great variety of new levies, differing from region to region, had been laid on fields, produce, mines, markets, etc., on celibates, and also on the permission to wed. Unrest in the provinces was sure to be punished by heavy fines, and Suleiman got much money from the confiscation of the property of high officials and other persons of great wealth. The simultaneous development of the machinery for collecting the taxes gives additional evidence of the rapidity of the increase of the Sultan's revenues. New commissions were being constantly brought into existence to deal with newly invented taxes. They were added from time to time as the need arose, but there was never any systematic reor-

19 Cf. on this question Francisco Lopez de Gornara, Annals of the Emperor Charles 1 F, ecL R. B. Memman (Oxford, 1912), pp. 138-130, and R.B.M.,111, 32, note i.

ganization of the Ottoman treasury as a whole. At the head of it there remained indeed the four great Defterdars (the word means "keeper of books," that is, tax books), each of them in charge of the collection of the revenues of one of the great portions of the empire; but under them there had come into being by the end of the reign upwards of twenty-five bureaus, some of them to deal with collecting, others with disbursements, some with the finances of a certain locality, others with those of some category or class. Most of these bureaus were resident in the regions committed to their charge and not in Constantinople, and instead of sending the funds they collected back to the capital, they often disbursed them themselves: doubtless, in theory at least, according to definite instructions, but also, in most cases, without adequate supervision. It is not an exaggeration to describe them as wellnigh independent bodies. In order to make sure of its money the government had recourse to tax-farming. The Defterdars would sell the revenues of certain regions for lump sums to important magnates, who in turn would resell them to others, and the process was often repeated until in the end it might well be "not Ottomans, but Christians and Jews who applied the screws to the unfortunate subjects. The amount wrung from them might easily be double what the government received." Comparisons with the financial expedients of Charles V and Philip II in Spain will be found profitable. In general it would seem that the increasingly intimate contacts of the Ottomans with the Occident had served to make them forget the noble simplicity of the system of taxation prescribed by the Koran. 20 Less information has come down to us in regard to what Western writers have characterized as the "chancery" of the Ottoman government; by the end of Suleiman's reign it might perhaps be more accurate to describe it as