Suleiman The Magnificent 1520 1566 (2 page)

2 A. H. Lybyer, The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent, Harvard Historical Studies, 18 (Cambridge, Mass., 1913), p. 12.

3 Further information about the origin of the Turk may be found in an article by J. Marquart entitled "Uber das Volkstum der Komanen" (Anhang 2. "tiber die Herkunft der Osmanen"). It is published in the Abhandlungen der koniglichen Qeselhchaft der Wmenschaften zu Gottingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, Neue Folge, Band XIII, Nro. i. (Berlin, 1914), pp. 187-194.

Early History r

his preserver into his employ; and subsequently, in return for further service, rewarded him with a grant of land around the present town of Sugut. This territory is situated in Western Asia Minor, not far from the cities of Isnik and Ismid, formerly Nicaea and Nicomedia. 4

We know but little of Ertoghrul, although legend has been very busy with his name. At his death in 1288 he was succeeded by his son Osman, about whom we have more definite information. At first the new ruler continued to play the role of the faithful vassal of the Sultan of Rum; he aided his master against further Mongol attacks, and obtained fresh favors in return for his devotion. But he was also constantly occupied in warfare with the semi-independent commanders of the Greek frontier posts-a warfare of foragings and skirmishes for plunder as much as for conquest, which gradually increased his territory and his prestige. In the course of this warfare Osman, the future greatness of whose empire is supposed to have been foretold him by a marvellous dream, is said to have become a Mohammedan/ If the tale be true, he could thenceforth regard himself, not as a mere freebooter and ambitious chief, striving only to add to his own territories, but as a champion of Islam, whose cause was sacred in the eyes of all true Moslems.

Meanwhile many changes were taking place among the great powers of the East. The Mongols had at last met their match in the Egyptian Mamelukes; their progress had been

*H. A. Gibbons, The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford 1916), pp. 21-22; W. L. Langer and R. P. Blake, "The Rise of the Ottoman Turks and Its Historical Background," in American Historical Review XXXVH, no. 3 (April 1932), 489 f.

6 The story of this dream, accepted by Gibbons (pp. 23 ff.), is regarded by Langer and^Blake (p. 495) as "utterly unconvincing." They feel it to be "almost a certainty that the Ottoman Turks . . . were Moslems even before they left Central Asia." They do believe, however, that "religion played some part, perhaps an important part, in the story of Ottoman expansion" pp. 496-497.

checked, and their dominion was breaking up; but they still remained formidable to the Turks. By the close of the thirteenth century they had put an end to the Seljuk empire. Out of its fragments were formed upwards of a score of small independent Turkish principalities, 6 which for the most part took their names from their rulers. That of Os-man (or "the Ottoman" as we call it) was neither the largest nor the most powerful, but it was so close to Christian territory as to offer all the temporal and spiritual advantages of a war for the faith, and Moslem recruits from all Asia Minor were speedily attracted thither. In the following years Osman's attacks on his enemies redoubled. It is true that his force, chiefly composed of light cavalry, could at first do little against the walls of the Greek cities, but the fact that those cities were left to fend for themselves by the government of Constantinople was ominous for the future. After the reconquest of its capital in 1261, the energy of the Byzantine Empire seemed to slacken. What remained was used up in internal disputes, in conflicts with Venetians and Catalans, with Servians and Bulgarians, and with Turkish pirates in the Mediterranean. The cities of Asia Minor were given no help; year after year their power of resistance weakened, as the Ottoman bands laid waste the open country, and cut off supplies and communication with the outside world. Ten years of this sort of blockading brought the city of Brusa into Osman's hands in 1326; but the news of the triumph only reached him on his deathbed. He died as he had lived, in the simplicity of a nomad chief, leaving as his sole personal possessions, besides his horses and sheep, one embroidered gown, one turban, one saltcellar, one spoon, and a few pieces of red muslin.

He had designated as his successor, not his studious and peaceable elder son, but his younger one, Orkhan, who

6 Gibbons, Appendk B.

took the title of "Emir." 7 Already distinguished as a warrior on more than one occasion, Orkhan now continued in the same path. Before long Nicaea and Nico-media had fallen into his hands; he also increased his territories at the expense of Karasi, one of the other Turkish principalities. Then followed a peace of twenty years, during which he governed wisely and well, and consolidated the institutions he had already established; indeed, it is rather as an administrator than as a conqueror that Orkhan is famous in Turkish history. Aided by his older brother and vizir, Ala-ed-Din, and by other counsellors, he introduced the first Ottoman coinage, regulated the costume of his subjects, divided up his territory into provinces, and above all reorganized his army. Hitherto the Turkish troops had consisted of the ordinary levies of feudal cavalry, who served in return for land and plunder. By the creation of the famous corps of the Janissaries, Orkhan obtained at little cost a body of highly disciplined regular infantry, thus strengthening his army in precisely the element in which Asiatics have almost always been weakest in comparison with Europeans. He also instituted a force of regular cavalry; in fact, he may be justly said to have established the nucleus of a national standing army at least a century earlier than any of the Christian sovereigns of the West.

In 1346 Orkhan had taken to wife a daughter of the Byzantine emperor, John Cantacuzenus, with whom he henceforth remained on friendly terms. This, however, did not prevent him from continually attempting, by one means or another, to get a foothold in the European dominions of his father-in-law. At last, in 1357, his oldest son Suleiman crossed the Hellespont by night with a few

7 Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) ed. J. B. Bury, 7 vols. (London, 1900), VII, 26. But "Emir," an Arabic word meaning "Commander," does not really connote "Commander of the Faithful" until the time of Selim I.

companions on two rafts, and seized the ruined castle of Tzynipe. Reinforcements soon followed, in spite of the remonstrances of the Emperor; and an earthquake, which threw down the walls of the city of Galiipoli, gave the newcomers an invaluable base for further operations. Even the death of Suleiman, which was followed shortly afterwards by that of his father, only served to clear the way for a new leader.

The next Emir, Murad I, was forty-one years old at the time of his accession in 1359, and a truly remarkable man. Primarily a soldier of Islam, stern, severe, and recklessly brave, with a tremendous voice which thundered over the battlefield, he was also a great builder of mosques, of almshouses, and of schools. And yet he could neither read nor write. When his signature was needed, he dipped his thumb and three fingers in the ink, and applied them -well separated-to the paper; a popular legend tells us that this mark was used to form the basic pattern of the "tughras" or calligraphic emblems of subsequent Ottoman rulers. 8 Murad came to the throne at a most fortunate moment. Not only did he inherit a reorganized army—full of religious and warlike ardor and led by brilliant officers; the political situation in southeastern Europe was also highly favorable to his designs. The death in 1355 of Stephen Dushan, the greatest of the Servian princes, had deprived the petty Balkan states of the one leader who might have been able permanently to check the Turkish advance. Only two enemies were really to be feared. The warlike kingdom of Hungary-then nearing the height of its power under Louis the Great of the House of Anjou-was, on

« 8 p n ,,^ reliability of this legend cf. The Encyclopedia of Islam, s.v. tughra, vol. IV, especially p. 824; also H. A. Gibbons, p. 127, n. 2. If the stoiy is to be believed at all, the large oval space at the left probably represents the mark of the thumb, while the three wavy lines at the top show that of the fingers. The tughra of Suleiman the Magnificent is reproduced on the title page of this book. r

paper at least, a formidable antagonist; but Louis was too much occupied with the affairs of the West, and especially of Poland, to devote due attention to the danger to the Balkans from Asia Minor; and the religious differences between his Roman Catholic Hungarian and Orthodox Slavic subjects made it welinigh impossible for them effectively to combine. In the republic of Venice the Turks had another even more dangerous potential foe. The wealth and resources of the city of the lagoons, her daring commanders and her skilful diplomats, her splendid fleet and her many strategic possessions in the Levant made her a power not lightly to be reckoned with; but for the time being she was much more concerned with her struggle against her commercial rivals the Genoese than with the protection of her territories in the Balkans. Her fleets might harass the Turkish seacoasts and cut off communications, but ^they could not check the advance of the Ottoman armies.

Murad did not long leave the world in doubt about his intentions. His forces marched suddenly to the northwest and captured Adrianople, which from 1366 till 1453 remained the European capital of the Turks, corresponding to Brusa in Asia Minor. The fall of Philippopolis soon followed. Thus the Turks had, almost at a stroke, separated Constantinople from nearly all contact by land with the rest of Christendom, at the same time that they directly menaced Bulgaria and Servia. The Balkan states were terrified, and a league was formed between Hungary, Servia, Wallachia, Bulgaria, and Bosnia to oppose the Ottoman advance; but in 1371 a great Christian army was surprised at night near Chirmen on the Maritza and dispersed by a few thousand Ottoman cavalry, and Servia and Bulgaria were soon reduced to the position of tributary states. Fresh hostilities led to fresh conquests; in 1383 Sofia was taken by storm. At the same time Murad was equally sue-

cessful in his contests with the other Turkish princes of Asia Minor. Here too he added steadily to his dominions, and finally in a decisive battle crushed an army that had been gathered against him by his most dangerous rival, the Emir of Karaman. Scarcely was this accomplished when he was recalled to Europe to meet a new coalition of his Christian enemies, who had just routed one of his generals at Toplitza in Bosnia. In 13 89 the plain of Kossovo ("blackbirds") witnessed the first of a series of really great victories of the Ottoman Turks over their Christian opponents, a series unbroken by a single important defeat on land by Europeans for over two hundred years. Murad had often prayed, before the fight, that he might die a martyr to the faith: and on the battlefield that prayer was answered. 9

JWithBayezid I (Yilderim, "the Thunderbolt") we have a new type of ruler, equal and in some respects superior in ability to his predecessors, but in character a proud and lustful Eastern despot, whose magnificence was only matched by his cruelty. It seems probable that he was the first Ottoman ruler formally to assume the title of Sultan. 10 His first act was to put his younger brother to death in order to render himself secure against any possible rivalry

0 Conflicting stories and legends have come down as to the manner of his death. Busbecq (Life and Letters, ed. Forster and Daniell, I, 153, and note) says he was assassinated by a Croatian. The Ottoman historians believed that Murad was killed by a wounded Servian soldier while walking across the field of battle. The Servian songs and the Byzantine historians say that he was killed by Milosh Obravitch, son-in-law of the Servian chief Lazar, who gained an audience with Murad during or after the battle in the guise of a deserter. Hammer, Histoire de PEmpire Ottoman (Paris, 1835-43), I» 2 ^4~ 290; H. A. Gibbons, pp. 176-177, with references.

10 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, VII, 34-35, says "Bajazet condescended to accept a patent of Sultan from the caliphs who served in Egypt under the yoke of the Mamelukes; a last and frivolous homage that was yielded by force to opinion, by the Turkish conquerors to the house of Abbas and the successors of the Arabian prophet." Gibbon rests his statement on Joseph de Guignes, Histoire generate des Huns, 4 vols. (Paris, 1756-58), IV, -336; de CJmgnes, in turn, on Benschounah (ibn Shihna), a contemporaneous Syrian

Early History n

for the throne. The deed was done on the field of Kossovo in the presence of his father's unburied corpse. It was a precedent imitated by his successors, with but few exceptions, for many generations to come, and the theologians justified it by the verse in the Koran which declares that "revolution is worse than executions. 7 '

As a soldier Bayezid was worthy of his surname. The victory of Kossovo was actively followed up. Bulgaria was incorporated in the Sultan's dominions; Servia was reduced to vassalage and Hungary threatened, while in Asia Minor the remaining Turkish princes were driven out of their possessions, which were annexed by the conqueror. Sigis-mund of Hungary, too weak to maintain the struggle alone, had turned to Western Europe for assistance. Aided by the Pope, he succeeded in organizing a belated crusade, led by a body of French nobles left unoccupied by a lull in the Hundred Years' War. The expedition, however, ended in 1396 with the fatal battle of Nicopolis, where the army of the crusaders and Hungarians was overwhelmingly defeated by Bayezid, owing largely to its incredible lack of discipline. Constantinople seemed inevitably doomed by this disaster. Already it had been threatened and it was now rigorously blockaded; but, though deserted by the West, it was to be saved for another half-century by an unexpected diversion. Bayezid had come into conflict with another and even greater Asiatic conqueror than himself, the terrible Tatar prince Tamerlane, who had built up a mighty empire in Turkestan, overrun Persia, and invaded Russia and India; shortly afterwards he was even to estab-

historian. A. Rambaud in Ernest Lavisse and Alfred Rambaud, Histoire ghierale (Paris, 1893-1901), IV (1894), 748, likewise reckons Bayezid the first Ottoman Sultan. Yet there is good evidence that his father had been generally known by that title; while, on the other hand, Teodoro Spandugino, Cornmentari dell'origine de Principi TurM (Florence, 1551), says expressly that Mohammed "the Restorer," who ruled from 1413 to 1421, was the first, of the Ottoman house to assume it.