Suleiman The Magnificent 1520 1566 (4 page)

Europe fondly hoped that Mohammed would rest content with the organization of his first conquest, but was doomed to disappointment. Constantinople, in the new Sultan's eyes, was not an end but a beginning. It has been well said that for many a minor dynasty in Southeastern Europe and Asia Minor his reign was like the Day of the Last Judgment. In one place only did he meet serious defeat on land, when the heroic Hunyadi, in the last weeks of his life, rolled the Ottoman armies back before Belgrade in the summer of 1456; and the memory of that disaster con-

tinned to rankle till it was terribly avenged, just sixty-five years later, by Mohammed's great-grandson. Everywhere else on land the Turkish forces proved irresistible. Between 1462 and 1464 Bosnia was subdued and its last sovereign executed; in 1467 Herzegovina was annexed. During these same years Wallachia had been made a tributary state; Moldavia had been attacked, and the last vestiges of independent Christian rule had been effaced from the mainland of Greece. Albania remained unconquered until Skanderbeg's death in 1467. In the succeeding years it became the battleground of local chieftains, Venetian captains, and the Turks; but after Ottoman cavalry had gone around the head of the Adriatic and attacked the Venetian mainland, it was evident that the Moslems were destined to dominate it. In the meantime Mohammed exterminated the Greek Empire of Trebizond; he conquered the Genoese settlements in the Crimea, and finally reduced to vassalage the powerful Khan of the Crimean Tatars. On the Asiatic mainland he extended his boundaries by extinguishing the last embers of the rival Seljuk state of Karaman; and he blasted the hopes of his enemies that a new Tamerlane would arise to defeat him by shattering the hosts of the Turcoman sovereign of the dynasty of the White Sheep, near Terjan, in 1473. He was now the undisputed master of the whole of Anatolia.

But Mohammed was not satisfied with land conquests alone. The Turks hitherto had been pitiably weak on the sea. Now, with an Empire situated on two continents and one of the most splendid ports in the world, the Sultan set himself to the task of creating a navy. He began by closing and fortifying the Dardanelles, thereby excluding all strangers from the Black Sea. In 1455 a Turkish fleet entered the Aegean and conquered several of the smaller Greek islands. Venice alone made feeble eiforts to resist him; in 1463, war was declared between the republic and the Porte,

and dragged out its course for sixteen weary years. There were no great naval battles, because Venice was careful to avoid them; but in 1470 she was ousted from the island of Euboea, and thereafter lost all claim to the mastery of the Eastern Mediterranean. So greatly was she impressed by the power of the new foe, so deeply discouraged by the failure of Western Europe to support her, that in 1479 she decided to make her peace with the Sultan, and pocket her territorial losses in return for the maintenance of her commercial privileges. Relieved of all anxiety of attack from the republic, Mohammed launched two new naval expeditions in 1480. The first landed an army at Otranto in the kingdom of Naples. The town was stormed, and the surrounding country laid waste. The whole of Southern Italy was in abject terror. There was no prospect whatsoever of aid from the North. But the second and greater of Mohammed's maritime ventures proved unfortunate. It was composed of a fleet of 160 ships, carrying a powerful army, and it was commanded to capture Rhodes, the island fortress of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. But it was met by an unexpectedly heroic defence; almost it accomplished its purpose, but not quite, and the unsuccessful commander of the Turks was relieved and disgraced. Mohammed was planning personally to take command of a fresh expedition in the ensuing year, when death suddenly overtook him, on May 3, 1481. Rhodes on the sea, with Belgrade on land, remained bitter remembrances, which the Turks felt in honor bound to wipe out; and it was to be the happy fortune of Suleiman the Magnificent, in the years 1521 and 1522, to succeed in obliterating them both.

After such a brilliant reign, it was almost inevitable that there should be a reaction. The Turkish troops in Italy, left unsupported, were obliged to withdraw; while at home a war for the throne broke out between the two sons of

the late Sultan. But when the elder of them, Bayezid II, had triumphed over his brother Jem, he showed little inclination to continue his father's conquests. Indeed he spent most of the first fourteen years of his reign in planning and plotting to prevent his Christian enemies from utilizing Jem against him. The tale of the latter's adventures at the courts of Innocent VIII and Alexander VI, of his transference to the guardianship of Charles VIII of France, and death at Naples in the spring of 1495, is full of dramatic incidents wholly typical of the Italian Renaissance. 14 Throughout his reign Bayezid waged desultory war on sea and on land, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but never with decisive results. The Turks, who had become accustomed to the dramatic victories of Mohammed, grew increasingly restless and discontented. Less and less was the Sultan able to control his subjects, his soldiery, and his turbulent children, and in 1512 a series of revolts ended in his abdication in favor of his youngest son Selim, who had won the support of the Janissaries. Bayezid was permitted to retire from Constantinople to his birthplace; but on the way thither he died, poisoned—so it was popularly believed —by his Jewish doctor at the behest of his successor.

The brief reign of Selim a the Terrible" (1512-20) witnessed a speedy and ominous resumption of his grandfather's conquests. Indeed the new Sultan, in the first five years of his rule, added more territory to his dominions than had any of his predecessors; all of it, be it noted, was won from his own coreligionists. His Christian neighbors to the westward thanked God that he elected to leave them alone, and sent embassy after embassy to his court to beg on bended knees for the renewal of truces and capitulations. They had good reason to fear, for though the new Sultan took delight in the society of scholars and theologians, wrote poetry himself in three languages, and even

14 Cf. L. Thuasne, Djem Sultan (Paris, 1892).

sought refuge from the cares of state by occasional indulgence in opium, he was first and foremost a savage warrior and a bloodthirsty despot. He began, in orthodox fashion, by ridding himself of all possible rivals for the throne. His two elder brothers and eight nephews were disposed of in rapid succession. He also made it clear from the outset that he proposed to tolerate no independence on the part of any of his subordinates, many of whom throughout his reign were handed over without warning to the executioner; hence the curse which became proverbial among the Turks, "May you be the vizir of the Sultan Selim!" Having regulated matters to his satisfaction at Constantinople and gathered all the reins of power into his own hands, he surveyed the state of his neighbors to the East and the South.

At Selim's accession the Ottoman dominions included practically all of Asia Minor, but Persia, which for the preceding century and a half had been split up into a number of minor principalities, had now at last begun to gather itself together under a new dynasty, ably represented by Ismail I, who in 1499 had been proclaimed Shah. The presence on his flank of what now threatened to become a powerful state was enough to rouse all the fighting spirit of Selim. The fact that Ismail belonged to the Sufi sect of the Shiite form of Islam was sufficient to fire his burning zeal for the maintenance of Sunnite orthodoxy. Sufi doctrines had of late begun to spread among the Sultan's own subjects, and Selim gave orders that all who were tainted with this heresy should be exterminated on a given day. It is said that 40,000 persons were massacred in the ensuing purge. Having thus shown the strength of his own sentiments, and obtained from the head of his clergy a declaration that there was more merit in killing one heretic Persian than seventy Christians, Selim led a. great force across Asia Minor to the eastward. Shah Ismail, who had no infantry

and not a single cannon, retreated, laying waste the country behind him as he went; but Selim was not the man to be deterred by any "scorched earth" policy. The sufferings of his army were terrible; even the Janissaries murmured, and on one occasion the Sultan's own tent was riddled with bullets; but Selim never wavered; and his persistence was at last rewarded, when Ismail was forced to accept battle at Chaldiran (August 24, 1514), in order to save his capital, Tabriz. The Turkish troops were exhausted, and most of their horses were gone; but their infantry and artillery sufficed to win the day. Shah Ismail was wounded; his baggage and harem fell into the hands of the enemy. Fresh outbreaks of the Janissaries prevented the Sultan from following up his victory to the extent that he wished; nevertheless in the course of the next two years he incorporated into his possessions the Jezirat or northern part of Mesopotamia and the mountainous region of Kurdistan, where, however, he left the tribal government of the turbulent inhabitants practically undisturbed. He returned to Constantinople in triumph; and after punishing the instigators of the recent mutinies, he reorganized his Janissaries in such fashion as to relieve him of all fear of disobedience in the future.

Even before the end of his Persian campaigns, Selim had turned his attention to another rival. Ever since the middle of the thirteenth century, Egypt, with its dependencies in Syria and on the Red Sea, including the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, had been ruled by the famous Mamelukes. Originally a body of slaves, they had finally become masters of the land; and they had kept up their numbers by the old method of purchase, first of Turkish, later of Circassian, children. This military aristocracy of a few thousand cavalrymen, whose Soldan was merely their chief, were intensely proud of their past, and promised to be a formidable foe. But, aided by treachery, Selim

defeated them near Aleppo on August 24,1516, their leader perishing in the ensuing flight. As Damascus surrendered without resistance and the inhabitants of Lebanon also submitted, this victory made Selim master of Syria and Palestine, whose administration he proceeded to reorganize before pushing on into Egypt itself. On January 23, 1517, at Ridania, the Mameluke cavalry, fighting with desperate bravery, were mowed down by his cannon. Twenty thousand men are said to have been left dead on the field. Cairo was now taken, and Tuman Beg, the last Mameluke Sol-dan, was pursued until he was betrayed by an Arab chief and hanged at the gates of the town. The Mamelukes as a body, however, were not exterminated or even deprived of all power. Selim left the administration of Egypt as it was, with a Mameluke bey at the head of each of its twenty-four provinces; but over them all, in place of a Soldan of their own, he placed a Turkish governor. 15 Selim reaped other rewards from the conquest of Egypt besides increase of territory and military fame. He also won the proud title of "Protector of the Holy Cities," with the overlordship of Mecca and Medina, a dignity to which both he and his successors attributed great importance. The story—generally accepted until very recently— that he took the title of Caliph from the last Abbasside, whom he found in Cairo, is of more doubtful authenticity. It now seems clear that some of his predecessors had occasionally been addressed as Caliph (though in a somewhat limited sense) by other Moslems, but that Selim and Suleiman took pains to avoid the use of the title. The "Ottoman legists of their time inclined to the view that the Caliphate had [really] lasted only thirty years—until the death of

15 The most recent account of the Turkish conquest of the Mameluke Empire is that by G. W. F. Stripling, "The Ottoman Turks and the Arabs, 1511-1574," in Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, XXVI, no. 4 (1942), 38-55.

All," 1€ the last of the four successors of the Prophet; and the first diplomatic document known to have called the Turkish Sultan Caliph is the treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji with Russia in 1774. Of course the title died with the establishment of the Turkish Republic in. 1922-24.—But even if we eliminate his claims to the Caliphate, we must admit that Selim had rendered notable service to the Turks and to Islam. The last three years of his life were spent in peace; but while officially absorbed in problems of internal government, he was also getting ready, with characteristic secrecy and thoroughness, another great expedition, presumably intended to wipe out the disgrace of Rhodes. The Christian West, which he had hitherto spared, was in an agony of suspense. But death interrupted him in the midst of his preparations, on September 22, 1520, in his fifty-fourth year. 17

16 Cf. A. H. Lybyer's article on the Caliphate in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, III, 145-194, and references there.

17 So at least Hammer, IV, 137, 358. He (juotes the Venetian reports giving Selim's age at his accession as thirty-eight or thirty-six, and dismisses them with the remark that "he then looked ten years younger than he was." It is to be noted, however, that Jovius says that he died in his forty-sixth year (Turcicarum Rerum Commentarius (Paris, 1539), p. 59), and lorga (Geschichte des Osmanischen Retches; 4 vols. (Gotha, 1908-13), II, 342) accepts the same figure.

Youth and Accession of Suleiman Contemporaneous Europe

the Terrible left behind him only one son, the Sultan Suleiman, surnamed by Christian writers "the Great" or "the Magnificent," and by his own people "El Kanuni" or "the Legislator." We know almost nothing of his early years; but it seems clear that he was born in the latter part of the year 1494 or possibly in the early months of 1495, and that his mother, whose name was Hafssa Khatoun, was a woman of rare charm and intelligence. Some writers have maintained that she was a Circassian or a Georgian; but there is much to support the statement of Jovius that she was the daughter of the Khan of the Crimean Tatars. 1 The power and popularity which both her husband and her offspring subsequently enjoyed at Kaffa (Feodosia) lend added weight to this -conclusion. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that Suleiman spent at least a portion of his boyhood there among his mother's kinsmen. 2 But as fiis father was only the youngest of the eight sons of Bayezid II, the infant's chances of ever coming to the throne can hardly, at the outset, have appeared promising.