The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (18 page)

Raby points out that the
Testament
‘seems to have been designed as one of a pair for the sultan’s library, although its companion was not a Greek work but an Arabic translation from the Syriac’. The companion volume is
Kitab Daniyal al-nabi
(
Book of the Prophet Daniel
), preserved in the library of Haghia Sophia. According to Raby, both books were magical treatises that served for prognostications, and he has shown that both were dedicated to Mehmet II.

Aside from the sixteen Greek manuscripts that can be traced to the Conqueror’s scriptorium, there are other works in the Topkapı collection that can be dated to his reign. One of these, according to Raby, is ‘a Hebrew commentary by Mordechai ben Eliezer Comtino on Maimonides’
Guide to the Perplexed
, which is codicologically comparable to the Greek series in the Saray and which is dated 10 Kislev 5241, that is 12 November A. D. 1480’. Raby goes on to note that ‘Mordechai Comtino (1420-pre-1487) was born in Constantinople and lived in Edirne for a time in the 1450s. He was a leading member of the Jewish intellectual community in Constantinople/Istanbul and was celebrated as a Talmudist, Commentator, Mathematician, and Astronomer.’ Comtino is known to have had contacts with Muslim scholars in Istanbul, and since one of his works was in the Conqueror’s scriptorium it would seem that he was a member of Mehmet’s intellectual circle.

Sultan Mehmet was also interested in the work of George Gemisthus Plethon (c. 1355-1452), the great neo-Platonist philosopher, whom Sir Steven Runciman has called ‘the most original of Byzantine thinkers’. Plethon was educated in Constantinople and taught there until c. 1392. He then went to Mistra in the Peloponnesos, which at the time was ruled by the despot Theodore Palaeologus, second son of the emperor Manuel II. Plethon taught there for the rest of his days, except for a year he spent as a member of the Byzantine delegation at the Council of Ferrara-Florence. Plethon’s teaching was dominated by his rejection of Aristotle and his devotion to Plato, who inspired his goal of reforming the Greek world along Platonic lines. His religious beliefs were more pagan than Christian, as evidenced by his treatise
On the Laws
, in which he usually refers to God as Zeus and writes of the Trinity as consisting of the Creator, the World-mind and the World-soul. George Trapezuntios writes of a conversation he had at Florence with Plethon, who told him that the whole world would soon adopt a new religion. When asked if the new religion would be Christian or Mohammedan, Plethon replied, ‘Neither, it will not be different from paganism.’

A manuscript in the Topkapı collection is evidence of Sultan Mehmet’s interest in Plethon’s writings. According to Raby, this work ‘contains an Arabic translation of Plethon’s
Compendium Zoroastreorum et Platonicorum dogmatum
, Plethon’s entire collection of that fundamental neo-Platonic text, the
Chaldean Chronicles
, and fragments of his
Nomoi
, which included a hymn to Zeus!’.

Mehmet was noted as a patron of literature, and during his reign he supported some thirty poets and scholars, according to contemporary Turkish sources. The sixteenth-century Turkish historian Hoca Sadeddin writes that Sultan Mehmet was held in high regard by all his subjects,

particularly by those who had distinguished themselves in letters and science during his reign, because of the marks of esteem and consideration they had received from him in the shape of liberalities… The protection he had extended to men of letters has resulted in the production of innumerable works of value, the majority of which are dedicated to him… He also collected several thousand manuscripts, in most instances autograph copies of the rarest and most valuable commentaries and exigeses on Islamic law and religion, and caused them to be distributed in each of the mosques which he had built for the use and convenience of the teachers residing in these mosques. In short he forgot none of the good works he could do in this world.

Persian was the language of literature in the Ottoman Empire of Mehmet’s time, while works in Islamic theology were written in Arabic. But although Mehmet had studied both Persian and Arabic, when he himself wrote it was mostly in colloquial Turkish. Writing under the pseudonym Avni, he left a collection, known as a
divan
, consisting of some eighty poems in Turkish, interspersed with a few Persian verses called
gazels
, which were merely paraphrases of works by the great Iranian poet Hafız. One of the frequently quoted love poems from Mehmet’s
divan
reveals his utter lack of originality.

When the rosebud in the garden dons its coat
It fashions the buttons from rosebuds.
When in speech the tongue weaves roses and buds together
Its words are as nothing compared to her sweet lips.
When you stroll through the garden with a hundred coy deceits
The jasmine branches are so amazed at the sight that they sway with you.
When the dogwood sees the roses strewn in your path
Then it too strews its roses before you.
Until that rose-cheeked beauty comes to see the garden,
O Avni, may the ground be always damp with the tears of your eyes!

The most notable poet in Mehmet’s court was Ahmet Pasha, a decendant of the Prophet Mohammed, but even his work is lacking in originality. The same is true of two women poets of Mehmet’s reign, Zeynep Hatun and Mihri Hatun. Zeynep Hatun, who was notorious for her many scandalous love affairs, wrote a
divan
in Turkish and Persian that she dedicated to Mehmet II. Mihri Hatun, known as ‘the Sappho of the Ottomans’, wrote love poems that her contemporary biographer Aşık Çelebi described as purely platonic, for ‘not the slightest cloud darkened her reputation for virtue’. ‘Despite this poetic love,’ he writes, ‘this woman of the world ceded to the desires of no one, no lover’s hand touched the treasure of her maidenly charms, and no arm excepting her amber-scented necklace embraced her pure neck, for she lived and died a virgin.’

Several Italian artists were at one time or another resident at Mehmet’s court in Topkapı Sarayı. Early in 1461 Mehmet entered into correspondence with the condottiere Sigismondo Pandolpho Malatesta, lord of Rimini, whom Pope Pius II called the ‘prince of wickedness’. Mehmet asked that an artist be sent to do his portrait, and Malatesta sent the painter and medallist Matteo de’Pasti of Verona, a student of Pisanello who had long been resident at his court in Rimini. Matteo set off for Istanbul in September 1461, bearing with him two presents from Malatesta for Mehmet. One of these was a manuscript of
De re militari
, an illustrated work on warfare by Roberto Valturio, a humanist scholar in Malatesta’s court; the other was a detailed map of the Adriatic. Matteo’s ship was stopped off Crete by the Venetians, who arrested him and brought him to Venice, where the Council of Ten questioned him about his purpose in going to Istanbul, for Malatesta was suspected of planning to form an alliance with the sultan. Matteo was freed by the Venetians and by early January 1462 he was back in Rimini, having been prevented from reaching Istanbul. Nevertheless, Matteo did do a medallion portrait of Mehmet, in collaboration with the Burgundian painter Jean Tricaudet, though there is no evidence that either of the artists was ever in Istanbul.

Late in the 1470s Mehmet corresponded with King Ferrante of Naples, asking him to send an artist to do his portrait. Ferrante sent the painter Costanzo da Ferrara, who arrived in Istanbul in 1477 or 1478, remaining for a year or two. Costanzo did two versions of a medallion portrait of Mehmet, the first of which is now at the National Gallery in Washington, DC. The obverse of this medallion, dated 1481, is a bust of the sultan and the reverse shows him on horseback, both in left profile. The second version, which is the same except for minor details, was reproduced in many castings.

During the summer of 1479 Mehmet wrote to Doge Giovanni Mocenigo, inviting him to the circumcision of one of his grandchildren and also requesting that the Venetians send him ‘a good painter’. The doge politely declined the invitation to the circumcision, but, in consultation with the Signoria, he sent the painter Gentile Bellini to Istanbul. Apparently, Bellini’s visit to Istanbul was prompted by a letter written by Giovanni-Maria Angiolello, who writes in his
Historia turchesca
of the great pleasure that Sultan Mehmet took in looking at paintings. Angiolello says, ‘It was I who wrote to the illustrious government of Venice that they should send one of their best painters to Constantinople, and there was sent Gentile Bellini, a very expert painter, whom Muhammed [Mehmet] used to see freely.’

Bellini arrived in Istanbul in the autumn of 1479 and remained until the beginning of 1481. The only authenticated work from his stay is his famous portrait of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, now in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The portrait shows Mehmet in three-quarters left profile, with deep-set brown eyes, a particularly long and thin scimitar of a nose projecting over his tightly shut thin red lips, reminding one observer of ‘a parrot about to eat ripe cherries’, a reddish-brown beard pointed at the chin, his head covered by a multi-layered white turban with a red conical top, wearing a red kaftan with a broad fur collar.

Other works attributed to Bellini and dated from his stay in Istanbul include a double portrait of Mehmet and a young man, now in a private collection in Switzerland, and sketches of a janissary and a young woman, now in the British Museum. An album in the library of Istanbul University contains a miniature of the Virgin and Child that may have been painted by Bellini, since it is similar to a painting in the Berlin Museum signed by Bellini. Anecdotal evidence indicates that Bellini painted frescoes on the walls of a pavilion that Mehmet had erected in Topkapı Sarayı, probably the Fatih Köşkü in the Third Court, but these have vanished.

The Florentine artist Bertoldo di Giovanni was commissioned by Lorenzo de’Medici to do a medallion portrait of Sultan Mehmet, which was completed in 1480. The obverse shows Mehmet in left profile and may have been copied from Bellini’s portrait of the sultan. The reverse shows the figure of the sultan riding in a chariot drawn by two horses led by the running god Mars. The sultan is holding a rope that encircles three nude women carried on the rear of the chariot, each of them wearing a crown, inscriptions identifying them as Asia, Trebizond and Greece, the three empires conquered by Mehmet. The inscription on the obverse reads ‘Mehmet, Emperor of Asia, Trebizond and Greater Greece’, the latter term meaning the European dominions of the Byzantine Empire in its prime.

The Topkapı Sarayı Museum has a miniature watercolour portrait of the Conqueror ascribed to the Turkish artist Sinan Bey, who is believed to have studied with an Italian master. The portrait shows Mehmet in left profile seated in the oriental fashion, grasping a handkerchief in his left hand and with his right hand holding a rose up to his nose, the faintest of smiles lighting up his face.

Mehmet’s chief architect, known in Turkish as Atik Sinan, was probably a Greek known as Christodoulos. Mehmet commissioned him to build Fatih Camii, the Mosque of the Conqueror, whose plan derived from that of the Great Church of Haghia Sophia, basically a cube covered by a dome. Mehmet’s interest in other styles of architecture besides Turkish is evident in a remark of Angiolello, who says that the Conqueror built in the gardens of the Saray three pavalions, ‘one in the Persian-Karaman style, another
alla turchesca
, and a third
alla greca
’. The second and third of these can no longer be identified, but the first is certainly Çinili Köşk, the Tiled Pavilion, a building entirely Persian in its design and decoration.

Mehmet wrote to Sigismondo Pandolpho Malatesta asking for the services of the builder and sculptor Matteo de’Pasti, a follower of the great architect Leon Battista Alberti. When de’Pasti was prevented from reaching Istanbul by the Venetians, Mehmet contacted other disciples of Alberti, including Antonio Averlino, known as Filarete. It is possible that Filarete may have been involved in the design and construction of some of the buildings in Topkapı Sarayı. The Italian humanist Francesco Filelfo wrote to George Amiroutzes on 30 July 1465 to say that Filarete was about to sail to Istanbul, where he may have stayed on, since Italian sources do not mention him after that time. The symmetrical plan of Topkapı Sarayı resembles that of Filarete’s Ospedale Maggiori in Milan, which appears in his
Trattato di architettura
, a copy of which was found in the library of King Matthias Corvinus. Mehmet also invited the Bolognese architect Aristotele Fioravanti to Istanbul, but the Italian went instead to Moscow, where he worked on the Kremlin.

Mehmet’s grand vezir Mahmut Pasha rivalled the sultan himself as a patron of literature, though in Islamic letters rather than in Greek classics. As Hoca Sadeddin wrote of Mahmut Pasha, referring to the
ulema
, or learned class of the empire: ‘The books and treatises written with his name bear witness to his inclination and care for the
ulema
.’ The works of only two of the scholars he supported have survived, those of the poet Enveri and the historian Şükrüllah.

Enveri composed a work entitled
Düsturname
(
Book of the Vezir
), completed in 1464, which he dedicated to his patron: ‘For the exalted Mahmut Pasha/I composed the
Düsturname
.’ The book is a verse epic in three parts, with the first giving the history of Muslim dynasties from the Prophet to the Ottomans, the second recounting the reign of the fourteenth-century emir Umur Bey of Aydın, and the third a history of the Ottoman sultans up to 1464, the last two sections devoted to the exploits of Mahmut Pasha. Enveri also wrote another work entitled
Teferrücname
, probably an account of the Ottoman campaign in Wallachia in 1462, but this has not survived.

Şükrüllah composed a world history in Persian entitled
Behcetü’t-Tevarih
(
The Beauty of Histories
), which he dedicated to his patron Mahmut Pasha, ‘the beam of the pillars of the kingdom, the flame in the skies of the Vezirate, the one who repairs the affairs of men, the Sultan of Vezirs in the world, the advisor of Beys and Sultans…’. The book is divided into twelve sections, giving the history of the world since the Creation, with emphasis on Muslim dynasties, the last section devoted to the Ottoman Empire.