CHAPTER XXXI
Suleiman the Magnificent
1520–66

I. AFRICAN ISLAM: 1200-1566

IT is hard for us, pigeonholed in Christendom, to realize that from the eighth to the thirteenth century Islam was culturally, politically, and militarily superior to Europe. Even in its decline in the sixteenth century it prevailed from Delhi and beyond to Casablanca, from Adrianople to Aden, from Tunis to Timbuktu. Visiting the Sudan in 1353, Ibn-Batuta found there a creditable civilization under Moslem leadership; and a Negro Mohammedan, Abd-er-Rahman Sa’di, would later write a revealing and intelligent history, Tarik-es-Sudcm (c. 1650), describing private libraries of 1,600 volumes in Timbuktu, and massive mosques whose ruins attest a departed glory.

The Marini dynasty (1195–1270) made Morocco independent, and developed Fez and Marraqesh into major cities, each with august gateways, imposing mosques, learned libraries, colleges squatting amid shady colonnades, and wordy bazarres where one could buy anything at half the price. In the thirteenth century Fez had some 125,000 inhabitants, probably more than any city in Europe except Constantinople, Rome, and Paris. In its Karouine Mosque, seat of Morocco’s oldest university, religion and science lived in concord, taking eager students from all African Islam, and—in arduous courses of three to twelve years—training teachers, lawyers, theologians, and statesmen. Emir Yaqub II (r. 1269–86), ruling Morocco from Fez or Marraqesh, was one of the most enlightened princes of a progressive century, a just governor, a wise philanthropist, tempering theology with philosophy, shunning bigotry, and encouraging friendly intercourse with Europeans. The two cities received many refugees from Spain, and these brought a new stimulus to science, art, and industry. Ibn-Batuta, who had seen nearly all of vast Islam, called Morocco the earthly paradise.

On the way from Fez to Oran the modern traveler is surprised to find at Tlemcen the modest remnant of what in the thirteenth century was a city of 125,000 souls Three of its once sixty-four mosques—the Jama-el-Kebir (1136), the mosque of Abul Hassan (1298), and that of El-Halawi (1353)—are among the finest in the Mohammedan world; marble columns, complex mosaics, brilliant mihrabs, arcaded courts, carved wood, and towering minarets survive to tell of a splendor gone and almost forgotten. Here the Abd-el-Wahid dynasty (1248–1337, 1359—1553) maintained for three centuries a relatively enlightened rule, protecting Christians and Jews in religious freedom, and providing patronage to letters and arts. After the Turks captured the city (1553) it lost its importance as a center of trade, and declined into the shadows of history.

Farther east, Algiers flourished through a mixture of commerce and piracy. Half-hidden in a rock-bound semicircular bay, this picturesque port, rising in tier upon tier of white tenements and palaces from the Mediterranean to the Casbah, provided a favorite lair for “privateers”; even from Pompey’s days the corsairs of that coast had preyed upon defenseless shipping. After 1492 Algiers became a refuge for Moors fleeing from Spain; many of them joined the pirate crews, and turned with vengeful fury upon what Christian shipping they could waylay. Growing in number and audacity, the pirates manned fleets as strong as national navies, and raided the North Mediterranean coasts. Spain retaliated with protective expeditions that captured Oran, Algiers, and Tripoli (1509–10).

In 1516 a colorful buccaneer entered the picture. The Italians called him Barbarossa from his red beard; his actual name was Khair ed-Din Khizr; he was a Greek of Lesbos, who came with his brother Horush to join the pirate crew. While Khair ed-Din raised himself to command of the fleet, Horush led ‘an army against Algiers, expelled the Spanish garrison, made himself governor of the city, and died in battle (1518). Khair ed-Din, succeeding to his brother’s power, ruled with energy and skill. To consolidate his position he went to Constantinople, and offered Selim I sovereignty over Tripoli, Tunisia, and Algeria in return for a Turkish force adequate to maintain his own authority as vassal governor of these regions. Selim agreed, and Suleiman confirmed the arrangement. In 1533 Khair ed-Din became the hero of Western Islam by ferrying 70,000 Moors from inhospitable Spain to Africa. Appointed first admiral of the entire Turkish fleet, Barbarossa, with eighty-four vessels at his command, raided town after town on the coasts of Sicily and Italy, and took thousands of Christians to be sold as slaves. Landing near Naples, he almost succeeded in capturing Giulia Gonzaga Colonna, reputed the loveliest woman in Italy. She escaped half clad, rode off with one knight as her escort, and, on reaching her destination, ordered his death for reasons which she left to be inferred.

But Barbarossa aimed at less perishable booty than a beautiful woman. Landing his Janissaries at Bizerte, he marched against Tunis (1534). The Nefsid dynasty had ruled that city reasonably well since 1336; arts and letters had flourished under their patronage; but Muley Hassan, the current prince, had alienated the people by his cruelties. He fled as Barbarossa approached; Tunis was taken bloodlessly; Tunisia was added to the Ottoman realm, and Barbarossa was master of the Mediterranean.

It was another crisis for Christendom, for the unchallenged Turkish fleet could at any moment secure a foothold for Islam in the Italian boot. Strangely enough, Francis I was at this time allied with the Turks, and Pope Clement VII was allied with France. Fortunately, Clement died (September 25, 1534); Pope Paul III pledged funds to Charles V for an attack on Barbarossa, and Andrea Doria offered the full co-operation of the Genoese fleet. In the spring of 1535 Charles assembled at Cagliari, in Sardinia, 400 vessels and 30,000 troops. Crossing the Mediterranean, he laid siege to La Goletta, a fort commanding the Gulf of Tunis. After a month’s fighting, La Goletta fell, and the Imperial army marched on to Tunis. Barbarossa tried to stop the advance; he was defeated and fled. Christian slaves in Tunis broke their chains and opened the gates, and Charles entered the city unresisted. For two days he surrendered it to pillage by his soldiers, who would otherwise have mutinied; thousands of Moslems were massacred; the art of centuries was shattered in a day or two. The Christian slaves were joyously freed, and the surviving Mohammedan population was enslaved. Charles reinstated Muley Hassan as his tributary vassal, left garrisons in Bona and La Goletta, and returned to Europe.

Barbarossa escaped to Constantinople, and there, with Suleiman’s funds, built a new fleet of 200 ships. In July 1537, this force effected a landing at Taranto, and Christendom was again besieged. A new “Holy League” of Venice, the papacy, and the Empire took form, and gathered 200 vessels off Corfu. On September 27 the rival armadas, at the entrance to the Ambracian Gulf, fought an engagement almost in the same waters where Antony and Cleopatra had met Octavian at Actium. Barbarossa won, and again ruled the seas. Sailing east, he took one after another of the Venetian possessions in the Aegean and Greece, and forced Venice to a separate peace.

Charles tried to win Barbarossa to his service by gifts and an offer to make him vassal king of North Africa, but Khair ed-Din preferred Islamic bait. In October 1541, Charles and Doria led an expedition against Algiers; it was defeated on land by Barbarossa’s army, and at sea by a storm. Barbarossa returned the call by ravaging Calabria and landing, unhindered, at Ostia, the port of Rome. The great capital shivered in its shrines, but Paul III was at that time on good terms with Francis, and Barbarossa, allegedly out of courtesy to his ally, paid in cash for all that he took at Ostia, and departed peacefully.¹ He sailed up to Toulon, where his fleet was welcomed by the matter-of-fact French; he asked that the church bells should suspend their ringing while Allah’s vessels were in the harbor, for the bells disturbed his sleep, and his request was law. He joined a French fleet in taking Nice and Villefranche from the Emperor. Then, seventy-seven, the triumphant corsair retired with full honors to die in bed at eighty (1546).

Bona, La Goletta, and Tripoli fell back to Islam, and the Ottoman Empire reached from Algiers to Baghdad. Only one Moslem power dared to challenge its predominance in Islam.

II. SAFAVID PERSIA: 1502–76

Persia, which had enjoyed so many periods of cultural fertility, was now entering another epoch of political vitality and artistic creation. When Shah Ismail I founded the Safavid dynasty (1502–1736) Persia was a chaos of kinglets: Iraq, Yazd, Samnan, Firuzkuh, Diyarbekir, Kashan, Khurasan, Qandahar, Balkh, Kirman, and Azerbaijan were independent states. In a succession of ruthless campaigns Ismail of Azerbaijan conquered most of these principalities, captured Herat and Baghdad, and made Tabriz again the capital of a powerful kingdom. The people welcomed this native dynasty, gloried in the unity and power it gave their country, and expressed their spirit in a new outburst of Persian art.

Ismail’s rise to royalty is an incredible tale. He was three years old when his father died (1490), thirteen when he set out to win himself a throne, still thirteen when he had himself crowned Shah of Persia. Contemporaries described him as “brave like a young gamecock” and “lively as a faun,” stout, broad-shouldered, with furious mustaches and flaming red hair; he wielded a mighty sword with his left hand, and with the bow he was another Odysseus, shooting down seven apples in a row of ten.² We are told that he was “amiable as a girl,” but he killed his own mother (or stepmother), ordered the execution of 300 courtesans at Tabriz, and massacred thousands of enemies.³ He was so popular that “the name of God is forgotten” in Persia, said an Italian traveler, “and only that of Ismail is remembered.” ⁴

Religion and audacity were the secrets of his success. Religion in Persia was Shi’a—i.e., “the party” of Ali, son-in-law of Mohammed. The Shi’a recognized no rightful caliphs but Ali and his twelve lineal descendants—“imams” or holy kings; and since religion and government were not distinct in Islam, each such descendant had, in this doctrine, a divine right to rule both church and state. As Christians believed that Christ would return to establish His kingdom on earth, so the Shi’ites believed that the twelfth imam—Muhammad ibn-Hasan—had never died, but would someday reappear and set up his blessed rule over the earth. And as Protestants condemned Catholics for accepting tradition, along with the Bible, as a guide to right belief, so the Shi’ites denounced the Sunnites—the orthodox Mohammedan majority—who found the sunna or “path” of righteousness not only in the Koran but also in the practice of Mohammed as handed down in the traditions of his companions and followers. And as Protestants gave up praying to the saints and closed the monasteries, so the Shi’ites discountenanced the Sufi mystics and closed the cloisters of the dervishes, which, like the monasteries of Europe in their prime, had been centers of hospitality and charity. As Protestants called their faith the “true religion,” so the Shi’ites took the name al-Ma-minum, “true believers.”⁵ No faithful Shi’ite would eat with a Sunnite; and if a Christian’s shadow passed over a Shi’ite’s meal, the food was to be discarded as unclean.⁶

Ismail claimed descent from the seventh imam, Safi-al-Din (“Purity of the Faith”), from whom the new dynasty was named. By proclaiming Shi’a as the national and official religion of Iran, and as the sacred standard under which he fought, Ismail united his people in pious devotion against the Sunnite Moslems who hemmed Persia in—the Uzbeks and Afghans on the east, the Arabs, Turks, and Egyptians on the west. His strategy succeeded; despite his cruelties he was worshiped as a saint, and his subjects so trusted in his divine power to protect them that some refused to wear armor in battle.⁷

Having won this fervent support, Ismail felt strong enough to challenge his neighbors. The Uzbeks who ruled Transoxiana had spread their power into Khurasan; Ismail took Herat from them, and drove them out of Persia. Secure in the east, he turned west against the Ottomans. Each faith now persecuted the other with holy intensity. Sultan Selim, we are unreliably told, had 40,000 Shi’ites in his dominions killed or imprisoned before going forth to war (1514), and Shah Ismail hanged some of the Sunnites who formed a majority in Tabriz, and compelled the rest to utter daily a prayer cursing the first three caliphs as usurpers of Ali’s rights. Nevertheless, in battle at Chaldiran, the Persians found Shi’a helpless before the artillery and Janissaries of Selim the Grim; the Sultan took Tabriz, and subdued all northern Mesopotamia (1516). But his army mutinied, he retreated, and Ismail returned to his capital with all the glory that shrouds a martial king. Letters declined during his hectic reign, but art prospered under his patronage; he protected the painter Bihzad, and rated him as worth half of Persia.⁸ After twenty-four years of rule Ismail died at thirty-eight, leaving the throne to his ten-year-old son (1524).

Shah Tamasp I was a faithless coward, a melancholy sybarite, an incompetent king, a harsh judge, a patron and practitioner of art, a pious Shi’ite, and the idol of his people. Perhaps he had some secret virtues which he hid from history. The continuing emphasis on religion disturbed as well asstrengthened the government, for it sanctioned a dozen wars, and kept the Islam of the Near and Middle East divided from 1508 to 1638. Christendom benefited, for Suleiman interrupted his assaults upon the West by campaigns against Persia; “only the Persian stands between us and ruin,” wrote Ferdinand’s ambassador in Constantinople.⁹ In 1533 the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha led a Turkish army into Azerbaijan, took fortress after fortress by bribing Persian generals, and finally captured Tabriz and Baghdad without striking a blow (1534). Fourteen years later, during an armistice with Ferdinand, Suleiman led another army against “the rascally Red-heads” (the Turkish name for the Persians), took thirty-one towns, and then resumed his attacks upon Christendom. Between 1525 and 1545 Charles repeatedly negotiated with Persia, presumably to co-ordinate Christian and Persian resistance to Suleiman. The West rejoiced when Persia assumed the offensive and captured Erzerum; but in 1554 Suleiman returned, devastated great stretches of Persia, and forced Tamasp to a peace in which Baghdad and Lower Mesopotamia fell permanently under Turkish rule.

More interesting than these dismal conflicts were the venturesome journeys that Anthony Jenkinson made into Transoxiana and Persia in search of an overland trade route to India and “Cathay.” In this matter Ivan the Terrible proved amiable; he welcomed Jenkinson in Moscow, sent him as his ambassador to the Uzbek rulers at Bokhara, and agreed to let English goods enter Russia duty free and pass down the Volga and across the Caspian. After surviving a violent storm on that sea, Jenkinson continued into Persia and reached Qasvin (1561). There he delivered to Tamasp letters of salutation from a distant queen who seemed to the Persians a minor ruler over a barbarous people. They were inclined to sign a trade agreement, but when Jenkinson confessed himself a Christian they bade him depart; “we have no need of friendship with infidels,” they told him; and as he left the Shah a servant spread purifying sand to cover the Christian footprints that had polluted the Shi’a court.¹⁰

The death of Tamasp (1576) concluded the longest but one of all Mohammedan reigns, and one of the most disastrous. It was not distinguished by any literature lovingly cherished in Persian memory, unless we include the fascinating memoirs of the expatriated Babur. But Safavid art, though its zenith would come later, already in these two reigns began to pour forth works of that grandeur, brilliance, and refinement which for twenty-two centuries have marked the products of Persia. In Isfahan the mausoleum of Harun-i-Vilaya displayed all the finesse of classic Persian design, and the best color and cutting of mosaic faïence; and a complex half-dome crowned the portal of the great Friday Mosque. Another Masjid-i-Jami rose in this age at Shiraz, but time has swallowed it.

In many instances the delicate work of the illuminators and calligraphers has outlasted the architectural monuments, and has justified the care that made the book, in Islam, almost an idol of loving reverence. The Arabs, proud of everything, were forgivably enamored of their alphabet, which lent itself to lines of sinuous grace. The Persians above all made that script an art in adorning the mihrabs and portals of their mosques, the metal of their weapons, the clay of their pottery, the texture of their rugs, and in transmitting their Scriptures and their poets in manuscripts that many generations would cherish as delights to eye and soul. The Nastaliq or sloping script, which had flourished under the Timurids at Tabriz, Herat, and Samarkand, returned to Tabriz under the Safavids, and went with them to Isfahan. As the mosque brought together a dozen arts, so the book employed poet, calligrapher, miniaturist, and binder into a collaboration quite as dedicated and devout.

The art of illumination continued to flourish at Bokhara, Herat, Shiraz, and Tabriz. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has a lordly manuscript of Firdausi’s Shah-nama signed by Arraji Muhammad al-Qawam of Shiraz (1552); the Cleveland Museum has another illuminated by Mushid-al-Kiatib (1538); and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has one of the finest examples of Tabriz illumination and calligraphy in the title page from a copy (1525) of Nizami’s Khamsu. The center of Mohammedan illumination moved to Tabriz when Bihzad chose it for his residence (c. 1510). During the campaign of Chaldiran Shah Ismail hid Bihzad and the calligrapher Mahmud Nishapuri in a cave as his most precious possessions.¹¹ Bihzad’s pupil Aqa Mirak painted at Tabriz one of the master miniatures of this period, the Khosru and Shirin Enthroned (1539), now in the British Museum. Mirak in turn taught the art to Sultan (Prince) Muhammad Nur. Born of a rich family, Muhammad ignored the fact that he had the means to be worthless; he became the “pearl without price” at the court of Shah Tamasp, for he surpassed all his contemporaries in calligraphy and illumination, and in designing book covers and rugs. Between 1539 and 1543 he copied and illustrated the Khamsu of Nizami; a magnificent page in the British Museum shows King Khosru, mounted on a pink horse, peering through foliage of green, brown, and gold at Shirin bathing, half naked, in a silver pool. Even more brilliant in color is a painting of the Prophet riding through the skies on his winged horse Buraq to visit heaven and hell. The figures are grace incarnate, but deliberately and religiously without individualized features; the artist was interested in decoration rather than representation, and valued beauty, which, subjective, is sometimes attainable, more than truth, which, objective, always escapes. In these miniatures Persian illumination reached the apex of its elegance.

The same loving care and delicate designs went into textiles and rugs. No textiles survive from these reigns, but the miniatures picture them. In rugs the Safavi designers and artisans were supreme. The carpet seemed an essential of civilization in Islam. The Moslem sat and ate not on chairs but on a floor or ground covered with a rug. A special “prayer rug,” usually bearing religious symbols and a Koranic text, received his prostrations in his devotions. Rugs were favored as gifts to friends or kings or mosques; so Shah Tamasp sent twenty large and many small carpets of silk and gold to Selim II on the latter’s accession as Ottoman Sultan (1566). Some dominating feature of design classified the rugs as of the garden, floral, hunting, vase, diaper, or medallion type; but around these basic forms were meandering arabesques, Chinese cloud configurations, symbols conveying secret meanings to the initiate, animals lending the pattern life, plants and flowers giving it a kind of linear fragrance and joyful tone; and through the complex whole an artistic logic ran, a contrapuntal harmony of lines more intricate than Palestrina’s madrigals, more graceful than Godiva’s hair.

Some famous Persian rugs survive from this first half of the sixteenth century. One is a medallion rug with 30,000,000 knots in wool on a silk warp (380 to the square inch); it lay for centuries in a mosque at Ardabil, and is now divided between the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the County Museum in Los Angeles. In a cartouche at one end is a verse from Hafiz, and beneath this the proud words: “The work of the slave .... Maqsud of Kashan, in the year 946” after the hegira—i.e., A.D. 1539.¹² Also in the Los Angeles Museum is the immense “Coronation Carpet” used at the crowning of Edward VII in 1901. The Poldi-Pezzoli Museum at Milan, before the second World War shattered the building, counted among its greatest treasures a hunting rug by Ghiyath ad-Din Jami of Yazd, the Bihzad of rug design. The “Duke of Anhalt Rug,” in the Duveen Collection, won international renown for its golden yellow ground and seductive arabesques in crimson, rose, and turquoise blue. The rug and the book are among the unchallengeable titles of Safavid Persia to a high place in the remembrance of mankind.

III. SULEIMAN AND THE WEST

Suleiman succeeded his father Selim I in 1520 at the age of twenty-six. He had won a name for himself by his courage in war, his generosity in friendship, and his efficient administration of Turkish provinces. His refined features and gracious manners made him welcome in a Constantinople tired of Selim the Grim. An Italian who saw Suleiman soon after his accession described him as tall, wiry, and strong, the neck too long, the nose too curved, beard and mustache thin, complexion sallow and delicate, countenance grave and calm; he looked more like a student than a sultan.¹³ Eight years later another Italian reported him as “deadly pale... melancholy, much addicted to women, liberal, proud, hasty, and yet sometimes very gentle.” Ghislain de Busbeq, ambassador of the Hapsburgs at the Porte, wrote almost fondly of the Hapsburgs’ most persistent enemy:

It is a picture worth noting, but too flattering: Suleiman was doubtless the greatest and noblest of the Ottoman sultans, and equaled any ruler of his time in ability, wisdom, and character; but we shall find him, now and then, guilty of cruelty, jealousy, and revenge. Let us, however, as an experiment in perspective, try to view dispassionately his conflict with Christendom.

The military debate between Christianity and Islam was already 900 years old. It began when Moslem Arabs snatched Syria from the Byzantine Empire (634). It proceeded through the year-by-year conquest of that Empire by the Saracens, and the conquest of Spain by the Moors. Christendom retaliated in the Crusades, in which both sides covered with religious phrases and ardor their economic aims and political crimes. Islam retaliated by taking Constantinople and the Balkans. Spain expelled the Moors. Pope after pope called for fresh crusades against the Turks; Selim I vowed to build a mosque in Rome; Francis I proposed to the Western powers (1516) that they should utterly destroy the Turkish state and divide its possessions among themselves as infidel spoils.¹⁵ This plan was frustrated by the division of Germany in religious war the revolt of the Spanish communes against Charles V, and the second thought of Francis himself—to seek Suleiman’s aid against Charles. Suleiman may have been saved by Luther, as Lutheranism owed so much to Suleiman.

Every government strives to extend its borders, partly to enlarge its resources and revenues, partly to create additional protective terrain between its frontiers and its capital. Suleiman supposed that the best defense was offense. In 1521 he captured the Hungarian strongholds of Szabacs and Belgrade; then, feeling safe in the West, he turned his forces against Rhodes. There the Christians, under the Knights of St. John, held a heavily fortified citadel directly athwart the routes from Constantinople to Alexandria and Syria; it seemed to Suleiman a dangerous alien bastion in an otherwise Turkish sea; and in fact the pirate ships of the Knights preyed upon Moslem commerce¹⁶ in one end of the Mediterranean as the Moslem pirates of Algeria preyed upon Christian commerce in the other. When Moslems were taken in these Knightly raids they were usually slain.¹⁷ Vessels carrying pilgrims to Mecca were intercepted on suspicion of hostile purposes. “Under all the circumstances,” says a Christian historian, “Suleiman was in no need of justification for an assault on Rhodes”;¹⁸ and a distinguished English historian adds: “It was in the interest of public order that the island should be annexed to the Turkish realm.” ¹⁹

Suleiman attacked with 300 ships and 200,000 men. The defenders, led by the aged Grand Master Philippe de Villiers de L’lle-Adam, fought the besiegers for 145 days, and finally surrendered under honorable terms: the Knights and their soldiery were to leave the island in safety, but within ten days; the remaining population were to have full religious freedom, and were to be exempt from tribute for five years. On Christmas Day Suleiman asked to see the Grand Master; he condoled with him, praised his brave defense, and gave him valuable presents; and to the Vizier Ibrahim the Sultan remarked that “it caused him great sorrow to be obliged to force this Christian in his old age to abandon his home and his belongings.”²⁰ On January 1, 1523, the Knights sailed off to Crete, whence, eight years later, they passed to a more permanent home in Malta. The Sultan tarnished his victory by putting to death the son and grandchildren of Prince Djem because they had become Christians and might be used, as Djem had been, as claimants to the Ottoman throne.

Early in 1525 Suleiman received a letter from Francis I, then a captive of Charles V, asking him to attack Hungary and come to the rescue of the French King. The Sultan answered: “Our horse is saddled, our sword is girt on.”²¹ However, he had long ago made up his mind to invade Hungary. He set out in April 1526, with 100,000 men and 300 cannon. Pope Clement VII urged Christian rulers to go to the aid of the threatened state; Luther advised the Protestant princes to stay home, for the Turks were obviously a divine visitation, and to resist them would be to resist God.²² Charles V remained in Spain. The consequent rout of the Hungarians at Mohács was a moral as well as a physical defeat for Christendom. Hungary might have recovered from the disaster if Catholics and Protestants, Emperor and Pope, had labored together; but Lutheran leaders rejoiced in the Turkish victory, and the army of the Emperor sacked Rome.

In 1529 Suleiman returned, and besieged Vienna with 200,000 men; from the spire of St. Stephen’s, Count Nicholas von Salm, to whom Ferdinand entrusted the defense, could see the surrounding plains and hills darkened with the tents, soldiery, and armament of the Ottomans. This time Luther summoned his adherents to join in the resistance, for clearly, if Vienna fell, Germany would be the next object of Turkish attack. Reports ran through Europe that Suleiman had vowed to reduce all Europe to the one true faith Islam.²³ Turkish sappers dug tunnel after tunnel in the hope of blowing up the walls or setting up explosions within the city, but the defenders placed vessels of water at danger points, and watched for movements that would indicate subterranean operations. Winter came, and the Sultan’s long line of communications failed to maintain supplies. On October 14 he called for a final and decisive effort, and promised great rewards; spirit and flesh were both unwilling; the attack was repulsed with great loss, and Suleiman sadly ordered a retreat. It was his first defeat; yet he retained half of Hungary, and carried back to Constantinople the royal crown of St. Stephen. He explained to his people that he returned without victory because Ferdinand (who had sat the siege out safely in Prague) had refused to fight; and he promised that he would soon hunt out Charles himself, who dared to call himself emperor, and would wrest from him the lordship of the West.

The West took him seriously enough. Rome fell into a panic; Clement VII, for once resolute, taxed even the cardinals to raise funds to fortify Ancona and other ports through which the Ottomans might enter Italy. In April 1532, Suleiman marched westward once more. His departure from his capital was a well staged spectacle: 120 cannon led the advance; 8,000 Janissaries followed, the best soldiers in the realm; a thousand camels carried provisions; 2,000 elite horsemen guarded the holy standard—the eagle of the Prophet; thousands of Christian captive boys, dressed in cloth of gold and plumed red hats, flaunted lances with innocent bravery; the Sultan’s own retinue were men of giant stature and handsome mien; among them, on a chestnut horse, rode Suleiman himself, robed in crimson velvet embroidered with gold, under a white turban inset with precious stones; and behind him marched an army that in its final mustering numbered 200,000 men. Who could resist such splendor and power? Only the elements and space.

To meet this avalanche Charles, after much pleading, received from the Imperial Diet a grant to raise 40,000 foot and 8,000 horse; he and Ferdinand provided 30,000 additional men at their own expense; and with these 78,000, gathered in Vienna, they awaited siege. But the Sultan was delayed at Güns. It was a small town, well fortified, but garrisoned with only 700 troops. For three weeks they fought back every Turkish attempt to break through the walls; eleven times these were pierced, eleven times the defenders blocked the opening with metal, flesh, and desperation. At last Suleiman sent a safeconduct and hostages to the commander, Nicholas Jurischitz, inviting him to a conference. He came, and was received with honors by the Grand Vizier; his courage and generalship were sorrowfully praised; the Sultan presented him with a robe of honor, guaranteed him against further attack, and sent him back to his citadel under a handsome escort of Turkish officers. The invincible avalanche, defeated by 700 men, passed on to Vienna.

But there too Suleiman missed his prey. Charles would not come out to fight; he would have been foolish to forfeit the advantage of his defenses for the gamble of the open field. Suleiman reckoned that if he had failed to take Vienna held by 20,000 men with no emperor or king in sight, he would hardly do better against 78,000 inspired by a young monarch who had publicly announced that he would welcome death in this contest as the noblest worldly end to which a Christian could aspire. The Sultan turned away, ravaged Styria and Lower Austria, and took stray captives to grace his retreat. It could have been no comfort to him to hear that while he was marching uselessly back and forth across Hungary Andrea Doria had chased the Turkish fleet into hiding, and had captured Patras and Coron, on the Peloponnesian coast.

When Ferdinand sent an emissary to Constantinople to seek peace Suleiman welcomed him; he would grant peace “not for seven years, not for twenty-five years, not for a hundred years, but for two centuries, three centuries, indeed forever—if Ferdinand himself would not break it,” and he would treat Ferdinand as a son.²⁴ However, he asked a heavy price: Ferdinand must send him the keys to the city of Grau in token of submission and homage. Ferdinand and Charles were so eager to free their arms against Christians that they were ready to make concessions to the Turks. Ferdinand sent the keys, called himself Suleiman’s son, and acknowledged Suleiman’s sovereignty over most of Hungary (June 22, 1533). No peace was made with Charles. Suleiman recaptured Patras and Coron, and dreamed of straddling Vienna and Tabriz.

He took Tabriz, and turned west again (1536). Putting theology aside, he agreed to co-operate with Francis I in another campaign against Charles. He offered the most amiable terms to the King: peace should be made with Charles only on his surrendering Genoa, Milan, and Flanders to France; French merchants were permitted to sail, buy, and sell throughout the Ottoman Empire on equal terms with the Turks; French consuls in that realm were to have civil and criminal jurisdiction over all Frenchmen there, and these were to enjoy full religious liberty.²⁵ The “capitulations” so signed became a model for later treaties of Christian powers with Eastern states.

Charles countered by forming an alliance of the Empire, Venice, and the papacy. Ferdinand joined in; so short was forever. Venice bore the brunt of the Turkish attack, lost her possessions in the Aegean and on the Dalmatian coast, and signed a separate peace (1540). A year later Suleiman’s puppet in Buda died, and the Sultan made Hungary an Ottoman province. Ferdinand sent an envoy to Turkey to ask for peace, and another to Persia urging the Shah to attack the Turks. Suleiman marched west (1543), took Grau and Stuhlweissenburg, and incorporated more of Hungary into the pashalik of Buda. In 1547, busy with Persia, he granted the West a five-year armistice. Both sides violated it. Pope Paul IV appealed to the Turks to attack Philip II, who was more papal than the popes.²⁶ The death of Francis and Charles left Ferdinand a freer hand to come to terms. In the Peace of Prague (1562) he acknowledged Suleiman’s rule in Hungary and Moldavia, pledged a yearly tribute of 30,000 ducats, and agreed to pay 90,000 ducats as arrears.

Two years later he followed his brother. Suleiman had survived all his major enemies, and how many popes had he not outlived? He was master of Egypt, North Africa, Asia Minor, Palestine, Syria, the Balkans, Hungary. The Turkish navy ruled the Mediterranean, the Turkish army had proved its prowess east and west, the Turkish government had shown itself as competent in statesmanship and diplomacy as all its rivals. The Christians had lost Rhodes, the Aegean, Hungary, and had signed a humiliating peace. The Ottomans were now the strongest power in Europe and Africa, if not in the world.

IV. OTTOMAN CIVILIZATION

1. Government

Were they civilized? Of course; the notion that the Turks were barbarians as compared with the Christians is a self-propping delusion. Their agricultural methods and science were at least as good as those of the West. The land was tilled by tenants of feudal chieftains who in each generation had to earn their holdings by serving the sultan satisfactorily in administration and war. Except in textiles, ceramics, and perhaps in arms and armor, industry had not yet developed a factory system as in Florence or Flanders, but Turkish craftsmen were famous for their excellent products, and the absence of capitalism was not mourned by rich or poor. The merchants had not reached in sixteenth-century Islam the political influence or social position then accorded to them in Western Europe. Trade between Turk and Turk was noted for its relative honesty, but between Turk and Christian no holds were barred. Foreign commerce was mostly left to foreigners. Moslem caravans moved patiently over the ancient and medieval land routes into Asia and Africa, even across the Sahara; and caravansaries, many of them set up by Suleiman, offered the merchant and traveler resting places on the way. Moslem vessels, till 1500, controlled the sea routes from Constantinople and Alexandria through the Red Sea to India and the East Indies, where exchange was made with goods borne by Chinese junks. After the opening of India to Portuguese merchants by the voyage of Da Gama and the naval victories of Albuquerque, the Moslems lost control of the Indian Ocean, and Egypt, Syria, Persia, and Venice entered into a common commercial decline.

The Turk was a man of the earth and the sea, and gave less thought to religion than most other Mohammedans. Yet he too reverenced mystics, dervishes, and saints, took his law from the Koran, and his education from the mosque. Like the Jews, he shunned graven images in his worship, and looked upon Christians as polytheistic idolaters. Church and state were one: the Koran and the traditions were the basic law; and the same ulema, or association of scholars, that expounded the Holy Book also provided the teachers, lawyers, judges, and jurists of the realm. It was such scholars who, under Mohammed II and Suleiman I, compiled the definitive Ottoman codes of law.

At the head of the ulema was the mufti or sheik ul-Islam, the highest judge in the land after the sultan and the grand vizier. As sultans had to die, while the ulema enjoyed a collective permanence, these theologian-lawyers were the rulers of everyday life in Islam. Because they interpreted the present in terms of past law, their influence was strongly conservative, and shared in the stagnation of Moslem civilization after Suleiman’s death. Fatalism—the Turkish qismet or lot—furthered this conservatism: since the fate of every soul had been predetermined by Allah, rebellion against one’s lot was impiety and shallowness; all things, death in particular, were in the hands of Allah, and must be accepted without complaint. Occasionally a freethinker spoke too frankly, and, in rare instances, was condemned to death. Usually, however, the ulema allowed much liberty of thought, and there was no Inquisition in Turkish Islam.

Christians and Jews received a large measure of religious freedom under the Ottomans, and were permitted to rule themselves by their own laws in matters not involving a Moslem.²⁷ Mohammed II deliberately fostered the Greek Orthodox Church because the mutual distrust of Greek and Roman Catholics served the Turks in countering crusades. Though the Christians prospered under the sultans, they suffered serious disabilities. Technically they were slaves, but they could end that status by accepting Mohammedanism, and millions did. Those who rejected Islam were excluded from the army, for Moslem wars were ostensibly holy wars for the conversion of infidels. Such Christians were subject to a special tax in lieu of military service; they were usually tenant farmers, paying a tenth of their produce to the owner of their land; and they had to surrender one infant out of every ten to be brought up as a Moslem in the service of the sultan.

The sultan, the army, and the ulema were the state. At the sultan’s call each feudal chieftain came with his levy to form the sipahis or cavalry, which under Suleiman reached the remarkable figure of 130,000 men. Ferdinand’s ambassador envied the splendor of their equipment: clothing of brocade or silk in scarlet, bright yellow, or dark blue; harness gleaming with gold, silver, and jewelry on the finest horses that Busbeq had ever seen. An elite infantry was formed from captive or tributary Christian children, who were brought up to serve the sultan in his palace, in administration, and above all in the army, where they were called yeni cheri (new soldiers), which the West corrupted into Janissaries. Murad I had originated this unique corps (c. 1360), perhaps as a way of freeing his Christian population from potentially dangerous youth. They were not numerous—some 20,000 under Suleiman. They were highly trained in all the skills of war, they were forbidden to marry or engage in economic activities, they were indoctrinated with martial pride and ardor and the Mohammedan faith, and they were as brave in war as they were restlessly discontent in peace. Behind these superlative soldiers came a militia of some 100,000 men, kept in order and spirit by the sipahis and the Janissaries. The favorite weapons were still the bow and arrow and the lance; firearms were just coming into use; and at close quarters men wielded the mace and the short sword. Suleiman’s army and military science were the best in the world at that time; no other army equaled it in handling artillery, in sapping and military engineering, in discipline and morale, in care for the health of the troops, in the provisioning of great numbers of men through great distances. However, the means were too excellent merely to serve an end; the army became an end in itself; to be kept in condition and restraint it had to have wars; and after Suleiman the army—above all, the Janissaries—became the masters of the sultans.

The conscripted and converted sons of Christians formed most of the administrative staff of the central Turkish government. We should have expected that a Moslem sultan would fear to be surrounded by men who might, like Scanderbeg, yearn for the faith of their fathers; on the contrary, Suleiman preferred these converts because they could be trained from childhood for specific functions of administration. Very likely the bureaucracy of the Ottoman state was the most efficient in existence in the first half of the sixteenth century,²⁸ though it was notoriously subject to bribery. The Diwan or Divan, like the cabinet in a Western government, brought together the heads of administration, usually under the presidency of the grand vizier. It had advisory rather than legislative powers, but ordinarily its recommendations were made law by a kanun or decree of the sultan. The judiciary was manned by qadis (judges) and mullas (superior judges) from the ulema. A French observer remarked the diligence of the courts and the promptness of trials and verdicts,²⁹ and a great English historian believed that “under the early Ottoman rulers the administration of justice was better in Turkey than in any European land; the Mohammedan subjects of the sultans were more orderly than most Christian communities, and crimes were rarer.”³⁰ The streets of Constantinople were policed by Janissaries, and were “probably freer from murders than any other capital in Europe.” ³¹ The regions that fell under Moslem rule—Rhodes, Greece, the Balkan—spreferred it to their former condition under the Knights or the Byzantines or the Venetians, and even Hungary thought it fared better under Suleiman than under the Hapsburgs.³²

Most of the administrative offices of the central government were located in the serai or imperial quarters—not a palace but a congeries of buildings, gardens, and courts, housing the sultan, his seraglio, his servants, his aides, and 80,000 of the bureaucracy. To this enclosure, three miles in circuit, admission was by a single gate, highly ornamented and called by the French the Sublime Porte—a term which, by a whimsy of speech, came to mean the Ottoman government itself. Second only to the sultan in this centralized organization was the grand vizier. The word came from the Arabic wazir, bearer of burdens. He bore many, for he was head of the Diwan, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the army, and the diplomatic corps. He supervised foreign relations, made the major appointments, and played the most ceremonious roles in the most ceremonious of European governments. The heaviest obligation was to please the sultan in all these matters, for the vizier was usually an ex-Christian, technically a slave, and could be executed without trial at a word from his master. Suleiman proved his own good judgment by choosing viziers who contributed a great deal to his success. Ibrahim Pasha (i.e., Abraham the Governor) was a Greek who had been captured by Moslem corsairs and brought to Suleiman as a promising slave. The Sultan found him so diversely competent that he entrusted him with more and more power, paid him 60,000 ducats ($1,500,000?) a year, gave him a sister in marriage, regularly ate with him, and enjoyed his conversation, musical accomplishments, and knowledge of languages, literature, and the world. In the flowery fashion of the East Suleiman announced that “all that Ibrahim Pasha says is to be regarded as proceeding from my own pearl-raining mouth.” ³³ This was one of the great friendships of history, almost in the tradition of classic Greece.

One wisdom Ibrahim lacked—to conceal with external modesty his internal pride. He had many reasons to be proud: it was he who raised the Turkish government to its highest efficiency, he whose diplomacy divided the West by arranging the alliance with France, he who, while Suleiman marched into Hungary, pacified Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt by reforming abuses and dealing justly and affably with all. But he had also reason to be circumspect; he was still a slave, and the higher he raised his head the thinner grew the thread that held the royal sword above it. He angered the army by forbidding it to sack Tabriz and Baghdad, and trying to prevent its sack of Buda. In that pillage he rescued part of Matthias Corvinus’s library, and three bronze statues of Hermes, Apollo, and Artemis; these he set up before his palace in Constantinople, and even his liberal master was disturbed by this flouting of the Semitic commandment against graven images. Gossip charged him with despising the Koran. Sometimes he gave entertainments surpassing those of Suleiman in cost and magnificence. Members of the Diwan accused him of talking as if he led the Sultan like a tamed lion on a leash. Roxelana, favorite of the harem, resented Ibrahim’s influence, and day by day, with feminine persistence, filled the imperial ear with suspicions and complaints. The Sultan was finally convinced. On March 31, 1536, Ibrahim was found strangled in bed, presumably as the result of a royal command. It was a deed whose barbarism matched the burning of Servetus or Berquin.

Far more barbarous was the law of imperial fratricide. Mohammed II had phrased it frankly in his Book of Laws: “The majority of the legists have declared that those of my illustrious children who shall ascend the throne shall have the right to execute their brothers, in order to ensure the peace of the world; they are to act accordingly”;³⁴ that is, the Conqueror calmly condemned to death all but the eldest born of his royal progeny. It was another discredit to the Ottoman system that the property of a person condemned to death reverted to the sultan, who was therefore under perpetual provocation to improve his finances by closing his mind to an appeal; we should add that Suleiman resisted this temptation. As against such vices of autocracy we may acknowledge in the Ottoman government an indirect democracy: the road to every dignity but the sultanate was open to all Moslems, even to all converted Christians. However, the success of the early sultans might have argued for the aristocratic heredity of ability, for nowhere else in contemporary government was so high an average of ability so long maintained as on the Turkish throne.

2. Morals

The diversity of Ottoman from Christian ways flagrantly illustrated the geographical and temporal variation of moral codes. Polygamy reigned quietly where Byzantine Christianity had so recently exacted formal monogamy; women hid themselves in seraglios, or behind veils, where once they had mounted the throne of the Caesars; and Suleiman attended dutifully to the needs of his harem with none of the qualms of conscience that might have disturbed or enhanced the sexual escapades of Francis I, Charles V, Henry VIII, or Alexander VI. Turkish civilization, like that of ancient Greece, kept women in the background, and allowed considerable freedom to sexual deviations. Ottoman homosexuality flourished where “Greek friendship” had once won battles and inspired philosophers.

The Turks were allowed by the Koran four wives and some concubines, but only a minority could afford the extravagance. The warring Ottomans, often far removed from their wonted women, took as wives or concubines, currente thalamo, the widows or daughters of the Christians they had conquered. No racial prejudice intervened: Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Hungarian, German, Italian, Russian, Mongol, Persian, Arab women were welcomed with open arms, and became the mothers of children who were all alike accepted as legitimate and Ottoman. Adultery was hardly necessary under the circumstances, and when it occurred it was severely punished: the woman was obliged to buy an ass and ride it through the city; the man was flogged with a hundred strokes, and was required to kiss and reward the executioner who dealt them. A husband could secure a divorce by a mere declaration of intent, but a wife could free herself only by complex and deterrent litigation.

Suleiman remained a bachelor till his fortieth year. Since the wife of Bajazet I had been captured and allegedly abused by Timur and his Tatars, the Ottoman sultans, to forestall another such indignity, had made it a rule not to marry, and to admit none but slaves to their bed.³⁵ Suleiman’s seraglio contained some 300 concubines, all bought in the market or captured in war, and nearly all of Christian origin. When they expected a visit from the Sultan they attired themselves in their finest robes, and stood in line to greet him; he saluted courteously as many as time allowed, and placed his handkerchief on the shoulder of one who especially pleased him. That evening, on retiring, he asked that the recipient should return his handkerchief. The next morning she would be presented with a dress of cloth of gold, and her allowance would be increased. The sultan might remain in the harem two or three nights, spreading his bounty; then he returned to his own palace, to live day and night with men. Women rarely appeared in his palace, and took no part in state dinners or ceremonies. Nevertheless it was considered a great honor to be assigned to the seraglio. Any inmate of it who reached the age of twenty-five without earning a handkerchief was freed, and usually found a husband of high estate. In Suleiman’s case the institution did not lead to physical degeneration, for in most matters he was a man of signal moderation.

Social life among the Ottomans was unisexual, and lacked the gay stimulus of women’s charms and laughing chatter. Yet manners were as refined as in Christendom, probably more refined than in any lands except China, India, Italy, and France. Domestic slaves were numerous, but they were humanely treated, many laws protected them, and manumission was easy.³⁶ Though public sanitation was poor, personal cleanliness was common. The institution of public baths, which the Persians seem to have taken from Hellenistic Syria, was transmitted to the Turks. In Constantinople and other large cities of the Ottoman Empire the public baths were built of marble and attractively decorated. Some Christian saints had prided themselves on avoiding water; the Moslem was required to make his ablutions before entering the mosque or saying his prayers; in Islam cleanliness was really next to godliness. Table manners were no better than in Christendom; meals were eaten with the fingers off wooden plates; there were no forks. Wine was never drunk in the house; there was much drinking of it in taverns, but there was less drunkenness than in Western lands.³⁷ Coffee came into use among the Moslems in the fourteenth century; we hear of it first in Abyssinia; thence it appears to have passed into Arabia. The Moslems, we are told, used it originally to keep themselves awake during religious services.³⁸ We find no mention of it by a European writer till 1592.³⁹

Physically the Turk was tough and strong, and famed for endurance. Busbeq was astonished to note how some Turks received a hundred blows on the soles of their feet or on their ankles, “so that sometimes several sticks of dogwood are broken on them, without drawing any cry of pain.” ⁴⁰ Even the ordinary Turk carried himself with dignity, helped by robes that concealed the absurdities of the well-fed form. Commoners donned a simple fez, which dressy persons enveloped in a turban. Both sexes had a passion for flowers; Turkish gardens were famous for their color; thence, apparently, came into Western Europe the lilac, tulip, mimosa, cherry laurel, and ranunculus. There was an esthetic side to the Turks which their wars hardly revealed. We are surprised to be told by Christian travelers that except in war they were “not by nature cruel,” but “docile, tractable, gentle... lovable,” and “generally kind.” ⁴¹ Francis Bacon complained that they seemed kinder to animals than to men.⁴² Cruelty emerged when security of the faith was threatened; then the wildest passion was let loose.

The Turkish code was especially hard in war. No foe was entitled to quarter; women and children were spared, but able-bodied enemies, even if unarmed and unresisting, might be slaughtered without sin.⁴³ And yet many cities captured by Turks fared better than Turkish cities captured by Christians. When Ibrahim Pasha took Tabriz and Baghdad (1534), he forbade his soldiers to pillage them or harm the inhabitants; when Suleiman again took Tabriz (1548) he too preserved it from plunder or massacre; but when Charles V took Tunis (1535), he could pay his army only by letting it loot. Turkish law, however, rivaled the Christian in barbarous penalties. Thieves had a hand cut off to shorten their grasp.⁴⁴

Official morals were as in Christendom. The Turks were proud of their fidelity to their word, and they usually kept the terms of capitulation offered to surrendering foes. But Turkish casuists, like such Christian counterparts as St. John Capistrano, held that no promise could bind the faithful against the interest or duties of their religion, and that the sultan might abrogate his own treaties, as well as those of his predecessors.⁴⁵ Christian travelers reported “honesty, a sense of justice... benevolence, integrity, and charity” in the average Turk,⁴⁶ but practically all Turkish office-holders were open to bribery; a Christian historian adds that most Turkish officials were ex-Christians,⁴⁷ but we should further add that they had been brought up as Moslems. In the provinces the Turkish pasha, like the Roman proconsul, hastened to amass a fortune before the whim of the ruler replaced him; he exacted from his subjects the full price that he had paid for his appointment. The sale of offices was as common in Constantinople or Cairo as in Paris or Rome.

3. Letters and Arts

The weakest link in Ottoman civilization was its poor equipment for the acquisition and transmission of knowledge. Popular education was generally neglected; a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Instruction was mostly confined to students intending to study pedagogy, law, or administration; in these fields the curriculum was lengthy and severe. Mohammed II and Suleiman took time to reorganize and improve the madrasas, and the viziers rivaled the sultans in gifts to these mosque colleges. Teachers in these institutions enjoyed a higher social and financial status than their counterparts in Latin Christendom. Their lectures were formally on the Koran, but they managed to include literature, mathematics, and philosophy; and their graduates, though richer in theology than in science, kept fully abreast of the West in engineering and government.

Only a small minority of the population could read, but nearly all of these wrote poetry, not excepting Suleiman. Like the Japanese, the Turks held public competitions in which poets read their offerings; Suleiman took a courtly pleasure in presiding over such Parnassian games. The Turks honored a hundred poets in this age, but our immersion in our own grandeur and idiom has left us unaware of even their greatest lyric poet, Mahmud Abdu’l-Baqi. His career spanned four reigns, for though he was forty when Suleiman died, he had another thirty-four years of life in him. He gave up his early trade as a saddler to live by his verse, and would surely have suffered want had not Suleiman befriended him with sinecures. Adding praise to profit, the Sultan wrote a poem on the excellence of Baqi’s poetry. Baqi paid him back in a powerful dirge mourning Suleiman’s death. Even in the translation, which loses dignity by seeking to preserve the multiple rhymes of the original, something of the poem’s passion and splendor emerges:

The Turks were too busy conquering powerful states to have much time for those delicate arts that had heretofore distinguished Islam. Some fine Turkish miniatures were produced, with characteristic simplicity of design and breadth of style. Representative painting was left to the scandalous Christians, who in this age continued to adorn with frescoes the walls of their churches and monasteries; so Manuel Panselinos, perhaps borrowing some stimulus from Italian Renaissance murals, frescoed the church of Protaton on Mount Athos (1535–36) with paintings freer, bolder, more graceful, than those of Byzantine times. The sultans imported artists from West and East—Gentile Bellini from Venice, Shah Kali and Wali Jan, miniaturists, from heretical Persia. In painted tiles, however, the Ottomans needed no alien aid; they used them to dazzling effect. Iznik made a name with the excellence of its faïence. Scutari, Brusa, and Hereke, all in Asia Minor, specialized in textiles; their brocades and velvets, adorned with floral themes in crimson and gold, impressed and influenced Venetian and Flemish designers. Turkish carpets lacked the poetic brilliance of the Persian, but their stately patterns and warm colors evoked admiration in Europe. Colbert induced Louis XIV to order French weavers to copy some Turkish palace rugs, but to no avail; the Islamic mastery remained beyond the reach of Occidental skill.

Turkish art reached its peak in the mosques of Constantinople.* Not even Mashhad in its crowded architectural splendor, nor Isfahan in the days of Shah Abbas, perhaps only Persepolis under Xerxes, equaled, in Persian or Moslem history, the grandeur of Suleiman’s capital. Here the spoils of Ottoman victories were shared with Allah in monuments expressing at once piety and pride, and the determination of the sultans to awe their people with art as well as arms. Suleiman rivaled his grandfather, Mohammed the Conqueror, in building; seven mosques rose to his order; and one of these (1556), taking his name, surpassed St. Sophia in beauty, even while imitating its assemblage of minor cupolas around a central dome; here, however, the minarets, raising their treble prayer to audacious heights, served as sparkling counterpoint to the massive base. The interior is a confusing wealth of decoration: golden inscriptions on marble or faïence, columns of porphyry, arches of white or black marble, windows of stained glass set in traceried stone, pulpit carved as if it were a lifetime’s dedication; this is perhaps too sumptuous for reverence, too brilliant for prayer. An Albanian, Sinan, designed this mosque and seventy more, and lived, we are told, to the age of one hundred and ten.

V. SULEIMAN HIMSELF

It was the West that named Suleiman “the Magnificent”; his own people called him Kanuni, the Lawgiver, because of his share in codifying Ottoman law. He was magnificent not in appearance but in the size and equipment of his armies, in the scope of his campaigns, in the adornment of his city, in the building of mosques, palaces, and the famous “Forty Arches” aqueduct; magnificent in the splendor of his surroundings and retinue; magnificent, of course, in the power and reach of his rule. His empire marched from Baghdad to within ninety miles of Vienna, to within 120 miles of Venice, the Adriatic’s quondam queen. Except in Persia and Italy all the cities celebrated in Biblical and classical lore were his: Carthage, Memphis, Tyre, Nineveh, Babylon, Palmyra, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Smyrna, Damascus, Ephesus, Nicaea, Athens, and two Thebes. Never had the Crescent held so many lands and seas in the hollow of its curve.

Was the excellence of his rule commensurate with its extent? Probably not, but we should have to say this of any spacious realm except Achaemenid Persia and Rome under the Antonines. The area governed was too vast to be well administered from one center before the coming of modern communications, transport, and roads. Laxity and corruption ran through the government; yet Luther said: “It is reported that there is no better temporal rule than among the Turks.”⁴⁹ In religious toleration Suleiman was bolder and more generous than his Christian compeers: these thought religious conformity necessary to national strength; Suleiman allowed Christians and Jews to practice their religion freely. “The Turks,” wrote Cardinal Pole, “do not compel others to adopt their belief. He who does not attack their religion may profess among them what religion he will; he is safe.”⁵⁰ In November 1561, while Scotland, England, and Lutheran Germany were making Catholicism a crime, and Italy and Spain were making Protestantism a crime, Suleiman ordered the release of a Christian prisoner, “not wishing to bring any man from his religion by force.”⁵¹ He made a safe home in his empire for Jews fleeing from the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal.

His defects appeared more clearly in his family relations than in his government. All are agreed that despite wars—which he excused as defense by offense—he was a man of refined and kindly sentiment, generous, humane, and just.⁵² His people not only admired him, they loved him. When, on Friday, he went to the mosque, they observed complete silence while he passed; he bowed to them all—Christians and Jews and Mohammedans—and then prayed for two hours in the temple. We do not hear, in his case, of that addiction to the harem which was to undermine the health and power of some later sultans. But we do find him so susceptible to the passions of love as to forget prudence, justice, and even parental affection.

In the earlier years of his reign his favorite mistress was a Circassian slave known as “The Rose of Spring,” marked by that dark and chisled beauty which for centuries has characterized the women of the regions around the eastern end of the Black Sea. She bore him a son, Mustafa, who grew into a handsome, able, and popular youth. Suleiman entrusted him with important offices and missions, and trained him to merit as well as inherit the throne. But in the course of love Khurrem—“The Laughing One”—a Russian captive whom the West called Roxelana, won the Sultan away from the Circassian; and her beauty, gaiety, and wiles kept him enchanted till tragedy was consummated. Overriding the rule of his recent predecessors, Suleiman made Khurrem his wife (1534), and he rejoiced in the sons and daughters that she gave him. But as he aged, and the prospect of Mustafa’s accession loomed, Khurrem dreaded the fate of her sons, who might legitimately be killed by the new sultan. She succeeded in marrying her daughter to Rustem Pasha, who in 1544 became Grand Vizier; and through this wife Rustem was brought to share Khurrem’s fear of Mustafa’s coming power.

Meanwhile Mustafa had been sent to govern Diyarbekir, and had distinguished himself by his valor, tact, and generosity. Khurrem used his virtues to destroy him; she insinuated to Suleiman that Mustafa was courting popularity with a view to seizing the throne. Rustem charged that the youth was secretly wooing the Janissaries to his cause. The harassed Sultan, now fifty-nine, doubted, doubted, wondered, believed. He went in person to Eregli, summoned Mustafa to his tent, and had him killed as soon as he appeared (1553). Khurrem and Rustem then found it simple to induce the Sultan to have Mustafa’s son slain, lest the youth should seek revenge. Khurhem’s son Selim was made prince and heir, and she died content (1558). But Selim’s brother Bajazet, seeing assassination as his fate, raised an army to challenge Selim; civil war raged; Bajazet, defeated, fled to Persia (1559); Shah Tamasp, for 300,000 ducats from Suleiman and 100,000 from Selim, surrendered the contender; Bajazet was strangled (1561), and his five sons were put to death for social secùrity. The ailing Sultan, we are told, thanked Allah that all these troublesome offspring were departed, and that he could now live in peace.⁵³

But he found peace boring. He brooded over the news that the Knights whom he had ousted from Rhodes were strong in Malta, and were rivaling the Algerian pirates with their own rapacious sorties. If Malta could be made Moslem, mused the seventy-one-year-old Sultan, the Mediterranean would be safe for Islam. In April 1564, he sent a fleet of 150 ships, with 20,000 men, to seize the strategic isle. The Knights, skillfully led by the resourceful Jean de la Valette, fought with their wonted bravery; the Turks captured the fort of St. Elmo by sacrificing 6,000 men, but they took nothing else; and the arrival of a Spanish army compelled them to raise the siege.

The old Magnificent could not end his life on so sour a note. Maximilian II, who had succeeded Ferdinand as emperor, held back the tribute promised by his father, and attacked Turkish outposts in Hungary. Suleiman decided on just one more campaign, and resolved to lead it himself (1566). Through Sofia, Nissa, and Belgrade he rode with 200,000 men. On the night of September 5–6, 1566, while besieging the fortress of Szigetvar, he yielded his life, upright in his tent; like Vespasian, he was too proud to take death lying down. On September 8 Szigetvar fell, but the siege had cost the Turks 30,000 lives, and summer was fading. A truce was signed, and the army marched disconsolately back to Constantinople, bringing not victory but a dead emperor.

Must we judge and rank him? Compared with his analogues in the West he seems at times more civilized, at times more barbarous. Of the four great rulers in this first half of the sixteenth century, Francis, despite his swashbuckling vanity and his hesitant persecutions, strikes us as the most civilized; yet he looked to Suleiman as his protector and ally, without whom he might have been destroyed. Suleiman won his lifelong duel with the West; indeed, the Emperor Maximilian II in 1568 resumed payment of tribute to the Porte. Charles V had stopped the Sultan at Vienna, but what Christian army had dared approach Constantinople? Suleiman was master of the Mediterranean, and for a time it seemed that Rome remained Christian by his and Barbarossa’s sufferance. He ruled his empire indifferently well, but how much more successfully than poor Charles struggling against the princely fragmentation of Germany! He was a despot, by unquestioned custom and the consent of his people; did the absolutism of Henry VIII in England or of Charles in Spain win such public affection and confidence? Charles could hardly have been capable of ordering the execution of his son on mere suspicion of disloyalty; but Charles in his old age could cry out for the blood of heretics, and Henry could send wives and Catholics and Protestants to the block or the pyre without missing a meal. Suleiman’s religious tolerance, limited though it was, makes these executions look barbarous by comparison.

Suleiman fought too many wars, killed half his progeny, had a creative vizier slain without warning or trial; he had the faults that go with unchecked power. But beyond question he was the greatest and ablest ruler of his age.