Suleiman The Magnificent 1520 1566 (5 page)

Sixteen years later, however, the situation had entirely changed. Suleiman was thrust prominently into the fore-

*-Cf. Busbecq, I, 112, note; Lybyer, p. 58, note 2; Bragadino in Alberi, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato . . . edite da Eugenio Alberi, 15 vols. (Florence, 1839-63), 3rd ser M III, 101. She died in 1533 at the age of fifty-five, and was buried in a tomb near that of Selim (Hammer, V, 181).

2 Cf. lorga, II, 310, note z, 342-343.

ground, and his prospects were much enhanced by the family troubles which convulsed the last years of his grandfather's life and finally cost him his throne. The number of Bayezid's surviving sons had by this time been reduced to three; and one of them, Korkud, had little ambition to rule. It speedily became evident that the only serious rivals for the succession would be Bayezid's oldest and favorite son, Achmed, and his youngest, the "Terrible" Selim. Both were governors of provinces; and since it would be essential to gain control of the capital, the treasury, and the household troops as soon as the old Sultan should die, the relative proximity of these provinces to Constantinople was a matter of primary importance. Achmed had been given Amasia, in North Central Asia Minor, while Selim had been stationed at Trebizond, farther eastward; but Achmed's advantage was almost nullified by the fact that Bayezid unexpectedly appointed Selim's sixteen-year-old son, Suleiman, to the governorship of the district of Boli, which intervenes between Amasia and Constantinople, and thus blocked Achmed's way in the future race for the throne. 3 The appointment of young princes of the blood to rule regions more or less remote from the capital was a practice too common in Ottoman statecraft to merit special attention, though the selection of Suleiman is, under the circumstances, very difficult to explain. In any case we know that Achmed complained so loudly that Bayezid transferred his grandson from Boli to Kaffa in the Crimea. Thither he was speedily followed by his father Selim, who, being convinced that as long as he remained at Trebizond his chances of the succession were slight, was determined to get nearer to the main theatre of operations. At Kaffa he appears immediately to have taken matters into his own hands, practically superseding his son and acting like an independent ruler, and the mass of the Crimean-Tatars ral-

3 Hammer, IV, 103 ff.

lied to his standard. When Bayezid ordered him to return to Trebizond, he replied by begging for a governorship in the Balkans, so that he might have a chance to fight against the Christians, and, above all, to be near enough to his imperial sire to kiss his hand. It was the custom, so he pointed out, "for governors of provinces to do so every year." * Thrice was the request repeated, and thrice refused. Nevertheless, the insubordinate prince started westward at the head of some 25,000 men, and soon was joined by reinforcements. We need not follow the details of the ensuing confusion. At Chorlu, near Constantinople, Se-lim's forces were met and routed by his father's trained Janissaries, who charged to the cry of "Death to the bastard!", but the victory had no lasting results. Selim made his escape to the Crimea. His father tried in vain to pacify him by offering him the governorship of the great province of Semendria, on the Danube; but Selirn was in no mood for compromise. His reckless bravery had won him the admiration and loyalty of the Janissaries with whom he had just fought, and without the Janissaries the cause of Bayezid was lost. Early in 1512 Selim reappeared at Constantinople, and forced his father to abdicate. 5

During all these troubles we hear little or nothing of Suleiman; but after his father had obtained the throne, he was summoned to his presence at Constantinople and left in charge there while Selim went off to end the fratricidal strife in Asia. When at length the "Terrible" Sultan had disposed of his brothers and nephews, he turned his attention to the conquest of Persia. Suleiman did not accompany him on the ensuing campaigns, but remained behind, this time as governor of Adrianople. There are occasional mentions of communication between the two; as when, writing from Tabriz, Selim announced his great victory

4 Iorga, II, 310, n. 7. 5 Hammer, IV, 121-123.

over the Persians to his son as well as to the Khan of the Tatars, the Soldan of Egypt, and the Doge of Venice. 6 At the close of the Persian and Egyptian wars the Sultan returned in triumph to his capital, and then proceeded to Adrianople, whence, eight days later, Suleiman departed with much pomp for Manissa, the chief town of the province of Sarukhan on the coast of Asia Minor, to which he was now assigned. We have no means of knowing what the relations between father and son at this period really were. Even if it does not seem probable that they were affectionate, we have no sure proof of the rumors which have come down to us that the Sultan really hated his offspring, or thought to put him to death. The tale that he once sent the prince a poisoned garment, which was prudently tried on a page who died from its effects, is undoubtedly an absurd fable. But it seems not improbable that Suleiman's prompt departure from Adrianople was all that availed to save him from hostile intent on the part of his terrible sire; for even though the Sultan had no other heir, rebellions of princes against their parents had been all too common in Oriental history. Selim's own conduct toward his father had been the most recent instance of it, and his suspicious and ruthless nature was ever on the lookout for danger. Four years earlier, when the Janissaries had mutinied during the Persian campaign, they are said to have threatened to replace their sovereign with his son. However all this may be, Suleiman himself was now established in comparative safety at Manissa, and the period during which he was doomed to remain in obscurity was destined to be unexpectedly brief. 7

The death of Sultan Selim, according to custom, was kept concealed until his successor should be notified in time to arrive and prevent any disorder among the soldiery. In

6 Hammer, IV, 203.

7 Hammer, V, 6-7.

the present case it was not found necessary to preserve the secret to the very end, for the interval was short. On Sunday, September 30, 1520, only eight days after his father's decease, the new Sultan reached Constantinople, where he was welcomed by the Janissaries, who clamored for the usual gifts on the accession of a new master. At dawn on the following day, Suleiman issued forth from the inner rooms of the palace to receive the homage of the high officials. That afternoon he went to the gate of the city to meet the funeral procession with his father's corpse, which he then escorted to the mosque where the burial service took place. His first official decree was an order for the erection of a mortuary chapel with a mosque and a school in honor of the departed—the mighty conqueror of Persian and Mameluke. 8 Two days later there was distributed the bakshish or donation, not only to the Janissaries, who had demanded and received more than had been given them at the accession of Selim, but also to the other household troops and to various civil officials. Then followed acts of mercy and justice. Six hundred Egyptian captives were set free, and a number of merchants, whose goods had been confiscated for trading with Persia, received an indemnity; on the other hand, a few salutary executions of evil-doers showed that the new ruler intended to be respected as well as beloved. 9

The reign certainly opened under most favorable auspices. According to an Oriental superstition, there arises at the beginning of each century a great man who is destined to dominate it, or, in Turkish phrase, "to take it by the horns." Suleiman also profited from the Moslem belief that the number ten, that of the fingers and toes, of the Commandments in the Pentateuch, of the disciples of Mohammed, of the parts and variants of the Koran, and of

8 Hammer, V, 8.

9 Hammer, V, 8~io.

the "astronomical Heavens" of Islam, is the most perfect and fortunate of all numbers. 10 Suleiman was born in the year 900 of the Hegira, that is to say, by Oriental reckoning, in the first year of the tenth century; he was also the tenth Sultan of the Ottoman line, and had been given the imposing name of Suleiman or Solomon, which is especially venerated in the East. He was, in fact, the first acknowledged Ottoman sovereign to bear that name; for the Suleiman who conquered Gallipoli in 1356 had died before his father Orkhan and was therefore never a real Sultan, while the Suleiman who disputed the throne with Mohammed I has always been regarded as a pretender by Turkish historians. When the latter speak of "El Kanuni" as "Suleiman II," it is in the sense of the second Solomon of the world. 11 It is noteworthy to what extent the destinies of the Europe of that time had been delivered into the hands of young men. Suleiman at his accession was twenty-six, the same age as Francis I; Henry VIII of England was three years older; Charles V, Emperor and king of Spain, was but twenty, and Louis, king of Hungary and Bohemia, only fourteen. Even the Pope, Leo X, was not quite forty-five. The new Sultan had already had some ten years of experience in the art of government; and the terrible severity of his father's reign, while it had maintained the bonds of despotic discipline, offered an easy popularity to a more gracious successor. Never had the empire been more tranquil at home or more respected abroad.

The reports of the Venetian ambassadors shed precious light on the character and appearance of the new Sultan throughout his reign, and it is significant that Titian should have painted him in his "Ecce Homo" in 1543 an( i Veronese in his "Marriage at Cana" some fifteen years later. 12

10 Hammer, V, 4-6.

11 Hammer, V, 4.

12 Cf. note on portraits at the end of this volume.

Our earliest description of him is from the pen of Barto-lomeo Contarini, and is dated October 15, 1520, less than a month after his accession. It tells us that "he is twenty-five years of age, tall, but wiry, and of a delicate complexion. His neck is a little too long, his face thin, and his nose aquiline. He has a shadow of a mustache and a small beard; nevertheless he has a pleasant mien, though his skin tends to pallor. He is said to be a wise Lord, fond of study, and all men hope for good from his rule." 13 Yet despite the apparent slightness of his frame, his early training and experiences at Boli and Kaffa had sufficed to furnish him with a body able to endure the strain of thirteen hard campaigns, and one authority tells us that, like other Turkish children of noble birth, he was taught to labor at a trade, so that, if necessary, he should be able to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. 14 On the other hand, he had spent at least one-third of his life previous to his accession at Constantinople, where he had acquired the ways and manners of the Turkish gentilhomme par excellence. Indeed, his popularity in the capital was an asset of enormous importance to him till the end of his days. Unlike his father, his interests and attention were directed rather to the West than to the East, to Europe rather than to Asia. He took no pleasure in Persian philosophy or poetry, though he delighted in stories of conquerors like Alexander the Great. Especially did he pride himself on his ability to converse with his officers—the great majority of whom had been born in the Balkans—in their native dialects. He had no enthusiasm for the persecution of Moslem heretics, nor did he believe that it was his sacred duty to extirpate Christians. Certainly he was no religious fanatic. On the other hand, no one of his predecessors had ever had any-

13 Marino Sanuto, Diarii, 59 vols. (Venice, 1879-1903), vol. XXIX, col. 391.

14 Lybyer, p. 76, note 5; Spandugino, Petit traicte de Forigme des Turcqz, tr. and ed. by Charles Schefer (Paris, 1896), p. 179; lorga, II, 343, and references there.

thing like such a lofty conception of the dignities and responsibilities of his office as "Commander of the Faithful." Every important event of his long reign furnishes fresh evidence of this fundamental fact, and many who had not fully grasped it were destined to suffer cruelly for their mistake. The new Sultan looked out on the world around him with a calm, cold, perhaps slightly whimsical gaze, as if wondering where the demands of his own position, and the insolence of its prospective challengers, would first compel him to strike. 15

As Suleiman was Selim's only son, and as Selim had made such a clean sweep of all his relatives at the time of his own accession, there was no danger that the new Sultan's right to the throne would be disputed by any scion of the house of Osman. In only one corner of the broad extent of his dominions did the change of sovereigns produce a serious revolt. A certain Ghazali, a bey, apparently of Slavonic birth, had deserted his Mameluke master at the time of the conquest of Egypt, and had been rewarded for his treachery by Selim with the governorship of Syria. He now deluded himself into thinking that the time had come for him to win complete independence. He easily made himself master of Damascus, Beirut, and Tripoli, with most of the adjacent seacoast; but Aleppo defended itself stoutly till Ferhad Pasha, the merciless third vizir, arrived with an army to relieve it. Ghazali retreated on Damascus, where he was speedily and completely defeated; he was caught, moreover, while attempting to escape, and was killed by one of his own adherents. 16 The affair had certain ominously significant aftermaths. When the head of the defeated rebel was brought back to Constantinople, the Sultan proposed to send it, as a token of friendly sentiment,

15 Iorga, II, 342-347 and references on 346-347; Hammer, V, 10-11. 1<5 Cf. G. W, F. Stripling, "The Ottoman Turks and the Arabs, 1511-1574," Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, XXVI, no. 4 (1942), 64-65.

to the republic of Venice; and the Venetian resident at the capital had no little difficulty in dissuading him from so doing. 17 Even the victorious Ferhad Pasha was ultimately rewarded with death. On his way back from Damascus, he had invited the Turkish ruler of an adjacent sanjak to his camp. When the latter appeared with his four sons, Ferhad Pasha reproached them for their failure adequately to support him, and finally handed all of them over to the executioner. Suleiman was not the man to tolerate such high-handed conduct. On the other hand, Ferhad Pasha had married the Sultan's sister, and the latter pleaded her husband's cause so eloquently that Ferhad Pasha was finally transferred to the governorship of the Balkan province of Semendria, 18 with a large salary, in the hope that this mark of imperial favor and proximity to Constantinople would make him see reason. But it was all in vain. Ferhad Pasha was as ruthless and insubordinate as ever in his new domain. When summoned by Suleiman to explain his conduct, he was so insolent in his replies that the executioners were sent for at once. It would appear that he gave them a fight for their lives before he was finally overpowered and killed (November i, 1524). We are also told that his widow made haste to present herself, clad in deep mourning, before the Sultan, and dared to express the wish that she would soon have the privilege of wearing mourning for her brother as well. 19 —But the real significance of Ferhad Pasha's end, as well as of many other contemporaneous episodes, was that it proved that the new Sultan proposed to be master in his own house, and Suleiman's Eastern neighbors were prompt to read the signs of the times. Long before Ferhad Pasha had been finally disposed of, the Persian Shah Ismail, who had been watching and waiting on the