The walls that surround it are set at the crest of the steep rocky slopes high above the water, and thus have no need to appear hugely imposing. Inside the main gate, which serves as the entry from the city, the atmosphere is more like that of a university than a palace. Everything is on the human scale, from the comparatively small, well-proportioned buildings to the courtyards and shaded walkways. Fountains play in the gardens. Amidst one courtyard stands a square library building, across another is the modest treasury building.
Behind the walls that encircle the courtyards, there are small pools where the sultan’s wives could gather and bathe. And at the far end of the palace, overlooking the vista of the water far below, is a small marble enclave with a single marble seat, where the sultan could sit on his own, gazing down over the vista of the city and the Bosphorus to the shore of Asia.
On the left of the large, second courtyard is the largest building in the palace, the Harem. This housed the sultan’s living quarters, as well as those for his wives and concubines. One entrance to this building leads into the Divan, which is lined with the furnishings that now take its name. This was the council chamber where the sultan’s Grand Vizier and the other ministers of state would gather on their divans, to hold what were virtually cabinet meetings. High on one wall is a grille, behind which the sultan would sit unseen, watching as his ministers discussed the state business of the day. Afterwards, the sultan was liable to summon any minister to a personal audience, to account for what he had said during the Divan. These debates may have been informal (tea, cakes, or meals could be served), but the manner of discussion was both guarded and discreet. All dreaded a summons to meet the sultan afterwards.
Where wider law was concerned, the Ottomans were a classic example of Kriwaczek’s observation concerning the governing of subject people: this was best left as before, but with the new imperial administrators occupying the senior positions. As long as sufficient recruits were inducted into the local imperial army, taxes were gathered, and the annual ‘tribute’ sent to the Porte (central government administration) in Istanbul, there was little interference from their Ottoman masters. For the most part local courts operated according to local religious custom: Jews were tried by Jewish courts in accord with Talmudic law, Christians had their own courts that applied canon law, and the Muslim courts administered their own version of Sharia law. However, the sultan’s decrees were above all laws, and were to be obeyed without question.
There were, of course, exceptions to this pragmatic approach. In a number of conquered territories, the subject people were forcibly converted to Islam, while in others the subject people were ‘induced’ to convert, with rewards such as lower taxes, access to privileged employment, land ownership and so forth. In this way, many amongst the conquered people were converted. The aftermath of such mixed religious populations remains to this day – accounting for hostilities in such regions as the former Yugoslavia and Cyprus.
Mehmed II may have sought cultural advice from the likes of Venetians such as Bellini; but there is no doubting that the Ottomans were, in many aspects, quite the cultural equal of their European counterparts. Just two years after the conquest of Constantinople, Mehmed II set about building the Grand Bazaar, which remains to this day the largest and finest covered market in the world, containing more than sixty streets and 4,000 shops. At the same time, he embarked upon the Topkapi Palace. Yet the greatest was yet to come.
The Islamisation of Istanbul would reach its apogee under Suleiman the Magnificent, who was born in 1494, just thirteen years after the death of his only rival in greatness, Mehmed the Conqueror. Suleiman would become sultan at the age of twenty-six, and his reign would live up to his epithet. Suleiman was not only the longest serving sultan (forty-six years), but would rule over the Ottoman Empire at its height, expanding his territory until he ruled over 25 million people. (By comparison, the population of the entire continent of Europe during this period was 75 million.)
It was Suleiman the Magnificent who made the inspired choice of Mimar Sinan as his chief architect. Sinan would be responsible for the great and graceful mosques that are such a feature of Istanbul to this day. The Süleymaniye mosque, overlooking the Golden Horn and the Galata Bridge, with its superb squat dome and towering pinnacle minarets, makes an inimitable silhouette against the evening sky. Inside, its gracefully arched courtyard gives way to the ethereal hues, intricate calligraphy, and symmetrical designs of the stained glass windows that adorn the vast, domed interior. This is rightfully judged to be Sinan’s finest work in Istanbul. It is certainly a match for Michelangelo’s contemporary plans for St Peter’s in Rome. Sinan’s technique and architectural influence was so great that both the Taj Mahal in India and the tiled modifications of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem were heavily inspired by his work.
The Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, overlooking the entrance to the Golden Horn.
Other influential aspects of Ottoman culture include its cuisine, which would spread from Anatolia throughout the Empire. The variety and ingenuity of its mezze (hors d’oeuvres) remain central to restaurant menus all over the eastern Mediterranean. Other ingredients include aubergine, spit-roasted meats, honey-soaked pastries, and all manner of vegetable dishes. Most of these originated as Anatolian or Levantine peasant meals.
Indeed, the transmission of food, and our words to describe it, echo the spread of cultures. As the anthropologist Jared Diamond indicates, the passage from language to language of words describing animals or food often gives surprising insight into the evolution and spread of these items. Consider, for instance, the use of the word describing sheep, indicating the passage of its domestication. Sheep is ‘avis’ in Sanskrit, ‘owis’ in Greek, ‘ovis’ in Latin, ‘oveja’ in Spanish, ‘ovtsa’ in Russian, ‘avys’ in Lithuanian and ‘of in Irish. English uses the word ‘sheep’, but the ancient root is preserved in the word ‘ewe’.
This leads us to a further historical distinction that can be indicated by language. For example, when William of Normandy took over England in 1066, his army included many French knights, who were rewarded with estates taken from their previous Anglo-Saxon lords. The language spoken at the dinner table was French, while the words used by the lowly servants and cooks remained Anglo-Saxon. Evidence of this remains in the names of animals, and the cooked meat dishes that they provide. Pigs become pork (French: pore), sheep becomes mutton (mouton), cows become beef (boeuf), and so forth.
A host of such deep linguistic divisions between the coloniser and the colonised can be found to this day in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire. Two common examples will suffice. What is called kebab in Turkish is insistently named souvlaki in Greek. And when asking for a small cup of thick Middle Eastern coffee, one orders Greek coffee in Greece, and Turkish coffee in Turkey.
Another difference in Ottoman culture was noted in 1717 by Lady Mary Montagu, wife of the British ambassador. She observed that the local women of all classes practised ‘ingrafting’, a process that involved piercing the skin of children with a needle, which had been infected with a tiny amount of smallpox. After a mild bout of smallpox, the child would then be protected from this disfiguring and often fatal disease for life.
At the time, smallpox was one of the greatest medical scourges. According to Voltaire, 60 per cent of the world population were liable to catch this disease, causing a death rate of 20 per cent. The disease was spread via the lungs; and through the centuries none were spared, regardless of class or personal cleanliness. It is now known that Pharaoh Ramesses V had died of this disease as early as the twelfth century BC. Elizabeth I of England had suffered from it, as had Mozart and George Washington. And its effect on the Aztecs would lead to it being described by Dr Edward Jenner as ‘the most dreadful scourge of the human species’.
When Lady Mary Montagu returned to England her ‘ingrafting’ idea was not widely accepted, almost certainly because she was a woman and of no medical qualification. Not until 1796 would Jenner hi
mself introduce the idea of ‘ingrafting’ with cowpox, rather than smallpox itself. The idea of vaccination was born, and the scourge of smallpox all but eliminated. Few realised, then as now, that this originated from an Ottoman invention.35
By now the Ottoman Empire was at the height of its power, with territory stretching from the Horn of Africa to Algeria. From the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottomans had virtual control over the whole Mediterranean. This was largely due to a pirate of Albanian descent known as Barbarossa (Red Beard), who had set up his headquarters in Algiers. When the Ottoman army overran the city, it was soon agreed that Barbarossa should remain in charge. This suited both sides. Barbarossa was declared Admiral of the Fleet, and led his considerable naval force to a resounding victory over the combined Christian European navy at Preveza (off western Greece) in 1539.
Algiers would continue as a centre of piracy for centuries to come, attacking ships of all Christian nations. As had happened to Julius Caesar in Ancient Roman times, pirates took important captives hostage, only releasing them from their jail in Algiers when a ransom had been paid. Others were simply sold off as slaves. An indication of the scale of such piracy can be seen from the geographical range of their activities. ‘Barbary Pirates’, as they became known, seized hostages or slaves from places as far afield as West Africa, Cornwall and Iceland.
Celebrated figures who suffered this fate range from the early Renaissance artist Filippo Lippi (who bought his release by selling skilled portraits of his captors), to the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (who would go on to write Don Quixote after his release). But the most renowned of their captives would be the twenty-year-old Aimée de Rivéry, a cousin of Napoleon’s wife Josephine, who was taken from a French ship in the Atlantic. The Bey of Algiers quickly realised the high value of such a beautiful white virgin and, in order to gain favour with the Sultan Abdul Hamid I, sent her to Istanbul so that she could be taken into his harem.
It is said that the sultan became so enamoured of Aimée that she was appointed his chief wife, taking on the name Valide Sultan Naksidil. A dominant and well-educated woman, she persuaded her husband to introduce a number of long-overdue reforms, and encouraged close diplomatic ties with France. Doubts have been cast on this story, and although some aspects of it ring hollow, there is no doubting the existence of Valide Sultan Naksidil and her beneficial influence over the sultan.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the power as well as the calibre of the Ottoman sultans had begun to wane. Much of this can be attributed to a uniquely Ottoman tradition known as the kafes (cage), which was originally introduced on humanitarian grounds. Prior to the seventeenth century, when the sultan died and his son succeeded, it was the practice for all his brothers to be executed immediately, in order to avoid any sibling claims to the sultanate. Sultan Ahmed I, who acceded to the throne in 1603, decreed an end to this barbaric practice. Instead of having his brother murdered, he had him confined to the kafes. Here he was otherwise granted every comfort, including his harem of wives.
This practice would have a number of unintended consequences. When Murad IV died in 1640, he was succeeded by his brother, who became Ibrahim I. By this stage, the new sultan had spent twenty-two years confined in the kafes. It is easy to see why he soon became known as Ibrahim the Mad. Utterly ignorant of political practice and protocol, as well as being deprived of the social graces expected of the occupant of the Topkapi Palace, he spent his days frolicking with his harem in the palace pool. When he heard a rumour that one of his wives had been unfaithful to him, he ordered all 280 members of his harem to be tied up in sacks and thrown from a ship into the Bosphorus. According to legend, one of them was rescued by a passing French ship, and ended up living in Paris, where she earned a fortune after her memoirs became a best-seller.
Such degenerate behaviour and erratic decision-making by successive sultans led to a considerable weakening of the Ottoman Empire, and it was now that the European powers began scheming to divide amongst themselves the vast territory of ‘the sick old man of Europe’. In 1914, the Ottoman Empire was persuaded to join on the German side in the First World War. By now Turkey and the provinces of its empire were beginning to fall apart. Rumours spread of various groups bidding for power.
The population of Anatolia contained, as it does to this day, a rich blend of nationalities. These were remnants of people who had, over the centuries, conquered or defended the country, as well as people from all over the Ottoman Empire. As such, they included a wide variety of Turkic people (who originated from central Asia), Mongols, Kurds, Armenians – as well as people of Slavic, Caucasian, Greek and Albanian stock.
The notorious Armenian Massacre, which took place in 1915, was provoked by the central government’s paranoia concerning this Christian group, or others, taking over the country. In fact, by now most racial groups were partially, if not fully integrated – there were even Armenians who had risen to ministerial level, running such vital institutions as the national mint, the water board and munitions production. Over the coming years of the war, the campaign against the Armenians led to mass deportation and indeed genocide. The very word was coined to describe what had taken place, an event that led to the death of over 1,000,000 people.
In 1918, the Ottoman Empire found itself on the losing side of the war; and at the Treaty of Versailles, Turkey was stripped of its colonial possessions. Consequently, the Greeks launched an opportunistic invasion into the heartland of Anatolia, but were eventually driven back by the skilled General Mustafa Kemal, who had defeated the allies at Gallipoli. In the ensuing confusion, the port city of Smyrna (now Izmir) was burned and as many as 100,000 fleeing Greeks may have lost their lives. A few months later, the last sultan, Mehmed IV, abdicated.
Within months, General Mustafa Kemal took power, naming himself Atatürk (‘father of the Turkish people’), and began introducing a widespread programme of reforms intended to ‘Europeanise’ the supposedly backward country. These included such measures as banning the fez for men, and the veil for women; transposing the Turkish language from Arabic to European script; an attempt to establish parliamentary democracy; as well as abolishing Sharia law and curtailing the power of the religious authorities, especially with regard to education. Almost a century later, disputes have begun to arise once more over most of these reforms, and now it is the Kurds who have become the scapegoats.
Sequence
The Ottoman Empire may be viewed as the last of the old-style empires. As we have seen, initially the world’s great empires had usually been initiated by the urge to conquest. (Indeed, in the case of the Mongol Empire, arguably this appears to have been the beginning and the end of the entire project.) Other, more civilising, or more exploitative aspects, came in the wake of conquest.
Yet since the end of the fifteenth century, empire building had undergone a subtle sea change. In both senses of the words: from that time on the sea would play a major role in empire; and change, in the form of historical transformation, or ‘advancement’, would become a feature excelling even that of Roman times. The Spanish conquest of the New World was almost as domineering as the Mongol Empire, yet in its wake came the extraction of great wealth in the form of gold and silver. The Portuguese, on the other hand, had rounded the Cape of Good Hope in the search of trade. They intended to circumvent the Silk Route to the East, and their success bankrupted the Venetians, the previous main beneficiaries of the trade in valuable oriental spices such as nutmeg, pepper, cinnamon and ginger.36
From now on trade would often be the initial inspiration, rather than the secondary consequence, of empire-building. From now on, it would be the age of growing European empires. Europe had become a cockpit of competing nation states. Wars were won and lost, but states survived, more or less intact. No one would conquer the entire continent of Europe until Napoleon. European civilisation advanced, spurred on by such internecine conflicts. In the process, warring European states developed ever more ingenious military invent
ions, which in turn led to a scientific revolution. (Both Leonardo and Galileo aspired to success as military engineers: Galileo’s modified telescope – proposed to the Venetians as a means of advanced warning of any approaching enemy fleet, would only become a revolutionary scientific instrument the moment Galileo raised it to the night sky.)
Meanwhile the rest of the world remained largely untouched by such technical progress, until the Spanish and the Portuguese initiated a new way forward. Other nations on the European landmass soon followed suit. The Dutch, the English, the French . . . all were soon sailing the seven seas in search of trade, with territorial conquest following in its wake. The latter was sometimes prompted by local objections to these interloper traders, but increasingly by the old imperial urge to conquest, in this case prompted more by greed and the wish to keep out other European competitors, rather than the wish to dominate or ‘civilise’.
Contrast this with what was happening on the symmetrically opposite side of the Eurasian land mass: China remained undivided and isolated, while its offshore counterpart to Britain (namely Japan), maintained a similar policy of isolation and inwardness. Meanwhile the European nations went on ‘discovering’ the rest of the world, rapidly claiming its territories as their ‘empires’. The greatest of these would become ‘the empire on which the sun never set’ – namely, the British Empire. This was literally true: no matter how the globe spun, the sun was always shining on at least one part of this far-flung empire.
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