by Alan Mikhail
Once safely within the palace walls, Bayezit received obeisance from the Janissary commanders and the imperial governing elite. The grand mufti, the empire’s chief religious figure, proclaimed him sultan of the entirety of creation, ruler of the first clime to the seventh, of time immemorial to the end of days. After this simple ceremony in the palace garden, Bayezit proceeded with full military accompaniment to the Mosque of Eyüp, a structure his father had ordered built after his conquest of Constantinople; it encircled the tomb of Eyüp, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad. There the empire’s elite bestowed upon Bayezit the sword of the first Ottoman sultan, Osman, his thirteenth-century ancestor. After these two simple ceremonies—conferring on him the recognition of the dynasty, of God, and of his family (except for Cem, of course)—Bayezit became the empire’s eighth sultan on May 22, 1481, one day after his arrival in the capital.
Bayezit converses with his advisers, including Korkud
Meanwhile, Cem found himself bogged down in Anatolia. He had made it only as far as İnegöl, a town in a bowl-shaped mountain valley near the first Ottoman capital of Bursa, when word reached him that his half-brother had taken the palace. He exploded in a fit of rage.
Bayezit knew that to secure his rule, he had to eliminate Cem. Thus, in the first military venture of his sultanate, just a week into his rule, Bayezit ordered an army contingent to İnegöl. Arriving in the mountain town on May 28, the new sultan’s forces encountered an inspired and fierce group of soldiers. Channeling their leader’s fury, Cem’s men routed Bayezit’s. With this victory, Cem took control of Bursa, the first seat of the empire and a center of the international silk trade. Ensconcing his forces in the palace, Cem proclaimed himself Sultan of Anatolia, a clear declaration of his intention to continue his war against his half-brother. He struck coins in his own image, and the mosques in Bursa intoned Friday prayers in his name. Now the empire had two palaces, two capitals, and two sultans. A civil war loomed, jeopardizing the empire’s very existence.
Cem understood the perilous nature of his position and tried to negotiate, suggesting that he rule Anatolia while Bayezit took everything west of the Bosphorus Strait, a roughly equal division of imperial territory. Bayezit refused. As far as he was concerned, he was the empire’s rightful sultan and Cem was a rebel enemy of the state. Bayezit responded to Cem’s “offer” by dispatching another army. Again, the forces met outside Bursa, but this time Bayezit’s men scored a decisive victory, driving Cem not only out of Bursa but all the way to Syria, out of the Ottoman Empire altogether. To Bayezit’s dismay, they failed to kill or capture him.
Secure on the throne and with his half-brother now on the run, Bayezit summoned his wives, children, and concubines from Amasya. Apart from his circumcision ceremony nearly two years earlier, Selim, now eleven, had never left Amasya. From a provincial, landlocked town, he arrived in the very heart of the empire, where his father was the sultan and his new home the nucleus of power.
The palace harem was as grand as anything imaginable: a sprawling complex of innumerable apartments with high vaulted ceilings linked by a warren of passageways, and dozens of buildings to explore. Perched on one of Istanbul’s fabled seven hills overlooking the Bosphorus, the palace, with its gardens and balconies, offered a panorama of spectacular views. After his daily lessons in language, history, and religion, Selim would gambol from one vantage point to another to gaze out at Europe and Asia and enjoy the sea breezes. He loved watching the boats glide between continents and listening to the calls of eagles and buzzards migrating south from the Black Sea. As a prince, he was kept at some remove from the city beyond the walls, but its loud noises and pungent smells inevitably found their way into the palace.
Defending Bayezit against an assassination attempt
Even while he enjoyed nonstop attention as the son of the new sultan, Selim sensed the tension. His father, especially in the early years of his rule, remained on the defensive, ever wary of Cem. Selim learned early that the imperial ground beneath him would be eternally unstable.
EUROPEAN POWERS, ALWAYS COGNIZANT of affairs on their eastern flank, were scheming to take advantage of this perceived moment of Ottoman weakness. On June 4, 1481, a mere two weeks after Bayezit took the throne, Pope Sixtus IV wrote to Christian leaders across Europe, hoping to organize a new Crusade against the Ottomans and other Muslims. A month later, the pope’s naval forces joined a fleet from Naples to attack Otranto, the Ottomans’ single territorial possession on the boot of Italy. Fighting began in July 1481 and lasted until September, when Ottoman forces surrendered, bringing to a close their thirteen-month sojourn. Buoyed by this victory, the Christian alliance set its sights on repelling the Ottomans from the Mediterranean. With a reinforcement of twenty-five ships from Portugal, the pope planned to cross the Adriatic from Otranto to Valona (today’s Vlorë) on the Albanian coast. A victory there would secure both sides of the strategic mouth of the Adriatic and create a foothold for reconquering the parts of Albania and Greece that Mehmet had captured during the previous decades. But an outbreak of plague in Albania and a group of disgruntled ship’s captains stalled these plans. Through no action of his own, the new sultan had, at least for now, managed to retain the eastern coast of the Adriatic.
To the east, the Mamluk Empire, the Ottomans’ major adversary in the Muslim world, took advantage of the power vacuum to strengthen their military and economic influence in the Middle East and throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The longer the House of Osman remained divided, the better, as far as the Mamluks were concerned. Thus, they welcomed Cem to Cairo, the Mamluk capital, as their guest, which transformed the Ottomans’ internecine enmity into a matter of international intrigue, one that ricocheted through much of global politics.
Cem could not have asked for a more powerful set of arrows for his quiver—an empire to help to win an empire. He felt at ease in the wealthy Mamluk court, where respect, comfort, and luxury were lavished on him. Outside the palace walls, though, Cairo was an entirely different matter. When Cem first reached the city on September 30, 1481, he gaped in awe at its imposing strangeness and grand scale. Of the two largest cities in the Mediterranean, Istanbul was bigger than Cairo, but Cairo had been spared the depopulation that had occurred in Istanbul immediately before and after 1453. Having never lived in Istanbul as an adult, Cem was overwhelmed by Cairo’s size, noisome streets, and the maddening intimacy of its tightly packed neighborhoods. The imperial court conducted its business in Arabic, rather than Turkish or Persian; Cem had some facility with Arabic, thanks to his harem education, but still it challenged him. Overall, Cairo was far more Arab and Muslim than any place in the Ottoman Empire, whose population still retained a Christian majority. The call to prayer reverberated throughout the alleyways of the Mamluk capital more forcefully than Cem had ever experienced.
Ramadan began a few weeks after Cem arrived in Cairo. As an honored guest of the Mamluk sultan Qaitbay, Cem dined as part of the sovereign’s entourage every night during the holy month. The sunset feasts that broke the fast of the day were sumptuous affairs, with poets and musicians offering entertainment. Over bulgur and lamb and desserts of saffron milk and dried apricots, Cem broached the topic of Mamluk support for his bid to overthrow his half-brother. Qaitbay, who had a long beard and spiky eyebrows, listened patiently but kept delaying promises of support, saying he would have to consult his advisers first, or would have to wait until the end of Ramadan, or offering some other excuse. In fact, Qaitbay wanted the fraternal rivalry to last as long as possible, as Ottoman disarray advantaged the Mamluks in the control of the East–West trade.
Intensely frustrated by Qaitbay’s stalling, Cem decided to leave Cairo and make the Hajj—the Islamic pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina—in December 1481. The Prophet Muhammad, born in Mecca in the year 570, had died in Medina in 632. In Mecca, he received the revelations that eventually became the Qur’an; no matter where they are in the world, all Muslims face Mecca to pray five times a da
y. The Hajj is one of the Five Pillars of Islam and is considered a duty that every able Muslim should undertake. Yet Cem was the only Ottoman sultan or prince in over six hundred years of Ottoman history to observe this important tenet of the faith. And even in his case, his motivation seems to have been more political than religious. The annual pilgrimage—the largest gathering anywhere in the Muslim world—showcased the cosmopolitanism of Islam, bringing together people from Morocco in the west to China in the east, who spoke languages ranging from Russian to Bengali. Cem saw it as an opportunity to project an image of himself as the Caliph of all Muslims and Protector of the Holy Cities; the Hajj would be evidence of his fitness to rule.
Cem’s arrival in Mecca with the caravan from Cairo sparked intense excitement. Just as he had hoped, his pilgrimage became what we would call today a publicity tour. Everywhere he went—from the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site, to the Tomb of the Prophet in Medina—crowds followed him, seeking his prayers and words of wisdom. He inspired Medina’s despondent residents to elevate their spirits and rebuild their Great Mosque (al-Masjid al-Nabawī), which had been engulfed by fire after lightning struck its minaret a few months before he arrived in the city. For centuries thereafter, the reconstruction of the mosque was credited to Cem’s influential visit.
Inspired and emboldened by his pilgrimage, Cem returned to the Mamluk capital with the Cairo caravan on March 11, 1482, and duly wrote the following challenge in verse to his half-brother:
While you lie on a bed of roses in sheer happiness,
Why should I be covered by ashes in sorrow’s furnace?
If one observes piety, shouldn’t justice favour him?
Is that not a legitimate right claimed by the pilgrim?
Upon receiving this dispatch, Bayezit scoffed and responded with a verse of his own, mocking Cem’s feigned piety and lack of respect for the empire:
Since time immemorial we were given this state,
Why then are you unwilling to accept preordained fate?
“I went on the pilgrimage,” you say to advance your claim;
Why then are these worldly gains and sovereignty your chief aim?
In Cairo that spring, Cem plotted his comeback. With reluctant Mamluk support—just enough to keep the brothers fighting—propelling him forward, Cem knew he would need help from within the Ottoman Empire. Through his network of emissaries and contacts, he started making overtures throughout Anatolia. There was no shortage of power brokers and local potentates ready to welcome an alliance with an Ottoman prince. Anatolia was still a tessellated landscape of minor regional powers, remnants of Byzantine military factions, and large household polities. The goal of early modern states like the Ottoman Empire was not necessarily to eliminate these mostly autonomous domestic elements but rather to co-opt, subdue, or otherwise manage them. Cem understood this politics of negotiation and cooperation; he therefore felt confident that he could secure the forces he needed to mount an effective challenge to Bayezit.
CEM’S FIRST MOVE WAS to enter into an alliance with the leader of the Kasıms, one of the largest tribal principalities in Anatolia. They were among the many very old families of pastoral nomads who had interests and influence around major Anatolian towns and had managed to cut deals with ruling powers over the centuries—from the Romans to the Byzantines and now the Ottomans. The Kasıms’ strongholds centered on areas near Konya, where Cem had been governor. Although the town now was, at least ostensibly, under his half-brother’s control, Cem shared a long history with the leaders of the clan and knew they could find common purpose. The arrangement could not have been more propitious for each side. By allying with Cem, the Kasıms transformed themselves from one of many local power brokers into an existential threat to the dynasty. The previous year, in hopes of capturing more territory from the empire, the Kasıms had sought a coalition with the Knights Hospitaller of St. John, rulers of the tiny island of Rhodes, but they were rebuffed as the Knights thought it best to honor the peace treaty with the Ottomans they had been forced to sign three years previously. The Kasıms clearly wanted a global power alliance; they found it in Cem. For his part, Cem gained a military force he could use against his half-brother.
With this collaboration in place, Cem secretly returned to Anatolia—against the protestations of Sultan Qaitbay—to finalize with the Kasıms his plans for an attack on Konya. He left behind his mother, concubines, and some of his four children (one of Cem’s daughters married Qaitbay’s son in this period). Having traveled overland through Syria to Cairo, then to the holy cities, and now back to Anatolia, Cem traced a path through the Mamluk Empire that presaged the conquests his nephew Selim would undertake thirty-four years later.
Upon reaching the rocky hills on the outskirts of Konya, Cem made his way to the Kasım encampments. Like Alexander the Great, the Seljuks, the Crusaders, and so many others, Cem and the Kasıms prepared for their invasion of Konya by amassing troops, weapons, and other resources on the plains beyond the city. This would, Cem hoped, be the first in a cascade of battles that would win him the throne. Instead, when fighting commenced in late May 1482, his forces were beaten back in mere hours by the city’s new governor, Abdullah—Bayezit’s eldest son, Selim’s half-brother, Cem’s nephew.
Denied Konya, Cem and the Kasıms decided to move on Ankara. As they headed north, word reached them that Bayezit himself, having heard that Cem was in Anatolia, had set off from Istanbul with a huge army, eager to welcome his half-brother back to the empire with a freshly dug grave. Rightly fearful for his life, Cem halted his march toward Ankara and retreated southward. Bayezit then dispatched one of his soldiers to catch up with Cem and the Kasıms and deliver a letter outlining terms of surrender. In exchange for relinquishing his interest in the throne and recognizing Bayezit as the one and only legitimate sultan, Cem would receive a yearly sum of gold and a protected retirement in Jerusalem, far away from Istanbul. Cem rejected the offer out of hand. Aside from requiring him to surrender any chance of becoming sultan, which was instantly unacceptable, Bayezit’s deal might also have been a ruse to assassinate him.
Cem’s quest for the throne had already taken him to Cairo and the Arabian peninsula. Before the succession was finally resolved, he would take the struggle through the royal courts of France, Italy, and Rhodes, grafting the politics of Ottoman succession into the politics of early modern Europe and then the globe.
CHAPTER
3
AN OTTOMAN ABROAD
Pope Pius II blesses a Crusading fleet at Ancona, with Cem in attendance
ADJUSTING TO HIS NEW LIFE IN THE PALACE WHILE ABSORBING the lessons of the sanguinary imperial politics around him, eleven-year-old Selim remained safely within the confines of the harem as his family’s succession drama unfolded. With a child’s fretfulness, he watched his uncle jockeying to gain the support of foreign powers against his father.
After his failure to establish a foothold in Anatolia, Cem knew his half-brother’s forces would soon drive him out of the empire altogether. The Mamluks had already made clear that they would support Cem only so far. Persia was an option, but it was too internally fractured to be interested in waging a major campaign against the far more powerful Ottoman Empire. By contrast, European powers, all weaker than the Ottomans in this period, were eager for any geopolitical advantage they could muster. Cem, while still encamped with the Kasıms outside Konya, began reaching out across the Mediterranean. In the early 1480s, the head of the family helped Cem to write and dispatch letters to disparate sovereigns, understanding that a war between Bayezit and a European state would open up space in Anatolia for the Kasıms to advance their forces. This was a slow process in the early modern world, where communication moved only as fast as a human on horseback or on a ship.
Cem’s first letter was to Venice, in January 1482; his request for asylum and alliance was refused. The Venetians had recently signed a peace treaty with the Ottomans and had no interest in upsetting the delicate balance of relations. Cem
turned next to the rulers of Rhodes, the Knights Hospitaller of St. John, whom the Kasıms had approached a few years earlier, but his first messenger was captured and killed by Bayezit’s forces. Realizing that Bayezit was aware of his schemes, Cem entrusted his next emissary with a verbal message, which ensured that the envoy, if captured, would not—unless tortured, perhaps—divulge any important information. The man chosen for the task was one Firenk Suleyman Bey, a Christian convert to Islam who spoke fluent French (“Firenk” is a corruption of Frank, a common title carried by Christian converts to Islam). Little is known about his origins. He may have been a captive who agreed to convert and serve the Ottoman state in exchange for his freedom. Alternatively, he could have voluntarily “turned Turk,” as the phrase went, as many Crusading soldiers did when they reached the Middle East, for various reasons: genuine faith, the love of a Muslim woman, awe at the superior power and majesty they discovered in the East, or the opportunities available to them in the Muslim world.
Rhodes, just off the southwestern Anatolian coast, is a parched and craggy island, strategically located where the Aegean meets the Mediterranean. In the summer of 1482, Firenk Suleyman Bey reached the island without incident and relayed Cem’s message to Pierre d’Aubusson, Grand Master of the Knights, who knew Cem personally from the truce negotiations in 1479, when Cem had been entrusted with that task by Mehmet II, his father. D’Aubusson, well aware of the tactical potential that Cem represented, leaped at the chance to serve as his protector. Buffeted on all sides by much larger and stronger enemies, the Knights viewed an internal challenger to the Ottoman throne as a potentially enormous weapon. Not only could Cem rattle the entire carapace of the Ottoman Empire, but should he gain the throne through their support, he would be forever in the Knights’ debt. For his part, Cem did all he could to encourage the Catholics’ expectations by promising to deliver something he could not: peace between Islam and Christendom. Desperate and perhaps naïve, the Knights saw Cem’s overture as an opportunity to forge a Christian–Muslim alliance against a shared Muslim enemy. Politics did not always trump religion in the early modern Mediterranean, but in this instance it clearly did. In the middle of July 1482, Cem boarded a ship at Korikos (modern-day Kızkalesi) on the southeastern Anatolian shore. Although he was unaware of it then, this was his last moment in the Ottoman Empire.