Global Crisis

by Parker, Geoffrey

  In 1632 the chaos in Istanbul reached such a pitch that the leading protestors demanded an emergency meeting with the sultan in person to secure the redress of their grievances. Murad complied, and reluctantly delivered to the mob his Grand Vizier, Chief Mufti, and several others. All immediately met a violent death. For several weeks, the insurgents held the city to ransom, threatening to burn down the house of anyone who refused to pay them, until the exasperation of the citizens of the capital at last allowed the sultan to eliminate many of those involved in the disorders (including the new Grand Vizier and Chief Mufti), to purge corrupt judges, and to crack down on bribery. Perhaps 20,000 perished in the disorders – but Murad, now aged 20, at last held the initiative and began eight years of ‘Personal Rule’. Every year, he ordered the execution of hundreds of officials and subjects for failing to maintain local roads, for indiscipline on campaign, for selling adulterated bread and for a host of other infractions. In addition, suspecting that his critics hatched plots in coffee-houses and taverns, Murad ordered all of them to close, and he forbade all consumption of coffee, alcohol and tobacco. The sultan took up enforcement of the last prohibition in person: according to the English ambassador in Istanbul, ‘so great is his hatred that in person he doth walk up and down (day and night disguised)’ in search of secret smokers, ordering the summary execution of all offenders.24

  These initiatives paralleled the reform programme of the empire's most prominent Muslim preacher, Kadizade Mehmet (1582–1635), the son of an Anatolian judge (and thus a member of the ‘ulema), who after spending time in both a medrese and a Sufi lodge came to Istanbul in 1622, the year of the regicide. At first he joined another Sufi lodge, but soon concluded that the chaos he saw around him stemmed from a failure to adhere strictly to the dictates of the sharî'a. Finding no support among either the ‘ulema or his Sufi brothers, Kadizade Mehmet decided to take his message directly to the faithful through sermons. Although Istanbul by then boasted over 1,200 mosques, not all enjoyed equal prestige: chief among them stood the seven ‘imperial mosques’, each of them a structure so enormous that those who delivered sermons there could address tens of thousands at a time. Even Katib Çelebi, a scholar and official unsympathetic to the movement, admitted that Kadizade Mehmet ‘was a good and effective speaker whose sermons never failed to move his hearers’. When he composed his autobiography 30 years later, Katib still recalled passing by a mosque in which Kadizade was preaching and feeling ‘it was as if he had taken hold of the reins of his hearer's mind’.25 In 1631, impressed by these oratorical gifts, Murad licensed Kadizade Mehmet to preach at Hagia Sophia, the most prestigious mosque of all.

  From the start of his ministry, Kadizade blamed the chaos that afflicted the capital and the empire on religious innovation. He repeatedly quoted the hadith (Prophetic tradition), ‘Every innovation is heresy; every heresy is error; every error leads to hell’, and argued that God would continue to punish the entire empire until everyone returned to the beliefs and practices of the Prophet Mohammed. He focused on those ‘innovations’ associated with Sufis. He condemned their habit of singing, playing, chanting and dancing while reciting the name of God (on the grounds that the Qur'an expressly forbade ‘entertainments’ or ‘plays’), as well as their prayers to the righteous dead for intercession with God. He demanded the abolition of all new social habits: the consumption of tobacco, alcohol or coffee; shaking hands or bowing before superiors; allowing women to prophesy; and wearing or using anything except traditional Muslim garments and artefacts. When a bystander sarcastically asked one of Kadizade's followers: ‘Will you also get rid of underwear?’ (a garment apparently unknown to the Prophet), the preacher shot back: ‘Yes – and spoons too!‘26

  Apart from the huge congregations enchanted by his oratory – some slept overnight in the mosque to be sure of hearing his sermons – Kadizade won many disciples among unemployed medrese graduates. According to Paul Rycaut, an English resident in the Ottoman empire, the Kadizadelis (as Kadizade's followers came to be called) included ‘tradesmen, whose sedentary life affords opportunity and nutriment to a melancholy and distempered fancy’, as well as apprentices and slaves (many of them former Christians). He added that the Kadizadelis ‘addict themselves to the study of their Civil Law, in which they use constant exercises in arguing, opposing and answering, whereby to leave no point undiscovered or not discussed’. ‘They are,’ Rycaut continued with relish, ‘great admirers of themselves and scorners of others that conform not to their tenets, scarce affording them a salutation or common communication'; ‘they admonish and correct the disorderly'; and those who spurned their teaching ‘they excommunicate’.27

  The Sufi leaders, many of whom danced and drank coffee to keep going as they ceaselessly chanted the divine name, reacted to Kadizade's criticisms swiftly and in kind. Those who served as preachers used their sermons to mobilize support among both medrese graduates and their congregations for their innovations, creating (in the words of an unsympathetic Muslim observer),

  A trap of imposture and a snare for disreputable fools. This is the reason why the brutish common people flock to them, and [why] votive offerings and pious gifts pour into their lodges. Since their gyrations play an important part in this, they will not abandon their spinning [round]. There is no rhyme or reason to any of it; they falsely extol their sheikhs to the skies and put on an act for the sake of a dinner.28

  The tide turned in 1633 when, following a prolonged drought, a great fire destroyed at least 20,000 shops and houses, the barracks of the Janissaries and the state archives in Istanbul. Kadizade blamed the disaster on religious ‘innovations’ and warned of more catastrophes to come unless they ceased. After one particularly vivid sermon, his hearers sacked the taverns of the capital. Since Murad did nothing to stop the disorders, the Kadizadelis advanced one step further: citing the Qur'anic injunction to ‘enjoin right and forbid wrong’, they called on the faithful not only to amend their own lives but to seek out and punish sinners. Individual Sufi sheikhs were denounced and beaten, their lodges vandalized, and their adherents given the choice of either reaffirming their faith or being put to death.

  Since Murad saw coffee shops and taverns as potential centres of sedition, he used the Kadizadelis’ ire as an excuse to shut them down, killing those who gathered to consume coffee, alcohol and tobacco because in doing so he believed he was also killing his political critics. The sultan's support for the ‘Puritans of Islam’ thus helped to discipline his subjects; but it also kept the preachers on edge because they never knew when some small miscalculation or oversight might lead their cruel and capricious sultan to take their lives too. (In 1634 Murad had another Chief Mufti executed for refusing to approve one of his actions.) No doubt Istanbul breathed a collective sigh of relief when Murad left with an army to recover Mesopotamia from the Iranians.

  In 1638, after a long siege, the sultan recaptured Baghdad. Perhaps mindful of the huge costs (both human and material) of the war, he promptly accepted Iran's offer to make peace, ending over a hundred years of conflict and bringing most of Iraq under Ottoman control for the next three centuries. Then in 1640 Murad died after a short illness – during which he characteristically threatened to kill his physicians if he did not recover, and tried to have his sole surviving brother Ibrahim strangled (he had already killed all three of their siblings). The new ruler was 25: the first sultan in a generation to reach the throne as an adult and also, as the sole surviving male member of the entire Ottoman dynasty, the first to rule unchallenged by rivals. Nevertheless, Ibrahim had spent his entire life confined in a ‘cage’ in the Topkapi Palace, reading the Qur'an, practising calligraphy and living in constant fear of sharing the violent fate of his other brothers. Just like Murad, therefore, he came to the throne lacking political experience.

  The ‘mad sultan’

  For the first four years of Ibrahim's reign, Kara Mustafa Pasha, Murad's last Grand Vizier, managed public affairs competently. Abroad, he promoted peaceful re
lations with both Iran and the Austrian Habsburgs; and, although in 1641 he failed to recapture Azov from the Cossack adventurers who had seized it, he secured it the next year by negotiation (see chapter 6 above). At home, Kara Mustafa stabilized the coinage (albeit after another sharp devaluation), initiated a new land survey in an attempt to create a more equitable tax base, reduced the garrison in the capital and banned the Kadizadelis from delivering inflammatory sermons. Although a provincial governor defied him and led an army to within sight of Istanbul, the capital remained loyal and the rebellion crumbled. This loyalty seems surprising because the summer months of 1640, 1641 and 1642 all saw torrential rains, as well as plague, throughout the empire, while a drought in Egypt (page 188 above) reduced the supplies of several staples normally consumed by the palace; but Kara Mustafa's ability to find alternative sources to feed the capital assured his survival. By 1643 the Ottoman treasury registered a small surplus.29

  Kara Mustafa also worked hard to train the inexperienced sultan, and the Topkapi Palace archive contains some rescripts written in the sultan's own hand urging his ministers to attend promptly to business.30 But the Grand Vizier failed in one crucial respect: he could not cure Ibrahim's numerous medical complaints. On the one hand, the sultan suffered from perpetual headaches and repeated attacks of physical exhaustion; on the other, he worried that he, the last surviving male of the dynasty, might be impotent. In 1642, since the doctors provided by Kara Mustafa failed to provide remedies, Ibrahim turned to charlatans recommended by his mother, Kösem Sultan. One of these, Cinci [meaning ‘sorcerer'] Hoca, seems to have cured at least Ibrahim's impotence, because in the next six years he sired several children, including four future sultans; but Cinci Hoca used the imperial favour thus earned to build a faction against Kara Mustafa, and early in 1644 engineered his downfall. The next 12 years would see the rise and fall of 23 Treasurers, 18 Grand Viziers, 12 Chief Muftis and countless provincial governors. Since each official tried to get rich and to enrich as many of his followers as quickly as possible, the 60,000 government officeholders of 1640 had grown to 100,000 by 1648.31

  The number of troops paid by the Ottoman treasury also increased, from 60,000 to 85,000, due to the outbreak of war with the Venetian Republic. The two states had remained at peace since the 1570s, although each allowed its allies to prey on the trading vessels of the ‘other side’ and to carry out coastal raids. Late in 1644 some galleys of the Knights of Malta seized a convoy carrying pilgrims from Istanbul to Mecca. Some died in the struggle, including the former Chief Eunuch of Ibrahim's harem, and the victorious galleys steered to the Venetian island of Crete, where the authorities allowed them put ashore some of their spoil and captives and to take on supplies.

  This breach of neutrality infuriated Ibrahim, and he ordered immediate retaliation. In a striking demonstration of imperial power, by April 1645 some 50,000 men had embarked on a fleet of 70 galleys, 20 sailing warships and 300 transports. The Venetians, who refused to believe that the Ottomans could mount a serious military or naval threat, assumed that the problem could be resolved through judicious bribery: ‘It will not be difficult to put forward our case, using money as our vehicle,’ they informed their resident in Istanbul.32 They seemed unaware both of the unpopularity of their rule with many sections of the Cretan population and of the dilapidated state of Crete's defences – especially after a catastrophic storm in January 1645 that severely damaged the fortifications of Khaniá, not far from Herakleion, the administrative capital. The Ottoman expeditionary force exploited these advantages to the full: in June its Janissaries stormed ashore near Khaniá and took it. Before long they controlled most of Crete – but the Venetians counter-attacked by blockading the Dardanelles, which cut off not only relief for the Ottoman garrisons on Crete but also the supply of grain to Istanbul.

  The war would last until 1669, costing the lives of some 130,000 Ottoman troops and absorbing around three-quarters of the imperial budget. It also coincided with more episodes of extreme weather. Torrential rains in 1646 and drought in 1647 destroyed the harvest surpluses on which Istanbul depended, creating another food shortage. The Ottoman capital normally consumed some 500 tonnes of bread each day, of which about half went to feed the palace employees, the capital's garrison and the students in the medreses, so that the sultan's immediate entourage were among the first to feel (and resent) any shortfall. Perhaps this explains why Ibrahim (like China's Chongzhen emperor: see chapter 5 above) reacted so savagely when his ministers failed to produce instant success. For example, in a tantrum following news of another military defeat, Ibrahim had his Grand Vizier strangled in the middle of the street. When his mother, Kösem Sultan, predicted (correctly) that 'the same thing will happen to you as happened to your brother Osman’, namely that ‘the soldiers and the people will cut you to pieces’, Ibrahim banished her.33

  Late in 1647 a new Grand Vizier persuaded his master to retreat to his private quarters in the Topkapi Palace, where he could be shielded from adverse news; but, in seclusion, Ibrahim's behaviour became ever more eccentric. He developed an extravagant taste for luxury items, especially furs, and became irrationally impatient for the goods he craved: on occasion he made the shops of the capital open at midnight while his men requisitioned items for him and his concubines. Foreigners in Istanbul noticed widespread ‘murmuring’ among the capital's residents that ‘the sultan ought to spend on the Arsenal what he spends on women and gypsies for dancing and skits [mattacine]’. ‘The extravagant prodigality of Sultan Ibrahim’, an English merchant in the capital wrote self-righteously, ‘was such as the wealth of his whole empire could rather only feed than satisfy: all costs and curiosities being too little to reward his pleasing bedfellows’.34

  Funding the war as well as the sultan's exotic tastes proved a challenge. Since the continued predations of pirates and bandits kept many rural areas depopulated, in the 1630s Ottoman fiscal experts moved away from dependence on taxes on agricultural production, long the mainstay of the treasury, in favour of personal taxes – above all the avariz (‘extraordinary levies’ paid in either cash or kind, such as chickens for the imperial kitchens or repairs on road and bridges) and the cizye (a poll tax on non-Muslims). Each year, the treasury held a public auction at which it sold the right to collect these personal taxes to the highest bidder, receiving payment in cash and in advance. Since even this did not suffice to fund Ibrahim's war with Venice, his ministers adopted desperate fiscal expedients: levying new excise duties on goods; demanding that even the ‘ulema contribute; selling still more public offices, including judgeships; and withholding pay from the Janissaries and sipahis of the Istanbul garrison. Venice exploited Ottoman weakness to recapture fortresses both on Crete and in the Balkans while its agents incited revolts in the Ottoman province of Albania. Above all, its fleet continued to blockade the Dardanelles, cutting off the capital from some of its principal food suppliers. As usual, this deprivation immediately affected those who received their food directly from the sultan: the officials and garrison of the palace.

  Meanwhile, locusts destroyed crops in Moldavia, another area on which Istanbul depended for its food. An eyewitness described vividly how ‘a locust swarm came at us like a flying army. The sun disappeared immediately, veiled by the blackness of these insects’ and afterwards ‘No leaf, no blade of grass, no hay, no crop, nothing remained.’ The same disaster destroyed the next two harvests, and an English traveller found the soil of Moldavia ‘covered with Locusts; such as were of a veneniferous Colour; some alive but most dead; having allready destroy'd almost all the Grass in these parts; all of which are most certein and fatall Signes of a Pestilentious Aire; sadly experienced at Constantinople in the times of theyr Prodigious Plagues there’.35

  Such was the tense situation when in June 1648 a major earthquake rocked Istanbul. According to Katib Çelebi, ‘an earthquake like this has not been seen in our times. According to some experienced and enlightened ones, when an earthquake happens during daytime in June, b
lood is shed in the heart of the empire.’ Four minarets at the Hagia Sophia collapsed and the mosque built by Ibrahim's father Ahmed sustained severe damage during Friday prayers, killing several thousand worshippers. The earthquake also demolished the city's main aqueduct so that drinking water ran short just as the summer heat began: the price charged by water vendors soared and many died of thirst. Once again, the Kadizadeli preachers blamed these natural disasters on failure to follow the teachings of the Prophet, and a Venetian observer in the city reported that ‘the wise made diverse predictions of unrest in the city in the near future, and of imminent ruin and discomfort’. ‘The wise’ were right.36

  A Second Regicide