The Sultan and the Queen

by Jerry Brotton

  The goods involved were the ubiquitous coarse woolen kersey cloths, as well as tin and lead, a flagrant violation of the papal ban on the trade of all such merchandise with Muslims. Harborne complained that the grand vizier knew the whereabouts of his servant’s assassins as well as of his goods, but his chiauses (Turkish sergeants) “have made no effort at all—they did not even wish to go to find the merchandise where the thieves confessed that it was but, rather, wasted their time.” Despite the apparent delicacy of the situation, Harborne managed to end his petition with a request for safe-conducts to trade throughout the Ottoman-controlled eastern Mediterranean, and for permission to export surplus lead.

  Neither Harborne’s subsequent letters nor Ottoman Chancery records reveal if he received compensation for his losses, but he is unlikely to have been able to continue trading without some indemnity. Hakluyt certainly believed that Harborne turned his loss into broader profit, describing the canny Englishman as having “behaved himself so wisely and discreetly that within a few months after he obtained himself not only the great Turk’s large and ample privilege for himself . . . but also procured his honorable and friendly letters unto her Majesty.”6 This was a very bland account of what really happened.

  The imperial ambassador to Constantinople, Joachim von Sinzendorf, had been keeping a suspicious eye on Harborne ever since his arrival. He reported to the Habsburg court in Vienna that “this so-called merchant Harborne” had “begun to set this trade going here, with the foreknowledge of the Queen.” Sinzendorf was appalled that, despite having no formal mandate from Elizabeth, Harborne had bribed Sokollu Mehmed “with a quantity sufficient for three robes of the best English cloth he had” to obtain commercial safe-conduct agreements. Having issued these agreements, the grand vizier had, Sinzendorf claimed, asked Harborne’s interpreter, Mustafa Beg, “Does he also want to have a letter from the Sultan to the Queen?,” to which a surprised and clearly delighted Harborne is reported to have said, “Yes, it would be nothing but good.”

  It seems that Murad was unaware of the proposed letter to Elizabeth, which was written by Sokollu Mehmed. Harborne had simply struck lucky, having obtained the precious commercial rights as well as the formal letter in return for a relatively cheap bribe. In demanding that the letter be written by the sultan’s chancellor, Sokollu Mehmed ignored protocol that insisted the sultan would correspond only if a letter was first written to him. It was reported that the grand vizier told the chancellor, “Of course, write the letter, because they are Lutherans, and good people!”7

  Sinzendorf’s report was hardly impartial: he had a clear vested interest in claiming that Harborne’s negotiations with the grand vizier were part of a broader Turco-Protestant conspiracy enabling Murad to establish “an open, safe port in England, by means of which to set his foot also into the western Empire.”8 However, Sinzendorf does seem to have understood that Harborne’s maneuverings had formalized amicable commercial exchanges with the Ottoman authorities that put the other European representative in Constantinople on the defensive.

  The letters that followed (which are discussed at the beginning of this book) were the first in an exchange of correspondence between an Ottoman sultan and an English monarch that would last for another seventeen years. The first letter, written in March 1579 on Murad’s behalf and sent to Elizabeth, had been composed in the Diwani script, using a particular variant of Ottoman Turkish known as Fasih Türkce (“eloquent Turkish”), the language of poetry and imperial administration.9 But with Mustafa Beg’s assistance Harborne also had it translated rather more freely into Latin to be read out back in London. The Latin version began:

  In greatness and glory most renowned Elizabeth, most sacred queen, and noble prince of the most mighty worshippers of Jesus, most wise governor of the causes and affairs of the people and family of Nazareth, cloud of most pleasant rain, and sweetest fountain of nobleness and virtue, lady and heir of the perpetual happiness and glory of the noble realm of England [Anletār] (whom all sorts seek unto and submit themselves) we wish most prosperous success and happy ends to all your actions, and do offer unto you such pleasures and courtesies as are worthy of our mutual and eternal familiarity: thus ending (as best beseemeth us) our former salutations.10

  Buried within the letter’s honorific rhetoric was some shrewd realpolitik. Murad was careful to describe Elizabeth as one of the Christian “worshippers of Jesus” and part of the “family of Nazareth,” implying the possibility of a Protestant-Islamic alliance based on the mutual acceptance of Jesus as a holy figure. He also ensured that, in praising Elizabeth, she was to understand that he was the active partner doing all the wishing and offering, for which she and her subjects should be grateful. Acknowledging Harborne’s arrival “in the name of your most excellent regal majesty,” with “kindness, courtesy and friendly offices on your part,” Murad was prepared to agree that “our country be always open to such of your subjects, as by way of merchandise shall trade hither: and we will never fail to aid and succor any of them that are or shall be willing to esteem of our friendship, favor and assistance.” Murad assured Elizabeth he had commanded “all our kings, judges, and travelers by sea” throughout the Ottoman Empire to ensure that “such aforesaid persons as shall resort thither by sea from the realm of England, either with great or small vessels to trade by way of merchandise, may lawfully come to our imperial dominions, and freely return home again . . . straightly charging that they be suffered to use and trade all kind of merchandise as any other Christians do, without let or disturbance.”

  In case Elizabeth might feel she was receiving special dispensation, the letter reminded her that “our familiars and confederates the French, Venetians, Polonians, and the king of Germany, with diverse other our neighbors about us, have liberty to come hither, and to return again into their own countries, in like sort.” The power and magnanimity of the Ottomans was so great they could accommodate anyone, from Catholic merchants and emperors to Protestant English sovereigns. However, in one final caveat, which seems to have been added by Harborne (with Mustafa’s connivance), the Latin translation reminds Elizabeth that the alliance should be reciprocal, and that “you likewise bethink yourself of your like benevolence, humanity and friendship toward us, to open the gate thereof unto us . . . and that like liberty may be granted by your highness to our subjects and merchants to come with their merchandise to your dominions.”11 The original letter contained no such wish, because the Ottomans did not regard the English as a serious political power, an attitude that Harborne tried to mitigate but which was underscored by the method of delivering its letters to Elizabeth: they were transported in a satin bag tied with a silver capsule—the method used to write to Caucasian princes.12

  Murad’s letter was not the only one that arrived in London from Constantinople in September 1579. Harborne’s dragoman, Mustafa Beg, also took the opportunity to break with convention and write an audacious letter to the queen. In it he encouraged Elizabeth to establish “a league and most holy alliance” between her and Murad, drawing yet again on the potential amity between Muslims and Protestants. “As I was negotiating in the presence of our Most Mighty Prince,” writes Mustafa,

  it occurred to my mind that if by any means I could encourage some kind of understanding and friendship between our Most Mighty Prince and your Sacred Royal Majesty, not only as I know the Sacred Royal Majesty to hold the most Christian faith among all people and that, therefore, Christians throughout the whole world envy the Sacred Royal Majesty and, if they can, try to harm her in every way, but also because I considered it to be beneficial for your Sacred Royal Majesty to be able to establish an understanding with so great and so powerful an Emperor, with whom almost all princes and kings, of their own free will, wish to be closely allied.13

  Despite its presumptuousness, the letter was taken seriously by Burghley, who filed and annotated it. Elizabeth regarded it as important enough to write back in October, just weeks after the
letter arrived, imploring Mustafa to assist her in obtaining the release of English captives:

  Your letter of March 15 was handed to us by William Harborne, who at the same time recorded your kindness to our subjects. As it has taken the form of promoting the trade of our merchants to the dominions of his Imperial Highness it demands our gratitude and reciprocity of good offices. As by your good means matters are so far advanced that he has begun to incline to Harborne’s request on behalf of himself and his partners, and we would not willingly be excluded from the conveniences granted to the subjects of other states, we have written to his Highness to testify our gratitude, and to ask him to allow to all our subjects the same permission that he has granted to a few; promising like liberty to his subjects in our dominions. We beg that you will aid us in obtaining this request. And as we have also dealt with him briefly for the freedom of certain of our subjects who are captive in his galleys we ask you to show your goodwill to us by promoting their cause.14

  In requesting the captives’ release, Elizabeth implicitly recognized Ottoman political legitimacy under (unwritten) international law.15 It was unprecedented and highly significant for the future of any Anglo-Ottoman alliance, especially considering how far her excommunication by the papacy had isolated her from the rest of Europe.

  The resident European merchants and diplomats in Constantinople were horrified by the sudden and apparently inexplicable success of the English interlopers. They were informed of developments by Mustafa Beg, who seems to have been playing both sides. In September 1579 Bernardino de Mendoza, Philip II’s ambassador in London, wrote that Joseph Clements, Harborne’s fellow agent, had “returned recently with a Turk, bringing a letter from his master [Murad] to the Queen, full of endearments, and offering unrestricted commerce in his country to Englishmen if she, on her part, will give the same privileges here to his subjects. I will endeavor to get copies of the letter and their reply to send to Your Majesty.”16 Mustafa Beg presumably supplied these “copies,” although not all Mendoza’s intelligence was quite so accurate as he might have believed. It seems he read the Latin translation of Murad’s letter, which had been embellished by Harborne and his associates to inflate the significance of the Anglo-Ottoman alliance, and its promise of closer trade relations. There is no record of the arrival in London of the Turkish emissary he mentions.

  Nevertheless, both Sinzendorf’s and Mendoza’s responses reflect the alarm felt by the Habsburgs at the rise of English commercial influence in Constantinople. Just two months later, Mendoza reported to Philip that these fears appeared well founded. “This queen has received another letter from the Turk by way of France,” he wrote on November 28. The letter has not survived, but Mendoza claimed that “in addition to many other offers,” Murad “promises a favorable reception of Englishmen who come to his country, either by land or sea; both on account of his desire for her friendship as for that of the king of France, with whom he requests her to be as friendly as she can. He says that, by reason of his friendship to the king of France, he will be pleased to hear of her marriage with his brother [the Duke of Alençon], from which it may be seen that the French have made it their business to write to him about it.”17 Elizabeth was indeed embroiled in her famous on-and-off courtship with Alençon, which if successful threatened the Habsburgs with the prospect of an Anglo-Franco-Ottoman axis capable of dominating Mediterranean naval and commercial movements.

  Mendoza went on to explain that “the Turks are also desirous of friendship with the English on account of the tin which has been sent thither for the last few years, and which is of the greatest value to them, as they cannot cast guns without it, whilst the English make a tremendous profit on the article, by means of which alone they maintain the trade with the Levant.” His intelligence—presumably again gleaned from Mustafa Beg—was that five English ships were already en route to Constantinople, and “I am told that, in one of them, they are sending nearly twenty thousand crowns’ worth of bar tin, without counting what the rest of them take. As this sending tin to the infidel is against the apostolic communion, and your Majesty has ordered that no such voyage shall be allowed to pass the Messina light [a watchtower built by Charles V in 1546 to protect Sicily from Turkish invasion] to the prejudice of God and Christianity, I advise the viceroy of Sicily of the sailing of these ships as I understand they will touch at Palermo, where the tin can be confiscated.”18 A month later he reported that even more ships were headed to Chios “carrying bell-metal and tin.”19 It was a symbolic act of alliance that conflated the iconoclastic faiths of Protestantism and Sunni Islam. With the queen’s sanction, Protestant English merchants were removing metal from ecclesiastical buildings—including lead roofing and bell metal—and shipping it to Constantinople to arm Muslims fighting against Catholics.

  By now events were moving fast. In late October 1579 Elizabeth had dispatched responses both to Murad’s first letter and to Mustafa Beg’s. The opening of her letter to Murad clearly took the hint about the superficial similarities between Protestantism and Islam by denouncing those Christians that “falsely profess the name of Christ.”20 Having learned that the Ottomans would give those they labeled “Lutherans” preferential commercial treatment, Elizabeth and her advisers obviously saw the advantages of presenting her as a religious ruler who rejected both idolatry and those who “falsely” professed Christ, attributes shared (according to the Catholic powers) by Protestants and Muslims. After establishing her theological credentials, the letter got down to business, asking for trading privileges to be “enlarged to all our subjects in general,” and agreeing that Turks should be allowed “to come, and go to and from us and our kingdoms.”

  The letter concluded with a last request. Murad’s “great affection to us and our nation, doth cause us also to entreat and use mediation on the behalf of certain of our subjects, who are detained as slaves and captives in your galleys,” that “they may be delivered from their bondage, and restored to liberty, for their service toward us, according to their duty: which thing shall yield much more abundant cause to us of commending your clemency, and of beseeching that God (who only is above all things, and all men, and is a most severe revenger of all idolatry, and is jealous of his honor against the false gods of the nations) to adorn your most invincible imperial highness with all the blessings of those gifts, which only and deservedly are accounted most worthy of asking.”

  The galley slaves in question were probably the crews of the Peter and the Swallow, two English ships captured off Algiers two years earlier. The plea brought release and redemption, although it earned for the English a mortal enemy in the shape of the galley slaves’ owner, the Turkish admiral Qilich Ali Pasha.

  Sultan Murad and Queen Elizabeth seemed to be edging toward a closer commercial and political relationship when Harborne was faced with an unexpected crisis. On October 12, 1579, as Sokollu Mehmed Pasha was listening to petitions in the Topkapi’s imperial council chamber, a Bosnian dervish suddenly leaped forward and stabbed him to death. Rumors abounded at court that Murad’s powerful mother, Nurbanu Sultan, had ordered the assassination to resolve the courtly power struggle between her and Sokollu Mehmed. Whatever the motivation behind his murder, Sokollu Mehmed’s death triggered a decisive shift in the balance of power within the palace. Over the next two decades the post of grand vizier would be progressively diminished, with eleven different incumbents unable to stop the sultan’s harem from taking political matters into their own hands. Sokollu Mehmed’s protégés were removed from government, and with them went his more emollient and westward-looking foreign and economic policy.21

  It is testament to Harborne’s determination and resourcefulness that he continued his dogged pursuit of an Anglo-Ottoman agreement. His time spent wooing—and probably bribing—subsequent grand viziers infuriated the other resident European diplomats, most especially Jacques de Germigny, the French ambassador. It was bad enough that Harborne lacked official diplomatic accreditation; eve
n more galling was his skill in playing France off against Spain, while still trading under the cover of the French Capitulations. “I was informed,” Germigny fumed in a report to Henry III in March 1580, “that this Englishman had represented to the Grand Vizier the seriousness of the increase of the power of the King of Spain, to the extent that he would take possession of Portugal and the territories dependent on the said kingdom neighboring to this lord in the Levant.”22 He protested that, despite Sokollu Mehmed’s death, Harborne was “pursuing his negotiation actively in this Porte, and appears to be greatly favored, as much by reason of the loads of steel, tin, and latten [copper alloys] which he has brought them and promises to bring thereafter.” In June, Germigny confessed that it all “makes me fear that the said Englishman will soon realize his aim” of obtaining full commercial privileges from the sultan. The English advance, together with signs of a growing rapprochement between Murad and Philip II, threatened to leave France dangerously isolated.

  By then it was too late. Murad had already agreed to the terms of a peace treaty with Spain, and at the end of May 1580, just days before the dispatch of Germigny’s letter, he signed a charter of privileges granting the English full commercial rights in Ottoman dominions. These Anglo-Ottoman Capitulations would prove to be even more important than Walsingham’s Memorandum of 1578, and they endured for 343 years, until they were dissolved under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of the Turkish republic.

  The agreement began by praising “Elizabeth Queen of England, France and Ireland, the most honorable queen of Christendom,” to whom Murad agreed to “give license to all her people, and merchants, peaceably and safely to come unto our imperial dominions, with all their merchandise and goods without any impeachment, to exercise their traffic, to use their own customs, and to buy and sell according to the fashions of their own country.”23 It listed in minute detail the privileges granted to the English: their ships were guaranteed security and help in the face of piracy (from Muslims or Christians), shipwreck or even debt; in the event of death, goods reverted to the merchant’s estate; in case of commercial disputes both sides agreed to abide by the ruling of the local cadi (judge) based on sharia law; English merchants were exempt from paying kharāj (a local community charge) and were allowed to appoint consuls in Alexandria, Damascus, Tunis, Algiers and Cairo; and if “any pirates or other free governors of ships trading the sea shall take any Englishman, and shall make sale of him . . . if the party shall be found to be English and shall receive the holy religion [Islam], then let him freely be discharged, but if he will still remain a Christian, let him then be restored to the Englishmen, and the buyers shall demand their money again of them who sold the man.”24