by Will Durant
On October 7, 1571, the armada moved through the Gulf of Patras into the Gulf of Corinth. There, off the port of Lepanto, the Turkish navy was waiting, with 222 galleys, 60 smaller vessels, 750 cannon, 34,000 soldiers, 13,000 sailors, 41,000 rowers. The Christians had 207 galleys, 6 greater Venetian galleasses mounting heavy guns, 30 smaller vessels, 1,800 cannon, 30,000 soldiers, 12,900 sailors, 43,000 rowers.13 The Christian fleet carried a standard of Christ crucified; the Turkish carried the Sultan’s standard, bearing the name of Allah embroidered in gold. The right wing of the Christians gave way before the Turks, but the left wing, under the Venetians, turned sturdy resistance into disciplined attack, and the artillery of the galleasses killed thousands of Turks. Don Juan ordered his flagship to steer straight for that of the Ottoman admiral, Muesinade Ali. When they met, the Don’s 300 Spanish veterans boarded the Turkish galley; a Capuchin monk led them to the assault, waving a crucifix aloft; the battle was decided when the vessel was captured, and Ali’s severed head was hoisted upon his own flagstaff.14 The morale of the Turks collapsed. Forty of their ships escaped, but 117 were captured and 50 others were sunk or burned. Over 8,000 Turks died in the battle, 10,000 were taken prisoner, and most of these were distributed as slaves among the victors. Some 12,000 Christian slaves, rowing in the Turkish galleys, were freed. The Christians lost 12 galleys and 7,500 men killed, including members of the oldest and most prominent families in Italy. It was unquestionably the greatest naval battle of modern times. Cervantes, who was among the 7,500 wounded Christians, described it as “the most memorable occasion that either past or present ages have beheld, and which perhaps the future will never parallel.”I15
It should have been the most decisive battle in modern history, but the exhaustion of the rowers, the damaged condition of the victorious fleet, and the rise of a violent storm prevented pursuit of the Turks. Quarrels sprang up among the Christians over the distribution of the glory and the spoils. As Spain had contributed half the ships and expense, Venice a third, and the papacy a sixth, the booty was divided accordingly. The Turkish prisoners were allotted in like proportion; Philip II received 3,600 slaves in chains, and out of the Pope’s share Don Juan was granted 174 slaves as an honorarium.16 Some Christian leaders wished to keep as slaves the Christians freed from the Turkish galleys, but Pius V forbade it.17
All Catholic Europe rejoiced when news of the triumph arrived. Venice decked itself with garlands and art; men kissed each other when they met in the street; Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese painted vast pictures of the battle, and the Venetian leader, Sebastiano Veniero, was feted for days and nights and at last was chosen doge. Rome, where, since the departure of the armada from Messina, clergy and laity had spent hours each day in anxious prayer, broke out in Te Deums of joy and relief; and Pius V, organizer of victory, almost canonized Don Juan by applying to him the words of the Gospel: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John” (John i, 6). Masses were said, fireworks were set off, salvos of artillery were fired. The Pope begged the victors to assemble another fleet; he besought the rulers of Europe to seize the opportunity by uniting in a crusade to drive the Turks out of Europe and the Holy Land. He appealed to the Shah of Persia and Sheik Mutahat of Arabia Felix to join the Christians in the attack upon the Ottomans.18 But France, jealous of Spain, proposed to the Sultan, soon after Lepanto, a direct alliance against Philip II.II19 Intelligence of this offer shared with other factors in dissuading Philip from further enterprise against the main Turkish power. He was involved in disputes with England and in the mess that Alva was making in the Netherlands; he resented Venetian insistence on monopolizing trade in the Adriatic, and he feared that another victory over the Turks would rehabilitate the crumbling empire of Venice and strengthen her as a rival to Spain. Pius V, worn out with victory and defeat, died on May 1, 1572, and the Holy League died with him.
III. DECLINE OF THE SULTANS
Meanwhile the Turks, with an energy that dismayed the West, built another fleet, as great as that which had been almost destroyed. Within eight months after Lepanto a Turkish flotilla of 150 ships roamed the seas looking for the Christian armada, which was too disorganized to venture from its havens. Encouraged by all to continue the war, but helped by none, Venice made peace with the Porte (March 7, 1573), not only ceding Cyprus but paying the Sultan an indemnity that covered the cost of the island’s conquest. The Turks had lost the battle and won the war. How far they were from enfeeblement appears in the confident proposal made by Sokolli to Venice (1573) that if she joined Turkey in war against Spain, they would help her to conquer the Kingdom of Naples as rich amends for losing Cyprus. Venice rejected the proposal as inviting the Turkish domination of Italy and Christendom. In October Don Juan refurbished his glory by capturing Tunis for Spain; but within a year the Turks, now with a fleet of 250 vessels, recaptured the city, and massacred the Spaniards who had newly settled there; for good measure they raided the coasts of Sicily. Selim II died in 1574, but Sokolli carried on the administration and the war.
It is a problem for philosophers that historians see a decline of Ottoman power in the reign of Murad III (1574–95), who loved philosophers. But he loved women too, and he begot 103 children from not quite so many wives. His favorite wife, “Baffo” the Venetian slave, enslaved him with her charms, mingled in affairs of state, and accepted bribes to use her influence. Sokolli’s authority was undermined, and when he aroused fanatical opposition among the populace by proposing to build an observatory in Stamboul, he was assassinated (1579), probably at Murad’s behest. Chaos ensued. The currency was debased; the Janissaries mutinied against being paid in bad coin; bribery corroded the bureaucracy; a pasha boasted that he had bribed the Sultan. Murad abandoned himself to venery and died of debauchery.
“Baffo” wielded almost as much influence over her son Mohammed III (1595–1603) as she had over his father. He began his reign in orthodox fashion by murdering nineteen of his brothers as an inducement to domestic peace; but Murad’s fertility had made this problem difficult; many of his sons were left dangerously alive. Corruption and disorder spread. War with Austria and Persia annulled victories with defeats. Ahmed I (1603–17), facing the rise of Shah Abbas I as a powerful leader in Persia, decided to concentrate Turkish forces on the eastern front. To free them in the West he ordered his agents to sign with Austria the Peace of Zsitva-Török (1606), the first treaty that the proud Turks condescended to sign outside Constantinople. Austria paid the Sultan 200,000 ducats, but was excused from any further tribute. Transylvania now voluntarily accepted Ottoman suzerainty. Persia too made peace (1611), giving Turkey, as a war indemnity, a million pounds of silk. Altogether this reign was marked with success and sanity, except for continued revolts of the Janissaries. Ahmed was a man of piety and good will. He tried, and failed, to end the rule of imperial fratricide.
Othman II (1617–22) proposed to discipline and reform the Janissaries; they demurred and killed him. They forced his imbecile brother Mustafa I to take the throne, but Mustafa was sane enough to abdicate (1623) in favor of his twelve-year-old nephew Murad IV (1623–40). The Janissaries chose the grand viziers and slew them whenever it seemed time for a change. They invaded the royal palace and compelled Sultana Kussem to open the treasury vaults to appease them. In 1631 they came again, pursued the young Sultan into his private apartments, and demanded the heads of seventeen officials. One of them, Hafiz, offered himself to the crowd as a sacrifice; they cut him to pieces. Murad, as yet impotent, faced them with what seemed an idle threat: “So help me God, ye men of blood, who fear not Allah, nor are ashamed before his Prophet, a terrible vengeance shall overtake you.”20 He bided his time, formed a corps of loyal troops, and arranged the assassination of one after another of the men who had led the mutinies. Further attempts at rebellion were crushed with savage ferocity, and occasionally the Sultan, like Peter the Great, shared personally in carrying out the sentences of death. He killed all of his brothers but one, whom he thought harmlessly imbecile. R
eveling in royal authority, he decreed the capital penalty for using tobacco, coffee, opium, or wine. Altogether, we are told, 100,000 persons were executed in his reign, not counting deaths in war.21 For a moment social order and administrative integrity were restored. Feeling now reasonably secure, Murad took the field against the Persians, accepted himself the challenge of a Persian warrior to single combat, slew him, captured Baghdad (1638), and concluded a victorious peace. When he returned to Constantinople the populace received him with wild acclaim. A year later he died of gout brought on by drunkenness. He was twenty-eight years old.
After him the Turkish decline was resumed. Ibrahim I (1640–48) had escaped death from his brother by being, or pretending to be, feebleminded. Under his careless rule anarchy and corruption were renewed. He made war on Venice and sent an expedition against Crete. The Venetians blockaded the Dardanelles. The people of Constantinople began to starve. The army revolted and strangled the Sultan. The Christian West, recalling the story of Rome’s Praetorian Guard, concluded that Turkish power need no longer be feared. Within thirty-five years the Turks were again at Vienna’s gates.
IV. SHAH ABBAS THE GREAT: 1587–1629
It was a boon to the Christian West that from 1577 to 1638, while first France and then Germany were crippled by the wars of religion, the Turks, who might have pushed their western frontier to Vienna, directed their energies against Persia. Here too religion offered a pretext to disguise the lust for power. The Turks, following the Sunna, or traditional forms of Mohammedanism, denounced as heretics the Persians, who accepted the heterodox Shi’a, and condemned as usurpers all caliphs since Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law. The real casus belli, of course, was more abdominal than theological—the desire of ruling minorities for additional land, resources, and taxable population. By a series of persistent wars the Ottoman Turks advanced to the Euphrates, the Caucasus, and the Caspian Sea, absorbing the new Persian capital, Tabriz, and the old Arab capital, Baghdad. Pedro Teixeira described Baghdad, about 1615, as a substantial city of Arabs, Persians, Turks, and Jews, living in twenty thousand brick houses, amid a crowded movement of pack bullocks, camels, horses, asses, and mules; the men cleanly dressed, “many of the women handsome, and nearly all have fine eyes, peering over or through their veils.”22 One public official was entirely devoted to protecting strangers.
East of Baghdad and the Euphrates lay the disunited states of Iran, reaching to the Caucasus and the Caspian on the northwest, to Turkistan on the northeast, Afghanistan on the east, the Indian Ocean on the south, the Persian Gulf on the southeast. These scattered members waited for a unifying soul.
Abbas the Great was the fifth Shah, or king, of that Safavid dynasty which Ismail I had founded at Tabriz in 1502. During the long reign (1524–76) of the second Shah, Tamasp I, the new state suffered many incursions by the Turks. After his death they invaded and annexed the Persian provinces of Iraq, Luristan, and Khuzistan. Meanwhile the Uzbeks came down from Transoxiana, captured Herat, Mashhad, and Nishapur, and overran Persia’s eastern provinces. When Abbas, aged thirty, succeeded to the throne without a capital (1587), he made peace with the Turks and marched eastward to meet the lesser foe. After years of war he recaptured Herat and drove the Uzbeks from Persia. He was now eager to face the Turks, but his army was depleted by losses, disordered by tribal jealousies, and lacking in the latest means of inflicting death.
About this time (1598) two adventurous Englishmen, Sir Anthony Sherley and his younger brother Robert, arrived in Persia on a trade mission from England. They brought valuable presents, military experience, and an expert founder of cannon. With their help Shah Abbas reorganized his army, equipped it with muskets as well as swords, and soon had five hundred pieces of artillery. He led this new force against the Turks, drove them from Tabriz (1603), and recovered Erivan, Shirvan, and Kars. The Turks sent against him an avalanche of 100,000 men; Abbas, with 60,000, defeated them (1605); Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Mosul, and Baghdad were recovered, and Abbas ruled from the Euphrates to the Indus.
Even before these arduous campaigns he had begun (1598) to build a new capital farther removed than Tabriz from invaders, and less desecrated with alien memories and Sunni feet. Isfahan was already two thousand years old (though not under that name), and had 80,000 population. About a mile from this ancient city the Shah had his engineers lay out a rectangular space as the Maidan-i-Shah, or Royal Square, 1,674 feet long, 540 wide, and bordered with trees. On two sides ran promenades covered against rain and sun. On the south side rose the Masjid-i-Shah, the Royal Mosque; on the east, the Mosque of Lutf Allah and a royal palace; the remainder of the periphery was occupied by shops, inns, and schools. West of the maidan ran an avenue two hundred feet wide, the Chahar Bagh (“Four Gardens”), flanked by trees and gardens, and adorned with pools and fountains. On either side of this parkway were the palaces of the ministers of state. Through the city flowed the River Zayand, spanned by three masonry bridges; one of these, the Allah Verdi Khan, was a picturesque structure 1,164 feet long, with a broad paved roadway and on each side arcades for pedestrians. The new town was watered and cooled with streams, reservoirs, fountains, and cascades. The whole design was as excellent a piece of town planning as that age anywhere knew.23
When Chardin visited Isfahan in 1673 he was astonished to find a great metropolis of administration, commerce, crafts, and arts, with 1,500 villages surrounding it and an urban population of 300,000 souls. The city and its suburbs had 162 mosques, 48 colleges, 273 public baths, and 1,800 caravanserais, or inns. Tavernier, seeing Isfahan in 1664, described it as equaling Paris in extent, but only a tenth as populous, for every family had its own house and garden, and there were so many trees that it seemed “rather a forest than a city.”24 It is a pleasant picture, but Tavernier adds, “There are before every door certain troughs to receive the filth and ordure of each family, which the peasants come daily to carry away to dung their grounds…. You shall also meet with little holes against the walls of the houses in the open street, where the Persians are not ashamed to squat and urinate in sight of all the world.”25
Alert to the fact that Western Europe was grateful to him for keeping the Turks busy in the East, Shah Abbas sent Sir Anthony Sherley and others on missions to establish relations with Christian governments, and to open up exports of Persian silk free from Turkish intermediaries. When European envoys came to Isfahan he housed them palatially and gave them full religious freedom. Having captured five thousand Armenians in his Turkish campaigns, he did not enslave them, but allowed them to develop their own center at Julfa, near Isfahan; and he profited from their commercial activity and finesse. There they built their own church and decorated it with a mixture of Christian iconography and Moslem decoration. Sometimes Abbas played with the idea of fusing all religions into one and “imposing peace in heaven and on earth.”26 In a more realistic mood he used the Shi’a fervor of the Persians as a means of national morale. He encouraged his people to make pilgrimages to Mashhad as the Mecca of Persian Islam, and he himself walked the eight hundred miles from Isfahan to Mashhad to offer his devotions and gifts.
Therefore the architecture with which he made Isfahan gleam was chiefly religious; like the medieval Church in the West, he would transmute the pennies of the poor into temples whose grandeur, beauty, and peace would be a pride and a possession for all. The most impressive structure in the new capital was the Masjid-i-Shah, which Abbas built in 1611–29. The maidan is its majestic plaza and approach; the whole square seems to lead to that embracing portal. The eye is caught first by the flanking minarets and their lacery of overhanging turrets, from which the muezzin proclaims the unity of God; then by the resplendent faïence that covers the portal frame, and by the inscription frieze offering this shrine as a gift from Abbas to Allah; in Persia even the alphabet is art. Within the arch the walls are clustered with stalactites spangled with white flowers. Then the inner court, open to the sun; then through further arches into the sanctuary under the great dome. One must g
o outside again to study the dome, its majestic Kufic lettering, its swelling and yet graceful form, faced with enameled tiles of blue and green flowing in arabesques over an azure ground. Despite the enmity of time this is “even now one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.”27
Less imposing, more delicate, is the mosque that Shah Abbas raised (1603–18) in honor of his saintly father-in-law, the Masjid-i-Sheikh-Lutf-Allah: an elegant portal, a sanctuary and mihrab of exquisite faïence, but, above all, an interior of incredible beauty—arabesques, geometrical figures, flowers, and scrolls in perfect, unified design. Here is abstract art, but with a logic and structure and consequence that offer the mind no bewildering chaos, but intelligible order and mental peace.
On the east side of the maidan the Shah built an open throne under a great arch, the Ala Kapi, or Sublime Portal; there he gave audience, or watched the horse races or polo matches in the maidan.III Behind this gate were the royal gardens, containing several palaces used by the Shah for special purposes. One of these survives, much chastised by time: the Chihil Sutun (Forty Columns), an audience chamber and throne room supported by twenty plane-tree columns faced with mirror glass, and a long gallery adorned with oil paintings depicting events in the life of the Shah. The doors of the palace were of lacquered wood decorated with garden scenes and floral scrolls; two of these doors are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Still in place is the brilliant stucco decoration, in gilt and colors, of the audience chamber ceiling; here again abstract art is brought to perfection in logic and design.