Suleiman The Magnificent 1520 1566 (21 page)

, p. 215.

29 GuBlaume Postel, De la rSpublique des Turcs (Poitiers, 1560), I, 127, 80 Juan de Solorzano Pereira, Politica Indiana (Madrid, 1647), lib. V, cap, X, paragraph 22.

Suleiman the Magnificent

cemed Moslems were brought before the kaziasker of Rnmelia, while those which concerned non-Moslems were tried by the kaziasker of Anatolia. Both of them were highly paid and much overworked, and when not occupied with other official duties, were supposed to sit in justice in their own houses; most of the cases that came before them were sent up on appeal from the minor tribunals, but their courts, like all others in the Ottoman Empire, were also courts of first instance. To them was also delegated the decision of many of the suits brought before the Grand Vizir, who as representative of the Sultan was officially the chief of the ulema, and consequently the highest judicial officer of the land. But the most important of all their functions was that of dealing with the capital cases of great officials which were brought before them in the Divan. That great assembly sat in judgment on important magnates, with whose conduct in office the Sultan had reason to be displeased. Often, indeed, the accused was not present to defend himself; but, in theory at least, no one was ever executed without a trial, and in trials of this kind, the decisive voice usually lay with the kaziask-

ers. 31

It will be worth while in closing to devote a paragraph to this Divan, for in it the kullar and the ulema were brought together. It was, in fact, next to the Sultan himself, who was the head of both of its component parts, the supreme expression of the unity of the Ottoman state. On campaigns, it might be held in the tent of the Grand Vizir or even on horseback. On such occasions it was primarily, of course, a council of war, and was shorn of much of its normal ceremony and magnificence. In time of peace it met, with much pomp and circumstance, in the Hall of the Divan at Constantinople. Its sessions there were held on Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays, and Tues-

ai Lybyer, pp. 220-224.

days. They began soon after sunrise, and often lasted for seven or eight hours. Every possible precaution was taken to see to it that the proceedings were not disturbed. In earlier days the Sultan had invariably presided in person, but Suleiman usually delegated this function to his Grand Vizir, and contented himself with keeping a grated window in the wall, through which he could listen, when he so desired, to the course of the deliberations. Since the members of the Divan had no means of knowing when he was on hand, they found it expedient to conduct themselves as if he were always present in their midst. Some Turkish writers have maintained that the Sultan's absence from the Divan was the primary cause of the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the succeeding period; but in view of the vast increase of business and responsibility which the rapid expansion of his dominions rendered inevitable, we can scarcely wonder that Suleiman seized the chance to relieve himself of such a burdensome task, and he had no compunctions about giving a free hand to the best of his Grand Vizirs. The Divan, when it met in full force and panoply at Constantinople, was at once the highest Council of State, or in modern parlance the cabinet—that portion of its functions being performed by those officers of the kullar who were privileged to attend it, and a supreme court of justice, in which cases of the highest importance were decided by the Grand Vizir and the kaziaskers. Great questions of national policy, such as problems of internal government, the lines of diplomacy, and the making of war and peace, were discussed and settled there; so likewise the weightiest lawsuits of the empire, and the fates of its greatest magnates, received in the Divan their final verdicts. All its decisions, whether political or judicial, were subject, of course, to the approval of the Sultan, Its various officials repaired after the sessions to the Hall of Audience to ask for that ap-

proval; if an eminent Grand Vizir was in the saddle, it was seldom refused. The speed with which the Divan dispatched its business was extraordinary. The Turk was a man of few words; anything like the modern practice of filibustering was inconceivable. Though the Divan had no power to make laws, its influence on legislation was not negligible. The kanuns issued by the Sultan were based in large measure on the information he received from its members; it was the means by which he kept in touch with everything that was going on. "It was a training-school of judges, administrators, and statesmen"; it was the capstone of the kullar and the ulema; "under the leadership of the Grand Vizir [it] governed the Ottoman Empire for the Sultan." S2

r, pp. 187-193.

Suleiman (in 'pro-file and on horseback} near i '

From a drawing by . iter Coeck van Aelst,

date 7553

c+* Vlil •**

The Seraglio; The Harem? The Sultan and His Subjects

iVe have hitherto discussed Suleiman's kullar as the nerve centre of the Ottoman army and government. It remains to consider it as a slave family and a nobility and as the dominant factor of the imperial court.

The coupling of the name "slave family" with that of a "nobility" may first provoke surprise, and a few words to explain the apparent contradiction are necessary to a comprehension of what follows. To begin with, it is essential once more to remind the reader that it was a highly desirable distinction to belong to the Sultan's kul-lar; no stigma whatsoever attached to it. Its members all wore a special costume which entitled them to the respect customarily due to those closely associated with monarchs. Their bodily wants were cared for, and they were generally exempt from taxation. Even the humblest of them, who never rose beyond the position of servant or under-gardener, was possessed of all these privileges. The 80,000 members of Suleiman's kullar were comparable, in fact, to the nobles of any one of the great Christian kingdoms of the West, with the important difference that the privileges conferred on them were, with a few exceptions, not hereditary. The whole system was based on the principle of advancement by merit. In a very true sense, indeed, the kullar was "a school in which the pupils were enrolled for life." Suleiman, it was said, "sows hope of

certain reward in all conditions of men, who by means of virtue, may succeed in mounting to better fortune," * but only those who made good progress were promoted and got to the top. For Ottoman political philosophy never contemplated the possibility of permitting any one of the members of the kullar to hand on to his descendants the position or the privileges he had been able to win for himself. His children might indeed be permitted to inherit a portion of his property, though even this was by Suleiman's gracious favor rather than of right; but his dignities and authority were regranted by his master after his death or disgrace to whatever member of the kullar was deemed most worthy to assume them. The Sultans did not propose to have their sovereign authority endangered by the power of great feudal families, as were the monarchies of England, France, and Spain at different periods in the fifteenth century. It was in order to avoid just this peril that the kullar was recruited in the way in which it was. Every member of it was considered to be "his own ancestor" and his tenure of office was terrifyingly insecure. The political pot was perpetually kept boiling. When any one died or was removed, his place was open to the ablest candidate, whose origin might well be totally different from that of his predecessor.

Western observers were much impressed by these things: none more than Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, the Imperial ambassador at Constantinople intermittently from 1555 to 1562. He was a fascinating personality, this Busbecq— a great classical scholar, antiquarian, and copyist of ancient inscriptions—a botanist also, to whom among other things we are indebted for the introduction of the

Diaz Tanco, Libra del? origine et successione delF imperio de y Turchi (Venice 1558), p. 197.

The Seraglio

horse chestnut, the lilac, and tulip into Western Europe 2 — but, above all, a charming, open-minded, tolerant, humorous man of the world, and a keen observer of men and events, who was not ashamed to learn and profit by what he saw of the manners and customs of a people which the mass of Western Europe still regarded as barbarous. Here is his description, written to an old friend and fellow-student in 1555, of the Sultan's kullar as he first saw it, when summoned before Suleiman at Amasia in Asia Minor.

The Sultan was seated on a very low ottoman not more than a foot from the ground, which was covered with a quantity of costly ^rugs and cushions of exquisite workmanship; near him lay his bow and arrows. His air, as I said, was by no means gracious, and his face wore a stern, though dignified, expression.

On entering we were separately conducted into the royal presence by the chamberlains, who grasped our arms. This has been the Turkish fashion of admitting people to the sovereign ever since a Croat, in order to avenge the death of his master, Marcus, Despot of Servia, asked Amurath for an audience, and took advantage of it to slay him. 3 After having gone through a pretence of kissing his hand, we were conducted backwards to the wall opposite his seat, care being taken that we should never turn our backs to him. . . .

The Sultan's hall was crowded with people, among whom were several officers of high rank. Besides these there were all the troopers of the Imperial guard, Spahis, Ghourebas

2 See his Life and Letters, I, 107-108; also <4 Brave Busbecq" by George Sarton in Isis, XXXIII (1942), 557-575. Busbecq was much aided in his botanical work by his private physician, Willem Quackelbeen, who accompanied him to Constantinople. Much additional information will be found in the forthcoming eighth volume of Dr. F. Verdoonfs Cbronica Eotcmica: Dr. Verdoom was kind enough to show me several pages of the typewritten manuscript. Busbecq was knighted in 1563, and the original patent of his knighthood is to be seen today in the Houghton Library at Harvard.

[Ghurebas], Onioufedgis [Ulufaje, or paid troops], and a large force of Janissaries; but there was not in all that great assembly a single man who owed his position to aught save his valor and his merit. No distinction is attached to birth among the Turks; the deference to be paid to a man is measured by the position he holds in the public service. There is no fighting for precedence; a man's place is marked ont by the duties he discharges. In making his appointments the Sultan pays no regard to any pretensions on the score of wealth or rank, nor does he take into consideration recommendations or popularity; he considers each case on its own merits, and examines carefully into the character, ability, and disposition of the man whose promotion is in question. It is by merit that men rise in the service, a system which insures that posts should only be assigned to the competent. Each man in Turkey carries in his own hand his ancestry and his position in life, which he may make or mar as he will. Those who receive the highest offices from the Sultan are for the most part the sons of shepherds or herdsmen, and so far from being ashamed of their parentage, they actually glory in it, and consider it a matter of boasting that they owe nothing to the accident of birth; for they do not believe that high qualities are either natural or hereditary, nor do they think that they can be handed down from father to son, but that they are partly the gift of God, and partly the result of good training, great industry, and unwearied zeal; arguing that high qualities do not descend from a father to his son or heir, any more than a talent for music, mathematics, or the like; and that the mind does not derive its origin from the father, so that the son should necessarily be like the father in character, but emanates from heaven, and is thence infused into the human body. Among the Turks, therefore, honors, high posts, and judge-ships^are the rewards of great ability and good service. If a man be dishonest, or lazy, or careless, he remains at the bottom of the ladder, an object of contempt; for such qualities there are no honors in Turkey! This is the reason that they are successful in their under-

takings, that they lord It over others, and are daily extending the bounds of their empke. These are not our Ideas; with us there is no opening left for merit; birth is the standard for everything; the prestige of birth is the sole key to advancement in the public service. But on this head I shall perhaps have more to say to you in another place, and you mast consider what I have said as strictly private. 4

A few more words need to be added to Busbecq's description, in order to understand how Suleiman's kullar -or, as we may for the present purposes describe It, his household or court—had come to be constituted in the way in which it was during the great Sultan's reign. In earlier days it had been a much more primitive affair, for the early Ottomans had not been induced to depart from their pristine simplicity by the reports that reached them of the splendors of Baghdad; not till after the conquest of Constantinople had their rulers been persuaded to adopt many of the forms and ceremonial which had so greatly impressed Busbecq. But when they were once established at the Porte, it is interesting to observe how many Byzantine titles and customs were taken over, almost without change, by the Turks. The "order of ceremonies'* and titles prescribed by the Kanun-Nameh of Mohammed II is modelled on the rules drawn up in the tenth century by Constantine Porphyrogenitus. The same Mohammed, after he had learned the ways of the Palaeologi, put forth an edict, utterly subversive of Ottoman tradition, to the effect that "It is not my will that any one should eat with my Imperial Majesty; my ancestors used to eat with their ministers; but I have abolished this custom"; 6 and Suleiman followed in the footsteps of his