We now return to the region where the world’s earliest empires had begun – and thrived – for almost three millennia, namely the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire, which originated in 1299, would eventually achieve sovereignty over territory in Asia, Europe and Africa, and would last for over 600 years. On four remarkable occasions it would even threaten to destroy the more advanced civilisation of Europe. Just 150 years after the founding declaration of the Ottoman Empire, during its early expansionist phase, Sultan Mehmed II (usually known as ‘the Conqueror’) achieved the unthinkable feat of conquering Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire (still officially designated the ‘Roman and Byzantine Empire’).
At its height in the eleventh century, the Byzantine Empire had ruled over every country bordering on the Mediterranean, from Spain and Italy to Egypt and North Africa, as well as controlling the shores of the Black Sea and the upper half of the Red Sea. By 1453, Mehmed the Conqueror had all but destroyed this empire, taking Anatolia, Greece and moving up into the Balkans, in the process encircling Constantinople. After Mehmed the Conqueror entered the holy city, Constantine XI, the last man to claim the title of Roman Emperor, was killed.
The Ottoman sultan then declared that the 900-year-old Hagia Sofia (‘Holy Wisdom’ in Greek), Christendom’s holiest cathedral and the largest building in the world, would from now on become a mosque. He also pronounced himself ‘Kaysari-i-Rûm’ (Turkish for ‘Caesar of Rome’). From his vantage point on the Bosphorus, Mehmed the Conqueror’s capital straddled Europe and Asia, making it the potential capital of the world. (Just over three centuries later, when Napoleon took Egypt, harbouring similar illusions, he regarded Cairo as the most strategic city on earth, the hub of Europe, Asia and Africa; America was dismissed as a primitive outpost.)
Back in Rome, a succession of popes had desperately been attempting to rally the divided nations of European Christendom to restart the Crusades, and drive back the Ottomans. One by one these attempts foundered, owing to ineffectual leadership, internal jealousies, suspicions and so forth. Meanwhile the Ottoman advance continued inexorably north through the Balkans towards Venice, and in 1480 even established a foothold on the Italian peninsula at the southern port of Otranto. Here the local bishop was publicly sawed in half before the terrified population, 12.000 of whom were then put to the sword, with another 50.000 being shipped off into slavery.
Within weeks, the Ottoman forces had advanced 200 miles up the east coast. Less than 200 miles east across the Apennines, the ailing, ageing Pope Sixtus IV was at his wits’ end. It looked as if Rome was now to suffer the fate of Constantinople. Then, as if by a miracle, the Ottomans suddenly withdrew and sailed back across the Adriatic. In an echo of the Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe three centuries previously, the Ottomans had learned of the death of Mehmed the Conqueror, and were anxious to return to Constantinople where the future sultan would be chosen. Europe was saved.
But the threat of the Ottomans overrunning Europe was not over. Within fifty years, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent was laying siege to the city of Vienna. But the autumn of 1529 was long and wet, and the Turkish troops soon became demoralised, their supply lines were overstretched, and a collapse of morale led to a Turkish retreat. Yet 150 years later, Sultan Mehmed IV ordered a second attempt to take Vienna, this time with a fully equipped and supplied army of 200,000 men, led by the Grand Vizier (chief minister) Kara Mustafa Pasha.
In July 1683, before the Turks were even within sight of Vienna, the ruling Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, and 60,000 of its citizens had fled. In fact, Leopold I’s act was less cowardly than it appeared – his intention was to solicit support from Poland, Cossacks and German allies. The massive Ottoman Army duly laid siege to Vienna, digging trenches and setting up tents in preparation for a long winter. By now the Ottoman Empire had considerably expanded its territory, stretching along the North African coast, through Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Iraq as far as the Caspian Sea. In Europe it had overrun the Balkans, Romania and Hungary. Once Vienna fell, the whole of central and western Europe would lie at its mercy.
The Ottoman forces had soon overrun the outer fortifications of Vienna, and were beginning to dig tunnels beneath its walls. Then, on 12 September, the Ottomans were surprised by the appearance of a combined German-Polish force, which emerged from the Vienna Woods at Mount Kahlenberg to the north of the city. The ensuing battle lasted fifteen hours, before the tent of the Grand Vizier was detonated, and as his troops fled from their trenches they were put to the slaughter. Kara Mustafa managed to make it to the safety of Belgrade, but the sultan was so outraged that he ordered his Grand Vizier to be executed, and his head brought to Constantinople on a silver dish. The battle of Kahlenberg is generally seen as marking the turning point of the Ottoman Empire, and from now on it would begin its long decline.
Ironically, it was this long decline that would have the most profound effect of all: presaging both the ultimate disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the political destruction of the old European order. By the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was an impotent force. Egypt was virtually independent under the Mamlukes, Persia and the Kurds threatened its eastern borders, Greece would declare itself independent in 1853; and Czar Nicholas I of Russia described Turkey as ‘the sick old man of Europe’. Here was a vast empire ready for the taking, and all the European powers were covertly making plans to seize strategic territories for themselves.
As early as 1799, Napoleon had already taken Egypt, but within a couple of years the British navy forced the French to return home. The British then came to an arrangement with the Porte (Ottoman government in Istanbul), whereby they would act as Egypt’s ‘protector’. However, this did not deter Napoleon. Having declared himself ‘Emperor’, he began covertly drawing up plans for an overland invasion of Turkey, in an attempt to forestall the Russians, who had by now extended their empire into the Caucasus borderland and looked poised to launch their own invasion.
Things came to a head with the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853, between Russia and an alliance of the Ottomans, Britain, France and Sardinia. The ostensible cause of this war was a dispute between Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox monks over the keys to the door of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (Christ’s birthplace). The underlying cause was to prevent Russia from expanding into the Ottoman Empire, an aim in which the western European allies eventually succeeded after a chaotic campaign involving great loss of life.
Determined not to be left out, in the early 1900s the recently formed German nation persuaded the sultan to allow their engineers to construct a Hejaz railway from Damascus to Medina, ostensibly for the transport of pilgrims making the Hadj to Mecca. But in fact, as all could see, this railway would become an integral part of an interlinked Berlin to Baghdad railway, a key piece of German strategy.
The Hejaz railway could be extended to Aqaba on the Red Sea, while the Baghdad branch could be extended to the head of the Persian Gulf. This would enable the Germans direct access to the Indian Ocean, thus circumventing the British-French owned Suez Canal, and enabling the Germans to extend their own empire beyond the bounds of German East Africa (basically mainland modern Tanzania). By the turn of the twentieth century, the strategic European rivalries were falling into place, indicating many of the locations that in 1914 would become the flashpoints of the First World War.
Such thumbnail sketches of the rise and fall of one of history’s greatest empires give little indication of the transformation of the world that took place around it. During the years between 1299 and the Ottoman collapse in 1922 the world changed as never before, shifting beyond recognition in a way that may well never be repeated. Such a claim might appear controversial in our present age of constant, miraculous human and technological selfreinvention, but is nonetheless worthy of argument. A brief outline of what happened during these six hundred years will give an indication.
In Europe the Renaissance would blossom, followed by the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, which in turn ushered in the age of steam, electricity and mechanical engines of all kinds. Spain, having discovered the New World, would reap untold riches in gold and silver from South America, an unearned fortune that would ironically bring about its economic ruin.31 Meanwhile Portugal, Great Britain, France and Holland would each carve out global empires. The wilderness of North America would see the British establish various coastal colonies; owing to inept administration, these colonies would soon cast out their masters. After becoming ‘united states’, their need for manpower would attract downtrodden emigrants from Europe, until America was on the verge of becoming the world’s greatest economy.
During this period (1299–1922), France would become Europe’s leading power for four hundred years, undergo an unprecedented Revolution, and then, under Napoleon, set about actually conquering those countries over which it had once merely held sway. All this, and so much more, took place during the long centuries when the Ottoman Empire ruled the Middle East, to a great extent unaffected by what it saw as these external irrelevancies of political and technological transformation.
This is not to imply that the Ottoman Empire remained isolationist. When Mehmed the Conqueror first set eyes on the walls and fortifications of Constantinople, he realised that they were impregnable, even to his army of over 160,000 soldiers. And a siege appeared to be out of the question. The city was built on an isthmus, surrounded by sea on three sides, its coastline protected by high walls. The land side was protected by a three-mile-long double ring of walls, protected by a moat. In all, the walls contained over fifty castles, many with twin towers straddling the few arched gates – the inner ring of walls being 40 feet high and 15 feet thick. Even starvation appeared out of the question, as the inner city contained freshwater wells, as well as gardens for growing produce. It appeared as if a stalemate was inevitable.
But Mehmed the Conqueror had been informed of a Hungarian cannon-founder named Orban, who had boasted that he could make a cannon ‘that could blast the walls of Babylon itself’. Mehmed commanded his men to bring Orban to the city of Adrianople, 150 miles to the west, where there was a large iron foundry. Here Orban was ordered to prove that he was as good as his word and build the largest cannon of which he was capable. It took Orban over three months, and the result was a wheeled cannon with a 27-foot muzzle, capable of firing cannonballs weighing 1,200 pounds over a distance of half a mile.
This monstrous weapon was named ‘the basilic’ (the king), and it would require sixty oxen to drag it to the walls of Constantinople, where it arrived on 11 April 1453. It was also accompanied by a number of smaller cannons. Mehmed II ordered that the ‘basilic’ and the other cannons be set up immediately opposite what he calculated was the weakest gate in the walls. He then ordered the cannons to be fired non-stop day in day out.
Orban objected that this would overheat the muzzles of the cannons, which were then liable to disintegrate under the power of their own recoil. Mehmed II was adamant, and a barrage was launched that would last continuously for six weeks. Fortunately, the ‘basilic’ took three hours to reload, but the smaller cannons proved less resilient, and Orban was killed when one of them exploded. By the end of May, the ‘basilic’ had opened only a small breach in the outer wall.
By now Mehmed II had lost patience. He ordered his men to charge through the breach in what appeared to be a suicidal assault. At the sight of the Ottoman soldiers, the Byzantines panicked, and tried to flee through a gate in the inner wall. In the midst of the mêlée, the Byzantines omitted to lock the gate behind them. The first Ottomans swarmed into the city itself, followed by wave after wave of their compatriots. The fall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453 is still seen as one of the most significant dates in European history: the ultimate end of any real Roman Empire. The word ‘real’ is necessary here, for as Voltaire pointed out the so-called Holy Roman Empire, which grew out of Charlemagne’s empire, was ‘neither Holy, Roman nor an Empire’.32
Initially, Venice was the state most affected by this event, as it had previously carried out most of its foreign trade with Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean, maintaining several strategic ports throughout the Aegean and the Peloponnese. Whilst the rest of Europe remained divided over what action to take, Venice had even sent its own fleet to relieve the siege of Constantinople; though this had barely entered the Aegean before news arrived of the fall of the city. Whereupon, in accordance with the ‘pragmatic’ policy adopted by Venice during this period, it decided to change sides.
Bartolomeo Marcello, the Venetian ambassador aboard the fleet, was ordered to sail on to Constantinople and negotiate a trade treaty with Mehmed II, choosing to overlook the fact that several hundred Venetians occupying the Venetian trading colony within Constantinople had been put to the sword by the Muslim invaders. Venice justified its change of policy to the rest of Italy by announcing: Siamo Veneziani, poi Cristiani – ‘We are Venetians, then Christians.’
Mehmed II received the new Venetian ambassador Marcello with the contempt he deserved, yet the sultan was also sufficiently versed in statecraft to realise the benefit of maintaining diplomatic relations with Italy’s major sea-trading nation. A treaty was signed, and to cement this new accord Venice chose to ‘loan’ to Mehmed II its greatest artist, Gentile Bellini, who was renowned for the realism and psychological penetration of his portraits. Mehmed II had no truck with the Muslim edict against creating images, and was glad to welcome Bellini to Constantinople. Indeed, despite Bellini’s understandable hesitancy, he and Mehmed II soon struck up a firm friendship: ‘unique in its intimacy’, according to a contemporary observer.
Mehmed II and Gentile both shared a deep interest in the knowledge and history of the Levant, as well as a love of the new sciences that were now beginning to emerge under the inspiration of the Renaissance. Bellini was given full rein to make sketches of life in the newly transformed Constantinople, as well as being commissioned to paint a portrait of Mehmed II himself. This conveys Mehmed seated in half-profile, wearing his large, white sultan’s turban, red kaftan and exotic fur shawl. There is no flattery in the depiction of Mehmed’s stern features, with their long nose and full brown beard. This is the face of a determined warrior, yet also a man of considerable culture and knowledge.
It was in these last two aspects that the cultural differences between Bellini and Mehmed II would become manifest. Mehmed II asked Bellini to create a painting of St John the Baptist (who was also renowned as a prophet in the Islamic faith). Mehmed II wished Bellini’s painting to depict the head of John the Baptist on a platter, when it was presented to the dancer Salome after she had engineered his beheading.
When Bellini duly presented his meticulously finished work to Mehmed II, the sultan examined it closely, and then drew Bellini’s attention to a detail in St John’s severed neck. What Bellini had painted was not anatomically correct. Bellini politely begged to differ; he had, after all, studied anatomy alongside the young Leonardo da Vinci. Mehmed II beckoned for his attendants to bring forth a slave, whom he ordered to be summarily beheaded. Mehmed then leaned forward, pointing out to the aghast Bellini the precise error in his painting. Within two years, Gentile had managed to persuade his friend Mehmed II to allow him to return to his native Italy.
The Ottomans appear to have originated in the Turkic heartlands of central Asia, moving west under the banner of the Mongols. As we have seen, following the split of the Mongol Empire into four main khanates in the mid-1200s, Il-Khanate had ruled the south-eastern region of the empire, occupying Persia and much of Anatolia (modern Turkey). When Mongol power had waned, this too had disintegrated into various semi-independent provinces. One of these was a small tribal territory to the east of the Sea of Marmara, stretching just over fifty miles long and fifteen miles wide. This was ruled by Osman I, who had been born in 1254.
Little is known of Osman I’s early life, except that he became ruler of his small territory in 1299, which is usually taken as the founding date of the Ottoman Empire. Osman is also known to have had a dream in which ‘he saw that a moon arose from the holy man’s breast and came to sink in his own breast’. When he asked his palace holy man what this meant, he was told that God had bequeathed the House of Osman with a great destiny: that it would one day rule over a vast empire with mountains and streams and running waters and gardens. This tale would become a driving myth for Osman and his people, who became known as Ottomans after their ruler. From this time on, Osman I gradually began extending his domain into neighbouring territory ruled by the Byzantine Empire.
Osman I’s dream was not only the founding myth of Ottoman national identity, but also played a leading role in the psychology of his descendant Mehmed II, who in 1444 ascended to the sultanate at the tender age of twelve, having scarcely finished his traditional Islamic education at the ancient city of Amasya.33 Despite being deposed by the Janissaries, the powerful crack troops who formed the sultan’s household guard, Mehmed II returned to rule in 1451. It says much of his determination and military skills that within two years he had taken Constantinople, as well as extending his empire’s territory well into the Balkans, Anatolia and the northern shores of the Black Sea.
Six years later, Mehmed II would begin building Topkapi Palace, his imperial residence in Constantinople.34 As imperial palaces go, this speaks volumes for the taste of its creator. Here there is none of the dwarfing grandeur of Roman imperial glory, or the overwhelming scale of Versailles. This is an almost homely palace. It is neither imposing from its exterior, nor belittling in its interior. Yet its situation is utterly impregnable. The grounds of the palace and its buildings occupy the narrow foreland that overlooks the Sea of Marmara to the right, the Bosphorus below, and the entrance to the Golden Horn to the left.
The walls that surround it are set at the crest of the steep rocky slopes high above the water, and thus have no need to appear hugely imposing. Inside the main gate, which serves as the entry from the city, the atmosphere is more like that of a university than a palace. Everything is on the human scale, from the comparatively small, well-proportioned buildings to the courtyards and shaded walkways. Fountains play in the gardens. Amidst one courtyard stands a square library building, across another is the modest treasury building.
Behind the walls that encircle the courtyards, there are small pools where the sultan’s wives could gather and bathe. And at the far end of the palace, overlooking the vista of the water far below, is a small marble enclave with a single marble seat, where the sultan could sit on his own, gazing down over the vista of the city and the Bosphorus to the shore of Asia.
On the left of the large, second courtyard is the largest building in the palace, the Harem. This housed the sultan’s living quarters, as well as those for his wives and concubines. One entrance to this building leads into the Divan, which is lined with the furnishings that now take its name. This was the council chamber where the sultan’s Grand Vizier and the other ministers of state would gather on their divans, to hold what were virtually cabinet meetings. High on one wall is a grille, behind which the sultan would sit unseen, watching as his ministers discussed the state business of the day. Afterwards, the sultan was liable to summon any minister to a personal audience, to account for what he had said during the Divan. These debates may have been informal (tea, cakes, or meals could be served), but the manner of discussion was both guarded and discreet. All dreaded a summons to meet the sultan afterwards.
Where wider law was concerned, the Ottomans were a classic example of Kriwaczek’s observation concerning the governing of subject people: this was best left as before, but with the new imperial administrators occupying the senior positions. As long as sufficient recruits were inducted into the local imperial army, taxes were gathered, and the annual ‘tribute’ sent to the Porte (central government administration) in Istanbul, there was little interference from their Ottoman masters. For the most part local courts operated according to local religious custom: Jews were tried by Jewish courts in accord with Talmudic law, Christians had their own courts that applied canon law, and the Muslim courts administered their own version of Sharia law. However, the sultan’s decrees were above all laws, and were to be obeyed without question.
There were, of course, exceptions to this pragmatic approach. In a number of conquered territories, the subject people were forcibly converted to Islam, while in others the subject people were ‘induced’ to convert, with rewards such as lower taxes, access to privileged employment, land ownership and so forth. In this way, many amongst the conquered people were converted. The aftermath of such mixed religious populations remains to this day – accounting for hostilities in such regions as the former Yugoslavia and Cyprus.
Mehmed II may have sought cultural advice from the likes of Venetians such as Bellini; but there is no doubting that the Ottomans were, in many aspects, quite the cultural equal of their European counterparts. Just two years after the conquest of Constantinople, Mehmed II set about building the Grand Bazaar, which remains to this day the largest and finest covered market in the world, containing more than sixty streets and 4,000 shops. At the same time, he embarked upon the Topkapi Palace. Yet the greatest was yet to come.
The Islamisation of Istanbul would reach its apogee under Suleiman the Magnificent, who was born in 1494, just thirteen years after the death of his only rival in greatness, Mehmed the Conqueror. Suleiman would become sultan at the age of twenty-six, and his reign would live up to his epithet. Suleiman was not only the longest serving sultan (forty-six years), but would rule over the Ottoman Empire at its height, expanding his territory until he ruled over 25 million people. (By comparison, the population of the entire continent of Europe during this period was 75 million.)
It was Suleiman the Magnificent who made the inspired choice of Mimar Sinan as his chief architect. Sinan would be responsible for the great and graceful mosques that are such a feature of Istanbul to this day. The Süleymaniye mosque, overlooking the Golden Horn and the Galata Bridge, with its superb squat dome and towering pinnacle minarets, makes an inimitable silhouette against the evening sky. Inside, its gracefully arched courtyard gives way to the ethereal hues, intricate calligraphy, and symmetrical designs of the stained glass windows that adorn the vast, domed interior. This is rightfully judged to be Sinan’s finest work in Istanbul. It is certainly a match for Michelangelo’s contemporary plans for St Peter’s in Rome. Sinan’s technique and architectural influence was so great that both the Taj Mahal in India and the tiled modifications of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem were heavily inspired by his work.
The Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, overlooking the entrance to the Golden Horn.
Other influential aspects of Ottoman culture include its cuisine, which would spread from Anatolia throughout the Empire. The variety and ingenuity of its mezze (hors d’oeuvres) remain central to restaurant menus all over the eastern Mediterranean. Other ingredients include aubergine, spit-roasted meats, honey-soaked pastries, and all manner of vegetable dishes. Most of these originated as Anatolian or Levantine peasant meals.
Indeed, the transmission of food, and our words to describe it, echo the spread of cultures. As the anthropologist Jared Diamond indicates, the passage from language to language of words describing animals or food often gives surprising insight into the evolution and spread of these items. Consider, for instance, the use of the word describing sheep, indicating the passage of its domestication. Sheep is ‘avis’ in Sanskrit, ‘owis’ in Greek, ‘ovis’ in Latin, ‘oveja’ in Spanish, ‘ovtsa’ in Russian, ‘avys’ in Lithuanian and ‘of in Irish. English uses the word ‘sheep’, but the ancient root is preserved in the word ‘ewe’.
This leads us to a further historical distinction that can be indicated by language. For example, when William of Normandy took over England in 1066, his army included many French knights, who were rewarded with estates taken from their previous Anglo-Saxon lords. The language spoken at the dinner table was French, while the words used by the lowly servants and cooks remained Anglo-Saxon. Evidence of this remains in the names of animals, and the cooked meat dishes that they provide. Pigs become pork (French: pore), sheep becomes mutton (mouton), cows become beef (boeuf), and so forth.
A host of such deep linguistic divisions between the coloniser and the colonised can be found to this day in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire. Two common examples will suffice. What is called kebab in Turkish is insistently named souvlaki in Greek. And when asking for a small cup of thick Middle Eastern coffee, one orders Greek coffee in Greece, and Turkish coffee in Turkey.
Another difference in Ottoman culture was noted in 1717 by Lady Mary Montagu, wife of the British ambassador. She observed that the local women of all classes practised ‘ingrafting’, a process that involved piercing the skin of children with a needle, which had been infected with a tiny amount of smallpox. After a mild bout of smallpox, the child would then be protected from this disfiguring and often fatal disease for life.
At the time, smallpox was one of the greatest medical scourges. According to Voltaire, 60 per cent of the world population were liable to catch this disease, causing a death rate of 20 per cent. The disease was spread via the lungs; and through the centuries none were spared, regardless of class or personal cleanliness. It is now known that Pharaoh Ramesses V had died of this disease as early as the twelfth century BC. Elizabeth I of England had suffered from it, as had Mozart and George Washington. And its effect on the Aztecs would lead to it being described by Dr Edward Jenner as ‘the most dreadful scourge of the human species’.
When Lady Mary Montagu returned to England her ‘ingrafting’ idea was not widely accepted, almost certainly because she was a woman and of no medical qualification. Not until 1796 would Jenner himself introduce the idea of ‘ingrafting’ with cowpox, rather than smallpox itself. The idea of vaccination was born, and the scourge of smallpox all but eliminated. Few realised, then as now, that this originated from an Ottoman invention.35
By now the Ottoman Empire was at the height of its power, with territory stretching from the Horn of Africa to Algeria. From the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottomans had virtual control over the whole Mediterranean. This was largely due to a pirate of Albanian descent known as Barbarossa (Red Beard), who had set up his headquarters in Algiers. When the Ottoman army overran the city, it was soon agreed that Barbarossa should remain in charge. This suited both sides. Barbarossa was declared Admiral of the Fleet, and led his considerable naval force to a resounding victory over the combined Christian European navy at Preveza (off western Greece) in 1539.
Algiers would continue as a centre of piracy for centuries to come, attacking ships of all Christian nations. As had happened to Julius Caesar in Ancient Roman times, pirates took important captives hostage, only releasing them from their jail in Algiers when a ransom had been paid. Others were simply sold off as slaves. An indication of the scale of such piracy can be seen from the geographical range of their activities. ‘Barbary Pirates’, as they became known, seized hostages or slaves from places as far afield as West Africa, Cornwall and Iceland.
Celebrated figures who suffered this fate range from the early Renaissance artist Filippo Lippi (who bought his release by selling skilled portraits of his captors), to the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (who would go on to write Don Quixote after his release). But the most renowned of their captives would be the twenty-year-old Aimée de Rivéry, a cousin of Napoleon’s wife Josephine, who was taken from a French ship in the Atlantic. The Bey of Algiers quickly realised the high value of such a beautiful white virgin and, in order to gain favour with the Sultan Abdul Hamid I, sent her to Istanbul so that she could be taken into his harem.
It is said that the sultan became so enamoured of Aimée that she was appointed his chief wife, taking on the name Valide Sultan Naksidil. A dominant and well-educated woman, she persuaded her husband to introduce a number of long-overdue reforms, and encouraged close diplomatic ties with France. Doubts have been cast on this story, and although some aspects of it ring hollow, there is no doubting the existence of Valide Sultan Naksidil and her beneficial influence over the sultan.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the power as well as the calibre of the Ottoman sultans had begun to wane. Much of this can be attributed to a uniquely Ottoman tradition known as the kafes (cage), which was originally introduced on humanitarian grounds. Prior to the seventeenth century, when the sultan died and his son succeeded, it was the practice for all his brothers to be executed immediately, in order to avoid any sibling claims to the sultanate. Sultan Ahmed I, who acceded to the throne in 1603, decreed an end to this barbaric practice. Instead of having his brother murdered, he had him confined to the kafes. Here he was otherwise granted every comfort, including his harem of wives.
This practice would have a number of unintended consequences. When Murad IV died in 1640, he was succeeded by his brother, who became Ibrahim I. By this stage, the new sultan had spent twenty-two years confined in the kafes. It is easy to see why he soon became known as Ibrahim the Mad. Utterly ignorant of political practice and protocol, as well as being deprived of the social graces expected of the occupant of the Topkapi Palace, he spent his days frolicking with his harem in the palace pool. When he heard a rumour that one of his wives had been unfaithful to him, he ordered all 280 members of his harem to be tied up in sacks and thrown from a ship into the Bosphorus. According to legend, one of them was rescued by a passing French ship, and ended up living in Paris, where she earned a fortune after her memoirs became a best-seller.
Such degenerate behaviour and erratic decision-making by successive sultans led to a considerable weakening of the Ottoman Empire, and it was now that the European powers began scheming to divide amongst themselves the vast territory of ‘the sick old man of Europe’. In 1914, the Ottoman Empire was persuaded to join on the German side in the First World War. By now Turkey and the provinces of its empire were beginning to fall apart. Rumours spread of various groups bidding for power.
The population of Anatolia contained, as it does to this day, a rich blend of nationalities. These were remnants of people who had, over the centuries, conquered or defended the country, as well as people from all over the Ottoman Empire. As such, they included a wide variety of Turkic people (who originated from central Asia), Mongols, Kurds, Armenians – as well as people of Slavic, Caucasian, Greek and Albanian stock.
The notorious Armenian Massacre, which took place in 1915, was provoked by the central government’s paranoia concerning this Christian group, or others, taking over the country. In fact, by now most racial groups were partially, if not fully integrated – there were even Armenians who had risen to ministerial level, running such vital institutions as the national mint, the water board and munitions production. Over the coming years of the war, the campaign against the Armenians led to mass deportation and indeed genocide. The very word was coined to describe what had taken place, an event that led to the death of over 1,000,000 people.
In 1918, the Ottoman Empire found itself on the losing side of the war; and at the Treaty of Versailles, Turkey was stripped of its colonial possessions. Consequently, the Greeks launched an opportunistic invasion into the heartland of Anatolia, but were eventually driven back by the skilled General Mustafa Kemal, who had defeated the allies at Gallipoli. In the ensuing confusion, the port city of Smyrna (now Izmir) was burned and as many as 100,000 fleeing Greeks may have lost their lives. A few months later, the last sultan, Mehmed IV, abdicated.
Within months, General Mustafa Kemal took power, naming himself Atatürk (‘father of the Turkish people’), and began introducing a widespread programme of reforms intended to ‘Europeanise’ the supposedly backward country. These included such measures as banning the fez for men, and the veil for women; transposing the Turkish language from Arabic to European script; an attempt to establish parliamentary democracy; as well as abolishing Sharia law and curtailing the power of the religious authorities, especially with regard to education. Almost a century later, disputes have begun to arise once more over most of these reforms, and now it is the Kurds who have become the scapegoats.
Sequence
The Ottoman Empire may be viewed as the last of the old-style empires. As we have seen, initially the world’s great empires had usually been initiated by the urge to conquest. (Indeed, in the case of the Mongol Empire, arguably this appears to have been the beginning and the end of the entire project.) Other, more civilising, or more exploitative aspects, came in the wake of conquest.
Yet since the end of the fifteenth century, empire building had undergone a subtle sea change. In both senses of the words: from that time on the sea would play a major role in empire; and change, in the form of historical transformation, or ‘advancement’, would become a feature excelling even that of Roman times. The Spanish conquest of the New World was almost as domineering as the Mongol Empire, yet in its wake came the extraction of great wealth in the form of gold and silver. The Portuguese, on the other hand, had rounded the Cape of Good Hope in the search of trade. They intended to circumvent the Silk Route to the East, and their success bankrupted the Venetians, the previous main beneficiaries of the trade in valuable oriental spices such as nutmeg, pepper, cinnamon and ginger.36
From now on trade would often be the initial inspiration, rather than the secondary consequence, of empire-building. From now on, it would be the age of growing European empires. Europe had become a cockpit of competing nation states. Wars were won and lost, but states survived, more or less intact. No one would conquer the entire continent of Europe until Napoleon. European civilisation advanced, spurred on by such internecine conflicts. In the process, warring European states developed ever more ingenious military inventions, which in turn led to a scientific revolution. (Both Leonardo and Galileo aspired to success as military engineers: Galileo’s modified telescope – proposed to the Venetians as a means of advanced warning of any approaching enemy fleet, would only become a revolutionary scientific instrument the moment Galileo raised it to the night sky.)
Meanwhile the rest of the world remained largely untouched by such technical progress, until the Spanish and the Portuguese initiated a new way forward. Other nations on the European landmass soon followed suit. The Dutch, the English, the French . . . all were soon sailing the seven seas in search of trade, with territorial conquest following in its wake. The latter was sometimes prompted by local objections to these interloper traders, but increasingly by the old imperial urge to conquest, in this case prompted more by greed and the wish to keep out other European competitors, rather than the wish to dominate or ‘civilise’.
Contrast this with what was happening on the symmetrically opposite side of the Eurasian land mass: China remained undivided and isolated, while its offshore counterpart to Britain (namely Japan), maintained a similar policy of isolation and inwardness. Meanwhile the European nations went on ‘discovering’ the rest of the world, rapidly claiming its territories as their ‘empires’. The greatest of these would become ‘the empire on which the sun never set’ – namely, the British Empire. This was literally true: no matter how the globe spun, the sun was always shining on at least one part of this far-flung empire.
On the other hand, it did contain the implicit suggestion that the sun would never set on such an empire. As we have seen, from the outset, this has been a delusion of all great empires. What might be called the Ozymandias syndrome has persisted in the modern era: one of the few reliable lessons of history, its traces can be seen in Hitler’s ‘Thousand Year Reich’ as well as the notion of a permanent ‘American hegemony’.
31 Oversupply of gold led to inflation and devaluation. Philip II chose to build up an army, borrowing against further gold. When the value and inflow of gold declined – owing to oversupply, piracy and corruption – Philip was forced to default on his debts no less than four times during the second half of the sixteenth century. This severely limited Spain’s ability to borrow, maintain its army, or even properly run its colonies. The expulsion of the Jews in 1492, with all their financial expertise, had hardly helped matters.
Similar national catastrophes have continued to recur through the ensuing centuries, especially following the sudden discovery of an easily exploitable commodity such as oil. Large quantities of guaranteed income flow directly to various senior government officials, who take their cut on this income. The guaranteed income also helps to keep taxes low, which increases government popularity. However, little money is used, as in direct taxation, for the specific purposes for which it was raised, such as infrastructure maintenance, building up new industries and so forth. Corruption becomes endemic, the economy stagnates, and huge fortunes accrue to the ruling elite.
32 Ironically, the Byzantine Empire, which was considered secondary in every sense to the original Roman Empire, lasted twice as long as its illustrious predecessor.
33 According to the early Greek geographer, Strabo, this name derives from it once having been the home of the legendary female warriors known as the Amazons.
34 The ancient name, derived from the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, continued to be used. As to a certain extent did the city’s even more ancient name Byzantium. Only gradually over the years would the present name Istanbul come into use. There are two conflicting derivations of this name. One claims that Istanbul is a corruption of the Greek phrase ‘eis sten polin’ (meaning ‘in the city’). However, according to Turkish sources, the name derives from ‘Islam bol’ (Turkish for ‘plenty of Islam’).
35 In fact, there is evidence that this practice may have been widespread in other parts of Asia, as well as Africa. As early as 1716, the New England puritan minister, Cotton Mather, observed his slave Onesimus administering this procedure. The minister would later put it to good use during an outbreak of smallpox in Boston. Ironically this pioneer scientist was the same Cotton Mather who had previously played a leading role in the Salem witch trials.
36 Arguably the aim of Columbus was to find a new trade route to Cathay. Similarly, the early conquistadores had been inspired by the myth of El Dorado (The Land of Gold) as much as conquest.