B. Granville Baker

Islam—And Christianity—Turks and the law of the Prophet—Their relations to the Sultan—Bajazet II and his army—Slavs go over to Islam—The rebellion of Djem—Matthias Corvinus—The growth of Western culture—Jews expelled from Spain—Kemal-Reis and Turkish sea-power—Bajazet and his sons—The revolt of Selim—Selim kills his brothers—Selim defeats Shah Ismail—Selim and his Grand Vizier—Selim defeats the Mamelukes—The death of Selim—Solyman the Great—Contemporary history—The conquest of Rhodes—The invasion of Hungary—Buda-Pesth surrenders—The first siege of Vienna—Sea victories of Barbarossa—Solyman and Roxalana—Solyman’s death.

RELIGION affects the private life of the Turk as also the life of the body politic more than is the case among the followers of other creeds, and Islam is singularly adapted to the sons of Othman, or rather has made them what they are. Mohammed assumed both spiritual and temporal power in the name of a god, who thrones high above the humble faithful, who is so far concerned in each believer that he arranges every detail of his life long before the poor mortal enters upon it. There is no mercy, no departure from the course marked out, no hope of propitiating a stern deity, aloof and vengeful, by prayer and intercession; Islam—obedience, submission. Allah is not often moved by loving-kindness, but anger may rouse him to punish by the hand of his “shadow on earth,” the Caliph-Sultan. He is particularly easily incensed against non-believers, and through his Prophet has promised all happiness after death to those to combat unbelief, and by war and rapine, murder and outrage, proclaim the fact that “La ilaha illa ’Uah!”

The Gate of Adrianople Through this gate, EdirnÉ Kapoo, as the Turks call it, the Sultan’s army marched out to war; through it his soldiery, defeated, sick, wounded, returned in small parties from the battlefields.
The Gate of Adrianople
Through this gate, EdirnÉ Kapoo, as the Turks call it, the Sultan’s army marched out to war; through it his soldiery, defeated, sick, wounded, returned in small parties from the battlefields.

It is not surprising to find that, whatever its theory, in practice Islam discouraged any serious regard for human life, whether a man’s own or the life of his neighbour. It also strengthened the ruler’s hands, for he was the voice of Allah on earth, and therefore privileged to take life without trial, inquiry, or any formality. Of this privilege Sultans have availed themselves freely, though it was not bien vue to kill more than a thousand in a day. For political reasons Mohammedan subjects were less exposed to violence, whereas Christians became more and more subject to ill-treatment as Christianity gained strength and helped to build up Empires strong enough to check the flowing tide of Islam.

Islam acted as an intellectual stimulus on its first adherents, the poetic-minded Arabs, though possibly it did not assume its present rigidity when they were a ruling power in Asia, Africa, and Southern Europe. I think it likely that the Arabs did not allow the strict letter of the law to cramp their intellectual development, but their converts, the Turks, a race devoid of the power of imagination, proved incapable of interpreting the “Book” in a liberal spirit even if it were possible, for the Koran, with all its contradictions, contains hard-and-fast dogma, definite rules to regulate conduct, and threatens those who depart from its teachings by but a hand’s-breadth with all the pains of Eternal Damnation. Gautama, the Prince, retired into seclusion, and by the beauty of a soul trained to deep meditation became Buddha; Christ came to earth and suffered all indignities and pains at the hands of men, rather than assert the power of His Godhead by offering political opposition to those who spurned His teachings: “His kingdom is not of this world.” After the awful day on Calvary none of the temporal powers of the day attached any further importance to His sayings, nor to the small band of disciples who went out into the outer darkness of the world carrying with them the first flickerings of a light which should illumine the earth and draw from mortals the best that is in them. Buddha lived alone in deep seclusion, renouncing all earthly vanities, and his few disciples went abroad poor and homeless searching for the souls of men. Mohammed drew men to him by promises of glory and honour on this earth, ease and luxury in the Beyond. Christianity bids you forgive your enemies; Mohammed led his followers to battle against the unbelievers, conquered their cities, and called those places holy when he had fixed the strongholds of his militant faith. Mohammed died in the possession of great power, spiritual and temporal, enjoining his descendants to maintain and increase it by the sword. The realm thus founded was inherited by the Caliphs, but they in time became enfeebled and hard pressed by their enemies, till first the temporal then spiritual power went to a race of rulers incapable and disinclined to widen the intellectual horizon of their subjects, the House of Othman. So the sovereign’s power was absolute, in his hands were life and death, all property but that applied to pious purposes came from him and by him could be retaken. The strict adherence to religious observances had its beneficial effects, for the laws that regulate the conduct, that prescribe for each hour of the day, allowed of no expansion and could not openly be disregarded, therefore the life of the people, at least to outward appearance, was clean and decorous. Mollahs and imams never gained the ascendancy over the minds of men which Christian priests and holy men of Buddhism have from time to time acquired; they played an unimportant part, acting rather as precentors at the worship of Allah in the mosques, though as preachers they could incite the fierce passions of a people untrained to independent thought. From time to time the Sultan would think fit to consult the mufti, the head priest, as to the advisability of some political measure, and that official generally found it convenient to agree, as his appointment was in the sovereign’s gift and could be recalled by him.

Under the law, administered by the Sultan, the Turks increased in numbers, extended their possession, carved a large Empire out of the ruins of former civilizations, and left unsought those Elysian fields wherein the intellect of a nation gains those victories that make for stability, the fields of progress, scientific, literary, artistic. Under the law they built up their body politic, each member sincerely, blindly devoted to the dynasty of Othman, however many corpses of its scions might pave a Sultan’s upward path to power. They swept over Asia Minor carrying their few belongings with them, nomads ever, expressing even in their poor attempt at imagery no other spirit than that of the houseless wanderer: The edifice of state is but a tent, its supporting poles the viziers, judges, treasurers, and secretaries of state. Its entrance, the Sublime Porte, is likened to curtained opening, and curtains rather than doors still screen the latticed chambers of many a present-day Turkish harem. The provinces they conquered were distributed among the fighting men as military fiefs and called Sanjaks, banners, remaining purely military organizations until more stable conditions led to the raising of a standing army; and civil officials always looked to their sovereign for guidance in the smallest matters as they had looked to him for leadership in the field.

Thus equipped the sons of Othman set out for conquest, and in one respect at least the records of those early days show signs of great capacity, though always the output of one active mind, not resulting from the reasoned growth of a collective national intelligence.

Mohammed the Conqueror had established the Ottoman Empire in Europe by means of a well-trained, Koran-disciplined army, his successor Bajazet II increased and strengthened it. Great attention was paid to all matters of artillery and military engineering, in which the Turks of those days outshone all other nations, and which made the hastily levied undisciplined armies of the West, the bands of hired condottieri, or enthusiastic swarms of Christian knights, go under before the sword of Othman. The conquered provinces provided recruits for the corps of Janissaries. In those days, too, the Turkish armies were more mobile and better found than even that which Charles VII of France raised in 1445, the first standing army of the West; supplies were well organized and transport effected by beasts of burden, not by carts which depend upon good roads. So Bajazet inherited a great Empire, won by the sword of a people in arms and governed by warriors devoted to his House, and over whom the Sultan had complete control; they could not rise above their fellows, for according to the law all Moslems are equal under the Caliph, and no ruling caste rose to defy the power of the sovereign or force him to grant concessions. Fresh blood was added to this homogeneous body politic by the voluntary desertion of Christians from the conquered provinces to Islam: Croats, Albanians, Bosniaks, Russians, even Scotsmen, adventurers mostly, and among the fiercest followers of the Prophet. Many of these rose to high office.

The reign of Bajazet II began with civil war, a not unusual occurrence, for Prince Djem, his brother, laid claim to the throne. But Bajazet vanquished his brother’s army, and Djem consoled himself by a visit to Mecca and Medina, which makes for holiness and raises a Moslem in the estimation of his fellows. Building on this Djem made further attempts to displace Bajazet, and went to the Knights of Rhodes to enlist their sympathies. These nobles kept the Prince a prisoner and made him a source of income from the Sultan by threatening to set him at large again. Djem finally escaped from Rhodes and sought help elsewhere, in Western Europe, but met with little encouragement, and was finally treacherously murdered by a servant of the Pope, bribed by Bajazet.

In the meantime Bajazet felt the need for expansion—there were still worlds to conquer and he was minded to acquire a few. His efforts on land were not particularly successful, he had at least one strong man against him, Matthias Corvinus, who had restored order in Hungary and was thus enabled to check the encroachments of Islam. There were other Powers of some importance in Europe at the time: the Medici, under whom the glories of Italian art, inspired by ancient Byzant, were preparing the way for enfranchised thought; and in Germany Meister Gutenberg had set up his printing-press. All glory to that great man whose gentle craft made the Reformation possible. “Buchstaben,” beech staves, for the selfish beech tree, which allows no growth under its spreading branches, found the wood out of which were cut those first strong Gothic letters. Laboriously pieced together those staves grew into sentences, and in time the first Bible, printed and bound in solid calf-skin, was given to the world. Luther perused it, studied it, absorbed it, and with it filled his soul till his voice arose above the jealousies of Papal Medicis and rang out over all the earth, is ringing still wherever the free-born praise their Creator and glorify His works. Even here it resounds, and strongly, since Christian men and women are aiding the sick and wounded of an alien race, a hostile creed, and are bringing them back from those dark depths where they were cast by their own kin, by those whose lives are overshadowed by rigid Islam. Ferdinand the Catholic had married Isabella of Castile, and thus brought the Kingdoms of Spain under one sceptre. They expelled the Jews from Spain to the “greater glory of God”; the descendants of those Jews now inhabit Saloniki and still speak Spanish, though they write it in Hebrew characters. John II of Portugal impoverished his country by the same method at the same time, though he derived some temporary advantage by taxing the exiled children of Israel heavily while they passed through his country on their way to more congenial surroundings. Macchiavelli was born in that era, and was composing his work on the ideal Prince when Bajazet was compassing the death of his brother Djem. Columbus arose to widen the world’s horizon, and Vasco da Gama’s ships felt their way cautiously round the Cape of Storms to India. But greatest of all these was Leonardo da Vinci, who rescued fragments of the art of old Byzant and breathed into it the life that created all the glories of the Renaissance. Those were brave days, my masters, when the world was young and strong, when art and literature revived, free from the trammels of warped classicism and showed mankind what beauty is and where and how it may be found and duly reverenced.

But Bajazet had no ideas beyond conquest. His campaign on land being unattended by the great success his predecessors had prepared him for, he turned to seaward and did his best to cripple rising Western Europe. A slave presented to his father was the instrument to hand, Kemal-Reis, the former name meaning “Perfection,” given him by the Sultan because of his great beauty. In constant sea war against Venice and the other states by the Mediterranean Sea, Kemal-Reis laid the foundations of Turkish sea power.

Bajazet sought to extend his power to Egypt, but was baffled by the Mamelukes, a body of militant nobility superior in training and “morale” to anything the Othmans could muster. This and other matters cast clouds over the last days of Sultan Bajazet. Dissensions arose among his sons, Korkoud, Achmet, and Selim, Governor of Trebizond, who even threatened his father with war and marched against him to Adrianople. Thereupon Selim was appointed Governor of Semendria, an old Roman settlement in modern Servia, now called Smederovo. But Korkoud and Achmet had revolted in Asia Minor, and by weakening Ottoman rule there invited the Shias, a heretic sect of Islam according to the Sunnis to which the Turks belong, under the Persian Prince, Shah Ismail, to ravage the eastern marches of the Empire. Selim was not content for long, and rose against his father a second time, but was beaten at Adrianople, that fateful city, and was carried from the field to safety by his swift horse Karaboulot, the Black Cloud. He turned to the Khan of the Crimea for assistance, and returning to the attack with a Tartar army forced his way into Constantinople and made Bajazet abdicate in his favour. Turbulent citizens, unruly Janissaries and Spahis gave weight to Selim’s demands. So Bajazet retired to Demotika for his remaining days. Violence brought him to the throne, by violence his son displaced him, and Selim reigned in his stead as Sultan, Caliph of the Faithful, the Shadow of God on Earth.

Selim I’s reign was short, from 1512-1520, but it showed him a man of high ability in politics and war, and even well disposed towards the gentler side of life, for he encouraged literature. He found himself under the painful necessity of having his brother Korkoud strangled, but redeemed this unbrotherliness by weeping over the corpse and by ordering court mourning for three whole days. After that he proceeded to the business of securing his hold on the Empire by marching against his other brother Achmet. Achmet was defeated, taken, and slain, but privileged to burial by the side of Korkoud. Then Selim, a pious Moslem, turned to the matter of his people’s spiritual welfare and discovered to his horror that large numbers of them held the heretic tenets of the Shias. This had to be stopped, so a general massacre of these misguided ones, ferreted out by Selim’s excellent secret police, was arranged. The Osmanli celebrated their St. Bartholomew’s Night by the slaughter of some forty thousand men, women, and children; thirty thousand others were spared, but spent the remainder of their days in perpetual imprisonment.

This annoyed Shah Ismail of Persia, and he made ready for war; the Turks were yet readier, and an army of some hundred and forty thousand men marched through Kurdistan upon Tabriz, then capital of Persia. They met with great hardships, which led to discontent among the Janissaries, whom Selim sought to comfort with quotations from the Persian poets. However, the two armies soon came to business, and met in battle in the Valley of Calderan, where the army of Selim beat that of Shah Ismail, some hundred and twenty thousand, of whom eighty thousand were horsemen, though suffering serious losses. Selim had all the captives killed excepting the women and children, among whom was the Shah’s favourite wife, who had come out to encourage her husband to the last. Selim levied tribute on Tabriz and pursued his march to Karabagh, but the severity of winter, causing discontent among his troops, obliged him to retrace his steps. This campaign added Diarbekr and Kurdistan to the Ottoman Empire. Trouble then arose in the south, the army of observation in Syria reporting that Egypt was inclined to be dangerous. Selim held a council of war to discuss the matter, and was so pleased with the advice of one Mohammed, a Secretary of State, that he appointed him Grand Vizier on the spot. Mohammed modestly declined, whereupon the Sultan bastinadoed him into submission with his own heavy hand. Ambassadors were sent to Kanson-Ghauri, Sultan of Egypt, but were treated with insults and violence, so Selim marched south and fought a battle at Aleppo, in which the Turks gained their first victory over the Mamelukes, and Sultan Kanson-Ghauri died on his flight to Egypt. Selim then added Aleppo, Damascus, and Jerusalem to his possessions, again defeated the Mamelukes and occupied Cairo. Of the remaining Mamelukes eight hundred submitted on Selim’s promise of pardon, and were all beheaded; incidentally the population of Cairo was massacred.

Peace ensured by these simple methods, Selim proceeded to the chief mosque of Cairo, offered up praise and thanksgiving to Allah for giving him the victory, and set about the annexation of Egypt, styling himself “Protector of the Holy Cities of Arabia,” the title of the Mameluke Sultans. This greatly enhanced Selim’s dignity among his people, for up to now the Caliphate had been held by the descendants of the House of Abbas in Egypt. Thus Selim acquired the sacred standard, sword, and mantle of the Prophet.

On Selim’s return to Constantinople he set about rebuilding his navy, for the presence of the Knights of Rhodes on the seaway to Egypt displeased him, but before he could accomplish the task of subduing them death overtook him at the place near Adrianople where he had formerly met his father in battle. Selim’s constant companion, Hasandshan, was just reading to the dying Sultan the verse from the Koran: “The word of the Almighty is salvation,” when Selim’s fierce career came to its close.

Upon this picturesque ruffian, this embodiment of all Turkish virtues and defects, followed one who may rank among the greatest of all the sons of Othman, a man of very different mind, stately Solyman, called the Great.

This monarch’s reign, from 1520-1566, fell into a great age for Europe, for among his contemporaries were some of those whose names shed lustre on the pages of history. Charles V, that gloomy monarch, ruled over half the known world, his Empire extending over the continent discovered by Columbus, where Cortez added Mexico to fill the imperial coffers, and Pizarro’s daring march across the Andes brought untold wealth to the Holy Roman Empire, “Deutscher Nation,” though Peru and its mild-mannered people suffered worse horrors than attended even the triumphal progress of the Turkish armies. Discord there was in Western Europe, too, for Luther had nailed his theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517, and thirteen years later the Protestants had made public confession of their faith at Augsburg, to be followed in 1540 by Paul III’s sanction of the Jesuits and their order, thus sowing the seeds of that great war which laid Western Europe at the mercy of the encroaching Turks, and made smooth their way to power. In England Henry VIII was King, and bickering with his chivalrous neighbour, Francis I of France.

Solyman had early learnt the art of government as Viceroy of Constantinople during his father’s campaigns in Persia; then, during the war in Egypt, he governed Adrianople, and succeeded at the age of twenty-six.

Solyman inherited his father’s forethought and military skill, and, following the traditions of his House, led a fine army westward into Christendom. By the end of 1521 he had captured Belgrade, and made it a strong outpost of advancing Islam. Unlike his father, he was merciful; after long, fierce fighting in the second year of his reign, he forced the Knights of Rhodes to surrender, but promised their gallant commander, de Lisle Adam, that no churches would be desecrated, no children driven into slavery. These promises he kept, and the Knights left the island with all the honours of war, conveying their wives and families away unmolested, while the inhabitants became subjects of the Sultan; moreover, Solyman exacted no tribute for five years.

After a few short years of peace, which Solyman used for reforms in the administration, the disturbed state of Europe drew Turkey into her troubles. The Janissaries had already been grumbling about the Sultan’s inaction, and had been sharply brought to order. Their heart’s desire, war and booty, was not long in coming to them, for Solyman decided to invade Hungary, urged by King Francis of France, who knew that such an event would annoy Charles V and distract that Emperor’s attention from the French King’s designs on Italy. With one hundred thousand men and three hundred cannon, Solyman set out at the head of his well-found army to meet the forces which Louis, King of Hungary, had gathered together to protect his country from invasion. The result was as might have been expected. Despite great bravery and devotion, because of their faulty organization and discipline, the Hungarian army was defeated at Mohacz in August, 1526; King Louis fell, eight bishops, and a great number of Magyar nobles, and with them some twenty-four thousand men. Buda-Pesth submitted to the Turks, the road to Vienna lay open, and Solyman’s victorious army carried fire and sword into the Crown lands of the House of Habsburg. Vienna trembled, but the Turks did not attempt a siege of that city and were content to return the way they came, heavy laden with plunder, carrying away one hundred thousand Christians—men, women, and children—into slavery. After a short absence in Asia Minor, Solyman felt called to Hungary again; civil war had broken out over the succession to the throne, and Solyman thought fit to hear the appeal of Zapolya, a native noble, claimant to the throne, for help against the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, brother of the Emperor.

The Mosque of Suleiman and the Tower of the War Office Seen from the height where stands the wireless telegraphy station.
The Mosque of Suleiman and the Tower of the War Office
Seen from the height where stands the wireless telegraphy station.

A yet greater army gathered together at Constantinople, two hundred and fifty thousand men with three hundred cannon, and, led by Solyman, appeared before Buda-Pesth in September, 1529; the town again surrendered, after a siege of six days, and Zapolya was solemnly installed as king over the people which Arpad had led out of the East, which Stephen the Saint had brought over to Christianity, and whose iron crown now pressed upon the brow of a vassal to the Sultan. Zapolya marched with his followers in the train of Solyman, his master, to Vienna. Like the storms of autumn equinox, the Akindji tore over the fair fields of Lower Austria and surged up against the defences of Vienna, led by Michael Oglou, descendant of Michael of the Peaked Beard, who had fought by the side of the first Othman. The main army followed the swarms of Akindji, and drew a circle of camps around Vienna, which was defended by low walls and contained a garrison of only sixteen thousand men. The capital of the Holy Roman Empire was in danger, and King Ferdinand, in his distress, appealed to his brother, the Emperor, for assistance; but none came, for the German princes were quarrelling about religious matters, while Vienna suffered. The city held out under its brave defender, Count Salm, through days and nights of storm and stress, till Solyman gave up the attempt and withdrew on the day on which Count Salm died of his wounds. Before leaving the outskirts of Vienna the Turks burnt what they could not remove, slaughtered their Christian prisoners or threw them living into the flames, and went away into the East, leaving desolation in their wake.

Solyman’s pride was deeply wounded by the rebuff before Vienna, and even the conquest of a large part of Armenia, of Mesopotamia, and Bagdad failed to comfort him, so he readily took the excuse of interfering with the West again when Zapolya died, and the question of Hungarian succession rearose. Throughout the war the Turkish arms, though worsted now and then, prevailed over the Western armies, and Austria was forced to enter into a treaty with the Porte and to pay tribute, while nearly all Hungary and Transylvania came under Turkish domination. To all these successes came the victories won by Solyman’s admiral, Khairreddin-Barbarossa, in the Mediterranean Sea. He defeated the Spaniards and drove the Arab pirates (himself a former pirate) of the north of Africa back to their hiding-places, sought them out there and made them subjects of the Sultan. He pillaged the coast of the Adriatic and sacked Italian towns, and with inferior numbers defeated the naval forces of the Pope, Venice, and the Emperor off Prevesa in 1538.

Solyman went out to meet Khairreddin’s successor, PialÉ, a Croat by birth, when the latter made his triumphal entry into the Golden Horn, but the Sultan’s brow was clouded, for trouble had sought him out. Within the Seraglio walls, in the halls of Solyman the Magnificent, stalked Tragedy, called in by Jealousy. A fair Russian girl had captured the Sultan’s heart, Sultana Roxalana, or Khourrem (the Joyous One), as the Turks called her, and her ambitions for Selim, her son, led her to fill her husband’s mind with suspicion. Mustapha, his elder son by a Circassian, a handsome youth and highly gifted, Governor of Carmania, was accused of plotting against his father. Mustapha was ordered to enter the Sultan’s presence alone, and Solyman, looking on from an inner chamber, saw seven mute executioners carry out his command to strangle his son with the bowstring. Thus the sword of Othman, the mantle of the Prophet, came to the son of Roxalana, to Selim the Sot.

Solyman died while conducting the siege of Szigath, on the night before the gallant defender of that place, Zriny, fell in a desperate last sortie. The news of his death was kept from his army till it had returned to the neighbourhood of Belgrade. Here, on the outskirts of a dense forest, when the setting sun threw long shadows out towards the east, the imams announced the Sultan’s death, and great wailings of lamentation re-echoed among the giant trees and set the leaves trembling in sympathy with an Empire’s grief. Solyman was buried near the mosque he built, round which to-day refugees, sick and wounded soldiers from the battlefields, are gathered together, patient sons of Islam awaiting their fate.