Ibrahim was a Christian of base extraction, the son of a Greek sailor of Parga.7 He was born in 1494.8 In his childhood he was captured by Turkish corsairs.9 It would seem that he was first sold to a widow of Magnesia, who clothed him well and had him well educated, and especially trained to perform upon a musical instrument resembling the violin, which he learned to play beautifully.10
Whether it was on one of his expeditions to Asia Minor that Suleiman, son of the reigning monarch Selim I, met Ibrahim and was won by his charm and his musical ability, or whether Ibrahim was taken to Constantinople and there sold to the prince, cannot be determined from conflicting reports, but the fact that Ibrahim became Suleiman’s property is incontestable.11
Ibrahim never forgot his origin or his family. In 1527 his father came to Constantinople to visit him, and later he had his mother and his two brothers at the Palace.12 He was able to help his father substantially, giving him a sandjak or governorship.13 Of course Ibrahim adopted Islam, else there were no story to tell, for a Christian could have had no career in Turkey in that day.
Baudier says that the boy Ibrahim was carried to Constantinople by “them which exact the tribute of Christian Children.” This tribute of Christian children had been levied since the reign of Orkhan (1326–1361) and was the material of which the redoubtable army of janissaries was formed. These children, separated from their own countries and their families, and practically always converted to Islam, were for the most part trained in military camps and forbidden to marry. Therefore they had no interest except in war, and no loyalty except to the sultan. Thus they developed into the finest military machine the world had known, the most perfect instrument for a conqueror’s use, but a dangerous force in time of peace.
Sometimes the tribute children were bred for civil careers and not placed in the corps of the janissaries. Prince Cantimir of Moldavia14 states that Ibrahim was a simple janissary of the 9th company. I have been unable to find a source for this statement, but Ibrahim’s later career as general of the Imperial forces would seem to imply a military training. Von Hammer,15 however, ascribes Cantimir’s statement to an error, and gives Ibrahim a civil training.
Ibrahim’s first office was page to the heir apparent Suleiman. When the latter came to the throne in 1520, he made Ibrahim Head Falconer, and then raised him in rapid succession to the respective posts of Khass-oda-Bashi, or Master of the Household, of Beylerbey of Roumelie, Vizir, Grand Vizir, and finally Serasker, or general-in-chief of the Imperial forces—a dazzlingly rapid promotion. Baudier tells a story in this connection which might easily be true, being quite in character, although it can not be verified. The story runs thus: “Ibrahim’s rapid rise began to alarm him. The inconstancy of fortune, as exampled by the fate of many of the great men of the Ottoman court, created in him an apprehension of the great peril which attached to those favorites who enjoyed the high dignities of the court, and served as a bridle to restrain his desires. He besought Suleiman not to advance him so high that his fall would be his ruin. He showed him that a modest prosperity was safer than the greatness wherewith he would honor him; that his services would be rewarded sufficiently if he received enough to enable him to pass his days in rest and comfort. Suleiman commended his modesty, but meaning to advance him to the chief dignities of the empire, he swore that Ibrahim should not be put to death as long as he reigned, no matter what other changes might be made in the court.” “But” moralizes Baudier, “the condition of kings, which is human and subject to change, and that of favorites, who are proud and unthankful, shall cause Suleiman to fail of his promise and Ibrahim to lose his faith and loyalty as we shall see”.16
A knowledge of the duties of these offices held by Ibrahim is essential to an understanding of the Turkish court at which his life was spent.17 The personal servants of the sultan were divided into six classes or “chambers”; the Body guard, the Guard of the treasury, the Guard of the office, the Guard of the campaign, the Black eunuchs and the White eunuchs. The Body guard, or personal attendants, included the Master of the stirrup, the Master of the keys, the Chief water-pourer, the Chief coffee-server, etcetera, to the number of thirty-nine. The first of these chambers was well furnished with attendants, mutes, dwarfs, musicians, and pages; some of these pages were attached to the personal service of high officials, whose pipes, coffee, or perfumes they tended; they might also be attached to the service of the sultan. Ibrahim seems to have been a page in the service of the shahzadeh or heir, Suleiman.
The heir to the throne after his thirteenth or fourteenth year had his own palace separate from his father’s harem, in which he had thus far been brought up. As soon as he showed sufficient promise he was sent to some province, that he might have experience in governing. Thus Suleiman, during the reign of his father Selim, was made governor of Magnesia in Asia Minor, north of Smyrna, where he probably met Ibrahim, a youth of his own age. The court of the shahzadeh had the same officials, with the same titles, as the Imperial court.
It was then in Suleiman’s court in Magnesia that Ibrahim held his position as page. The pages in the sultan’s palace at Constantinople attended schools especially designed to train them, and Ibrahim, when he became grand vizir, founded one of the best of these schools in Stamboul. Probably there were no such schools in the provinces, but either in the palace, or earlier in the household of the widow of Magnesia, Ibrahim obtained an excellent education.
He could read Persian as well as Turkish, also Greek (his native tongue) and Italian. He was a wide reader, delighting in geography and history, especially the lives of Alexander the Great and Hannibal. Of his musical training we have already spoken.18 When their schooling was completed, the pages were taken into the Serai,19 passing through two lower chambers before completing their education in the first chamber. The pages usually lodged near the sultan’s apartments in handsome dormitories having their own mosque and baths. But Ibrahim, as the favorite of Suleiman, used to sleep in the apartments of his lord and master, and generally took his meals with him.20 Bragadino says that when they were not together in the morning they wrote notes to each other, which they sent by mutes. Pietro Zen records seeing them together often in a little boat with but one oarsman, and says they would land at Seraglio Point and wander through the gardens together.21 Zen declares that the Grand Signor loved Ibrahim greatly, and that the two were inseparable from childhood up, continuing so after Suleiman became sultan. This intimacy, so often noted by the Venetian Baillies, is never commented on by the Turkish writers. It scandalized the Ottomans, and seemed to them utterly unsuitable that the Lord of the Age should show such favor to his slave. The partiality of Suleiman for Ibrahim is important, for it is the explanation of Ibrahim’s phenomenal rise.
From a page, Ibrahim became Head Falconer, a post which requires no explanation. The last two chambers of the sultan’s personal attendants were the black and white eunuchs. The black eunuchs, several hundred in number, guarded the imperial harem, and were thence called aghas of the harem. Their chief was called Kizlar agha, or agha of the maidens, and his office included some further duties beside those connected with the “maidens.” There were also in the palace a number of white eunuchs, whose chief was called Capon agha, or captain of the gate. Next to him the chief officer was the Khass-oda-bashi. The Turkish historians22 call Ibrahim, at the time of his being called to the vizirate, “khass-oda-bashi.” Cantimir calls him “Captain of the Inner Palace” which is a very good translation of the Turkish term. This official, as we have seen, was second in rank among the white eunuchs. To him was confided one of the three imperial seals set in rings, used for the precious objects which were kept in the apartment of the sultan.23
He also garbed in caftans24 in the Imperial presence those whom the sultan would thus honor. Another curious duty was the following: whenever the sultan had his head shaved, and the personal attendants stood in order before him; their hands crossed respectfully over their girdles, the khass-oda-bashi placed himself several steps from the sofa, on which the sultan sat, his right hand resting on a baton chased with gold and silver. The white eunuchs lodged behind the third gate of the palace, the Bab-el-saadet, or Gate of Felicity. D’Ohsson states:25 “The seraglio is their prison and their tomb; they are never permitted to absent themselves. The white eunuchs have no other prospect than the post of Commandant of the school of pages at Galata.”
It would seem that Ibrahim must have been a eunuch. Daniele Barbarigo states it flatly26 and the office of khass-oda-bashi, according to D’Ohsson, was held only by eunuchs. Furthermore Solakzadeh speaks of Ibrahim’s being called from the Imperial harem to the grand vizirate, and all the officials of the harem were necessarily eunuchs. But to Ibrahim the seraglio was neither a prison nor a tomb. He went freely about the city, and his rise was not at all impeded by what generally proved a fatal limitation. Other eunuchs have also overcome their limitations, for D’Ohsson mentions four eunuchs, kizlar aghas, who became grand vizirs. Another very distinguished eunuch, Ghazanber Agha, a Hungarian prisoner-of-war, in childhood was educated as a page in the serai, became a Mahommedan and, because Selim II, the son and successor of Suleiman the Magnificent, wanted him about his person, he voluntarily submitted to castration, in order to enter the corps of white eunuchs. His office was capou agha (captain of the gate) which he held for thirty years, and raised to a very great importance.
That Ibrahim married need not astonish us, for marriages arranged with eunuchs by fathers of many daughters were not uncommon. Sometimes a sultana was married to a eunuch for his fortune, in which case he generally died soon after his marriage; sometimes no other suitable husband being found for her, she was given to a eunuch of high rank. In stories we occasionally read of a father who marries his daughter to a eunuch as a punishment. Ibrahim probably married a sultana, which curiously enough would be a more natural marriage than with a woman of lower rank, for it has never been deemed advisable that the daughters of sultans should have male children, and if such were born, they were condemned to immediate death by the omission to knot the umbilical cord. This measure became a law in the reign of Ahmed I,27 with the idea of saving the country from the civil war of rival princes of the blood, but was probably a custom long before it was legalized. Therefore Suleiman may have thought that the marriage of his relative to a man of Ibrahim’s position, fortune, and charm, was a happy fate for a princess who might not hope to be a mother.
We have seen that the fact that Ibrahim was a Greek, and a Christian by birth, was no barrier to his rise, so long as he adopted Islam. Many of the great officials of Turkey were of Christian extraction; as for instance, the two men who succeeded Ibrahim Pasha as Grand Vizirs, Rustem Pasha and Mehmet Sokolli, considered the greatest of Turkish vizirs and both Croats by birth. Furthermore his humble family was no obstacle, for in Turkey it has always been possible for a bootblack or a grocer to rise to the highest position, if good fortune or marked ability led him thither.
Ibrahim suffered from still another disability, as we in the Occident would consider it: he was a slave. How did that affect his advancement? To understand the position of a slave in Turkey in the fifteenth century we must recognize at the outset the fact that Turkish slavery was quite different from that of the Occident, and so approach the subject free from our natural prejudice.
The only slavery sanctioned by Islam is that imposed on infidels as a result of supposed inferiority of race and religion,28 and has never in fact included the rayahs (Christian subjects) but only prisoners of war. The rayah might not be enslaved but neither might he hold slaves, except in very rare instances before 1759, and not at all after that date.29
There were two kinds of legal slaves, those made by capture in war, and those by birth. Slaves by purchase, taken from Africa and the Caucasus, were not recognized by law, but nevertheless such slavery existed.30 Brigands also seized foreigners from time to time and sold them as slaves. Prisoners of war lost their civil liberty according to Islamic law. The Prophet repeatedly enjoins their destruction.31 According to the Turkish code, the sovereign might perpetuate their captivity, or free them to pay tribute, or cause them to be slaughtered, if more expedient. The exceptions to this law were the cases of any orthodox Moslems who might fall into Turkish power, and the case of the Tatars of the Crimea, who were Shiites, or heretic Moslems, and who were enslaved.32
Prisoners of war formed two classes of slaves, prisoners of the state, and private slaves. To the first class belonged all soldiers and officers, and a fifth of the rest of the slaves, or their value. Of these some were exchanged or resold after the peace, others were employed in the Serai or given away. Some were handed over to public works, especially to the admiralty, where they were confounded with criminals and condemned to hard labor. To the second class belonged all the prisoners not given to the sultan, including those captured by the soldiers. These were generally sold. Merchants would purchase them in the camps, and sell them all over the Empire. These slaves taken in war were far the greater number of slaves in the Empire; many were enfranchised before they had children, and children of one free and one slave parent were themselves born free. The adoption of Islam after captivity did not free the slave.
The power of the master was absolute over the person, children and property of his slaves. He might sell, give, or bequeath them, but he might not kill them without some reason. As a corollary of this power, the master had full responsibility for his slave; he must support him, pay his debts, stand behind him in any civil affair, and give consent to his holding of property. A slave might not act as a witness nor as a guardian. He was entirely dependent on his master.
Thus far the theory is not unlike that of the West, but there were two facts which changed the entire situation. The first was the brevity of time of enslavement in most cases; the second was the absence of odium attached to the position of a slave. In regard to the first fact, it was not considered humane to keep persons long in slavery, and it was a general rule to enfranchise them either before their marriage or on their coming of age, or when they had served sufficiently long. Enfranchisement is a voluntary and private act by which the patron frees his slave from the bonds of servitude and puts him into the free class.33 It is also considered by the Turk to be a noble action, one especially befitting a dying man, who often frees his slaves in his testament. The enfranchisement of slaves was regarded by the Moslem as the highest act of virtue.34 A less disinterested form of enfranchisement has a pecuniary inducement, the slave buying his freedom from his master.35
Thus the slave never thought of himself as by nature servile, nor always to be a slave, but could look forward to his freedom in a few years more or less. This fact induced self-respect and hope. The slave’s dress did not in any way distinguish him from the free man; he was in no way branded.
Sir Henry Bulwer said of white slavery in Turkey in 1850, “It greatly resembles adoption, and the children often become the first dignitaries of the Empire.”36 This statement is confirmed by Fatma Alieh Hannum, a living Turkish lady, who gives a most attractive picture of the home care and affection given to slaves,37 and my own observation of slavery in Constantinople would bear her out. The condition described by Bulwer would seem also to have obtained in the sixteenth century. George Young in his Corps de Droit Ottoman38 speaks of two systems of slavery in Turkey, the Turkish system and the Circassian system, which have been fused in our day, but of which only the former existed in Ibrahim’s day, and in contrasting them he says: “The Turkish system by its moderation scarcely went beyond the limits of apprenticeship, and could be classed with the voluntary servitude that for a determined time was permitted in some of the European colonies. While the Circassian system fixed the slave forever in the servile class, the Turkish system has always permitted and in some cases prescribed his enfranchisement. Furthermore the social situation of a slave under the Old Regime of the Empire favored his advancement even to the highest office.... The Turkish system made a career of slavery.... Many slaves by birth have played leading roles in the history of the Empire.” The last statement admits of no argument, but the question how far the Turkish system made a career of slavery, and how far slavery was beneficent, demands further consideration.
Let us return to the classes of slaves spoken of above. Some, we saw, were put into public works; these could have found no career in their forced labor, although they might have bought or otherwise earned their freedom, and then have made a career for themselves. Some were owned by private individuals where they were given no opportunity to rise, although life in a private house, as in the case of the widow of Magnesia, might prepare a slave for a career. But the only slaves who would naturally have an opportunity for a career were those who served in the royal palace or in the house of some important officer. To them slavery truly opened a career. We cannot perhaps agree with Mr. Young that the Turkish system “made a career of slavery”, but it certainly was no barrier to a career, and it even opened up such opportunities as could not come otherwise to a Christian youth, nor indeed to most Moslem youths.
The mild and even beneficent quality of Oriental slavery has been maintained by many writers. Busbequius, writing from Constantinople in Suleiman’s reign, commends Turkish slavery on economic grounds, and then, moved by the contemplation of this fatherly system, bursts into a defence of slavery in general.39
Robert Roberts in his monograph says that the condition of slaves in modern Moslem lands is “not so bad”, and that the slavery he himself saw in Morocco “is only formally to be distinguished from Christian service”.40 The Baron de Tott speaks of seeing Moslem slaves in 1785 “well fed, well clothed, and well treated,” and adds, “I am inclined to doubt if those even who are homesick have in general much reason to be satisfied with their ransom. It is possible in truth that the slaves sold into the interior parts of the country, or to individuals who purchase them on speculation, are not as happy as those who fall to the lot of the sovereign or the grandee. We may presume, however, that even the avarice of the master militates in their favor, for it must be confessed that the Europeans are the only people who ill-treat their slaves, which arises no doubt from this cause,—that they constitute the wealth of the Orientals, and that with us they are means of amassing wealth. In the East they are the delight of the miser; with us they are only the instrument of avarice.”41 In interesting support of de Tott’s idea that Oriental slaves might not care to be ransomed is the fact that after the treaty of Carlowitz, when the Porte engaged to set European prisoners at liberty for a ransom, and did attempt to do so, there were a large number of captives who rejected their liberty and their fatherland.42
Perhaps the chief explanation of the lack of distinction between freeman and slave lay in the fact that the Turks had very little conception of freedom, and the man legally free was practically almost as bound as the slave. As we have seen in the introduction to this study, loyalty and obedience were the two great virtues in the eyes of the Turks, so that in the idea of service there was no degradation. All who served the Crown were called Kol, or slaves of the Sultan, even the grand vizir receiving this title, which was much more honorable than that of subject, the kol being able to insult the subject with impunity, while the latter could not injure a royal slave in the slightest degree without subjecting himself to punishment.43 Turkey was a land of slaves with but one master, the sultan, even the brothers and sons of the monarch being kept in durance for the greater part of their lives. In the case of women, no practical distinction that we should recognize existed between slave and free. The mother of the sultan was always a slave, one of the sultan’s titles being “Son of a Slave”. Most of the pashas were born of slave mothers, as the Turks had more children by their slaves than by their wives.44 Such conditions rendered obviously impossible the sharp line which is drawn in the West between the freeman and the despised slave, and placed the slave potentially with the highest of the land. Slavery was certainly the Greek Ibrahim’s opportunity. Slavery brought him into the court, placed him before the sultan, educated him, gave him ambition, and finally gratified it. When Ibrahim was freed, no one thinks it worth while to record; certainly before his marriage, perhaps much before. But evidently the moment when Suleiman said to him: “Thou art enfranchised, thou art free”45 was a moment not worth recording, so natural and inevitable was his enfranchisement the moment that slavery ceased to be the ladder of his advancement.
It is evident, then, that Ibrahim’s lowly birth, his Christian origin, his experience as a slave, and his being a eunuch were none of them barriers to a great career. What was there, on the other hand, to give him such a career? His extraordinary ambition, his marked ability, and above all his immense good-fortune in falling into the hands of the sultan and winning his affection, so that Suleiman was dominated by his love for Ibrahim, and unable to resist any of his caprices;46 these were the prime factors in his extraordinary rise.
While still master of the household (khass-oda-bashi) he was often spoken of as “Ibrahim the Magnificent” by the Venetian baillies. Barbarigo relates that the serai was never so splendid as in the days when the magnificent Ibrahim was oda-bashi of the Grand Seigneur, and also when he was grand chamberlain. As the title of “the Magnificent” is that which Europe has accorded to Sultan Suleiman, a love of pomp and display must have been one of the interests that he and his ennobled slave had in common. But such showy qualities are hardly suitable to a mere master of the household. Ibrahim had to be raised to the rank of pasha.
A pasha was a sort of military governor, although the title might be given as a mere title of nobility, and in any case was indefinite, being determined by the particular office the pasha held. The pashas were generally very proud and stately persons, with grave, leisurely manners, and were always surrounded by a large number of pages and other richly-garbed domestics when they went abroad mounted on superb steeds, banners and horse-tails waving before them, and the people paying homage. But their power was often very small, and their income frequently quite inadequate to the state they were obliged to maintain.47
The famous horse-tail banner which distinguished a high official originated in the following way: the banner of one of the old Turkish princes having been lost in battle and with it the courage of his soldiers, he severed with one blow a horse’s tail from its body and fastening it to his lance cried, “Behold my banner! who loves me will follow me!” The Turks rallied and saved the day.48 The banner was called the Tugh. Each sandjak bey was entitled to one horse-tail, being, as Europeans say “a pasha of one tail”; a beylerbey (literally prince of princes or colonel of colonels) was entitled to two or three tails; the grand vizir sported five horse-tails, and before the Sultan seven of these banners were carried.
In 1522 Ibrahim became Ibrahim Pasha, Grand Vizir, and Beylerbey of Roumelie. Turkey has always been divided into Turkey in Europe, or Roumelie or Roum,49 and Turkey in Asia, or Anatolia. These two divisions of the empire during Suleiman’s reign were each ruled by a governor, or beylerbey, who had general charge of the sandjakbeys over each sandjak50 or province. The beylerbeys of Roumelie generally resided at Monastir or Sofia, but here again Ibrahim seems to have been an exception to the general rule and to have resided at Constantinople.
The office of vizir was a venerable one, its institution being ascribed by some to the Prophet, who appointed as first vizir Ali, his son-in-law and successor, and by others to the first Abasside, who bestowed the title on his first minister. The duties of vizir in the sixteenth century have been defined as follows:51 “The vizir commands all the armies, is the only one except the Grand Seigneur who has the power of life and death throughout the whole extent of the Empire over criminals, and can nominate, degrade, and execute all ministers and agents of the sovereign authority. He promulgates all the new laws, and causes them to be put in effect. He is the supreme head of the justice that he administers, although with the aid and according to the opinion of the Ulema, the legal body. In short, he represents his master to the full extent of his dignity and temporal power, not only in the Empire, but also with the Foreign States. But to the same degree that this power is splendid and extensive, it is dangerous and precarious.”
Mourad I (1359–1389) was the first sultan of Turkey to name a vizir. Mohammed the Conqueror thought the office concentrated too much power in one person, and planned to abolish it, but instead left it vacant for eight months.52 Selim I, as strong a monarch as the Conqueror, left vacant for nine months this office which almost rendered a sultan unnecessary. But his son Suleiman soon after his accession put his favorite Ibrahim into the highest office in a sultan’s gift, and kept him there thirteen years. Probably with the idea of dividing the immense power of this office, he increased the number of vizirs to three and later to four. Of these one was known as the grand vizir (Vizir Azam) and to him alone applies the description given above. Ibrahim Pasha was at first the third vizir, the other two being Piri Mustafa Pasha and Ahmed Pasha. There was always great jealousy among the vizirs. Ahmed Pasha, anxious to rise to the first rank, accused Piri Pasha of sedition and procured the latter’s downfall; but to his inexpressible chagrin was himself passed over in favor of Ibrahim, who was “told the good news of his appointment as grand vizir and brought gladness and brilliance into the divan.”53 Ahmed’s feeling was so great and the consequent dissensions in the divan were so considerable, that Suleiman sent Ahmed to Egypt as governor, leaving the field clear for Ibrahim, who in his palace received at the hands of a noble of the sultan’s service the imperial ring as a symbol of his new power.
The grand vizir lived in a palace modeled after the Sultan’s, having under him the same class of officials and servants even to ministers of state, and his household was conducted with great ceremony. Ibrahim’s salary was increased over that of the preceding grand vizir from 16,000 to 25,000 piastres54 but he obtained much more from the disposal of public offices, and he also received enormous presents from those under him, although this was balanced by the large gifts he had to make to others. The property of a grand vizir was always confiscated at his death, which was doubtless one reason why a sultan could afford to lavish so much on a favorite minister, knowing that eventually it would all return to the imperial coffers. Dress and style were very carefully regulated in Turkey in the XVI century. The turban of the grand vizir, his barge with twelve pairs of oars and a green awning, the five horse-tails that might be carried before him, all distinguished him from lower officials. He had eight guards of honor, and twelve led horses. When he appeared in public his hussars would cry aloud, “Peace unto you and divine clemence”, while the other soldiers responded in chorus, “May your fortunes be propitious; may Allah be your aid; may the Almighty protect the days of our sovereign and the pasha, our master; may they live long and happily.”55 All of the public officials except the sheik-ul-Islam received their offices from the grand vizir, and were garbed in his presence with a caftan, or robe of state. The grand vizir and the sheik-ul-Islam were the only officials invested by the sultan himself and appointed for life.
The divan was the imperial council, consisting of the vizirs, the defterdar, or secretary of finance, the nishanji who made out royal firmans and berats, and the sheik-ul-Islam or head of Islam. It was a council for discussion and wholly without power.
On the 22d day of May, 1524, the Sultan celebrated with great pomp the marriage of Ibrahim Pasha. Who the bride was we cannot be certain, but this is in accord with Turkish etiquette which strictly forbids all mention of the harem,56 and considers any public knowledge of woman as an insult to her, thus depriving historians of desirable information concerning such important political figures as Roxelana, who greatly influenced Suleiman the Magnificent, Baffa the Venetian sultana, and others. Von Hammer says that Ibrahim married a sister of Suleiman, but I can find no proof of it.57 A wedding in Turkey always includes two distinct feasts, the one for the bride and her women friends, the other for the groom and his men friends. Now-a-days the woman’s part is ordinarily more important, but in Ibrahim’s time a wedding or a circumcision was the occasion of a great public feast for the men. Ibrahim Pasha, as we have seen, was always spoken of by the Venetians as “Il Magnifico Ibrahim.” Perhaps since so much stress has been laid by historians on the splendor of the court and the grand vizir, a description of this great public marriage will not be out of order.58
The feast or series of feasts was held in the Hippodrome, a great piazza being erected near Agia Sophia from which the sultan might view all the proceedings. Here was set up the Blessed Throne of Felicity, adorned with precious gold embroidery and rich velvets, while in the Hippodrome below, artistic, vari-colored tents were set up, and carpets of gold thread were spread over the ground. Terraces and canopies and pavilions for the nobles were raised above the ground, but below the sultan’s terrace. Hangings of velvet and satin covered the grey walls of the buildings surrounding the Hippodrome.59 The second vizir, Ayas Pasha, and the agha of the janissaries went to the palace to invite the sultan to honor the feast by his presence. Suleiman received them graciously, delivered a pompous eulogy upon Ibrahim, and made them rich presents.
To the first banquet “all the world” was invited;60 the seven that followed were given to various branches of the army, there being very splendid feasts to the janissaries, vizirs, beylerbeys and sandjakbeys. To the first feast came Ayas Pasha and the agha of the janissaries, escorted by a troop of slaves. When they reached Bab-el-Saadet, that gate of the city leading from the Seraglio grounds to the space before the Agia Sophia, they met the glorious sultan “whose throne is in the heavens.” His escort bore scarlet banners and carried robes of honor with which they garbed those who had come to meet them, and they led also richly caparisoned steeds to present to Ayas Pasha and his two followers, for which, says Solakzadeh, “there was limitless thanks.”
On the ninth day, the eve of that on which the bride would be brought from the palace, Ayas Pasha and the other vizirs, and the defterdar, and the agha of the janissaries sought the bridegroom and led him through the streets of Stamboul in gorgeous procession. From the Bab-i-Humayoun (The Sublime Porte) to the Hippodrome the streets “were full of pleasure from end to end,” all hung with silks of Broussa and velvets of Damascus, through which passed the ranks of the janissaries and the vizir who thus honored Ibrahim Pasha.
Ibrahim was a lean, dark man, slight in stature and bearing himself gracefully in his cloth-of-gold robes.61 He was escorted by brilliant officers on prancing steeds. There is no finer setting for a procession than the grey streets of Stamboul under the vivid Southern sky. When the procession approached the sultan’s throne, the dignitaries of the state and the nobles of the Empire, approaching on foot over the richly carpeted street, fell on their faces before his Majesty.
“This day they enjoyed riches and booty and sumptuousness without end”. “Especially were the people charmed with the sounds of rejoicing flutes and trumpets, whose music rose from earth to the first heaven”. The wise ulema and sheiks were present on this occasion, the sultan seating on his right the venerated Mufti Ali Djemali and on his left the great hodja (teacher) of the princes, while other learned doctors were arranged confronting the Imperial Majesty. The sultan presided over a learned discussion of the verse from the Koran, “O David, I will make thee Caliph in the world”, a sufficiently courtly text. The meaning was discussed and questions were propounded and answered. After this literary episode, knights-at-arms, wrestlers and other athletes displayed their skill. Then a rich feast was served and Mehmet Chelebi had the honor of presenting to the sultan sherbet in a priceless cup cut from a single turquoise, a souvenir of Persian victories, and the pride of the nation. Others drank their sherbet from goblets of china, then a rare and valuable ware. Food was served to the sultan and the ulema on silver trays,62 and each of the guests took away with him a tray of sweetmeats. From evening to morning fireworks and illuminations lit up the city, and were reflected in the Bosphorus and Marmora. On his return to the palace Suleiman was informed of the birth of a son, who afterwards became Selim II.
The wedding was followed by several days of dancing, races, contests of wrestlers and archers, as well as poetic contests in honor of the newly-wedded couple. Such was a public festival in the city of the sultan in the days of the magnificent Suleiman. It reminds us of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, whose splendor delighted the French and the English in this same quarter century, the most striking difference being the literary side which the Turkish festival possessed and the European lacked.
Solakzadeh tells an interesting anecdote in connection with another great feast, that of the circumcision of Suleiman’s three sons.63 This was also a very splendid function and Suleiman is said to have asked Ibrahim in pride, whose feast had been the finer, Ibrahim’s or that of his sons. Ibrahim replied: “There has never been a feast equal to my wedding.” Suleiman, somewhat disconcerted, enquired how that was, to which Ibrahim gave the following courtly answer: “O my Padisha, my wedding was honored by the presence of Suleiman, Lord of the Age, firm Rampart of Islam, Possessor of Mecca and Medina, Lord of Damascus and Egypt, Caliph of the Lofty Threshold, and Lord of the Residence of the Pleiades: but to your festival, who was there of equally exalted rank who might come?” The padisha, greatly delighted, said, “A thousand bravas to thee, Ibrahim, who hast explained it so satisfactorily.”
Of Ibrahim’s relations to the sultan a good deal has been said. He was brought up in close contact with his master, eating and sleeping with him. They often changed garments and Ibrahim told an Austrian ambassador that the sultan never ordered garments for himself without ordering the same for his favorite. The Venetians spoke of seeing the two friends taking pleasure rides together in a cÄique, and visiting what shores they pleased.
Ibrahim was said to exert such an influence on the sultan that the latter could deny him nothing, and from the time that he became grand vizir, he almost took over the sovereignty of the land: as von Hammer says, “from this time he divided the absolute power with Suleiman”. In becoming grand vizir and presiding over the divan, Ibrahim occupied the highest position open to any except a member of the imperial Ottoman family. Here the romantic story of his rise merges into the account of his public career, and this in its turn is a part of Turkish and South European history.
