[1] Cahun, Introduction à l’Histoire de l’Asie, 90.
[2] The West was much concerned in the sixteenth century with the problem of ascertaining the origin of the Turks. Balbus gives an idea how difficult it was to reach a definite opinion: “Some count the Turks among the Asiatic Sarmatians, and say that they were expelled by their neighbors from the Caspian mountains into Persia, and descended into Asia Minor. Others, following the name, perhaps, think that this people had its beginning in Turce, a great and opulent city of the Persians. Others consider them the progeny of the Parthians. Some think the Turks had their origin in Arabia, and some in Syria. But it is more likely that they were Scythians by origin, and (as we said above) from the foot of Mount Caucasus, and that they formerly inhabited vast deserts.” See also Knolles, 1-2.
[3] Keane, Man, Past and Present, 268, 314-315. Holdich (in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., ii. 749 b) says, “As ethnographical inquiry advances the Turk appears to recede from his Mongolian affinities and to approach the Caucasian.” Keene (Turks in India, 1 ff.) is inclined to consider the Turks a mere mixture of Mongols with Caucasians. So bald a theory does not account for the group of Turkish languages.
[4] Keane, 267.
[5] Ibid. 317.
[6] Ibid. 322; Hammer, Geschichte, i. 3.
[7] Keane, 322; Hammer, Geschichte, i. 2; etc.
[8] Hammer, Geschichte, i. 1. This fact, known to Knolles (p. 2), seems to have escaped the attention of Sir Charles Eliot (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., xxvii. 470 d).
[9] The older view, that Iran represented peoples of Indo-European stock, and Turan peoples of Ural-Altaic stock, though once so generally adopted as to sanction the bestowal of the names Iranian and Turanian upon these groups of peoples, has been abandoned as regards the original legends, in which Turan seems to have represented ruder tribes of Indo-European lineage (Meyer, Geschichte, i. pt. ii. 814-815). But the Greeks from their first acquaintance with the name identified Turan with the Scythians, and at about the same time the Persians began to apply it to the Northern peoples of alien stock. The conditions of frontier contact between Turks and Persians during many centuries were undoubtedly as described in the legends.
[10] Rawlinson, Parthia, 33-35; Keane, 319. Meyer (in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., xxi. 214 c) regards the Parni or Aparni, who became the conquering tribe in Parthia, as Iranian nomads; but Peisker (in Cambridge Medieval History, i. 332) asserts that the nomads of the Asiatic background all belong to the Altaian branch of the Ural-Altaian race. The fact that the Parthian army was a slave army (see Meyer, as above, 217 a) is perhaps the strongest piece of evidence that the original Parthians were Turks.
[11] Keane, 327. Asia Minor is here used in the larger sense, as denoting in general the Asian territory which lies west of a line drawn from the eastern end of the Black Sea to the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta.
[12] Quoted in Keane, 328, from Gibbon (ed. Bury), vi. 250.
[13] Vambéry, Die Primitive Cultur, 47; Keane, 328; Cahun, Introduction, 169 ff.; Ramsay, Studies in Eastern Roman Provinces, 295.
[14] Ramsay, Studies in Eastern Roman Provinces, 297. This statement has been confirmed by conversation with other persons well acquainted with conditions in Asia Minor. See also E. Huntington, in National Geographic Magazine, September, 1910, p. 767.
[15] Vambéry (Die Primitive Cultur, 47) expresses the opinion that the Ottomans never received, all told, more than 25,000 men of Turkish blood.
[16] Ottoman is an attempt to pronounce Othman by those who pronounce th like t; Osman a similar attempt by those who pronounce th (as in “thin”) like s.
[17] Hammer, Geschichte, i. 42-43.
[18] Keane, 268, 316. Peschel, 380, says, “The Turks of the west have so much Aryan and Semitic blood in them that the last vestiges of their original physical characters have been lost, and their language alone indicates their previous descent.” On the other hand, E. Huntington (in National Geographic Magazine, September, 1910, p. 767) expresses the opinion that the inhabitants of the central part of the plateau of Asia Minor are “almost purely Turkish in race.” He does not say, however, that this opinion is based on observation of physical appearances.
[19] Hammer, Geschichte, i. 59.
[20] Keene, 2, makes the interesting suggestion that this custom, followed mutatis mutandis by the Moguls of India, was a survival of exogamous conditions among the ancestors of the Turks.
[21] The twentieth power of 1/2 is 1/1,148,576. The description given of Orchan, furthermore, shows scarcely a discernible trace of Mongolian ancestry. Compare Hammer, Geschichte, i. 158: “Mit demselben [Osman] waren ihm zwar die Bocksnase und die schön gewölbten schwarzen Augenbrauen gemein; aber er hatte blonde Haare und lichte Augen, die Statur und die Stirne hoch, die Brust breit, die Faust kräftig wie die Klaue des Löwen, das Gesicht rund und die Farbe desselben weiss und roth; der Körperbau stark, der Bart und Knebelbart dicht und wohlgenährt.” Murad II showed a little more evidence of Tatar descent. He “is,” says La Broquière, 181, “a man of stout build and short body, and he has something of the broad face of a Tatar’s physiognomy, and he has a rather large hooked nose and rather small eyes, and he is very brown in the face, and he has plump cheeks and a round beard.”
[22] Keane, 266.
[23] Compare the election of Sebuktegin, in Schéfer’s edition of the Siasset Namèh, 158.
[24] Cahun, Introduction, 79.
[25] Vambéry, Uigurische Sprachmonumente und das Kudatku Bilik, 118. This passage closely resembles the words attributed to Artaxerxes I, first king of the Sassanian Persian line: “There can be no power without an army, no army without money, no money without agriculture, and no agriculture without justice” (Rawlinson, Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy, i. 61).
[26] Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 36-45.
[27] Ibid. 36.
[28] Quoted by Cahun, in Lavisse and Rambaud, iii. 964.
[29] Schéfer, Siasset Namèh, 139.
[30] Bérard, 4 ff.
[31] Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 30; D’Ohsson, v. 7; Heidborn, 111.
[32] D’Ohsson, i. 291; Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 32.
[33] D’Ohsson, vi. 253.
[34] Ibid. v. 53.
[35] Ibid. 109.
[36] Ibid. iv. 280; Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 331; Erizzo, 137.
[37] This was based upon a passage of the Koran, “Sedition is worse than execution” (Sura 2: 187): Hammer, Geschichte, i. 216. Professor G. F. Moore points out that in this passage (and in Sura 2: 214, which is substantially identical) the text refers to Mohammed’s war with the Meccans, or to fighting in the sacred months. The word fitnah, here translated “sedition,” has various meanings: first of all, “trial,” as gold and silver, for example, are tried by smelting; then, “successful temptation, leading or turning a man astray, error, discord, dissension, sedition, etc.” The context indicates clearly that Mohammed had in mind the leading or turning of people from the true religion as that which is “worse than killing.” The other meanings would, however, allow some accommodating jurist or theologian to make this a plausible proof-text for authorizing the killing of the sultan’s brothers, who might become seditious or furnish cause for dissension.
[38] Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 31.
[39] Ibid. 32; D’Ohsson, vii. 150.
[40] Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 478, and Staatsverfassung, 340.
[41] For the Tartar method of raiding in the seventeenth century, see Ricaut, book i. ch. xiii. This may be compared with Turkish methods in the fifteenth century, as described by the author of the Tractatus, ch. v.
[42] D’Ohsson, v. 50. Orthodoxy in the Moslem religion was by no means an insuperable obstacle to attempts at conquest. The Mamelukes whom Selim I overthrew were Sunnites, and Malekite Morocco was long a land coveted by the Ottomans. A desire for the unification of orthodox Islam came into play here.
[43] D’Ohsson, v. 86.
[44] The Turks laid claim also to Morocco, but they never exercised abiding authority there: Knolles (ed. 1687), 987.
[45] Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 520-521.
[46] These are given in detail in Hammer’s Staatsverfassung, 219-327.
[47] Ibid. 251 (Kanun-nameh of the sanjak of Kurdistan).
[48] Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 478, and Staatsverfassung, 343 ff.; Heidborn, 320 ff.
[49] Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 344.
[50] D’Ohsson, vii. 372 ff.; Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 475 ff., and Staatsverfassung, 337 ff.
[51] Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 345.
[52] Ibid. 347.
[53] Ibid. 344.
[54] D’Ohsson, v. 96.
[55] Ibid.
[56] Belin, La Propriété Foncière, 88 ff.
[57] Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 476; D’Ohsson, vii. 374.
[58] D’Ohsson, ii. 523 ff., especially 552-557.
[59] Belin, La Propriété Foncière, 104 ff.
[60] Ricaut, 112.
[61] Bernardo, 387 (“like a mine of slaves for the service of the Turks”); Ricaut, 123; Chardin, 85, 90 (“sometimes they will sell their own children”), 94, 114, 192. It is said that the practice of raising Circassian girls for sale is still carried on in Asia Minor (Heidborn, 81).
[62] Ricaut, 138; Postel, iii. 71; Nicolay, 10 (“The most of those who are called Turks in Algiers, whether in the king’s household, or on the galleys, are Christians of all nations who have denied their faith and turned Mohammedan—sont Chrestiens reniez et Mahumetizez de toutes nations”); Lavisse and Rambaud, iv. 816, 820.
[63] Nicolay, 83. Jorga, iii. 167-189, has taken note of the ancestry of many of the high Turkish officials of the sixteenth century; he finds no Roumanian among them.
[64] In regard to the Armenians, see Schiltberger, 73; Chalcocondyles, 53. As to both Armenians and Jews, see Navagero, 42; Postel, i. 34. Morosini, 294, makes mention of an Armenian who was in 1585 the Beylerbey of Greece by special favor of the Sultan.
[65] Pélissié du Rausas, i. 21-22.
[66] D’Ohsson, v. 104. Visiting foreigners (muste emin) who might remain more than one year became tributary subjects (zimmi): Belin, La Propriété Foncière, 57.
[67] For the times when these different “communities” were formed within the Ottoman state, see Steen de Jehay, passim. In brief, the Greek community was organized in 1453 and the Armenian in 1461. The latter was at first supposed to include all subjects who were not Moslem or Greek Orthodox; those who were not Gregorian Armenians were gradually separated off by a process of differentiation which may be said to be active still. With the growth of the spirit of nationalism in the nineteenth century, the Greek Orthodox community has also been divided.
[68] Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 237.
[69] See Jorga, iii. 167 ff., especially 174, 188.
[70] Gritti, 24-25.
[71] A. Barbarigo, 149-150 (from a summary of his Relazione).
[72] Barbaro, 315-329, passim.
[73] Morosini, 263-267, passim.
[74] Bernardo, 358-364, passim.
[75] Zane, 389.
[76] Ibid., 414.
[77] Knolles (ed. 1687), 982.
[78] Ricaut, 14-15.
[79] These Spahis of the Porte are to be distinguished from the body of feudal Spahis. See below, pp. 98-105.
[80] This is illustrated by the quotations in the last section of Chapter i, above. See also Menavino, 138 (referring to the pages, he says “Tutti sono suoi schiaui & figlioli Christiani”); Ricaut, 14 (all who receive pay or office from the sultan are called kul); D’Ohsson, vii. 203 (“Les employés civils de même que les militaires, suivant l’antique usage de l’Orient, sont assimilés aux esclaves du Souverain, et qualifiés de ce nom—coul—dans toutes les pièces publiques”). In D’Ohsson’s time the term had acquired such a general usage as in the English phrase “your obedient servant.” Della Valle, i. 44, speaking of the entry to the Divan, says, “Tutti sono schiavi;” and Ranke, 9, says, “All were slaves.”
[81] D’Ohsson, vii. 149, 207.
[82] For example, Lodge, The Close of the Middle Ages (1906), 500; Myers, Medieval and Modern History (1905), 165.
[83] The Tractatus, ch. viii, says simply 20 years and under; Zeno, 128, says above 10 years. Ramberti and Junis Bey (below, pp. 244, 263) mention pages from 8 to 20 years old; Navagero, 49, says between 12 and 15 years, Trevisano, 229, says that they were taken not at the age of 6 or 7 years as formerly, but at 10 or 12 years. Postel, iii. 23, sets between 12 and 14 as the lower limit, and 18 and 20 as the upper limit. Nicolay, 62, says that the pages were from 8 to 20 years of age; Garzoni, 396, says that they ranged from the tenth to the thirteenth year; Ricaut, 74, fixes the age at 10 or 12 years. Too much reliance should not be placed on Trevisano’s statement as to former times, since hearsay evidence as to Turkish affairs is unreliable. Considering the rougher life in earlier times, it is likely that levies would then have been made of older, rather than younger, boys. The presence of young boys among the pages was due to the selection of unusually promising captives.
[84] Myers (as above) mentions the two methods of capture and tribute as successive.
[85] Djevad Bey, i. 26: “Ces prisonniers ou esclaves étaient d’ailleurs incorporés dans l’armée des Janissaires, et alors l’effectif qui manquait était complété par la voie de la levée de troupes parmi les sujets chrétiens.”
[86] Ramberti and Junis Bey (below, pp. 254, 270) say that 10,000, or 12,000 were taken every 4 years. Geuffroy, 242, and Postel, iii. 23, give the same estimate. Ricaut, 74, says he is “given to understand” that about 2000 were collected yearly in the middle of the seventeenth century. The exigencies of war probably increased the number greatly at times. Bérard, 12, naming no authority, says that in some years Suleiman took 40,000 boys.
[87] 20,000 Ajem-oghlans, 12,000 to 14,000 Janissaries, 10,000 of the auxiliary corps, grooms, etc., 40,000 Spahis of the Porte (including the 12,000 members of the four corps and the followers they were obliged to bring), 2000 pages and high officials. Suleiman took with him on his last campaign 48,316 men under pay (Hammer, Staatsverwaltung, 181). Morosini, 259, says that in 1585 the sultan had under pay 80,000 men. This is exclusive of about one-half of the Ajem-oghlans.
[88] Postel, i. 20.
[89] See below, p. 69, note 3.
[90] Postel, iii. 36.
[91] See below, p. 99, note 1.
[92] For example, Piri Mohammed, a descendant of the thirteenth-century poet, Jelal ad-din Rumi. Cf. Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 18.
[93] Notably Junis Bey, who says (below, p. 265), “None can be a pasha except a Christian renegade.” This custom is said to have been established by Bayezid II (Angiolello, 74, quoted by Jorga, ii. 306, note 2). For further instances, see the last section of Chapter i, above.
[95] D’Ohsson, v. 91.
[96] Schiltberger, 5, gives an early example. See also Tractatus, ch. viii.
[97] Hammer, Geschichte, i. 167.
[98] Zeno, 127.
[99] Zeno is strongly impressed by these two sources.
[100] Postel, iii. 17-18. It was in this way that Menavino entered the system (see his Trattato, 10).
[101] Cf. Postel, iii. 23.
[102] A study of the nationality of the high officials of the sixteenth century gives evidence of this. For example, Ibrahim was an Albanian (Junis Bey, below, p. 265); Rustem Pasha was a Croat (Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 268); Ferhad was a Hungarian (ibid. 365); the grand vizier Ali, whom Busbecq (Life and Letters, i. 157) calls “a thorough gentleman,” was a Dalmatian; Ayas was an Albanian, and Kassim a Croat (Junis Bey, p. 265); etc. For many other examples, see Jorga, iii. 167-189.
[103] The Tractatus, ch. viii, says every 5 years; Spandugino, 102, says once in 5 years or oftener; Zeno, 128, says each year; Ramberti and Junis Bey (below, pp. 254, 270) say every 4 years; Postel, iii. 22, says every 3 or 4 years.
[104] Tractatus, ch. vi.
[105] Giovio, Commentarius, 75; Zeno, 128; Nicolay, 83. Jorga, iii. 188, finds no Roumanian among the high Turkish officials of the sixteenth century. Roumania, being a vassal state, was not exposed to the devshurmeh. Knolles (ed. 1687, pp. 984-985) says that the tribute boys from Asia were not advanced to become Janissaries, because they were not of sufficiently high quality. They are not found in positions of prominence.
[106] Navagero, 48.
[107] Menavino’s translator says quasi decimatione (Lonicerus, i. 140). Postel, iii. 22-23, says expressly that the children were not tithed; Nicolay, 83, however, states that one in three were taken, as does J. Soranzo, 245. Morosini, 264, speaks of a tithe (decima). Gibbon (ed. Bury), vii. 79, says that a fifth of the boys were taken; see also Lavisse and Rambaud, iv. 758. The latter statements seem to be based theoretically on the fifth of the captives to which the sultan was entitled. The differences among those who profess to fix a proportion are evidence that there was none.
[108] Spandugino, 103.
[109] Postel, iii. 22. Navagero, 49, says that the officers summoned the heads of families and commanded them to present their sons.
[110] Navagero, 49.
[111] Postel, iii. 23.
[112] Navagero, 49.
[113] Postel, iii. 23.
[114] Geuffroy, 240. Bragadin (1526), 103, says: “Ibrahim has his mother and two brothers in the palace. He does much good to Christians. His father is Sanjak in Parga.” And again, 104: “Ayas has three brothers. His mother at Avlona is a Christian, and he sends her 100 ducats annually.” Nicolay, 86, says, on the contrary, that the tribute boys are never afterwards willing to recognize father, mother, or relatives. He cites the case of an uncle and nephews of Rustem Pasha, who begged in Adrianople, but received no aid from him. Cf. Zane, 438.
[115] Spandugino, 144, 145.
[116] Trevisano, 130.
[117] Ibid.
[118] Bernardo, 332, says in 1592, after the system had been dislocated, that the greater part of the recruits were then sons of Turks.
[119] Erizzo, 131; Morosini, 267; Ricaut, 14.
[120] Spandugino, 180.
[121] Ibid. 183; J. Soranzo, 250.
[122] Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 144, 156, 162.
[123] Postel, iii. 68.
[124] Ibid. G. Soranzo (1576), 197, says that the Grand Signor is heir of all the pashas.
[125] D’Ohsson, vii. 147. In the seventeenth century the sultan allowed the children of pashas only what pleased him (Ricaut, 131). Morosini, 274, refers to a similar practice in the latter part of the sixteenth century.
[126] Ricaut, 16, calls the Turkish court “a prison of slaves.”
[127] Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 379.
[128] Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 159.
[129] D’Ohsson, vii. 61 ff.
[131] Spandugino, 78, is probably wrong in his statement that the girls of the harem were recruited from gifts, tithes, and tribute. The small number of women in the harem would make the elaborate process of tribute-taking unnecessary.
[132] Postel, i. 34.
[133] Navagero, 75; Jovius, Historiarum, ii. 371. But Bragadin, 101, calls her a Montenegrin, and Ludovisi, 29, an Albanian; while Busbecq (Life and Letters, i. 178) says that she came from the Crimea. Gomara indicates that her Turkish name was Gul-behar, the Rose of Spring (Merriman, Gomara’s Annals of Charles V, 141). This confusion of knowledge in regard to so important a personage gives evidence of the secrecy which surrounded the sultan’s harem.
[134] See below, p. 79, note 2.