[388] Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 79.
[389] Ibid. 160.
[390] Other reasons have been advanced to account for the fall of Ibrahim (cf. Postel, iii. 48 ff.). The fact that he had became a danger to the throne is sufficient.
[391] Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 438.
[392] Halil Ganem, i. 206.
[393] Ranke, 11.
[394] The Spahis of the Porte, and the Janissaries were not as a body put under a Seraskier’s command until the time of Murad III: D’Ohsson, vii. 368; Djevad Bey, i. 16.
[395] Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 141.
[396] Final audience was given to the Austrian ambassadors on June 23 (ibid. 138), and Ibrahim marched about September 21 (ibid. 143).
[397] Ibid. 277.
[398] Postel, iii. 54, speaking of Charles V in 1535-36, says: “The Emperor had and lost during the war against the Sofi the fairest opportunity that ever Prince had in this world, to recover Constantinople: for at every shaking of a leaf, all the people trembled, and there was no guard in the city except the inhabitants and ten thousand Ajem-oghlans” [these from the time of Mohammed II had been commissioned to guard the capital during the army’s absence: D’Ohsson, vii. 348]. Erizzo, 131, also discusses this danger, emphasizing the valor of the Persians and the readiness of Asia Minor to revolt. The Turks in Constantinople in 1535 feared that the expedition which Charles V was preparing against Tunis was intended for an attack upon their city (Revue Africaine, xix. 352).
[399] Suleiman in his letter to Ferdinand, November 27, 1562, says, “I, Lord of the Orient from the land of Tsin to the extremity of Africa”: Busbecq, De Re Militari, 272.
[400] Ibrahim said, “I, if I now wished it, could place Luther on one side and the Pope on the other, and compel them to hold a council; what Charles ought to have done, the Sultan and I will now do”: Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 134.
[401] Gerlach, 257, quoted in Zinkeisen, iii. 222.
[402] Postel, iii. 19.
[403] Spandugino, 218; Postel, i. 126.
[404] D’Ohsson, vii. 202.
[405] Suleiman permitted this because of the increase it produced in his income: Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 114; Halil Ganem, i. 197.
[406] D’Ohsson, vii. 182, 202.
[407] Ricaut, 140; D’Ohsson, vii. 287.
[408] Montesquieu, livre v, ch. xix.
[409] Postel, i. 126: “les gents de la court, qui ont leurs chefs Aga & Bassi pour Iuges,” etc.
[410] Spandugino, 214 ff., relates how this came about, and says (p. 218), “No Cadi can have power and authority over the slaves who receive pay from the Seigneur.”
[411] Zane, 407; Robertson, i. 249.
[412] Hammer, Geschichte, i. 176, 684; ii. 674.
[413] Ibid. i. 96. The descendants of Michael have been among the very few families who were constituted landed nobles in the Ottoman Empire. Seven “endowments of the Conquerors” still exist, one of which benefits his line: Heidborn, 314.
[414] Hammer, Geschichte, i. 96.
[415] Ibid. iii. 18.
[416] Spandugino, 13; Ramberti, below, p. 242; Junis Bey, below, p. 273. D. Barbarigo, 19, names eight great families among whom the succession might fall (he says that some thought it should pass through the female line): in Rumelia four,—Micali, Ersecli, Eurenesli, Egiachiali; in Anatolia, four,—Cheselamath, Diercauli, Durcadurli, Ramadanli, formerly called Spendial. Ricaut, 107, says that in his time there existed an “ancient compact” by which, in default of heirs male in the Ottoman line, the empire was to descend to the Crimean Tartars.
[417] Ricaut, 211.
[418] Ibid. 129: “A Turk is never reverenced but for his Office, that is made the sole measure and rule of his greatness and honour, without other considerations of Vertue or Nobility.”
[420] Above, ch. iii, under heads “Other Motives for Incorporating Christians,” “Advancement Based on Merit.”
[421] Ricaut, 129.
[422] About the year 1800, when the two institutions, and particularly the Ruling Institution, had reached an extreme state of decay, and before new institutions after Western models had yet been introduced, the Ottoman Empire was to come very near to such a breaking-up. It seems actually to have been saved by the lingering of the tradition against heredity in office; for, though life-tenure of purchased governorships had become regular, no Pasha except the North African corsairs of the seventeenth century, and Ibrahim in Egypt in the early nineteenth century, succeeded in founding a dynasty upon Ottoman soil. For the disorders about 1800, see Heidborn, 144.
[423] Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 490-491, quoting Kochi Bey.
[424] See above, p. 69, note 3.
[425] Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 278.
[426] Hammer, Staatsverwaltung, 6.
[427] Postel, i. 31, says that Suleiman occasionally sent for one of his women to visit him in the principal palace. Nicolay, 62, reports that about 1551 Roxelana was residing within the palace grounds. By 1585 the principal ladies of the harem had been transferred to the new palace, leaving the old palace to the function of a training-school for recruits. These steps illustrate the rapid increase of the importance of the harem in the Ottoman scheme.
[428] Exceptions were made in case of the old Hojas, or teachers of the young princes, the religious advisers of the queen mother, and physicians. See Postel, i. 35; Ricaut, 68; D’Ohsson, vii. 11; Hammer, Staatsverwaltung, 73.
[429] Siasset Namèh, 121, 123, 163.
[430] “Kanun of the Imperial Table,” printed in Hammer’s Staatsverfassung, 98: “It is not my Kanun that any one should dine with my Imperial Majesty; it might be some one not of Imperial blood.” Suleiman did not always observe this Kanun (cf. Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 99).
[431] Erizzo, 138; Morosini, 281.
[432] Extended descriptions of the household are found in D’Ohsson, vii and Hammer’s Staatsverwaltung. Lane-Poole, in his Story of Turkey, ch. xiv, gives a good, clear summary of D’Ohsson. References to these authorities are here omitted except in a few instances of special interest.
[433] Hammer, Staatsverwaltung, 71; Menavino, 179. The Eski Serai of the sixteenth century stood where the Seraskierat, or War Office, now stands.
[434] D’Ohsson, v. 52.
[435] Postel, i. 32.
[436] See above, pp. 56, 57, 78, 79.
[437] Junis Bey (below, p. 269) says twenty, a number scarcely sufficient. Twenty years earlier Menavino, 180, speaks of about forty.
[438] Ricaut, 67-68, mentions several of these.
[439] Postel, i. 35.
[440] Ricaut, 73.
[441] Hammer (Geschichte, ii. 222) says that the custom of accomplishing the death of sons of daughters of sultans (by neglecting to tie the navel cord) dates from Mohammed II; but no contemporary authority appears to mention such a custom. D’Ohsson, vii. 93, says that it was instituted in the time of Achmet I. The son of a sister of Selim I was Beylerbey of Aleppo about 1550 (Alberi, Anonimo of 1553, 228).
[442] Ludovisi, 29; Postel, i. 31. See p. 141, note 2.
[443] Postel, i. 31.
[444] Spandugino, 64.
[445] Menavino, 137.
[446] D’Ohsson, vii. 34. Whether this number was fixed in Suleiman’s time does not appear from the records. Mohammed II had 32 officers of the Khas Oda (Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 96). Menavino, 121-123, names three special officers, 15 of second grade, and 35 of third grade, before mentioning the treasury. Ramberti and Junis Bey (below, pp. 243, 263) name 6 principal officers, but do not distinguish the odalar further. Chesneau, 39, says that 25 of the pages were Suleiman’s personal servants, and that 5 served him specially. Navagero, 45, speaks of 25 or 30 in the Khas Oda. Ricaut, 52, speaks of 40.
[447] Ramberti and Junis Bey, as above; Postel, iii. 4; Navagero, 45.
[448] Navagero, 44.
[449] The number of pages in the Kiler Odassi is given by Menavino, 125, as 25, all between 20 and 22 years of age. Navagero, 44, says that they numbered 300 or 400; but this is incredible. He gives no numbers for the purely educational odalar, and evidently has counted them all in the Kiler Odassi.
[450] Hammer (Staatsverwaltung, 30) erroneously says that the pages of these odalar attended to the lowest duties of the palace, and were recruited from three palace schools outside. Navagero, 44, disproves this.
[451] An additional chamber, the Seferli Odassi, or Chamber of Campaign, was instituted by Murad IV to attend to his laundry work and other special duties in time of war. The membership was chosen out of the educational odalar, and it ranked next after the Kiler Odassi. See Hammer, Staatsverwaltung, 28.
[452] Ricaut, 47.
[455] Menavino, 160 ff.
[456] Zinkeisen, iii. 181, states erroneously on the authority of Trevisano, 125 (meaning p. 128), that these were all Turks and of noble blood. The fact that Menavino, 146, calls them “schiaui” is sufficient disproof. Zinkeisen also quotes Spandugino, 114, to the effect that the Muteferrika were all lords, or sons of princes or of lords; but Spandugino, 62, says that pages pass to the office of Muteferrika from the highest four offices at least. Trevisano, 127, says, “Li quali sono giovani nati Turchi, e figliuoli d’uomini di autorità” (italics not in original); but “men of authority” were practically all renegades. Moro, 341, calls them, in 1590, sons of the principal Turks. The fact seems to be that most of the Muteferrika were Ottomans of the second generation (i. e., sons of renegades) and that the rest were regarded as ennobled by passage through the high offices of the Khas Oda.
[458] Spandugino, 116, gives the number 300, and says that they became Janissaries. Menavino, 140, mentions 500. Ramberti (pp. 246, 253) mentions 250 at the principal palace and 100 at the palace of the harem; the latter he calls Janissaries.
[460] Spandugino, 125.
[461] Postel, iii. 9.
[462] Ricaut, 373. In his time they numbered 500 or 600.
[464] Postel, iii. 11.
[465] Menavino, 129. In D’Ohsson’s time (vii. 15) this official was also the jailer and presiding executioner of the palace, inspector of the water supply and forests near the capital, and overseer of hunting and fishing and of the trade in wine and lime. How many of these functions he exercised under Suleiman seems not to have been recorded. In Spandugino’s time (p. 118) the chief Kapuji was presiding executioner.
[468] Shortened in use to Miri-akhor, Imrakhor, Imbrahor, Imbroor, Imror, etc.
[469] D’Ohsson, vii. 17; Menavino, 148-150.
[470] A short form of Emir-Alem.
[471] Menavino, 145.
[472] D’Ohsson, vii. 21. In his time these were under the “Chief of the Black Eunuchs.” It does not appear who controlled them under Suleiman.
[473] Postel, iii. 12; Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 44.
[474] Hammer, Staatsverwaltung, 37.
[475] Spandugino, 127-128, describes the hunting organization under Bayezid II. Ramberti and Junis Bey (below, pp. 249, 266) state that 2700 or 900 Janissaries served under the Segban-bashi and Zagarji-bashi in the care of the dogs.
[476] D’Ohsson, iv. 98 ff.
[477] Siasset Namèh, 161.
[478] Tractatus, ch. ix.
[479] Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 88 ff.
[480] Ibid., 434 ff.
[481] The statements of this paragraph are based upon the Kanuni Teshrifat as given in Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 434 ff. See Della Valle, i. 45: “Tutti gli uffici, e tutti gli ordini, tanto della militia, quanto della Corte, e d’ogni altra sorte di persone, hanno qui il loro habito proprio, and in particolare al portamento della testa, si cognosce ciascuno che cosa è.”
[482] Postel, iii. 13; Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 18.
[483] Ricaut, 156.
[484] The festival of the Birth of the Prophet was not instituted until the reign of Murad III (Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 469). The sultan’s annual visit to the relics of the Prophet also became a great ceremony.
[485] Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 96-101. Only less splendid was the marriage of Ibrahim to Suleiman’s sister in 1524 (ibid. 38).
[486] Compare Gritti, 27: the Janissaries at the reception of ambassadors “stand in such quiet and order as for war that it is a marvellous thing and not to be believed by those who have not seen it with their own eyes.”
[487] Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 152 ff.
[488] A name for Cairo, used much from the time of the crusades onward.
[489] Nicolay, 88-89, explains that the wearing of ostrich plumes, attached in a tube of jeweled gold to the front of the turban, and curving over the head and down the back, was a highly-valued privilege accorded only to such Janissaries as had distinguished themselves in action.
[490] The Solaks.
[491] The Sharabdar, the Chokadar, and the Silihdar.
[492] Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 283 ff.
[493] Ibid., 302 ff. These quotations may profitably be compared with those from the Tractatus in regard to the simplicity of Murad II (above, p. 134). Not a few descriptions of court and camp ceremonies in the century following the accession of Suleiman have been handed down. For example: Suleiman’s entry into Belgrade in 1532 (Marini Sanuto, lvi. 870); Suleiman’s entry into Aleppo, 1548 (anonymous report, in Alberi, 3d series, i. 224 ff.); Suleiman’s reception of Captain Pinon in 1544 (Maurand, 207-225); Selim II’s reception of De Noailles in 1573 (Du Fresne-Canaye, 59-72); Ahmed I’s going to mosque, 1614 (Della Valle, 68-71); Ahmed I’s reception of the Venetian Bailo, 1615 (ibid. 98 ff.).
[494] Postel, i. 31, speaks of the mother of Mustapha as having superior authority about 1537, though residing much at Magnesia; and he does not speak of Roxelana. But Ludovisi, 29, shows that Roxelana was in 1534 the wife of Suleiman, and that the mother of Mustapha then resided with her son at Magnesia. For the decisive quarrel between Roxelana and the mother of Mustapha, see Navagero, 75.
[495] Navagero, 79.
[497] Navagero, 76-77.
[498] The unfortunate Jehangir also was thought to have come to his death from shock at the death of Mustapha and fear of a similar fate for himself. See Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 178; Navagero, 77. But see Alberi, Anonimo of 1553, 216, for another and more credible account.
[499] Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 425.
[501] Busbecq, Life and Letters, i. 331; Halil Ganem, i. 199.
[502] Spandugino, 185. A generation earlier still La Broquière, 186, said: “No one speaks to them [the pashas] unless he brings them a present, as well as one for each of the slaves who guard their gate.”
[503] Spandugino, 145, relates how in his time the peasants were eaten, as it were, all the year by tithes, compulsory presents, land-tax, and extortion. The earlier sixteenth-century writers seem not to have observed that the sultan’s subjects were especially miserable. Morosini (1585), 272, remarks vigorously upon the tyranny and oppression which were causing depopulation and destroying the incentive of the farm-dwellers to produce more than a bare sustenance. Zane (1595), 395, 415, writes in a similar vein. Gerlach, 52 (quoted in Zinkeisen, iii. 361), found those who lived at a distance from Constantinople in a wretched state of oppression. Knolles (ed. 1687, p. 982), writing about 1603, speaks of the desolate condition of the empire, especially in those regions through which the army was accustomed to pass. In Ricaut’s time (pp. 124, 145, 323) agricultural decline, accompanied by misery and depopulation, was apparent.
[504] Hammer, Geschichte, iii. 438.
[505] D’Ohsson, i. 268; Heidborn, 112, note 11. Heidborn, 106-121, treats fully the constitutional position of the sultan.
[506] Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 226.
[507] D’Ohsson, iv. 482 ff.
[508] Hammer, Geschichte, ii. 1-3.
[509] Ibid. i. 557, iii. 159, etc.
[510] Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 29. This use of the word Urf in Turkish is not the same as that of its Arabic original (see Redhouse, 1294; Youssouf Fehmi, 237). Heidborn, 37 ff., discusses the sources of Ottoman law, giving an especially thorough and excellent treatment to the Sacred Law.
[511] Macdonald, 71; D’Ohsson, i. 5 ff.
[512] Macdonald, 94, 115; Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 4; D’Ohsson, i. 11 ff.
[513] Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 9.
[514] D’Ohsson, 21.
[515] Hammer, Staatsverfassung, 10; D’Ohsson, i. 22-24. The Multeka is the basis of D’Ohsson’s excellent work, which consists of a translation of the code with its comments, to which he has added observations of great value based on historical studies and on his own investigations during many years’ residence in Turkey. Heidborn, 44-69, gives a detailed account of the development of the Sacred Law. He also (pp. 85-89) describes the Multeka and gives a table of its contents.
[516] Heidborn, 40-41. This writer uses the form fykyh.
[517] Snouck Hurgronje, in Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, xxvii. 1 ff., 74 ff.
[518] Goldziher, in Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, viii. 406 ff.; Kohler, ibid. 424 ff.; Juynboll, 8, 310.
[519] In Turkey at the present day the courts of the Sacred Law (Sheriyeh) have sole cognizance of the following classes of cases: “in civil law, questions concerning marriage, alimony, education of children, liberty, slavery, inheritance, wills, absence, and disappearance; in criminal law, suits concerning retaliation, the price of blood, the price of laming a limb, the price of causing an abortion, damages for disfigurements, the division of the price of blood” (Heidborn, 255). The Nizamiyeh, or secular courts, have sole cognizance of commercial and penal cases, and a few other groups. All other causes are taken before the Sheriyeh courts if the parties agree; otherwise before the Nizamiyeh courts. Thus the courts of the Sacred Law still retain a great deal of importance in Turkey.
[520] See, in particular, above, pp. 40, 41, 42. See also Postel, i. 116 ff., 124 ff.; Ricaut, 200 ff. Heidborn, 43, comments on this state of affairs, and explains the comparatively recent further legal developments in Turkey as follows:—
“Durant de longs siècles le fykyh, tout pétrifié qu’il était, put suffire aux besoins de la société islamique et son manque de souplesse fut d’autant moins ressenti, que l’évolution de cette société elle-mème a été à peu près nulle. Assoupie dans une léthargie profonde, elle semble se recueillir de son immense effort de jeunesse et contempler en spectatrice indifférente ou dédaigneuse les progrès réalisés, depuis, par l’Occident. En Turquie seulement, à mesure que se resserraient ses liens avec l’Europe, fut comprise l’impérieuse nécessité de sortir de cet isolement et d’emprunter à la culture occidentale certaines méthodes susceptibles de rajeunir le corps vielli de l’empire. Par suite de cette orientation récente, le fykyh a subi, en Turquie, d’importantes abrogations de fait sinon de droit, qui atteignent cependant plutôt le domaine du droit public que celui du droit privé. Celui-ci subsiste, dans une large mesure, malgré ses imperfections et son absence de plan et de clarté. On s’est contenté de combler ses lacunes les plus apparentes par des lois empruntées à la législation occidentale, sans se soucier de la complète disparate créée par la réunion d’éléments aussi hétérogènes.”