4.
Power and Control in Mehmet's Empire
Constantinople in the late 15th century
The City
During Mehmet II’s twenty year reign, he spent twelve years on campaign [1]. It is ignorant however to view the Sultan as simply the ‘Grand Turk’ of European legend, a bloodthirsty warlord interested only in the sword. In his new capital of Constantinople, of which he was, we shall remember, heir not conqueror, he intended to resurrect what the Byzantines had considered the ‘navel of the world’ and surpass its historic greatness. He rebuilt the city walls and citadels, created public gardens, aqueducts and new palaces. Asia came to Europe. The churches became mosques; abandoned houses were donated to Anatolians moved to repopulate the city; the Turkish women took up the Byzantine veil in place of their linen hoods. While the old aristocracy was brutally purged for any misdemeanour against their new Caesar, the Greek merchants and artisans who had fled the city (many long before its capture for greener economic pastures) were welcomed back with open arms. The fierce old theologian Gennadius, Rome’s most implacable critic, was removed from his quiet exile and made Patriarch of the Orthodox Christians, overseeing their semi-autonomous millets [2] in Constantinople and across the Empire. Mehmet too brought the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, and the Armenian Patriarch from Bursa. He granted the Franciscan monks amnesty to travel Turkish lands and preach their teachings as they saw fit. All the religious leaders of the city were called on to translate their holy texts into Turkish.
This religious tolerance was based in part on the Islamic idea of Alh-ah-Kitab, or ‘People of the Book’ which respected Jews and Christians as followers of the Abrahamic God. It can also be seen to descend from the pluralism of Genghis Khan and his nomadic successors which was utilised as a pragmatic strategy to avoid conflict in vast empires of multiple faiths. While only Muslims could hold high office in the Ottoman state, for most of their history they simply saw the Christians and Jews as wayward brethren who would one day see the light. This atmosphere of liberalism went beyond faith and led the Genoese and Venetians to return with the Greeks to take up their trades once more, their business quarters returned to them without compensation. The following years saw Serbs, Albanians, Bulgars, Vlachs, Turcomen and others come, many captives of war transplanted into Mehmet’s cosmopolis. Italian humanists and Greek scholars were made guests of the Sultan, their books adding to his vast library. Mehmet cemented his absorption of Western thought with his own book, Siyasah [3], which claimed to combine Byzantine, Latin and Islamic theories of kingship into a new, uniquely Ottoman, philosophy.
Ottoman tolerance provided both spiritual peace and earthly rewards
For his seat of power, the Kaiser-i-Rum shunned the Great Palace of his Byzantine predecessors and instead built the Topkapi Palace, named after the nearby ‘Cannon Gate’ through which Mehmet had first arrived in Constantinople. To European eyes it was a squat, disorganised collection of courtyards, harems, kitchens and chambers, unbecoming of an emperor and paling in comparison to the great buildings being thrown up elsewhere in the city. These observations were partly informed by the medieval correlation of authority with military fortification. Why, an Ottoman might retort, would the Sultan barricade himself within the greatest city within the greatest empire the world had ever known? Topkapi was no castle but a microcosm of Mehmet’s realm. Based on the layout of a nomadic lord’s great tent, the outer courtyards were a bustle of activity were traders sought audiences with bureaucrats, the Sultan’s guard drilled and scholars debated the matters of the day. As one entered into the inner courtyards, a stoic silence grew. Gardeners quietly tended the orchards as clerics sat in contemplation beneath Cyprus trees.
Inside the actual chambers of the Sultan courtiers stood like statues, ready for their lord’s command. No word was spoken aloud unless Mehmet demanded it and often he himself would only talk in whisper to his grand vizier when not behind closed doors. This silence was so disciplined that by the start of the 16th century the denizens of Topkapi had perfected their own form of sign language [4]. Many Western visitors found the atmosphere otherworldly, even disturbing, though few were left in doubt of Mehmet’s authority and gravitas. Another quirk of the Ottoman court, which uneducated ambassadors often considered a humiliation designed to belittle Christians, was the grasping of their arms by courtiers before they knelt before the Sultan. This was in fact an act of security turned ritual, dating back to 1389 when Murad I had been assassinated by a Serbian envoy at the 1st Battle of Kosovo. For all his deference to Byzantium, it was at Topkapi, an itinerant khan’s yurt made permanent in stone and marble, that Mehmet established the Ottomans as nomad warriors turned imperial rulers. Giovanni de Tosca, a 17th century Italian merchant described Topkapi as the ‘eye of a storm’. For while the boundaries of the Empire spun in fast rotation, engulfing new conquests and new markets, at its centre the Sultan sat in sublime tranquillity, controlling chaos with absolute authority.
The sprawling Topkapi Palace would by expanded and renovated throughout the Empire's history
The State
The governmental structure of the Ottoman Empire was forced to expand and evolve rapidly during the reign of Mehmet II. Administration on a local level remained much as it had since the days of Osman, that is to say a labyrinthine mixture of religious, secular and military regulation. The millets, mentioned above, had no geographical boundaries and instead allowed Muslims, Christians and Jews to be judged by their own religious courts. Non-Muslims were granted this freedom, as well as exemption from military conscription [5] in return for the Jizya, a per capita tax. The highest level of provincial government was the eyalet, overseen by a beylerbey or governor-general. Appointed by the sultan, he oversaw tax collection, the census and the recruitment of troops in times of war. Often the sultan’s sons would be given control of an eyelet to educate them in ruling. Beneath this lay the timariots, the closest relations in the Empire to the feudal knights of Europe. Granted land (a timar) for military service, they and their successors would serve the beylerbey, enforcing taxes in their domain and raising a personal retinue for campaigns as payment for their fief. Technically separate from the eyalet but in reality heavily intertwined were military jurisdictions, overseen by Janissary commander. They were the professional garrisons of the Empire, answerable directly to the Sultan and positioned to combat revolt, invasion and an ambitious beylerbey if necessary. Though this cluttered system would in time cause problems for the Ottomans, it provided effective checks and balance, as well as security for Constantinople.
Regardless, the complexities of the eyalet, millet and timar required Mehmet’s central government to be drastically overhauled. New provinces in Anatolia, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia and Moldavia, warfare and an explosion in trade put great strain on the relatively small bureaucracy of the pre-1453 era. In moving his capital from Edirne the Sultan was able to absorb much of the Byzantine administration, including many of its former employees. Courts, tax offices, trade houses, census rolls and more besides were incorporated to give Mehmet a level of centralised control unheard of before in the Ottoman state; this was only a partial, stop-gap solution to the problem of ruling the new empire. A new generation of officials, scholars and soldiers were to be raised with the rapid expansion of two institutions: Devsirme and the Madrasa. Devsirme, translated ominously as the ‘blood tax’ was the Ottoman answer to the question that plagued all pre-modern states, how to devolve power from the monarch without ceding it entirely. The Persians had eunuchs, the Europeans had the Catholic clergy and the Chinese had their system of examinations. In Devsirme the Turks created a paradoxical class of slaves, destined to rule the empire but forever be property of the emperor.
A censor collects the 'blood tax'
It had long been a custom of Turkish tribes to enslave the children of their enemies to be raised as servants of their new lord. In 1432 Murad II translated the practice into state policy and upon this Mehmet pushed the boy tribute system to its logical conclusion. Every three years Ottoman officials travelled through the villages of Greece and the Balkans, selecting the finest of Christian youth to serve the Sultan. Eventually vast caravans of human levy passed from Europe into Constantinople. From here the boys were sent to Anatolian farms to build their strength and learn Turkish, before returning to the capital, converting to Islam and being enrolled into the Madrasa of the Fatih Mosque. The Madrasa were religious schools common across the Islamic world were students would be educated in literature, theology, mathematics and the sciences. Those of the Fatih Mosque were considered some of the finest schools in the Early Modern world and from here the boys would be split. Those deemed of a more intellectual bent would be recruited into the bureaucracy, while the physically capable would join the Janissary Corps.
The Janissaries were the backbone of the Ottoman military and to some extent the state itself. They acted as soldiers, sailors, firemen and policemen. The most capable could rise to become pashas and join the Sultan’s inner circle, or even be promoted to the office of Grand Vizier. Mehmet valued this system of authority as it removed the taint of nepotism, the purging of the Candarli family being an indication of his views on the subject [6]. By Islamic law Muslims could not be enslaved, which excluded the children of Janissaries from gaining entry into the Devsirme system, while marriage was discriminated against. Save the minor ‘barons’ of the Empire, the timariots, the Ottoman state was the only one in Europe without a hereditary aristocracy. The Janissaries were cut off from their homelands by distance and religion, lived in isolated barracks and were barred from growing beards, their long, drooping moustaches marking them as apart from Turkish society. Though a Devsirme recruit could grow rich and powerful in the Sultan’s service, all their worldly wealth remained the property of the Sultan and on their death would be returned to him [7]. Mehmet’s system ensured, at least theoretically, that none would grow to rival the House of Osman.
The Sultan dines with his Devsirme slaves
[1] This excludes the almost seasonal revolts of Serbs, Bulgars and anti-Semites in the Balkans.
[2] Administrative divisions based on religion.
[3] The title translates as Politics and introduced the word to the Turkish and Arabic vernacular.
[4] Many of the Sultan’s attendants were in fact deaf-mutes and it is from them the Kanunname, the court etiquette of Topkapi, developed.
[5] Plenty of Christians, particularly amongst Carpathian Vlachs, volunteered in times of war, acting as scouts and irregulars in return for plunder.
[6] See Chapter 1
[7] This doesn’t mean heirs might not be granted their father’s land or property but it would be gifted by the Sultan, not inherited by right.