HARVARD HISTORICAL STUDIES
PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF
THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
FROM THE INCOME OF
THE HENRY WARREN TORREY FUND
VOLUME XVIII
HARVARD HISTORICAL STUDIES
=I. The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of
America, 1638-1870.= By W. E. B. DU BOIS, Ph.D., Editor of “The Crisis.”
8vo. $1.50 net.
=II. The Contest over the Ratification of the Federal Constitution in
Massachusetts.= By S. B. HARDING, Ph.D., Professor of European History in
Indiana University. 8vo. $1.25 net.
=III. A Critical Study of Nullification in South Carolina.= By D. F.
HOUSTON, A.M., LL.D., Secretary of Agriculture. 8vo. $1.25 net.
=IV. Nominations for Elective Office in the United States.= By FREDERICK
W. DALLINGER, A.M., late Member of the Massachusetts Senate. 8vo. $1.50
net.
=V. A Bibliography of British Municipal History.= Including Gilds and
Parliamentary Representation. By CHARLES GROSS, Ph.D., late Gurney
Professor of History and Political Science in Harvard University. 8vo.
$2.50 net.
=VI. The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest.= By THEODORE
CLARKE SMITH, Ph.D., Professor of History in Williams College. 8vo. $1.75
net.
=VII. The Provincial Governor in the English Colonies of North America.=
By EVARTS BOUTELL GREENE, Ph.D., Professor of History in the University
of Illinois. 8vo. $1.50 net.
=VIII. The County Palatine of Durham.= A Study in Constitutional History.
By G. T. LAPSLEY, Ph.D., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 8vo. $2.00
net.
=IX. The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies.= By ARTHUR
LYON CROSS, Ph.D., Professor of European History in the University of
Michigan. 8vo. $2.50 net.
=X. The Administration of the American Revolutionary Army.= By LOUIS
CLINTON HATCH, Ph.D. 8vo. $1.50 net.
=XI. The Civil Service and the Patronage.= By CARL RUSSELL FISH, Ph.D.,
Professor of American History in the University of Wisconsin. 8vo. $2.00
net.
=XII. The Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts.= By C. A.
DUNIWAY, Ph.D., President of the University of Wyoming. 8vo. $1.50 net.
=XIII. The Seigniorial System in Canada.= By W. B. MUNRO, Ph.D.,
Professor of Municipal Government in Harvard University. 8vo. $2.00 net.
=XIV. The Frankpledge System.= By WILLIAM ALFRED MORRIS, Ph.D., Assistant
Professor of English History in the University of California. 8vo. $1.50
net.
=XV. The Public Life of Joseph Dudley.= By EVERETT KIMBALL, Ph.D.,
Associate Professor of History in Smith College. 8vo. $2.00 net.
=XVI. Mémoire de Marie Caroline, Reine de Naples.= Edited by ROBERT
MATTESON JOHNSTON, A.M., Assistant Professor of Modern History in Harvard
University. 8vo. $2.00 net.
=XVII. The Barrington-Bernard Correspondence.= Edited by EDWARD CHANNING,
Ph.D., McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History in Harvard
University. 8vo. $2.00 net.
=XVIII. The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the
Magnificent.= By ALBERT HOWE LYBYER, Professor of European History in
Oberlin College. 8vo. $2.00 net.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A.
THE GOVERNMENT OF
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
IN THE TIME OF SULEIMAN
THE MAGNIFICENT
BY
ALBERT HOWE LYBYER, PH.D.
PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY, OBERLIN COLLEGE
“Our empire is the home of Islam; from father to son the lamp of our
empire is kept burning with oil from the hearts of the infidels.”
MOHAMMED II, THE CONQUEROR.
“A lord and his bondsmen.”
RANKE.
“Les Turcs ... nées de la guerre et organisées pour la conquête.”
CAHUN.
“The Ottoman government ... seems to have attained during the
sixteenth century the highest degree of perfection of which its
constitution was capable.”
ROBERTSON.
[Illustration]
CAMBRIDGE
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HENRY FROWDE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1913
COPYRIGHT, 1913
BY HARVARD UNIVERSITY
PREFACE
The Ottoman Turks, after the world had long despaired of them, have
in these last years shown signs of renewed vigor. The time is, then,
perhaps not inauspicious for an examination of the structure of their
organization in the period of its greatest power and prestige. It is not
easy for the present age to realize how large the empire of Suleiman
bulked in the eyes of contemporaneous Europe. Amid the vast energies
and activities, the magnificent undertakings and achievements, of the
marvellous sixteenth century, nothing surpassed the manifestations of
power that swept forth from Constantinople. The following pages will have
been worth while if their incomplete presentation shadows forth, however
dimly, the secrets of Ottoman greatness and success.
This book was originally prepared in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Harvard
University, and was subsequently awarded the Toppan Prize. The writer
desires to acknowledge his very great indebtedness for advice,
suggestion, and criticism to a number of kind friends with whom he has
consulted, but especially to Professor A. C. Coolidge and Professor G. F.
Moore. Nor can he let the book go to press without recording his extreme
obligation to his wife for unwearying assistance at every stage of its
preparation.
A. H. L.
OBERLIN, OHIO, 1912.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION
IDEAS CONSTITUTE A NATION 3
THE BACKGROUND OF OTTOMAN HISTORY 5
CHARACTER AND MISSION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 7
THE RACIAL DESCENT OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS 10
SELJUK AND OTTOMAN TURKS IN ASIA MINOR 14
THE SOURCES OF OTTOMAN CULTURE 18
CHAPTER I
THE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE IN GENERAL
DEFINITION 25
THE LIMITATIONS ON DESPOTISM 26
THE TERRITORIAL BASIS 28
THE PEOPLES 33
INSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT 35
CONTEMPORARY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE TWO GREAT INSTITUTIONS 38
CHAPTER II
THE OTTOMAN RULING INSTITUTION: AS A SLAVE-FAMILY
I. GENERAL DESCRIPTION 45
II. THE SLAVE-FAMILY 47
METHODS OF RECRUITING 49
THE TRIBUTE BOYS 51
ESTIMATE OF THE SYSTEM 53
THE SLAVE STATUS 55
THE HAREM, THE EUNUCHS, AND THE ROYAL FAMILY 56
OTHER OTTOMAN SLAVE-FAMILIES 58
CHARACTER OF OTTOMAN SLAVERY 60
CHAPTER III
THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE
AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
I. THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE 62
THE OTTOMAN ATTITUDE 63
OTHER MOTIVES FOR INCORPORATING CHRISTIANS 65
THE REQUIREMENT OF CONVERSION 66
SINCERITY OF CONVERSION 68
EFFECT OF THE PROCESS 69
II. THE EDUCATIONAL SCHEME 71
THE COLLEGES OF PAGES 73
THE HAREM 78
THE AJEM-OGHLANS 79
ADVANCEMENT BASED ON MERIT 82
PUNISHMENTS 88
CHAPTER IV
THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS AN ARMY
THE MILITARY ASPECT 90
THE JANISSARIES 91
THE SUCCESSION TO THE THRONE 93
THE SPAHIS OF THE PORTE 98
THE FEUDAL SPAHIS 100
OFFICERS OF THE FEUDAL SPAHIS 103
OTHER BODIES OF TROOPS 105
DISCIPLINE AND ARDOR 108
THE SUPREME COMMAND 109
INDIVISIBILITY OF THE ARMY 111
CHAPTER V
THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS A NOBILITY AND A COURT
I. PRIVILEGES OF THE KULLAR 114
NOBILITY NOT HEREDITARY 117
II. CHARACTER OF THE SULTAN’S COURT 120
ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSEHOLD 123
THE HAREM 124
THE INSIDE SERVICE 126
THE OUTSIDE SERVICE 128
THE CEREMONIES OF THE COURT 133
INFLUENCE OF THE COURT 141
CHAPTER VI
THE RULING INSTITUTION: AS GOVERNMENT
SUMMARY 146
FUNCTIONS OF THE OTTOMAN GOVERNMENT 147
THE SULTAN AS HEAD OF THE STATE AND OF THE GOVERNMENT 150
THE SULTAN AS LEGISLATOR 152
THE LEGISLATION OF SULEIMAN 159
THE VIZIERS 163
THE DEFTERDARS OR TREASURERS 167
TAXATION IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 175
SULEIMAN’S INCOME 179
THE NISHANJI OR CHANCELLOR 182
THE DIVAN OR COUNCIL 187
THE RULING INSTITUTION AS A WHOLE 193
CHAPTER VII
THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
GENERAL DESCRIPTION 199
FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION 200
THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 203
CLERGY, SEIDS, AND DERVISHES 206
JURISTS AND THE MUFTI 207
THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM 215
THE MOSLEM INSTITUTION AS A WHOLE 224
CHAPTER VIII
COMPARISON OF THE TWO GREAT INSTITUTIONS
LIKENESSES 227
DIFFERENCES 230
INTERACTIONS 232
THE RELATIVE POWER OF THE INSTITUTIONS 233
APPENDICES
I. THE SECOND BOOK OF THE AFFAIRS OF THE TURKS
Written in 1534, supposedly by BENEDETTO RAMBERTI.
Translated from the Italian 239
II. PAMPHLET OF JUNIS BEY AND ALVISE GRITTI
Printed in 1537. Presented in the original Italian 262
III. INCOMPLETE TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE KANUN-NAMEH, OR
COLLECTION OF EDICTS, OF SULEIMAN THE MAGNIFICENT
AS ARRANGED BY THE MUFTI EBU SU’UD
Translated from the Turkish 276
IV. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE MOGUL EMPIRE IN INDIA
General Comparison of Ottoman and Indian Conditions 278
The Personnel of the Mogul Government 279
Relation of Government to Religious Propagation 283
The Army 285
The Court 287
The Government Proper 292
The Moslems and the Moslem Church 299
Books consulted in the Preparation of Appendix IV 303
V. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
i. Origins of Ottoman Governmental Ideas 305
ii. The Ottoman Government in the Sixteenth Century 307
iii. Alphabetical List of Works Cited 322
GLOSSARY OF TURKISH WORDS 331
INDEX 339
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
INTRODUCTION
IDEAS CONSTITUTE A NATION
A nation, when considered from its earliest to its latest days, is much
more a body of ideas than a race of men. Men die, families decay, the
original stock tends to disappear; new individuals are admitted from
without, new family groups take the lead, whole tribes are incorporated
and absorbed; after centuries the anthropological result often bears but
slight resemblance to the original type. Undoubtedly the fabric of ideas
which a nation weaves as its history develops also undergoes changes
of pattern; old principles pass out of sight, and new ones, born of
circumstance, or brought in from without, come to controlling influence.
But ideas are not, like men, mortal: they can be transmitted from man to
man through ages; they can be stored in books and thus pass from the dead
to the living; when built together into a solid and attractive structure,
they impart to the whole something of their individual immortality.
Singly they pass as readily to strangers as to kindred; when organized to
rounded completeness as the culture of a great living nation, they have
a power which lays hold of men of many races, alone or in masses, and in
the absence of strong prejudice compels acceptance.
Such an assimilative force can clearly be seen in vigorous operation in
the United States of America today. A system of ideas, woven of countless
threads spun by Egyptian, Babylonian, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Teuton,
preserved and enlarged by Frank, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and Englishman,
recombined in a new and striking pattern by the founders of the republic,
is thrown over men from every nation under heaven, who under its
influence all become of one type, not to be mistaken wherever it is seen.
The history of the Ottoman Empire reveals the constant working of a
like assimilative force. It was not merely, and not even mainly, the
compulsion of the sword that built up and maintained the strongest
national power of the sixteenth century. Swords must be wielded by men;
and how were enough strong and capable men found and bound together
in willing coöperation to conquer large sections of Europe, Asia, and
Africa, to organize and govern their conquests in a fairly satisfactory
fashion, and to establish a structure which, after more than three
hundred years of decay, disaster, and disintegration, has yet enough
strength to form the basis for a new departure? The only answer possible
is that the attraction of a great body of national ideas gathered men
from every direction and many races to unite in a common effort. Although
much violence, injustice, and destructive passion was involved, the
result was a great and on the whole a durable and useful empire.
The government of the Ottoman Empire when at the height of its power
cannot be understood from a description of its court, costumes,
ceremonies, and officials, with a catalogue of their provinces and
duties. A thorough comprehension of the main political ideas that
constituted the life of the empire is essential. Since most of these
ideas were old and tried, and were wrought in a thousand ways into the
general scheme, a complete treatment would demand that they should be
considered historically from the time of their adoption. Nor would it
be sufficient to go back to the beginning of the house of Osman. The
Turkish nucleus which gathered around him, and the Mohammedans and
Christians from near and far who joined his rising fortunes were already
in possession, in a fairly systematic form, of most of the ideas of the
completed Ottoman government. The inquiry should be begun farther back,
among Byzantine Greeks, Seljuk Turks, Mohammedans of Persia and Arabia,
and Turks of Central Asia. Many of the ideas, indeed, can be traced yet
farther, through Tartary to China and through Parthia and Rome to Babylon
and Egypt.
These origins, however, cannot be considered here except in the briefest
possible fashion. All that can be done is to outline the background of
Ottoman history, the general character of the Ottoman Empire and its
service to the world, the racial descent of the Ottoman Turks, and the
main influences which affected their institutions and culture.
THE BACKGROUND OF OTTOMAN HISTORY
From early times the developing Chinese civilization in the valley of
the Yellow River had to contend with intermittent attacks from the
barbarians of the north and west. In the latter half of the third century
B.C. China’s work of domestic consolidation and centralization reached
completeness, and foreign conquest began. The policy was then initiated
which has never since been departed from,—the subjugation of the outlying
lands and the cultural assimilation of their inhabitants.[1] Following
up with armies, governors, and garrisons the nomads who fled to the
west, by the beginning of the second century A.D. China held vassal all
the population of the steppe country from the Great Wall to the Caspian
Sea; her frontiers marched with those of Parthia. Early in the third
century she entered upon four hundred years of weakness, and her western
possessions fell away; but she regained strength and restored her western
dominion just in time to confront the rising Saracen flood. During three
brilliant centuries, the seventh, eight, and ninth of our era, she held
the nomads in fairly constant subjection, and presumably taught them many
of her orderly, organized ways. It was probably in part by the strength
of her discipline that in the succeeding half-millennium the descendants
of these nomads, Turks and Mongols, wrought their will from the Sea of
Japan to the Adriatic, over most of Asia, half of Europe, and a goodly
portion of Africa.
From the eighth century Turks drifted southwestward in ever-increasing
numbers out of Chinese territory into the declining Saracen Empire.
Early in the eleventh century an army followed this course and set up
the vast but short-lived empire of the Seljuk Turks. These broke the
eastern frontier of Asia Minor, which had protected the Greeks and
Romans for fourteen hundred years, and pushed on until they could see
the domes of Constantinople. The eastward pressure of the crusading
period kept them from European shores for two centuries, near the close
of which the Mongols overran their disintegrated lands. A remnant, the
Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, struggled on in Asia Minor until the close of
the thirteenth century, when it fell into ten parts. The East Roman, or
Byzantine Empire, had by that time also been thoroughly wrecked, and the
Balkan Peninsula was divided among Frank, Italian, and Catalan, Greek,
Serb, Albanian, Wallach, and Bulgarian.
The people of one of the ten fragments of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm
took the name of Osmanlis from their chief Osman. Located on the border
of the Greek and Turkish groups of principalities, they drew men and
governmental ideas from both. The rapidity of their growth from so small
a beginning, and under such apparently unfavorable circumstances, into
a durable state is one of the marvellous things of history. In about
two and a quarter centuries from the time of their independence they
were able to attempt for the last time to unite the entire Mediterranean
civilization into one empire. North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Arabia,
the Tigris-Euphrates valley, Armenia, Asia Minor, Greece, the Balkan
Peninsula, a large part of modern Austria-Hungary and of modern Russia,
were theirs; they threatened Italy, Central and Eastern Europe, and
Persia. They thus held all three of the earliest centers of Mediterranean
civilization, the western half of the Old Persian Empire, and all the
dominions of Rome except the northwestern one-third. Apart from Spain and
the lands east of the Zagros Mountains, they ruled the Saracen Empire.
With the exception of Italy (with Illyricum and the adjacent islands) and
the short-lived Byzantine conquests in Spain, the empire of Justinian
lay within their boundaries. The later Byzantine Empire became the heart
of their dominions, and its two chief supports—the trade which passed
through the Bosphorus and the products and men of Asia Minor—became their
own principal supports. The inheritance of lands and of institutions by
the Ottoman Turks from the two great medieval empires of the Levant, the
Saracen and the East Roman, is by all odds the most pregnant fact of
their existence. They were the immediate heirs of a part of the territory
and of the whole of the culture of the Seljuk Turks. The scene of the
“world’s debate” formed but an insignificant part of their dominions.
They gathered into one net all the shoal of feudal, royal, and imperial
powers which made the Levant of the thirteenth century as decentralized
as the Holy Roman Empire or the Italy of the fifteenth century.
CHARACTER AND MISSION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
This rapid survey leads to a number of significant observations. First,
the Ottoman Turks of the sixteenth century ruled countries wholly within
the sphere of the Mediterranean civilization. The only possible exception
was the steppe lands north of the Black Sea; but these had been almost
as much under the sway of Rome and Constantinople as they ever were
under that of Stamboul. Even communication with Eastern and Southern
Asia was well-nigh cut off. The road to China north of the Caspian Sea
alone remained open, but after the break-up of the Mongol Empire it had
become long and dangerous. The rival and hostile New Persian power firmly
closed the southern land route to India and China; and even the sea-way
from Egypt eastward was blockaded by the newly-arrived Portuguese. Thus
the Ottoman Empire, except in remote origins, which, indeed, profoundly
influenced it, grew and flourished within what is commonly considered
the main field of history. Accordingly, it has a greater claim upon the
Western world on the score of kinship than has hitherto generally been
allowed.
Second, within the Mediterranean civilization the Ottoman Empire combined
regions of both Orient and Occident. The classical world knew chiefly
Romans, Greeks, and Orientals. The Ottoman Turk succeeded to two-thirds
of this world, the lands of Greece and the East. From the day of Issus
to the day of Menzikert, Asia Minor had to all intents and purposes
been a part of Europe. After Menzikert it became a center of Turkish
rule, to which, in the course of time, territories from both Asia and
Europe were added in widening circles. No deep knowledge of historical
forces is necessary to suggest that neither in Southern Europe nor in
Asia Minor itself could the teachings of fourteen centuries or more be
obliterated in five centuries or less, or even in an eternity; nor would
they fail to exert a profound influence from the moment of conquest. To
regard the Ottoman Empire as a mere Oriental state would be to misread
history and to misunderstand human nature. Its lands were of both Orient
and Occident, so also were its people, so also were its culture and its
government.
Third, the Ottoman Turks drew men and ideas from both Mohammedans and
Christians. They have commonly been regarded as wholly Mohammedan, and
therefore they have been shut off by a well-nigh impenetrable barrier
from the sympathies of a world still possessed by the prejudices of
crusading days. The foundations of such prejudices are easily open to
attack. The main religious ideas of Mohammedanism are not, except as
to the divinity of Christ, inharmonious with those of Christianity;
they were, indeed, in all probability drawn chiefly from the religious
teachings of the Old Testament. The social system of Mohammedanism
is also much like that of the Old Testament. Its most objectionable
features, the seclusion of women, polygamy, and slavery, may be regarded
as survivals from an older condition of mankind out of which a portion
of the human race has emerged—not without frequent cases of atavism—and
which Mohammedans themselves are tending to abandon. But, leaving aside
the question of the kinship of Christianity and Mohammedanism, no one can
deny that the Ottomans ruled over many Christians, that many of their
ablest men and families were of Christian ancestry, and that, according
to the nature of humanity, as much of their civilization and ruling ideas
may have come from Christian as from Mohammedan sources.
It is true that as a nation the Ottoman Turks remained Mohammedan; this
has constituted the real “tragedy of the Turk.” Bound hand and foot by
that scholastic Mohammedanism which was reaching rigid perfection at the
time when the Turks first became prominent in the Saracen Empire, and
which only in very recent days seems tending toward a Reformation, they
could not amalgamate the subject Christian peoples, already confirmed
in nationalism by the events of centuries. The deadening system stilled
their active spirits, imprisoned their extraordinary adaptability,
and held them at a stage of culture which, though in some respects it
distinctly led Europe in the sixteenth century, was before long passed
through and left behind by the progressive West. Nevertheless, the Turks
were no more limited to Mohammedan ideas than to Mohammedan men, and they
are entitled to be considered in the light of their double origin.
Fourth and last, the great task before the Ottoman Turks was a work of
unification. Lands which had been united under the great Theodosius, and
then during eleven centuries had been more and more disintegrated by
invasion of German, Slav, Arab, Tatar, and Turk, by war of Byzantine,
Persian, Moslem, Crusader, and Mongol, by destruction of roads and safe
water-routes, and by general decay of civilization, until confusion
and disorder reigned and anarchy seemed not far ahead—these lands were
once more brought under a single control. Was it their destiny to be
genuinely reunited, not merely in a common subjection, not merely by
an external shell of authority, but in the pulsing life of a vigorous
nation, harmonious in every part and run through by patriotism? This
was the well-nigh insoluble problem which the Ottoman Turks attempted
bravely. How they solved the administrative and governmental phase of it
the present treatise will try to show. Religious unity was out of the
question; and in the sixteenth century, in East and West alike, social
and cultural unity waited upon the religious. Had the Ottoman Empire
been able four hundred years ago to set apart religious considerations
as matters for the individual—a process which affords the chief hope of
the new Turkey of the twentieth century—her whole subsequent history must
have been very different.
But in the measure in which unity was attained in the Levant under the
Ottoman authority, in that measure did the Ottoman Empire render service
to civilization and humanity. After the close of the thirteenth century
Western Europe, absorbed in its own affairs, was able to give little
attention to the East. Two centuries were taken up with the consolidation
of national powers, chiefly at the expense of feudalism and the medieval
church. By the sixteenth century a measure of internal solidarity had
been attained and the struggle for external supremacy over the West
had been begun. The whole situation was complicated by the actively
leavening force of the New Learning and the explosively rending force
of the Reformation. Under such circumstances even the advance of the
Turks into Central Europe could only temporarily divert attention from
absorbing problems and direct it toward the East. To what a state of
minute division and infinite disorder the Levant would have come by that
time, had the Ottoman Empire not grown up, can only be imagined. Egypt,
the only Levantine power of consequence after the close of the crusades,
had reached the natural limits of her dominion, and had she aimed at
wider conquests the Mameluke government would scarcely have been capable
of imperial sway. No other of the countless principalities of the eastern
Mediterranean showed enough life to accomplish unity. But the Ottoman
Turks, cruelly and destructively, imperfectly and clumsily, yet surely
and effectively, built up and maintained a single authority, to which the
world probably owes most of that measure of enlightenment, culture, and
order which can be found in the Levant today.
THE RACIAL DESCENT OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS
The question as to the origin of the Ottoman Turks was raised in Western
Europe as soon as the race began to appear upon the stage of history.
There seemed to be something mysterious and uncanny about their rise to
power. If an innumerable horde of strange barbarians, a second invasion
of Attila, had overrun the Levant and settled down to rule its conquests,
cause and effect would have been apparent. But this nation seemed to
arise out of the earth. Organized and disciplined beyond any parallel in
the West, it seemed to come from nowhere and to begin at once to take
a very real part in human affairs.[2] The problem of its origin is by
no means completely solved as yet, but the main elements can perhaps be
outlined. A search for these carries the inquiry to the steppe lands.
The great band of open country which stretches with hardly a break across
the whole of Asia and far into Europe resembles the ocean both in its
vastness and in its character as an intermediate region through which
the travel of commerce, statesmanship, religion, learning, and curiosity
can pass between more thickly-settled lands. It differs from the ocean,
however, in being everywhere more or less habitable. The ethnic relations
of its families, tribes, and nations are by no means clear. China,
with a markedly Mongolian population, lay at the east and southeast;
Indo-Europeans of the Caucasian race dwelt at the southwest and west. The
tribes between seem from the earliest recorded times to have presented
every intermediate stage of physical type, as they do now; and in general
the shading from yellow to white appears to have proceeded regularly from
east to west, a circumstance that may have been due largely to climatic
influence, but was probably far more the result of admixture.[3] These
peoples were given to frequent warfare, one of whose objects was the
capture of men, women, and children as the most valuable booty. They
seem to have had no race aversions that would hinder inter-mixture,
and no race pride that would prevent captives, in the course of time,
from attaining full equality in any rank to which their abilities could
carry them. Accordingly, the process of admixture that can be observed in
historic times has probably been followed from the remote past.
The name Tatars may be used to designate all the inhabitants of the
steppe-ocean who were not distinctly Caucasian. By geographical
designation they are properly called the Ural-Altaic peoples, while
ethnically they constitute the Mongolo-Turki group.[4] Included perhaps
among those unclassified peoples who were known of old to the Greek
as Scythians, to the Persians as Turanians, and to the Chinese as
_Hiung-nu_, the Tatars, despite many differences, show unmistakable
kinship, usually in their physical features, always in their language
and institutions. They have been grouped since medieval times into two
great divisions, the Mongols and the Turks. This division may be said to
correspond in a very general way to their greater and lesser resemblance
to the Chinese, and to a narrower and wider geographical separation from
China. Many tribes possess such intermediate characteristics that they
cannot easily be classified as Turks or Mongols;[5] but a tribe that is
markedly like the Chinese is clearly Mongol, and a tribe that differs
widely from the Chinese is clearly Turkish. If these explanations be
adopted, the Turkish peoples are then in general those Tatars who have
had the greatest admixture of Caucasian blood. Their original seat seems
to have been in Mongolia, but in historic times they had come to occupy
the whole central part of the steppe region, from the Desert of Gobi to
the Volga, in contact with their Mongol kindred on the east and with
Iranians on the south and Slavs on the west. The theory of admixture
receives support from the fact that the peoples of the Mediterranean
civilization found Mongolians repulsive in appearance, but prized Turkish
slaves for their beauty.[6]
The name Turk does not appear prominently in the Byzantine and Chinese
annals before the fifth century A.D., when the people of a Tatar empire
were designated Τοῦρκοι and _Tu-kiu_.[7] The word _Turcae_ was used by
classical writers soon after the beginning of the Christian era.[8] The
name has been suspected of lying hidden in the _Targitaos_ of Herodotus
and the _Togharmah_ of Scriptures. However this may be, ancestral peoples
possessing the characteristics of the Turks of course existed, and
perhaps appeared in history, in very early times.
Some have suggested that the Sumero-Accadians of Babylonia were Turks,
but this question hardly bears on the present subject. The relations of
Turks and Persians on the Central Asian frontier is much more apropos.
The legends of the long wars of Iran and Turan, however little detailed
historical value they may have, illustrate the circumstances of continual
contact both in war and in peace.[9] Princes and nobles whose lives
were forfeit in their own country fled over the border; princesses were
exchanged in marriage; and unnumbered thousands of less exalted folk
passed the frontier as captives or slaves. The frontier itself was not
fixed, but left great regions now to the rule of the Persian and now
to the rule of the Turk. The Parthians may have been Turks.[10] After
their downfall the lines of Persian and Turk were drawn sharply by the
nationalist Sassanians. From the middle of the fifth century, indeed, the
Persians had their fill of wars with the Ephthalites, whose appellation
of White Huns may indicate their mixed Mongolian and Caucasian origin;
the Chinese annals specify the kinship of the _Tie-le_ with the _Tu-kiu_.
No sooner had the Arabs engulfed Persia than they began to welcome the
Turks whom they found to the north, and whose semi-nomadic culture was
singularly like their own. The Saracen Empire was administered for about
a century chiefly by Arabs, for another century chiefly by Persians,
and after that chiefly by Turks, who rose rapidly through slavery and
military service to the rule of provinces and even of kingdoms. Thus
great numbers of Turks came or were brought into many parts of Western
Asia. When Toghrul, grandson of Seljuk, led the first great Turkish
invasion into the heart of the Saracen Empire, he found his kindred
everywhere. Under the Seljuk Sultans large numbers of Turks streamed in
and were settled in Persia, Azerbaijan, Syria, and Asia Minor.
The Turkish occupation of Asia Minor has been called the most thorough
piece of work done by the race.[11] Few details of it have been recorded,
but one great fact stands out: under the Byzantine Empire, Asia Minor was
Greek, Christian, and the home of the empire’s most vigorous and loyal
citizens; under the Ottoman Empire, Asia Minor is Turkish, Mohammedan,
and the home of the empire’s most vigorous and faithful subjects.
The process of this transformation, so far as it is known, deserves
examination.
SELJUK AND OTTOMAN TURKS IN ASIA MINOR
The Seljuk Turks were orthodox, and often fanatical, Moslems; accordingly
they put great pressure upon the inhabitants of the peninsula to make
them exchange Christ for Mohammed. “Great numbers apostatized, ‘many
thousand children were marked by the knife of circumcision; and many
thousand captives were devoted to the service or the pleasures of their
masters.[12]’”
The Seljuk Turks were already a mixed race, and had no greater objection
than their ancestors to the reception of new members. They had come as a
Turkish army followed by a host of Turcoman nomads.[13] The soldiers took
wives from the women of the land and servants from the men and children,
and the nomads filled the gaps left among their women and children after
the long, hard journey. Those of the adult Anatolians who were left
free found a thousand temporal advantages in following the Prophet,
whose simple faith and consoling doctrines, moreover, suited both their
temperament and their circumstances. Christianity had sat lightly upon
many of them, and Mohammedanism seems to have been accepted as lightly;
for traces of Christian and perhaps of pre-Christian practices and
beliefs can be seen among the Moslems of Asia Minor today.[14] To turn
Moslem was then, as ever since, to turn Turk. In the course of three
centuries the process of settlement and conversion reached virtual
completion; nearly all the plateau of Asia Minor became Mohammedan and
Turkish. Nothing approaching the nature of statistics is available for
determining what the proportion was between invading Turks and converted
Christians. The probabilities, based on the known character of Turkish
invasions and the length and difficulty of the journey from the steppe
lands, point to a relatively small number of Turkish settlers.[15] Yet
this doubly-mixed people has contributed those subjects of the Ottoman
Empire who are accounted the most characteristically Turkish.
The invasion of Western Asia by the Mongols of Genghis Khan in the
early part of the thirteenth century drove an unknown number of
Persians and Turks to take refuge in Asia Minor. Among these is said
to have been a group led by a chief named Suleiman, whose grandson
Osman gave the Ottomans their name.[16] This group reached the Seljuk
kingdom of Rûm, and was allowed by good custom of the time to proceed
to the Christian frontier and conquer what it could. About the time of
settlement tradition specifies the number as four hundred families, or
444 horsemen, a figure which has clearly been shaped with reference to
the sacred number four, but which shows the belief that the group was
not large.[17] The growth of this band was far more rapid than could
have been accomplished by natural increase. A part of the additional
membership was supplied by Turks and other Moslems of adventurous spirit
who sought the fighting and booty of the border-land. But these were by
no means all. The Ottoman traditions and history reveal at countless
places the hospitable incorporating spirit of the embryonic nation,
which rapidly increased its numbers from the Christian population by
conversion, marriage, and capture, and most strikingly by the tribute
tax of Christian male children. The Ottoman conquests to the eastward
brought gradually into the brotherhood all the Seljuk Turks of Asia
Minor, and as many as were or became Mohammedan from the various
conquered peoples—Greeks of Trebizond, Armenians, Syrians, and others.
The conquests in Europe converted _en masse_ some sections of Bulgarians
and Albanians, who still show evidence of their origin; a very great
number of individuals among the subject Christians, however, were so
completely incorporated as to lose all trace of their source. Thousands
upon thousands of captives from the whole of Southeastern Europe, from
all of Southern Russia and Poland, from the Caucasus region, from Central
Europe as far as Regensburg and Friule, and from the shores and islands
of the Mediterranean were likewise incorporated; till, as a result of all
this Western admixture, the ruling nationality of the Ottoman Empire,
though called Turkish today, retains no physical trace whatever of
Mongolian ancestry.[18] Many of its members undoubtedly have no Tatar
blood in their veins; as for the rest, they are, if the above discussion
be well founded, a mixture of Europeans chiefly with Turks of Asia
Minor, who were themselves a mixture of the former Christian population
with Seljuk Turks, while these again were a mixture dating back through
countless ages of contact between the white and the yellow races. A
simple computation will illustrate the matter. Osman is said to have
captured a fair Greek lady named Nenuphar, or Nilufer, the Lotus-flower,
and to have given her as bride to his son Orchan, the first of the
Ottoman sultans.[19] From that time it became increasingly the policy of
the sultans to take their wives from the Caucasian race.[20] If Orchan
be set down as of pure Mongolian descent, and if it be supposed, as is
certainly very near the truth, that all the mothers of succeeding sultans
were not of Turkish blood, and if the mother be assumed to contribute to
the child an influence equal to the father’s, the proportion of Mongolian
blood in the veins of the reigning sultan, who is of the twentieth
generation from Orchan, can readily be calculated,—about one part in one
million.[21] Similar proportions would hold good for many of the Osmanli
Turks. Probably the nation as a whole has no more of Tatar blood than the
American nation has of Norman.
THE SOURCES OF OTTOMAN CULTURE
The question at once arises: What significance, then, has the name Turk
as applied to modern Turkey? To this query a general answer only can be
given here, as part of a rough statement in regard to the derivation of
the main elements of Ottoman culture.
Of the whole body of ideas and institutions and intangible inheritances
possessed by the Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth century, no small number
of the most fundamental ones were derived from the remote Tatar ancestors
of a part of the nation, from whom even this part was far separated
in time and space. Foremost among these inheritances is the Turkish
language, which in its principles of monosyllabic stem, inflexion by
postfixes alone, and assonance, and in its general system of grammar and
body of words of ordinary life, has survived from the early days through
all vicissitudes.[22] Old Turkish is the Anglo-Saxon of the Osmanli, as
Persian is his Greek and Arabic his Latin. Somewhat more hospitable than
those who use Western languages, the Turk has nearly always accepted with
a foreign thing its foreign name; and the great majority of the foreign
words and phrases so accepted he has not changed in any way, except to
modify the pronunciation of some sounds about which the tongue does not
readily curl. Among other Tatar bequests to the Osmanlis may be named
the hospitable assimilative tendency to which reference has already been
made; a predisposition to war and conquest, accompanied by an openness
of mind as to the best methods and means of prevailing; an ability and
inclination to govern, combined with great adaptability as to methods and
means; and some acquaintance with systematic and bureaucratic methods
of government impressed upon the nation by the Chinese. Again, the
Tatars, possessed of the tenacious conservatism of a primitive people,
predisposed the Ottomans to a close adherence to custom—to the doctrine
that, when a thing had been done once in a certain way, it should always
thereafter be done in the same way. Finally, the Tatars contributed
various elements of the national character, such as a touch of the old
love of nomad life, a certain stolidity of spirit and calm sobriety of
temper (taught, perhaps, by the vastness of the steppe in comparison with
the littleness of man), and a lack of originality which hindered the
construction of freely-borrowed ideas into new forms of higher relation.
In general, therefore, the foundations of the national character of the
Ottomans were laid in the early days, in a body of ideas which was passed
down continuously from man to man, not so much through blood-relationship
as through willing acceptance or enforced adoption.
The nature of a Tatar nation in the steppe lands, manifesting many of
the elements mentioned above, is extremely significant as foreshadowing
some features of the Ottoman government. A Tatar nation was a voluntary
association, independent of kinship, formed about a promising leader, and
interested in war and conquest; thus it might grow with extreme rapidity
until the geographical extent of its dominion would be marvellous. The
empire of the _Tu-kiu_, for example, gathered in about twenty-five years
after its foundation territories which reached from China proper to the
confines of the Byzantine Empire. The leader of such a nation maintained
his control by the right voluntarily given him to punish treason and
conspiracy by death;[23] when his controlling hand grew weak, the nation
went to pieces. “A Turkish tribe could maintain a political organization
and a compact grouping only by war; without benefits from pillage and
tributes, it would be obliged to dissolve and to disperse by clans, whose
fractions would group themselves anew, and form another nation about
the strongest man.... In regard to empires like those of the Huns, or
the Turks, military associations without ethnic bonds, one cannot say
that they dissolve; they disband. Reversing the custom of other peoples,
with the Turks it is the king who feeds his people, who clothes them,
who pays them.”[24] Add to this system a loyalty to a hereditary leader
which makes the bonds of union permanent, and the description would apply
fairly well to the growing Ottoman nation. A passage from the _Kudatku
Bilik_ applies yet more closely, since it shows a military government in
the midst of a subject population:[25]—
“In order to hold a land one needs troops and men;
In order to keep troops one must divide out property;
In order to have property one needs a rich people;
Only laws create the riches of a people:
If one of these be lacking all four are lacking;
Where all four are lacking, the dominion goes to pieces.”
The ancient Persian seems to have given the Ottoman at long range a
number of his ideas of government, such as the exaltation of the monarch,
the separation of officials of the court from those of the government
proper, the division of the ministry into five departments, the council
of state, the giving of large powers to local governors, and the
beginnings of the so-called “legal” system of taxation.[26] From him also
seems to have come the policy of allowing subjects who professed alien
religions to form separate organizations, which lived in a measure under
their own laws. One writer goes so far as to say: “All investigations
into the oldest state regulations of the Orient, into the origin of
monarchical forms and constitutions, into the ceremonial of courts and
the hierarchy of officials, lead back to the great kingdom of the ancient
Persians, from whom they have come down more or less modified, to the
Arabs, who sat as caliphs on the thrones of the three continents, to
the Seljuk Turks and the Byzantines, who at the same time grew up on
the ruins of the Saracen and Roman kingdoms in Asia and Europe, and
through both to the Ottomans who swallowed up the kingdoms of Iconium
and Byzantium.”[27] The Sassanian Persians handed down through the
Moslems the completed “legal” system of a land tax of two sorts based on
cadasters, and a capitation tax levied on those who practised a foreign
religion. They may also have contributed many features of the Ottoman
feudal system. During the Abbassid period the Persians and the Turks who
gradually displaced the Arabs in the civil and military administration of
the Saracen Empire were thrown into very close contact with each other.
It was only natural, therefore, that the Persians, who possessed the more
advanced culture, should influence the Turks in many directions. Their
chief direct gift lay in the domain of poetry and literature, a field in
which they added a vast number of words and ideas to the original Turkish
stock.
The Saracens gave the Ottomans a complete religious and social system,
united under a Sacred Law which professed to provide for all relations
of life, and which became more and more rigid as time went on. Into this
had been wrought slowly by generations of learned men most of the Persian
governmental ideas that have been mentioned, together with others from
Arabian and Byzantine sources, such as a species of laws of inheritance
and a system of juristic responses. The Saracens gave also their alphabet
and a large stock of Arabic words. All that the Moslems gave the Ottomans
was embodied in one great, complex institution, which was founded upon an
elaborate system of education and supported by the revenues from a large
part of the land of the empire, and which possessed great solidity and
an almost changeless permanence. In the Ottoman Empire, as in all other
Moslem lands, the influence of this completed institution was ultimately
very injurious; when added to the Tatar love of custom, it laid a heavy
hand on all movements toward improvement and progress. Its ultimate
attitude toward earthly affairs is well expressed in the following
couplet:—
“To build in this world palaces and castles, there is no need;
They will at last be ruins: to build cities, there is no need.”[28]
A development which took place among the Turks within the Saracen Empire
was of the profoundest significance to Ottoman history. From some date
in the early ninth century, Turkish youth were brought to Bagdad in
large numbers as purchased, but by no means unwilling, slaves. Having
been trained as soldiers, they became generals and local governors, and
after no great length of time the central government also passed into
their hands. The training of such young Turkish slaves in the palaces of
caliphs and governors clearly foreshadowed Ottoman methods. The account
that perhaps looks farthest back in relation to the Turks is found in the
_Siasset Namèh_, and refers to the time of the Samanid dynasty, which
ruled in East Persia from 874 to 999. It describes the external aspect of
the system of education, such as promotion and marks of honor, but leaves
the severe work which lay behind to be inferred:—
“This is the rule that was followed at the court of the Samanids:
“They advanced slaves gradually, taking account of their services, their
courage, and their merit. Thus a slave who had just been purchased served
for one year on foot. Clothed in a cotton tunic, he walked beside the
stirrup of his chief; they did not have him mount on horseback either in
public or in private, and he would be punished if it were learned that he
had done so. When his first year of service was ended, the head of the
chamber informed the chamberlain, and the latter gave the slave a Turkish
horse which had only a rope in its mouth, a bridle and a halter in one.
When he had served one year on horseback, whip in hand, he was given a
leathern girth to put about the horse. The fifth year they gave him a
better saddle, a bridle ornamented with stars, a tunic of cotton mixed
with silk, and a mace which he suspended by a ring from his saddle-bow.
In the sixth year he received a garment of a more splendid color; and in
the seventh year, they gave him a tent held up by a pole and fixed by
sixteen pegs: he had three slaves in his suite, and he was honored with
the title of head of a chamber; he wore on his head a hat of black felt
embroidered with silver and he was clothed with a silk robe. Every year
he was advanced in place and dignity; his retinue and his escort were
increased until the time when he reached the rank of chief of squadron
and finally that of chamberlain. Though his capacity and merit might be
generally recognized, though he had done some noteworthy deed and had
acquired universal esteem and the affection of his sovereign, he was
obliged nevertheless to wait until the age of thirty-five years before
obtaining the title of _emir_ and a government.”[29]
In this system of the training of slaves for war and government lay the
nucleus of the fundamental institution of the Ottoman state, which,
together with the institution based on the Sacred Law, was to sum up
practically the entire organized life of the Ottoman nation. Under
the Samanids it was Turkish boys who were thus educated by Arabs and
Persians, but the Ottomans were later to apply the same principle to the
education of Christian youth.
The Seljuk Turks brought most of the ideas that have been mentioned into
Asia Minor. They served chiefly as mediators between the older Turkish,
Persian, and Mohammedan systems and that of the Ottomans. Besides
adding some features out of their own experience, such as a method of
book-keeping, and handing on a taste for constructing public buildings
like caravanserais, khans, and mosques, they gave rise to several
important religious orders which were to have a place in Ottoman life.
What was left for the Byzantines to contribute to the Ottoman? He had
received already the main features of his national character,—language,
literary influences, law, and religion. One of his two leading
institutions was already almost fully developed in Moslem lands, and
required only transplantation. The other, however, the institution of war
and government, could still be modified considerably; and this was to
incorporate much from the Byzantines.[30] Many details of governmental
organization, both imperial and local, a supplementary system of
taxation, a greatly elaborated taste for court ceremonial and splendor,
a plan of organizing foreign residents under a special law, and a host
of lesser usages and customs were to be taken over by the Ottomans.
The Ottoman feudal system also probably owed its final form to the
Byzantines; and perhaps it was from them that the Ottomans learned their
abnormal love for fees and gifts. The matchless structure of Saint Sophia
served as a model for the superb mosques that lift the shapely masses of
their great gray domes, supported by clusters of semidomes and lesser
domes, above the cypress trees and gardens of the rounded hills which in
Constantine’s city slope down to the blue waters of the Sea of Marmora,
the Bosphorus, and the Golden Horn.
This sketch of the origin of the elements of Ottoman culture does not
profess to be in any sense complete. So great a subject is worthy of
separate and extended treatment. No more has been attempted here than
partly to prepare the way for an understanding of the strange system
of government which the Ottoman Turks developed, and to show that that
system was no new creation, but was made of elements which in their
origins reached far back into the past. Out of old and tried ideas was
built up a double structure which was individual, conservative, and
efficient, strong, durable, and useful.
CHAPTER I
THE CHARACTER OF THE OTTOMAN STATE IN GENERAL
DEFINITION
The Ottoman Turkish state of the sixteenth century was a despotism,
limited and supported by the Mohammedan Sacred Law; it governed a vast
territory, which had been gathered by the progressive conquest of
many separate lands, and which was consequently held in many diverse
relationships; it ruled a multitude of peoples, some of which were
favored as holding to the state religion, and others of which, though in
an inferior position, had yet the right by sacred compacts to practise
other religions and obey other laws.
This description reveals at once the complex and parti-colored character
of the Ottoman Empire at the period when its power and prestige were
greatest, when its armies were feared from the shore of the German
Ocean to the borders of India and its fleets from Gibraltar to Bombay,
and when its favor and goodwill were sought by powers great and small
in Asia, Africa, and Europe. For the state as for the individual, the
penalty of greatness is increase of responsibility and care. In any
conquering nation the growth of governmental institutions must keep pace
with increase of territory and population, or advance will be stifled
by confusion. The growth may, however, be too rapid to be intelligently
directed. Most great institutions, in fact, tend to develop a separate
life of their own which may become too vast and powerful for human
comprehension and control; for political, religious, economic, and social
forces proceed out of and act upon them in numerous and unexpected
ways. In the case of the Ottoman Empire the situation was rendered
more difficult by the presence in its territory of stable and vigorous
institutions centuries older than its own. These were profoundly hostile
to its inner spirit, far too powerful and individual to be destroyed or
absorbed by it, and therefore an eternal obstacle to unity. In addition,
the Ottoman institutions themselves grew more and more apart into two
unified groups, which were in striking contrast in many ways; dwelling
together, they acted upon each other continually; and unfortunately they
were so constituted that their reciprocal influence was to the injury of
both. A fuller explanation will make the complicated situation clearer.
THE LIMITATIONS ON DESPOTISM
It may seem a contradiction in terms to speak of a despotism as limited;
yet a little reflection will show that there never has existed and never
can exist a despotism that is not limited. In what land has the will of
one man been obeyed instantly, everywhere, and by all? In what land have
there not been stubborn traditions, ineradicable prejudices, and powerful
organizations, which have blocked the way of the despot as effectively
as lofty mountains and stormy channels? The great limitation upon the
power of the Ottoman sultan was the _Sheri_, or Sacred Law of Islam,
which claimed to be wholly above him and beyond his alteration.[31] He
might by act of violence transgress its provisions, but he had even
then done it no damage; it was still what it had always been. And he
knew well that his transgressions must not be too many, and must not at
all touch certain matters, else he would be declared to have forfeited
the throne.[32] The Sacred Law divided with him the allegiance of his
Mohammedan subjects; it demanded to be consulted before he removed the
head of a criminal,[33] or went to war with an enemy;[34] it took for
itself the revenues of a large share of his lands, and so controlled the
imposition of general taxation as seriously to embarrass his finances; it
even protected his Christian subjects from all efforts of his to bring
them forcibly under its sway;[35] it entered into his very spirit and
persuaded him to relinquish harmless pleasures,[36] while it supported
him in the execution of able and worthy brothers and sons.[37] The
_Sheri_ was a form of rigid constitution which by its own provisions
was incapable of amendment. It purported to regulate for all time the
matters included in its scope. Open to a small measure of modification
by juristic interpretation, it was probably on the whole as changeless
a system as has ever prevailed among men. The sovereign had no right to
modify it in the least respect.
Nor was the Sacred Law the only real limitation upon the sultan’s power.
Although he was not bound to observe the legislation of his ancestors or
maintain their institutions,[38] yet he could not lightly destroy what
he must at once replace. Some of their laws he might cease to observe,
some institutions he might neglect, improve, or reform; but the main
substance of their work was too useful and too well-established to be
undone. Suleiman bears the name of Legislator (_El Kanuni_); but in his
case it was even more true than in similar instances in other lands that
he did not so much ordain and create anew as rearrange and put in order,
reorganize and regulate.
Again, few other peoples in the world, perhaps, have been so much under
the power of custom as was the Ottoman nation.[39] That which had
been once done in a certain way must always be done in the same way,
or in what was believed to be the same way, unless a change had been
accomplished by the distinct intervention of fully recognized authority.
The inertia of the people was so marked that the sovereign power seldom
found it worth while, and then only when driven by necessity, to put
forth the great exertion required to make a change in the established
order.
Restricted thus by an unchangeable constitution, by the presence of
deep-rooted laws and institutions, and by the settled customs of a highly
conservative people, the power of the Ottoman sultan could be exerted
freely in certain directions only. What these were will appear as the
scheme of the government is unfolded.
THE TERRITORIAL BASIS
A fundamental characteristic of the modern state is considered to
lie in the fact that its power is territorial, that it exerts equal
authority over every part of a certain territory, and over every human
being and every material object upon, above, or under the surface of
that territory. Although an authority so evenly applied may be possible
theoretically, it is never in actual existence in any particular
state; for special laws and arrangements always modify the situation.
For example, lands and property devoted to religious or educational
uses, or owned by a foreign nation for its ambassador, are regularly
exempted from taxation. Or, again, the government of the United States
of America stands in different relations toward the soil of the District
of Columbia, the state of Massachusetts, the territory of Alaska, the
Philippine Islands, and the Panama Canal Zone.
By the laws of Islam the soil of a conquered land is granted by God as
the absolute possession of the _Imâm_, or divinely commissioned prince,
who commands the conquering army.[40] Apart from the question as to where
the sovereignty rests, this theory of ownership is substantially that of
the modern state. The fact that the soil of the Ottoman Empire came into
highly complex relationships with the government, therefore, arose not
so much from a different fundamental theory as from a greater number of
special arrangements based on circumstances and on the personality of
religion and law.
The Ottoman Empire consisted, first, of a great body of lands which
were directly administered according to a system that was exceedingly
intricate but approximately uniform; second, of a number of regions less
directly administered under special regulations; third, of numerous
tributary provinces; and fourth, of certain protected or vassal states.
Outside the whole, except where the frontiers were natural, lay a belt
of neutral or disputed territory, which tended to be depopulated by
continual raids from both sides, only less frequent and terrible in time
of peace than in time of war.[41] The great significance of this belt
to the Ottoman people and government was that it furnished a continuous
supply of captives for the enormous slave-trade of the empire. Outside of
the raided belt, again, lay the _Dar-ul harb_, or land of war, inhabited
either by peoples whose religions were regarded as inferior, or by
heretics, whom it was a duty to conquer, at least when practical.[42]
The order in which these several regions are mentioned, an order based
on progressive diminution of control, corresponds in general to an
increasing distance from Constantinople. While the Ottoman Empire was
growing, each sort of territory tended to absorb the next, proceeding
from the center outward.
These lands may be considered rapidly in the reverse order. The
territory in which raiding was frequent consisted of a strip extending
across Austria-Hungary from the head of the Adriatic in a northeasterly
direction, and another band stretching eastwardly across Southern
Poland and Russia in the edge of the forest region. The latter was
separated from Crimean Tartary by the steppe land, which the Tartars kept
uninhabited in order to afford a free passage to their light horse. The
Persian frontier also lay waste; but the country was too much broken for
easy raiding, and Mohammedans, even though heretical, could not lawfully
be enslaved.[43] Similar conditions existed on the Moroccan frontier,
except that the majority of the inhabitants of Morocco were orthodox
Moslems. Another section that may properly be regarded as one of the
raided regions from which slaves and booty were drawn was the Christian
shipping on the Mediterranean Sea, and the islands and shores of that
sea so far as they were held by Christians. Crimean Tartary, Georgia,
Mingrelia, and parts of Arabia were vassal territories, more or less
lightly attached and paying no regular tribute.[44] Venice’s island of
Cyprus, the Emperor Ferdinand’s possessions in Hungary, the territories
of Ragusa, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia, all paid regular
tribute with occasional presents, for the privilege of maintaining their
own administrations. Egypt was under a special government, adapted
with slight changes from that of the Mamelukes, headed by a pasha sent
out from Constantinople for a term of three years, and delivering a
large part of its annual revenue to the imperial treasury. The Holy
Cities of Mecca and Medina, far from paying tribute, received a large
annual subsidy at the cost of Egypt.[45] North Africa, conquered by
the Corsairs, was brought into the empire by Khaireddin Barbarossa
principally for the sake of prestige and support; but, though in its
organization it imitated the parent government, it was seldom in close
obedience.
The regions directly administered were divided into districts, or
_sanjaks_, each of which had a separate law or _kanun-nameh_, of
taxation, which rested upon terms made at the time of conquest.[46]
Parts of the mountain lands of Albania and Kurdistan, and the desert
of Arabia, though nominally under direct administration, were in very
slight obedience; they retained their ancient tribal organizations, under
hereditary chieftains who were invested with Ottoman titles in return
for military service, and whose followers might or might not submit to
taxation.[47] The remaining _sanjaks_, more closely under control, were
yet organized in no simple way.
Parcels of land in the great central portion of the Ottoman Empire were
in three classes,—the tithe lands (_ersi ’ushriyeh_), the tribute lands
(_ersi kharâjiyeh_), and the state lands (_ersi memleket_).[48] The tithe
lands had been granted to Mohammedans in fee-simple (_mulk_) at the time
of conquest, on condition of paying a relatively small portion (not more
than one-tenth) of the produce to the state. The tribute lands had been
granted or left to Christians in fee-simple at the time of conquest, on
payment of one of two taxes—either a fixed sum for the land itself or
a share of the produce—the latter ranging in amount from one-tenth to
one-half.[49] The state lands were such as had never been granted in
fee-simple, and hence their title remained in the sultan. He received
the revenue, however, from only a part of them; for a very large portion
had been given to mosques as endowment (_vakf_) for their maintenance
and the support of their attendants, or for the benefit of the schools,
hospitals, and other buildings attached to them; and another large
portion had been granted in fief to Mohammedans, who in return rendered
military service on horseback.[50] The comparatively small remainder of
the state lands was held as crown domain, administered in a special way
by the sultan as owner. The tenants of state lands held title only by
lease, or _tapu_, and paid both money and crop rent to the church, the
fief-holder, or the crown.[51] All the lands in Europe were regarded as
state land,[52] for the Ottomans gave out in fee-simple few lands that
were conquered from Christians. Asia Minor was also largely state land;
but Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt were held under older arrangements,
and were mainly tribute lands. Arabia and Bosra were almost wholly tithe
lands, as being the oldest Arabian possessions.[53] The fundamental
quality of all tribute land was unchangeable;[54] but original tithe
lands which had come into the hands of Christians were temporarily
regarded as tribute lands,[55] and lands in fee-simple (tithe and
tribute lands) might be devoted by their owners as religious endowments
(_vakf_).[56] Original small fiefs might be made into one large one; or
a number of persons might come to hold a fief without division of it,
provided they jointly furnished the required military service.[57] Many
endowments (_vakf_) were made by private individuals for various public
purposes; in time, through the attachment of pension provisions and by
other devices, a system was built up which had many of the features of
the employment of uses under English law.[58]
No small amount of land of every sort went out of cultivation, and after
a certain time had elapsed, if the owner was unknown, became state land.
If this or any other unoccupied land was brought again under the plow, it
might be granted to the new cultivator.[59]
This rapid survey is sufficient to reveal the tangled nature of the
Ottoman land system in both its farther and its nearer aspects, and to
show why the administration had to become markedly and increasingly
bureaucratic. Such a multiplication of relations acted powerfully toward
decentralization, since the regulation of countless details could be
attended to better from points near at hand; and the immense amount of
adjustment to which officials and clerks must devote their time afforded
infinite opportunities for corruption and extortion. Suleiman, in his
legislation, made a series of efforts to simplify and systematize the
situation, and with some success; but he could not remove the causes of
the complications, or arrange matters so that they would not eventually
become worse than before.
THE PEOPLES
The wide Ottoman territory held a great number of peoples, marked off by
differences of race, language, religion, and customs. The raided belt
was inhabited chiefly by Southern Slavs, Germans, Hungarians, Poles,
and Russians; and the Christian shores and islands of the Mediterranean
chiefly by Greeks, Italians, French, and Spaniards. Accordingly, slaves
from all these peoples were constantly forwarded to the center and
distributed widely—in the service of the sultan, in the households of
the great, and on the estates of country gentlemen. They were treated
without prejudice in accordance with their abilities, and in the end the
great majority were brought into the Moslem fold, many of them rising
to the highest positions. The inhabitants of the tributary states were
left in possession of most of their own institutions, but whether to
their advantage in the long run is a question open to debate.[60] They
were plundered directly by their own princes and indirectly by the
Turks, and they had almost no part in the work and life of the empire.
The Mingrelians and Georgians captured and even raised children for the
slave-trade of the empire proper and of Egypt.[61] The Egyptian fellahs
toiled, as they have done through all ages, to produce wealth for their
masters, who were now in two bodies—the Mamelukes, recruited as always
from slaves of many races, and the group of officials and Janissaries
who aided and sustained the Ottoman pasha. The Berbers of North Africa
furnished a sufficient task of government to their rulers, who consisted
of a body of officials and Janissaries recruited from captives and from
the Turks and other inhabitants of southwestern Asia Minor,[62] but
connected only at the top with the central government of the empire.
In the region which was under more or less direct administration,
Albanians, Servians, Croatians, Bulgarians, and Greeks—in general,
the Christian subjects in the Balkan Peninsula—furnished most of the
tribute children; but some were taken from the Christians of western and
northeastern Asia Minor and the Caucasus region.[63] Kurds and Arabs,
being Moslems, could not be enslaved, but they fought for the empire on
the eastern frontiers. Armenians and Jews were, by ancient privilege,
exempt from both blood tribute and military service.[64]
The principle of the personality of law and religion came most visibly
into play in the heart of the empire. Prevalent in the Orient from the
time of Assyria’s greatness to the present day, it is not easily to be
understood in a land that has wholly separated religion and law. Where
these two ideas are united, two men who hold different faiths must
perforce live under different laws.[65] Islam inherited the idea of the
personality of law through the Sassanian Persians, and endeavored to
apply it with simplicity by drawing a single line between Moslem citizens
(_Muslim_) and non-Moslem subjects (_Zimmi_).[66] The Ottomans adopted
the idea unreservedly and worked it out into a complicated system: each
considerable body of their non-Moslem subjects, Greek Orthodox, United
Greek, Armenian, and Jewish, they left, in time, not merely to its own
religion, but to its own law and the administration of its law in all
matters that did not concern Moslems.[67] Proceeding yet farther with
the same principle, they granted even greater privileges to foreigners
who wished to reside within the empire. Except for a tax upon the land
which they might occupy, for the necessity of paying customs duties, and
for responsibility to Ottoman courts of justice in civil cases in which
Ottoman subjects were concerned, such foreigners were almost wholly free
from Ottoman control, freer far to do as they pleased than they could be
in their native lands.
Regions existed where nearly all the inhabitants obeyed one law. In
Bulgaria and Greece few were not Greek Orthodox. In the interior of
Asia Minor few were not, at least legally, Mohammedan. But in the great
cities of the empire, and especially in the capital, there was an immense
variety of obedience. Not only did the various colonies of foreigners
and the various subject nationalities have their separate rights under
different systems, but individuals among them, such as ambassadors
and clergymen, had special privileges and immunities. Even among the
Mohammedans there were various distinctions. Several large classes were
privileged, and in different ways, including all the people of court and
church, of the army and the law, of government and education. The social
and legal structure was thus scarcely less complicated than that of
medieval Western Europe, with its interlocking of feudal and official and
royal privilege, of clergy and nobility, of free and chartered cities.
INSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT
In the midst of so much territorial complexity and among so many peoples
which enjoyed different rights, what unifying institutions did the
Ottoman Empire possess? In the largest sense, the government included
every organization that could lay claim to any public character, and
all of these must be brought into view if there is to be a complete
understanding of the conditions. In the first place, however, it is
necessary to discover and comprehend the genuinely great and powerful
institutions. These were two, and not, as is essential to the modern
conception of the state, a single one. Each was, it is true, composed
of several parts, which may be regarded as distinct institutions in
themselves; and yet each had an inherent unity that must be firmly
grasped and held if the situation is to be understood.
If names must be assigned to these two great composite institutions, the
nearest approximation would perhaps be to call them State and Church.
But these words give no adequate idea of them, since each embraced
a little less and at the same time far more than is included in the
conception of the corresponding Western institutions. They will therefore
be described and discussed as the “Ottoman Ruling Institution,” and the
“Moslem Institution of the Ottoman Empire.” The character of each and
the distinction between them will become clear as they are explained in
detail. For the present, a brief statement of the composition of each and
of its function in the government of the empire will suffice.
The Ottoman Ruling Institution included the sultan and his family, the
officers of his household, the executive officers of the government,
the standing army composed of cavalry and infantry, and a large body of
young men who were being educated for service in the standing army, the
court, and the government. These men wielded the sword, the pen, and
the scepter. They conducted the whole of the government except the mere
rendering of justice in matters that were controlled by the Sacred Law,
and those limited functions that were left in the hands of subject and
foreign groups of non-Moslems. The most vital and characteristic features
of this institution were, first, that its personnel consisted, with few
exceptions, of men born of Christian parents or of the sons of such; and,
second, that almost every member of the Institution came into it as the
sultan’s slave, and remained the sultan’s slave throughout life no matter
to what height of wealth, power, and greatness he might attain.
The Moslem Institution of the Ottoman Empire included the educators,
priests, jurisconsults, and judges of the empire, and all who were
in training for such duties, besides certain allied groups, such as
dervishes or monks, and emirs or descendants of the Prophet Mohammed.
These men embodied and maintained the whole substance and structure
of Mohammedan learning, religion, and law in the empire. They took
part in the government by applying the Sacred Law as judges assisted
by jurisconsults, and in these capacities they paralleled the entire
structure of administration to the remotest corner of the empire.[68] In
fact, their system extended to regions where direct administration was
not exercised. In the Crimea, for example, the rendering of justice was
in their hands, while the other functions of government were performed by
a vassal state in light obedience. The situation in Arabia and in North
Africa was somewhat similar, though complicated by the presence of rival
systems of jurisprudence. In direct contrast to the Ruling Institution,
the personnel of the Moslem Institution consisted, with hardly an
exception, of men born of Moslem parents, and born and brought up free.
Both these institutions, while uniquely powerful and independent within
the empire, were paralleled by lesser institutions, but in different
ways. The Ruling Institution was followed closely by the governments of
Egypt and North Africa, and less closely by those of the tributary and
vassal states; but all these were strictly subordinate, and exercised
what authority they possessed only within definite territorial limits.
The Moslem Institution was followed closely by the Greek and Armenian
and Jewish national institutions, and to some extent by the organization
of the foreign colonies. Each of these various institutions rested on
a religious organization or theory, cared for the learning, religion,
and law of its people, and rendered justice in matters not covered by
the Ottoman administration; but all were wholly independent of the
Moslem Institution, and, since they were based on personality instead
of territory, they exercised jurisdictions which were territorially
co-extensive with its jurisdiction and often with the jurisdictions of
each other.
The two great institutions and the lesser parallel ones included
practically all the government of the empire when regarded in its widest
aspect. In the time of Suleiman the Ruling Institution was perhaps of
greater power and influence than the Moslem Institution, but the tendency
of the latter was to gain upon the former. Notable progress in that
direction was made during his reign, and indeed through his personality.
The policy of both toward the parallel lesser institutions was to prevent
them from gaining in power, and, so far as possible, to weaken them.
In the former aim this policy succeeded with all but two classes,—the
governments of North Africa, which were separated by a sea under their
own control, and the organizations of the foreign settlements, which were
supported by active and increasing powers outside of the empire. But the
two great institutions were restrained by circumstances and their own
inherent structure from extirpating the parallel institutions, and in
time they were to cease to weaken them. The greatest dangers to the whole
Ottoman system lay, however, in the rivalry of the two great institutions
and in a tendency of the Ruling Institution toward decentralization and
division into its component parts.
CONTEMPORARY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE TWO GREAT INSTITUTIONS
Few writers on the history and government of the Ottoman Empire since the
sixteenth century have grasped the individual unity, the parallelism,
and the contrast of its two leading institutions. D’Ohsson and Von
Hammer understood the Moslem Institution, but missed the conception of
the Ruling Institution, the unity of which had disappeared long before
their time. Ranke obtained from a few of the Italian writers a very vivid
conception of the Ruling Institution, particularly as a slave-family and
an army; but he did not see the Moslem Institution in its due proportion
and importance. Zinkeisen, making wider use of the Italians, came nearer
than any other to a clear understanding of the whole scheme; yet his
exposition does not leave a distinct impression. Bury, in his lucid
chapter in the _Cambridge Modern History_, describes well the _Spahis_
and the Janissaries, and notes that many tribute children rose to high
positions; but he does not grasp the unity of the Ruling Institution,
and he seems hardly at all to see the Moslem Institution. Jorga, the
latest to write a general history of Turkey, makes it his avowed purpose
to exhibit cultural and institutional growth; he comes near, but does
not attain, a distinct conception of the Ruling Institution; while
giving especial attention to the renegades who reached high position in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, he seems not to recognize how
definite, and how intelligently constructed and directed, were the policy
and organization which raised them to power.[69]
In order to show how clearly some of the Italian writers of the sixteenth
century understood the two institutions, though not under any particular
names, translations of certain quotations are subjoined. Since they will
serve also to justify the present writer’s point of view, no apology need
be made for their length.
Andrea Gritti, Venetian orator extraordinary to Bayezid II, in his report
to the Venetian senate on December 2, 1503, mentions the highest Turkish
officials as follows:—“For affairs of state and every other matter of
importance His Majesty is wont to take counsel with the pashas.... These
are ordinarily four in number, who reside in Constantinople; they are
born of Christian parents, seized from the provinces while small, and
educated in different places by men delegated for that purpose; raised
then to certain positions either through the affection which the Grand
Signor bears for them, or by some enterprises valorously carried through,
they quickly become very rich, selling, among matters of importance,
justice and favors; but when they find themselves at the summit of
felicity they live in great danger.”[70]
Antonio Barbarigo, Venetian _Bailo_ at Constantinople from 1555 to 1560,
speaks further of the high officials: “Nor does there exist in this so
great empire either superiority or illustriousness of blood, so that any
one can glory in his descent, but all are in an equal condition, and
they themselves wish to be named and called slaves of the Grand Signor,
and their greatest pride is when they say that they are slaves of the
Signor; and all his chief men and governors are slaves, and Christian
renegades, and sons of Christians brought up from an early age in the
seraglio, and then in time, according to their worth, exalted and
rewarded and made great by His Majesty.”[71]
Marcantonio Barbaro, _Bailo_ of Venice at Constantinople from 1568 to
1573, seems to have been the first to discern clearly the contrast of the
two institutions.
“It is a fact truly worthy of much consideration, that the riches, the
forces, the government, and in short the whole state of the Ottoman
Empire is founded upon and placed in the hands of persons all born
in the faith of Christ; who by different methods are made slaves and
transferred into the Mohammedan sect. Then whoever will carefully direct
his attention to this principal consideration, will come more easily to
an understanding of the government and nature of the Turks....
“Other sorts of persons are not ordinarily admitted to the honors
and the pay of the Grand Signor, except the above-mentioned, all
Christian-born....
“The emperor of the Turks has ordinarily no other ordinances and no
other laws which regulate justice, the state, and religion, than the
Koran; so that, as the arms and the forces are wholly reposed in the
hands of persons all born Christians, so, as I have already said, the
administration of the laws is all solely in the hands of those who are
born Turks, who bring up their sons in the service of the mosques, where
they learn the Koran, until being come of age they are made _kazis_ of
the land, who are like our _podestas_, and administer justice, although
the execution remains in the hands of those who wield arms....
“I have taken much space to demonstrate to your most excellent Signory
how the government of this empire is wholly reposed in the hands
of slaves born Christians, this appearing to me a matter for much
consideration....”[72]
Gianfrancesco Morosini, Venetian _Bailo_ at Constantinople from 1582 to
1585, later made a cardinal of the Roman church, yields to none in the
fulness and depth of his observation of the Turks. He too distinguishes
clearly the great institutions:—
“There are two sorts of Turks: one of these is composed of natives born
of Turkish fathers, and the other of renegades, who are sons of Christian
fathers, taken violently in the depredations which his fleets and sailors
are accustomed to make on Christian territories, or levied in his own
territory by force of hand from the subjects and non-Moslem tax-payers
(_carzeri_) of the Signor, who while boys are by allurement or by force
circumcised and made Turks.... Not only does the greater part of the
soldiery of the Turks consist of these renegades, but in yet greater
proportion all the principal offices of the Porte are wont to be given
to them, from the grand vizier to the lowest chief of this soldiery, it
being established by ancient custom that the sons of Turks cannot have
these positions....
“To the native Turks are reserved then the governing of the mosques, the
judging of civil and criminal cases, and the office of the chancery: from
these are taken the _kazis_ and the _kaziaskers_, the teachers (_hojas_),
and their _Mufti_, who is the head of their false religion; and the
_kazis_ are like podestas, and render justice to every one, and the
_kaziaskers_ are like judges of appeal from these _kazis_....”
“The renegades are all slaves and take great pride in being able to
say, ‘I am a slave of the Grand Signor’; since they know that this is a
lordship or a republic of slaves, where it is theirs to command.”[73]
Lorenzo Bernardo was _Bailo_ of Venice in Constantinople from 1584 to
1587. After a second period of service in 1591 and 1592 he presented the
longest extant report to the Venetian senate on the Ottoman Empire. After
describing the principal officers of the Ottoman government at the time
he says in his involved style:—
“These are they, in whom is reposed not only the whole government of the
state, but also the command of all the arms of this so great an empire;
and yet these are neither dukes, nor marquises, nor counts, but all by
origin are shepherds, and persons base and vile; wherefore it would be
well if this most serene republic, imitating in this direction the Grand
Signor, he who from this sort of persons, his slaves, creates and makes
the best captains, _sanjaks_ and _beylerbeys_, giving them in this way
credit and reputation....
“Just as the whole government of the affairs of the state and the command
of its arms is reposed in the hands or the control of slaves by origin
Christian, and then made Turks by various accidents; so the government
of the affairs which look toward justice, and all the charge of affairs
of religion are located in the hands of native Turks, sons of Turks, who
having been educated in the universities instituted by the Grand Signor
and the present ministers, and made learned in their laws, which consist,
both civil and criminal, in no other teaching than that of the sole book,
the Koran, become _imâms_, or priests, who govern mosques; _kazis_, or
podestas; _hojas_, or preceptors of great men; and finally _kaziaskers_,
or judges of supreme appeal, of whom there are only two, the one in Asia
and the other in Europe; and the head of all these and supreme in their
religion is the _mufti_, like the pope among us, who is chosen by the
Grand Signor.”[74]
Lastly, Matteo Zane shall speak, Venetian _Bailo_ in Constantinople
from 1591 to 1597. In the imperfect record of his vigorous report,
the illustrious diplomatist says: “The Turks are partly natives and
partly renegades; the natives, who live for the most part in Asia, are
in comparison with the renegades less depraved and less tyrannous,
because they still have in them some religion, which the others have
not,—the most arrogant and scoundrelly men that can be imagined, having
seemingly with the true faith lost all humanity. This alienation from
religion is fitting in desperate characters, who are induced to it by
licentious freedom of life, and by seeing placed in their hands the arms,
the government, the riches, and in short the whole empire, excluding
the native Turks, who are admitted only to the careers of justice, as
that of _kazi_ and the like, and to those of religion, such as _mufti_,
_hoja_, and _imâm_, as is very well known.”[75]
The impending break-down of the system near the close of the sixteenth
century is also set forth clearly by Zane: “The government of the Turkish
Empire is suffering within itself so many and such great alterations,
that one may very reasonably hope, divine aid mediating, for some notable
revolution within a short time, because the native Turks continue to
sustain the greatest dissatisfaction, from seeing all the confidence
of the government reposed in the renegades, who, at a tender age for
the most part, are taken into the seraglio of the king or of private
citizens, and made Turks. To the renegades is committed not merely the
care of arms, but the entire command and the execution of the acts
of justice of the _kazis_ (although they do not allow appeals), and
the superintendence of religion; whence one may say that they rule
everything and that the native Turks are their subjects as are servants
to their masters; which was not true in other times to such excess as at
present.”[76]
To these testimonies from Italian writers may be added a paragraph
written about 1603 by the great English historian of Turkey, Richard
Knolles. Knolles shows no acquaintance with the Moslem Institution, but
his recognition of the Ruling Institution is good:—
“The _Othoman_ Government in this his so great an Empire, is altogether
like the Government of the Master over his Slave, and indeed meer
tyrannical; for the Great Sultan is so absolute a Lord of all things
within the compass of his Empire, that all his Subjects and People, be
they never so great, do call themselves his Slaves and not his Subjects;
neither hath any man power over himself, much less is he Lord of the
House wherein he dwelleth, or of the Land which he tilleth, except some
few Families in _Constantinople_, to whom some few such things were by
way of reward, and upon especial favour given by _Mahomet_ the Second, at
such time as he won the same. Neither is any man in that Empire so great,
or yet so far in favour with the Great Sultan, as that he can assure
himself of his Life, much less of his present Fortune or State, longer
than it pleaseth the Sultan. In which so absolute a Sovereignty (by any
free born People not to be endured) the Tyrant preserveth himself by
two most especial means; first, by taking off all Arms from his natural
Subjects; and then by putting the same and all things else concerning the
State and Government thereof into the Hands of the Apostata, or Renegade
Christians, whom for the most part every third, fourth, or fifth Year
(or oftner, if his need so require) he taketh in their Child-hood, from
their miserable Parents, as his Tenths or Tribute Children; whereby he
gaineth two great Commodities: First, For that in so doing he spoileth
the Provinces he most feareth, of the flower, sinews, and strength of
the People, choice being still made of the strongest Youths, and fittest
for War; then, for that with these, as with his own Creatures, he armeth
himself, and by them assureth his State; for they, in their Child-hood,
taken from their Parents Laps, and delivered in Charge to one or other
appointed for that purpose, quickly, and before they are aware, become
Mahometans; and so no more acknowledging Father or Mother, depend wholly
on the Great Sultan; who, to make use of them, both feeds them and
fosters them, at whose hands onely they look for all things, and whom
alone they thank for all. Of which Fry, so taken from their Christian
Parents (the only Seminary of his Wars) some become Horse-men, some
Foot-men, and so in time the greatest Commanders of his State and Empire,
next unto himself; the natural Turks, in the mean time, giving themselves
wholly unto the Trade of Merchandise, and other their Mechanical
Occupations; or else to the feeding of Cattel, their most ancient and
natural Vocation, not intermedling at all with matters of Government or
State.”[77]