The Grand Turk Read online

  The cardinals who had been with Pius in Ancona rushed back to Rome, where a conclave was held on 29 August to elect a new Pope. On the first vote the conclave elected the Venetian Pietro Barbo, who the following day was consecrated as Pope Paul II.

  Although the new Pope was a Venetian, he had not been on good terms with the government of his native city. Nevertheless, he tried to avoid a break with the Serenissima for fear that the republic should make peace with the Turks, which would end all possibilities for Paul to carry on with his predecessor’s crusading policy The Venetian bailo in Istanbul, Paolo Barbarigo, had an interview with Mahmut Pasha in February 1465, in which the grand vezir expressed surprise that Venice was still persisting in war with the Ottomans, implying that peace terms might be a possibility. The Venetians were interested in peace, but they knew that Mehmet would propose only terms that the republic could never accept, such as the loss of the Morea and other possessions of its maritime empire.

  On 16 May 1465 the Pope appealed to the Signoria, the Venetian government, to contribute to the war effort being made by the Hungarians against Sultan Mehmet, the ‘common enemy and calamity of Christians’. The Signoria responded on 1 June, acknowledging the need to support the Hungarians against the Turks, but asking to be excused from contributing to the war effort, for ‘many and grave difficulties are arising which make it so hard for us that we cannot see how action can be taken on your wish and our own desire, which is always attendant upon a pontiff’s wish’.

  Although the Italian rulers and other Christian princes were reluctant to support another crusade, the Pope did manage to give significant financial support to the Hungarians, and a contemporary observer notes that in 1465 alone Paul sent King Matthias Corvinus some 80,000 ducats. But this was a paltry sum compared to what Venice was spending, as the Senate informed Paul on 26 September 1465, noting that the annual expense to the republic of maintaining her army and navy in her war against the Turks, which she fought almost alone, was 700,000 ducats, which exceeded her entire income from maritime trade.

  Then in the early spring of 1465 Venice was suddenly faced with the threat of war with another powerful Muslim ruler, the Mamluk soldan (sultan) of Egypt, az-Zahir Saif-ad-Din Khushkadam. This came about when Venetian galleys carrying Egyptian merchants from Alexandria to Rhodes were attacked and captured by the Knights of St John. The Mamluk sultan threatened Venice with war unless the merchants were released and compensated, and several years of negotiations were necessary before the matter was finally resolved peacefully.

  Venice continued to fight on against Mehmet on several fronts, as the Senate noted in their response to an appeal for aid from an envoy of the Albanian leader Skanderbeg, who was still holding out against the Turks in his mountain fortress at Kruje. Expressing their gratitude for Skanderbeg’s valorous defence of Kruje, the Senate went on to say ‘and as to the money he asks for, we certainly wish that we could satisfy [him] to the fullest extent of his desire, but we must inform him that we have been incurring huge and intolerable expenses both on land and at sea, and not only in Albania and Dalmatia, but in the Morea, Negroponte, and other points in the east’.

  Then Venice had an unexpected respite, when Mehmet decided to rest himself and his army before going on with his march of conquest. Kritoboulos writes of this hiatus in his chronicle of the events of the year 1465, when Mehmet first moved in to his new palace of Topkapı Sarayı on the First Hill of Istanbul.

  The Sultan himself was greatly exhausted and worn out in body and mind by his continuous and unremitting planning and care and indefatigable labors and dangers and trials, and he needed a time of respite and recuperation. For this reason he knew he ought to remain at home and rest himself and his army during the approaching summer, so that he could have his troops fresher and more enthusiastic for the other undertakings which were ahead.

  7

  The House of Felicity

  The new imperial residence that Mehmet moved into during the winter of 1464-5 came to be known as Topkapı Sarayı, the Palace of the Cannon Gate, from the row of cannons that guarded its marine entrance at the confluence of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, where their waters meet and flow together into the Sea of Marmara. Thenceforth the earlier residence Mehmet had built on the Third Hill came to be called Eski Saray, the Old Palace, which continued to be used by the imperial household, though the sultan now clearly preferred the new pleasure dome he had erected on the First Hill, described by Kritoboulos in his first entry for the year 1465.

  Both as to view and as to enjoyment as well as in its construction and its charm, it was in no respect lacking as compared with the famous and magnificent old buildings and sites. In it he had towers built of unusual height and beauty and grandeur, and apartments for men and others for women, and bedrooms and lounging-rooms and sleeping-quarters, and very many other fine rooms. There were also various out-buildings and vestibules and halls and porticoes and gateways and porches, and bakeshops and baths of notable design.

  Aside from Kritoboulos, there are a number of chroniclers who describe the organisation of Topkapı Sarayı and life in the palace during the first century of its existence, written by men who were intimately acquainted with the Saray through being attached to its service. All of them were foreigners, slaves of the sultan who later retired or escaped from the imperial service.

  The earliest of these chroniclers are Iacopo de Camois Promontario, a Genoese merchant who served the Ottoman court in the years 1430-75, and Giovanni-Maria Angiolello of Vicenza, who was captured in 1470 and remained in the Ottoman court until 1483, serving both Mehmet II and his son and successor Beyazit II. Chroniclers from the sixteenth century include Giovanni Antonio Menavino, a Genoese who served as a page in the reign of Beyazit II (r. 1481-1512); Teodoro Spandugino, who came to Pera in the first decade of the sixteenth century; Luigi Bassano da Zara, who lived in Istanbul in the 1530s, and Bernardo Navagero, the Venetian bailo, who visited the palace in 1550. Their chronicles give a picture of life in Topkapı Sarayı during the century after the palace was built by Mehmet. Angiolello also describes the Conqueror as he would have appeared in the last decade of his life.

  The Emperor Mehmet, who, as I said, was known as the Grand Turk, was of medium height, fat and fleshy; he had a wide forehead, large eyes with thick lashes, an aquiline nose, a small mouth with a round copious reddish-tinged beard, a short, thick neck, a sallow complexion, rather high shoulders, and a loud voice. He suffered from gout in the legs.

  Angiolello says that the palace comprised ‘three courts each enclosed by walls’, each one entered through a double gate, the entire complex surrounded by an outer wall ten feet high, underestimating its height by a factor of about three. The outer wall encloses the palace on its landward side, extending from the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmara, where it connected with the sea walls that extended around the tip of the Constantinopolitan peninsula. The wall built by Sultan Mehmet is still perfectly preserved, looking much the same as it is shown in the Nuremberg woodcut of 1493 by Hartman Schedel, studded with a series of mighty defence towers. The enclosed area coincided with the site of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium, which originally comprised only the First Hill. The main buildings of Topkapı Sarayı were erected on what had been the Byzantine acropolis, or upper city, while the palace gardens were laid out on the slopes leading down to the Golden Horn and the Marmara.

  According to Angiolello, the gardens also included fruit orchards, vineyards, game parks and an aviary, as well as a zoological park and botanical gardens.

  And here in this garden there are many kinds of fruit tree planted in order, and similarly pergolas with grapevines of many kinds, roses, lilacs, saffron, flowers of every sort, and everywhere there is an abundance of most gentle waters, that is fountains and pools. Also in this garden are some separate places in which are kept many kinds of animals, such as deer, does, roe deer, foxes, hares, sheep, goats and Indian cows, which are much larger than ours, and many other sorts of anima
ls. This garden is inhabited by many sorts of birds, and when it is spring it is pleasant to listen to them sing, and likewise there is a marshy lake which is planted with reeds, where a large number of wild geese and ducks dwell, and in that place the Grand Turk derives pleasure in shooting with his gun.

  Bassano also says that the palace built by Sultan Mehmet had three courts, which were aligned one after the other in the form of a great rectangle. The fourth court of the present palace is really a large garden with isolated pavilions mostly added in the late Ottoman period. The Harem, or women’s quarters, in its present state belongs largely to the time of Murat III (r. 1574-95), with fairly extensive reconstructions and additions chiefly under Mehmet IV (r. 1648-87) and Osman III (1754-7). Three serious fires - in 1574, 1665 and 1856 - devastated large sections of the palace, so that, while the three main courts have preserved essentially the arrangements given them by Mehmet the Conqueror, many of the buildings have either disappeared (as most of those in the First Court) or have been reconstructed and redecorated in later periods.

  Topkapı Sarayı was not merely the private residence of the sultan and his court, for Mehmet also made it the centre of his government. It was the seat of the so-called Divan, the supreme executive and judicial council of the empire, and it housed the famous Palace School, the largest and most select of the training schools for the imperial civil service. The separate divisions of the Saray corresponded closely with these various functions, all of which took their original form under Mehmet the Conqueror.

  The First Court, which was open to the public, was the service area, containing a hospital, a bakery, an arsenal, the mint and outer treasury, and a large number of storage places and dormitories for guards and domestics of the Outer Service, those who would not normally come into contact with the sultan and his household. The Second Court was the seat of the Divan, devoted to the public administration of the empire; it could be entered by anyone who had business to contract with the council; beyond this court to left and right were other service areas, most notably the kitchens and the privy stables. The Third Court, strictly reserved for officials of the court and government, was largely given over to various divisions of the Palace School, but also contained some of the chambers of the Selamlık, the reception rooms of the sultan. The Harem, specifically the women’s quarter of the palace, had further rooms of the Selamlık and the sultan’s own bedroom, as well as quarters for the Black Eunuchs who guarded the women’s quarters. The White Eunuchs, who looked after the pages and the students in the Palace School, were housed in the Third Court. The Fourth Court was an extension of the Selamlık added in later times, the only structure remaining from the Conqueror’s time being Hekimbaşı Odası, the Chamber of the Chief Physician.

  The main entrance to Topkapı Sarayı has always been Bab-ı Hümayun, the Imperial Gate, opposite the north-east corner of Haghia Sophia. The great gatehouse is basically the work of Mehmet the Conqueror, though its appearance has changed rather radically in the course of time. Originally there was a second storey with two rows of windows, but this was removed in subsequent remodellings. The seventeenth-century Turkish historian Hezarfen Hüseyin notes that this upper storey was added by Mehmet to create a vantage point from which he could look out over the city.

  The rooms on the ground floor of the gatehouse were for the Kapıcıs, or corps of guards, of whom fifty were on duty at all times. The side niches in the gateway were in Ottoman times used for the display of the severed heads of executed offenders of importance, each labelled with his crime.

  The Imperial Gate opens into the First Court, which no longer looks like a courtyard because most of the buildings that formed its periphery have disappeared through fire and earthquake. This was once called the Court of the janissaries, for those members of the elite corps of the Ottoman army who were on duty in the palace assembled here.

  The most prominent building in the court is off to the left as one enters; this is the former church of Haghia Eirene, built by Justinian in the years 532-7 at the same time that he erected Haghia Sophia. This was one of the few Byzantine churches in the city that was not converted into a mosque after the Conquest, since it was within the bounds of Topkapı Sarayı. Sultan Mehmet used it to store captured weapons and other trophies of his conquests, and in the late Ottoman era it became an archaeological museum.

  On the west or left-hand side of the First Court, between the outer wall of the Saray and Haghia Eirene, there once stood a great quadrangle that housed the Straw Weavers and Carriers of Silver Pitchers. The large courtyard of this building served as a storage place for the firewood of the palace and the buffalo carts used to transport it.

  North of Haghia Eirene on the left side of the court is the Darphane, the buildings formerly used for the Imperial Mint and the Privy Treasury. Beyond these buildings a road leads downhill through a gateway called Kız Bekçiler Kapısı, the Gate of the Guardians of the Girls, referring to the Black Eunuchs who guarded the Harem. This road led to the outer gardens of the palace on the slope of the First Hill leading down to the Golden Horn, now the site of Gülhane Park.

  A short way down the road a gateway leads to a terrace below the north side of the First Court, an enclosure containing the Archaeological Museum, the Museum of the Ancient Orient, both of them founded in the late nineteenth century, and the Çinili Köşk, or Tiled Pavilion, one of the very few original buildings of Sultan Mehmet’s palace that has not been significantly altered. Sultan Mehmet seems to have built the kiosk in 1472 as a review pavilion, which he is known to have used to watch the palace pages playing jirit, a form of polo.

  Between Kız Bekçiler Kapısı and the wall of the Second Court to the north there once stood a number of buildings, including a large storehouse, two barracks for domestics of the Outer Service, and a small mosque for their use; all of these, which were probably largely constructed of wood, have disappeared except for some undistinguished foundations.

  On the east or right-hand side of the First Court is the site of the famous infirmary for the pages of the Palace School. This was a large building with a courtyard and a number of wards allotted to the various divisions of the school. Beyond the site of the infirmary a road led to the outer gardens of the palace on the slope leading down to the Marmara. This area is still covered with Byzantine substructures, including remains of the Great Palace of Byzantium, the sight of whose ruins had so saddened Mehmet when he first saw them on the day he conquered Constantinople.

  The rest of the east side of the First Court beyond the road consists of a blank stone wall with a gate and a water tower halfway along. Behind this wall stood the bakery of the palace, famous for the superfine quality of the white bread baked for the sultan and those favourites on whom he chose to bestow it. Beyond the bakery are the waterworks of the palace, built by Mehmet and subsequently reconstructed.

  Just before the gate to the Second Court, against the wall on the right, is a famous and sinister fountain. This is Cellâl Çeşmesi, the Executioner’s

  Fountain, in which the chief executioner washed his hands and sword after a decapitation, which took place just outside the gate. If the culprit was of sufficient importance the severed head was placed on one of the two Ibret Taşları, or Example Stones, on either side of the gate, as a warning of what happened to those who broke the sultan’s laws.

  The entryway to the Second Court is called Bab-es Selam, or the Gate of Salutations, also known as Orta Kapı, the Middle Gate. The gateway is shown in Schedel’s woodcut of 1493 and is essentially a construction of Mehmet II, with repairs and alterations by later sultans, as evidenced by inscriptions. The chief executioner had a small apartment in the gatehouse, one room of which served as a cell where the condemned man was held before his execution. Other chambers within the gatehouse were used as waiting rooms for ambassadors and other officials attending an audience with the sultan or the grand vezir.

  Here one enters the palace proper, which now houses the Topkapı Sarayı Museum. At this
point the vezirs and other high functionaries and the ambassadors of foreign powers, who were permitted to ride through the First Court, had to dismount from their horses, for only the sultan himself and his three favourite pages when in his company could ride through this gate.

  The Second Court, also known as the Court of the Divan, is still very much as it was when Sultan Mehmet laid it out, as evidenced by the descriptions of earlier chroniclers. The courtyard is a tranquil cloister of imposing proportions, planted with venerable cypress trees; several fountains once adorned it and mild-eyed gazelles pastured on the glebe. Except for the chambers of the Divan and the Inner Treasury to the north-west there are no buildings in this court, which consists simply of blank walls with colonnaded porticoes in front of them. Beyond the colonnade the whole of the eastern side is occupied by the palace kitchens, while beyond the western colonnade are the Privy Stables and the quarters of the guards known as the Halberdiers-with-Tresses. These guards took their peculiar name from the fact that false locks of hair hung down on either side of their face, supposedly to prevent them from taking sidelong glances at the concubines they might see when on duty in the Inner Palace.